Hearing of the House Armed Services Committee, Subject: Independent Assessment of Iraqi Security Forces

HEARING OF THE HOUSE ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE
SUBJECT: INDEPENDENT ASSESSMENT OF IRAQI SECURITY FORCES

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REP. HANK JOHNSON (D-GA): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I want to thank each of you all for your service to the nation. This morning there was a hearing where Dr. William Perry, who's former secretary of Defense and also a member of the Iraq Study Group -- we received testimony from him today. And one of his statements was that the most important benchmark that needs to be achieved by the Iraqi government is reconciliation between the Shi'as and the Sunnis. And he pointed out, as the GAO report pointed out or as the GAO report found, that the Iraqi government had failed to show significant progress towards meeting that benchmark.

And so in that regard, I wanted to ask whether or not you all studied the makeup of the Iraqi security forces. Can you share with us any information in that regard -- makeup in terms of Sunnis, Shi'a, Kurds, even tribal personnel.

GEN. JONES: We certainly did, and as Chief Ramsey pointed out, that in those areas where there is no ethnic balance, you have sectarian problems, particularly in the national police, which is 85 percent Shi'a. On the army side, our testimony would be that of the 10 Iraqi divisions; four are Shi'a-led, four are Sunni-led and three are Kurdish-led, if I have that right.

MR./GEN. : They're developing one. That's 11.

GEN. JONES: And they're developing one.

MR./GEN. : Three Sunni, four --

GEN. JONES: Three Sunnis and four Kurd -- and on the army side of things, there seems to have been paid more attention to the ethnic make-up of the force and correspondingly fewer problems. On the police side, not as much attention has been paid to that, correspondingly higher problems.

REP. JOHNSON: Okay, well, if you will, I'd just like to move on.

GEN. JONES: That's fine.

REP. JOHNSON: I'd like to move to this question. Describe the command-and-control relationship between the Iraqi national government, which is, of course, controlled by the Shi'a, and the Iraqi security forces, if there is any command-and-control relationship. Can you all describe that?

GEN. JONES: Sure. Let me ask General Joulwan to take on the army task --

REP. JOHNSON: Because it appears that with private contractors training the Iraqi security forces, with the Iraq government being kind of out of balance with respect to being able to bring some reconciliation between Shi'as and Sunnis, it just seems to be a dysfunctional kind of structure there.

And could you all just shed some light on that?

GEN. JOULWAN: On the command and control, particularly in the army and special forces side, let me go to the special forces. And by the way, it's a totally integrated organization in the special forces. All factions are represented, and they're performing superbly. The issue on command and control is that -- while we were there -- it now reports directly to the prime minister, and so when you talk about the chain of command, some of us thought that was an issue here; that if it reports directly to the minister, they're bypassing a great deal of the military chain of command from the minister of Defense on down.

There is also some indication that in the chain of command, that there is interference by the prime -- at the prime minister level, if I can be very candid, and I think we mentioned it in this report -- about bypassing, again, the minister of Defense and some of the forward-deployed commanders in giving instructions down to the lower levels.

So I think there is a chain of control -- chain of command issue here within the army and within the minister of Defense and within the office of the commander in chief, the prime minister. And I think that needs to be looked at if we're going to get through this sectarian part of the challenge that we face.

REP. JOHNSON: So you now note that we've spent about $19 billion in U.S. taxpayer money training the Iraqi security forces and another 2 billion (dollars) is requested for the 2008 fiscal year. And with that, I will close. Thank you.

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