Iraq's Interior Miinistry

It may seem weird to Americana that the cabinet post of the Interior in Iraq is among the most important. The Department of the Interior in the United States has very little power. The Interior ministry in Iraq, on the other hand is in charge of counter-insurgency, hence responsible for granting multi-million dollar contracts to those they deem fit and by "fit," I mean those who share the profit in half.

Under the governing council, this important position went, strangely enough to Mr. Samir al-Sumaeda'i. Samir is not closely affiliated with any of the major blocs, but being a Sunni liberal was apparently enough for a clearance by L. Paul Bremer III. Samir al-Sumaida'i has since served as Iraq's ambassador to the United Nations and as of a few months ago as the Iraqi ambassador to Washington. He is eloquent, but beyond that I am not so sure about his qualifications or his loyalties for that matter. There were a few people who behaved rather well by keeping a low profile after having been blessed by Bremer and they continued to stay in positions of power, Samir al-Sumaida'i is certainly one of those few people. He is not a politician in the Iraqi sense of the word because a politician in Iraq has to come from within the ranks of one of the major political parties.

Under Prime Minister Allawi, the post was given to Falah Hassan al-Naqib, yet another Sunni. But unlike al-Sumaida'i, al-Naqib was far more controversial. There were accusations that he sympathized with the insurgency, whether true or not, there are no doubts about the fact that al-Naqib did a horrible job at bringing security to the Iraqis. He recruited Ba'thists to the ministry at a time when school teachers were losing their jobs because of de-Ba'thification. Under Allawi, de-Ba'thification and re-Ba'thification occurred at the same time!

Hassan al-Naqib, like many of his colleagues were let go when the Shi'a/Kurdish government swept the January 30 elections. That Interior ministry was then given to one of the worst nightmares of the New Iraq, Bayan Solagh Jabr of the SCIRI.

Mr. Jabr was so sectarian that immediately after taking over the ministry, most Sunnis were expelled from the ministry. This happened infront of the Americans who, having just celebrated the monumental elections in Iraq thought that the UIA can do no wrong. What started with expelling Sunnis soon developed into a militia called Maghawir al-Dakhiliyyah, to say nothing of the detention centers all over Baghdad, most notably that of al-Jadirriyyah. In these detention centers, Sunnis (not all terrorists) were tortured and many killed.

while Bayan Jabr lost that job after the December 15 elections, he got a better one, finance minister. The ministry is now in the hands of Jawad al-Bolani, the 45 year old engineer who knows nothing about policing or security. The lower ranks continue to be occupied by those appointed by Jabr and so it is highly unlikely to see any major changes in the next four years.

The ministry needs a shake up very badly. The bad apples need to go and a set of non-sectarian bureaucrats need to take over the ministry. That is mere wishful thinking though, none of that is likely to happen.