Non-Subscriber Extract
Back to the past in Iraq
- Article Tools
22 July 2004
Back to the past in Iraq
Iraq's new internal intelligence service, the General Security Directorate (GSD), established by the transitional government of Prime Minister Iyad Allawi faces an uphill struggle in its mission to crush the plethora of insurgent groups that have dragged the country to the brink of anarchy.
The GSD, the latest US effort towards remaking Iraq's security apparatus, will include former members of Saddam Hussein's feared security services, collectively known as the Mukhabarat. These former Ba'athists and Saddam loyalists will be expected to hunt down their colleagues currently organising the insurgency.
The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is supporting the new service, which was unveiled by Allawi after the US-led Coalition handed over sovereignty to his interim government on 28 June 2004. However, the USA is having its own serious problems in functioning effectively in Iraq even though it currently has hundreds of operatives deployed. Before the 2003 invasion, Iraq had been a 'black hole' for the CIA, which found it almost impossible to recruit agents because of Saddam's all-pervasive secret police.
Yet the CIA's vast deployment in Baghdad, Basra, Mosul and other cities has hardly been able to dent the insurgency. In December 2003, the CIA station chief in Baghdad was removed because his ability to lead the complex intelligence operation was in doubt and a more experienced officer was sent in. Since last year's invasion, the CIA's Baghdad station has become the largest in the agency's history, bigger even than the station in Saigon during the Vietnam War. The overall mission in Iraq - originally planned for 85 personnel - presently numbers 500, including 300 full-time 'case officers' running intelligence-gathering operations. With the war on terrorism now covering five continents, US intelligence capabilities are stretched extremely thin, or "beyond the limits" as one informed intelligence source told JID.
297 of 897 words