Global Policy Forum

By Omar Anwar

When the U.S. military looks at Iraq's 40,000-strong National Guard, it sees an exit strategy. What Iraqis often see instead is an ill-disciplined rabble many regard as more foe than friend. With Iraq's police force widely considered ineffectual and the army only a few thousand strong, the U.S.-trained National Guard has become the frontline domestic security force in the fight against a determined guerrilla insurgency.

The sooner the National Guard, eventually due to expand to 60,000 men, is trained and backed up by a reliable police force, the sooner U.S. forces can withdraw, U.S. commanders have said. That may be all well and good for U.S. forces, who have occupied Iraq for the past 21 months, losing nearly 1,300 troops in the process. But many Iraqis have a low opinion of the Guard, a force half-way between a police and an army, rather along the lines of Italy's Carabinieri or Spain's Civil Guard.

The animosity stems in large part from the fact National Guard soldiers wear a camouflage uniform similar to the Americans and, being U.S.-trained, have picked up attitudes and habits many Iraqis associate with the disliked U.S. military. "Are the National Guards wearing the same uniform as the occupiers?" Sheikh Ahmed Abdul Ghafoor al-Sammerai, a preacher at Baghdad's Um al-Qura mosque, asked the faithful recently. "They fire randomly at people," said Sammerai, who also accused a National Guard trooper of shooting dead one of his bodyguards while he was queueing for petrol. "Is the blood of Iraqis that cheap? Who is responsible for this bloodshed? Many children, young men, old men, and women have died from random shooting for no reason," he said.

"Heathen Guards"

The National Guard, who were originally called the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps and designed as a force to stay in barracks and used only to quell occasional civil disorder, have become as common on the streets as police in many parts of the country. Armed with AK-47 assault rifles, they often wear traditional Arab scarves around their faces, guerrilla-style, and tote their guns as they are driven around in the back of pick-up trucks. Most have received only limited training, and even if they have had that, the courses do not involve lessons in restraint of force or basic civil rights, one U.S. trainer said.

Some analysts have also raised the prospect of the National Guard becoming a future source of instability, a large armed force that could be an actor in possible future civil conflicts. Like the police, the National Guard are targeted in daily car bombings and ambushes by insurgents. There are no precise figures, but it is estimated more than 1,000 National Guards and even more police have been killed in the 18-month insurgency. Their courage is not disputed; but Iraqis say living with the threat of death hanging over them has made many Guards aggressive and careless in dealings with their own people. "They cover their faces and rank because they are afraid. Officers in the past showed off their ranks and were proud to be officers," said a woman civil servant, who refers to them as the "non-National Guards," doubting their patriotism.

Rasool Noori, an unemployed 22-year-old, said he had witnessed Guards firing warning shots to prevent drivers and pedestrians approaching their convoys, like the Americans do. "Most of the guardsmen were laborers and streetsellers before joining the National Guard," said Noori. "They are Iraqis like us, but they act like the Americans. They lack morals."

Iraq's Defense Minister Hazim al-Shaalan, whose department is responsible for the National Guard, has admitted incidents of ill-disciplined Guards insulting their commanders. "That is not acceptable," he told U.S. and Iraqi officers at a conference this week intended to address, among other things, problems of discipline in the new force. "The National Guard is above all loyalties and is for the people and the country." Iraqis, some of whom also praise the Guard for being forceful in difficult times, have developed a play on words to insult them: their Arabic name is al-Haras al-Watani but for many they have become al-Haras al-Wathani -- the Heathen Guard.