U.S. Trainer of Iraqi Police Assesses Their Future

MICHAEL HEIDINGSFIELD: The biggest challenge was the Iraqi police were a totally bureaucratic organization where power flows from the top down. There was no, and there is today, no decision making made at the field or operational level, in terms of policy. Information is still treated as power, and coveted greatly. So, that kind of aftermath of the Saddam Hussein era lives today, and it's very difficult for us to break down and create collegial relationships, and relationships between the different factions of police -- the border police, the National Police, the Iraqi Police Service, the Highway Patrol -- they are very, very competitive, and very adversarial from one to the other.

The episode I would describe to you, is I visited an Iraqi police station in the Baghdad Medical District. And, had a good visit with the station commander, talked about the insurgent issues in their neighborhood and so forth. And, this young woman stepped forward -- and this is very unusual, because the Iraqi Police Service is 99 percent male, which is a reflection of the Middle Eastern culture, in general -- and the few women that are a part of the Iraqi Police Service don't serve, normally, in operational roles, and they never appear in an Iraqi Police uniform, and they always avert their eyes from Western males.

Well, this uniformed Iraqi policewoman stepped up, and came over to me -- which was an enormous thing for her to do, in and of itself -- and then began to talk to me in very fluent English. And, in the course of that conversation, I'm sure much to the dismay of her superiors, she talked about what they were doing, and the kind of work they were engaged in, and wanted to know how we were going to change the training. And it really was a quite informed conversation that -- it stunned me.

We concluded the conversation, I got in the armored vehicle to get ready to leave the station, and she came over and knocked on the window, and made a motion that she wanted to have a photograph taken with me, which is contrary to all of the cultural training we had had, that a Muslim woman would not want to be photographed with a Western Christian male. So, I checked with my interpreter, to make sure I understood what she wanted to have happen, got out of the truck, had the pictures taken, and in the course of the picture-taking she put her arm around me, bumped her hip up against me -- which startled me, terribly -- and then lifted my left arm, my hand, to make the "V" for victory, and she lifted her right hand, and made the "V" for victory at the same time. And, as the photographer was snapping the pictures, she began to weep, and she said to me, "Tell the people of America, 'Thank you' from the nation of Iraq."

RAY SUAREZ: Earlier you talked about starting from scratch. Was there no legacy of the past, either patriotism or an older remnant of fidelity toward the rule of law? Insignia, traditions, uniforms, anything you could build on? Or was this all really sui generis -- something that you had to invent for Iraq?

MICHAEL HEIDINGSFIELD: We largely recreated the Iraqi Police Service. First, I think it's important to note -- and I'm not sure that we appreciate this particularly well in the United States -- I did not find a strong, abiding sense of nationalism, the notion of Iraq as a state, as a nation-state is obviously relating recent, so you don't have that sense of nationalism. The police recruits -- as is the case with the Iraqi people, in general -- are first and foremost dedicated and loyal to their respective religions. And, that was another issue we had to contend with.

But, we had no legacy, in terms of vehicles, uniforms, weapons -- anything like that. We started, literally, from the ground up.

Now, their senior leadership -- some of whom returned or stayed -- were as often likely to be former military officers as, rather than police commanders. Which means you had people in leadership roles who might not necessarily understand what policing was about. So that was kind of confounding, as well.

But, I think it is fair to say that we, literally, rebuilt them from the ground up.

MICHAEL HEIDINGSFIELD: Well, for a long time, there was virtually no difference. And, when we started our training -- I talked about that a few minutes ago -- we developed a 320-hour curriculum that talked with, in great depth and detail, about the rule of law and the principles of democratic policing. None of that actually resonated with the classes. They didn't understand it, they had no context for knowing how to employ it, and frankly, they were getting killed so quickly, it was not the curriculum that was going to keep them alive. So, we revamped the curriculum, and gave them largely survival and light infantry skills. And they ultimately began to be turned out of the system, if you will, as a component of the Iraqi government.

Now, the training has re-adjusted again, been re-calibrated since then, to bring back in the democratic and Westernized principles. So, we're trying to move them out of the notion of truly being a counter-insurgency force. But frankly, when you talk about policing in Iraq today, it is overwhelmingly about counter-insurgency, and a distant second is about law enforcement.

RAY SUAREZ: So, if there's a fight in a restaurant, or a car theft, or a minor house fire, and the Iraqi Police roll up, are we at the point yet where people say, "Oh good, the police are here." Or, are they more as likely to say, "Oh no, it's the police."

MICHAEL HEIDINGSFIELD: Well, the first challenge is whether they roll up at all, because the Iraqi Police customs have them staying in the police stations much more than going out, as we do here in the United States, so that's the first challenge. And, it is entirely neighborhood-dependent, as to how those community members will view the police when they arrive.

