thedrifter
07-25-06, 03:20 PM
July 31, 2006
Iraq’s detainee release program ‘a big mistake’
Short prison terms hurt U.S. and Iraqi policing efforts, officials say
By Sean D. Naylor
Staff writer
RAWAH, Iraq — Iraqi and U.S. officers here are highly critical of the Iraqi government’s new detainee release program, saying it hurts the credibility of coalition forces in the eyes of the Iraqi people and that one-third of those released immediately take up arms against the coalition again.
“Prime Minister [Nouri] Maliki is making a big mistake,” said Capt. Mohammed Abdalwahab, the police chief in this town of 20,000 in Anbar province. “These detainees — the coalition forces had evidence that these criminals did bad things.”
Abdalwahab found common cause with the intelligence officer for the Iraqi army’s 3rd Battalion, 2nd Brigade, 7th Division, which is stationed in Rawah and is partnered with the U.S. Army’s 4th Squadron, 14th Cavalry Regiment.
“This is the government’s biggest mistake,” said the intelligence officer, a captain who, like Abdalwahab, is a Sunni who served as an officer in Saddam Hussein’s army. “We’ve captured three or four terrorist leaders in Rawah, sent them to Baghdad, and they came back. … The terrorists aren’t scared of being captured anymore.”
The detainee release program, sometimes called an amnesty plan, is an attempt by Maliki to draw Sunni insurgent groups away from violence and into the political process. The Iraqi government now releases many detainees — especially those from so-called “Sunni rejectionist” groups, rather than the foreign fighters associated with the late Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s al-Qaida in Iraq organization — after just a few months in jail.
Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, gave his support to the program in a July 11 speech in Washington, saying the plan was born of the realization on the part of Iraq’s leaders that “ending wars inevitably require amnesties of some kind.”
But that argument made little headway with the Iraqi intelligence officer.
“It’s good to try to bring Sunnis into the fold, but not the terrorists with Iraqi blood on their hands,” he said.
Good in theory, bad in practice
Maliki’s proposal has the potential to persuade Sunni rejectionists not only to put down their weapons and return to civilian life but to actively inform on foreign jihadists, said Marine Lt. Col. Ron Gridley, executive officer for Regimental Combat Team 7, which is based at Al Asad Air Base and operates across western Iraq.
“The windfall across the board will be significant,” he said. “These same guys who rubbed elbows [with jihadists] as a matter of convenience” now can be expected to give coalition forces intelligence on the foreign fighters.
But to U.S. and Iraqi officers in Rawah, that view appears out of touch with reality.
“Actually, it’s quite the opposite,” said Army Capt. Andrew Decker, 4-14’s intelligence officer. “They look at it as a badge of honor, being locked up by coalition forces and coming out.”
It’s true that the insurgents “rubbed elbows” with hard-core jihadists while in prison, but the result was that they were able to learn new tactics, techniques and procedures for use against coalition forces, he said.
Chief Warrant Officer 3 Matt Gray, a 4-14 analysis technician, said his squadron was tracking “close to 20” insurgents who took advantage of the detainee release program to return to Rawah and resume hostilities against the coalition over the past two months. That number represents about one-third of the 50 to 70 detainees captured in the Rawah area.
U.S. officers are particularly worried that their intelligence sources will dry up when they realize that the insurgents they are helping send to jail return within a few months.
“It’s very disheartening,” Decker said. “It gives the impression we don’t know what we’re doing, and makes them not want to provide us information. We’ve lost very good tactical informants.”
“That’s why people are so scared to talk to us, so scared to engage us — because they know that these guys aren’t going away forever,” said Lt. Col. Mark Freitag, commander of the 4-14.
In their arguments against the release program, almost all the officers interviewed in Rawah cited the case of Hogar Jamal Abdul Razzaq, a local leader of Jamat Al Tawid Al Jihad, a branch of al-Qaida in Iraq.
Freitag’s squadron captured Hogar in a firefight late last year. He was sent to Abu Ghraib prison, and coalition forces here presumed they had seen the last of him. But in late May or early June, without giving the 4-14 any warning, the Maliki government released him.
“Hogar came back and went to Syria and tried to rebuild his group,” the Iraqi army intelligence officer said.
Shortly thereafter, the 4-14 noticed a rise in improvised explosive devices and mortar and rocket attacks against coalition forces.
Intelligence reports link Hogar to four or five IED attacks and similar number of indirect fire attacks against 4-14’s Combat Outpost Rawah and the downtown government building that houses the police force.
He is back on the squadron’s blacklist, and its soldiers are actively hunting for him, for the second time — a situation that has caused them intense frustration.
“When you mentioned the name Hogar on the streets of Rawah when we first got here, people would walk away,” Freitag said. “They were scared to death of this guy. When we detained Hogar … and sent him to Abu G., that was a message that went out across the town: ‘You no longer have to fear Hogar. Coalition forces … were successful in taking a known terrorist off the street.’
“The bottom line is that the guys are going away,” Freitag added. “The challenge that we’ve got right now is they go away, but they come back.”
In some cases, if coalition forces get enough advance notice of who is going to be released, they can write a rebuttal and submit it up their chain of command. That happened recently after the 4-14 received word that the Maliki government planned to release a notorious local terrorist named Radu, known as “the beheader” because of the “over 40” beheadings he had committed, according to Gray and Decker.
“We wrote that up, RCT-7 submitted a rebuttal and he was not released,” Decker said. “So we’re still doing the common-sense check to the greatest degree we can, to ensure the really significant individuals stay where they belong.”
But this system does not always work.
“Hogar, for some reason, we were never really notified when he was released,” Gray said.
