Iraq police prepare for new responsibilities

Iraqi police are preparing to take charge of security in most of the country's cities as US troops withdraw from urban centers on June 30, but the Iraqi army will help in the most dangerous areas, a senior security official said.

With just weeks to go before Iraqi security forces take sole control of the country's cities, towns and villages, the interior ministry unveiled the main features of a strategy that will see 500,000 police officers deployed across the country.

Eight (provinces) are our sole responsibility and seven others will fall under the joint responsibility of security forces from the defence and interior ministries," interior ministry spokesman Brigadier General Abdel Karim Khalaf said.

The army will support the police in the provinces based on Iraq's three main cities of Baghdad, Basra and Mosul, in the predominantly Sunni Arab western province of Al-Anbar, in Diyala and Salaheddin provinces north of the capital and in Karbala to its south.

Khalaf said troops were being deployed in those seven provinces either because of the continuing insecurity of their main towns, or because of their economic or religious significance.

In the case of Baghdad, 70 percent of the capital falls under our control, and the rest will be secured by the army," Khalaf said. "We will fill the vacant space left by the departure of the Americans.

We can, according to the agreement, ask for the presence of American forces to help us but we have not yet done so, even in Mosul and Diyala," he said, referring to a defense pact between Baghdad and Washington that has governed the presence of US troops since the start of the year.

Insurgents loyal to Al-Qaeda remain active in both Mosul and Diyala, where levels of violence are much higher than most of the rest of the country.

In the past three years, the interior ministry has accelerated the formation of the police force, helped in part by a priority allocation in this year's budget.

In the run-up to the June 30 deadline, the process has quickened further -- 11,000 new police officers took their oaths of allegiance in May.

Nine divisions have been deployed-four made up of national police, including elite troops, and five of border guards.

The force numbers will give Iraq a ratio of one police officer for every 134 inhabitants. By comparison, France has one police officer for every 252 inhabitants and Canada one for every 537.

The Iraqi security forces will also gradually take responsibility for patrolling the country's 3,600 kilometres (2,250 miles) of borders, where some 700 observation posts have been erected.

By mid-2010, we hope to control the entire border with Iran," Khalaf said. Interior ministry officials have said that Shiite militias continue to smuggle arms across Iraq's eastern frontier but Khalaf insisted that the western border with Syria was now well secured.

Where once there was "one border post every 15 km, there is now one every 1.5 km," he said. US Colonel Bryan Bequette said: "We are proud of the accomplishments the ministry of interior has achieved with its training program.

He said the program had moved Iraq "toward the goal of police primacy, where the Iraqi police maintain primary responsibility... in the cities." Khalaf acknowledged that the Iraqi police still had some deficiencies.

We lack equipment for air support, arms and other military equipment provided by the United States," he said. But he added: "I don't think the threat will evolve-the attacks remain urban, and against the Iraqi population. The terrorists will not exclusively target American soldiers." --- AFP

Hopes pinned to Iraqi police as U.S. trainers get ready to exit Basra

The 100 men and women with the Army’s 793rd Military Police Battalion’s headquarters unit have been in Iraq so long they’ve seen units arrive, serve their 12 months, and return home.

Finally, with less than a month to go on one of the Army’s last 15-month tours, the military police are headed back to Bamberg, Germany — "to the hefeweizen (wheat beer)," as one soldier said Saturday.

The unit has spent the last months of their tour working with the Iraqi police in Basra, who are on a 15-month journey of their own.

In March 2008, about the same time the 793rd arrived in Baghdad, the Iraqi army swept through Basra and cleaned out the Shiite-backed militias who waged much of the violence in the area.

During the campaign, some Basra police either joined the militias or abandoned their posts, according to Marine 1st Lt. Mike Masters, the intelligence officer for an Iraqi army training unit inside Basra.

Now the police must try to clean up that bad reputation. The locally-hired police must also prove their worth to the Iraqi army, who are outsiders but remain the dominate law enforcement authority in the city and province, Masters said from his unit’s operation headquarters at Naval Base, a U.S. outpost next to an Iraqi Army base in the city.

The military police units are preparing the police to take over in Basra, one of Iraq’s most populated cities, according to Lt. Col. Mike Blahovec, the 793rd’s battalion commander.

"It’s an important police force, on par with Baghdad," Blahovec said last week during an interview in his office at COB Basra. "The difference here [with the situation in Baghdad] is the partnership is new."

In December, the battalion and its attached companies — 900 military police in all — were among the first U.S. troops to move to Basra to begin the transition from British to U.S. military.

