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Violence hindering growth of Iraqi forces

WASHINGTON — Iraqis have not made enough progress toward learning to manage their security forces because they’ve had to divert too much attention to continued violence and sectarianism, U.S. congressional investigators said Monday.

For example, Iraqi recruits to the Army who were designated for training as logistics specialists have been diverted to combat roles, said the report by the Government Accountability Office.

The report said the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Interior have made some progress in the last year. The defense ministry has developed lower echelon logistics units for the military and the interior ministry has established an intelligence organization.

“While the Ministry of Defense and Ministry of Interior, with coalition assistance, made some progress since August 2006 in developing their respective logistics, command and control, and intelligence capabilities ... persistent violence and sectarianism, along with immature ministerial capacity, continue to impede this progress,” the report said.

It said the Ministry of Defense has yet to develop adequate personnel management and support functions, Iraqi support specialists are not being employed in the positions for which they were trained, and schools for training those specialists lack fuel, equipment and supplies.

At the Ministry of Interior, violence has prevented contractors from completing the installation of a command and control network and hampered intelligence capabilities, the report said.

The report also criticized the terminology the Pentagon uses for assessing the progress of Iraqi forces.

While the Defense Department has, in multiple reports, stated that a certain number of (Iraqi) units are either “independent” or “fully independent,” it is unclear how the military arrived at the determination, the report said.

It noted that in a number of reports in which the Department of Defense has asserted that a certain number of Iraqi units are independent, it has appeared to contradict itself by adding qualifiers. For example, defense officials reported in June that a certain number of units were either “in the lead” or “fully independent” — then added the forces “often do not get the support they require without substantial coalition assistance.”

“As a result of DOD’s lack of clarity, Congress and other decision makers may not obtain a clear picture of the progress” of the Iraqi forces toward becoming independent of U.S. forces, the report said.

Also, the report suggested that the Iraqi forces cannot be considered independent as long as neither of the ministries in charge of them has developed the abilities to logistically sustain their forces, effectively command and control their forces, and provide intelligence to their forces.