UPI Analysis/Middle East Times: Iraqi Police In Militias

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http://www.metimes.com:80/storyview.php?StoryID=20070225-113032-1795r

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Analysis: Iraqi police in militias
Rebecca Pearsey
UPI
February 25, 2007

WASHINGTON -- Iraqi police wear their uniforms by day, but, when night falls, they take them off and morph into the sectarian militias. They do this in order to protect themselves, said Nora Bensahel, a senior political scientist at RAND Corporation.

"In a situation where the state doesn't provide security, which is clearly the case today, people seek refuge and identity through often the protection. And in Baghdad today, the militias offer way more protection than perhaps the state," said Bensahel, who is also a professor in the Security Studies program at Georgetown University in Washington, DC.

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"I think the police suffer from an evil history in Iraq. Under Saddam they were perceived to be the thugs that enforced Saddam's harsh laws," said James Phillips, a research fellow for Middle Eastern affairs at the Heritage Foundation. There is a civil war in Iraq that has been driven by sectarian violence from the beginning and will not easily move into any certainty of security.

"When the US went in, there was an assumption that the police and other government institutions could be rebuilt with minimal effort," said Phillips. The corruptions were deep in the Iraqi police long before the United States began their reform of Iraq. And as the insurgent groups shifted powers with the fall of Saddam's regime, the police force also underwent a shift in power.

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"Reform????" Sheesh!