[House Hearing, 110 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H.A.S.C. No. 110-57]
DEVELOPMENT OF THE IRAQI POLICE SERVICE
__________
HEARING
BEFORE THE
OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
HEARING HELD
MAY 24, 2007
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OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE
MARTY MEEHAN, Massachusetts, Chairman
JOHN SPRATT, South Carolina W. TODD AKIN, Missouri
VIC SNYDER, Arkansas ROSCOE G. BARTLETT, Maryland
LORETTA SANCHEZ, California WALTER B. JONES, North Carolina
ELLEN O. TAUSCHER, California JEFF MILLER, Florida
ROBERT ANDREWS, New Jersey PHIL GINGREY, Georgia
SUSAN A. DAVIS, California K. MICHAEL CONAWAY, Texas
JIM COOPER, Tennessee GEOFF DAVIS, Kentucky
JOE SESTAK, Pennsylvania
Suzanne McKenna, Professional Staff Member
Thomas Hawley, Professional Staff Member
Roger Zakheim, Professional Staff Member
Sasha Rogers, Staff Assistant
C O N T E N T S
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CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF HEARINGS
2007
Page
Hearing:
Thursday, May 24, 2007, Development of the Iraqi Police Service.. 1
Appendix:
Thursday, May 24, 2007........................................... 41
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THURSDAY, MAY 24, 2007
DEVELOPMENT OF THE IRAQI POLICE SERVICE
STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS
Akin, Hon. W. Todd, a Representative from Missouri, Ranking
Member, Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee.............. 4
Meehan, Hon. Marty, a Representative from Massachusetts,
Chairman, Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee............ 1
WITNESSES
Swengros, Col. Richard W., Assistant Commandant, U.S. Army
Military Police School, U.S. Army; Col. Robert J. Coates,
Assistant Chief of Staff for Training and Experimentation
Group, First Marine Expeditionary, U.S. Marine Corps; and Lt.
Col. Robert E. McCarthy, Executive Officer, Fifth Marine
Regiment beginning on.......................................... 5
APPENDIX
Prepared Statements:
Akin, Hon. W. Todd........................................... 49
Coates, Col. Robert J........................................ 57
Meehan, Hon. Marty........................................... 45
Swengros, Col. Richard W..................................... 52
Documents Submitted for the Record:
[There were no Documents submitted.]
Questions and Answers Submitted for the Record:
Mr. Meehan................................................... 75
DEVELOPMENT OF THE IRAQI POLICE SERVICE
----------
House of Representatives,
Committee on Armed Services,
Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee,
Washington, DC, Thursday, May 24, 2007.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 9:11 a.m., in
room 2212, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Marty Meehan
(chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. MARTY MEEHAN, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM
MASSACHUSETTS, CHAIRMAN, OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS
SUBCOMMITTEE
Mr. Meehan. Good morning. Today the Subcommittee on
Oversight and Investigations meets to continue its examination
of the development of Iraqi Security Forces. The focus of
today's hearing is Iraqi Police Service, or IPS.
The discussion of the Iraqi Security Forces tends to focus
on the Iraqi army and the national police, but there is also a
large Iraqi Police Service force that is intended to carry out
a community policing function. They are the traffic cops, the
patrolmen and the local beat cops who are essential to the
counterinsurgency effort as well as establishment of the rule
of law. We have witnesses here today who have been working
directly with the IPS and can tell us about their experiences
in advising and mentoring them.
Before we get to our witnesses, I want to bring the
subcommittee up to date on the status of the Defense
Department's compliance with our first document request, given
the discussion that we had in the subcommittee on Tuesday.
On March 20th, Mr. Akin and I asked for four documents that
we considered essential to studying the development of the
Iraqi Security Forces. Among other documents, we asked for the
classified April 2006 Joint Multinational Forces-Iraq and U.S.
Embassy Baghdad Campaign Plan as well as its predecessors and
any subsequent revisions to it. Yesterday, we received some of
the documents we requested including part of the Joint Campaign
Plan. We anticipate receiving the campaign plan annexes
shortly.
The bad news is, before we received a copy, we already read
yesterday's Washington Post article outlining the details of
the plan that will replace the 2006 Joint Campaign Plan. In
other words, March 20th we asked for the documents and
yesterday we read about it in the Washington Post; and I am
concerned that the press had access to this before anyone in
Congress saw it, and I do believe the DOD should pursue the
leakers to the full extent of the law.
That having been said, we have been assured that once
Secretary Gates signs off on the strategy, it will be delivered
to us immediately.
The new plan, if approved by Secretary Gates, appears to
contain a notable shift. As reported in the Post, the new plan
shifts the immediate emphasis of military operations away from
transitioning to Iraqi Security Forces. The Post goes on to say
that one of the sources of the article--and apparently there
are many sources, some quoted by name--have said that the
United States drive to make Iraqi forces independent has
already limited U.S. leverage.
Needless to say, the subcommittee will need additional
information regarding the new plan and in particular, its
reported annex on ISF policy.
Moving to today, we had hoped to have two panels of
witnesses. We had asked the Department of Defense to provide
appropriate witnesses who could talk about the DOD plans and
efforts to establish, plan and assess the progress of the Iraqi
Police Service. I asked specifically that witnesses be able to
provide testimony on the following issues:
The IPS's role in and contributions to stabilizing the
security conditions in Iraq; IPS's role in the
counterinsurgency effort; and how the IPS is managed between
the Ministry of Interior and provincial governments.
Unfortunately, the DOD responded that the one witness who
could meet the subcommittee's need for this first panel is
Lieutenant General Martin Dempsey, and since General Dempsey
could not be here today, we asked for witnesses who have been
very involved in the development of ISF and IPS who are located
in the Washington area. Specifically, we asked if General
George Casey could testify.
Before becoming Army Chief of Staff, General Casey was the
commander of the Multinational Force-Iraq and he reportedly
declared the year 2006 as the ``Year of the Police.''
We also asked for General Chiarelli, who currently is
serving at the Pentagon. General Chiarelli was the previous
commander of the Multinational Corps in Iraq. The Multinational
Corps commander assumes the operation and control of the ISF
units once they have been formed, and he could have provided
his insight into the importance of developing a capable and
professional police force.
I think either general could have helped us better
understand the evolution and development of the ISF and the
IPS. So there will be no first panel today to discuss the
Department's plans to establish the IPS.
In reference to our requests for this past Tuesday and
today, Secretary Gates assures us that General Dempsey will
appear before the subcommittee on June 12th. After hearing
about the plans, policy and progress of IPS development, we
wanted to hear about how this actually works on the ground.
We appreciate that, for our second panel, the Department
has allowed us those people who have hands-on experience to
join us. I would ask witnesses for the second panel to join us
at the witness table now.
We are very pleased to have several witnesses today who can
discuss their personal experiences in the development of IPS.
General Richard Swengros oversees the training of the Army
police transition teams as the Assistant Commandant of the U.S.
Army Military Police School at Ford Leonard Wood Missouri. He
also established the Police Partner Program when he served in
Iraq as Commander of the 42nd Military Police Brigade from
November of 2004 to November 2005.
Colonel Robert Coates served as Assistant Chief of Staff
for the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force and was responsible for
supporting the transition teams working with ISF in Al Anbar
Province. Now he is the Assistant Chief of Staff of the
Training/Experimentation Group and is overseeing Police
Transition Team training for the 1st Marine Expeditionary
Force.
Lieutenant Colonel Robert McCarthy, also from the Marine
Corps, has returned this past February after serving as a
Police Transition Team leader in Al Anbar.
We also have 1st Lieutenant Cadetta Bridges, who serves as
the Headquarters Detachment Commander of the 372nd MP Battalion
of the DC National Guard. Lieutenant Bridges returned from Iraq
in February after serving as a Police Transition Team
coordinator in Baghdad.
Finally, joining us is Lieutenant Colonel Brad Felling of
the Air Force who just returned from four months in Iraq last
Wednesday. We are pleased that, on late notice, Colonel
Felling, after returning Wednesday, is here before this
committee.
I want to thank all of you for your outstanding service to
the United States and thank all of you for being here. And we
look forward to your testimony.
I would note that Colonel Swengros and Colonel Coates have
prepared statements that will be made a part of the record; and
we will turn to you two gentlemen for any brief opening
statements that you can make, following Mr. Akin.
To encourage discussion, we would like to follow the same
procedures that we have been following in the committee, and
that is that we will dispense with the five-minute rule during
the hearing, so there can be some give-and-take with the
outstanding witnesses that we have. I would also like to remind
everyone that this is an open hearing so no classified
information should be discussed.
Before I turn to Mr. Akin for any opening remarks, I would
like to take a moment to share news from Iraq. It drives home,
I think, how critical and dangerous the mission that we are
discussing is. Last week an Air Force staff sergeant, John
Self, was killed in Iraq; and he was a part of a police
training team much like the ones that we are discussing here
today. And all of our thoughts are with his family. He was on
his fourth tour in Iraq.
Now I would like to turn to my partner on this committee,
Mr. Todd Akin, for any remarks that he would have.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Meehan can be found in the
Appendix on page 45.]
STATEMENT OF HON. W. TODD AKIN, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM MISSOURI,
RANKING MEMBER, OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE
Mr. Akin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And good morning to our
witnesses. Thank you all for coming. We are looking forward to
your comments.
Over the course of this investigation, it is becoming
increasingly apparent that the Iraqi Police Service, the IPS,
nominally part of the Iraqi Security Forces, is really a unique
organization that requires its own analysis and discussions
separate from the Iraqi army or the National Police. Despite
being critical to our effort in Iraq and the fact that nearly
half the security forces we have trained belong to the Iraqi
Police Service, it has been remarkably difficult to get
information about the efforts of the police transition teams.
Along that vein, I want to thank the Department for supporting
this important hearing and the ones to follow in June.
If defeating sectarianism and marginalizing militias are
paramount to success in Iraq, then the Iraqi Police Service
that ensures law and order and has the respect and trust of the
local communities is absolutely essential. A community that
relies on the IPS for safety is a community that will not turn
to militias.
It seems to me, as the strategic framework for prioritizing
our police training effort, the police transition teams are an
essential piece of the effort to execute this strategy. I am
looking forward to hearing from our witnesses on this.
Some of the issues I would like for the witnesses to touch
on will be:
First, the competency of the police stations your PTT
worked with, and the extent the Ministry of Interior involved
itself in the work of these police stations;
Second, whether the IPS you worked with was able to carry
out nominal law-and-order police work or they were forced to
support counterinsurgency operations;
Three, the extent of militia infiltration in the police
stations you oversaw; and
Four, how the chain of command supported your efforts.
Once again, thank you all for joining us. We are looking
forward to your testimony.
And thank you, Mr. Chairman.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Akin can be found in the
Appendix on page 49.]
Mr. Meehan. Thank you very much, Mr. Akin.
Colonel Swengros and Colonel Coates, if you could proceed
with your opening statements.
STATEMENT OF COL. RICHARD W. SWENGROS, ASSISTANT COMMANDANT,
U.S. ARMY MILITARY POLICE SCHOOL, U.S. ARMY; COL. ROBERT J.
COATES, ASSISTANT CHIEF OF STAFF FOR TRAINING AND
EXPERIMENTATION GROUP, FIRST MARINE EXPEDITIONARY, U.S. MARINE
CORPS; AND LT. COL. ROBERT E. MCCARTHY, EXECUTIVE OFFICER,
FIFTH MARINE REGIMENT
STATEMENT OF COL. RICHARD W. SWENGROS
Colonel Swengros. Yes, sir. Thank you Chairman Meehan
Congressman Akin, distinguished members of the committee. It is
my pleasure to appear before this committee today and give my
testimony on the police transition teams and the work of our
soldiers in Iraq and at the U.S. Army Military Police School as
we support their transition team efforts.
Mr. Chairman, I believe you have my opening statement, and
if I could, I will go ahead and summarize to allow more time.
I have been in the Army nearly 31 years, all in the
military police. I started out as a private. As I attained the
rank of staff sergeant I went to OCS, commissioned as a second
lieutenant. I have had every military police type of duty the
Army offers, in corrections, detention operations, military
police companies and our Criminal Investigation Command.
I do keep in contact with the senior military police
leaders that are in Iraq today, and in Afghanistan, as we move
forward to develop and enhance the transition team efforts from
our bases here in the United States.
In my experiences in Kosovo and now in Iraq I observed that
building police capabilities in a Third World nation that is
encumbered by fallen regimes and police that were part of the
oppressive societies is absolutely the most complex thing I
have ever done in my life. I have done it twice in my first
rotation in Kosovo and then in a third rotation Iraq.
