by Dimiter Kenarov

Originally published in the Politics Blog of Esquire

JEWEL SAMAD/AFP VIA GETTY

“As the Iraqi security forces stand up, coalition forces can stand down,” George W. Bush said in 2005 with oracular brevity.

George W. Bush was a bad oracle.

Five years, a hundred thousand lives, and hundreds of billions of dollars later, his words are coming true at last. Well, sort of. On Monday, President Obama reaffirmed his own pledge to withdraw all combat troops from Iraq by the end of August. A transitional force of 50,000, diplomatically dubbed Advise and Assist Brigades, will remain behind to further train and support the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF), ensure the safety of U.S. facilities and personnel, and conduct targeted counterterrorism operations. By the end of next year, the diving hope goes, they’ll be gone, too.

Would the ISF please stand up? In a way, they are already standing — on crutches. Since the Security Agreement between Iraq and the United States went into effect in June 2009, the ISF, which includes both the Iraqi Army and the Iraqi Police, or about 650,000 people total, has been responsible for much of the country’s well-being. American troops are a rare sight on the streets of Baghdad these days — during my weeks of reporting there for an in-depth feature on the war’s transition in the current issue of Esquire, I saw many of them are dying of boredom in their bases, drinking Gatorade, and secretly searching for pornography on out-of-country servers to evade the Army firewalls. For many reasons (the availability of porn certainly among them), there is no doubt that violence is significantly down in Iraq. The last elections, though marred by hundreds of bombs, did not plunge the country into an ocean of blood. On the surface everything seems to be calm and the ship of state sails on.

So why won’t Obama tell us any of the good news from on the ground? Because, as I learned spending time with the Iraqi Security Forces, there’s plenty of bad news, too:

1. The Iraqi Police hate the Iraqi Army.

Sounds like a poorly scripted domestic dispute — wife clawing at husband, husband slapping wife. And it is. Everybody’s heard of the conflict between the Sunni and the Shi’a, but few are aware that the Ministry of the Interior hates the Ministry of Defense and, by proxy, the local cops hate the hometown troops. (Note to self: the U.S. State Department isn’t exactly on the best terms with the Pentagon, either.) While I was in Iraq, nobody could quite explain to me the roots of the problem, but it all looked like the usual turf war, with two government rackets fighting for lucrative territory.

Since Iraq is still in a state of emergency, the army is actively involved in the internal security of the country, stepping with their military boots on the bare toes of the cops. As one Iraqi police general, Abdul Kareem Hatim, complained to me, “Right now our biggest problem is the Iraqi army. We want the army out of internal security, out of the cities. When a bomb goes off, the police and the army start arguing who’s responsible for the breach of security. We need the army out, so we can take full responsibility. All the security breaches happen because of lack of coordination.” The main problem in Iraq today, if I had managed to follow his logic correctly, was not too little security but too much. I wonder if the road to peace in Iraq might not be getting rid of the security forces altogether.

2. The Iraqi Police are not really police. And they were never meant to be.

There are more than 400,000 cops in Iraq. That’s one helluva of a lot of cops. It is the most dangerous trade in Iraq — blowing up a bunch of security forces is the wet dream of every suicide bomber — but it is better than dying out of hunger or succumbing to disease. The starting monthly salary of a regular Iraqi cop, or a shurta, is 700,000 dinars (about $600), a decent amount, if not exactly wealth — enough to buy you food, not enough to buy you happiness or a ticket out of Iraq. The starting salary in the army is a bit higher, around $700. In a country devastated by years of sanctions and war, without any sort of functioning economy, the security sector provides the closest thing to a regular job. Plus, extortion and bribery can always get you something extra.

