[Media-watch] Pentagon covers up failure to train and recruit local forces - Independent on Sunday - 13/02/2005

[Julie-ann Davies]

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=610574


Pentagon covers up failure to train and recruit local security forces
Police and army numbers falling far short of projections as post-election 
violence surges and wait for results drags on
By Andrew Buncombe in Washington, Kim Sengupta in Basra, and Raymond 
Whitaker in London
13 February 2005


Training of Iraq's security forces, crucial to any exit strategy for Britain 
and the US, is going so badly that the Pentagon has stopped giving figures 
for the number of combat-ready indigenous troops, The Independent on Sunday 
has learned.

Instead, only figures for troops "on hand" are issued. The small number of 
soldiers, national guardsmen and police capable of operating against the 
country's bloody insurgency is concealed in an overall total of Iraqis in 
uniform, which includes raw recruits and police who have gone on duty after 
as little as three weeks' training. In some cases they have no weapons, body 
armour or even documents to show they are in the police.

The resulting confusion over numbers has allowed the US administration to 
claim that it is half-way to meeting the target of training almost 270,000 
Iraqi forces, including around 52,000 troops and 135,000 Iraqi policemen. 
The reality, according to experts, is that there may be as few as 5,000 
troops who could be considered combat ready.

The gap between troops "on hand" and the overall target for fully trained 
and equipped security forces has actually widened in recent months, 
according to John Pike of GlobalSecurity.org, a Washington- based 
think-tank. Between October and November last year, just before the Pentagon 
quietly stopped giving figures for fully trained troops, the shortfall more 
than doubled, from 69,400 to 159,000. At current levels, the targets would 
not be met until next year.

The sleight of hand over troop numbers provoked a sharp clash during 
Condoleezza Rice's Senate confirmation hearings to become Secretary of 
State. After she quoted Pentagon figures claiming 122,000 Iraqis had been 
trained, she was told by Democratic Senator Joseph Biden: "Time and again 
this administration has tried to leave the American people with the 
impression that Iraq has well over 100,000 fully trained, fully competent 
military police and personnel. And that is simply not true. We're months, 
probably years, away from reaching our target goal."

David Isenberg, an analyst at the British and American Security Council, 
said "disaster is too polite a word" for efforts to train Iraqi forces. "We 
are not being honest about the numbers," he added. "We have no consensus 
about who has been trained, about who we are talking about."

The insurgency, which has claimed the lives of 60 police, soldiers and 
would-be recruits since the election, has disrupted both sides of the 
equation. Not only has it forced the occupation authorities to drastically 
increase their estimate of the required number of Iraqi security forces , 
but training and recruitment have been disrupted by constant attacks, 
desertions, political suspicion and a catalogue of errors by the invaders, 
starting with disbanding the Iraqi army immediately after the war.

The Iraqi police force is considered the biggest failure, being poorly 
equipped and trained. US officials also say that tens of thousands of Iraqis 
are claiming police salaries but are not working, and nearly half of the 
force has been sent for further training.

A police colonel told the IoS: "I keep on hearing that we have been trained 
and we have been given the arms necessary by the Americans. But I seem to 
have missed all that. We have had people sent here who I would not trust at 
all. I have discovered that the Americans have made no checks on these men. 
Do you wonder why police stations and army barracks get blown up?"

Meanwhile, recommendations to attach more US advisers to the fledgling Iraqi 
units stoke fears that this Vietnam-era policy will further delay any exit 
from Iraq.