Prime Minister Maliki and President Bush announced today that more Iraqi army and US troops will be moving into Baghdad to bring the violence under control.  It's hard to figure out exact numbers given what's been made public so far, but it does sound like a significant increase.  Interestingly, part of the plan is to bring in more American military police and embed them with Iraqi Police units.

Bush said the point was to make these units "more effective," but I wonder if that's code for an attempt to keep a better eye on the Iraqi Police.  This is a pretty murky area, and there are questions about how much of the death squad activity is conducted by Iraqi Police (the equivalent of neighborhood cops) and how much is conducted by the National Police (which doesn't really have a US equivalent—they seem to be domestic commandos).  At the very least many Iraqi Police units are loyal to militias and not, ultimately, to the Iraqi government.

It's hard to tell how much it will change things to have more American MPs with these Iraqi cops.  Having spent some time with the training units I didn't get the sense that the problem was a lack of American manpower, or a lack of effort.  It's simply very difficult to get competent, loyal and enthusiastic Iraqi cops out on the streets of Baghdad, and it's not possible to watch what these guys do 24 hours a day.  At best the US might be able to keep a few heavily compromised units from actively participating in the sectarian violence.  At that point those cops would probably quit and join their militia outright, and there won't be a long line of top-notch recruits waiting to replace them.  The police will only straighten out if political directives come down from the men who run the militias, and I don't think that's likely.

All that said, it's at least encouraging that the president and the military command in Iraq understand that militia infiltration of the police is a serious problem (I'm just guessing that's the subtext of this plan, but I think it's a pretty safe bet).  It's also possible that the Iraqi forces in Baghdad can be shuffled around so the best of the best are working the worst neighborhoods alongside American units, with advisers keeping tabs on their activities.  At this point managing the violence to keep it from getting truly horrific (don't think it can't get much worse) is a more realistic goal than de-commissioning the militias and ending the violence entirely.  I'm dubious that more troops is a long-term solution (it would just get us back to where we were two or three years ago), but in the past increasing the number of Americans out in the city has kept a lid on things in the short-term.

 

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