Baghdad now responsible for size of security force

Washington: Buried in the latest Defence Department quarterly report on Iraq is the disclosure that the Baghdad government is now responsible for setting the size of its security forces, and that it has authorised a level of 550,000 military and police forces - an increase of more than 40 per cent over the level that the US-led coalition reported just three months ago.

"While previous reports have listed numbers authorised by the Coalition and provided estimates of numbers on the payroll, the GoI (Government of Iraq) is now responsible for determining requirements and counting personnel," the Pentagon reported in December. "Therefore, reporting will now reflect GoI statistics."

The new numbers show a jump of more than 150,000 from three months ago, when the coalition put the previously authorised number of military and police at 389,000. According to the Pentagon report, that jump under the Iraqi statistics mainly represents police who "have never been trained, as rapid hiring over the past two years outstripped academy training capacity."

Not accurate

The Pentagon noted that the Interior Ministry, which is in charge of the police force, not only has recruiting and hiring problems but also does not know "how many of the approximately 376,346 employees on the payroll are regularly reporting for duty."

Unlike the coalition, the Iraqi defence and interior ministries use "the number of authorised and assigned personnel" rather than the number trained as a measure of development of their security forces, the Pentagon reported. At the same time, the Pentagon warned that the two Iraqi ministries "do not accurately track which of those personnel who have been trained as part of US-funded programmes are still on the force and which are no longer on the force as a result of being killed in action or leaving for other reasons."

Desertion

For example, the Pentagon reports that the annual attrition rate for the approximately 255,000-person Iraqi Police Service is running at about 17 per cent. The Iraqi army, with an authorised ground force of about 186,000, also had an attrition rate of 17 per cent, "in part due to a casualty rate two to three times higher than that of Coalition forces," according to the Pentagon report. But it notes that on average about 2,000 soldiers each week go absent without official leave, and that this year about 21,000 were dropped from the rolls for desertion or for going AWOL.

In the Ministry of Interior, "corruption and sectarian behaviour continue to be evident," the Pentagon concludes. However, internal investigations are "increasingly aggressive ... to uncover perpetrators and reduce their impact." Thirty brigadier generals have been arrested, fired or forced into retirement; "several thousand personnel fired, 700 of whom were fired based on criminal records information"; and 195 police "fired for militia activity and involvement in corruption."

The Pentagon expects the security forces to continue growing under the planning of the central government in Baghdad, reaching "between 601,000 and 646,000 by 2010." Police forces would reach near 350,000 and the military would expand to about 280,000, with 260,000 of those in the army.