The vetting of recruits to Iraq's police force is so poor that
many who join up have criminal records, are barely literate, or are
members of the insurgency, a new US government report concludes.
Compiled by Pentagon and State Department officials and quoted in last
week's Time magazine, the report says that, while training for the
new Iraqi police force has improved, there are still a number of serious
problems. It says "too many recruits are marginally literate; some
show up for training with criminal records or physical handicaps; and
some recruits allegedly are...insurgents". The report adds to a
recent assessment by the US military in Iraq that only half of the
country's police battalions are capable of fighting insurgents.
News that the Iraqi police are not up to scratch will come as no
surprise to ordinary Iraqis, however, many of whom see little change in
the brutality and corruption of the force under Saddam. The loyalty of
Iraqi police to the new authorities in Baghdad has also come under
question, most notably last November in Mosul when three-quarters of the
city's police force abandoned their posts or helped insurgents in
an uprising.
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