U.S. Exacerbates Iraqi Civil War With Indiscriminate Commando Training
By Pratap Chatterjee, CorpWatch. Posted September 26, 2007.
The U.S. is indiscriminately arming Iraqis, destabilizing the country even more.
"Starting the month with a bang, the boys from Baghdad executed two baited ambushes … and further confirmed the (Emergency Response Unit's) ability to conduct operations with stealth and violence of action," writes an unofficial historian for the ERU, in Unit History of 1st Battalion, a report obtained by CorpWatch.
The "boys" that the report praises are members of one of dozens of elite Iraqi commandos units that function as a "third force" to augment the Iraqi police and army, both of which are widely considered to be failures. On this mission in early July 2005, the Emergency Response Unit, backed by the First Battalion of the Fifth Infantry Regiment of the U.S. Army, had detained "anti-Iraqi forces" and intercepted roadside bombs.
Their tactics owed much to a secretive U.S. private contractor, U.S. Investigations Services (USIS), which conducted ERU trainings on U.S. military bases in Iraq -- including at Camp Dublin and Camp Solidarity. The trainings began under Gen. David Petreaus as an effort to bolster security in Iraq, and soon evolved into a system for providing support to the deeply sectarian Ministry of the Interior.
Beginning in May 2004, U.S. authorities contracted with USIS to create the first ERU. The nonsectarian force is supposed "to respond to national-level law enforcement emergencies. The four-week training runs recruits through SWAT-type emergency-response training focusing on terrorist incidents, kidnappings, hostage negotiations, explosive ordnance, high-risk searches, high-risk assets, weapons of mass destruction, and other national-level law enforcement emergencies" according to the Pentagon.
By April 2006, the ERUs had conducted 117 "close target reconnaissance" missions in Baghdad alone, completing 104 of them and capturing 236 "suspects," according to estimates by Lt. Col. Jeffrey Voss, military advisor in charge of the ERU program.
The ERUs are now officially controlled and paid by the Iraqi Ministry of Interior and are accompanied by U.S. trainers or soldiers throughout their training. But a high-level State Department report issued in 2005 explains that the Iraqi commandos were initially rejected by the very Ministry of the Interior that they were intended to support when they were created more than three years ago. Instead, U.S. officials and contractors controlled the ERUs, which became an unofficial Iraqi face to provide local cover for U.S. operations. With no support from the Iraqi government at the time, the ERU had to rely on USIS for salaries, thereby becoming a privately financed militia.
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http://alternet.org/waroniraq/63410/
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