BAGHDAD—A struggle between Iraq's political factions is sowing divisions in the country's security forces just weeks before the last U.S. troops depart, as Iraqis rely on a unified force to hold the country together and suppress extremist violence.
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Associated Press
U.S. soldiers boarded a plane to leave Iraq at al-Asad Air Base west of Baghdad last week. All U.S. forces are set to leave the country by Dec. 31.
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a member of the majority Shiite sect, has in recent weeks accelerated measures to purge the Iraqi forces of anyone who served in the intelligence and security services of the former Sunni-led regime of Saddam Hussein.
Dozens of Sunni officers were expelled last month and more dismissals are planned, according to interviews with officers and copies of decrees viewed by The Wall Street Journal and confirmed by the Interior Ministry.
While some of the Sunni officers were accused of serving in Hussein's "repressive apparatuses," some were simply called on for "early retirement," and others were dismissed under vague accusations of associating with terrorists.
In another move that shook the Iraqi security services, Mr. Maliki—the acting interior minister—ordered the arrests on Oct. 23 of what he said were "many" army and police officers among more than 600 people accused of plotting to overthrow his government.
At the same time, Mr. Maliki is delaying appointments to top posts that oversee the security forces, now almost one-million strong including the army and police. Mr. Maliki continues to run the ministries of defense, interior and national security himself or through party and sectarian allies, contravening an agreement with Sunni-dominated and Kurdish political blocs that formed the current coalition government more than 10 months ago.
With the U.S. departure imminent, any new fissures in the security services will make it harder for Iraq's army and police to keep the peace and defend the country's borders.
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Yet the prime minister's moves have triggered countermoves by his Sunni political rivals that are threatening to further fragment the country. The leaders of Salahuddin Province, a predominantly Sunni area north of Baghdad, said last month they would begin the process of becoming a semiautonomous region—complaining that, among other things, they wanted to be better represented in the security services, both in rank and file and executive positions.
Sunni Arab politicians and tribal leaders from several provinces, including Salahuddin, met at parliament in Baghdad on Wednesday to air grievances that included what they see as inadequate representation in senior posts in the security forces.
In a statement issued at the meeting's end, they referred to a "dangerous structural flaw" in relations between the provinces and the central government. Parliament Speaker Osama al-Nujaifi, a Sunni Arab, warned about "using the army as a tool in the hands of some politicians."
The ethnic and sectarian polarization of Iraqi politics puts immense pressure on security forces that, in the years after Hussein's fall, endured a civil war that transformed elements of their ranks into sectarian death squads in the service of politicized militias.
The U.S. military presence has served as a buffer against Iraqi politicians who may seek to control elements of the security services to give muscle to their own factions. "We remain split over the country's most fundamental issues," said a general in the country's federal police based in Baghdad. "The Americans are a balancing factor."
Unifying the services' disparate units and ragtag brigades into a coherent security force remains very much a work in progress. The U.S. military has led this process in the aftermath of Washington's decision to disband the Iraqi army in 2003—now widely recognized as an ill-fated move that helped fuel the insurgency.
Yet many of the targets of the effort to purge the army and police of former Hussein loyalists are people who had been reintegrated into the services as part of a U.S.-backed program to foster national reconciliation and weaken the Sunni insurgency, according to Deputy Interior Minister Hussein Kamal.
But the unifying role of the U.S. is fast coming to an end. As of Friday, about 32,000 American forces remained in Iraq—compared to 171,000 at the height of the war in 2007—all of them set to leave by Dec. 31.
Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Buchanan, spokesman for U.S. troops in Iraq expressed confidence in the Iraqi forces' ability to maintain security. "They have not stepped away from any challenge or any fight since taking over security throughout the nation, ensuring every incident they're presented with is quickly contained," he said. He deferred questions about the polarization of the forces to the Iraqi government.
Mr. Maliki's aides said the prime minister has delayed doling out top ministry posts because of fears of a coup attempt arising from the security services. "It's impossible for the prime minister to accept anyone he does not trust," said his media adviser Ali al-Mussawi.
In Diyala Province, a highly volatile area near Baghdad, the Interior Ministry issued an order to dismiss 32 Sunni officers from the police force on grounds including allegedly collaborating with terrorists and having a role in one of Hussein's paramilitary forces. The order was implemented last month, around the same time that the last U.S. soldiers in Diyala left the province.
Mr. Kamal, the deputy interior minister, described the order as a routine administrative matter that had nothing to do with the U.S. departure or Iraqi politics. But the timing hasn't been lost on the Sunni officers.
"This order was issued after the U.S. pullout [from the province] to gauge reaction" by Sunnis, said Maj. Abbas Ghaidan Khalaf, one of the dismissed officers. "If there's no reaction, then you'll see more marginalization of [Sunnis] until there are not even street sweepers from this sect."
There has been ample reaction. Adnan al-Karkhi, a member of the Diyala provincial council, warned after the dismissals, "The lack of balance [in the security forces] will keep the province in the vicious circle of violence and instability."
The dismissal order says Maj. Khalaf and two others were fired "because their brothers are terrorists," without providing evidence.
Maj. Khalaf said two of his siblings are active duty police officers, one of whom survived several suicide bombings. A third sibling is a local government employee. The fourth, a lieutenant in the Interior ministry's intelligence unit, was assassinated two weeks ago.
Another incident in Diyala in October also offered a reminder of the country's political divisions, this one related to Kurds serving in the security forces. Kurdish recruits report to, and are paid by, the central government, of which Kurds are a part. But their ultimate loyalty is to the political leadership of the semiautonomous region of Kurdistan in the north, which keeps its own security force.
An order from the central government to remove Kurdish flags from public buildings in the town of Khanaqin, one of several disputed territories in northern Iraq claimed by both Kurds and Arabs, was challenged by the predominantly Kurdish local police. Baghdad backed down, but tensions remain.
U.S. forces have played a critical role in tamping down such tensions in these contested areas and fostering collaboration between Arabs and Kurds. The Kurdistan region's President Masoud Barzani warned in a recent interview with Dubai-based al-Arabiya channel that the U.S. withdrawal at year's end might give way to an "open-ended civil war," with nobody there to stop it.
—Ali A. Nabhan contributed to this article.
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