Tuesday, April 24, 2007
PBS Frontline documentary on the training of an Iraqi security force
Media
Worth watching:
Gangs of Iraq tracks the struggle to create a loyal and national Iraqi force from the earliest months following the invasion. It provides a chronological timeline of events and offers much needed context for the news that you see today, as well as explaining the complex situation and illustrating how Iraq has reached this point.
In Gangs of Iraq, a joint production of FRONTLINE and the "America at a Crossroads" series, FRONTLINE correspondent Martin Smith and producer Marcela Gaviria spent two months embedded with American forces taking a hard look at how the training effort is faring. Their report draws on interviews with U.S. advisers and military commanders charged with training a new security force, including Gen. David Petraeus, and interviews with Iraqi officials, including Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.
In addition to sectarian bloodshed, one of the chief problems American trainers are working hard to address is the divided loyalties within the Shi'ite-dominated police and army where Iraqis are loyal not so much to the Iraqi state, but to sheikhs or clerics -- in particular, the powerful rival clerics Moqtada al-Sadr, who has his own 60,000-man militia, the Mahdi Army, and Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, leader of the Shi'ite SCIRI Party and its armed wing, the Badr Brigade.
The first national elections, in January 2005, only fueled the sectarian dynamic. It brought to power an alliance of Shi'a religious parties which moved quickly to secure control of the Sunni-headed Ministry of the Interior. The ministry, in charge of all of Iraq's police, includes the elite units known as the Commandos. The ministry's new head, Bayan Jabr, a top deputy to Shi'ite cleric al-Hakim, began re-staffing commando units with commanders in Badr Corps, the militia loyal to Hakim. Soon, many bodies -- many of them of Sunni civilians -- started turning up on the streets.
Allegations of death squads, secret torture centers and infiltration by militia forces were leveled at the Ministry of Interior. In a revealing interview with Jabr, Smith confronts the former minister with the charges. Jabr vigorously defends his record, but then concedes that abuses have taken place. "I cannot correct the ex-officers of Saddam which work with us," Jabr says. "There is a culture."
In addition to sectarian bloodshed, one of the chief problems American trainers are working hard to address is the divided loyalties within the Shi'ite-dominated police and army where Iraqis are loyal not so much to the Iraqi state, but to sheikhs or clerics -- in particular, the powerful rival clerics Moqtada al-Sadr, who has his own 60,000-man militia, the Mahdi Army, and Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, leader of the Shi'ite SCIRI Party and its armed wing, the Badr Brigade.
The first national elections, in January 2005, only fueled the sectarian dynamic. It brought to power an alliance of Shi'a religious parties which moved quickly to secure control of the Sunni-headed Ministry of the Interior. The ministry, in charge of all of Iraq's police, includes the elite units known as the Commandos. The ministry's new head, Bayan Jabr, a top deputy to Shi'ite cleric al-Hakim, began re-staffing commando units with commanders in Badr Corps, the militia loyal to Hakim. Soon, many bodies -- many of them of Sunni civilians -- started turning up on the streets.
Allegations of death squads, secret torture centers and infiltration by militia forces were leveled at the Ministry of Interior. In a revealing interview with Jabr, Smith confronts the former minister with the charges. Jabr vigorously defends his record, but then concedes that abuses have taken place. "I cannot correct the ex-officers of Saddam which work with us," Jabr says. "There is a culture."
Labels: Badr Corps, documentary, Iraq, Iraqi security forces training, Mahdi Army, SCIRI
