Men in Black
Why Iraq's Shiite militias are so brutally effective. What can be done to stop them?
When Hunzeker and Ibrahim met in Numaniyah recently, their first topic of conversation was another security problem: the proliferation of police uniforms on the black market. In the past six months, according to Ibrahim, there have been at least 50 instances of National Police uniforms being worn by people committing crimes. "They're gold," says Hunzeker. The Americans and Iraqis recently designed a difficult-to-duplicate uniform, an improvement over the six National Police uniform variants floating around. "So far, the new uniforms have not been copied-yet," says Ibrahim, who outlines his plan to keep control of the three newly designed uniforms issued to each recently re-trained cop. The new police officers will get one uniform each, says Ibrahim-the other two will be kept under lock and key. It's a vital control given that U.S. military officials assume a 20 percent attrition rate among new National Police recruits, says Hunzeker.
Equally important is screening the soldiers who will be wearing the uniforms, who might find themselves under the influence of militias in a variety of ways. "There's what I would describe as passive influence," says Dempsey, "which is to say turning a blind eye to the activities of militia, allowing them to go through checkpoints, things like that. Then there's active participation-where they might let them use uniforms, let them use vehicles, or participate themselves." Recruits at Numaniyah are biometrically screened, then their names are cross-checked against criminal records formerly maintained by once powerful Ba'ath Party. The goal, says Hunzeker, is to "get at the criminal element-the people most vulnerable to being recruited by militias." Since arriving here, General Ibrahim has fired 189 policeman. "Most were thieves," he says. "The rest were useless."
"Mystique." But it's a tough slog, given that in some neighborhoods informants may be coerced, or simply seeking security. And there is what Duke calls the growing "mystique" of the Mahdi Army among youths in some neighborhoods. "They're perceived as having the power," he says. Recently, a gang claiming to be members of the Mahdi Army attacked an Iraqi Army checkpoint in Mansour, says Duke. "They said, 'Leave now, or we will kill you-we own this checkpoint.'" They added, "'By the way, Sadr will no longer support the Iraqi government. We are no longer supporting the Iraqi government-we're in charge now.'"
Just who that "we" is can be hard to figure out. CIA Director Michael Hayden told a Senate committee last month that sectarian forces are "descending into smaller and smaller groups fighting over smaller and smaller issues and over smaller and smaller pieces of territory." The Iraq Study Group says the Mahdi Army may have as many as 60,000 fighters, some of whom may no longer be under Sadr's control.
Senior U.S. commanders here estimate that the Mahdi Army [also known as Jaish al-Mahdi, or JAM] has spawned 18 to 24 offshoots. "How much is under Sadr's influence is tough to call," says a top American military official in Baghdad. "Clearly, he has some groups that he has very little control over." There have also been indications, Dempsey tells U.S. News, that Sadr "is trying to distance himself" from the more extreme elements. "I would suggest to you that the JAM is not a monolithic, homogenous beast. It's probably some combination of unemployed young men who think they're doing a decent thing watching their neighborhood, criminal opportunists in the middle, and some Shia religious extremists on the other end. The ones we're worried about are Shia religious extremists who are not trying to reconcile with the Sunni side, just as on the Sunni side there are Sunni religious extremists, who we typically call al Qaeda."
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