In the right neighborhoods, where you have a homogeneous population, and they've got, say, Sunni policemen responding to a Sunni community, I think they will be welcomed. But, if you get that cross-cut of cultures -- Sunni versus Shia -- then it could be an entirely different reception.

RAY SUAREZ: So that old saw about the police only being one color -- blue -- that's a very American idea?

MICHAEL HEIDINGSFIELD: That is a very American idea. We saw religious cut -- religion cut deep and wide in recruit training, and in how recruits treated on another. And, originally we tried to deploy policemen throughout the country, irrespective of whether they were Sunni or Shiite or Kurds -- that did not work at all. And the greatest success with the Iraqi Police is now in places where it is one community with one religion, and we are returning those police recruits to, not only their hometowns, but to police their neighbors who share the same religious beliefs. Which, in the short term, probably makes great sense in terms of returning some sense of peace and order to the community. In the long-term, though, it just re-draws -- even more vividly -- the lines of sectarianism, and I'm not sure how we're going to get beyond that, frankly.

RAY SUAREZ: Let's talk a little bit about what change you've seen over time, from the 2004-2005 period you spent with the mission of the State Department to set up the Iraqi Police, and what you're seeing now as part of a body that has to report to Congress on progress.

Dan writes from Ayer, Massachusetts: "Are things different today than they were two years ago? What do you think they'll look like two years from today?"

MICHAEL HEIDINGSFIELD: Well, I'd have to say things are definitely different today. Most of my observations are anecdotal. But, as an example: When we first got to Iraq, the Iraqi Police would not leave their stations at all. They simply wouldn't. And often when threatened by the insurgents, they abandoned their station, and turned them over to the enemy. That doesn't happen any longer.

On those rare occasions, early on, when the Iraqi Police did come out in the community to exercise their law enforcement authority, they were as likely as not to wear what we call "belaclavas" or ski masks, to conceal their identity for fear of retribution against their families for their role as policemen. They don't do that any longer. They're out, in the communities, running checkpoints, running roadblocks, grabbing the bad guys out of the houses, and they don't do it in a way that conceals their identity. So, that's kind of an anecdotal representation of progress.

Early on, when there were explosive devices to be dealt with, we saw very brave -- but often very foolish -- Iraqi policemen with virtually no tools, try to dismantle IED devices, literally using their hands -- and in one case that I personally observed, their teeth -- to dismantle a detonation device. Today they have the right robotic equipment, the EOD equipment they are required.

Another area of progress is in forensic investigation, which has begun a, kind of, a slow return to what it should be.

So, in specialized circumstances, they definitely show some progress. But, it's very uneven. And in the Baghdad area, in particular, and the Sunni Triangle, in general, the Iraqi Police simply have not been successful.

RAY SUAREZ: Is that the gist of what you've told Congress?

MICHAEL HEIDINGSFIELD: It is. Yes, absolutely. The -- when you compared the, when you talk about the Iraqi Security Forces, which are composed of the armed forces and the police -- it is clear that, in particular, the Iraqi Army has made significant positive strides, and are probably within, I think the Commission's consideration was 24 months of acting entirely on their own in an independent fashion.

You cannot say that about the police. The police suffer from all of the issues I just talked to you about, plus the fact that they are by -- in the Iraqi government's structure -- in the Ministry of the Interior, which is riddled with corruption, it is largely inept and unable to do anything successfully in terms of being a bureaucracy that discharges governmental responsibilities. And it is infiltrated by the various militias from throughout Iraq. And the police suffer from that lack of leadership, that lack of oversight, and that lack of accountability. So, they are far behind the Iraqi Army.

MICHAEL HEIDINGSFIELD: That's an excellent question. Early on, we tried and learned quickly that it was not going to work, but we tried to employ the same sort of screening process that we use here in the United States. It was unsuccessful, because at that time, Iraq had no archival records, really, and most of them were destroyed before Saddam was deposed. They certainly didn't have the databases or the technology to access databases that allow you to make decision about people in terms of their character and their quality.

So, we turned, early on, to trusted agents in the Iraqi government who, frankly, would either give a "thumbs up" or a "thumbs down" to individual candidates. And we had to rely on that. And, to be honest, it worked better than all of our well-thought out, but impossible-to-execute plans for doing background investigations.

Today that screening is done at the provincial level, through the 18 provincial governors, and now there are some bio-metrics in place where we check fingerprints and retinal scans of candidates, and measure them against what still are fairly meager databases, but at least the databases do exist in the Ministry of the Interior, and hopefully we're making better-informed decisions. That's not to say that the Iraqi Police are not riddled with infiltration from the militia groups, because they certainly are.

