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Measuring Stability and Security in Iraq

December 2007
Report to Congress
In accordance with the
Department of Defense Appropriations Act 2007
(Section 9010, Public Law 109-289)

Section 2—Iraqi Security Forces Training and Performance

Since late 2003, approximately 440,000 Iraqi military and police personnel have been trained for the Ministry of Defense (MoD) and Ministry of Interior (MoI) forces. This represents an 80,000 increase in reported numbers since the September 2007 report. The majority of this increase represents those who have received training at regional and provincial training centers, and, as they were not part of the programmed Coalition training, were not included in earlier reports. As the Government of Iraq (GoI) has funded increasing percentages of the security budget, the MoD and MoI have taken responsibility for running their training bases and academies by paying the salaries of recruits and Iraqi trainers as well as the operations, maintenance and life support of the training bases, and to an increasing degree, initial personnel and unit equipment. U.S. funding is focused on developing logistics and sustainment capacity, equipment replenish-ment, equipment for enabler units such as aviation, engineer, and transportation units and construction of facilities including bases for new units, but the MoD and MoI increasingly contribute to these programs. U.S. funding also supports ministerial capacity development as well as provincial and station-level civilian police advisors.¹⁷ Similarly, while previous reports have listed numbers authorized by the Coalition and provided estimates of numbers on the payroll, the GoI is now responsible for determining requirements and counting personnel. Therefore, reporting will now reflect GoI statistics.

Authorized personnel numbers are increasing as a result of three major factors. First, the successful offensive operations and local awakenings have resulted in new sources of potential recruits in a wider range of Iraqi communities. Second, over the past months the GoI has been consolidating security forces from other ministries into the MoD and MoI. This consolidation will continue through 2008. Third, the GoI recognized that the previous endstate of training and equipping 390,000 personnel was inadequate if they were to assume more responsibility for Iraq’s security.¹⁸ As a result, this report focuses more on the number of authorized and assigned personnel than on the number trained as a measure of development of the MoD and MoI forces.

As of November 15, 2007, more than 491,000 personnel are assigned to the MoD and MoI, not including civilian staff or MoI’s Facilities Protection Service personnel. This number exceeds the number of total trained personnel because many of them—mainly police—have never been trained as rapid hiring over the past two years outstripped academy training capacity. In addition, the MoD and MoI do not accurately track which of those personnel who have been trained as part of U.S.-funded programs are still on the force and which are no longer on the force as a result of being killed in action or leaving for other reasons.

The increase in authorized MoD and MoI forces’ endstrength from 389,000 personnel, as previously reported, to the current 555,789, and likely beyond, reflects the GoI’s upward reevaluation of force ratio calculations originally developed by the Coalition in the 2003-2005 timeframe. Specifically, for the MoD it represents five new divisions (the previously reported two divisions of the Prime Minister’s Expansion Initiative as well as three additional planned divisions). The MoI force expansion is driven by increases in police authorizations requested by several provinces and by the creation of auxiliary police forces. These auxiliary forces are elements of the current strategy, which seeks to gain the support of local populations through the inclusion of select elements of the community in the permanent structure of Iraqi forces.

The basic combat and basic police training facilities continuously operate at or near capacity. For the Army, these increases have led to significant improvements in the percentages of enlisted personnel who are assigned to generated units. Nevertheless, the shortage of officers remains problematic, and it will take years to close the leadership gap given current capacity in the officer pro-grams, which have long training cycles. The possible addition to the police service of some of the nearly 70,000 “Concerned Local Citizens” (CLCs) working with Coalition forces in an effort to better secure their neighborhoods will exacerbate the challenge of training all police who are on the force. The GoI has issued instructions to the MoI for its police commanders to be prepared to contract CLCs within the next three to six months. Many of the CLCs have expressed a desire to be formally hired into the Iraqi Police Service (IPS) and the army.

Analysis of future force structure require-ments projects that the size of the Iraqi Army in 2010 should expand to between 261,000 and 268,000 personnel and to 5,000 in the Iraqi Air Force, 1,500 in the Navy and 4,000 in the Special Operations Force. MoI forces should grow to between 307,000 and 347,000. Including additional personnel for training bases and logistics, the size of the Iraqi military and police forces could grow to between 601,000 and 646,000 by 2010. Ultimately, the GoI will decide force levels based on national security requirements and its fiscal capacity to sustain a significantly expanded force structure.