My first day after the transition of authority as brigade
commander, I went to a squadron on the west side of Tigris
River in Baghdad and said, I am the new brigade commander. What
can I do to help you in your mission? At that point, it wasn't
a transition team; it was a program, it was military police
squads operating in the police stations. And the squad leader,
without missing a beat, said, You have got to fix the
headquarters.
You can't just fix the police stations. It has got to be a
top-down--from the top all the way down to the bottom approach
to how we fix the problems.
So I took that in. The next day, I am out on the east side
of the Tigris, found a platoon leader out there, asked the same
question. These are different units, different commanders,
different brigades they are working for, and this lieutenant
almost verbatim said the same thing. She said, You have to fix
the hierarchy. You have to fix the structures at the same time
you are fixing the police stations because what is happening,
as we develop the police station capability, there are
transfers, there are pay problems, there are a whole number of
things that pull away from what the police stations are trying
to do.
So I went back to my staff, and we sat down and we
basically figured out, in order to do this, we had to partner
with more than just our squads; we had to partner with our
brigade battalion staffs. And we formed in early 2005 with
General Chiarelli and Brigadier General Jones the Police
Partnership Program. It was centered specifically at this point
in Baghdad, and then by the time I left--in Iraq, when I first
started, we had about 70 teams I could put out in my entire
brigade, and now you are facing almost 230 police transition
teams out there. Their number is still growing; about 85
percent of the stations are being partnered with in one fashion
or another as they go through and address the various problems
and situations that are out in Iraq.
As a result of our working with the current police
transition teams over there, military police school was trying
to level the playing field. When you go over there as a new
unit it is more than just a transition from a right-seat ride
to a left-seat ride. There is a transition process in learning,
one month, two months, three months, whatever that dynamic is,
to figure out what forms you have to fill out.
So we develop a training support package and we now teach
it as a five-day course. We teach, both residents and a
military training team, we go out to the units and we will
train them on Police Transition Team. And it is a package of
slides and briefings that will allow units to train on what the
PTT program is about, so when they get in country, all that
learning aspect is diminished and they can concentrate really
on who is operating in the area and how they can make
effectiveness quickly at the same time that the enemy, if you
will, operates to undermine or to take advantage of that scene
that typically takes place when we transition units.
Challenges continue to be the environment, the groups vying
for population control; that is, organized crime, criminals,
insurgents, terrorists, political or tribal parties. The number
of PTTs, the number of interpreters with each PTT, all those
get out the program.
This part of the program is the best chance for success,
but it will take time. It is an expensive effort under trying
circumstances.
There are a great majority of Iraqis and Iraqi police who
are grateful for our efforts and are trying to effect change.
And we saw that. We see it in their efforts. We see it in their
eyes. Through my current job, again, I stay in contact. And it
is the same feedback we are getting from folks who are
returning. I think you will hear that today from the panel.
I would like to thank this committee again for your time
and interest in the Police Transition Team program, and I will
be happy to answer any questions.
Mr. Meehan. Thank you Colonel.
[The prepared statement of Colonel Swengros can be found in
the Appendix on page 52.]
Mr. Meehan. Colonel Coates.
STATEMENT OF COL. ROBERT J. COATES
Colonel Coates. Sir, Chairman, Congressman Akin,
distinguished members of the subcommittee, I am honored to
appear before you this morning to discuss the Marine Corps
advisory efforts in the Iraqi police development in Al Anbar
Province. First, on behalf of all marines and sailors and their
families, I want to thank you for your continued support off
our Corps as we continue to fight on in the war on terror.
In February 2006 the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, or I
MEF, created a separate staff section, the G-10, to oversee not
only all Iraqi Security Force development in Al Anbar Province
but the formal training of all U.S. Marine Corps and transition
teams stemming from I MEF.
As you are aware, we have transition teams assigned to the
Iraqi Army, the Iraqi Police Service, and the Border Protection
Service. Through the IPS, February 2006, approximately 2,143
policemen were assigned to Anbar Province with an additional
1,599 in training. However, many of these assigned policemen
were not actively working.
There are 10 police districts identified in Al Anbar
Province, but only four of these police districts were
operating at that time, with a total of 14 police stations.
Two of these districts in many of the stations were barely
functioning. The provincial headquarters was not operational.
The only truly functioning police force is the City of
Fallujah.
The Iraqi Police initiative in Al Anbar to date provides
the Coalition the most direct method of Sunni engagement for
the populace. Iraqi Police are nationally controlled by the
Iraqi Ministry of Interior, the MOI, and are organized along
military lines with regard to rank structures, and
distinguished between sworn officers and policemen. I might
add, officers are the ones that have the real authority, the
arrest authority and such, and the policemen are more like an
enlisted rank structure.
The Principal Director of the Police, or the PDoP, is
appointed for each province and works directly for the governor
of the Province, while adhering to ministerial policies and
regulations. The chief of police appointed in each district is
responsible for the management of all stations within the
district.
Iraqi Police recruiting in Al Anbar faced many challenges
during most of 2006. Al Qaeda was conducting a ruthless murder
and intimidation campaign against the then-fledgling Iraqi
Police, causing much of the local populace to adopt a wait-and-
see attitude with regard to Iraqi Police, this wait-and-see
attitude exacerbated by tribal affiliations where prospective
recruits must obtain permission from the Sheiks to join the
Iraqi Police.
The recruiting process heavily taxed Coalition Forces to
provide adequate security, as recruiting locations made
attractive targets for the insurgents. Of course this created
great pause in the minds of potential recruits. Many of those
individuals brave enough to enter recruiting stations were
rejected due to literacy or lack of proper identification. Once
properly screened, the recruit must graduate from a preapproved
police academy such as the Baghdad Police Force or the
Jordanian International Police Training Center, JIPTC. Upon
graduation, the MOI issues hiring orders for new policemen and
assigns them to a home province. Policemen who formerly served
in the IP could also rejoin the service by attending a three-
week transition integration program refresher course.
From February 2006 to February 2007, all equipment issued
to the IP was from Coalition Forces. During that first half of
2006, Iraqi Police lacked basic equipment, to include vehicles,
weapons, body armor, radios and communications infrastructure.
This impacted operations throughout the year. Logistics support
was also an issue. An example of this was a lack of fuel for
the Iraqi Police vehicles. There is no MOI funding for Iraqi
fuel nor is there any infrastructure to hold and distribute
fuel.
Problems associated with Iraqi equipment was eventually
overcome when large shipments of gear were delivered to the
Iraqi Police in Al Anbar in the last half of 2006.
Iraqi Police in Al Anbar Province lacked ministerial
support from central government and was unfailingly prioritized
last, as with all other major government programs. Local
government tribal support, however, provided the impetus to
expand the Iraqi Police in the province, allowing it to grow to
its current size.
Perhaps the greatest factor in sustaining Iraqi Police is
pay. When I MEF arrived in Al Anbar Province, police hadn't
been paid in four months. The PDoP was arrested for stealing
Iraqi Police (IP) salaries. Baghdad Treasury withheld all
police funds from Al Anbar. Extensive Coalition involvement was
required to restart the pay process because the Baghdad
Treasury did not trust provincial police officials to do so.
Restarting the pay process was essential to recruiting Iraqi
Police.
Iraqi Police Service was not designed similarly to fight an
insurgency but is an essential element to fighting the
insurgency. This required Coalition and Iraqi Army Forces to
set conditions that would allow the Iraqi Police to conduct
day-to-day operations. Coalition and Iraqi units also provided
quick reaction forces for the Iraqi Police in emergency
situations. Today there are many locations throughout al Anbar
where our Iraqi Police have established security to a level for
allowing schools and shops to open for the first time in years.
There are no existing criminal courts or judges in Al Anbar
Province. This has created obvious problems for the police as
there is no established system of justice outside the Central
Criminal Court of Iraq. The CCCI's focus was on the prosecution
of insurgents, which neglected the prosecution of common
criminals. This greatly hampered police operations.
There are no existing prisons in Al Anbar Province. Police
could turn the insurgents over to the Coalition for detention,
and the regional detention facility only possessed small jails
within the police stations to hold common criminals. These were
almost always, always, always overcrowded.
Construction of Iraqi Police facilities was problematic.
Threats and attacks against contractors slowed or halted many
of these projects. In addition, proof of land ownership further
delayed many projects as titles and deeds to most land did not
exist, making this requirement nearly impossible to satisfy.
Al Anbar Iraqi Police are mentored by both U.S. Army and
Marine Police Transition Teams or PTTs. Many of these teams
proved to be difficult initially, and a U.S. Army Military
Police (MP) battalion was originally tasked to source these
teams but was diverted to Baghdad, leaving only a company in
place to provide PTTs. I MEF created 15 additional PTTs from
personnel from staff positions and line units to fill the gap.
During the initial stages of the PTT program PTTs received
local generalized adviser training. As the PTT program
developed, incoming advisors began to receive more specialized
PTT-centric instruction at Camp Fallujah, followed by more
detailed on site the ten-day training with outgoing PTTs. Today
I MEF maintains a dedicated Advisory Training Group board at
Camp Pendleton to train and prepare all transition teams as
well as issuing a PTT handbook.
And, sir, I brought an example of that handbook for your
staff. And it has been distributed and in no way, sir, is the
``dummies'' portion in there warranted at any anybody----
Mr. Meehan. It is not just for the Congress, anyone that
gets the book----
Colonel Coates. Absolutely not, sir. Upon I MEF's transfer
of authority to II MEF on 9 February 2007, Al Anbar had
approximately 10,250 assigned IP. And that is school-qualified
IP, sir, formally trained, with approximately 9,211 walking the
beat. Provincial headquarters in all ten districts were
operational with a total of 40 active police stations. The IP
are being paid on time each month, and also receive additional
funds for operations and maintenance. The IP are invaluable not
only for the security they provide, but also for the ground
level intelligence on local insurgent activities.
During December 2006 to February 2007, four graduating
police academies, each ranging in size from 550 to 1,300,
reported to more than 40 police locations throughout Al Anbar,
equipped with complete equipment kits and vehicles, as well as
on good pay status.
The Iraqi Police officer has been the subject of much
violence in Al Anbar. Often one to two police officers are
killed daily or murdered on a daily basis. That is an indicator
of what their impact has been upon the al Qaeda insurgency. No
question in recent months the IP is taking the fight to the
insurgency in Al Anbar Province.
Additionally, in February of 2007, I MEF installed a
commercial satellite Internet system covering all police
stations in Al Anbar, providing first-ever coverage to the
Province, resulting in a capability to coordinate and share
information.
Iraqi Police Service in Al Anbar Province has proven to be
a good news story. Much of the recent decline in violence there
can be directly attributed to their increased presence in the
Province as well as a form of Sunni engagement by both
Coalition Forces and the government in Iraq. I can provide you
today with many examples of bravery on the battlefield that I
know of firsthand.
Again, I would like to thank you for this opportunity to
appear before you, and I look forward to answering any
questions you may have as well as providing any additional
information that you require.
Mr. Meehan. Thank you very much Colonel.
[The prepared statement of Colonel Coates can be found in
the Appendix on page 57.]
Mr. Meehan. Colonel Swengros and Coates, you have been
involved in the evolution of the PTT program from an informal
approach to a more formal approach. Can you describe for the
subcommittee how the program has evolved and what progress you
have seen in the IPS and how that has evolved?
Colonel Swengros. Yes, sir. Mr. Chairman, as I said, when
we got over there what I saw was a lot of policing effort but
it wasn't synchronized and it wasn't addressing it from the top
to bottom. So from the very start, we had efforts out there to
train stations that I would classify as very desychronized;
everybody doing the right thing, but it wasn't connected. So we
really concentrated on that.
And I took my brigade staff and my logistics officer and
non-commissioned officer (NCO) and they went out and built the
capability in the Baghdad Maintenance Facility. And that
included calling back to Chrysler and Chevrolet and getting
parts lists for vehicles that were sent over by contributing
nations but didn't come with the right parts sets to repair the
damages from the insurgency. First day in we had--ball peen
hammers was all they had. And that is the complexity I was
talking about. So that is the logistics side.
I can talk about the accountability system, the weapons,
when we got there. I think our mission in 2004 was really--late
2004, we had lost the police stations in Mosul, we had lost
police stations in a lot of areas. And so our initial focus
entering 2005 was the January 2005 elections and getting the
police to really be able to defend themselves.
I think today you will see that most police stations can
and do defend themselves from attack by the insurgents, and
that was not happening at the onset. It took our intelligence
folks. And they helped develop a criminal intelligence. When
the police were disbanded, all their expertise went away. Most
of your police leadership in Iraq is Army. And, in fact, the
year I was there, the only former policeman that was a Province
police chief was the Baghdad police chief, General Asad.
