The vetting of recruits to Iraq’s police force is so poor that many who join up have criminal records, are barely literate, or are members of the insurgency, a new United States government report has concluded.
The report, compiled by Pentagon and state department officials and quoted in this week’s Time magazine, said that while training for the new Iraqi police force had improved, there were still a number of serious problems.
According to Time, the report says that ”too many recruits are marginally literate; some show up for training with criminal records or physical handicaps; and some recruits allegedly are … insurgents”.
The report adds to a recent assessment by the US military in Iraq that only half of the country’s police battalions are capable of fighting insurgents.
The new report will make depressing reading for the Bush administration, whose exit strategy from Iraq rests on the ability of Iraq’s nascent security forces to gradually assume control of the country.
News that the Iraqi police are not up to scratch will come as no surprise to ordinary Iraqis, however, many of whom see little change in the brutality and corruption of the force under Saddam Hussein.
The loyalty of Iraqi police to the new authorities in Baghdad has also come under question, most notably last November in Mosul when three-quarters of the city’s police force either abandoned their posts or assisted insurgents during an uprising.
According to US military estimates Iraqi security personnel number 171 300, comprising about 76 700 in the army, 600 in the air force and navy, and 94 000 under the control of the department of the interior, most of whom are police.
On Monday, attempts to meet the August 15 deadline for a new Constitution received a boost when Sunni Arab representatives said they would return to the negotiating table, and drafters announced agreement on several key articles of the new charter.
Meanwhile two suicide attacks in Baghdad killed at least 14 Iraqis and wounded more than 30, underlining the scale of the task faced by Iraq’s new US-backed political establishment in stabilising the country.
The Sunni Arab members on the constitutional committee had walked out of talks last week after one of their colleagues and his adviser were shot dead outside a Baghdad restaurant.
As a price for their return, the Sunnis had demanded improved security for their delegates, an international investigation into the attack and an end to Shia claims that the constitution was almost complete.
It appeared on Monday that the Iraqi Parliament had accepted those demands. ”We are expecting the Sunnis to return today,” said Mahmoud Othman, a Kurdish member of the constitutional committee.
The participation of the Sunni Arabs is seen as vital to the credibility of the new charter, which Iraqi authorities hope will help to isolate the Sunni-Arab-led insurgency, pave the way for fresh general elections, and facilitate the withdrawal of foreign troops.
”It is a positive sign,” said Othman. ”Even if we may disagree with them, they should be involved.”
One of the subcommittees drafting the constitution announced yesterday that the new law would state that Iraqis are equal under the law ”regardless of sex, race, origin, colour, religion, sect, belief, or opinion”. The draft text also affirmed the family as ”the nucleus of society and the state should preserve its values and religious and patriotic principles”.
Despite the progress, Othman said it would become clear in the next three days whether the Constitution could be finished on time. US and British officials have been insisting the deadline is met, but Othman warned that there were ”substantial differences still to be ironed out”.
There are disagreements over issues such as federalism, which the Sunnis oppose, the control of natural resources, and the role of religion, which has pitched women’s groups and secularists against conservative Shia. – Guardian Unlimited Â