Source:
nytimesIraq Balks at U.S. Bid to Widen Sunni Police Role
Joao Silva for The New York Times
Recruits who are training to be police officers at an American-financed academy in Habbaniya, Iraq, lined up for lunch recently.
By MICHAEL R. GORDON
Published: October 28, 2007
HABBANIYA, Iraq — The American military’s push to organize Sunni Arabs into local neighborhood watch groups has been one of the United States’ most important initiatives in Iraq — so much so that President Bush flew to Anbar Province in September to highlight growing alliances with Sunni tribal leaders.
But now that the Americans are trying to institutionalize the arrangement by training the Sunnis to become policemen, the effort has been hampered by halfhearted support and occasionally outright resistance from a Shiite-dominated national government that is still inclined to see the Sunnis as a once and future threat.
It was the American military that pressed to open the new Habbaniya Police Training Center, where Sunni tribesmen and former insurgents are to be trained to serve as policemen in Anbar. And it was the Americans who provided the uniforms, food, new classrooms and equipment for the police recruits.
While the Iraqi government has agreed to basic police instruction at the academy, it has balked at training police leaders there. The government has also scaled back plans by Anbar officials to expand the provincial police force by almost 50 percent..................
Read more:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/28/world/middleeast/28sunnis.html?ref=world