Iraqi forces plagued by poor discipline: US investigators’ report
WASHINGTON, March 15: Iraqi security forces, whose build-up is seen as the lynchpin of the US exit strategy, remain crippled by poor discipline, questionable loyalties and a rate of absenteeism possibly reaching tens of thousands, US congressional investigators have found.
But a senior military official on Monday downplayed the importance of the findings by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), saying that high numbers of Iraqi police officials absent without leave was “a cultural thing”.
Washington’s plans call for training and equipping 271,000 members of the Iraqi military and police by the middle of next year, enabling them to take over many of the combat duties performed today by the Western forces.
Rear Admiral William Sullivan, deputy director of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a House subcommittee the Pentagon was more than halfway to this goal, with about 142,000 Iraqis listed as trained and equipped for battle.
However, the GAO report presented at the hearing expressed serious doubts about the quality of Iraqi recruits and charged that “US government data do not provide reliable information on the status of Iraqi military and police forces”.
Citing unnamed US defence officials, congressional investigators said Iraqi soldiers absent from their units without leave number “probably in the tens of thousands”.
As for the national police, the Iraqi interior ministry simply does not know how many officers it has at any given moment because local police stations do not provide accurate reporting, the report stated.
Admiral Sullivan tried to argue that leaving one’s unit without permission was part of time-honoured Iraqi tradition.
“This has been a cultural thing with the Iraqis throughout time,” he assured lawmakers. “Under the Saddam regime, when they went home ... maybe they stayed home and helped bring in a crop and didn’t report back for duty when they were supposed to.”
But the issues of combat readiness and loyalties also loomed large.
Joseph Christoff, the GAO’s top investigator for international affairs, said most police officers in Iraq had been trained and equipped to conduct law enforcement functions in a peaceful environment rather that fight ‘an insurgency’.
Investigators pointed to reports that some Iraqi security personnel continued to cooperate with anti-American guerillas and that foreign militants were trying to infiltrate both the fledgling Iraqi army and police.—AFP
