BAGHDAD, Iraq, March 6 — As the threat of full-scale sectarian strife looms, the American military is scrambling to try to weed out ethnic or religious partisans from the Iraqi security forces.
Max Becherer/Polaris, for NYTAn Iraqi police officer patrolled in Baghdad on Jan. 4, after a roadside bomb had destroyed an armored van used by the American military.
Iraqi Law Enforcement
Max Becherer/Polaris, for The New York TimesMaj. Gen. Joseph F. Peterson leads the training program for the Iraqi police forces.
The United States faces the possibility that it has been arming one side in a prospective civil war. Early on, Americans ceded operational control of the police to the Iraqi government. Now, the police forces are overseen at the highest levels by religious Shiite parties with militias, and reports of uniformed death squads have risen sharply in the past year.
The American military is trying an array of possible solutions, including quotas to increase the number of Sunni Arab recruits in police academies, firing Shiite police commanders who appear to tolerate militias, and sending 200 training teams composed of military police officers or former civilian police officers to Iraqi stations, even in remote and risky locations.
There is no quick or painless fix. The efforts risk alienating Shiite politicians, who have fiercely resisted attempts to wrest away their control of the security forces. The moves may appeal, though, to recalcitrant Sunni Arabs, whom the Americans want to draw into the political process.
Trying to reform the police forces could take years, because sectarian loyalties have become entrenched, and police officers are rooted in their communities, senior military officials acknowledge. Critics say American efforts to train the Iraqi police also continue to be hampered by a shortage of troops and civilian advisers.
Several of the initiatives, such as enrolling more Sunni Arab students in police academies, have been going on for months. Others, such as the deployment of the new police training teams, are just beginning on a large scale. The wave of sectarian violence that followed the bombing of a Shiite shrine in Samarra on Feb. 22 has heightened the urgency of the measures.
After the bombing, mobs led by Shiite militiamen attacked dozens of Sunni mosques and left hundreds dead. Many police units stood aside, either out of confusion or sectarian loyalties, according to Iraqi witnesses. Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the top American commander in Iraq, said Friday that police officers had allowed militiamen through checkpoints in eastern Baghdad, where much of the violence occurred.
The Iraqi Army poses less of a problem than the police, because the American military has direct operational control over it, and because the Americans took more care in building it up. Kurdish militiamen, though, make up a significant part of it.
The military's efforts to revamp the police are taking place alongside a strong push by the American ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, to press Iraqi politicians who are forming the new government to appoint a nonsectarian figure as head of the Interior Ministry, which controls the police.
"When you're forming a government, you can't form it with any kind of sectarian element," said Maj. Gen. J. D. Thurman, commander of the Fourth Infantry Division, charged with controlling Baghdad. "That's got to be put aside, particularly with military forces." The attempts to erase sectarianism dovetail with a broader American initiative to strengthen police training this year by diverting more resources away from mentoring the Iraqi Army. The military hopes to have 200,000 Iraqi police officers in place by early 2007.
The development of the police is in some ways more crucial than that of the army, because the Americans want the police to handle all security inside Iraq.
The units believed to be most plagued by militia recruitment and sectarian loyalties are the police paramilitary forces, which have a total of 17,500 members, the American military says. The regular blue-uniformed police force numbers 89,000, and the border force totals 20,000. But there are serious doubts about whether anyone has an accurate overall tally.
The paramilitary forces are divided three ways — the commandos, the public order brigades and a mechanized brigade that will soon be shifted to the army. Matthew Sherman, a former Interior Ministry adviser, said Shiite parties were especially keen to seize control of those forces because they can operate anywhere in the country and have great autonomy.
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