Today the Iraqi government has become dependent upon
militias to defend the country against the insurgency. These armed groups might
be up to half of Baghdad’s forces. The question is what will happen to these
militias after the insurgency is defeated? Can they be integrated into the
security forces and whom will their loyalties lie with? Some are connected to
political parties and many were created by Iran to either fight the Americans
or defend the Assad government against the Syrian rebels. Iraq faced a similar
dilemma in 2005 when the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq’s Badr Brigade was
recruited into the police commandos who later became the National and then Federal
Police. These units singled out Sunnis for mass arrests, ran death squads, and maintained
secret prisons. It was only through external pressure and training by the U.S.
and its allies, an independent Interior Minister, and a strong Iraqi general
that the Federal Police was reformed. Today the situation is the reverse with
Iran pushing militias to the fore, and an Interior Minister connected to the
armed groups as well making the transformation of these organizations into a
national security force all the harder.
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| Interior Minister Naqib created the 1st police commando units (AP) |
The Iraqi police were in chaos after 2003 and the Americans
did little to remedy the situation. After the overthrow of Saddam Hussein the
police were largely ignored
by the United States. It didn’t give the time or resources to rebuild the force
even though they were crucial to restoring law and order in the country.
Attacks by both insurgents and militias devastated many police units leading to
collapses
in several cities in 2004. That led to a push to a militarized police to help
fight the anti-government elements. Interior Minister Falah Hassan al-Naqib and
his uncle General Adnan Thabit went on to create the special police
commandos to fulfill that role. The new units were mostly former Sunni
soldiers, but included some Shiites and minorities. The commandos, the police,
and the Interior Ministry in general were a mess and besieged from all sides.
That led the Interior Minister to take matters into his own hands and create ad
hoc units like the commandos, which were welcomed by the Americans at the time,
because they too needed all the help they could get to restore security to
Iraq.
 |
| Members of the Wolf Brigade in Baghdad 2007 (IraqSlogger) |
This chaos continued into 2005 and into this void stepped
the Shiite militias. In May 2005 a new government took office and the Islamic
Supreme Council of Iraq’s (ISCI) Bayan Jabr was named Interior Minister. He brought
in his party’s Badr Brigade into commando units like the Volcano and Wolf
Brigades. These units were accused of mass arrests, running death squads and
secret prisons. Twice in 2005 the Wolf Brigade entered Diyala and arrested over 1,000
people all of which were Sunnis. By the summer, the first stories emerged
of secret detention facilities being run within the Interior Ministry. (1) In
July the 759th U.S. Military Police Battalion found 170 prisoners at
one such prison at the Ministry in Baghdad. The next month the Volcano Brigade
took away 36 Sunnis from their homes in Baghdad, tortured, killed them, and
dumped their bodies near the Iranian border. A warrant was issued for the
commander of the brigade, but it was never followed through with. In November,
the U.S. discovered another secret
prison in the basement of the Interior Ministry’s operations center in Jadriya,
Baghdad. Former Interior Minister Naqib told the New York Times that the
Special Interrogations Unit ran the facility and that it was under the direct
command of Minister Jabr. There were 8-10 other such secret facilities in
Baghdad, which were run
by the Deputy Director of the Interior Ministry’s intelligence directorate
Bashir Nasir al-Wandi who was a Badr member. In Jadriya there were 173
prisoners, many of which had been tortured. A U.S. army adviser to the Wolf
Brigade stated that the unit acted fine when the Americans were around, but
when they weren’t it would kidnap and kill Sunnis and burn their homes. In
fact, the Brigade once led U.S. advisers into an ambush. In September 2006 an
inspection of the Site
4 prison in eastern Baghdad found that the Wolf Brigade was torturing many
of the 1,400 prisoners there. The commanding General Mahid al-Gharawi was charged
with abuse afterward, but the case against him fell apart when witnesses
recanted their testimony. Two months later a National Police unit raided the
Higher Education Ministry and took away 159 people. The incident was considered
a sectarian attack, as the commandos had become the National Police and the
Iraqi Accordance Front, the main Sunni party in the government, ran the
ministry. Finally, in March 2007 the National Police blocked off an area of
eastern Baghdad and kidnapped five British security guards. Both Premiers
Ibrahim al-Jaafari and Nouri al-Maliki denied that the commandos or the
National Police were involved in sectarian attacks. They claimed that people
wearing fake police uniforms were responsible. The actions of the commandos,
National Police and the protection they received from the prime ministers were
all a reflection of the cooperation between the government and militias to
carry out a sectarian war in response to the insurgency. By 2005 the civil war
was just taking off, and the ruling Shiite parties decided to fight fire with
fire giving the militias free reign both on their own and through the Iraqi
Security Forces (ISF).
