In the Shadow of the Swords will hopefully wake America up to the fact that there are dedicated men and women, not just in the military, who are working in harm’s way all over the world, trying to bring a semblance of order into societies and countries that in many cases have never known it, or at least not known it for decades or even centuries. Their work is particularly important and dangerous in the many so-called ‘Third World’ countries that have been gripped by strife, war, or despotic and oppressive leaderships.
From the day President George W. Bush brought the War on Terror to Iraq, and up until the last American cop left the Baghdad Police Academy, men and women from law enforcement took the risks and accepted the challenges of working in a war zone to support U.S. policy and help rebuild Iraq. They dedicated themselves to improving the lives of innocent Iraqi people, yearning for a breath of freedom following the horror of life under Saddam and his regime, and the destruction brought to their historic land by an invading army.
This book looks through the eyes of the dedicated men and women who stepped up to this challenge. It also brings to light those who ‘gamed’ the system and literally stole money from the American taxpayer, receiving generous salaries for duties not performed. It shares the recollections of working with bewildered Iraqi cadets, who lacked any understanding of Western law-enforcement tactics, methods, and (especially) police ethics. It highlights the impact on family members back home, who saw the carnage on the streets of Baghdad via the daily barrage of television news, and it reveals the hypocrisy of the bureaucrats in the ‘Green Zone’, who attended their embassy cocktail parties and stood inside Saddam’s palaces with arms folded across their chests, thinking ‘deep thoughts’. Ultimately, it opens up a conversation about the wisdom of any future efforts to bring American- or Western-style law enforcement to Third World nations.
There is also plenty of humor, as seen in the daily practical jokes and camaraderie that developed between a disparate group of American (as well as some foreign) cops, thrown together in the middle of a hot war zone. You will see how we survived and faced the immense challenges of just making it through another day. Photographs paint a visual history of the places and people who were brought together and who persevered through difficult times to establish a brotherhood–in-arms, understandable only by those who answered the call.
While many books covering the challenging events of America’s War on Terror have come from journalists, politicians or soldiers, not many have spoken of the effort from the viewpoint of a civilian contractor, sent to help rebuild Iraqi society following the fall of Saddam. This rebuilding included the restoration of government services, to bring back some semblance of normalcy to a society that had nearly been destroyed. As a long-time police officer and contractor in Iraq, I can tell a very different side of the story. This is not the viewpoint from the lofty towers of political appointees and senior officials, who have reputations to protect and records to defend, but rather that of someone who was on the ground, getting his hands dirty and seeing firsthand our successes and, sadly, some of our failures.
“You’re making $14,000 a month and you want to complain?” Tom Burnett said to the group of instructors who approached him with questions about the weakness of the training curriculum at the Baghdad Police Academy. “I only have one thing to say, window or aisle?” This phrase, ‘window or aisle’, became the almost daily refrain from those running the police training program in Iraq. It signalled that they really didn’t give a damn about feedback from instructors on the front lines, dealing with the challenges of actually training police cadets. All the instructors felt that six weeks of training, conducted through a translator, wasn’t nearly enough, barely scratching the surface of what the cadets would need to survive on the streets of Baghdad and elsewhere in Iraq. It is a difficult enough job on the streets of America, let alone in the extremely challenging environment of Iraq, where police were prime targets for an insurgency in full swing. But it seemed the program managers in the Green Zone were interested in only one thing—getting police officers on the streets as quickly as possible, with little regard for how well they were prepared. They were viewed as something akin to ‘cannon fodder’—just toss them into the lion’s den and if three-quarters of them are killed, so be it. That was the governing philosophy of the people in charge of rebuilding the Iraqi police force.
