Study Finds Iraqi National Police Ineffective in Combating Terrorism

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Study Finds Iraqi National Police Ineffective in Combating Terrorism

By Jim Randle
Baghdad
14 October 2007

Iraq's National Police are supposed to play a key role in the country's counterinsurgency, but U.S. experts say they are so corrupt and riddled with sectarianism they should be "disbanded and reorganized." As VOA's Jim Randle reports from Baghdad, a major effort to overhaul the National Police has been underway for some time, and a respected police agency from Italy, the Carabiniere, joins the effort this month.

A study of Iraqi military and police forces by a team of U.S. experts recently called the Iraqi National Police ineffective, corrupt, sectarian, and unable to help in the struggle against terrorism.

The Jones Commission and other critics says the problems in the Iraqi National Police are so serious that the top leadership and many officers have been replaced.

In an effort to deal with the crisis, entire battalions, units of several hundred members, have been undergoing investigations and retraining to strengthen skills and weed out unfit officers.

Former Washington, D.C. Police Chief Charles Ramsey, a member of the Jones Commission, recently told the U.S. Congress the problems in the Iraqi National Police were the worst he has seen in 38 years of police work.

"It was unbelievable, the amount of negative comments we got, whether we were speaking with Iraqi Army, Iraqi police service, it didn't seem to matter, community members, there was almost a universal feeling that the National Police were highly sectarian, were corrupt, had been accused of having death squads and the like," said Ramsey.

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http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/news/iraq/2007/10/iraq-071014-voa02.htm