Everybody else was Army.
So it was the leadership management piece of it, but in
terms of policing, it wasn't there. And that was the same
basically as you go through the stations. It was very difficult
to find some seasoned police folks, because they were run out
of the country and they were able to stabilize that a little
bit.
We brought our operations folks and set up command centers
to try to get at the same thing that he talked about in Al
Anbar that we were doing about a year and a half earlier:
communications across Baghdad where they could actually track
where people were, somewhat of a 9/11 system, the tips lines.
The Iraqis are calling the Iraqi Police now and not the
Coalition tip line to provide information on insurgent or
criminal activity in an area.
Our personnel section in brigade and battalions would go
out and work the personnel and pay issues. From my perspective,
and I have worked with the Deputy Minister of Interior for
Police Affairs in my year there, trying to work that piece of
it. But as you can tell, we are starting to get spread between
brigades trying to work Mosul and trying to work Baghdad, being
those are our two top priorities, and then trying to work with
the Deputy Minister of Interior for Police Affairs.
But we worked on the pay system and the fuel system and
what we saw was when the government transitioned later on that
year in 2005, a lot of the folks that we had been working with
then were removed or replaced by other party members. And we
had to basically start, not really from over, but we had to
start pretty close to ground zero again, getting through all
the pay problems, the badging problems, the weapons problems.
A lot of people will talk about the partnership program and
ask how it works, and I think the clearest example is: I went
into Baghdad, I had a lot of questions coming from me, from the
Multi-National Corps Iraq (MNC-I). We operated under 18
Airborne Corps, saying okay, show me this logistics
accountability system. So I said, okay, you give me a
security--a serial number of AK-47 that you issued to me, and I
will use the Iraqis to track it down and tell you where it is.
And we were able to track down in 2005--if we issued a weapon
we could track it down to a certain station.
What we found is as we were going through and tracking
computers and weapons and vehicles, there are a lot of folks
would get those, and, because of that distrust, they would not
issue them out to stations that they didn't trust. So they were
kept in the Iraqi Police warehouses. So we had to go down there
and stoke the fire over that system. And that is, again, in a
nutshell, some of the complexity.
But all of it was a success because it was all working in
various stages. I think the issue is that we really have to
keep at it for a lot of different reasons. We have to keep at
that program. But the Iraqis are capable of doing it.
Mr. Meehan. Colonel, do you have anything to add to that?
Colonel Coates. In regards to the transition teams, Mr.
Chairman, you know at first it was very informal. We had a
formalized period of instruction, but I will tell you, you can
be very proud of the marines, the soldiers, and the sailors
assigned to those teams. And Lieutenant Colonel McCarthy can
speak firsthand.
Our goal was to set conditions that would allow the police
to thrive and grow which obviously gets initial security
established. And that was a challenge. But in parts of Al Anbar
which have very unique challenges, what you will find today is
not uncommon--and we didn't have this when we first got there--
to have an Iraqi Police section accompany an Iraqi Army unit
and a Coalition unit and have a combined patrol through
neighborhoods. And that was what was really a key success,
because there was much mistrust between the Iraqi Army and the
IPS initially. And each considered each other terrorists.
So the vehicle with which we brought about that trust or
bringing that coordination together was the PTT team and the
associations that the PTT team could have with a partnered
unit, and bringing that joint coordination together, which
resulted in better intelligence to where the police went on
patrols with the military and they could point the street-level
bad guys out immediately and tell them what is right, what is
left, and so on so forth.
So that was, you know, the real vehicle of getting that
done was the in emplacement of those PTT teams. And also those
PTT teams gave us true visibility of what was going on at the
lowest levels and then bringing it up.
For the ministerial thing, we had no functioning provincial
police headquarters. Our first step of trying to get that
provincial police established or establishing the provincial
police so we could get that ministerial engagement I will tell
you, sir, it is very broken at that level. You know, they
consider the Government of Baghdad as the other side of the
world. They do not get much in the way of day-to-day support.
We are getting salaries. But the establishment of our
provincial headquarters and engaging ministerial level is
absolutely key to sustaining the future.
Mr. Meehan. Lieutenant Colonel McCarthy and Lieutenant
Bridges, I wonder if you would introduce yourself and then tell
us where you served. But I am interested in you describing for
the subcommittee what a typical day for a PTT working with the
IPS would be like.
Colonel McCarthy. Good morning, Chairman. Lieutenant
Colonel Bob McCarthy from the great Commonwealth of
Massachusetts. I was in Al Habbaniya.
Mr. Meehan. Do you know how many Bob McCarthys I know in
Massachusetts?
Colonel McCarthy. Probably 110, sir.
But Colonel Coates threw me into Al Habbaniya that needed
some adult leadership. There were two squads, military police
squads, that were working with a very corrupt lieutenant
colonel in the Iraqi Police Service. And it was a function of
leadership dealing with those folks. Unannounced calls, zero 5
to zero 7 to check posts. Basic leadership supervisory role.
Are you manning your towers? Are you manning your Entry Control
Points (ECPs)? Are you dressed professionally? Are you wearing
your uniform properly? Are you carrying your weapon properly to
make things safe? You would have negligent discharges all over
the place and it was unsafe for the soldiers and the marines.
We fixed that immediately.
We would screen and vet their rosters over and over and
over again, because you had ghost policemen on the rosters. I
mean, the administrative burden for the soldiers and marines
was gigantic. But you know, basically the task, man training
and equipment, lead, teach, and mentor 24 hours a day. The
Military Police Force, they never left the station. They waited
for a call.
In a counterinsurgency environment, they have to be on the
streets because they are there to provide the basic security
for the locals.
We taught them to do dismounted combat patrols. Let's walk
outside your station. Show them how to walk the beat.
We stand off. They walk in front and get them comfortable
showing the blue, showing the police uniform on the streets.
And the people started to recognize their efforts and started
to actually bring information regarding criminal activity and
insurgent activity to the stations.
Mr. Meehan. Can I ask, how did the international police
officers, contractors, how do they fit into this equation?
Colonel McCarthy. The way we broke it down into functional
areas we trained the leadership, you know, to operate along
functional lines as a staff and do their admin, do their
logistics, do their intelligence, their communications. We
taught them basic police and soldierly skills and virtues. And
that's where the police officers came in, you know; our
International Police Liaison Officers (IPLOs), they would teach
investigations, the conduct of investigation, over and over and
over again. Sensitive site exploitation, how to gather and
maintain a chain of custody on evidence.
And staying on top of that--I mean, we taught the
investigative process every day for six months.
Because if I said Chairman Meehan was a bad man, and
Colonel Coates said Chairman Meehan was a bad man, the report
would be that you are a very bad man because we have two
statements that you are a bad man.
Mr. Meehan. Sounds like my local newspaper.
Colonel McCarthy. But they did great, great work, with just
how to set up a dispatch center; because if they launched a
patrol, they had no battle-tracking capability. It was God
willing. Insha'allah.
You just launched a patrol, and into a very bad
neighborhood; what is the plan, who is the quick reaction
force? Now, when are they checking in, how are you tracking
this on a map? How are you, you know, registering this for your
historical records? They didn't track that. So we taught them
all those things.
Mr. Meehan. Lieutenant Bridges.
Lieutenant Bridges. Good morning.
Mr. Meehan. Basically the question is describe, if you
would, a typical day for the PTT working with the IPS and what
it would be like.
Lieutenant Bridges. Good morning, Chairman Meehan Mr. Akin
and distinguished panel. Thank you all for allowing me to be
here. I am Lieutenant Bridges, and I was a Helicopter Aircraft
Commander (HAC) commander in the 322nd.
A typical morning for us was getting my team up 04,
convoying out of the gate, getting to the IP station, to find
no one there. Meaning, sir, everyone was fast asleep.
So our job was to try and discipline the IPs at our
subprovincial headquarters. We had a lot of discipline issues.
So we couldn't even talk about infrastructure or classroom
training until we finally got them to a place of discipline.
Once we got them to put on their uniform, sir, we started
classroom instruction. We started to try and teach them things,
just as Colonel McCarthy just noted, just basic policing, basic
reporting.
The reporting system within the station, we managed over
5,000 IPs for nine districts, and the reporting system was: Who
is at work today? So all of the officers--I had nine officers,
06s, there in their Iraqi chain, they would come to me and say
we have 10 people here, we have 20 people here.
And actually sir, they wouldn't have those people there.
Typical.
Let's talk about the afternoon. We would go into the
operation section. Our job was to try and make sure that these
Iraqis knew how to read the maps. We would bring maps for them
that were made for us at the division level, but they did not
know how to read their own maps. So that was a big issue for
us, getting them to know where their patrols and IPs were being
dispatched so that they could track them. So we had a lot of
issues there.
Well into the evening our IPs would leave at two o'clock.
So we had a hard time trying to get them to learn how to stay
at the station, do overnight operations. We had a lot of issues
in the patrol issues, sir.
Mr. Meehan. Lieutenant, do you know whether the IPs that
were present were trained by the Coalition? Were they
Coalition-trained?
Lieutenant Bridges. Are you speaking of the formal
training?
Mr. Meehan. Yes.
Lieutenant Bridges. All of my IPs, sir, had been to the
Jordan Academy or the Baghdad Academy. There were some who had
not received training because they had been IPs for maybe 20
years, so they did receive refresher training from those
academies.
Mr. Meehan. One of the thing the members of the committee--
we took a recent trip to Iraq and we toured the JIPTC in
Jordan, and it was stunning to me and the other members of our
delegation. The fact that they couldn't tell us whatever
happened to those people who graduated from what appeared to me
to be a pretty high-quality police training facility.
Before I was elected to Congress I ran a very large
district attorney's office. And the police training operation
itself, we were very impressed with it. But the notion of not
knowing who you are training, whether they show up for work,
how long they stay, whether they move up in the ranks, or
whether they were, you know, Iraqi Police officers or al Qaeda,
was very concerning, I think, to all of us, keeping track of
who we are training and where they end up.
Lieutenant Bridges. Yes, sir. That process is very
frustrating for us. I have worked alongside the 463rd MP
commander and we would see the recruiting process, sir, from
start to end. And I can tell you if we sent over 80 IPs to
Jordan or Baghdad Academy, we could not account but, I will
say, for maybe 50 percent of those IPs at the end of the 8-week
training, and we just could not get a pulse on what activity
was happening at the school that allowed us not to, you know,
battle-track these IPs.
We vetted them, sir. We would go to the recruitment center
and ensure that these civilians would go through the process,
take the test, the doctor say they are good to go, they cough.
They are good, sir. We wait for them to go to training, we
can't find them at the end of the course. Maybe like I said, we
send 80, we can only account for 40, and I don't even want to
impress upon you the badging process, sir.
Mr. Meehan. I am interested if anybody else had comments on
this when you think--I think it was mentioned, there were
50,000 Iraqi Police that had been trained; the cost to the
United States was significant. And again, an impressive
facility, but not having any idea whether we were training
insurgents, al Qaeda, or people that really want to be Iraqi
security. And the only way we could identify them, many would
come in and give names and no way really to identify them until
we got their identification. Then there were instances, if they
came back for training, and you would know, you have already
been here for training once. But I would like to hear from all
the panelists on this.
Colonel Swengros. Mr. Chairman, we also had responsibility
for the Baghdad Police College when I first got there. When I
first got there it was eight weeks and now it is ten weeks.
But, as Colonel Coates was saying, you start looking at
training and you start looking at what the curriculum is. It is
good training but the first couple of weeks are human rights-
type training, little to do with police work. And we spend a
couple weeks on training them how to survive, a lot of time on
the ranges and stuff like that, and when you get down to
policing, out of the ten weeks, you may get four weeks out of
it.
I did try to address the same problem we had in 2005. You
send folks to the Academy and they would be expected to go back
to a certain location, because that is where they recruited
from. But the Iraqi Minister of Interior had a different way of
doing business. They would make the assignments. When we were
making the assignments we could track it; and we knew, we had
accountability systems. When they track things they do things
by paper, and it is handwritten, and a lot of things get lost.
But they will make decisions. And it will be decisions that we
may not agree with, but that was their decision.
The other dynamic of it is that they did have to fill
certain provinces. Ninevah Province at one point had 40 percent
at some stations. And then you go out to other provinces and
they would only have 60 percent. So I said, okay, let's try to
fill up this other province. You go to fill them up and say
here is your assignment instructions; and it is like a New York
State trooper, you graduate, you may not go back to Buffalo,
you may go to the New York City area. They wouldn't go. There
is no way I am going to go to work in Mosul if I live in
Baghdad. I won't survive back there, and plus I am not driving
back and forth to take care of my family. So there is a
tremendous dynamic there that we don't have to deal with.