Their apparent opinion was that few knew or even cared about what was happening at an out-of-public-view training site in Baghdad, or any of the other locations around Iraq. And to be honest, most Americans simply didn’t pay attention, or even know what we were doing—we didn’t make the evening news. Back in the States, people were more concerned with what color to paint the spare bedroom, who to invite to next Saturday’s cocktail party, or little Miss Buffy’s dance recital on Tuesday night. We kicked Saddam out of Iraq, and rather quickly at that, much quicker than we had prepared for, in fact. As far as the American ‘public’ was concerned, what happened afterwards was someone else’s problem. Those with family members in the military, or serving out there as civilians, certainly cared, but few others in America did. Nor did they really want to hear about it. We were out of sight, and easy to put out of mind.
No one knew about the American cops struggling to rebuild a police force that had been disbanded through the stupidity of American bureaucrats. Few Americans knew about people like my buddy Bob (Baghdad Boob) Manfreed, initially enticed to Iraq by the high salary, but who developed a genuine affection for the cadets he worked with each day. Not many Americans cared that instructors like my friends, and many others, were working in very basic conditions, often without even the barest necessities of life. Like toilet paper.
Instructors faced almost daily mortar attacks, as well as more simple challenges—with dozens of us packed into spaces designed for far fewer. Most Americans simply did not care that instructors had to deal with out-of-touch program managers in the Green Zone, who really didn’t give a damn about us once they sent us out into the field, not even bothering to learn most of our names. These same instructors faced a constant threat of attack from within, by Iraqi cadets sympathetic to the insurgency, but no one really cared. The insurgency had developed out of the sheer stupidity exhibited by the career bureaucrats who had arrived in Iraq early after the invasion. They were the epitome of the saying, “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” There was corruption, but sadly the American public has become conditioned to it in government programs, and most accepted that at least some was inevitable. Corruption in the Iraqi Police Training Program was accepted and, sadly, far too often ignored.
But why tell the story now, with our larger involvement in Iraq ‘in the rear view mirror’? With concern about radical Islamic groups like ISIS threatening to lead to a new, larger American presence in Iraq and elsewhere, the timing is ideal for a wider, deeper examination of American efforts to use civilian contractors to provide training to Third World countries. This book will remember those who sacrificed and faced the dangers in Iraq, most serving with honor and distinction when their country asked. Was this cost and risk worthwhile?
No other books have dealt with our efforts to reconstruct the Iraqi National Police following the disastrous decision by L. Paul Bremmer (the man President Bush appointed to oversee the reconstruction of Iraq) to disband the Iraqi police and start again from scratch. The dust from the collapse of Saddam’s regime had barely begun to settle when a serious insurgency took root, and many of the insurgents were the same Iraqi army and police personnel who had been ousted as a result of Bremmer’s decision. We are long overdue for a comprehensive narrative of American and coalition efforts to rebuild Iraqi infrastructure, of which the police are a major part.
Police officers, deputy sheriffs, federal agents, and corrections officers from all over America traveled to Iraq to answer the call for ‘police trainers’ to help reconstruct the Iraqi police force. Some came for the adventure, some out of a sense of patriotism, and some for no other reason than the money. Iraqi Police Trainers were indeed paid well, roughly $168,000 per year, far more than any cop would ever see back in America. Were there drawbacks? Absolutely. Living conditions were austere, and there were shortages of the basics Americans have grown accustomed to. Over in Iraq, you couldn’t run down to the corner Quick Trip to pick up a roll of toilet paper or loaf of bread or gallon of milk. Aside from the separation from loved ones, there was also the constant threat of attack both from outside the academy, and from within. During one period, the academy came under daily mortar attack for over a month.
Do I sound a bit jaded and critical? You bet I do, but pointing out shortcomings in order to hopefully create a better program is the right thing to do. Since my time in Baghdad, and since I started writing this book, I’m sure there have been some improvements, and hopefully some of the waste in the program has been fixed or discarded. America still has international police-training programs going on in different parts of the world, so it’s important to learn from mistakes. Hopefully, lessons will be learned.
Were we all perfect? Certainly not, no one ever is, and we made our share of mistakes. My intention is not to give a blanket indictment of everyone who oversaw the program. There was enough blame to go around, but I think the time has come for a critical look at this little-known part of the American reconstruction effort in Iraq.