THE admission yesterday by a senior Iraqi minister that his country’s police and armed forces were infiltrated by militants should come as no surprise. It is one more consequence of Washington’s total lack of forethought about its invasion of Iraq. By straightway scrapping Saddam’s entire police and military infrastructure the coalition created two disasters straight off. First it released into the community well-trained men, often still armed, who formed the core of the insurgency. Second, brand new police and military contingents had to be recruited.
Had the coalition authorities stuck with the old police and army, they would have been able to weed out the Baathists, while re-training the rank and file. Instead Washington insisted on a new broom policy. The result was clouds of dust swept up, so thick and confusing, that even the Iraqi government is now unsure of the reliability of its law and order and defense assets.
The politicization of what should have been an independent police force is particularly worrying. However, coming on top of the $1 billion scandal over the re-equipment of the Iraqi Army with substandard equipment, it now seems another inevitable consequence of the chaos caused by the almost total lack of postwar planning by the invaders. One wonders if the government’s belated attempt to weed out militants from the police and army will be successful.
This is in part because the problem lies not just with the militants who have slipped into these formations. Ordinary police officers are becoming ever more angry at finding themselves in the front line of the insurgency. Each day colleagues are being murdered in terror attacks. They feel ill equipped and powerless to strike back. It may be the terrorists who are doing the killing, but it is the American-led invasion and occupation that has turned Iraq into a merciless shooting gallery.
Coalition members have been training police and soldiers but the courses have been too swift and too shallow. They have also focused very much on how policemen should behave in a peaceful European or North American setting, which is hardly appropriate in a country on the brink of tearing itself apart, where terror, kidnappings and murders occur on a daily basis.
One problem for any moderate Iraqi is that ever since Saddam’s ouster, Washington has announced time and again that the country was “turning the corner” in the struggle against the insurgency. Indeed so many corners have now been turned that it is clear that the Americans are going round and round in ever decreasing circles. If the Bush White House does not know what to do next, why should a humble Iraqi policeman?
And the Basra developments show that occupation is occupation, whatever be the flag under which it is run. They also show that no country can really be sovereign when the occupation forces, not bound by the constraints of the law of the land, can and do act the way they want to the utter embarrassment of the government that is supposedly in charge.
