Baghdad Blues
For three years, the U.S. has tried to build Iraq's police force. Why it's still a mess
Inside a low-slung bunker in a quiet residential neighborhood in Baghdad, Falah al-Naqib was holding court in his temporary office. It was July 2004, and Iraq's new interior minister was briefing a team of U.S. civilian advisers on his plan to jump-start Iraq's moribund police force. A former Sunni opposition leader, Naqib wanted to bring back intact Iraqi Army units, which mirrored Iraq's ethnic and sectarian makeup, to form a new police commando force that could tackle an alarming spike in violence.
Within a few weeks, the first recruits were training, even though they lacked uniforms--and in some cases, shoes. When Matt Sherman, a U.S. adviser, first saw the unit, he was impressed by its tight discipline and high morale. The commandos soon received support from the U.S. military and gained respect from other Iraqis after battling insurgents in several cities. "They literally were the most effective [Iraqi] fighting force," says Sherman. "What was great about it was that the Iraqis were doing it on their own."
Deadly raids. The glow has long since faded. Today, the bunker where this brief success story was conceived is better known as the site of an illegal detention center apparently run by a renegade force within the Interior Ministry. The reputation of the police force now lies in tatters, amid accusations of human-rights violations and other police abuses. And many Sunnis have come to distrust the commandos, now called the National Police, while the ministry is widely believed by Iraqis to be riddled with hard-line Shiite militias that have free rein to pursue their own, often violent, agendas. Suspicion has only grown in the past two weeks after a string of deadly raids on Baghdad businesses by gunmen dressed in Iraqi commando uniforms.
The need for a reliable and integrated police force has never been greater. Iraq is facing a dangerous surge of sectarian violence with insurgents scheming to provoke a full-scale civil war. But these days, the embattled Interior Ministry has become a symbol of the Bush administration's inability to establish basic security in central Iraq. There were some early successes, such as the commandos, but broader progress has been undone by the vagaries of Iraq's emerging political scene and the ever rising violence. The failures were compounded by intense squabbles and profound disconnects inside the U.S. government effort. U.S. military officials point to signs of progress: Police are better able to hold their ground against insurgent attacks, and the ministry has disbanded some outlaw units in recent months. But other U.S. officials insist that the ministry urgently needs to be depoliticized to help stave off a civil war. "I think it's one of our biggest problems," says a senior U.S. official.
Rebuilding was always going to be difficult, given Iraq's recent history of oppression. But, as with most of the reconstruction effort, U.S. officials did very little preinvasion planning for rebuilding the crucial Interior Ministry, which oversees the police nationwide as well as the border and customs forces. When Steve Casteel arrived in Baghdad in the fall of 2003 to be the ministry's senior adviser, he had no time for illusions. On his first morning, the 32-year veteran of the Drug Enforcement Administration pulled up at the Al Rashid Hotel, which was to be his home, to watch smoke billowing from the hulking structure, which had just been rocketed by insurgents. The next day, suicide bombers hit four Baghdad police stations, killing eight officers. And on the third day, an aide warned that the ministry had somehow misplaced $72 million. (The money was located days later.) "So by the third day, I was asking, 'Is Iraq like this every day?'" he says.
advertisement
