Iraq now woos officers once spurned
In need of leaders, the Army seeks officers from Saddam Hussein's corps.
By Gordon Lubold | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitorfrom the August 29, 2007 edition
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Baghdad - Iraq's security forces have been plagued with charges of human rights abuses, corruption, and disloyalty ever since they were hurriedly assembled by US advisers in the wake of Saddam Hussein's fall.
Many of the problems within the fledgling Army and police are the result of not having enough skilled officers to command inexperienced ground troops, experts say.
As a result, Iraqis and their US advisers are stepping up efforts to bring many ex-officers from Mr. Hussein's Army back into the fold,a measure they say will improve the quality of the country's forces.
Their hopes rest in people like Mohammed Abbas Elawi, a former warrant officer who left the Army before the US invasion. He's now willing to return. "We face death every month, so I'd rather take part in one of the forces to defend myself and my family," he said at a recruitment drive Sunday.
The officer shortage – and much of the trouble in rebuilding the Iraqi security forces in the first place – is largely due to the decision by the Bush administration and Paul Bremer, then the top US official in the country in 2003, to disband the Iraqi Army. It is generally agreed that that decision led to a number of problems, not least of which is the current shortage of officers.
At the Baghdad Police Academy, for example, officials are focused on graduating new officers by dramatically expanding the academy. That will help to "professionalize" the force, they say, and potentially reduce the problems within its ranks since it was revamped under US leadership. Many Iraqi police, both officer and non-officer, lay their allegiances to their sect or tribal family, sometimes ignoring national laws they are paid to uphold.
Each officer is required to sign a document swearing his loyalty to the country, says Maj. Gen. Abdul Karim Khalaf, a spokesman for the Iraq Interior Ministry.
"The document concluded that he should work under the Iraqi flag, not Sunni or Shiite," says General Khalaf. "If he disobeys, then he will be fired from the service."
Such claims have been made before, but it appears the Interior Ministry, which oversees the police, is getting serious. Since last June, says Khalaf, the ministry has fired as many as 14,000 officers. Many were fired for being Baathists, members of Hussein's party. But others were fired after the police force's new internal affairs unit investigated a number of them for mistreating citizens, bribery, and other criminal acts.
The ministry's policy is to send police officers to work in the neighborhoods in which they live, which also helps to reduce the number of crimes and abuses conducted by officers in uniform, Khalaf says. But he acknowledges that putting more officers into the mix will not be a cure-all.
"We don't have angels," he says.
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