US Training of Death Squads in Iraq? - War Is A Crime .org

experience with Saddam's government has left him bitter and distrustful of anyone he suspectshas ties to the previous regime. That would most certainly include the former members ofSaddam Hussein's Special Forces and Republican Guards which initially made up the bulk of theNational Police when Jabr took charge.To help facilitate his transformation of the police forces, Jabr made sure to enlist the help ofSCIRI's armed wing, the Badr Organization. Members of the militia have been a growingpresence in the National Police, which now consists of nine brigades, with about 17,500members divided between the Special Police Commandos, the Public Order brigades and amechanized brigade, which will soon be transferred to the Ministry of Defense. "Leadership inthe commando positions has been turned over to Badr," said Matt Sherman, a former CPAadvisor to the Interior Ministry. "And new recruits are mostly Badr."Indeed, outside the ministry headquarters, banners proclaiming solidarity with Imam Hussein,one of Shi'ites' holiest figures, snap in the spring breeze alongside — and sometimes instead of— Iraqi flags. Most of the guards' beards are invariably cut in the close-cropped Iranian style,making them stand out in Baghdad, where beards are less common.Like so many things in Iraq right now, it wasn't supposed to be this way. As far back asDecember 2003, David Gompert, the former National Security Advisor for the CoalitionProvisional Authority, realized the dangers sectarian militias posed to Iraq's stability. And in thewaning days of the Coalition Provisional Authority, American viceroy L. Paul "Jerry" Bremerissued Order 91, which was intended to demobilize or integrate nine militias totaling about100,000 men into the Iraqi security forces. But the Kurdish pesh merga and the armed wing ofSCIRI, the Badr Organization, still exist today because the order was never completely orcompetently carried out.For that, Gompert puts the blame squarely on the Iraqi government, then under Iyad Allawi, aswell as the American embassy. With the U.S. military engaged in several major operations in2004 and the government transitioning from the CPA to a more traditional diplomatic presencewith the arrival of U.S. ambassador John Negroponte at the end of June, Gompert says, neitherAllawi nor the U.S made the reintegration program a priority. Job training programs run byAllawi's Labor Ministry were cancelled over personal feuds and pension programs and otheraspects of the program of DDR — "demilitarization, demobilization and reintegration" — werebounced around from one command to another.Making matters worse has been the fact that the police — unlike the Iraqi Army, which is stillunder U.S. command and supervision — were practically ignored almost from the beginning ofthe occupation, says Burke. And what supervision the National Police did get came from U.S.military intelligence officers, not civilian police advisors.This grave oversight, which stemmed from the military's unfamiliarity with civilian policemethods and its unwillingness to learn, has led to numerous abuses and little accountability. TheU.S. State Department, in a report released two weeks ago, documented numerous incidents in2005, dating back to early May when Jabr was first appointed Interior Minister, where Sunni135