Redstate

Are the Iranians just the first to learn that there's a new sheriff in town?

By AcademicElephant Posted in War — Comments (2) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

I participated in a blogger round table this morning with Major General Kenneth Hunzeker, who is in charge of training the Iraqi police forces. You might expect him to be rather downcast, for as we understand it his is a thankless, dead-end mission. But not so. The General was realistic but overall upbeat--even, to borrow his phrase "Pollyanna-ish" about the progress of the Iraqi police. In his opening remarks, he referred to them as "trained," "committed" and "heroic"--which are not words we often hear in this context, either from the press or at a congressional hearing. It seemed to me that his purpose was not so much to debunk the relentless reporting that has painted such a grim picture of the Iraqi police as to point out its selective nature. Yes there are problems and challenges--notably in Baghdad and in Diyala province. But there are successes as well, and when you take these into account a very different picture emerges.

Read on...

I asked the General about how Iraqis traditionally have understood a police force. In a statement we received after the roundtable, he pointed out that under Saddam, there was not a "professional and efficient" extant police force that could be re-constituted under new leadership. As General Hunzeker noted in the roundtable, all real security was provided by Saddam's military. The police spent their time in their stations, from which they might or might not emerge to confront criminal activity. He called them "passive, reactionary and not dependable." Being a traffic cop in Baghdad was not an chance to help the city run smoothly--it was an opportunity to pull over random vehicles on trumped up charges and demand a bribe to make them go away. So there was a long way to go to get both the police force ready to do its duty and to get the Iraqi people ready to accept them as police according to US standards. But General Hunzeker insists that steady progress is being made, especially in training. He also maintains that a "corner has been turned" in al-Anbar province, where local leaders are now encouraging their followers to join the police because "they're mad as heck [at the violence] and they're not going to take it any more."

Asked what his greatest sources of optimism and frustration are, the General responded that he draws continuous optimism from the Iraqis he meets when he "breaks ranks" to talk to new recruits or recent graduates from the 15 police academies now functioning across the country. He finds them "positive" and "upbeat," and conscious of their status as "the face of the new Iraq." In terms of frustration, General Hunzeker admitted that he tends to like to get things done quickly, and that mindset is antithetical to Iraqi culture where things move much more slowly. He has had to reconcile his desire to "effect change" on an American schedule with the need to have Iraqi solutions to Iraqi problems. This response suggested that the General can sympathize with Americans who are impatient with the progress of the Iraqi police, but also served as a warning for them to broaden their perspective.

For those who consider the denizens of Nouri al-Maliki's government one step removed from the supposedly-disfunctional police, General Hunzeker had a glowing review for his closest Iraqi counterpart, Jawad al-Bolani, who is Minister of the Interior. Mr. al-Bolani was in the air force under Saddam, left to go into private business, and made early contact with the Americans in Baghdad. He asked the General to convey a message to the western press: "The ministry of the interior has within it very brave men who are loyal to the people of Iraq." General Hunzeker has "total faith in his ability to do his job."

I came away from the call with an increased appreciation for how the notion of a civilian police force that actually enforces the law is somewhat foreign to the Iraqis, and goes counter to what they have experienced in living memory. And that the notion of joining the police to enforce the law, instead of to enrich yourself through graft is also strange. Is it then so astounding that it took the Iraqis, who, as General Hunseker pointed out, are inherently resistant to change, some time to embrace this new concept? It seems to me that we are perhaps both closer and farther away from the Iraqis culturally than we might think. On the one hand, they're not opposed to an effective police force along western lines. But on the other, they're not prepared to embrace it overnight in the "go for broke" American style. If we accept the General's assessment, what's happening is that they're putting an Iraqi face on this solution to their security problems, and doing it according to Iraqi benchmarks.

As a footnote, if I'm correct then those in Washington clamoring for a rigid schedule for the democratization of Iraq that suits their political agenda rather than for a natural--and lasting--evolution are revealing their own parochial and limited viewpoint. That certainly seemed to be General Hunzeker's soto voce message this morning.

Of course, General Hunzeker has his own agenda, and we might expect him to be supportive of the forces he is training. The proof will ultimately be in the pudding--will the Iraqi police actually exert control over the violence in Baghdad and impose the rule of law? A clue may have emerged today when it was revealed that the Iranian "official" who vanished on Tuesday wasn't kidnapped--he was arrested. The details are still unclear, but what if the "gunmen wearing uniforms" were the local gendarmes? I don't blame the Iranians for being a little slow on the up-take; after all, there hasn't been a functioning police force in Iraq for over three decades--and the last two years might have lulled them into thinking that the new Iraq was not going to be so very different from the old Iraq, at least in terms of civilian law enforcement. But General Hunzeker and Mr. al-Bolani see a different face. They see "heroes," who "get it" and are spending "their blood" to secure their country. It might behoove not only the Iranians, but also the rest of us who believe we have a clear picture of the abject failure that is the Iraqi police force to reflect on this alternative reality. Is it possible that, as General Hunzeker suggested, a corner has been turned as the Iraqis work into this new culture on their--rather than our--schedule? And are the Iranians just the first to learn that there's a new sheriff in town?