Ellie
Iraq’s detainee release program ‘a big mistake’
Short prison terms hurt U.S. and Iraqi policing efforts, officials say
By Sean D. Naylor
Staff writer
RAWAH, Iraq — Iraqi and U.S. officers here are highly critical of the Iraqi government’s new detainee release program, saying it hurts the credibility of coalition forces in the eyes of the Iraqi people and that one-third of those released immediately take up arms against the coalition again.
“Prime Minister [Nouri] Maliki is making a big mistake,” said Capt. Mohammed Abdalwahab, the police chief in this town of 20,000 in Anbar province. “These detainees — the coalition forces had evidence that these criminals did bad things.”
Abdalwahab found common cause with the intelligence officer for the Iraqi army’s 3rd Battalion, 2nd Brigade, 7th Division, which is stationed in Rawah and is partnered with the U.S. Army’s 4th Squadron, 14th Cavalry Regiment.
“This is the government’s biggest mistake,” said the intelligence officer, a captain who, like Abdalwahab, is a Sunni who served as an officer in Saddam Hussein’s army. “We’ve captured three or four terrorist leaders in Rawah, sent them to Baghdad, and they came back. … The terrorists aren’t scared of being captured anymore.”
The detainee release program, sometimes called an amnesty plan, is an attempt by Maliki to draw Sunni insurgent groups away from violence and into the political process. The Iraqi government now releases many detainees — especially those from so-called “Sunni rejectionist” groups, rather than the foreign fighters associated with the late Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s al-Qaida in Iraq organization — after just a few months in jail.
Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, gave his support to the program in a July 11 speech in Washington, saying the plan was born of the realization on the part of Iraq’s leaders that “ending wars inevitably require amnesties of some kind.”
But that argument made little headway with the Iraqi intelligence officer.
“It’s good to try to bring Sunnis into the fold, but not the terrorists with Iraqi blood on their hands,” he said.
Good in theory, bad in practice
Maliki’s proposal has the potential to persuade Sunni rejectionists not only to put down their weapons and return to civilian life but to actively inform on foreign jihadists, said Marine Lt. Col. Ron Gridley, executive officer for Regimental Combat Team 7, which is based at Al Asad Air Base and operates across western Iraq.
“The windfall across the board will be significant,” he said. “These same guys who rubbed elbows [with jihadists] as a matter of convenience” now can be expected to give coalition forces intelligence on the foreign fighters.
But to U.S. and Iraqi officers in Rawah, that view appears out of touch with reality.
“Actually, it’s quite the opposite,” said Army Capt. Andrew Decker, 4-14’s intelligence officer. “They look at it as a badge of honor, being locked up by coalition forces and coming out.”
It’s true that the insurgents “rubbed elbows” with hard-core jihadists while in prison, but the result was that they were able to learn new tactics, techniques and procedures for use against coalition forces, he said.
Chief Warrant Officer 3 Matt Gray, a 4-14 analysis technician, said his squadron was tracking “close to 20” insurgents who took advantage of the detainee release program to return to Rawah and resume hostilities against the coalition over the past two months. That number represents about one-third of the 50 to 70 detainees captured in the Rawah area.
U.S. officers are particularly worried that their intelligence sources will dry up when they realize that the insurgents they are helping send to jail return within a few months.
“It’s very disheartening,” Decker said. “It gives the impression we don’t know what we’re doing, and makes them not want to provide us information. We’ve lost very good tactical informants.”
“That’s why people are so scared to talk to us, so scared to engage us — because they know that these guys aren’t going away forever,” said Lt. Col. Mark Freitag, commander of the 4-14.
In their arguments against the release program, almost all the officers interviewed in Rawah cited the case of Hogar Jamal Abdul Razzaq, a local leader of Jamat Al Tawid Al Jihad, a branch of al-Qaida in Iraq.
Freitag’s squadron captured Hogar in a firefight late last year. He was sent to Abu Ghraib prison, and coalition forces here presumed they had seen the last of him. But in late May or early June, without giving the 4-14 any warning, the Maliki government released him.
“Hogar came back and went to Syria and tried to rebuild his group,” the Iraqi army intelligence officer said.
Shortly thereafter, the 4-14 noticed a rise in improvised explosive devices and mortar and rocket attacks against coalition forces.
Intelligence reports link Hogar to four or five IED attacks and similar number of indirect fire attacks against 4-14’s Combat Outpost Rawah and the downtown government building that houses the police force.
He is back on the squadron’s blacklist, and its soldiers are actively hunting for him, for the second time — a situation that has caused them intense frustration.
“When you mentioned the name Hogar on the streets of Rawah when we first got here, people would walk away,” Freitag said. “They were scared to death of this guy. When we detained Hogar … and sent him to Abu G., that was a message that went out across the town: ‘You no longer have to fear Hogar. Coalition forces … were successful in taking a known terrorist off the street.’
“The bottom line is that the guys are going away,” Freitag added. “The challenge that we’ve got right now is they go away, but they come back.”
In some cases, if coalition forces get enough advance notice of who is going to be released, they can write a rebuttal and submit it up their chain of command. That happened recently after the 4-14 received word that the Maliki government planned to release a notorious local terrorist named Radu, known as “the beheader” because of the “over 40” beheadings he had committed, according to Gray and Decker.
“We wrote that up, RCT-7 submitted a rebuttal and he was not released,” Decker said. “So we’re still doing the common-sense check to the greatest degree we can, to ensure the really significant individuals stay where they belong.”
But this system does not always work.
“Hogar, for some reason, we were never really notified when he was released,” Gray said.
Ellie