~ 720th Military Police Battalion Reunion Association History Project ~

Iraqi Police Services

        Before Iraq was liberated Saddam Hussein ruled through a sophisticated structure of intelligence and security services, a vast network of informers, and a brutal hand in dealing with political dissents and civil criminals. He skillfully balanced competing forces within the country, playing upon ethnic and religious rivalries and using cooperation and financial inducements. Saddam concentrated decision making within a tight circle of close relatives, fellow tribesmen, and individuals from his hometown, Tikrit. Beyond this ruling group, he relied upon patronage networks, tribal allegiance, ethnic affiliation, and economic leverage in maintaining power. At the core of this system was a pervasive security apparatus.

This network of interlocking military and civilian intelligence and security organizations had different official missions but overlapping functions. These services were responsible to Saddam through the National Revolutionary Council, which he chaired. The civilian security organizations included the following:

Special Security Directorate (SSD; al-Amn al-Khas): Under the leadership of Saddam's youngest son, Qusai, the directorate's 5,000 members belonged to the president's Tikrit clan and were handpicked for their loyalty. The SSD was responsible for protecting the president, the presidential family, and the presidential palaces. It was also charged with such sensitive tasks as evading the embargo on sensitive technologies and supervising weapons facilities.

General Intelligence Directorate (Jihaz al Mukhabbarat): The Mukhabbarat's primary missions involved foreign espionage and intelligence collection, supervision of Iraqi embassy personnel, covert action, assassinations, and terrorist operations. Its responsibilities also included suppressing Kurdish and Shiite opposition, monitoring foreign embassies and other intelligence and security agencies, and conducting surveillance of government ministries, the Baath Party, and the Iraqi military.

General Security Directorate (GSD; al-Amn al-‘Amm): The oldest and largest of the security services, the GSD was concerned with internal security and responsible for detecting public dissent and monitoring Iraqi citizens, particularly prominent personalities. Its heavy-handed operatives were responsible for most of the official harassment suffered by the Iraqi population.

Baath Party Security Agency (BPS; al-Amn al-Hizb). The BPS—the internal security apparatus of the Baath Party—monitored civilians through the party's security branches in commercial enterprises, universities, factories, and trade unions. It was also responsible for monitoring party members and providing security to party offices.

Iraqi National Police (INP)

        Below these security agencies, the INP was responsible for law enforcement. Established under the monarchy by British advisers, the INP operated under the Ministry of Interior and included personnel from all of Iraq's ethnic and religious groups.

1960's Police academies were established to improve the training of INP officers.

1968 After Saddam Hussein came to power, the Baath Party enacted legislation that subjected the police to military oversight. Armed with aging assault rifles, the INP was forced to rely upon the more favored special security services to perform all but the most routine operations, such as controlling traffic and petty crime. Thirty years of neglect by Saddam's regime left the INP with low standards, poor management, and a "firehouse"; mentality—that is, police officers remained in their stations until ordered to make arrests.

The pervasiveness of the regime's security apparatus and its brutal methods meant that crimes were more likely to be committed by regime operatives than criminals. In many cases, the security services stopped the INP from investigating crimes. Such repressive political leadership discouraged initiative and prevented efforts to modernize the police force.

1991 Following international sanctions and the resulting decline in living standards after the Gulf War, members of the INP turned to petty corruption to survive. Their modus operandi was simple: they would round up all possible suspects in a given crime, obtain confessions through brutal interrogations, and then collect bribes from family members to release the innocent. This led Iraqis to grow increasingly distrustful of the INP.

2003 The INP had 60,000 personnel divided between an officer corps educated at the police academies and a poorly educated, untrained rank and file. And the public viewed the organization as just another oppressive tool of the regime.

9 April 2003 In planning for post conflict operations, senior Department of Defense (DOD) officials assumed that coalition forces would inherit a fully functioning state with its institutions intact. They believed the Iraqis would welcome U.S. troops as liberators and join coalition forces in quickly neutralizing the Baath Party, Saddam's security services, and other opponents of the new order. Instead, the Iraqi police and all government authority simply vanished when the U.S. Army's Third Infantry Division reached the center of Baghdad on 9 April 2003. Security officers, intelligence personnel, and Baath Party operatives went into hiding, while police officers and members of the regular army took their weapons and went home.

