Iraqi police applicants unhappy with delays

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Iraqi police applicants unhappy with delays
By James Warden, Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Monday, April 7, 2008

BAGHDAD — Delays in hiring “Sons of Iraq” volunteers into the Iraqi police are frustrating applicants whom the program aims to recruit away from competing militia groups.

Leaders say the recent fighting around Baghdad has delayed the hiring process, but others blame the government’s Ministry of Interior for just one more holdup in a process that was supposed to have finished before the fighting began.

Nearly 100 applicants formed up Saturday in the Ghazaliya area of Baghdad to talk with Capt. Rob Gillespie — commander of B Troop, 1st Squadron, 75th Cavalry Regiment — about their complaints.

American and Iraqi officials originally latched onto the Sunni-initiated “Sons of Iraq” movement, which in this area is called the Ghazaliya Guardians, as a temporary security solution against sectarian violence. The movement has since spread across Iraq, including Shiite-dominated areas like the one in which Gillespie spoke Saturday.

Yet leaders have also pitched the movement as a way to move jobless young men into temporary employment prior to hiring them into permanent jobs either with Iraqi security forces or as civil servants in the Iraqi government.


Rest of article at: http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=53887