All those pieces lead to exactly what Lieutenant Bridges
said. It is extremely difficult to track them. They do not have
a National ID card, as many times as they have tried to do
that. There are many, many common names out there. And to us a
lot of them really do cause us difficulties in distinguishing
who is who.
That dynamic in and of itself makes it extremely difficult,
the entire process.
Colonel Coates. Sir, Mr. Chairman, and, again Al Anbar got
kind of a later start, but in the recruiting process nobody was
admitted into it unless they had the proper ID card or papers.
We vetted and we conducted biometric identification of
everybody in that process, and, because Al Anbar is unique,
most of them would only join if they could go to their home
areas or hometowns. That was one of the conditions. That was
the appeal of the police force, that they could stay at home
rather than be nationally assigned.
The other thing was that they preferred to go to the JIPTC
Academy and they found it to be very professional, but because
they were in the Sunni Province, Jordan was a very appealing
place to go.
When they returned, we had handlers assigned. We picked
them up at Baghdad or Al Asad. They were Coalition-escorted or
-driven to their police districts, to police stations, and
almost in all cases the PTT team was there to receive them, to
make sure they were processed at the station. So we also
maintained our own rostering and tracking of all those assigned
because we tied it to the payroll process.
If you do not have a graduation certificate with an
identification of hiring order, you weren't on that, we
screened the pay rosters, your name was not added to that
payroll.
Mr. Meehan. Thank you, Colonel. Before I go to Mr. Akin, I
don't want to leave out Lieutenant Colonel Felling. And welcome
back from Iraq.
I understand that you were on a military transition team
rather than a Police Transition Team but worked directly with
the Iraqi IPS. Can you describe your experiences with the IPS?
Colonel Felling. Yes, sir, good morning. My name is
Lieutenant Colonel Brad Felling, and it is a pleasure to be
here, Mr. Chairman. Having just come back last Wednesday, I was
intimately familiar with the military transition team
operations in the Ninawa and the MND Center-South Province.
Being the Air Force gentleman on the military transition
team staff, my primary role was air support, but there is a
very fine line in this Coalition area between PTTs and MTTs. A
lot of the MTT functions are served with the PTTs as well. It
is almost a graduation, if you will, from PTT up to the MTT
areas and the military transition teams are doing fantastic
work.
My responsibility was to make sure that they had whatever
they needed outside the wire; specifically to make sure that,
one, they were protected; two, they felt comfortable; and to,
three, make sure that they had any air support that they
possibly needed, be it rotary wing or fixed wing.
The primary effort there pre-plus-up was construction and
then post-plus-up was to make sure that we could assimilate out
into the local neighborhood, and that is where the PTT and MTT
members were essential, because they were part of the local
neighborhoods.
Mothers, fathers, daughters, sons, you name it, we went out
there and we assimilated with them. And as an Air Force
aviator, my job was to make sure that I could impart as much
aviation expertise as I possibly could.
Not being a security policeman, my job was to make sure
that their security policemen were able to maintain their
expertise along with whatever communications we could provide
them. So, it was very, very meaningful work down there. And in
a multinational environment in the Coalition sector, be it
Polish, El Salvadoran, Mongolian, et cetera, and, specifically,
the Mongolians with their security expertise, were extremely
helpful to our effort down in Diwaniyah.
Mr. Meehan. Mr. Akin.
Mr. Akin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is fascinating what I
am hearing all of you describe is sort of building from the
ground up on everything. Just starting out, you got to be awake
and you got to be on the job, and it is absolutely amazing. And
it sounds like progress, you know. Hearing from where we
started and where we are moving, it seems like we made
considerable progress. It is at least a picture of things
moving forward.
In Al Anbar, is the situation now, in the areas where we
have pretty good cooperation with the local Sheiks and all, are
the police stations and all--is that starting to work
reasonably well, and are they locally supported and respected,
Colonel Coates?
Colonel Coates. Yes, sir. In Al Anbar what truly, you know,
turned the situation with the police, again, was engagement
with the Sheiks and the local tribal officials. And I think
probably, you know, they saw that they could help shape their
future by cooperating and so on. It has been a big turnaround,
particularly in Ramadi, sir, and in the area where Lieutenant
Colonel McCarthy was, in Habbaniya and in Chaldea, where
foreign fighters and bad guys walked the streets during the
day.
And what changed the complex of that place was, again, the
integration of the police, our Iraqi Army units with Coalition
in overwatch or in Reserve for them and a clearing operation
took place where an Iraqi Army unit would go in, establish
initial security, it would be backfilled by police, and we
would drive on to the next street.
But there was no question that the recent events in Al
Anbar have been through the tribal and Sheik engagement. That
is what has brought the numbers to join and the quality people
as well.
Again, I think they were very much on a wait-and-see type
posture. See how things were going to go. Maybe guys were
sitting on the fence deciding what side they were going to
take, but no question, recent tribal engagement with the Sheiks
is what brought the numbers to come join.
Mr. Akin. So you are talking about Ramadi which has been
the biggest success story because the Sheiks are on board; is
that correct?
Colonel Coates. Absolutely, sir.
Mr. Akin. My son was in Fallujah first half of 2005, and I
don't think there was any real cooperation from the Sheiks at
that point is what I recall.
Colonel Coates. That is correct, sir.
Mr. Akin. So in the places where the Sheiks are working
with us, do we now have local police? Are they functioning
reasonably well, would you say?
Colonel Coates. Absolutely, sir. And what is happening is
the numbers have shown up and security has been established and
a way of life, with children going to school, shops reopening,
no question.
Mr. Akin. Is that starting to carry over into some of the
other areas of Al Anbar? Are they still full of bad guys and
completely resistant?
Colonel Coates. Al Qaeda, where it was heavy fighting in
2004, sir, there is probably not much reason to have Coalition
Forces there now. We have a Iraqi battalion brigade headquarted
out there. But the police forces run the show completely. Very
little or no violence at all. Ramadi is a turning point, as we
are squeezing on the Euphrates River. The foreign fighters or
the insurgents are moving toward the center, to the Haditha
triangle, but as we left we had numbers joining from Haditha
and those areas, come to join the police forces.
The challenge in those areas was that MOI had established
limits on the number and the size of the police forces in that
area based on paid salaries and structure. And often now these
police forces wanted to exceed their authorized strengths, and
trying to explain to them you are only going to have a set
number of salaries to achieve those numbers; we have to get MOI
to fund a higher authorization.
Mr. Akin. How about Fallujah? Is that more under control
now or is that still dicey?
Colonel Coates. Sir, I think it has probably backslided a
bit. Initially we had a very strong chief of police in there,
as you know, in 2004. When we took Fallujah in November, the
Iraqi Government put police in there. We had a joined--we had a
very strong police chief in there with a deputy. The deputy was
killed. The chief of police was promoted, went to Baghdad, and
probably the personalities and strength of the leadership in
Fallujah probably let the police force itself backslide.
However, when I left, they got a very strong chief of
police back in there. But I think Fallujah, sir, is probably
backsliding in my opinion.
Mr. Akin. Would you like to add anything else, Lieutenant
Colonel?
Colonel McCarthy. Yes, sir. When I got to Habbaniya there
were 400 Iraqi Police and probably half of those were school-
trained. From November until January 1, we shipped 400 police
to the Jordanian Police Academy. And when I left in April,
there were 800 Iraqi Police on the rolls, all supported by the
Sheiks.
As I left, the day before I left, a couple of head Sheiks
from our western sector came in and said, Can you make more
police? Now, I had already been authorized to break our ceiling
twice, and I was told to cease and desist on the recruiting,
but with more successes I believe they can get more police in
that region.
Now, when I got there, no one would work with the police.
They had Army units and police units sitting next to each
other. The Sunni kids from the local neighborhood and the Shia
kids stationed there, they got along to get along but that is
about it.
After a few months of engaging the Army and the police at
the same time, having security and planning meetings, we
started off with the Army teaching that--you know, giving them
some marksmanship courses. Started going into civil military
engagements by, you know, running the medical engagements out
in town with police, you know, cordoned Army setting in. You
know, the Iraqi Army running the CMV with some Coalition
support but all with an Iraqi face.
Then we started to plan combined interagency traffic
control points, entry control points. They started to work that
way. Then they started to go out on joint combined patrols,
combined combat patrols to get security presence out in the bad
towns.
Now, one night this old guy went along and brought two
policemen. The Army planned the patrol and this is a bad
neighborhood. The two police sergeants I brought, they said
yeah, the places you want to go cordon off, and don't do that.
Let's go here, here, and here. There are bad guys here. And on
the course we chased a couple diggers down the road who were
trying to emplace an IED. The soldiers lined these people up
against the wall, and the police said you need to talk to him,
you need to talk to him, you need to talk to him.
After that, the other battalions, the Iraqi Bronze started
requesting police to come on patrols with them. We were pushing
patrols out with the Coalition Force and the Battalion Task
Force to the West. We were pushing out Iraqi patrols and Iraqi
Police patrols with the Army to our south. So by the time I had
left, we had the marines, the soldiers, the IPLOs, doing God's
work out there. The IPs had worked with three Iraqi battalions,
the Iraqi brigade, three rifle companies from the Marine Corps
and the Army National Guard battalion south of us. That is
partnership. That is cooperation, that is engagement.
And the Iraqi Army wants to work with the Iraqi Police big
time, because propping them up for success is their exit
strategy, too, so they can push out further to the border, to
the hinterlands, and the police can provide the security.
Now as come, you know, right around March, we under cover
of Camp Habbiniyah, and the, you know, the two camps around
Camp Habbiniyah with just police providing security, the Army
had been able to extend themselves throughout that district
with the police just providing security on the outer boundaries
of the camp which was a gigantic leap forward.
Mr. Akin. So I think what I am hearing you say, and I will
conclude with this, Mr. Chairman, I don't want to take too much
time, I think what I am hearing you say the approach you were
using in Al Anbar in terms of partnershipping with all of
your--putting all of your resources together in building a
sense of cooperation and teamwork, that sounds an awful lot
like what we are trying to do in Baghdad with the surge and
everything. It is the same basic kind of strategy of pulling
all of the resources together which then reduces the sectarian
kind of problems. It gets you the information that you need and
the training all across the board so that people can't--would
you say that is probably correct?
Colonel McCarthy. That is exactly correct, sir, and the
thing is it is working in my little slice of heaven, and the
Iraqi Security Forces are winning this fight. And with
patience, I mean, when I got there in September and if I had
told you all that stuff was going to happen, you would have
laughed me out of the room. I would have laughed myself out of
the room. But you have to be patient. It took 6 months for them
to arrest one insurgent. But then they were arresting 50 at a
time. So it works with patience.
Mr. Akin. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Meehan. Thank you.
Dr. Snyder.
Dr. Snyder. I ended up with several questions, and I will
try to ask my questions quickly, and if you all can err on the
side of brevity then we can get to Mr. Jones and Ms. Davis.
When the concept of the war in Iraq first came about, one
of the things that was said was that the Iraqi people were
reasonably well educated and had a sense of wanting to fully
participate in the modern world and they should do well. My
information received from one of my constituents who spent a
year in Iraq, he is a police chief in Arkansas, training
Iraqis, was there. He was really surprised with the low
literacy rate, the number of people that can't read or write in
Arabic, and that it was a real challenge.
Is that your experience?
Colonel Swengros. Yes, sir.
My experience and it still is now is they have heart. They
will go up there and they will do everything they can to defend
their country but--and the large part, especially as you start
talking about getting them from certain tribal areas and such
when you get outside of Baghdad.
Dr. Snyder. This was in the Basra area. But that it made it
very difficult when you start pulling out police manuals or
training manuals and it all had to be verbal. He said maybe
about a fourth grade education, which fourth grade reading
isn't bad, but is that your experience also, Colonel Coates?
Colonel Coates. In Al Anbar.
Once you get west of Fallujah, it is a very farm-based
community in which education competes with the requirement to
farm. So a lot of people wanted to join but didn't have the
reading and writing, and that was the same for the Army.
Dr. Snyder. So those folks would not make it.
Colonel Coates. And we tried to engage the government of
Iraq, and they were pretty hard over. They weren't going to
change those requirements. It hurt not only the police
recruiting but also the military recruitment. The easy part you
had to have 22 teeth. They could satisfy that. But the
reading--we opened a kind of a prep school for reading, and we
had kind of a pre-recruiting class, and we would teach them to
read capacity exam.
Dr. Snyder. Reading in Arabic.
