BAGHDAD -- In the face of spiraling costs and Iraqi officials who say they never wanted it in the first place, the State Department has slashed -- and may jettison entirely by the end of the year -- a multibillion-dollar police training program that was to have been the centerpiece of a hugely expanded civilian mission here.| Before you think that this is just another situation in which the evil Champ and his White House minions are letting the Iraqis slide back into civil war, consider the alternative hypothesis that Champ and Co. are just incompetent instead, and that the program deserves to be dumped. Then keep reading to see whether you've satisfied Occam's razor... |
The training effort, which began in October and has already cost $500 million, was conceived of as the largest component of a mission billed as the most ambitious American aid effort since the Marshall Plan. Instead, it has emerged as the latest high-profile example of the waning American influence here following the military withdrawal, and it reflects a costly miscalculation on the part of American officials, who did not count on the Iraqi government to assert its sovereignty so aggressively.
"I think that with the departure of the military, the Iraqis decided to say, 'O.K., how large is the American presence here?' " said James F. Jeffrey, the American ambassador to Iraq, in an interview. "How large should it be? How does this equate with our sovereignty? In various areas they obviously expressed some concerns."
| Funny how it is that the Iraqis know what they need and don't need, and the State Department and our current Secretary of State do not... |
A lesson given by an American police instructor to a class of Iraqi trainees neatly encapsulated the program's failings. There are two clues that could indicate someone is planning a suicide attack, the instructor said: a large bank withdrawal and heavy drinking. The problem with that advice, which was recounted by Ginger Cruz, the former deputy inspector general at the American Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, was that few Iraqis have bank accounts and an extremist Sunni Muslim bent on carrying out a suicide attack is likely to consider drinking a cardinal sin.
| [facepalm] |
The Iraqis have also insisted that the training sessions be held at their own facilities, rather than American ones. But reflecting the mistrust that remains between Iraqi and American officials, the State Department's security guards will not allow the trainers to establish set meeting times at Iraqi facilities, so as not to set a pattern for insurgents, who still sometimes infiltrate Iraq's military and police.
| Our military didn't have these problems, did it? |
Robert M. Perito, director of the Security Sector Governance Center of Innovation at the United States Institute of Peace, called the project a "small program for a lot of money."
| So why would a program with a couple hundred advisors cost hundreds of millions of dollars? |
The State Department has consistently defended the program, even after it was whittled down in scope and criticized publicly by the head of Iraq's Interior Ministry, Adnan al-Assadi, who last year questioned the wisdom of spending so much on a program the Iraqis never sought.
"We have stood up a robust police-training program, which is doing a terrific job working with the local police in training and developing a program, which I think will pay enormous dividends," said Thomas R. Nides, deputy secretary of state for management and resources, in a briefing in February with reporters in Washington.
In fact, at every turn the program has faced steep challenges. In an interview on Friday, Mr. Nides said, "I don't think anything went wrong." He added, "the Iraqis don't believe they need a program of that scale and scope."
Mr. Nides said the scaling back of the program was part of his broader effort to reduce the size of the embassy.
After realizing that the security environment would largely prevent the trainers from traveling outside their barracks, the focus of the program was shifted to holding seminars and PowerPoint presentations on topics like how to spot suicide bombers, protect human rights and deal with large crowds. The trainers are mostly retired state troopers and other law enforcement personnel on leave from their jobs back home, and a number of officials who criticized the program questioned what those trainers have to offer Iraqi police officials who have been operating in a war zone for years.
| What would an Illinois state trooper know about the streets of Baghdad? Good grief. Our military at least knew what it was doing. |
Retired Lt. Gen. James M. Dubik, now a senior fellow at the Institute for the Study of War, who oversaw the training of Iraqi security forces from 2007 to 2008, said, "The evidence suggests that the State Department never really engaged the Iraqis to find out what they need and what they want."
The program has consistently been challenged by the special inspector general's office, which in an audit late last year warned that it could become a "bottomless pit" for taxpayer dollars. The office's most recent quarterly report, released at the end of April, stated that embassy officials acknowledged "that those challenges may lead to the further restructuring" of the program "in the near future."
Last year, in preparation for the withdrawal of the military, the State Department planned a large expansion of its role here, designed to maintain influence and be a counterweight to the vast political influence of Iran. Yet, after doubling the size of the embassy staff to nearly 16,000 people, mostly contractors, the State Department quickly reversed course this year -- partly because of Iraqi objections to the expanded operation -- and is now cutting back from the slightly more than 12,000 people presently in Iraq.
Since 2003, the American government has spent nearly $8 billion training the Iraqi police. The program was first under the State Department, but it was transferred to the Department of Defense in 2004 as the insurgency intensified. Yet the force that the American military left behind was trained to fight a counterinsurgency, not to act as a traditional law enforcement organization. Police officers here, for example, do not pull over speeding drivers or respond to calls about cats stuck in trees.
"What is really needed is a restructuring and reorienting of that force so it becomes a law enforcement agency that serves a democracy," Mr. Perito said.