At first, the U.S. leadership was largely unwilling to deal with
the militias in the security forces saying it was an Iraqi affair, but by 2006
it started pushing for reforms. In January it started a re-training program for
the police to try to stop some of the abuses. It also got the Interior Ministry
to mix the commandos created by General Thabit with the Badr ones into the
National Police. These moves had no real effect as the leadership within the
ministry and National Police was still in tact to give orders to the units to
continue on with their operations. In October, the U.S. took
stronger action when it disbanded the 8th Brigade of the 2nd
National Police Division and arrested its officers for abuses. It was blamed
for a raid on a Baghdad factory where it kidnapped 26 Sunni workers and killed
seven of them. Later in the year the Americans began another process with the
National Police that involved taking each brigade off line to go through three
week of training and vetting that included human rights, policing, patrolling,
and other skills. It took over a year to finish this reform effort, and this
time it was more far reaching. By the end
of the year 27,000 National Police had been fired, 17 of 27 battalion
commanders and 8 of 9 brigade commanders had been removed. In September 2007 a
congressionally mandated commission issued its findings about the ISF known as
the Jones report, which advocated disbanding the National Police because of its
sectarian nature. The U.S. military rejected this suggestion claiming that the
National Police were necessary to help secure the country. At the same time, it
acknowledged that the National Police were still carrying out attacks upon
Sunnis and needed more work. It therefore launched its third re-training
program, this time by the Italian Carabinieri. The training lasted two months
and went from December 2007 to 2009. The Americans also created 41 National
Police Transition Teams to monitor the Iraqi units. Although it took several
years to get it right this outside pressure to deal with the militias in the
police was crucial in changing the force. The Shiite parties that led the
government were not interested in the matter because it was their fighters who
were in the units and they were committed to fighting a sectarian war. The U.S.
was one of the only groups within Iraq capable of pushing for re-training the
National Police and getting rid of its commanders who were Badr members. The
Americans could not do this alone, and needed to find Iraqi partners to
accomplish this and they eventually did.
 |
| Interior Minister Bolani was essential for clearing out the Badr elements within the National Police (Getty Images) |
In May 2006
a new Interior Minister Jawad Bolani was named, which opened the door to
changing the National Police. Under the new Maliki administration Jabr was
switched to Finance and Bolani became Interior Minister. Bolani was considered
an independent giving him some leeway to operate outside of the other Shiite
parties who had militias in the ministry. After the 2007 Jones Report came out
he ordered an evaluation of the National Police, which found that it was still
plagued with problems. That led to a major reform effort that worked congruently
to the American one. He investigated
5,000 National Police and fired 2,300 of them by the end of the year. He
appointed a new National Police Commander General Hussein al-Awadi who was also
committed to change. Awadi got assurances that he could fire anyone without
political interference or repercussions. He then recruited new young officers
that could carry out his reforms within the National Police, while at the same
time forcing out most of the old leadership from command positions. The
National Police Brigades also went through their own Iraqi re-training program.
They were then partnered with a U.S. unit afterward that provided oversight and
more mentoring. The Interior Ministry also recruited
more Sunnis into the National Police to try to balance out the force. One
result was that the head of the Wolf Brigade was fired, half of the unit was
broken up, and Sunnis were brought in. The Americans applied the outside
pressure, but if it wasn’t for Bolani at the top of the Interior Ministry and
General Awadi commanding the National Police the U.S. could have been ignored.
