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24 March 2006

In Iraq, 2006 is the "Year of the Police," says U.S. General

Increased focus on civil order and diversity, rooting out corruption

By David I. McKeeby
Washington File Staff Writer

Washington – Coalition forces now are focusing on upgrades to Iraq’s security forces, calling 2006, “the year of the police,” says U.S. Army Lieutenant General Martin Dempsey, head of the Multi-National Security Transition Command in Iraq.

“What we’re seeing now is progress on a three-year investment in Iraq's security forces.  It's been a big investment, and it’s yielding big progress,” Dempsey told reporters at a March 24 press briefing from Baghdad.

Dempsey said that this progress could be seen in a growing Iraqi army that increasingly leads counterinsurgency operations, as well as in a police force that will be responsible for security along all 3,631 kilometers of Iraq's borders by July. (See related article.)

But breaking old habits has not always been easy, Dempsey said, particularly for the police, noting “ups and downs, stops and starts, wins and losses” in transferring responsibilities from coalition forces to Iraqis.

Dempsey said that under Saddam’s regime, “corruption, ethnic divisiveness, embezzlement, human rights abuses – those kinds of conduct were actually condoned.  They were in some cases even a matter of policy.”

Concerns about the Iraqi police have heightened among some observers since the February 22 bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra, due to reports that individuals and units within Iraqi security forces may have allowed violence among the country’s Shiite, Sunni, and Kurdish communities – and allegedly may have participated in some attacks.

As part of the effort to build trust in the police, Dempsey’s command has worked with Iraqi authorities to encourage diversity in hiring, training, and deploying new army and police units.  Dempsey said that authorities recently decided to merge two national police forces to better reflect the country's diverse communities.

Dempsey said that his command also works very closely with Iraqi authorities to investigate reports of police misconduct. As a result, individual officers and mid-level commanders have been dismissed for corruption and other types of misconduct.  In one case, Dempsey said, an entire police unit was fired when authorities discovered that its leadership was, “doing some things that were not helpful to the formation of a national unity government.”

“It’s not that these things are not going to occur,” he said. “But if [Iraqi authorities] begin to punish conduct like that, change leaders and publicize it as a way of gaining public confidence, then I think we will have gotten where we need to be.” (See related article.)

A transcript of the briefing will be available from on Department of Defense Web site.

For more information, see Iraq Update News.

(The Washington File is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)