Colonel Coates. Most of the test was in reading. They
didn't have to write. But in Al Anbar, as the region as a
whole, the education system really falls off as you get deeper
into the farmlands.
Dr. Snyder. One of the other concerns that my constituent
had was the frustration he experienced that every month he
thought it was about a 75- to 80-page report that he had to do,
and he thought if he could spend more time training and less
time filling out these pages every month, that the whole
country would have been better off, and he uses a specific
example. He had to do a monthly report on the inventory of the
furniture. Now the furniture was adequate. It wasn't fancy. But
it was adequate. But he said the furniture didn't change, and
yet every month he had to fill out this new form.
Is that, Lieutenant Bridges, or any of you, is that still
your experience?
Colonel McCarthy. The police station monthly report, it is
a big beast, sir, but it is a check in the box. But it also
helps focus your efforts on what you are going to work on that
month. If----
Dr. Snyder. One of your trainers said it did not help focus
efforts. It took time away and didn't find the benefit of it.
But a
75-, 80-page monthly report.
Colonel McCarthy. Assigning the responsibility to one
person, making them the action officer on that one, they
contract that, they can piece off the IPLOs, the, you know, our
U.S. police officers would take a section, the logistics guys
would take a section and you parcel it off along functional
lines. It takes, you know, an hour and a half to fill out and
you combine it all and you are done in three hours. It is not
too bad.
Dr. Snyder. So that is helpful information.
Colonel McCarthy. Yes, sir.
Dr. Snyder. Has the committee had that information made
available? I mean, if you all find it helpful, perhaps we would
find it helpful to get, you know, copies of one month of all of
the reports filled out and then the composite over the last
year of the following trends. Have we had that information
available? We have it. And do we have--the 75, 80 pages of
each?
Yes. Okay.
The issue, Colonel Coates, I wanted to ask you, as you have
made progress in Al Anbar in your recruiting and working with
the tribal leaders, what is the current status? I think you
touched on this either in your written statement or orally, but
what is the current status? Do you have concerns about--is the
policing to enforce the laws or is the policing to do the will
of the tribe?
Colonel Coates. Yes, sir. And that has always been our
concern. One thing we really insisted was a formal training of
a police officer. I understand that he is going to be a
representative of the government of Iraq and not a militia
member.
How they have done their tribal business in the past when
they recruited for the army in the Saddam stage or recruited
for the police, they went to the Sheikhs and the Sheikhs would
provide the recruits. And it is pretty hard to break them of
that way of doing business.
But you know, clearly, you know, professionalization of the
police forces or military forces is our number one goal, and we
insisted they are going to go to formal education and training
of a JIPTC or BTC, get back and then, you know, we try to
accommodate, you know, where they recruited from, you know,
placing them there in the town with the police. And so we paid
very close attention. Again, our PIT teams were the vehicles to
measure the metrics of what their police station was doing to--
and if the warning lights came on, you know, we would apply the
pressure and make sure that we could shape it to the direction
we wanted to, but militias was the last thing we wanted.
Dr. Snyder. Lieutenant Bridges, would you describe for me,
please, your experience as a woman MP both from the directions
you receive from your superiors in our military force and what
you were told to do or advised to do with regards to being a
woman in Iraqi culture and then how that worked out in practice
and what your thoughts are about that whole issue of being a
woman officer serving in the capacity you did.
Lieutenant Bridges. Yes, sir. I spoke on this a few days
ago, but as I received the training at Fort Dix at the
mobilization station, we were told that, in the classes, not to
be too friendly or even overtly seen because the men in the
country would not be receptive to us as women.
So my instruction or my battalion commander's instruction
was not really have me out there being forward but have me on
the team. But what we found, sir, is the exact opposite--and it
is really a means of trust or a matter of trust--was able to
gain the respect of the police chief general at the central
headquarters as well as the officers and NCOs that worked with
them and being a minority woman they really felt like we had a
lot in common. They knew a lot about our society so we just
talked about things on just a--just on a common level, sir.
Didn't have anything to do with the military. You know, asking
me about my family. And once they really realized I was really
a real person, someone just like them, it was easy to really
work with them.
So it was an easy choice, sir, and once we overcame--once I
overcame the barrier of being a woman, I found that it had
nothing to do with my gender but what I knew as a soldier and
their belief in me and my belief in them.
Dr. Snyder. Were the directions you received before going
into this capacity, is that something you had to kind of
ignore? I mean, should the directions you had been given been
changed for women who are coming through going in that capacity
tomorrow?
Lieutenant Bridges. Sir, you can see that even if it wasn't
spoken, you could see that the direction that the coalition
forces was going, it was changing greatly.
Dr. Snyder. Colonel Felling, you described yourself as an
aviator. Colonel Swengros, your bio, you seem to be an MP from
the get-go and have made that as a career. For people in the
military who are not MPs but who have been recruited in this
issue of being on police transition teams, is that a help,
hindrance, or neutral with regard to career advance?
Is there any grumbling about any of the folks who are
assigned to these teams, that it might hold them back?
Colonel McCarthy. It was an honor to serve with the
soldiers, sailors and Marines out there, sir. It was a unique
opportunity. That is all that matters.
Dr. Snyder. Nobody felt they were going to be held back.
And Colonel Swengros, you described that was the most
difficult thing you have ever been involved in. How much of the
difficulty was related to the language training of the American
troops, or--which is a frustration that we all have, whether it
is as physicians or business people, and we have had that for a
couple of hundred of years, but it has been brought home in the
last five years.
How much of that could have been overcome if we did a
better job of training our troops in foreign language skills?
Colonel Swengros. Sir, I am not sure how much better it
could be. I mean, you are talking dialects. And I think what we
are trying to concentrate on is the basic language piece, and
we are getting at that piece. But the other piece we are really
paying attention to is the cultural awareness, but it is more
than just an awareness, it is understanding body languages. And
there are actually some courses we have been working with FLETC
down in Georgia and then on our own trying to look at it.
There are ways that you can talk to people, look at people
and get an idea of just how truthful they are, how truthful
they are not being.
And so we are actually trying to work a little bit more
than--along those lines understanding the dynamics of body
language and expressions and how their expressions are
different than ours.
What we used was our interpreters, and as you get very
close, especially my level, because I had interpreters who were
American citizens, and I had one that had grown up in Baghdad
and left after the 1991 Gulf War and came to the United States
and he was coming back to serve. But he would point out to me,
because I could understand, after a few months, I could
understand the basic language. I knew kind of what the police
chief was saying. But he would tell me, pull me aside
afterwards and say well, he was really saying it in this manner
or saying it in that manner.
So that is a dynamic I am not sure we can get at throughout
training.
Dr. Snyder. I am not sure we tried very hard, though.
I mean, we had a Cinco de Mayo festival a few weeks ago in
Arkansas, and I think the speakers that spoke in Spanish were
better received than the ones who spoke in English and had a
Spanish translator. I think that is true, and I don't think we
put enough investment in the military in all kinds of
languages.
Colonel Coates, you mentioned you could give us anecdotal
stories of the bravery in Iraq.
Colonel Coates. Certainly, sir.
I can tell you on a daily basis I was in Ramadi where a
police station was hit, and now that--the vehicle bombs are
dump truck size. Basically loading a dump truck up with a ton
or two of explosives and ramming it. It doesn't even have to
get in within the perimeter. Just even if it goes outside the
wall, the size and the magnitude of the explosion encompasses
the whole complex.
But I have seen a couple of those firsthand, and you saw
the police stand their ground, did not run, did not break. They
stood there. The chief of police was in Ramadi, a lieutenant
colonel or colonel. He personally--he had about a 40-man
assault with no U.S. Coalition-Iraqi Army thing on an apartment
complex where the insurgents were holding people in there
basically as hostages.
We had Lieutenant Colonel Reed, who is chief of police of
the highway patrol in Al Anbar Province. He personally was out
there every day. We got him his vehicles and his fuels, and
without any urging, he established patrols and routes between
Ramadi and Rutbah and brought back tons of munitions with the
people who were transporting it. There is a place called
Humid's Garage, it is just on the outskirts of Fallujah. It is
a gathering place of military age people at the truck, kind of
pull-over place. One day on his own initiative he decided well,
let us go raid it after the U.S. forces had done it twice and
came up empty handed. He arrested something like 36 foreign
fighters and probably on the order of a hundred insurgents that
were mixed in with a group of a thousand there.
So I can tell you that they have all of the abilities. A
lot of what it came down to is what Lieutenant McCarthy said
was leadership. They had somebody that led by example, that was
strong. They were absolutely stone cold brave in the battle.
But, you know, their success is based on getting the right
leadership at the right place at the right time.
Dr. Snyder. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Meehan. Thank you.
Mr. Jones.
Mr. Jones. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much. And I wanted
to say to you gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, you are great. I
sit here in bewilderment to think about how difficult your job
is. And yet, as you have acknowledged, it has been slow, but
there has been some progress. But I sit here thinking where
this country is today. I wasn't going to do this, Mr. Chairman,
but I want to read part of a quote because I think that the
American people want this Congress to listen to you and make
our decisions as to where are we going.
General Matthew Ridgeway wrote a book called Soldier: The
Memoirs of Matthew B. Ridgeway, 1956.
I am only going to read part of a paragraph.
To me, nothing could more tragically demonstrate our
complete and utter moral bankruptcy than for us to deliberately
initiate a prevented war. Once we take that absolutely fatal
step, our civilization will be doomed.
The reason I bring that up is because I think the American
people have great love and affection and appreciation for those
of you in uniform. I don't think there is any question about
that. But when I listen here, you are talking about different
cultures. You are talking about Shiites, you are talking about
Sunnis, you are talking about Kurds, you are talking about what
many of us think is a civil war. Some say sectarian, we think
it is a civil war. Right or wrong, that is what we think.
And then to listen to what you have accomplished and you
have accomplished, there is no question about it, because you
have taken an impossible, an impossible situation and you are
giving the light a possibility. And it is a light at this
point.
Each one of you have spoken extremely well and
knowledgeable on your job and what you do.
What would you say to the American people as to how much
time do we need to give to this effort to stand up a police
force?
Colonel Swengros. That is a very fair question, sir. I
personally--you know, we go through these same questions. And I
will personally say I appreciate folks asking the tough
questions because at the end of the day, if I am going to be
told to go out and do something, I at least want that decision
to be an informed decision.
Right, wrong or indifferent, as history might look at it
10, 15 years from now, for me, going out there and doing what I
did every day for a year, 7 days a week with a squad right in
the middle of Baghdad or other places, and I guess I would tell
folks just because it is hard doesn't mean it is impossible.
Just because it is a long process doesn't mean it is a wrong
process. I think the question we have all asked is what do we
want at the end, what are the ramifications of not doing
something?
I talked to our soldiers about this. You know, what can
they really effect and how do they go about doing it, and every
one of them, you know, as they go through, especially having
lived it, they really do see the progress. They see the lights
in the eyes of the children. They see the faces of the female
population who, for the most part, didn't really have a life as
we know it.
You see the direction they are trying to head in with all
of the difficulties out there, and it kind of makes you stop
and think from a ``doer'' level. I really believe we are on the
right track, and we will continue down that track. We will
continue to improve.
We are fighting an enemy. That enemy is out there, and it
is real. You can call it terrorists. You can call it
insurgents. There are different pieces of it. And every one of
them are vying for population control or control of that area.
And those are dynamics that are causing us to adjust and to
relook different--and go back to different ways of doing things
before. And that is the complexity that I have talked about as
well as the complexity of building a police force from nothing.
So we do search for those answers, and we do try to find
ways to effect change quickly. And I think most of the soldiers
really do, when they get out of there, believe that they
contributed to something, which, you know, from our standpoint
is a good thing. We do see the progress.
Mr. Jones. Let me just real quickly, I won't take too much
of your time.
Everything you said, I mean, again, I would agree with you.
You are the professional. But when I came to Congress, this
country was $4 trillion in debt. We are close to now over 10
trillion. According to David Walker, the true debt of this
Nation, if you take in all of the obligations and liabilities
and brought them in this year to pay the bill this year would
be $50 trillion. We are spending roughly $9.2 billion a month
in Iraq. The American taxpayers are going to have to pay the
bill.
There is much frustration in this country because we felt,
many of us, that the real war on terrorism was in Afghanistan.
Bin Laden was our enemy. And we, in Iraq, said okay, we won't
go into that.
But the point is I know you can't say well, five years from
now I expect this to happen. But if you could, and each one of
you, and I am taking too much time and I will be through in
just a second, would you just say, you know, Congressmen, we
are going to be there ten years before we see a police force in
the communities, the provinces or the country that can pretty
much stand on its own. And I realize this is not really fair to
ask you. But I am telling you that the American people, I feel
their frustration. The American people have got to know that
there is a fourth quarter to this game. Because if we stay in
the second quarter, using a football analogy, and a third
quarter and never see the fourth quarter, I don't know if this
country can afford the blood and the money as it relates to
Iraq.
