only 60000 to go

Abd al-Karim Khalaf, spokesman for the Interior Ministry, just announced that the Ministry is ready to hire 12,000 members of the Sons of Iraq (nee Awakenings militias) into the Iraqi Police.  This is a potentially positive development since the integration of the CLCs into national institutions is so vitally important.  Al-Hayat quotes one CLC commander responding positively to this "show of good intentions" and the fact that the news was promoted in al-Sabah newspaper suggests that the government hopes to get some credit for it.  If this actually happens, and is the start of the process rather than the end, then I'd be relieved to see some actual progress on something that matters for the long-term prospects.  Of course, those two "ifs" are the catch as always.  Iraqi government promises of this sort have been made frequently, with little to show for them, and in the meantime tensions between the mostly-Sunni CLCs and the Shia militia-dominated police continue to run high.  We'll see if this time it's different.  The even bigger issue is whether that promised 12,000 is meant to be the first step towards wider integration or the ceiling.  If 12,000 is the cap (i.e. something below 20% if you take the 70,000 figure usually bandied about), then you're looking at something like 60,000 CLC fighters who will not be hired into national institutions - and that would spell bad news indeed.   Again, wait and see.

Comments

[bb]

There is a very good and informative article in the LongWar Journal by Bill Ardolino which may help explain why things don't happen overnight in Iraq.:

Some excerpts:

"A complex executive structure

The Iraqi government differs from its US counterpart in the vast diversity of political interests within the executive branch.

Any examination of political progress requires a basic understanding of the inherent challenges to quick action posed by the structure of the executive branch under the Iraqi constitution.

Executive authority is unevenly divided between the Presidency Council – comprised of the president and two vice presidents – and the prime minister, deputy prime ministers, and the Council of Ministers, a deliberative body composed of about 40 heads of Iraq’s ministries. The relatively powerless president is a Kurd, Jalal Talabani. The lion’s share of influence lies with Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki, a Shia with the Dawa Party, and the Council of Ministers, which has its own powers, like debating proposed legislation before it’s forwarded to the legislative branch.

The various ministers are appointed by Maliki and must be approved by a majority of Parliament, which apportions the positions as political spoils after extensive haggling among members of the various parties that comprise the ruling coalition, or “government list.” The process doesn’t inevitably result in the most qualified administrators taking charge of the ministries, as priorities are placed on the distribution of political parties and approving candidates who are broadly acceptable. The result is an executive branch of variable competence that is radically divided among various ethnosectarian and political affiliations.

Applied to American politics, such a scenario might look like a Republican president’s cabinet divided among Republicans, Democrats, Independents, and Libertarians, roughly proportional to their prevalence in Congress. For instance, Iraq’s Minister of Municipalities and Public Works is a Shia affiliated with the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, the Trade Minister is a Shia with Maliki’s Dawa Party, the Defense Minister is an independent Sunni, the Foreign Minister is with the Kurdistan Democratic Party, and the Minister of the Interior is an independent Shia.

This structure is designed to force representation from and interaction between Iraq’s various religious sects and ethnicities. Ministers, representing various parties, are ostensibly granted great latitude in carrying out the function of their ministry, and have a practical say in overall executive decisions via their membership in the Council of Ministers. These features of the Iraqi Constitution that place a significant amount of power in a collective, rather than in one person, necessarily slow executive action, even as they prevent the dictatorial abuses of Iraq’s past. "

and, On "Administrative ability and capacity":

" ...a paper-based system of requisitions adds layers of difficulty for various provincial police headquarters getting equipment from the Ministry of the Interior. Thus, both Western observers and police officers in a Sunni province like Anbar might view equipment shortages as the product of sectarian hostility by the Shia-dominated federal government, when much of the delay is really administrative.

“An extremely small percentage … of equipment shortages would be attributed to some sort of deliberate effort to deny somebody something,” said Major General Michael Jones, Commanding General of the Coalition Police Assistance Training Team. In fact, Jones had not seen this occur in the four months he had been in Iraq. He believes that a combination of complex administrative rules and inexperienced bureaucrats is responsible for many delays.

“There are procedures that you have to follow to order equipment or just to do basically everything,” said Jones. “When you look at the volume of procedures that you have in an institution, to have inexperienced people try to suddenly start filling senior roles in that institution with these practices that are not well-known, and in some cases not well-documented, it creates … big challenges.”

Inefficiency is exacerbated by the drastic growth of the young government. A primary focus of American advisers is “building the capacity” to govern and administer, at all levels, in rapidly expanding institutions headed by Iraqis with varying levels of experience, honesty, sectarianism, and patriotism. For example, the Ministry of the Interior’s authorization for the police force in al Anbar has grown from 11,000 to 24,000 in six months. Any organization that makes decisions to grow at such a rapid pace is “going to have huge problems” because of the inherent logistical and hiring challenges presented by such rapid expansion, said Jones."

The above might help explain why only 12000 of the CLC are slated for integration? Iraqi administration wouldn't have the capacity to process 76,000 in one go. How about giving these poor schmucks a break instead of constantly deriding them for not being able to achieve the impossible overnight?

Feel these latest posts have seriously been missing an informed context, Abu A. Not up to your usual standard?

btw the whole article is worth reading.

[Farook Ahmed]

The plan has never been to hire 100% of CLCs into the Iraqi Security Forces. MNFI Spokespersons have usually tossed around figures of 20-25% integration into the ISF. They say that some of this is apparently because not all CLCs want to join the ISF. Also, there does not seem to be a need for that many additional police on a permanent basis.

I'd have to speculate that part of it is because the Shi'ites in the Iraqi Government are wary of having such a broad influx of Sunnis - especially Sunnis who were previously sympathetic to or members of the insurgency - into the ISF.

We'll have to see whether and how it is implemented. There are Shi'a CLCs as well, running over 20% in some areas (notably Baghdad's Southern and Eastern Belts). If the Iraqi Government does its vetting and finds that a disproportionate number of CLCs who "fit the bill" for the ISF are Shi'a, we may have a serious problem on our hands.

[doug]

The shorter of the Bill Ardolino piece: let me accent how tangled the bureaucracy is while ignoring the deeper realities.

[Derfel64]

So what if they get nominally integrated?The Anbar police which is 20-30 thousand strong is full-fledged, official police, and they are NOT counted in the usual 80,000 clcs always quoted. But they are not under the authority of the central government, but of the awakenings. (thus the new militias actually total over 100,000)

If the government makes real efforts, providing support to the awakenings, letting them go through army and police areas and arresting those in the security forces who try to attack clcs, that´s fine. However it´s just about impossible that it will happen in the short term.