Iraq security forces fire 1,300 deserters
BAGHDAD — Iraqi officials said Sunday that they had fired about 1,300 soldiers and police officers who refused to fight Shiite Muslim militias during the recent government crackdown, desertions that raise questions about the likely performance of Iraqi forces as U.S. troop levels decrease.
The announcement provided the first detailed accounting of the resistance put up by some Iraqi soldiers and police during the offensive, which began March 25 in the southern city of Basra and sparked clashes in several Shiite strongholds in Baghdad.
A high-ranking police official in Basra said a roundup of alleged militia sympathizers had begun Saturday and that "a large number" of police officers were arrested at work and accused of membership in militias. "They were high-ranking and with different positions," said the Iraqi official, who was not authorized to speak and would not give his name.
He did not specify which militias they were accused of supporting.
A spokesman for the Interior Ministry, Abdul Kareem Khalaf, said fired troops would face court-martial after having deserted for political, religious and ethnic reasons.
Khalaf described their offenses as "showing solidarity with outlaws," but did not detail the specific charges they face. Khalaf did not say how many of those fired were police and how many were soldiers.
Khalaf said most of the desertions occurred in Basra, where 921 police officers and soldiers were fired. The other deserters were from Kut, the capital of Wasit province and the scene of intense fighting in the days immediately after the launch of the Basra operation.
U.S. and Iraqi officials have said that police officers were most likely to have gone AWOL because of pressure they faced in their own neighborhoods. They said this was especially true in militia-heavy areas such as Sadr City, the Baghdad stronghold of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr and his Mahdi Army militia. Unlike soldiers, police report for duty in the districts where they live.
Three days after the offensive began, Salman Freiji, the chief of the Sadr organization in Sadr City, greeted about 40 men who said they were police and soldiers. The men, wearing dark glasses and masks, told journalists accompanying them that they would not fight fellow Shiites and wanted to give their weapons to Sadr. Video and photographs from journalists showed Freiji giving the men olive branches and Korans in return.
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