Baghdad security to be revamped
In a bid to curb sectarian violence, Iraq’s government plans to restructure the capital’s security forces by putting all police officers and paramilitary soldiers under one commander.
Iraqis in the new National Police force would wear a newly-designed uniform and drive similar patrol cars, said Colonel Ali Rashid, a police supervisor at the Ministry of the Interior.
Currently, Baghdad is filled with tens of thousands of police officers, soldiers and paramilitary troops, whose identities and allegiances are often not known.
In addition to widespread attacks by Sunni Arab-led insurgents, Baghdad is rife with Shiite militias and death squads that carry out sectarian reprisal killings, often dumping the bodies of their tortured victims on city streets
In many cases, witnesses and authorities say such attacks are carried out by men wearing police uniforms, leading Sunni Arabs to argue that Iraq’s Shiite-led Interior Ministry at least tacitly condones the violence.
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