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Training Iraqi police remains hard task
(Iraq)
Updated: 2005-11-30 11:37
At a dusty school converted to a military outpost, American soldiers are
packing up this week, preparing — yet again — to hand most of the security
control of this city to Iraqi forces.
It's their third try, and one big problem remains: Only 100 of the 700
police on the city payroll actually show up for work most days, U.S. commanders
acknowledge. As President Bush prepares to herald American progress in training
Iraqi forces, Samarra is a bitter example of the long road ahead.
U.S. commanders say the plan to soon relinquish the city's largest inner base
to the commandos demonstrates the growing competence of Iraqi troops. By next
summer, they hope to hand all security duties in Samarra to a local force of
1,200.
But skeptics, including some U.S. soldiers involved in previous hand over
attempts, point out that this is only the latest effort to put Iraqis in charge
of this Sunni Arab city of about 200,000. Twice before over the past two years,
police crumbled in the face of insurgent threats.
In this picture released by the U.S. Air Force
on Nov. 24, 2005, Army Staff Sgt. Jason Lyday, left, instructs Iraqi Army
soldiers on muzzle discipline prior to entering a room during a dry run of
close quarters battle at weapons class on Forward Operations Base McHenry
northern Iraq, near Kirkuk, Wednesday, Nov. 23,
2005.[AP] | "If they give it to the cops that are here now, we'll just wind up coming
back," said Staff Sgt. Eric Doolittle of Jacksonville, Fla., assigned to the
101st Airborne Division.
In other parts of Iraq, there is more progress toward establishing local
forces willing to fight the insurgency — either in cities such as Baghdad or in
the desolate desert plains of Anbar province.
Large Shiite cities in the south such as Karbala and Nasiriyah are largely in
the hands of Iraqi forces, for example. And Najaf, where U.S. troops fought
Shiite militants in some of the war's bloodiest battles, is now quiet and mostly
devoid of Americans.
But throughout central and northern Iraq, cities that are either Sunni Arab
or ethnically or religiously mixed pose a much more difficult challenge.
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