If you could just tell me, and your best guess, that you
know what you are dealing with, you all articulated that. But
tell me when in the world do you say to the American people I
think we are getting a fairly decent, a fairly decent, not the
best, but a decent police force? Some of the provinces or
across the nation? I mean, the American people have a right.
They are paying the price. The families are giving their sons
and daughters. They have a right to know that there is a
definition of success. That is the only--if you can answer
that, fine. If you can't, I understand.
Colonel Swengros. Yes, sir. I really cannot answer that in
terms of time. I mean, I just--there is no crystal ball out
there.
I will tell you that having watched this very closely over
four years from our business and then listening to the Al
Anbar, because that was not a priority for us back then, if we
are making progress then I see a brighter light at the end of
the tunnel, and I see a bright light at the end of the tunnel.
How much effort we are willing to continue to impart in that
area will determine how long we are going to be there.
We started, again, we are only talking 2 years from a
concept of 70 teams, so now 230 to 300 teams, whatever that
number is right now, and we are seeing that significant
progress.
The insurgents and the terrorists and the organized crimes
all operate off of a similar aspect, and they go for the seams.
They go where they are not going to be harassed by police,
where they are not going to be harassed by an army. They will
operate in areas that are not patroled just like your criminals
here in the United States, and I think we are getting after
that right now with these surges and these increases.
We are getting after it. We are putting pressure in areas,
and you can tell by the way the enemy is responding that we are
having an effect. We, not only just the coalition forces, but
the Iraqi police and the Iraqi army. They are the ones really
being targeted right now. As the difference, if you remember in
2004, 2005, a lot of attacks, a lot of major attacks on the
civilian populace. Right now taking the brunt of it is the
Iraqi army and the Iraqi Security Police.
I cannot put a time on it. I apologize. I just can't.
Mr. Jones. Thank you.
I have taken too much time, but thank you, Mr. Chairman,
and thank you, Colonel.
Mr. Meehan. Mrs. Davis.
Ms. Davis of California. Thank you, and I want to echo my
colleagues' comments. The military has just performed
extraordinarily. I think the concern that we all have, and I
have expressed this before, is that we are a military at war
and not a nation at war.
So all of the burden has really fallen on you and on the
families of our military.
Could you talk a little bit about what we have done to try
and track and identify the people who are serving as the
police?
You mentioned obviously pay and how you can track that. But
I am concerned about the folks who don't show up. Do we know
who they are? Do we know what they are doing? Are they, as far
as you know, engaged in militias, and do we even have officers
or individuals in the Iraqi police force who are engaging in
other activities when they are not on the beat? What do we know
about that? What kinds of efforts are being made to track that?
Do you think it is important? Should we know?
Colonel Coates. Absolutely, ma'am.
First and foremost, what we are about is accountability.
And, you know, our PTT teams down there, they have
accountability, holding the Iraqi's completely responsible for
what their responsibilities are to their society, their
integrity and so on and so forth. We have had bad cops, we have
had bad chiefs of police. When we find out, we instantly move
to have them removed or in case of--for example, the chief of
police of Sha'aban, who was the provincial chief of police, he
stole the payroll one day, and he was thrown in jail,
mysteriously released from jail and murdered two days later.
Never recovered the money but the accountability is what we are
about.
There is no question there are police that have been behind
probably insurgent activities and so forth. We, you know----
Ms. Davis of California. How are we doing the tracking?
Colonel Coates. First of all, we do biometrics. Every
police officer in Al Anbar is biometrically recorded and put in
a database. And we hold the key to that database.
Ms. Davis of California. So if you mentioned that initially
the Iraqi police arrested one insurgent and now it is more like
50 or in a short period of time, of the insurgents that they
are arresting, how many of them were identified biometrically
to have been part of the police corps or in the military.
Colonel Coates. I can give you one specific example. Our
highway patrol went and arrested people on a highway that were
basically robbing cars going back and forth. They had no police
officers in Ramadi. They got their identification, the badges,
and they also were identified in the Biometrics Automated
Toolset (BAT) system. They were arrested by the highway police
which, you know, obviously got our attention, and we tried to
address that very quickly.
I will tell you that is out there on a daily basis, and we
are doing our best again to hold their system and them
individually accountable to what they should be doing.
Ms. Davis of California. Lieutenant Bridges, in your
experience, what do you think people were doing when they
weren't on the jobs.
Lieutenant Bridges. To speak specifically, Mrs. Davis, I
can't say exactly what they were doing, but I know they weren't
at work. I can say that we did have suspicions, but no evidence
of some of the IPs being involved in militias. We would go to
different IP stations or we would even communicate within the
coalition forces chain to ensure did you know this person, do
you think he was involved, have you heard, maybe I would speak
to one of the MIT or PIT team members, give a name to them to
see what they have heard.
So we were actively engaged in trying to identify some of
our persons with whom we suspected.
But once again, ma'am, we never really, you know, got any
hard evidence, and, of course, they are not going to say we are
a part of it. But my police chief had given us a list of names
that he felt like was a part of the Mahdi militia and we were
able to get those policemen not fired but transferred. Because
everyone knows in Iraq when you do something wrong, you don't
just necessarily get fired.
Ms. Davis of California. If they don't get fired, where do
they go? Do they join the militia?
Lieutenant Bridges. It has been my experience--I have never
seen one of the IPs fired. I have always seen them transferred
to other stations, stations that may not be in their home area.
But I have never experienced where an IP has been actually
fired.
Ms. Davis of California. I think what you are saying then
is they are still in the system essentially. They may be a part
of a militia, but they are transferred to another post.
Lieutenant Bridges. Yes, ma'am. And that was one of our on-
ground frustrations as platoon leaders and commander. You are
trying to get this guy moved because you really have strong
suspicions, no evidence, that he may be a part of the militia
or even part of the insurgency. You can't prove it. So you
bring it to the general. He brings--feels the same way. Brings
it to the Baghdad police. They transfer it. He may be a cousin
to the police chief of the Baghdad headquarters. So the problem
still exists, ma'am, but it just got transferred to somewhere
else maybe further out so that that police chief no longer had
to deal with it, and that was a big frustration.
Ms. Davis of California. Do you have a window on what is
happening once the insurgents are captured, what is going on
there, where are they? Are they in jail? Do we have a role to
play in that?
Colonel Swengros. Ma'am, are you talking about the Iraqi--
from the Iraqi system when they are captured by the Iraqis?
Ms. Davis of California. Yes.
Colonel Swengros. I don't think there is any specific
system out there. I mean, that is one of the dynamics of
turning things over to the host nation for the Iraqis. You lose
some of that visibility but as was talked--there is an
increasing work on the judicial system, it is a triad out
there. The law enforcement, the penal system, and there is an
Military Membership Status Identifier (MMSI) focus right now,
is those three arms and making sure that those cross-talk
between to know what is going on.
We implemented some policies where the four folks who are
released, we sent the information to the Minister of Interior
into the deputy minister of police affairs to do the cross-list
check, and if they could spot a name of somebody that we were
about to release because we didn't have anything more on them
or whatever the situation was, then we did that prisoner
transfer stuff. So there is some of that that is going on out
there.
But I don't know of any tracking mechanism.
Ms. Davis of California. Did you want to say something,
Colonel McCarthy?
Colonel McCarthy. Yes, ma'am.
When our police would arrest somebody, our advisors,
soldiers, sailors, Marines, would go down there and do the
biometric picture on them. We would also take a picture on them
and put their name on the picture and put it through our
channels.
Now the investigative process, you know, due process for
Iraqis is in 24 hours, they have to have a package against the
suspect ready to go before an investigative person. Our
equivalent of a District Attorney (DA). Then--there are no
judges. They are hiding underground. They can't be found. So
the mayor or the police chief can sign off to allow them to
continue the investigation for another week.
Now, if they have enough information there, a package to
put before a magistrate, they can hold that guy until a
magistrate appears.
The burden is, you know, in the Muslim culture. They have
to treat the prisoners, you know, like family. So it is a
burden on their system, and they want to release them, but they
can't exercise rule of law when they are continuing to----
Ms. Davis of California. I guess the question is how does
all of that, which is complicated and embedded cultural issues,
how does that impact the work that you do and how--is there
anything in the training that would be helpful to all of you to
have been able to deal with that?
Colonel McCarthy. Actually, with our U.S. police officers
over there, the IPLOs. They actually work with the
investigators to help them run the investigation properly. They
ask these questions, let us put this evidence together. Have
you logged it in? How are we tracking this so you can put
together a, you know, a solid package before a judge? We use it
as a training opportunity. We use it to, you know, ensure that
they are practicing appropriate human rights behavior in the
holding facilities and it keeps bad guys off the streets.
Ms. Davis of California. One other question, and I am--I
know that I certainly could go on. I think this has been very
interesting.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
On the issue of translators. It is my understanding that
Marines are training with translators even before they are
going versus the Army, which is expected to find their
translators in field. Is that true? Is that a problem? And do
you usually have enough translators?
And Lieutenant Bridges as well, how did you feel about
translators and whether you had the support that you needed?
Colonel Coates. If I may, as the committee noted, probably
the biggest disadvantage that a transition team has, whether it
is a military police or border, is the language. No question
you are at a disadvantage and you are kind of doing things
through a third person. All of the translators are, for the
most part, contractors in Al Anbar, which is a Sunni province,
all of the translators are Shia. And of course very quickly you
have an Iranian working for you, you know, just describe some
of the atmosphere when you are dealing with the locals when
they see that.
What we have done here real recently and one we are about
to start, we are bringing our translators that are going to be
paired up with their teams. They are coming to California, they
go through the six-week course with their transition team and
then they will go forward with their teams. So they have a pre-
employment training package.
In addition to that, we are about to establish a language
lab in our transition. We have our own building that will be in
there so that there will be a language threshold mark every day
through the six weeks that all members are going to have to
hit. We are not going to make them native speakers. We are not
going to make them conversational in anything. But they will be
evaluated to task and to standard, and to graduate the course
they are going to have to hit a certain level of Arabic. And
with the translator there and the language lab, we hope to use
the vehicle of absorbing some of those cultural differences
that have been described.
In Al Anbar, the dialect is different from town to village.
You know where somebody comes from just by his accent or the
words he uses. You know, you can tell the difference between
somebody from Ramadi, Fallujah, or Al Qa'im. We used to have it
years ago in certain parts of our cities and the States.
Colonel Swengros. Ma'am, our training is somewhat along the
same line. And I know we went over there and in preparing to go
over there in 2004, our soldiers got 40 hours of Arabic
training. We brought over linguists that work to help us
through the translator piece together--I know each iteration--I
was at Fort Lewis when we were doing this--we tapped into that
capability. So and I know it occurred to me to meet the
divisions and what have you.
So it is more localized. We try to expose our folks to that
dynamic of working with translators and what have you.
We do meet up with a majority of our translators in theater
because they are Iraqis. Those that are part of the military
that come over with the translators, they are linked up with
the unit as well. That was early on, but I couldn't give you an
exact time.
Lieutenant Bridges. Mrs. Davis, we have four linguists that
we worked with and we did fall in on them and we found out a
lot of information about what they knew based on our
relationship with the outgoing unit. I can tell you that we had
a great relationship with the interpreters. We had no issues of
corruptness or them sharing different information with the
Iraqi police. We never felt like we were set up because they
went out with us daily.
We came in trying to let them know that we appreciate what
they do. We appreciate all of the information that they give
us.
So from our outgoing unit, it is imperative of us to listen
to what they had to say about the existing linguists and once
you show respect, once you show that you kind of trust them,
maybe you don't totally trust them all the way, but you are
trying to show them the semblance of trust so you can get
whatever necessary information that you can to support the IP's
movement. So we had a good experience with our linguists. We
had no issue with them. No cause to believe that they were not
on our team.
Ms. Davis of California. Thank you very much.
Colonel Felling. I am a reservist so I went over with my
eyes wide open. I am a full-time law enforcement officer. When
I went over, I had no idea that I was going to be working with
Iraqis and Poles and Romanians, and you are asking specifically
about translation. I would have never thought that it would
work. Because you have Iraqis who also speak those languages.
And trying to get things done in that environment is very, very
difficult. But something that I thought would not work, it
worked. It worked, difficult at times but it worked and it
was--the translators and the interpreters who are really
sacrificing themselves physically and taking themselves out of
the environment that they are used to without the interpreters.