RAY SUAREZ: Is there a status, an identity, something in your life history, or in your resume that's just a deal breaker, where you say to a fellow who's come to sign up, "No, sorry, you just can't do this work."

MICHAEL HEIDINGSFIELD: Well, collaboration with the insurgency that opposed the Coalition Forces, I mean, those kinds of activities would be a clear disqualifier.

On the other side of the argument, we have to be very careful, because Saddam imprisoned people with impunity, and charged people with trumped-up accusations, that didn't at all necessarily reflect what they'd actually done. So, trying to sort through those -- the legitimate from the illegitimate criminal histories -- is a very difficult process.

RAY SUAREZ: Is there a changing way that we legally regard previous membership in the Ba'ath Party?

MICHAEL HEINDINGSFIELD: Yes, I think everybody would agree that throwing the baby out with the bath water -- no pun intended -- was probably a very significant error on the part of the United States. And so the police, in particular, do accept back -- after proper screening -- members of the Ba'ath Party.

And frankly, my personal experience was that Ba'athists in police command positions often has simply been part of that party because it was required of them, and the alternative was a very serious negative, and it didn't necessarily represent their allegiance to Saddam personally. So, I think inviting them back in is the right thing to do.

RAY SUAREZ: Are there culture clashes in the field, where advisors from the West, trainers from the West, are basically told by officers in uniform, "Yes, I understand this isn't the way we would do it in Amsterdam, or Roanoke, Virginia, but you don't understand Iraq. So, if I'm beating a suspect on the scene, if I'm intimidating his family, we have to break eggs to make omelets here in Iraq, and please, just back off."

MICHAEL HEIDINGSFIELD: Yes, some of that does occur. First of all, I might just note for you, that the only police advisors in the field are Americans. It is solely a United States operation. The only -- the only other country involved were the Brits, and they had a very, very small portion of the police training program, largely in Southern Iraq. So, you're really talking solely about American police advisors.

I think, at times, we as Americans tend to be overbearing sometimes, in our training and our attitudes, and we don't, we don't give a great deal of consideration of the cultures we're trying to modify. So, you had some of that early on.

But, conversely, the older American police advisors, the retired law enforcement officers, the senior American police officers, were held in very high regard by the Iraqi who -- as you well know -- think of age as wisdom, and with that comes respect. So that worked for us, rather than against us.

Now, in terms of their criminal justice system, as you described, the notion of torture to extract confessions, is part of their canonized law. And that's a great example of the culture clash that we encountered. The judiciary -- which has enormous power in Iraq, including the power to investigate crimes, which the police do not have, by the way, it is a judicial function -- the judiciary also demands as the most compelling kind of evidence, a spoken confession. Well, that requirement is communicated to the prosecutors who, in turn, communicate it to the police who, in turn, then move to extract confessions by whatever means is necessary. And trying to overcome those kinds of things is very, very difficult.

RAY SUAREZ: Well, your answer really brings into high relief just what you're facing in Iraq, because in America policing works, in part, because other institutions in society, work -- the judiciary, a chain of evidence, the integrity of evidence. And, I'm wondering how -- or whether -- any of these things yet work in Iraq, or is that stuff for down the road, when you get the basics right?

MICHAEL HEIDINGSFIELD: Well, it's both now and down the road. The Justice Department has a significant investment in the Rule of Law program, which is directed out of the United States Embassy in Baghdad, and the whole notion of that program is to, kind of, infuse into Iraq this notion of institutions, the fat that we all defer to the law, first and foremost, and those kinds of things.

But it is very, very slow going. The notion of evidence, chains of custody, respecting individual rights, the sanctuary that homes are supposed to represent -- those are all concepts that are largely still foreign in the Iraq legal system. And this -- the re-design of the Iraqi justice system will be, perhaps, the largest challenge we encounter, other than the whole notion of political reconciliation between the religions.

RAY SUAREZ: So, if you are picked up on a street in a major provincial city, can you -- as a suspect -- have any confidence that the police aren't going to mistreat you, that you aren't simply going to disappear into the penal system, that if there's no evidence to hold you that you'll really be released?

MICHAEL HEIDINGSFIELD: No, you can have no confidence on any of those three counts, at all. Arrests remain very arbitrary. Confinement is an extended, kind of, dark process with little accountability. The correction system is not responsive, nor is it accountable. So, no, you have no assurance of any of those things, frankly.

On the other hand, I mean, there are points of light and you, from time to time, you find enlightened Iraqi police leaders who do understand where they need to go, in terms of how they treat the people whom they encounter. But generally, it's a very grim situation.