Sons of Iraq militia member. (Photo: Paul McLeary)
“There is infiltration everywhere in the state, especially in the security forces,” an Iraqi told Washington Post reporters in Baghdad after yesterday’s bombings that killed almost 100, while injuring another 500. “Today the entire city was targeted. How do you justify that?”
A new report by Iraqi Major General (Ret.) Najim Abed Al-Jabouri put out by the Institute for National Strategic Studies (PDF) points to just such “infiltration” of the security forces by various Iraqi political parties, and outlines how this is contributing to the continuing instability in the country. As the recent spate of deadly bombings attest, all is not well in a land where 130,000 American troops are now largely confined to their bases, and like the Baghdadi in the Post story, Al-Jabouri frets about the continuing politicization of the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF). He says that the ISF are better trained and more professional now than at any time in the recent past, but too many units of both the army and police still retain deeper loyalties to various political or ethnic factions than to the central government.
He brings up the worrying prospect of continued violence, writing that
If high-profile mass murder attacks and assassinations continue, the ISF will be confronted with a dilemma: if they are not able to provide security for the people, then the people will seek alternative means of protection. During these times of uncertainty, there are two ways in which the ethno-sectarian parties seize the initiative: first, by allowing partisan militias to operate in their areas of influence; and second, by allowing security to overshadow their deficiencies in governance and public services.
And that is exactly where the ethnically-based political parties can exploit their power, especially if not all of the security units are on the same page when it comes to what the best interests of the country are. Al-Jabouri notes that the situation is so unstable that “even Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who is the commander in chief of the armed forces, has had to form his own personal security forces that are not connected to the Ministries of Interior or Defense because of the fear of political party influence over those ministries.”
He also complains of a deeply corrupt culture within the ISF where certain well-connected but unfit officers are quickly pushed up through the ranks, either because they have bribed their way into promotions, or because of political patronage. In order to break hold that political parties have over entire divisions in the army, Al-Jabouri recommends moving battalions from one division to another to “weaken sectarian and ethnic susceptibilities and strengthen the loyalty of the army to the state,” much the way the Baghdad government has done with Kurdish units, to try and weaken the influence that Kurdish parties have in the ISF. He recommends that the U.S. use whatever leverage it has with the Baghdad government and the ISF to start this reform process, but as the Washington Post story this morning pointed out, whatever ability the Americans currently have to influence Iraqi politics is waning, and quickly.
The Thunder Run has linked to this post in the blog post From the Front: 08/21/2009 News and Personal dispatches from the front and the home front.
http://www.thunderrun.us/2009/08/from-front-08212009.html
Posted by: David M | August 21, 2009 at 10:53 AM