Instead, it found Iraqis who were just as committed as it to cleaning up the
militias’ influence within the police. Together the two removed the leadership of
the National Police and made it loyal to the government and country rather than
ISCI. By breaking that link the National Police really became a national force.
The reforming of the National Police provides important
lessons for Iraq today as it is again dealing with a massive militia
mobilization and integration within the security forces. The two situations
could not be more different however. This time the main outside power is Iran
not the Americans, and Tehran has pushed
the militias, many of which it helped create, funds and arms, to the front
in the fight against the insurgency after the ISF collapsed in Mosul this
summer. Even before that when fighting broke out in Anbar in January the
militias were active there and many were included within ISF units. That has
only increased since then. The Iraqi government has talked about including all
of the various independent armed groups in Iraq within a National Guard to try
to bring them under the umbrella of the government. The Americans support this
idea. That would not break the militia ties to their leadership however just as
when Badr joined the Interior Ministry in 2005. In fact, Iran wants to maintain
its power and influence within the Iraqi government and ISF through its militia
allies and would oppose any effort at trying to carry out any serious reform of
government forces. Not only that but the new Interior Minister Mohammed Ghaban
is from the Badr organization the leading militia in the country. It was tasked
by Iran with heading the Iraqi militias fighting in Syria, and it appears to be
doing the same in Iraq. Premier Haider Abadi has welcomed the help of the
militias to defend the country now, but there is talk that he is worried about
the day after. Unless he finds strong allies that will help him it’s unlikely
that he will be able to end the militias’ influence, and their ties to Iran.
FOOTNOTES
1. San Francisco Chronicle, “Iraq concedes detainees likely
were tortured,” 11/16/05
SOURCES
Allbritton, Christopher, “Why Iraq’s Police Are a Menace,”
Time, 5/20/06
CNN, “Death Squads,” 3/25/07
Cordesman, Anthony, “Iraqi Force Development: A Progress
Report,” Center for Strategic and International Studies, 8/23/07
Diamond, Larry, “What Went Wrong in Iraq,” Foreign Affairs,
September/October 2004
Gangs of Iraq, “Interview Brig. Gen. Karl Horst,” Frontline,
4/17/07
Jones, General James, “The Report of the Independent Commission
on the Security Forces of Iraq,” Independent Commission on the Security Forces
of Iraq, 9/6/07
Moore, Solomon, “Killings Linked to Shiite Squads in Iraqi
Police Force,” Los Angeles Times, 11/29/05
Oppel, Richard, “Iraqi Police Cited in Abuses May Lose Aid,”
New York Times, 9/30/06
PBS Frontline, “Interview Robert Perito,” Truth, War and
Consequences, 10/9/03
Perito, Robert, “The Iraq Federal Police U.S. Police
Building under Fire,” United States Institute of Peace, October 2011
Rathmell, Andrew, "Fixing Iraq's Internal Security Forces: Why is Reform of the Ministry Interior so hard?" Center for Strategic and International Studies, 11/13/07
Rayburn, Joel, Iraq After America, Strongmen, Sectarians, Resistance, Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 2014
San Francisco Chronicle, “Iraq concedes detainees likely
were tortured,” 11/16/05
Sherman, Matt and Carstens, Roger, “Cooling the Streets:
Institutional Reforms in Iraq’s Ministry of Interior,” Institute for the Theory
and Practice of International Relations at The College of William and Mary,
11/14/08
Silverstein, Ken, “The minister of civil war: Bayan Jabr,
Paul Bremer, and the rise of the Iraqi death squads,” Harper’s Magazine, August
2006
Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, “Quarterly
Report and Semiannual Report to the United States Government,” 7/30/07
Tharp, Mike, “More Sunnis joining Iraq’s National Police,”
McClatchy Newspapers, 5/29/08
Tyson, Ann Scott, “U.S. Commanders Say Iraqi Police Can Be
Reformed,” Washington Post, 12/11/07
Wong, Edward and Burns, John, “Iraqi Rift Grows After
Discovery of Prison,” New York Times, 11/17/05
Zavis, Alexandra, “Iraq works to clean up national police,”
Los Angeles Times, 2/6/08
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