It would be an impossible task.
Ms. Davis of California. Thank you all very much.
Mr. Meehan. Ms. Sanchez.
Ms. Sanchez. Thank you for coming before us today.
I am sorry. They closed down the Capitol compound for
something going on in Cannon and didn't let me through. So I
didn't get to hear your opening statements. I know some made
some and some didn't.
I want to associate myself with the initial comments of Ms.
Davis, in particular the ones that talked about what a great
job our military is doing. Because we, I think, to a large
extent, almost everybody believes that that is the case. But,
you know, we have argued that this is not about the military
any longer, that it is about political and institutional
capability by the Iraqi government and its people and the
economic situation that exists in Iraq. And I just would like
to put some comments, Mr. Chairman, into the record.
With all due respect, Colonel Swengros, you spoke about our
troops being over there and, you know, learning that, you know,
women somehow have more rights now and the new system that the
Iraq people are under. The reality is that just in March I was
back in Iraq talking to women's rights groups there, and the
fact of the matter is women had more rights in Iraq under
Saddam than they have under the current constitution.
In fact, one of the women, very well known lawyer, woman
lawyer in Baghdad, said to me, my current rights under the
constitution that you all have given us now is that I have the
same rights as somebody who is mentally disabled or a child.
So I want to put that on the record because it speaks to
this whole issue of amending the constitution which the
Democrats have pushed for as one of the products, one of the
timetables, one of the milestones that we need to see in place
in order to continue moving forward and putting our resources
in and your lives on the line to get things done in Iraq.
So the amendment of the Constitution is incredibly
important. One, of course, the women know they are not going to
get it through because they don't have enough representation
there and issues go on, but they have less rights under the
current constitution of Iraq than they did under Saddam
because, remember, Saddam was secular. He did not put an
Islamic overview on the constitution that he had at the time.
This speaks to a lot of these issues of again going back to
the political and the institutional and the economic.
We keep reading in the newspaper and this is the case that
there is really not a banking system in Iraq. So the police
officers do the work, they get paid, now they got to go home
wherever it is. They go home and some of them don't return and
some of them are gone for a long time and some, many, many of
them I would suggest this is where they are.
So again, it is an institution problem that we have. We
have got to get a banking system going in Iraq in order for us
to be able to augment the great work that you are doing, and
that the rest of our troops have put their lives on the line
every day.
This whole issue of the rule of law that the Lieutenant
Colonel spoke to, which is again, so important. I mean, you can
apprehend as many people as you can but if you don't have
judges, you don't have magistrates, you don't have an ability
to bring them forward, again, it is an institution problem and,
you know, it is a big problem for us.
We have got to get the local government and the provincial
government on the line hitting milestones to put those
institutions in place. It is a very difficult to do. It is not
an easy thing. We look at Kosovo, and we are still nation
building. I am not saying it is easy but we are seeing no
improvement in the situation.
So you can be doing a great job or the Iraqi policemen that
you are training can be doing a great job, but it can be going
nowhere. It can be a revolving door the next day out on the
street against you.
This issue of the Arabic language and probably the only--
anybody who has lived for a long time in a Muslim country is
probably one of the few who has training in Arabic, and I would
just say that is an incredible need for our military, and I
think it would just improve our chances of being able to
operate in these Muslim/Arabic speaking areas.
And last, I would like to put on the record, Mr. Chairman,
that this whole issue of accountability, and this also goes to
our military, how do you account, where are these people, who
have we trained? Where have they gone? Where are they? That is
an incredibly important issue, and I would say we are doing a
terrible job at it.
I just mention again back to the recent trip that I took in
March where I went and was talking to General Fell, who is of
course the operating general under Petraeus for the four
provinces, including Baghdad, and I asked him how many security
and police from the Iraqi side do you have in those four
provinces? And he said to me, said to me 37,568 to the number.
I told him that just wasn't possible. There had to be a lot
more. Why? Because if you look at the numbers we have trained,
either everybody has gone home or the fact is that they are not
working.
And in talking to Petraeus less than an hour later, of
course Petraeus said he was wrong. You know, maybe he didn't
understand the question. Oh, no. We went completely through it.
This whole issue of who we have trained, if they are on board,
if they are helping, if they are working. If they are working
against us, where are they, is an incredibly important one. And
it is one that we have been asking about now for the last four
years since this whole thing began.
So if there is anything that I could ask the military to do
is to figure out how do we account for these people we are
training.
And that is it. I really have no questions of the panel
today.
Thank you.
Mr. Meehan. Thank you.
Any of the panelists want to comment?
Colonel Coates. In Al Anbar, there has been a large number
of them killed as well. So there you talk about--the
accountability is everything but to include in those numbers
are the numbers that have been killed in the line of duty as
well.
Ms. Sanchez. I don't have a problem. It is just that the
military can't give me those numbers. You can't give me an
accountability. I know because I keep asking. How many police
have we trained? Where have they come from? Who are they? What
groups do they belong to? Where do you have them stationed? Why
did they run away? Did you take your weapons with you?
You really don't have an accountability system and I think
this is something that is going to come back to bite us. We can
do a great job, but you could be training the enemy in the long
run.
Mr. Meehan. Thank you.
It is tradition in this subcommittee to have the staff
counsel have an opportunity to ask some questions. So I would
like to ask Susan McKenna, staff counsel, if she has some
questions.
Ms. McKenna. As you all know, last year, 2006, was the year
of the police and the emphasis was on the generation of the IPS
force. 2007 was the year of leadership and logistics, and I was
wondering if you could comment on what that means on the street
for the IPS.
Colonel Swengros. I can tell you what I think it means in
terms of how we operate. There are--getting at some of the
institutions out there, there is a tremendous amount of
accountability in terms of logistics. And part of that PMSR we
talked about earlier where 68 pages, it started out at 200
pages. It has to get at the questions that leadership is
asking. How many of this is issued? Where is it? How were these
people acting? What is your assessment of the leadership
capabilities?
So all of this, that is part of the assessments and the
decisions to move to really put some emphasis, not that we are
not going to take care of the police in 2007, but we are trying
to get at the evolving issues. As you get a better police, you
need better logistic systems in place. You get the police
training in there. We are looking at now the second piece of
that, and that is what we would consider as field training.
Once you get out of the academy, you have certain training that
you go through.
Ms. McKenna. Are you seeing specific initiatives at the
station, district and provincial level, that represent the
execution of the year of leadership and logistics for the IPS?
Colonel Swengros. I can tell you what Colonel Mike Lucius,
who is the MP brigade commander who is operating in Baghdad.
The answer is yes. And we started a little bit of this in 2005,
leadership training, where we actually brought in the various
leaders and he is doing that now, and we put them through some
leadership training like leadership training seminars that we
would do here in our own military. And that is seeing some
pretty positive results.
The logistics is something we continue to work on, and I
know he is working hard with the Iraqis and in addressing some
of the fuel problems and what have you that Lieutenant Bridges
talked about. But I don't have the specifics on that.
Colonel Coates. Yes. Part of what you brought up earlier
was the settings and the conditions. You have to have a process
in which the training and education system produces the police
officer who can report and then has the proper equipment in
place with a facility that supports his mission. And in Al
Anbar, we have only been able to achieve that probably in the
last six or seven months. That has been very challenging out
there to where you can send people to the police academies.
They come back. They have very limited equipment or they don't
have any vehicles or they didn't have the communications
infrastructure to do what they were required to do.
And we are achieving that synchronization. The logistics
portion of it is big. I think you know also lending to that
accountability, to all of that that has been invested in this
program.
So but the leadership is absolutely huge. Our best
districts have the strongest leaders. We have some of them
coming back to the United States to attend the FBI Academy and
to enhance their professionalism, and that will be the solution
to the long term.
Ms. McKenna. So is there a formal plan in place to develop
that leadership for the IPS, and if so, who is responsible for
it and where could we find it?
Mr. Dominguez. I don't know the answer to that right now,
ma'am. I know of no plan.
Colonel Swengros. I do know that part of the police plan,
the Iraqi police plan, is to really get that Baghdad police
college. It used to be a three-year college and they want that
thing--in fact, I think they have pretty much built it up. I am
not sure of the status, but from their standpoint, they
recognize the leadership and the technical development of their
police. They are planning to go to a three-year police academy
if they are not there yet.
Ms. McKenna. Do the police transition teams have any input
into who is selected to be a part of the--to be trained for the
leadership? I mean, I know a lot of this has shifted over to
the Iraqis so I am just interested to hear what your impact is
on that selection.
Colonel Coates. We had, ma'am, there is a nomination
process through the governor through the provincial chief of
police. He will submit that nomination to the MOI and the MOI
will give its final blessing to it. But essentially, it lies
within the purview of the governor to do that.
Now again, there is a lot of negotiation, tribal influences
and the sheikhs, and so on and so forth, to get to that
consensus. Al Anbar had a very hard time getting a consensus
between a governor and many of the chiefs of police that he
nominated. They wanted somebody else, and that was always a
daily battle on that.
Colonel Felling. I think these gentlemen are being humble.
I will speak on their behalf of being an outsider looking in.
It takes--you asked about leadership, physical and moral
courage. And these gentlemen and this young lady, they have got
it and that is what it takes. To be a MIT and PIT team leader,
to put your life in somebody's hands, being a law enforcement
officer, I know there is a culture and these individuals put
their lives in another culture's hands to train and to lead,
and these individuals are the embodiment of leadership.
Ms. McKenna. I am sorry if I was confusing, and I didn't
mean our service members. I meant how are we developing the
leadership of the IPS, and I imagine that they, many of them,
are very courageous as well given the attrition that they
suffer.
Lieutenant Bridges. I would like to speak to that as well.
When you talk about the year of the police, you envision
closing the P3 book, if you will, and you are opening up the
PTT book because the police partnership program went out when
we were coming in and was phasing out. And when you talk about
the year of the police, we envisioned trying at first to get an
infrastructure of which we can be safe once we are there
because we can't train them if our soldiers don't feel safe. So
once we got the infrastructure to somewhat bearable to even
train, we started to focus on, like I said in the beginning,
just the basics of discipline, do they have on a uniform like
Colonel McCarthy mentioned. Just those basic things.
But once we got inside, Ms. McKenna, we really found out
that there was some huge disparities between officers and NCOs.
I mean, officers had uniforms whereas they did not feel that
their peers or subordinates, there was a great need for them to
have that. So we had to fix those issues. And just getting
different areas set up was the most difficult in terms of
personnel. Those pay problems.
I, literally, my convoy literally went to the banks, we
picked the money up from the bank, brought the money back to
the IP station. Once we got the accounting officer set up, we
had all of the IPs and a long line around the building. Okay.
How many days were you at work. We had the legal officers there
to tell us oh, no, they weren't there. So let us dock this pay.
We are literally detracting money from his salary.
So it was very difficult to try to implement policing into
the year of the police before even working on the basics.
Ms. Davis of California. If I could follow up for a second.
I can't imagine--I mean, what you started with and where you
are now. So I applaud that.
But I just wanted to share because this is what is out in
the kind of public consumption, and I am wondering about the
reality on the ground for your Iraqis as well.
There was a story this morning on NPR about the traffic cop
basically and the job that they have to do, no lights are
working, and I still am wondering why don't they have any
traffic lights working in some areas in some bad intersections,
but that basically, you know, they can't stop Americans. Every
one is plowing through the intersections because they have to
move very quickly, and we are aware of why.
So how do you train someone to be a traffic cop in the
middle of what sounds like tremendous chaos? And again, this is
the story on NPR today. They have had some good reporters who
have been pretty realistic. How do you deal with that, and
again, what can we take away from that and what we are trying
to do here? Any comments?
Colonel Swengros. I would say--I worked with the traffic
police. It is the national traffic police headquarters, it is
in Baghdad. They operate both Baghdad and the other traffic
police in each of the various provinces.
And in terms of professionalism and technological awareness
and development, they were--don't take this too literally--the
model for what we were trying to do get the Iraqi police to.
They actually had computer systems that somebody saved before
all of the records were destroyed, and they were going through
there and trying to--in the year of time we worked on it, we
finally got where a traffic policeman could call at an
intersection and say I have got this vehicle or this person,
can you do a background check. Something like our National
Crime Information Center (NCIC) check, and they would have to
go to a separate computer and try to bring up those records,
but that is the way they were working. They actually had it.
The traffic police were probably one of the most effective
police because nobody would mess with them because they kept
the traffic flowing. And the nuances of military convoys
rushing through convoys, they understood that and we never--and
I worked in Baghdad all the time, they saw a convoy come, they
actually kept traffic cleared so we could move through.