Since then, those police split into about 30 U.S. military police transition teams, called PiTTs. Those teams moved in with Iraqi police around the province, which holds 1.8 million people and the country’s second-largest city.

Currently there are about 20,000 Iraqi police in Basra province, though about 10 percent have yet to go through basic training, which is about average. Iraq is bringing large blocks of recruits in before running them through a training class, according to Army Capt. Jay Cash, a 793rd member and the intelligence officer for the police training team working with the provincial-level police in Basra.

Internally, the Iraqi police’s biggest obstacle remains their supply chain, a common problem in police units throughout the country, Blahovec and others said. Partly that’s a funding problem at the very top of government, they said.

But it’s also partly cultural.

Iraqis tend to look at a successful supply chain as one with a closet full of goods rather than one with a series of empty shelves, even if the materials are simply being used, at smaller stations or among officers, Masters said. To complicate things, it’s a sign of weakness for an Iraqi commander to ask for supplies, the Marine said.

"Just getting them to submit the forms is hard," he said.

Blahovec has similar concerns. But he said the police training teams are making progress in other ways. He also said the U.S. teams have adjusted the way they measure success.

"It’s a subjective assessment you make," he said Thursday. "Are they are at work? In uniform? Are they willing to get out into the community? How are they responding to crimes?"

Some things are more black and white. Last week, the battalion shared one of its "watch lists" of suspected criminals with the No. 2 Iraqi police chief in the province. The general promised to hand over similar information from his troops in the future.

Earlier this month, the top police chief in Basra survived an assassination attempt outside his home. A police lieutenant colonel was not as lucky and died last weekend in an attack.

"The police get targeted just as much as coalition forces," Cash said.

Blahovec said goal is to prepare the Iraqi police to secure Basra without the help of the Iraqi Army.

"At some point the Iraqis will pull the army out of the city," Blahovec said. "Then the police will be the only game in town."

That point may come sooner than the Americans, or the Iraqi army, want. Rumors are that the newly elected Basra officials want the Iraqi army gone as soon as possible, according to Masters.

"We’ve been told that it’s coming down," Masters said. "The [Iraqi police] can’t handle it yet."

21 wanted men nabbed in Basra

Police forces on Thursday arrested 21 wanted men and seized dozens of unlicensed vehicles during security operations in Basra, the Basra police’s information office said.

“Policemen on Thursday (May 21) waged crackdown operations in separate areas of Basra, during which 21 wanted men were arrested and 30 unlicensed vehicles and 17 motorcycles were seized,” the office told Aswat al-Iraq news agency.

What will happen when Brits leave Basra?

A year ago, Iraq's security forces often had to fire on their own troops instead of fighting the supposed enemy.

Some 2,000 policemen defected to an Islamic militia and another 4,000 were sacked for alleged spying.

Yet, in just a few months, the burden of policing Iraq's second city will fall squarely on homegrown recruits as Britain's 4,000-strong force withdraws.

Many of their senior officers served under Saddam Hussein but they are described cautiously as 'Iraqi-good-enough' by Lt Col Jonny Price, one of 850 British soldiers advising the Iraqis.

He admits there is distrust between Iraqi soldiers and police officers but adds: 'They've come a long way. They're human rights-compliant, relatively well-trained, quite fit and reasonably well-paid.'

The trainees, based at Camp Saad outside Basra, have seized 2,758 weapons since June, making 441 arrests.

Col Price described their commander as 'a bit of a despot' but said he was generally 'a good man'.
Abdul, a lieutenant in the new army, told me: 'People can go out at nights now, walk the streets or markets in safety. Soon Iraq will be as normal as anywhere else.'

But many recruits face intimidation for joining up – and most will be glad to see the back of the Brits.

Policeman Akeel Abdel Hassan said: 'The British did a lot but we still look at them as occupation forces. We would like them to leave now so we can feel we're an independent country again.'

RAF team lose to Iraqi Police Service in football tournament - Scotsman

A SIX-A-SIDE football tournament involving British and local forces in Basra has been won by one of the home teams.
The competition was sponsored by the Premier League, which provided football strips, and the winners were the Iraqi Police Service, who played as Wigan.

They beat 903 Expeditionary Air Wing, Royal Air Force, playing as Sunderland, 2-0 in the final.

Brigadier Abdul Hussein Soud Sawadi Toama, the Commander of 52 Brigade Iraqi Army, who fielded a team, said: "We had a beautiful day away from our military jobs and we are grateful to participate in this competition."

