Interview with Secretary-General of Ministry of Defence

The Secretary-General of Iraq's Ministry of Defence (MoD), Bruska Noori Shaways, has a huge task - how to get the largest number of Iraqi forces trained in the shortest amount of time. In an interview with IRIN in Baghdad, Shaways said although training of the Iraqi security forces was slow, with the upcoming January elections, there was no doubt that it would be a lengthy process if the best results were to be achieved. QUESTION: US army officials recently in town complained that training of Iraqi forces was not going quickly enough. How do you respond? ANSWER: It is necessarily slow. We are going to build a new army, not just revive units from the old army. We’re giving them all sorts of new training, even morality training. We need time to create new commanders, ones who will follow the international rules on human rights, democracy, rule of law, etc. Those things are easy to say, but they’re not easy to change in someone’s brain. So many of the officers we have in the new army are from the old army. So we’re going at a necessarily slow pace. At the same time, security is pushing our agenda so we can’t move so slowly that we can’t meet our deadlines with the multinational forces. Q: How will you provide enough security for the election scheduled for 30 January, since it’s the responsibility of the Iraqi forces to do so? A: We know the security situation is not too easy. There are very insecure areas. Even in very secure areas, sometimes the administration makes it not very easy to have a free election. Our minister, the minister of interior, the intelligence services and multinational forces met to make a security plan. It includes four aspects: 1) Security of the polling stations, since we need to secure the buildings from car bombers, suicide bombers and the like. 2) Security of the candidates. If I am a candidate, I want to be able to travel to Mosul in the north or Basra in the south and to have a free and secured access route. 3) Voters - those who want to vote and not have any influence on how they vote. We have to make sure the roads to the polling centre are clear and there is no intimidation. 4) We need general security against general crimes, so people feel safe. Those four things have to be considered, but we are doing well. Our main problem is that the Independent Electoral Commission says there cannot be multinational forces near the polling stations. I say that multinational forces are neutral forces. They don’t want to establish a kingdom in Iraq. In the new Iraq that is democratic, federal and free, they are neutral and they can be everywhere. Without them, the four main issues I talked about will be harder to implement. Q: What is the MoD’s policy in relation to US-led forces in Iraq? A: If you look at the statistics, we need 150,000 security forces [individuals] to be available in our country. If we reach that number, maybe we won’t need the help of the multinational security forces anymore. We might reach it by the end of 2005. If they think we are making progress and winning - peacefully and accurately - then we need to have a plan to continue to do well. So many people now are afraid to even go down the street. We need to give them a semi-secure environment. Q: We saw NATO representatives came to Iraq the other day. What role will they play in the training of the Iraqi security forces? A: Because of the different policies of different NATO nations, they only want to do training at this time. We asked them for equipment and training. It’s up to them whether they do training inside of Iraq or outside of Iraq. But there is a team here discussing long-term training for the country’s military academy and staff college. Norwegian military forces will do the mental and physical training of the Iraqi army. In a democracy there should be civilian control of the military, so we have to implement these new ideas. In the past, Saddam Hussein made the army defend a party and an ideology. We need to have a country where the military defends the rights of all of its people. It’s very unique to try to bring together the various ethnic groups and religious groups. We have units with Sunni Muslims, Shi'ite Muslims, Kurds - they are all working well together. They understand each other. Currently, commanders and staff are 80 percent Sunni Muslim. In the past, up to 95 percent of officers were Sunnis. And 90 percent of the soldiers working under them were Shi'ite Muslims. Now, we must change this. We must advance soldiers based on merit. Q: How are you recruiting new staff, since there have been so many car bombs at recruiting centres and killing of Iraqi forces? A: The only way to move against a car bomb is intelligence. If someone is coming to kill himself, I have to run away, or I will be killed. In the next couple of weeks, I believe the actions against us will decrease. We have four brigades of special forces and they will start to make operations. They have been trained in urban warfare. They’re very good. Also, we didn’t have coordination between the intelligence forces and the other forces before. Now we will. There will be no safe haven for the people who are making the car bombs, whether they are in Fallujah or wherever they are now. Q: What’s happening in Mosul? There are reports that the Iraqi forces ran away and insurgents are running the area. A: Mosul is a tough case. It is the motherland of pan-Arabism. There are also Baath Party cells in Mosul, along with Republican guards and intelligence from Saddam Hussein’s elite corps of about 4,800 people. There may also be a stream of Wahabis [conservative Islamists] who want to dominate Mosul. Between them, their Arab brothers and the Kurds, there is friction from the past. It’s the most important place to secure in Iraq but also the most complicated one. Our forces will try to deal with three kinds of people there: 1) The former regime elements, who are the best organised. They are military guys working with outsiders. They still have money from the Baath party. They don’t want the expansion of a democratic Iraq and they’re trying to everything they can to cause problems. 