Stability of Iraqi police eroding

BAGHDAD -- The virtual collapse of Iraqi police authority in many parts of the country during the dual uprisings last week threatens one of the linchpins of the US strategy: to hand over policing responsibility and put an Iraqi face on domestic security.

US officials have not publicly disclosed the extent to which Iraqi

Baghdad highways closed; Fallujah talks proceed. A12

police officers quit, stayed home, or mutinied during the nearly two weeks of turmoil that engulfed Iraq at the beginning of April. But discussions with senior Iraqi interior ministry officials, police officers, members of the Civil Defense Corps, and some military officials who work with them highlight the deep flaws in the security services that were hastily assembled beginning last summer. They also paint a disturbing picture of a security force nowhere near ready to take a central role.

Originally, American officials expected Iraqi forces to be taking the lead on domestic crime and terrorism by now. Instead, it appears that even after the planned June 30 handover of power, the already busy US-led occupation troops will have to continue spending much of their time on police work.

''We are starting from zero. The police force is full of people who are good for nothing, appointed because of who they know," said Brigadier General Ahmed Ali al-Khafaji, a former resistance fighter who is now responsible for nearly 60,000 police officers in Iraq's provinces as a deputy to the interior minister.

In Baghdad, as many as seven police stations -- more than 10 percent of the city's total -- were abandoned in the face of threats from Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia during the first week of April, said Brigadier General Hussein Kamal, the deputy interior minister now responsible for Baghdad's police.

In three provincial cities -- Kut, Karbala, and Kufa -- police surrendered weapons and equipment to the militia and withdrew entirely from the streets. They also withdrew from stations in Nasiriyah, but did not cooperate with the rebels.

Details now emerging show that dozens of police stations came under coordinated attack at the peak of the fighting in the first weeks of April from either the Shi'ite Mahdi militia or from Sunni resistance fighters who view Iraqi police as collaborators with the occupation.

In Shi'ite areas, clerics accompanied by Mahdi fighters visited police stations at the beginning of the uprising and demanded that officers either join the militia or go home, Iraqi police officials said. In many cases, the police handed over uniforms, police vehicles, and machine guns to the militia.

Before the uprising, key police officers received warnings at their homes that their families would be killed if they protected police stations. Many chose not to return to work until the violence subsides, Iraqi police and a senior coalition official said.

And in cases where police officers chose to defend their stations from attacks, they were vastly outgunned, using light machine guns to fend off hundreds of fighters armed with rocket-propelled grenade launchers, hand-grenades, and heavy machine guns.

US and Iraqi officials said they are investigating every police officer to learn who shirked their duties and who mutinied during the tumultuous events this month, but they have refused to estimate the breadth of the problem. Still, some senior Iraqi police officials estimate that more than half of the nation's police force isn't qualified to be on the beat.

''In an emergency, I have 1,000 officers I can trust to control Baghdad," said the police chief for the entire capital region, Major General Jamal Abdullah al-Ma'athede. He has 10,000 officers under his authority and is responsible for a region of at least 6 million people.

Last week, as the situation in Baghdad calmed, Ma'athede gave an unusually frank assessment of the police force's response to the Shi'ite militia takeovers in several Baghdad neighborhoods earlier this month.

''There are no standards for someone to become an Iraqi police officer. He just comes from anywhere, says I was punished by Saddam, and now I want to be in the new police," Ma'athede said. ''No one checks them. No one examines them."

Since last summer, when there were almost no Iraqi security forces, the US-led occupation authority has assembled and trained some 200,000 local security forces, including a contingent of building security guards, police for electric lines, and border patrol units. The most visible are the police, who number 70,000.

US officials have always cautioned that the vetting process for new recruits isn't perfect and that over time they hope to augment the three-week training course in human rights given to new and re-hired police recruits.

But the breakdown in authority and police loyalty this month exceeded even the fears of some of the force's fiercest critics. In Shi'ite strongholds in Baghdad, most notably Sadr City and Shula, uniformed police officers openly joined ranks with the Mahdi, taping posters of Sadr to their vehicles and taking orders from clerics at his offices.

At the same time, many officers refused to help when police stations in Sunni areas came under attack by insurgents. In Aadhamiya, for example, a Baghdad neighborhood with a history of anti-American resistance, more than 100 heavily-armed men attacked the police station several nights running at the beginning of April.

On the first aggressive night of the assault, only six police officers came to the station to protect it, said Sergeant Ali al-Louabi. ''The new police officers have no sense of duty or honor."

Added a US military police officer who trains Iraqi police: ''Whoever has the biggest gun, that's who they'll follow."

US officials acknowledged for the first time last week the severity of the problems in the police force.

General John Abizaid, commander of the US Central Command, told reporters the police needed an improved chain of command, and acknowledged that a ''troubling" number of police officers defected to Sadr's militia.

''Clearly, there's things that we have to do better with the police," Abizaid said. ''Some of it has to do with leadership. Some of it has to do with vetting. Some of it has to do with training. But most of it has to do with time and confidence, which is what we're going to have to work on the most."

The senior coalition official in Baghdad said the occupation authority and the Iraqi Interior Ministry were trying to establish quickly how many officers failed to perform and who should be fired.

After June 30, Abizaid reiterated, US troops will continue to guarantee security in Iraq. But, he said: ''The ultimate point to which this country must move is Iraqi security by Iraqis. Everyone knows that."

Khafaji, the national police coordinator, recalled that last summer, in their rush to hire recruits, the US military and its allies flooded police departments across the country with thousands of green officers, pushing the total to its present level.

But hiring and training varied wildly from province to province. In some areas, like Nasiriyah, Italian troops have built a sophisticated emergency call center and have tried to give police enough vehicles to function; even that was not enough for them to match the force of the religious militia that drove them off the streets for three days in earlier this month. In other provinces, Khafaji said, a force of thousands shares five mobile phones and has no reliable direct communications link to headquarters in Baghdad.

The embryonic state of communications was illustrated during an interview with Ma'athede, the Baghdad police chief, who learned from a reporter that a key Sadr lieutenant had been arrested at a downtown hotel -- a capture that could have sparked renewed violence.

And at the Interior Ministry's headquarters, Khafaji opened a national ''operations room" 10 days ago; it boasts one telephone, a handwritten logbook, and paper wall maps of a dozen provincial cities. ''We'll get the rest of the maps next week," he said.

Khafaji delivered a report Thursday proposing an overhaul of the interior ministry: He wants to see the minister, his deputies, and police chiefs take a hands-on approach, meeting every day to discuss crises, trends, and the ongoing effort to revamp the nation's police force.

''We need efficiency in addition to enthusiasm," he said. ''Most of the people in charge are civilians who don't even know the alphabet of security or defense."

Kamal, the deputy interior minister, said that within a month ''retraining camps" would open in Kurdistan. He estimates that at least 60 percent of the police force around the capital needed to learn their jobs anew.

Khafaji said he believes that the police will never succeed unless Iraq's political parties and clerics disband their militias. He has also invited clan leaders and sheiks to the Interior Ministry, to convince them that their political power and wealth depends on security.

''We need radical plans," he said. ''Success at this stage is a matter of life and death."

Thanassis Cambanis can be reached at tcambanis@globe.com.