Yesterday's Third Platoon patrol took us to the same National Police headquarters in the Kamshara area as the day before.  Later in the morning a joint patrol was planned to clear the main road of rocks and debris.  The purpose here is to remove any type of concealment for explosives planted along the route.

Along with Third Platoon came Bravo Battery's commander Captain Christopher Kliewer, a red-haired Oklahoman who watched as the acting-platoon leader, Staff Sergeant Eddie Ruiz, sat down with the National Police captain.

The meeting between leaders was amicable enough. Ruiz ran down the usual checklist of supplies the Army could provide and, just as the day before, discussed the morale of his colleague's men. 

As the meeting came to a close the room's door swung open and a policeman entered somewhat excited.  There had been a carjacking on a highway nearby.  There was no other information.  The policeman left.

The National Police captain sighed and seemed disinterested considering the violence that occurred less than 500 yards away.  It wasn't in his district, he told the Americans through their military translator.  He would need a direct order from his commanding officer to send men those few hundred yards to assist in the necessary police work.  Otherwise, if one of these policemen were hurt doing so, he'd be in considerable trouble.

At that moment the same national policeman entered the room and reported a civilian was killed in the attack.  A minor commotion ensued as both the National Police captain and the Army translator both tried to question the bearer of news, who seemed uniformed on anything but the most general of details.  

He eventually left and the room settled once more.

The National Police captain continued, saying the Iraqi Police were responsible for that area, and that they do nothing but checkpoints without patrolling their area. The captain recounted one incident where Iraqi Police simply stood by as gunman opened fire on a group of civilians.

Some background: The National Police and the Iraqi Police constitute two of the six armed security forces operating in the Kadarah neighborhood, the other four being the U.S. Army, the Iraqi Army, the neighborhood-based Sons of Iraq, and the Kurdish security detail for Iraq's president Jalal Talibani, who lives in western Karadah.

Soldiers here explained the difference between the Iraqi Police and the National Police as being akin to local and state police in the United States.  While the Iraqi Police are strictly assigned to neighborhood, the National Police are assigned throughout the country.

Checkpoints manned by these various groups can be as close as a few blocks away. There is little or no communication between these checkpoints directly, Captain Kliewer said, but so far this hasn't presented any significant problems.

A National Police checkpoint in Karadah. Photo: David Botti

Sergeant Cork, a third platoon team leader suddenly entered the room.  A passenger in the targeted car had made his way from the highway to the police headquarters.  Blood was pouring from the man's gunshot wounds.  The platoon medic, 20-year-old Private First Class Eric Bradley, was treating him on the sidewalk.  The driver of the car, Cork confirmed, was killed.

With the wounded man now in his district, the National Police captain agreed to take him to the hospital.  We arrived outside to see the man lead to a waiting police pickup truck.  He was shirtless.  A bandage was tied around his shoulder and another he held to his bleeding chin.  

Walking back to his humvee Kliewer expressed frustration over the National Police captain's unwillingness to send men to the scene of the crime.

"In the Army, if we needed to go into another unit's AO [Area of Operations] we'd do it no problem," he said.  "You just open up a line of communication and take it from there."

Making things more complicated is a perceived lagging behind of the Iraqi Police's effectiveness in basic police work. According to Kliewer, their view of the job is  bureaucratic: they're there to simply sit in the office and take reports.

If the situation sounds complex and difficult to deal with from the U.S. Army's mentoring point of view, it is.  But soldiers here don't necessarily measure success in this situation according to degrees of rivalries.  Minor disagreements are far more desirable than past situations.

"A year ago these guys wouldn't trust each other because they worried about their forces being infiltrated by militias and other types of bad guys," Kliewer said.  "Now they complain about the traffic situations."

Kliewer likened the relationships between the various security forces as similar to the type of rivalries between the Army and the Marine Corps, or other branches of service.  The problem is there, he said, but it's manageable–and it's a far greater improvement over what's occurred during the past few years throughout the neighborhood.