Jubilant crowds poured onto the streets and began looting, ransacking government buildings, and pillaging residences of regime officials. Once it became clear that U.S. soldiers were not going to intervene, a systematic effort to strip stores and public institutions of everything of value began. Organized criminal groups and gangs of men armed with assault rifles began to work their way through government ministries, removing their contents, tearing out the plumbing and wiring, and setting the buildings on fire. Thieves "jump started" tractors and bulldozers and drove them away. Mobs ransacked factories and warehouses, returning home in a parade of cars, trucks, and wheelbarrows piled with stolen goods. Additionally, looters ransacked, damaged, and destroyed facilities that were suspected of producing nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. Over time, the economic and social impact of increasingly systematic looting was exacerbated by former regime operatives who sabotaged oil pipelines, electrical pylons, railroads, aircraft, and road transport.

In the aftermath of Baghdad's capture, the Iraqi National Police was the only institution in Saddam's network of intelligence and security services to remain intact. However, police infrastructure was either heavily damaged or completely destroyed by looters and arsonists following the collapse of the regime. Rampaging mobs destroyed police stations, stole police vehicles, and walked away with weapons and equipment. With fires still burning in police stations and other government buildings, U.S. military authorities decided to make a public appeal for Iraqi police to return to duty.

In the face of growing local hostility toward the occupation and attacks on coalition forces, recruiting programs were accelerated. The size of the police force jumped so quickly that U.S. advisers in the Interior Ministry were unable to track the number of police recruited by various U.S. military units. This emphasis on quickly recruiting and deploying Iraqi police meant that the U.S. military could not conduct careful background checks on new recruits or adopt vetting procedures that had been utilized effectively in previous peace and stability operations. As a result, many recruits were later found to be unsuitable for the job, and several thousand were disciplined or dismissed for corruption, human rights abuses, or criminal offenses.

14 April 20003 Joint patrols of U.S. soldiers and Iraqi police made their first tentative appearance on the streets of the capital. Though the Iraqi police were not permitted to carry weapons, the presence of certain officers—alleged to have committed abuses under Saddam—produced outrage among many citizens.

Ultimately, given the INP's record of abuse and corruption, a thorough vetting of its personnel would be needed to remove Baath Party loyalists and those guilty of criminal behavior. Policemen who survived the vetting process would require retraining and new weapons and equipment, and would need to undergo a probationary period during which international supervisors could monitor their performance.

May 2003 A police assessment team from the Justice Department's International Criminal Investigative Training Assistance Program (ICITAP) concluded that the Iraqi police were incapable of maintaining public order and required international assistance to accomplish this task. The team called for the deployment of 6,600 international police advisers, including 360 professional police trainers who would be assigned to the police academy. The mission also recommended the provision of ten armed and fully equipped international constabulary units with a total of 2,500 personnel to assist coalition military forces with restoring stability and training Iraqi counterparts.

June 2003 The assessment team's report was discussed at White House meetings, but the recommendations were considered overly ambitious and, therefore, were not accepted. Additionally, a State Department effort to recruit one thousand U.S. police advisers as part of the larger international police force was suspended and did not resume until late fall.

December 2003 The U.S. Justice Department's basic training program for Iraqi police recruits finally opened at the Jordan International Police Training Center in Amman. In twelve months, some 30,000 Iraqis were brought to the facility on U.S. military flights for eight weeks of training. Recruits were selected with minimal background checks or other types of vetting. The curriculum, which was tailored for Iraq, was based on the sixteen-week course given at the Kosovo Police Service School. The program initially utilized international administrators and instructors from Kosovo. Once in full operation, the center graduated 2,500 police every month—a force the size of the Boston Police Department. However, after returning to Iraq, newly minted officers received little or no additional mentoring or training.

Spring 2004 U.S. police advisers, who were recruited and trained by DynCorp, a commercial contractor, began arriving in Iraq. By then, however, the target number of advisers had been reduced from 6,600 to 500 because of limited funds. Though armed for self-defense, these U.S. police did not have executive authority to engage in law enforcement. Rather, they were assigned to provide train-the-trainer programs in secure locations, as it had become too dangerous for them to mentor Iraqi police in the field. Only 283 U.S. police advisers had been deployed, as repeated rocket and car bomb attacks on their Baghdad hotel and the deteriorating security situation in other cities discouraged volunteers. Personnel for the remainder of the international civil police force and the entire constabulary force—to be provided by other coalition countries—were never deployed either.

