The U.S. police assistance program in Iraq broke new ground in three notable and far-reaching ways, said a panel of distinguished experts at USIP on February 29, 2012. The event, entitled “Policing Iraq,” was co-hosted by USIP and the Institute for the Study of War.
The U.S. police assistance program in Iraq broke new ground in three notable and far-reaching ways, said a panel of distinguished experts at USIP on February 29, 2012. The event, entitled “Policing Iraq,” was co-hosted by USIP and the Institute for the Study of War. It took place in the midst of a series of spectacular attacks on Iraq’s police, including a February 19 suicide car bombing at the Baghdad police academy and a March 5 killing spree by gunmen diguised as SWAT teams.
Retired U.S. Army Lieutenant General James Dubik, former deputy Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction Ginger Cruz, Columbia University’s Dr. Austin Long, and USIP’s Director of Security Sector Governance Robert Perito participated in the panel discussion. Despite their varying perspectives on Iraq’s reconstruction, the panelists agreed that the Iraq police program marked several “firsts” for the U.S. and its allies. Further, these “firsts” have significant implications for ongoing operations in Afghanistan and future operations in Libya and elsewhere.
AT SCALE – Iraq represented the first time for the U.S. to attempt to train and equip a police force in a large country with a large population. A previous U.S. police-building operation took place in Kosovo. At the time a province of Serbia, Kosovo had a population of 1.8 million. Iraq’s population is nearly 18 times greater, at 32 million. Correspondingly, the U.S. police program trained far more police in Iraq. The Kosovo police force was about 6,000 strong. Today, Iraq’s police forces exceed 412,000.
To achieve this enormous scale, the U.S. has spent $8 billion on police assistance in Iraq since 2003. One reason for the high cost was that sufficient resources and personnel were not initially committed to rehabilitating the Iraqi police. “The first budget in 2004 was for only $24 million,” said Cruz. “There should have been 5,000 trainers. The Coalition Provisional Authority had six.” Although funding increased exponentially, the number of civilian experts did not. Dubik said he requested that the State Department provide embedded advisers to build ministerial capacity but none arrived. A second reason for the staggering cost was that the U.S. was training and equipping police in the midst of a war.
UNDER FIRE – Iraq also marked the first time that the U.S. and its allies tried to build an indigenous police force before the shooting stopped. Previous police assistance operations in Latin America and the Balkans were carried out in truly post-conflict environments. In stark contrast, the Iraq program took place in the midst of “indirect fire, direct fire and IEDs,” recalled Dubik, who oversaw the training of the Iraqi Security Forces from 2007-2008. “When I visited Capitol Hill before deploying to Iraq, I received many more condolences than congratulations. There was a feeling approaching despair.”
Initially trained as community police officers, the Iraqi police found themselves outnumbered and outgunned by heavily armed militias and insurgents. During street battles, some police broke and ran. Others simply put down their weapons and walked off the job. In his recent USIP Special Report, Perito details how the U.S. pivoted toward training “heavy” Iraqi police units modeled upon European gendarme forces. As a result, the Iraqi police are largely a militarized force focused on counterinsurgency operations with only a limited capacity to enforce the rule of law.
MILITARY-LED – Responsibility for training foreign police forces was traditionally under the purview of the Departments of State and Justice and USAID. These civilian agencies have been relatively successful in smaller countries, like Haiti and Kosovo. However, as insurgent and criminal violence escalated in Iraq, Washington transferred responsibility for the police assistance program to the U.S. military and Department of Defense. A similar hand-over occurred in Afghanistan. Although controversial, the panelists agreed that it was the right decision. “No other organization had the resources,” argued Long. General Dubik added, “There is a difference between imposing security and enforcing security. Military and military police are good at imposing security that is not there. Then, police can come in and enforce the rule of law.” Cruz agreed with her co-panelists, but added, “It should not have been State nor Justice [in charge]. If the U.S. is going to continue to do nation-building, it needs to create a unique body with national building as its primary mission. We should not commit the Department of Defense to doing something that it is not trained to do.”
During the withdrawal from Iraq, the Defense Department transferred responsibility for police assistance back to the State Department. Where the goal was once to develop large numbers of police to deploy quickly, now the State Department focuses on improving the ability of Iraq’s senior police officials to manage the force. To further this goal, the State Department’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement will deploy 115 advisers in FY12. Critics have noted that of the $500 million budget, only 12 percent will actually go toward police advising. The remainder will be spent on providing security and life support for the advisers. However, Perito noted that the advisers “will be directly hired by the U.S. government, replacing the previous practice of relying upon contractors provided by a commercial firm.” He added, turning to General Dubik, “Jim, I think your embeds have finally arrived.”
BROADER IMPLICATIONS BEYOND IRAQ – The U.S. experience in Iraq has been instructive for Afghanistan, where the U.S. has trained a large police force now numbering around 157,000 members. As in Iraq, U.S. military forces will be draw down and are scheduled to transition their duties to the Afghan national security forces by 2014. At that point, the large U.S. police assistance program -- which now involves nearly 10,000 advisers and has cost some $14 billion -- will be reduced and may transition to State Department supervision. “Afghanistan has additional layers of complexity,” Long concluded. “However, almost every problem in Iraq mentioned by this panel today has come up in Afghanistan.”