U.S. forces hand off to Iraqi police

QUDAS, Iraq | In post-surge Iraq, the campaign to prepare for the June withdrawal of U.S. forces from the streets is being waged on many levels.

U.S.-sponsored — or U.S.-managed and Iraqi-funded — projects are building neighborhood parks and playgrounds, fixing roads and financing small-business expansion plans. Schools are receiving essential supplies, and citizens’ health issues are being dealt with by roving U.S.-Iraqi medical clinics.

Efforts to protect the Iraqi public with a professional police force are considered vital for the nation’s long-term future.

“I’m here to tell how you can help secure our country,” National Police Maj. Mortada Bahar Abdullah said recently at an elementary school outside Baghdad. “We are out here to protect you and your families from evildoers.

“When you see your Iraqi Security Forces, don’t be afraid, but have faith.”

The central government’s 41,000-man NP force is predominantly Shi’ite. During the sectarian bloodletting of 2006-07, in which tens of thousands of Shi’ites and Sunnis died in reprisal killings, police were infiltrated by Shi’ite militias and suspected of actively participating in the slaughter.

The police force has since undergone reform in a process called “Re-Bluing” — a term derived from the process of refurbishing a gun barrel and also from the color of the force’s new digitalized-patterned blue uniforms.

“Because our country needed people quickly to join the NP when it started, some people picked were bad and untrained and influenced in a negative way [by Shi’ite militias],” Lt. Col. Mohammad Salah Hamid al Zobaidi said. “There were people who just wanted to cause sectarian problems, and this reflected on all of us.”

Col. al Zobaidi, in charge of an NP battalion in northeastern Baghdad, said misfits were later fired, and some were sent to prison. Remaining NPs — enlisted personnel as well as officers — were sent to a training academy where the weeding out process continued.

According to a May report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank, 18 of 27 battalion commanders were removed along with 1,300 lower-level officers.

Recruitment of Sunnis also began. Of the 1,800 NPs who graduated from training in January, 40 percent were Sunnis, the report said.

“I know their image is improving,” said Maj. Jeremy Simmons, a Military Transition Team chief who works with NPs in Baghdad. “I don’t think they’re the same as two years ago, when they were seen as thugs.

“I can’t speak to everything that goes on with them because we only see slices of their life, … but I go on missions with them all the time. The people like them; they wave at them, come up and talk to them on the street.”

The government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki recently agreed to absorb into its security forces up to 20 percent of nearly 100,000 Sunni fighters who joined U.S. forces to battle al Qaeda.

Last month, Iraq began paying about 54,000 members of the volunteer force, known as Sons of Iraq or Awakening Councils. Monthly income is expected to be about $300, the same amount the Americans paid, according to Associated Press.

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