Ms. Davis of California. So you think the reality on the
ground for Iraqis is one of confidence and at least----
Colonel Swengros. I think irrespective of traffic police,
again, because it allows people to move about. So I think
traffic police in my dealing with them for a year, I think in
the entire year they had one policeman killed. One traffic
policeman killed. And I was having about 120, 160 every 2 weeks
of the regular police killed. And they were out there. They
were out there in numbers.
So I think maybe from an Iraqi person standpoint they say
oh, the traffic is not good. It is not tied up but, you know,
in the priority of things I am not sure how much of that really
was a burden versus an inconvenience. But that is my
perspective.
Ms. Davis of California. Okay, thank you. I was just
curious because that is what is out in the public, and it is
helpful to have. If you have a different point of view that is
right on, I would like to--I was appreciative of that.
Thank you.
Mr. Meehan. Mr. Spratt.
Mr. Spratt. Thank you for your testimony, and I am sorry I
was late arriving.
So the questions I may ask could be redundant, but most of
these cases are probably better repeating some of this.
I was over in Iraq during the year of the police, 2006, and
we had as a special focal point of our trip over there to
inquire into what was happening, what plans were being laid. It
seems to me if you had some basic goals, such as the number of
who will process through police training, you attain those
goals; is that correct? I mean, the object was to train
200,000, the coalition was to train the lion's share of those
and the Iraqis themselves were training some.
But as I understand what you are reporting is that the
numbers were attained. A couple hundred thousand troops, police
were actually trained for that responsibility.
Is that right or is that wrong?
Colonel Coates. In 2006, sir, for Al Anbar Province we
pretty much came within about a thousand of the set goal of
11,330. So we had the training pipeline and stuff. We were
getting very close to meeting that goal for that year.
Mr. Spratt. Is that generally true for every year? The
200,000 man goal was sufficiently attained?
Colonel Swengros. I don't specifically have that--I would
kind of agree with Colonel Coates. I think the numbers were
fairly close. The dynamic that is out there is a number of
killed and wounded in action that have to be replaced. I think
you will see some figures where we were not able to reach the
numbers because the numbers are changing. So I kind of agree
with Colonel Coates. I think so, say yeah, they actually met
every goal.
Mr. Spratt. I am just saying your miracle goals. You are
still short police in most places in Al Anbar. But in other
places as well?
Colonel Swengros. I think the question for sure is were you
short trained police, and I think the answer is yes. It is
always that opportunity over need and that continues. I think
the number when we were there we were 74,000 or something. I
wish we had put through more trained. That is why building the
additional police academies----
Mr. Spratt. What are the most notable deficiencies in the
forces that are actually there dressed down, reporting for
duty, but nevertheless not adequate for the job? What are the
most glaring deficiencies?
Colonel Coates. I think in the IPS service, the ministerial
level to execute security force policy through the police, we
have got a pretty good foundation going in Al Anbar at the
police station and the district level. The provincial thing we
are making progress. It is not where it should be yet. But the
engagement with the ministerial level in Baghdad and all of the
support and everything you need to administer a police
department nationally, I think right now is probably the
biggest lacking or the biggest challenge right out there now.
Mr. Spratt. One of the apprehensions then, I guess in 2006,
I guess it was, was they were concerned about the performance
of the MOI, Minister of Interior, and corruption at the highest
level, and they were determined about militia infiltration. At
the lowest levels they were concerned about militia
infiltration. Is that still a major concern, corruption in the
MOI and militia infiltration in the likes of local police
departments?
Colonel Swengros. I don't have any direct information on
that. I have talked to brigade commanders out there and he did
not address that as a major concern that he is working on. But
I don't have any information, sir.
Mr. Spratt. Is there a basic division of labor amongst the
security forces so that the border patrol will patrol the
border and the armed forces actually engage in
counterinsurgency or anti-insurgency and the police deal with
crime, murder, assault an battery, rape, fraud, things of that
nature?
Colonel Coates. All of them contribute to overall security
and the challenge has been to bring them all together. So there
is a synchronization of capabilities that allow them to
contribute to the overall security. There is a separate border,
protective service, that clearly is defined. The IPS is clearly
defined and the Iraqi Army is clearly defined.
Our real challenge out there is in bringing them together
and the sharing of information between the two of them.
Ideally, in the city in--except in Ramadi, if the police were
responsible for the internal security on a day-to-day street
security, the Army would position itself on the outside.
To reinforce or support or to make sure that the conditions
remained to----
Mr. Spratt. Are they, being the local police, oftentimes
being pre-empted and pressed into service or with the Iraqi
armed forces. For example, if there is a firefight or something
of that nature, are they being diverted from their basic
mission, which is to enforce civil laws and criminal laws?
Colonel Coates. I think what they are mainly enforcing,
sir, is that of the establishment of security. Bob, you can
comment on the criminal activity.
Mr. McCarthy. Sir, right now the criminal activity is
insurgency. That is the danger on the street. And if you are
worried about getting blown up at mosque, you are not worried
about the pickpocket in the crowd.
And we lost a station. We lost eight policemen. We lost 60
citizens now, right after mosque on a Saturday. The police
responded well.
Mr. Spratt. Is there a distinction made between kidnapping,
let's say, or a major theft or breaking and entering and
fighting the insurgency and, if the police aren't allowed to
concentrate on what they are doing, what you are saying is that
the main problem is violence.
Colonel McCarthy. Yes, sir and, in the Habbaniyah district
where I was, tribal law, shari'a law, and then civil law is a
distant show. And any theft and they are pointing fingers at
each other, it goes to Sheikh Hamad and Sheikh Hamad determines
it and they do reconciliations.
Mr. Spratt. So what do the police do then, do they augment
the national armed forces?
Colonel McCarthy. They man entry control points into the
villages, they man their stations, they man towers, they do
security patrols up and down the different routes and in and
about the villages. They maintain a security presence on the
street to keep the insurgents underground because people can't
go to the store without the police there. They can't go to
school without the police there because the army is focused
elsewhere and the coalition is obviously in their own battle
space. Where I was, I was in an Iraqi army battle space where
that was superimposed on a police jurisdiction. You know, so
you have command and control issues, you have battle space
apportionment issues all the time. So you have to work together
in the counterinsurgency fight or you are going to fail.
Mr. Spratt. To what extent are civil police functions
operable, possible, if you don't have a judicial system and a
penal system in place that is functional? Is that a problem
that they arrest people, put them in jail and don't have a
system of justice that can routinely process them?
Colonel Swengros. Sir, as Ms. Sanchez said before, this is
more than--the solution has to be more than a security piece.
The security piece is tremendously important but there are
those, that triad that you have to get to in any society,
especially in one such as Iraq with insurgents, the penal, the
judicial and the law enforcement piece of it. So yes, it is a
problem and it is a problem that they have been addressing from
the start. As simple as in a police station, we go in there and
try and track who is sitting in the local jail cell for what
reason and did they meet the certain timelines that had been
established by the Iraqi government for keeping people under
investigation or in jail and those types of things. So that, is
it a problem, overcrowding, if they don't get to the judicial,
it just compiles as you go through that. But does that, how
much does that really affect the security battle, the
insurgents battle, again I will agree with Lieutenant Colonel
McCarthy that you don't separate the army, you don't separate
the police.
When you do that, the more seams you have in your
operations, the more that the insurgents or the organized crime
is going to operate in, and it is trying to close down those
seams.
One of the things that the army has pursued over this last
year with JIEDDO, the Improvised Explosive Device (IED) defeat
organization, is the police intelligence operations. And that
is taking the law enforcement mindset from looking at whether
it is an IED or another criminal activity--stolen cars or those
types of things--and trying to figure out where the dots can be
connected and if you address it from a policing mindset to get
at the insurgent activity. And they are finding some success in
that. It is less than a year old. It is hinged on bringing in
retired or other senior law enforcement with criminal
investigative type experience to go in there, and they are
putting it in there within the Brigade Combat Teams (BCTs) to
get at the police intelligence to complement the military
intelligence, so when the commander looks at what is going on
on the ground you have both pieces and you make sure you are
not missing any.
So we are seeing some tremendous strides in that. And as
you operate with the Iraqi police, when we started out you may
never see an Iraqi with an army sitting down at a table to plan
an operation or conduct an operation, and each one of us have
many stories where they do that now to get at that security
picture. So I see some positive stuff in those areas.
Mr. Spratt. Thank you all for your testimony and for your
service to our country.
Mr. Meehan. Any other questions? Let me just say that all
of us who traveled to meet with our men and women around the
world, whether it be Iraq, Afghanistan, Kosovo or even in the
United States, we are always impressed but this panel this
morning has been outstanding. And I think I speak for all the
members when I say we thank you from the bottom of our hearts
for your service to your country. We are in awe of the job that
you are all are doing every day for the United States of
America. So thank you very much for your service, and thank you
very much for testifying before us this morning. Thanks.
[Whereupon, at 11:20 a.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
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A P P E N D I X
May 24, 2007
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PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD
May 24, 2007
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[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
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QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD
May 24, 2007
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QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. MEEHAN
Mr. Meehan. On page 9 of your testimony, you write that ``I MEF had
to send representatives to MOI, MOF, and the Baghdad treasury in order
to get IPs paid.'' Did you try to engage MNSTC-I or CPATT or the MOI
Transition Team to assist with this? What was their response?
Colonel Coates. We were heavily engaged with MOI-TT and CPATT when
I MEF first began dealing with this issue in the spring of 2006. Upon
arrival in Al Anbar in Feb. 06, I MEF sent a full time liaison officer
(LNO) to work at CPATT representing and ensuring that CPATT understood
the unique issues of Al Anbar. As such, this LNO was designated as the
action officer by CPATT along with a few other individuals on the CPATT
staff to initiate the restarting of the payment of salaries to the
Iraqi Police in Al Anbar. I MEF always sent representatives to Baghdad
with our Iraqi counterparts to ensure the pay process was executed (The
Anbar Provincial Committee of Three-Senior Iraqi Police officials
tasked with the execution of the pay roll). For the initial trip to
Baghdad during mid-June 2006 to broker the initial meeting with MOI &
MOF officials, there was a large delegation from the Coalition to
include the MOI-TT representatives that were primarily from their
finance division. After this first meeting, the log jam was cleared and
the Iraqi Police of Al Anbar were issued their salaries. The number of
representatives dropped off for each subsequent salary execution drill.
For the next several pay drills/trips to Baghdad, I MEF
representatives/LNO along with Mohammed (Iraqi/American who worked at
MOI-TT as an advisor and had a finance/accounting degree), with a Lt.
Col. from MOI-TT (finance background) walked and coordinated the pay
day drill for Al Anbar directly with MOI, MOF and the Central bank.
This also included the transporting of the salaries to Al Anbar by the
Coalition.
Mr. Meehan. On page 9 of your testimony, you also mention that
``the process for obtaining hiring orders is relatively simple but
often bogged down by the slow bureaucracy within MOL'' Does CPATT or
the MOI transition team have a plan for fixing the ``hiring orders''
after-training delay?
Colonel Coates. By Jan. 07, CPATT was reorganized and remissioned
into the MOI-TT. I am not aware of any plan for the Iraqis to change
the process for issuing ``Hiring Orders''. The I MEF LNO/
representatives would initiate the action by sending graduating class
rosters to coalition counterparts with in the MOI and in most cases,
hiring orders were issued within a 10 day period by MOI. During our
tenure, the I MEF Liaison Officer brokered the hiring orders process by
walking the request for orders office to office with MOI Iraqi
counterparts. The Iraqis were always slow in dealing with anything and
seemed very apprehensive in changing their current bureaucratic ways.
Mr. Meehan. Since JIPTC is no longer training IPs and Al Anbar's
Police College is not yet operational, are all recruits attending the
Baghdad Police College with all the attendant difficulties you identify
in your testimony (page 6)? Has the USMC chain of command engaged with
the MNSTC-I and CPATT chain of command to try to continue to send
recruits to Jordan until Al Anbar's college is open, particularly given
the security and sectarian issues? If so, what was CPATT's response?
Colonel Coates. I MEF immediately raised the operational impact of
the loss of JIPTC and issues with the Bagdad Police College in Nov.
2006. I MEF requested in writing that the decision to close JIPTC be
reconsidered and that JIPTC remain open. MNSTC-I with the endorsement
of CPATT delayed the closing of JIPTC for two months which in turn
provided I MEF with two additional class dates at JIPTC. The additional
classes provided the opportunity to train over 1500 Iraqi Police in Al
Anbar. In concert with the aforementioned, CPATT funded the
construction of an interim Police Academy for Al Anbar which opened in
early June 07 and will graduate the first class of 550 police recruits
in mid August 07.