Officer: U.S. Military Can’t Purge Iraqi Police of Violent Extremists

Members of anti-American insurgent groups have infiltrated the ranks of Iraqi police. But even when American soldiers have reason to believe an Iraqi policeman secretly belongs to one of these groups, which drive the rising violence in Iraq, they cannot get him kicked off the force, a former U.S. military trainer told members of Congress last week. The Iraqi police are armed, trained and assisted by the U.S. military. American hopes for military withdrawal from Iraq rest largely on the ability of the police and Iraqi military to become independently capable of maintaining order and ensuring justice and safety for Iraqi citizens. "My police chief had given us a list of names [of policemen] he felt [were] part of the Mahdi militia, and we were able to get those policemen not fired, but transferred" to another police station, National Guard Lt. Cadetta Bridges told a congressional panel May 24. Bridges recently served as a coordinator for U.S. military efforts to train and equip Iraqi police to function on their own. "Everyone knows, in Iraq when you do something wrong, you don’t necessarily get fired," Bridges said. "That was one of our on-ground frustrations." There are exceptions. Six Iraqi policemen were arrested last month when their commanders were given a surveillance video showing the men aiding an insurgent attack on U.S. military personnel, the New York Times reported this morning. The episode has created "distrust" among U.S. soldiers working with the police in the area, the paper reported. The White House has said that training Iraqi police forces is part of the U.S. effort to help the Iraqi government "stand up," so U.S. forces can eventually "stand down" and leave the country. The failure to prevent sectarian and insurgent loyalists from donning police uniforms sets that effort back, experts and lawmakers say. Many senior Iraqi police officials complain the men assigned to their stations are "little more than militiamen in uniform," the Nation magazine reported recently. "When they get into civilian clothes, they go out and kill the other sect," one Major Ali told the magazine. Recent estimates place the number of Iraqis in police ranks who are also members of sectarian militia or insurgent groups as high as 50 percent. Another witness at the May 24 hearing, Marine Col. Robert Coates, told lawmakers of an incident in which an Iraqi law enforcement unit with which he had worked arrested individuals robbing cars on a highway, only to discover the men had police badges and identification. "They had been police officers in Ramadi," Coates said. Such incidents occur "on a daily basis," he noted, but said U.S. forces were trying to hold such individuals accountable. "They are the traffic cops, the patrolmen and the local beat cops who are essential to the counterinsurgency effort," said Rep. Martin Meehan, D-Mass., chairman of a House Armed Services subcommittee that heard Bridges’ testimony May 24. Do you have a tip for Brian Ross and the Investigative Team?