Iraqi police under siege

BAGHDAD — Nadia Jassim joined the police department for only one reason: She so distrusts its ability to protect her family that she signed up for the free weapons training.

“My neighbor was kidnapped, and there are gangs in my neighborhood,” the 26-year-old cadet said. “The police don’t help, and I want to learn to use the weapons to protect my family.”

The police are so unpopular that Miss Jassim and many of the other trainees at the Baghdad Police Academy say they change into their uniforms only once they are inside the compound.

“I haven’t told many of my friends I’m doing this,” she said. “And mother is so worried that she has hired a taxi to take me to the academy and home each night.”

The Bush administration has said the 138,000 U.S. troops will not leave Iraq until Iraqi soldiers and police can provide adequate security. Despite Washington’s $3.5 billion commitment and the participation of various British police and military units, it is clear that Iraqi police and civil-defense units will not be ready to stand alone for a very long time.

“Our military exit strategy requires a fully effective, credible, reliable Iraqi security force,” said Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmit, deputy director of operations. Such a force includes the police, army, border patrols and a national guard.

The Iraqi police department, once one of the most feared and hated arms of Saddam Hussein’s regime, is shattered. Analysts say it will take years to create a nationwide police that is trusted and capable.

No police station is properly equipped: Vehicles, weapons, communications, bullet-proof vests and ammunition are in short supply. The buildings often are dilapidated.

About 40 percent of nearly 90,000 cadets and officers on the job have received the basic police training. Twenty-year veterans have no experience in investigations and no concept of a police department sworn to “protect and serve” rather than shake down and terrorize.

Unlike postconflict situations as in Kosovo and Bosnia-Herzegovina, there is no NATO force to provide backup while civilian police officers are vetted and trained. In Montenegro and Liberia, there was relative stability after hostilities subsided.

But Iraq is different. Not only is there a robust and organized insurgency in Baghdad, Basra and the so-called Sunni Triangle, but much of the violence is directed at the police.

On Thursday, dozens of officers were killed or wounded in a string of coordinated attacks in six Iraqi cities. Attacks on police stations, training academies and roadblocks indicate that the Iraqi police department is drawing special ire from pro-Saddam elements and foreign fighters.

Hundreds of Iraqi police officers have been killed or wounded in attacks since the U.S.-led occupation began more than a year ago, according to the Iraqi Interior Ministry.

But the Iraqi police force is having no trouble finding recruits. In a country where jobs are scarce and money is tight, police jobs are tempting: Cadets make the equivalent of $51 a month and a police captain about $165. Two years ago, that captain would have been paid $12 to $17 a month — plus whatever he squeezed from motorists, shopkeepers and officers working beneath him.

The new recruits, by comparison, are drilled that bribery, extortion, arbitrary detention and summary execution are unacceptable methods of policing.

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