Strengthened “Iraqi security forces” are often offered as a panacea for the mess in Iraq by both Democratic and Republican politicians. “As they stand up, we will stand down,” George W. Bush says. Democratic politicians suggest redirecting American soldiers from combat roles to training missions for Iraqi soldiers and police.
Actually, the training of Iraqi soldiers and police has been going on for almost four years now. What have we gotten out of it? We get the kind of thing that happened in Tal Afar yesterday – a massacre.
A group of Iraqi police in Tal Afar, trained by Americans, got angry after a series of bombings, presumed to be done by Sunni insurgents. So, they got their guns and went around the town, gathering up as many Sunni men as they could, and executed them one by one, shooting them in the back of the head. The Tal Afar police killed at least 45 people this way.
Wathiq al-Hamdani, the provincial police chief, says that everything is under control now, and police from Mosul are being moved in to replace the local police. I wonder whose side will the police from Mosul be on.
When the American government trains and equips Iraqi police and soldiers, we may just be helping different death squads in Iraq do their dirty work more effectively. Training “Iraqi security forces” isn’t stopping insurgent attacks, and may be as much a barrier to establishing lasting peace in Iraq as the insurgencies they are supposed to fight.
