Senior U.S. military commanders in Iraq rejected an independent commission’s recommendation Thursday to disband the 25,000-strong Iraqi National Police force, saying that despite sectarian influences the force is improving and that removing it would create dangerous security vacuums in key regions.
“We are way past the point where we just fire everyone and start over,” said Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, who commands U.S. military forces in a large swath of central Iraq, where he seeks to have five more police battalions assigned.
The report released Thursday by the 20-member Independent Commission on the Security Forces of Iraq, headed by retired Marine Gen. James Jones, described the national police force as riddled with sectarianism and corruption. The force, which is 85 percent Shiite Muslim, was the only branch of the Iraqi security forces that the commission deemed beyond repair.
In congressional hearings Thursday, lawmakers focused less on the report’s details than on its broad proposals.
Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, emphasized the commission’s recommendation to redirect U.S. troops toward protecting Iraq’s borders and key infrastructure in early 2008, while turning over security to Iraqi forces, despite their deficiencies. “It is long overdue that we cut the cords of dependence,” Levin said.
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Presidential candidates from both parties seized on the report to battle over timelines for troop withdrawal.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) asked Jones whether a deadline for withdrawal would be in the interest of the United States. “Senator, I’ll speak for myself on this, but I think deadlines can work against us,” Jones replied. “And I think a deadline of this magnitude would be against our national interest.”
But Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) said a deadline would force Iraqi leaders to reconcile their differences.
“If we take away deadlines, we take away benchmarks, we take away timelines,” she said, “what is the urgency that will move them to act?”
Overall, the report painted a mixed view of Iraq’s security forces. It said Iraq’s Defense Ministry is increasingly capable and the Iraqi army has made measurable progress, although it will not be ready to take over domestic security from U.S. forces in the next 12 to 18 months.
In contrast, it called the Interior Ministry “dysfunctional” and unable to control tens of thousands of its armed members.
The National Police was singled out as “beyond repair,” testified commission member Charles Ramsey, the former Washington police chief.
Yet the senior U.S. commanders said they neither expected Iraq’s Shiite-led government to dismantle the National Police — nor did they believe the government should do so.
Recruiting and training a new force would present major hurdles and would not necessarily prevent its reinfiltration by sectarian officers, they said.
Instead, the commanders said the sheer demand for Iraqi forces to back the U.S. military troop increase this year — now at 168,000 troops — makes it unfeasible to do away with the National Police, a paramilitary force led by a mix of police and army officers deployed throughout the country.