WASHINGTON, Dec. 18 (UPI) -- An Iraqi army division that recently took control of security operations in Baqubah turned a significant part of the local population against it when they policed up hundreds of innocent men in a five-day operation during Ramadan, a U.S. military official said last week.
"Some political groups and tribal leaders are turning to terrorists and insurgent organizations for protection" rather than Iraqi security forces, said Col. David Sutherland, commander of the U.S. Army's 3rd Brigade of the 1st Cavalry Division, headquartered near Baquba.
"There is a public perception of inequity, corruption of the Iraqi security forces and the way they conducted operations," he said. "We have had instances where the (Sunni) Iraqi Islamic Party was ready to walk away from the political process because of their disgust with the way the Iraqi security forces were being conducted. "
Sutherland said he knew personally of only one flawed operation, but it was enough to undermine whatever public confidence had built up in the local Iraqi army and police forces.
"It was during Holy Ramadan. And it was after the 5th Iraqi Army Division commander took over. It was a five-day operation. The first day went very well, and the remaining four days is where things got out of control and the wide sweep operations took place," he said Friday.
"That created a great deal of disillusion towards the security forces that were operating," he said.
Sutherland said U.S. military advisers were embedded with the offending units during the operation but were unable to change the course of the operation because they do not control the force.
"The (Military Training and Transition Teams) were there; the MiTT teams did have discussions with them. They did go through," Sutherland said. "But the Iraqi army is also a force that works for the Iraqi government.... So they would turn to other elements that they felt could protect them more, and those other elements happened to be terrorist organizations."
The incident underscores how difficult the task is for the American troops attempting to train and equip a fledgling Iraq security force, as they must counter not just the unprofessionalism and heavy-handed tactics endemic to the old regime, but also sectarian and tribal sympathies, and threats and intimidation.
An effective Iraqi security force, however, is vital to securing Iraq. U.S. forces are not sufficiently numerous, trusted or accepted by the people to quell the violence.
Sectarian violence has snowballed in Baghdad to be the primary security problem, with Shiite militias and in some cases government forces targeting Sunni civilians for execution, torture and kidnapping. That problem has migrated north to Baqubah, where until mid-2006 the primary security problem was the Sunni insurgency.
The 5th Iraqi Army Division is overwhelmingly Shiite in a majority Sunni province. It assumed the lead for security operations in Diyala province in July. Those handovers are supposed to benchmarks of progress for Iraq's military. But often in Iraq, it is one step forward, one step back.
The 5th Army Division's heavy-handed Ramadan operation -- whether motivated by sectarian tension or well-meaning overzealousness -- made Diyala less stable rather than more because it undermined confidence in the central Iraqi government and drove Sunnis closer to al-Qaida in Iraq and other Sunni insurgent and terrorist groups.
"This sort of unity only worsens the sectarian divide and encourages further violence. The key to security is separating the insurgents from the terrorists, and bringing the insurgents into the political process while defeating the terrorists with intelligence-driven operations," he said.
Sutherland said since that Ramadan operation that is precisely what he has been trying to do. His combat units, not just the advisers, have been conducting intelligence-driven operations with the 5th Iraqi Army Divisions.
"We will try to coach, teach and mentor them on how to do them properly," he said. "We are in a retraining plan, retraining operation with the Iraqi police, making sure they understand the rule of law, making sure they understand the respect and values application. The Iraqi army, now we have gone back and told them and gone through their tactics that they use, looked at it with them and showed them how this created more enemies than it did friends. The tactics of Saddam, that they understood those were correct tactics, are what we are changing," he said.
Sutherland said his forces have been able to show the Iraqi forces "not subjectively but objectively" how their tactics backfire.
"Since I've been here, every operation is controlled, every operation is disciplined. We've gotten 1,300 new recruits that are trained on values as part of their integration process into the Iraqi army," he said.
He noted two recent operations that netted large numbers of high-value targets, weapons and explosives, and rescued a kidnapped 15-year old.
"They did this without disrupting the population. They did this in a very respectful manner to the people that surrounded the houses ... and by doing this, what they're conducting is -- or doing -- is changing that perception that we talked about."
