Protecting
Neither
Facilities Nor People
By Dahr Jamail &
Ali al-Fadhily
09 November, 2006
Inter
Press Service
BAGHDAD, Nov 7 (IPS)
- The Facilities Protection Service (FPS) created after the invasion
of Iraq in 2003 has become the principal set of death squads in Iraq,
senior leaders say.
"The first accomplishment
of Paul Bremer (former U.S. administrator in Iraq) in Iraq was dissolving
the Iraqi army and all security establishments," a consultant with
an Iraqi ministry told IPS on condition of anonymity. "The man
was granted the highest decoration by his President for a job well done."
The U.S. occupation authorities
and the Iraqi leaders working with them set up new army and police forces
under supervision of the Multi National Forces (MNF). It was decided
that each ministry could establish its own protection force away from
the control of the ministries of interior and defence.
Under Coalition Provisional
Authority (CPA) Order Number 27, the FPS was established on April 10,
2003, the day after the fall of Baghdad.
This document states: "The
FPS may also consist of employees of private security firms who are
engaged to perform services for the ministries or governorates through
contracts, provided such private security firms and employees are licensed
and authorised by the Ministry of Interior."
Global Security.Org, a U.S.
based security research group, says: "The Facilities Protection
Service works for all ministries and governmental agencies, but its
standards are set and enforced by the Ministry of the Interior. It can
also be privately hired. The FPS is tasked with the fixed site protection
of ministerial, governmental, or private buildings, facilities and personnel."
The security website adds:
"The majority of the FPS staff consists of former service members
and former security guards. The FPS will now secure public facilities
such as hospitals, banks and power stations within their district. Once
trained, the guards work with U.S. military forces protecting critical
sites like schools, hospitals and power plants."
General Harith al-Fahad of
the former Iraqi army says the FPS turned out to be no such thing. "All
the forces formed were actually militias, not organised forces, because
they were formed according to rations given to each party in power,"
he told IPS at a café in Baghdad, with explosions echoing in
the background.
"Those politicians brought
their followers into the so-called security forces. Others took bribes
of 500 to 700 dollars from each applicant to be accepted regardless
of standard regulations."
When sectarian violence spread
across Iraq after the Shia shrine in Samarra was destroyed in February
this year, "the FPS appeared to be the main force that conducted
assassinations in Baghdad, and there is evidence that they did it for
money."
This seems to continue. U.S.
officers training Iraqi police told reporters last week that infiltration
of police units by militia members could delay the handover of control
of the Iraqi security forces for years.
"How can we expect ordinary
Iraqis to trust the police when we don't even trust them not to kill
our own men?" Capt. Alexander Shaw said. Shaw is head of the police
transition team of the 372nd Military Police Battalion, a Washington-based
unit charged with overseeing training of all Iraqi police in western
Baghdad.
"To be perfectly honest,
I'm not sure we're ever going to have police here that are free of the
militia influence," he said.
Most of the infiltration
is coming from the two large Shia militias, the Badr Organisation that
is the armed wing of the pro-Iranian Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution
in Iraq, and the Mehdi Army, the militia of the Shia cleric Muqtada
al-Sadr.
Shaw said about 70 percent
of the Iraqi police force has been infiltrated, and police officers
are too afraid to patrol many areas of the capital.
"None of the Iraqi police
are working to make their country better," Brig. Gen. Salah al-Ani,
chief of police for western Baghdad told reporters recently. "They're
working for the militias or to put money in their pocket."
Dr. Nameer Hadi recently
left his post at a major Baghdad hospital because he felt threatened
by the FPS.
"I saw them kill in
cold blood a lady patient when they learned that she was the wife of
a Sunni tribe leader," he told IPS. "I am a Shia believer,
but this kind of crime is unbearable."
It is common knowledge in
Baghdad that the FPS consists mainly of criminals who looted banks and
government offices at the beginning of the U.S. invasion in April 2003.
Many also believe that once the looters spent the money they stole,
they needed a new source of income, and they were hired by local and
regional powers for organised crime campaigns.
Iraq's interior minister
Jawad al-Bolani rejected allegations last month that Iraq's police and
military have played a major role in the death squads. He said it was
the FPS, whose numbers he estimated to be 150,000, that was to blame
for the astronomical level of violence.
"Whenever we capture
someone, we rarely find anyone is an employee of the government ministries,"
Bolani said. "They've turned out to be mostly from the FPS."
In an interview on al-Arabiya
satellite channel Oct. 21, official spokesman of the Iraqi government
Dr. Ali al-Dabbagh accepted that security forces need to be "purified."
He blamed mistakes made during the "Bremer Period" for the
current level of killings.
With attacks on government
targets mounting, it is also not certain how far the FPS has been effective
in protecting facilities.
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