Major General Andy Salmon, Commander of Multi-National Division (South East), said: "Everyone has got on with it together in a spirit of fun and mutual trust and co-operation which is exactly a reflection of what we have done for the last eight or nine months."

The competition, played yesterday on the Contingent Operating Base (COB), took the World Cup format with four leagues of five teams and the winners and runners up of each league going forward into the final eight for the knockout stages.

Three teams entered from the Iraqi Army and one each from the Iraqi Air Force, Police, and Department of Border Enforcement.

Teams from KBR and Turners, two civilian engineering companies employed on the COB, also entered teams.

In order to decide which team would wear which strip the organisers held a charity auction during which the teams bid for their favourite strip.

The auction raised a total of 6,115 US dollars (£4,300) for the competition's chosen charity, Project 65.

This figure was matched by the Premier League, so the donation to Project 65 was 12,230 US dollars (£8,600).

Project 65 has been created to honour the men who took part in the Coup de Main operation to capture the bridges over the Caen Canal and River Orne in the first combat operation of D-Day 65 years ago. These are known as Pegasus and Horsa Bridges.

The charity aims to raise £500,000, a small proportion of which will be used to erect a memorial to the men of the Coup de Main force and those directly associated with the operation.

It will be put up in front of the original bridge within the grounds of the Memorial Pegasus Museum.

The remainder of the money raised will be split between various service charities.

The teams that entered were as follows:

Manchester United – 5th Battalion The Rifles
Liverpool – 1st Royal Tank Regiment
Aston Villa – Queen's Royal Hussars
Chelsea – 200 Signals Squadron, Royal Signals
Arsenal – Royal Artillery
Everton – KBR (civilian)
Wigan Athletic – Iraqi Police Service
West Ham United – Royal Military Police
Manchester City – 1 Logistic Supply Regiment, Royal Logistic Corps
Fulham – 1st Battalion Princess of Wales Royal Regiment
Sunderland – 903 Expeditionary Air Wing, Royal Air Force
Hull City – 35 Engineer Regiment, Royal Engineers
Newcastle – 52 Brigade Iraqi Army
Bolton – Department of Border Enforcement
Portsmouth – Turners (civilian)
Tottenham Hotspur – UK Medical Group
Stoke City – 50 Brigade Iraqi Army
Blackburn – 51 Brigade Iraqi Army
Middlesbrough – 1st Battalion Yorkshire Regiment
West Bromwich Albion – Iraqi Air Force.

RAF lose in Basra football final

Click here for a video of the competition
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7947315.stm

A six-a-side charity football tournament involving UK and local forces in Basra, Iraq, has been won by one of the home teams.

The Iraqi police service, wearing a Wigan Athletic strip, beat the RAF 903 Expeditionary Air Wing, playing as Sunderland, 2-0 in the final.

The event was sponsored by the English Premier League, which donated strips.

A total of 20 teams from the British and Iraqi forces and civilian contractors took part.

The competition was played on Sunday at Britain's Contingency Operating Base.

It worked on a World Cup format with four leagues of five teams and the winners and runners-up of each league going forward into the final eight for the knockout stages.

Brigadier Abdul Hussein Soud Sawadi Toama, commander of 52 Brigade Iraqi army, which fielded a team, said: "We had a beautiful day away from our military jobs and we are grateful to participate in this competition."

Charity auction

Major General Andy Salmon, commander of multi-national division (south east), said: "Everyone has got on with it together in a spirit of fun and mutual trust and co-operation which is exactly a reflection of what we have done for the last eight or nine months."

In order to allocate strips, the organisers held a charity auction during which the teams bid for their favourite jerseys.

The auction raised a total of £4,300, a figure matched by the Premier League.

A total of £8,600 will go to Project 65, created to honour the men who took part in the Coup de Main operation to capture the bridges over the Caen Canal and River Orne in Normandy in the first combat operation of D-Day 65 years ago.

These are now known as Pegasus and Horsa Bridges.

The charity aims to raise £500,000, a small proportion of which will be used to erect a memorial to the men of the Coup de Main force and those directly associated with the operation.

The rest will be split between various service charities.

RAF Police on the beat in Basra

Their primary role is to undertake regular patrols within the vast area of Basra's COB and to provide post-attack recovery, but RAF police are also providing training for local Iraqi police who will one day have responsibility for policing the area around the COB themselves.

Read more on the RMP Association blog here

British Police Walk The Streets In Basra

ACC leads a team of 16 UK police officers and they have been walking the streets of Basra...

