Interview with Interior Ministry spokesman

Sabah Kadhim, spokesman for Interior Minister Falah al-Nakib, has said that the ministry's biggest challenge was to provide enough security to encourage United Nations workers to return to Iraq in preparation for an election in January 2005. Aid agencies and foreign investors must also feel comfortable enough to return to Iraq amid the recent spate of kidnappings orchestrated to scare them away, he added. More than 130,000 police and civilians are now working in the Interior Ministry. In an interview with IRIN, Kadhim said his ministry's two biggest current problems were organised crime gangs and followers of former President Saddam Hussein. QUESTION: What is the ministry's biggest goal? ANSWER: We are preparing for the election in January. We'll try our best to do it. So far, we're still optimistic. If you look at the country, the Kurdish north is quiet and the south is generally much quieter than it has been. [Cleric Moqtada Sadr's Mehdi militia] was supposed to explode into something bigger [in southern Iraq]. But we met one of his representatives, and they said they wanted to cooperate with the police. Q: What's the biggest change in the ministry since you started a month ago? A: The situation suddenly changed because we were, until 28 June, recognised by the UN as a fully occupied country. Now that we are fully sovereign, we're fighting for more - to restore security in Iraq, to do reconstruction in Iraq, to provide the necessary services such as electricity and water. Q: We understand that you are talking with resistance fighters about giving them amnesty? A: We're discussing giving everyone a chance to participate in the new Iraq. As long as they didn't cause violence in the past, they're welcome to get involved. Iraqis are quite intelligent - they know how to handle the security issues here. Ultimately, we want the foreign troops to leave in the next six months to a year. Q: Is it possible to think foreign troops such as the United States could leave Iraq in six months? A: Six months may be a very short period of time when we have inherited years of Saddam. But we also had [US administrator Paul] Bremer for 15 months. They [US-led administrators] made a lot of mistakes. They should have made a new government in April of last year. We came, 300 people who were in exile during the former Saddam Hussein regime, and the Americans didn't want it. We had been working against Saddam's government for so long that we were ready to take over. They [US-led administrators] felt it was so easy to win the war that it would be so easy to win peace. Dissolving the [former Iraq] army really caused them problems. It was a big mistake. Q: How are new police being recruited? A: We have to be careful to do the vetting of these security people. [US military consultants and other] are recruiting many people who are not desirable, because some of them were criminals in the former regime. Many of those people had no respect for basic human rights. They were torturing people under the former regime. But we can have the [former] decision makers in the force. There's no problem working with them, as long as they didn't commit any crime, just like [Prime Minister Iyad] Allawi said. Q: Where do you find qualified people to work, especially in this ministry, if many of them worked for the former regime? A: We are finding criminals in the police forces now. People need training. We have another programme we're working on in a major way. We're very pleased with the response we're getting from countries regarding the new government's needs regarding the police. In the [United Arab] Emirates [UAE], in Jordan, in Egypt, our police are being trained. The training is being supervised by the Germans. The German ambassador in Iraq is telling us we have to train even more now. He is asking us to tell him our requirements for security forces. France also wants to help with training or equipment. Equipment is a very different issue, though, because they didn't want to equip them with tanks, for example. Jordan offered to sell us 150 tanks. The UAE offered to send us 270 vehicles. Q: We know the Egyptian and Jordanian governments both offered to send some sort of peacekeeping troops as well. Will you accept them? A: That's not really going to happen. It's [a problem] on both sides. If they see the anti-American, anti-Iraqi feeling, if they bring troops here, others might not know where their loyalties lie. Other countries like Canada also want to help. We need to use their offers wisely. Q: Who will serve in the new mukhabarat, or security police force? A: It will be more an "istikhbarat" or an intelligence-gathering force. They're not scaring people - that's not the plan. Having the problems of the past [with scare tactics and torture] we want to do it differently. We are recruiting people, and a lot of it is tribal. They can help us with intelligence gathering in areas where we traditionally have fallen short. The army will also have a part. You've got Muwfak Rubaie [new national security adviser] and a system modelled on the American National Security Council. We work in cooperation with the Ministry of Defence, which is under the command of the prime minister on this. Q: What is the quickest way forward now? A: We're working with the army to lessen the number of foreign troops here. We want to lower the number of foreign troops, especially in places like Baghdad. It's at the discussion and command stages in the Ministry of Interior. There is now a very different path for us to play. It's very easy for us to say to multinational forces - go bomb Fallujah, even though it causes problems. But if we have to do this, we will do it. [Recent US bombings of houses in Fallujah have been done with the help of Iraq intelligence forces, according to Allawi.] We want to persuade residents that there is no reason to fight the government, because the occupation is over. This is a recognised government. If it were quiet in Iraq, tomorrow, they [US-led troops] would leave. They want to go. I don't think the government wants them to stay, no matter who is in power. Q: So, who is causing all of the problems now? Is it only people loyal to former President Saddam Hussein? A: We have two major [problem] areas. The first is organised crime. We just conducted an operation in Baghdad and arrested 150 people with explosives and drugs. In another operation, we arrested 527 people. These organised crime "gangs" are built up from the release of prisoners by Saddam as the US-led troops came in. So the Coalition has to deal with prostitutes, drugs, explosions. Also, the borders are open, so that adds all kinds of crime. Second, we have former Saddam followers. They have plenty of currency. Even the new Iraqi dinar was forged. It wasn't as good as the original, but this is how they do it [finance themselves]. Q: How will the ministry work with US forces in the country? A: They're all in the process of formation. We've only been working [since the handover of sovereignty 28 June] and people expect miracles from us. The US troops have their own command and we coordinate with them. There might be a misunderstandings, but we can resist any unreasonable demand. We have liaison officers between the Ministry of Interior, the Ministry of Defence and their officers. Every team is commanded by Iraqis. Q: Why are you working out of a former bomb shelter instead of the Interior Ministry building? A: We need offices everywhere. There's a terrible shortage of them. For example, poor people move into the former Ministry of Defence. It's such a big problem, because people just moved in. How can we kick them out? This government is just taking over from now, because the Coalition forces here were just taking care of themselves. Not only are we starting from zero, we're starting from minus zero. We don't have the security to do what we need to do right now.