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Training Iraqi police remains hard task
(Iraq)
Updated: 2005-11-30 11:37

At a dusty school converted to a military outpost, American soldiers are packing up this week, preparing — yet again — to hand most of the security control of this city to Iraqi forces.

It's their third try, and one big problem remains: Only 100 of the 700 police on the city payroll actually show up for work most days, U.S. commanders acknowledge. As President Bush prepares to herald American progress in training Iraqi forces, Samarra is a bitter example of the long road ahead.

U.S. commanders say the plan to soon relinquish the city's largest inner base to the commandos demonstrates the growing competence of Iraqi troops. By next summer, they hope to hand all security duties in Samarra to a local force of 1,200.

But skeptics, including some U.S. soldiers involved in previous hand over attempts, point out that this is only the latest effort to put Iraqis in charge of this Sunni Arab city of about 200,000. Twice before over the past two years, police crumbled in the face of insurgent threats.

Training Iraqi police remains hard task
In this picture released by the U.S. Air Force on Nov. 24, 2005, Army Staff Sgt. Jason Lyday, left, instructs Iraqi Army soldiers on muzzle discipline prior to entering a room during a dry run of close quarters battle at weapons class on Forward Operations Base McHenry northern Iraq, near Kirkuk, Wednesday, Nov. 23, 2005.[AP]
"If they give it to the cops that are here now, we'll just wind up coming back," said Staff Sgt. Eric Doolittle of Jacksonville, Fla., assigned to the 101st Airborne Division.

In other parts of Iraq, there is more progress toward establishing local forces willing to fight the insurgency — either in cities such as Baghdad or in the desolate desert plains of Anbar province.

Large Shiite cities in the south such as Karbala and Nasiriyah are largely in the hands of Iraqi forces, for example. And Najaf, where U.S. troops fought Shiite militants in some of the war's bloodiest battles, is now quiet and mostly devoid of Americans.

But throughout central and northern Iraq, cities that are either Sunni Arab or ethnically or religiously mixed pose a much more difficult challenge.

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