Baghdad Blues
For three years, the U.S. has tried to build Iraq's police force. Why it's still a mess
"Civil war." U.S. officials, meanwhile, worried that Jabr would absorb into the police elements of the Badr Corps, the military wing of SCIRI. "With the militias, we tried to take them as individuals, not as a unit," says Casteel. "That changed with this government." Naqib now accuses his successor, Jabr, of purging some of his best units because they had many Sunnis. "They brought in new people," he says, who were mostly Shiites. U.S. military officials acknowledge that some local police forces remain infiltrated by militias but say that Jabr does not tolerate the practice. A Baghdad police captain in an investigations office, however, says that Sunnis in the force have been discriminated against and that Badr Corps fighters have been brought into the ministry with broad authority. "I see units go out on patrol in the night without any orders from anyone or even a court order signed by a judge," the captain, a Sunni, says. "We have our own civil war in the Ministry of Interior."
Casteel left Iraq soon after the transition. Gradually, the civilian advising team, which had kept offices inside the Interior Ministry, was ordered by the State Department to withdraw to the embassy. Jabr also wanted a more hands-off approach. "We were really kind of blocked out of a lot of things," says Sherman, who left in December.
Quickly, it became difficult for U.S. officials to track developments. They would receive reports of Shiite units carrying out unilateral operations in Sunni areas. Rumors of "death squads" spread as more and more bodies of men who had been killed execution-style began turning up on Iraqi streets. U.S. officials could rarely determine when the ministry was involved--and when it wasn't. Naqib is very critical of Jabr's management, saying the ministry is looking more like groups of militias. "Either they're for the people or against the people," he says. "What's happening now, it's against the people, like we had in Saddam's time."
Indeed, the gist of the rumors seemed to be confirmed in November when U.S. forces raided the Interior Ministry bunker where the commandos had been originally conceived. The search uncovered a secret detention area that held nearly 170 prisoners, some of whom had been starved or beaten. U.S. officials were furious. A U.S. aide walked into Jabr's office the following morning carrying a box with several whips sticking out--a collection of alleged torture implements found at the bunker. An Iraqi investigation is still pending.
Jabr would later insist the reports of tortured prisoners were exaggerated, calling them a ploy to sway voters in the December election for the first government under Iraq's new Constitution. He has publicly denied tolerating militias or death squads inside the ministry, which declined to comment for this story.
The U.S. military, meanwhile, had grown so concerned about the faltering police and hollow bureaucracy that it took over the ministry advising role in October. Today, U.S. officials are deeply divided over Jabr's performance. Some, who were critical early, now praise him. "We believed a lot of the intelligence that said he was the reason for the sectarian divide in the ministry," says Maj. Gen. Joseph Peterson, the ministry's current senior adviser. "I've tested him, and he has always been national, not sectarian, in his decisions." He notes that Jabr has fired special police commanders and disbanded a rogue, predominantly Shiite, internal affairs unit. But others blame him for the ministry's lack of accountability. "He's either incompetent and not able to exercise control, or he is compliant," says a senior U.S. official.
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