That’s why everyone in Iraq wants to be a cop. Former bakers. Former mechanics. Former teachers. At one of the American-run police training camps in Baghdad I met a young cop, Safaa Abdalha, who was a semi-professional soccer player. The dandy of the group, he sometimes wore fancy clothes — pink shirts and fake Armani jeans. He had joined the police force because he needed cash to marry his girlfriend. He showed me snapshots of her, now his wife, and of their baby son. He showed me snapshots of himself posing in his soccer outfit. His team, as far as I could understand, was called Paris Street. “If had a choice,” he told me, “I wouldn’t be police. It’s just not a job for me. I just want to play soccer.” As a parting gift, he gave me his wristwatch and would not let me refuse. There are many bad cops in Iraq, but Safaa was not one of them. In fact, he was never meant to be a cop, good or bad. He just wanted to play soccer.

3. The Iraqi Security Forces use fake bomb detectors. Seriously.

The bombs, of course, are genuine, but the detectors are totally fake. It’s true: the Iraqis use fake bomb detectors. The official model of the device is ADE-651, but the Americans prefer their own nickname. “We call it the magic wand, because if it detects a bomb it’s freaking magic,” Sergeant Arne Eastlund, of the 49th Military Police Brigade, told me once in Baghdad. Everywhere Iraqi police officers in blue shirts are holding their wands, inspecting long lines of vehicles with open doors and hoods and trunks, hoping to chance upon some kind of evil magician who wishes to violate the streets. It is the local version of The Hurt Locker. It is Sex and the City.

The ADE-651 is a simple thing: a plastic handgrip with a swiveling antenna like a dowsing rod. The trick is the following: a bunch of preprogrammed cards, when inserted in a special console connected via a cable to the handgrip, are supposed to tune in to the frequencies of dangerous substances and precious objects, from TNT and C-4 to drugs to money to human bodies to contraband ivory. You name it. One kilometer away, two kilometers away, underground, underwater: distances and places don’t matter a bit. And, best of all, it is environmentally friendly, self-powered by the user’s static electricity. Only the price tag is bit off-putting — $60,000 per unit. The Iraqi government has spent already $85 million on the device. And guess what? It was a British company that sold them the magic wands in the first place.

4. The training of the Iraqi Security Forces is a theater of the absurd.

Well, sort of. I met a number of highly dedicated American soldiers, who were taking their job seriously, responsibly. I met an MP who had left his corporate job at a banking division in California in order to serve in Iraq, make it a better place. He wanted to teach the Iraqis all he knew, make them better cops. There is no doubt in my mind that many of these actors were fine, fine individuals. Iraq, however, is a wondrously strange stage where strange things are bound to happen.

How else to explain the hours of PowerPoint presentations on everything from counter-IED to riot control, slide after slide, click after click, lulling the Iraqis to sleep? And I mean sleep. Or teaching a course in unarmed self-defense next to hundreds of blown-up police cars? Yawning. Or reading out an ethics lesson in the dark muddy yard of a police station? Dreaming. There are more things in heaven and earth, dear Army, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

5. The future of the Iraqi Security Forces still won’t get rid of the future of Iraqi terrorism.

One episode in particular stands out for me as the essence of the Iraq War. It does not involve the Iraqi Security Forces, but still.

There was a police training camp called Criminal Justice Center on the grounds of Camp Liberty, on the western outskirts of Baghdad. It was a beautiful place: palms and eucalyptus trees overhanging the stone paths and artificial canals, birds chirping in the branches, butterflies flitting through the air. Everything would have been perfect, paradise might have been regained, but for one small detail. Balancing in the middle of the canal on a raft made out of an old door, two of his buddies on the opposite banks holding the door in place with ropes, an Iraqi day laborer was cutting reeds with a garden trimmer. Keeping watch over them all, like slave overseers, were private contractors from Uganda — loaded Kalashnikovs and all. Despite the supervision, the whole business seemed to progress so slowly that new reeds were already growing in the places that had been just cleared up, a hundred feet behind.

“These guys have the hardest job in the whole country,” Specialist Caleb Morgan, an MP from Alabama, told me, watching the day laborers from a distance. “They’re never going to finish it. They should just throw in some poison — the water’s already polluted anyway.”