Iraq's divided police force lacks drive of a single vision

IRAQ: The storming on Monday of Basra's police headquarters by British forces to rescue two undercover servicemen detained by Iraqi police revealed that the interior ministry's writ does not extend to Iraq's second city and that its police are not a national force.

Basra policemen connected with the militia of the radical Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr did not free the British soldiers on the order of minister Bayan Jabr, a commander of a rival Shia militia.

British and Iraqi spokesmen claimed that the police had been "infiltrated" by militia elements. But this is not correct.

Ever since the US and Britain began to rebuild Iraq's security and defence forces, Iraq's police and military have recruited entire militia formations into their ranks.

Consequently, the country's national forces consist largely of members of the CIA-fostered Kurdish peshmerga; the Iran-trained Badr Corps of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (Sciri); and, to a lesser extent, US-trained militiamen loyal to the Iraqi National Congress headed by former favourite Ahmad Chalabi, now deputy prime minister.

As a result, Iraq is now beset by warfare on two levels: resistance to foreign occupation and civil war. Criminal activity, tribal in-fighting, and score-settling blend into both.

The struggle against the occupation is being waged by an estimated 30,000 insurgents, about 10 per cent foreign fighters.

If accurate, the number of insurgents has increased by 50 per cent over the past year, explaining why the insurgency has become more robust and more effective. The resistance is made up a variety of groupings, both Islamist and secular.

The most notorious is al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia, consisting of foreign Muslim militants led by the Jordanian Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi. Their objectives are to drive US and British forces from Iraq, reassert Sunni political dominance, establish an ultraconservative Islamic regime, and export their ideology to neighbouring states.

Recently, al-Qaeda has attracted Iraqi as well as foreign recruits because of its spectacular operations. Experts believe it attracts a constant stream of Iraqi volunteers for suicide missions.

Iraqi Sunni groups such as Ansar Sunnah and Ansar Islam take part in joint or co-ordinated operations with al-Qaeda.

These groups aim to oust the foreign presence, re-establish Sunni ascendancy, and create an Islamist government. Supporters of Saddam Hussein seek to wreak vengeance on the US and its allies for toppling his regime.

Baathists and Arab nationalists are determined to end the occupation and establish a secular, nationalist, Arab government.

They believe that once there is a full-scale civil war, they will be asked to take over because the Kurds and Shias cannot impose order or ensure Iraqi unity.

The 10,000-strong Mahdi Army of Mr al-Sadr is not normally counted among the resistance groups, but it shares their main objective - an end to the occupation. Mr al-Sadr rejects Tehran's influence in Iraq exercised through the pro-Iranian factions now running the government, and wants to establish an Arab-Iraqi Islamic state.

Iraqi factions have strongly condemned al-Zarqawi's recent call to target Iraqi Shias and, in a joint statement, said that the resistance would direct its attacks at "the occupiers and collaborators, and nobody else".

It also asserted, ". . . the call for attacking Shias . . . is nothing but a fire which will burn all Iraqis". Civil war was always likely.

Communal warfare has been waged for many months against Sunni, Turkomen, and Christian communities by Kurdish militiamen (estimated to number 70,000) and the Badr Corps, the military wing of Sciri.

The Kurds are intimidating, arresting, and harassing Sunni and Christian Arabs and Turkomen in the Kirkuk area, with the aim of driving out these communities, repopulating it with Kurds and taking control of its oil.

Shia militiamen are driving Sunnis and Christians from Basra and other southern cities and murdering innocent Sunnis in retaliation for Sunni resistance operations which kill Shias.

Kurdish and Shia units of the Iraqi army are being deployed in US-led operations against Sunni towns and cities, exacerbating Sunni resentment against these two communities.

Kurdish and Shia soldiers and policemen also work in hit squads under the command of their ethno-sectarian parties. The combined strength of these forces is said to be 190,000.

Since they possess the largest and most well-trained militias, the Kurds and Sciri have resisted efforts to disband these illegal formations and the US has been unable or unwilling to act.

The Kurds and Sciri, which seek to establish largely autonomous regions in the north and south, do not want Iraq's police and army to develop into national forces.

A national army could be used against the communal militias to preserve the country's unity, integrity and sovereignty. The Iraqi army, an effective force established during British rule, was preserved under the Arab nationalist and Baathist regimes.

Largely officered by Sunnis, the army fought Shia Iran to a standoff during the 1980-88 war, in spite of the fact that the majority of soldiers were Shia.

No real effort has been made to recreate the national loyalty, traditions and spirit of this army in post-war Iraq, because Washington decided from the outset to create an ethno-sectarian system of governance rather than a secular national system.

The price of this policy may very well be protracted conflict and the fragmentation of Iraq.