2) We have the Islamic radicals and al-Qaeda sympathisers, whom I already talked about. 3) There are organised criminal bands of people who were released from jail when the former regime fell. They are wanted for killings, robberies, assassinations and now there is a kind of alliance between these people and some in the other groups. Q: Do you personally feel safe in your job? Many political figures, academics and doctors have been assassinated or threatened. A: I lived as a peshmerga [a Kurdish fighter] in the mountains for 35 years. I am an optimist that things will get better here. The situation is not ok for normal people, but I believe we will succeed. We are creating forces and institutions for those forces. As they get built up, the trust between the ministry and the people of Iraq will increase. Q: What role do women play in the new Iraqi forces? A: We have started now to count how many women we have - about 30 percent of MoD workers are women. We have military police and a brigade with three companies of women. In the Iraqi National Guard, they make up at least 5 percent. In the past, they could only be intelligence agents in the security forces. Now, they are checking women, they are raiding houses, they are doing administrative things. One of the mistakes of the multinational forces was when they enter a house of an Arab tribal member, if they enter a bedroom of a woman that is taboo. It is a huge mistake, so we will send female soldiers with them to make sure they can do the searches rather than the male soldiers. They get all of the same training, because they may be killed, the same as men. Q: How can you protect foreign aid agencies and foreigners in general, since there have been so many attacks and kidnappings of them? A: It will be the duty of security forces to provide safety to everyone. We will develop groups who can handle that particular issue, but there are so many private security companies now in Iraq, they can also do the work of a bodyguard or whatever needs to be done. I don’t trust them, but if it’s a hard situation, they are here to do a job. Q: What’s happening now with the insurgents? It seems fighting has spread? A: It seems fighters went to Latifiyah [south of Baghdad] Baqouba [north of Baghdad] and Mosul. Now we are working on attacking them on the main road to Kut [southern Iraq]. We are always changing our tactics so they have no safe haven. We have some groups on the run - we have to keep working on our intelligence. You don’t see the enemy, we have no front line, you have people coming out from houses, cars. We have to keep civilians safe. Q: Did interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi meet with insurgents/opposition in Jordan, as some reports said? A: The meeting wasn’t with the opposition, it was eight or nine guys who are involved in trade in Jordan. He encouraged them to participate in the elections. We have more than 1 million Iraqis living in Jordan. In fact, you can’t really call anyone opposition because we are an interim government. After the election whomever is outside the government will be considered opposition in the political sense. We have not made any negotiations with former regime elements or with al-Qaeda. [Anti-US cleric] Moqtada Sadr is completely different. He is accepted by the marajahea [the Shi'ite religious council] and is also close to some former regime elements. These people want to change things politically through coups or by violence. If they are willing to come into the political process and try to change things peacefully, we will have no problem. Q: What coordination do you have with multinational forces now? A: We have advisers from Britain, the United States and Australia helping us now, since we are rebuilding the ministry from the base. We also have a headquarters commander helping us solve the problems at the lower level and at the higher level. Sometimes we give them advice. Sometimes, they give us advice. Q: How do you deal with soldiers who get trained and then desert when they face combat? A: In April, virtually all of the forces decided not to fight. In August, they did and now they do. People say they want to take a job and we pay a good salary, but they also are coming to the army because they want to serve their country. These soldiers are very dedicated. We had problems with food, for example, the food didn’t get delivered to them for one day while they were fighting in Fallujah. People are starting to understand on our side that these are the soldiers who will build a new Iraq, a democratic, federal and free Iraq that respects human rights. We’re giving the chance to everyone to begin to think about these slogans. If we open our doors to everyone who wants to be trained, so many people will come. But we won’t have enough equipment for them, no place for them to live, not enough supplies. This is the new Iraq.