Defense Tech pal Chris Allbritton has a brutal story out of Iraq, on the "growing evidence" that "massacres... are being tolerated and even abetted by Iraq's Shi'ite-dominated police forces, overseen by Iraq's Interior Minister, Bayan Jabr." This is exactly the kind of thing Stephen Biddle warned us about.
On his watch, sectarian militias have swelled the ranks of the police units and, Sunnis charge, used their positions to carry out revenge killings against Sunnis. While allowing an Iranian-trained militia to take over the ministry, critics say, Jabr has authorized the targeted assassination of Sunni men and stymied investigations into Interior-run death squads...
So black is the reputation of the National Police, that after the Feb. 22 bombing of the Askariya shrine in Samarra, many Sunnis said the perpetrators were Interior Ministry troops who were looking for a pretext to start a civil war. Their fears were further fueled in the bloody two days after the attack, when Iraq became a sectarian slaughterhouse. Instead of protecting citizens from each other, National Police units stood by as Shi'ite rioters and rival militiamen from Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army stormed Sunni mosques and swarmed over Sunni neighborhoods, according to numerous reports, including some confirmed by U.S. Gen. George Casey, commander of American forces in Iraq...
[Former National Security Advisor for the Coalition Provisional Authority David] Gompert notes, "I remember saying, 'If there is going to be a civil war, it's going to be fought between Sunni insurgents and Shi'ite militias." And as long as Jabr is running the Interior Ministry and its police forces, there is little doubt which of the two in such a conflict will have the law and American training on its side.
