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questions for the COIN-savvy
September 18, 2008 | Posted by iraqologist@gmail.com - 9:42pm | 28 Comments
The news item Iraqologist discussed in his last post, plus SNLII's interesting analysis in the comments, have called to mind something we should think about in the context of Iraqi provincial and national elections: the loyalty of the security forces.
Conventional wisdom (which Iraqologist has no reason to doubt) has it that many of the various Iraqi security forces have loyalties that trump their loyalty to the Iraqi state. For example, we can point to ISCI/Badr's infiltration of the ISF from their inception, Maliki's recent efforts to cultivate forces and agencies loyal to him personally, and supposedly entire divisions of the Iraqi Army that Iraqologist has heard are merely re-hatted peshmerga. What happens to these security forces if the ruling parties who own them get voted out in the national elections? Is it really possible to believe that peshmerga will be loyal to a central government in which the Kurdish parties are not part of the ruling coalition, or that, the moment they're ordered to do something the Kurds don't like, Arbil won't veto it? (cf. Khanaqin). Same goes for ISCI/Badr and Maliki as well. People often refer to Maliki's strongman efforts as "coup-proofing," but they also potentially amount to "peaceful transition-of-power-proofing" as well.
This problem is most obvious with regard to national elections, but it's relevant on the provincial level as well. Provincial governors have command of provincial police (Article 31.10 of the PPL), except the provinces where the central government has denied "police primacy" and created essentially a state of emergency in which all police are subordinate to the Iraqi Army (perhaps four or five provinces currently). Theoretically at least, therefore, a great deal is at stake with provincial elections on the security level. Again, to whom are these police in the provinces currently loyal? Mike Knights and Eamon McCarthy, in their indispensable report on provincial governance, describe how militias have infiltrated the Iraqi Police and are often implicated with the dominant parties in each province and are essentially free of MOI oversight, even though MOI is paying the bills (see pg. 20-30). It's probably a different case for every province, more of an issue in some provinces than others, but the police's "changing administrations" is likely going to be problematic.
Is Iraqologist missing something here? This is potentially a big, big problem, and there must be a big debate going on about it somewhere. What good are these provincial and national elections that so many have invested such hope in if the people who win them don't get control of the security forces? There is no transition of power if there is, well, no transition of power. (How do you like that bit of wisdom?) Maybe this is just a gaping lacuna in Iraqologist's knowledge and the COIN-savvy readers will fill him in.
Iraqologist doesn't know the details of how the training mission in Iraq works, although he has heard quite a bit about purging "sectarian" officers from the security apparatus. "Sectarian" may just be shorthand for people who are loyal to someone or something other than the state, but if all they're looking for is sectarianism in the Sunni/Shi'a sense, they're going to miss a lot. It's like a chicken and egg problem--you can't have a state without security forces, but you also can't have security forces that function the way you want them to without first having a state for them to be loyal to. Anyway, rather than blathering on in this fashion, Iraqologist is ready to be enlightened by those in the know.
Conventional wisdom (which Iraqologist has no reason to doubt) has it that many of the various Iraqi security forces have loyalties that trump their loyalty to the Iraqi state. For example, we can point to ISCI/Badr's infiltration of the ISF from their inception, Maliki's recent efforts to cultivate forces and agencies loyal to him personally, and supposedly entire divisions of the Iraqi Army that Iraqologist has heard are merely re-hatted peshmerga. What happens to these security forces if the ruling parties who own them get voted out in the national elections? Is it really possible to believe that peshmerga will be loyal to a central government in which the Kurdish parties are not part of the ruling coalition, or that, the moment they're ordered to do something the Kurds don't like, Arbil won't veto it? (cf. Khanaqin). Same goes for ISCI/Badr and Maliki as well. People often refer to Maliki's strongman efforts as "coup-proofing," but they also potentially amount to "peaceful transition-of-power-proofing" as well.
This problem is most obvious with regard to national elections, but it's relevant on the provincial level as well. Provincial governors have command of provincial police (Article 31.10 of the PPL), except the provinces where the central government has denied "police primacy" and created essentially a state of emergency in which all police are subordinate to the Iraqi Army (perhaps four or five provinces currently). Theoretically at least, therefore, a great deal is at stake with provincial elections on the security level. Again, to whom are these police in the provinces currently loyal? Mike Knights and Eamon McCarthy, in their indispensable report on provincial governance, describe how militias have infiltrated the Iraqi Police and are often implicated with the dominant parties in each province and are essentially free of MOI oversight, even though MOI is paying the bills (see pg. 20-30). It's probably a different case for every province, more of an issue in some provinces than others, but the police's "changing administrations" is likely going to be problematic.
Is Iraqologist missing something here? This is potentially a big, big problem, and there must be a big debate going on about it somewhere. What good are these provincial and national elections that so many have invested such hope in if the people who win them don't get control of the security forces? There is no transition of power if there is, well, no transition of power. (How do you like that bit of wisdom?) Maybe this is just a gaping lacuna in Iraqologist's knowledge and the COIN-savvy readers will fill him in.
Iraqologist doesn't know the details of how the training mission in Iraq works, although he has heard quite a bit about purging "sectarian" officers from the security apparatus. "Sectarian" may just be shorthand for people who are loyal to someone or something other than the state, but if all they're looking for is sectarianism in the Sunni/Shi'a sense, they're going to miss a lot. It's like a chicken and egg problem--you can't have a state without security forces, but you also can't have security forces that function the way you want them to without first having a state for them to be loyal to. Anyway, rather than blathering on in this fashion, Iraqologist is ready to be enlightened by those in the know.
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