In a move that would have been unthinkable a few months ago, UK police officers have been walking the streets of Basra with their Iraqi counterparts.

Leading the team of sixteen police officers deployed in Iraq is Assistant Chief Constable Geoff Cooper of South Wales Police who is seconded to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

Levels of violence in the southern Iraqi city in the past would have meant such a visit was impossible.

However, due to the improving security situation ACC Cooper and Chief Inspector Alan Costello from Sussex Police, together with the Basra Chief of Police, Major General Adel Dahham, have been talking to local people to develop the concept of Community Policing.

ACC Cooper said, “It’s an absolutely tremendous feeling because being here on the streets of Basra at this moment in time just shows how much the security situation has improved.”

Read the full article on PoliceOracle.com click here

Policeman swaps South Wales for streets of Basra

A SOUTH Wales policeman is patrolling the streets of Iraq. Assistant Chief Constable Geoff Cooper, 49, has been posted to Basra alongside 15 other British police officers as part of their secondment to the Foreign Office.

Mr Cooper, who is married and lives in Cardiff, said: “It’s an absolutely tremendous feeling because being here on the streets of Basra just shows how much the security situation has improved.”

It is the first time British police have been able to patrol Iraq’s second city alongside their Iraqi counterparts, including over the Eid celebrations.

Mr Cooper, who has been working in the Middle East as the UK’s chief police adviser for the past seven months, said: “It was a privilege to be able to share the joy of families celebrating the festivities, which would have previously been impossible.

“Our mission is about listening to the needs of the Iraqi police and supporting them to develop Iraqi systems and processes, which will stand the test of time.”

For the full story on Wales online click here

Read more on News Wales online here

Sussex policeman heads to Basra

It may not be everyone's preferred destination but Sussex policeman Alan Costello has moved to Iraq, he’s swapped Friday nights in Brighton for Basra.

As Victoria Heath reports from Meridian TV Alan is offering support to the Iraq security forces on community policing. The challenges that arise from the relocation vary from the heat and flies to the very real possibility of rocket attacks. Scary stuff indeed.

Nevertheless, Alan recognises the importance of his role in rebuilding the country’s infrastructure, but is under no illusion that moving Sussex policing to Basra will not solve the inherent problems. Instead, he understands the importance of an Iraqi-led solution supported by the work he and others from our own police service can offer.

To date the project has seen over 1000 Iraqis train in skills relevant to establish a police force and it is thanks to the likes of Alan who you can hear discussing his work here.

Community Policing in Basra

In a move that would have been unthinkable a few months ago, British police officers have been walking the streets of Basra with their Iraqi counterparts.


Following a meeting with Major General Adel of the Iraqi Police Service, Assistant Chief Constable Geoff Cooper and Chief Inspector Alan Costello walked along the banks of the Sha’at Al Arab waterway.



In doing so they demonstrated the development of the Iraqi Police Service in their efforts to increase public and community support.

30 suspects and an ammunition cache seized by Basra Police

Basra Police have arrested 30 criminals and siezed a significant quantity of ammunition in a recent operation.

IPS spokesman Colonel Kareem Az Zaydi announced that in the last few days the police department has arrested 30 terror and criminal suspects, seized 76 mortar rounds of varying sizes and diffused a locally made IEDs (improvised explosive device) in the Shat Al Arab district. The Police also took 25 medium-sized weapons with 70 rounds of ammunition, while impounding a stolen car.

The IPS emergency battalion in Al Qurna discovered a cache of ammunition in the An Najiriya area in the north of Al Qurna made up of 75 mortar rounds of differing calibres along with 5 ‘Katyusha’ rockets.

Iraqi Police and Army join forces in Basra

New Joint Security Stations for the Iraqi Police Service and Iraqi Army, from which the two forces will conduct joint patrols, have opened in the al Hussein area of Basra this week.

Major General Andy Salmon General Officer Commanding Multi National Division (South East) shakes hands with Major General Aziz General Officer Commanding 14th Division Iraqi Army at the Joint Security Station in the Hyyanniah district of Basra [Picture: LA (Phot) Jannine B Hartmann]

The creation of the Joint Security Stations (JSSs) marks a new period of co-operation and closer working between the two security forces. The stations will provide community bases from which the Iraqi Police Service and Iraqi Army will plan and conduct security patrols together, enabling a sustainable and permanent security solution for the people of Basra.
Full article on the MOD website - click here



Iraqi army and police join forces in Basra - Middle East Times