BAGHDAD (AP) - The U.S. military is urging Iraq's Shiite-led government to boost the number of Sunni volunteers — many of them ex-insurgents — into its security forces, a U.S. officer said Tuesday.
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government reluctantly committed to absorbing up to 20 percent of the 100,000 members of the volunteer Awakening Councils, also known as Sons of Iraq, into the security services in an attempt at reconciliation with the minority Sunni Arab community.
"It shouldn't stop at 20 percent. It needs to continue beyond that," said Col. Byron Freeman, commander of the 8th Military Police Brigade, which is training the Iraqi police force in the Baghdad area.
The government promised to pay the rest of the Sunni volunteers until it can find them civilian jobs. Many of them were former insurgents who turned against al-Qaida, and U.S. officials fear some will return to the battlefield if the government does not honor its pledge.
Freeman said the U.S. military is asking the government to increase the numbers of Sunni police, saying more police put on the streets will further curb violence.
The U.S. military transferred control of the Sons of Iraq to the government last October.
But many Iraqi officials are openly contemptuous of the volunteers, fearing they may turn against the Shiites once the Americans leave.
Freeman's comments came Monday as the police academy graduated its first class of more than 1,000 recruits made up entirely of Sons of Iraq, which the military has credited with helping reduce violence by 80 percent across the country since early 2007.
Even among those accepted for police duty, the suspicion was clear.
"I didn't believe it until I looked at it," said Ahmed Mohsen, 22, a Sons of Iraq graduate who recently collected his first paycheck from the Iraqi government.
Mohsen, like all police recruits, now has a 90-day temporary contract, similar to a probation period.
U.S. Army Maj. Robert Arnold, who is helping oversee the police training, said the 90-day contract applies to all police recruits as a way to measure performance.
"If the assessment is favorable, they will generally be hired on permanent orders," he said. If their performance is poor, the contract is not renewed.
Many of the ex-Sunni fighters have publicly questioned whether the 90-day contract is a way to push them out of the security forces.
Perhaps sensing those concerns, Iraqi police Maj. Gen. Khadhom Hameed told the graduates that their uniforms, their equipment and their paychecks were provided by the government.
"Your loyalty should be to your country," he said during a ceremony on a muddy field near the Iraqi Police Training Center, which still lacks enough power and running water in all its facilities.
Sam Brannen of the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Strategic and International Studies said making the Sunni population part of a working government, including its security forces, is one of the most important issues facing the stability of Iraq.
"If you don't bring the Sons of Iraq into the security forces, you run the real risk that they will do what they did from 2003 until 2007 when we spent most of our time fighting them," he said. |