As a result, six members of the DOJ assessment team were asked to remain in Iraq and were pressed into service. Under the direction of former New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik, they were assigned responsibility for reforming the Interior Ministry, creating the Iraqi Police Service (IPS), and re-establishing immigration, customs, and border checks. They were also asked to restore Baghdad's fire and rescue service.

Leadership provided by the small cadre of U.S. advisers also could not compensate for the massive loss of management skills resulting from de-Baathification. The CPA's decision to ban ranking Baath Party members from public-sector employment meant that large numbers of senior officers in the Interior Ministry and police and security-related services were released from duty. Many of these officers were apolitical and had only become party members as a condition of employment. While in previous peace and stability operations officials were vetted on an individual basis, allowing those with good records to continue to serve, in Iraq the mass firing of senior officers removed an entire layer of ministry executives whose leadership and managerial skills would have been useful in rebuilding the Iraqi Police Service and confronting crime and the insurgency.

With the Pentagon in charge of Iraq's reconstruction, routine DOD contracting, hiring, and procurement procedures were utilized for obtaining additional U.S. personnel and services, and the vehicles, uniforms, weapons, and equipment needed by the IPS and other Iraqi security forces. These procedures proved extremely slow in responding to immediate needs. U.S. police advisers were constantly forced to improvise to obtain needed equipment and supplies, but such ad hoc measures generally failed to satisfy critical needs.

As the transfer to Iraqi sovereignty approached, the DOD determined that only the U.S. military had the resources required to "fast track"; the police training program.

U.S. police advisers developed a three-week reorientation course ,the Transition and Integration Program (TIP), for rehired members of the Iraqi National Police. With U.S. Military Police serving as instructors, some 40,000 members of the IPS received training in weapons handling and the use of force in making arrests, and instruction on human rights, ethics, and law.

March 2004 The Civilian Police Advisory Training Team (CPATT) was established under the control of the Multi-National Force-Iraq (later the Multi-National Security Transition Command) and assigned responsibility for training, equipping, and mentoring the IPS. CPATT was led by a general officer with a civilian (DOJ/ICITAP) deputy and included both military and civilian personnel. Transferring responsibility for civilian police training to the military was resisted in Washington and resented in Baghdad. U.S. police advisers believed the military did not understand either the ethos or the practical requirements for training law enforcement officers and was intent on simply "putting Iraqi guns on the street"; in order to reduce pressure on coalition forces.

June 2004 On the eve of transition to Iraqi sovereignty the number of police on the government payroll had ballooned to 120,000, although only about 90,000 were reporting for duty. In response, the Interior Ministry announced a $60 million buyout program to reduce the official ranks of the police by 25 percent.

Iraqi police who had been trained and equipped for community policing were utilized to fight the insurgency. These poorly led, ill-trained, and improperly equipped police were pitted against a heavily armed insurgent force of former military personnel, veteran security operatives, and foreign terrorists. Iraqi police operated from unprotected facilities, patrolled in thin-skinned vehicles, carried simple side arms, lacked body armor, and took increasingly grievous casualties. No civilian police force could be expected to deal with repeated attacks from car bombs and forces equipped with rocket-propelled grenades and other military weapons. In the period of CPA control, more than one thousand IPS members were killed in the line of duty. Hundreds more were killed or injured in terrorist attacks while standing in line at recruiting stations. They were a primary target for terrorists who wished to demonstrate the danger of cooperating with the coalition.

December 2004 Of the 90,000 Iraqi police "available for duty"; this figure included 43,800 "rehired"; officers—former members of the old Iraqi National Police who had completed the three-week Transition Integration Program (TIP) reorientation program—and 18,300 "rookies"; who had graduated from the training program in Amman.

Robert M. Perito, coordinator of the Iraq Experience Project at the United States Institute of Peace, prepared this report. The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training conducted the interviews under a contract with the Institute. The views expressed in this report do not necessarily reflect views of the United States Institute of Peace, which does not advocate specific policy positions.