An article in Saturday's
Guardian reports that US troops will be intermingled with Iraqi police to oversee and act as "Advisors". This is reportedly in response to the infiltration of Shite militias into the Iraqi police and the resulting abuse of mainly Sunnis by the police. The architects of this new strategy believe having more US troops embedded with police patrols can insure that the Iraqi police operate in a fair and just manner.
Is This A Recipe For Disaster? I explore that question after the jump...
First, what exactly are we talking about here. According to the Guardian story...
Thousands of American troops will be assigned to Iraqi police units to monitor their work and rein in those who abuse prisoners, according to US military officials in Baghdad.
"It is not easy to identify that some operation tonight was legitimately directed by somebody in the security organisation of the ministry of the interior or the ministry of defence," a US commander said, "or whether it was some people in ... militia ... who decided to attack someone's ... neighbourhood."
The US military says it does not tolerate militias in the security forces, but the Iraqi constitution allows regions to have "home guards" or "regional guards."
"What we're trying to look for is that moderation," a senior official told the Los Angeles Times, "that you can't just go and attack that neighbourhood because it's primarily a different sect or a different race or a group of foreigners ... and just arrest them because they're different and put them in secret facilities and hold them for undetermined periods of time." US troops have themselves abused prisoners, most notoriously at Abu Ghraib prison, where National Guards routinely humiliated and degraded those under their jurisdiction.
So let's see, we are intermingling more US troops with the Iraqi police who don't want them involved and who will resent, if not out right oppose, any interference by our troops. Since the troops will reportedly be acting as "advisors", it is uncertain what if any control they will have on the Iraqi police. One things for sure after our performance at Abu Ghraib and other US run Iraqi prisons, the Iraqi police probably can't help but think this is a matter of "Do as we say, Not as we do".
Now how about Bush's overall strategy of giving Iraqis greater control of their own security...
At present about 40 American soldiers are attached to each of seven of the nine special Iraqi police brigades. Under a plan, expected to be announced in Washington in the coming weeks, all the units will get several hundred advisers each.
Earlier this week the US said it would delay the transfer of prisons it controls to the Iraqi government while stepping up the monitoring of arrests and detainees.
"They have to coordinate with us and request permission to come into our battle space," an official said.
The assertion of US control over the police indicates a growing involvement in Iraq's internal affairs even as Washington seeks to scale down troop levels elsewhere.
Yet another example of Bushco doing the exact opposite of what he tells us he is doing.
But, what scares me the most about this whole idea has nothing to do with politics. Right now the Iraqi police seem to be easy targets for insurgent attacks. The number of Iraqi police killed or wounded on a weekly basis far exceeds US Troop casualties. Now I am by no means a military expert, but it seems that spliting our troops up among the Iraqi police instead of keeping them together as a well trained fighting unit, will make them more vulnerable. Also, instead of having their buddies watching their backs as is the custom of the US military, our troops will be in the midst of Shite dominated Iraqi police most of which couldn't give two shits if an american soldier gets killed or captured. That's why may fear is that this will only result in a sizeable uptick in US casulaties, and increase the possibility of US soldiers being taken prisoner by insurgent groups and tortured. God, I hope I'm wrong!