the
National Police were involved in sectarian attacks. They claimed that people
wearing fake police uniforms were responsible. The actions of the commandos,
National Police and the protection they received from the prime ministers were
all a reflection of the cooperation between the government and militias to
carry out a sectarian war in response to the insurgency. By 2005 the civil war
was just taking off, and the ruling Shiite parties decided to fight fire with
fire giving the militias free reign both on their own and through the Iraqi
Security Forces (ISF).

At first, the U.S. leadership was largely unwilling to deal with
the militias in the security forces saying it was an Iraqi affair, but by 2006
it started pushing for reforms. In January it started a re-training program for
the police to try to stop some ofthe abuses. It also got the Interior Ministry
to mix the commandos created by General Thabit with the Badr ones into the
National Police. These moves had no real effect as the leadership within the
ministry and National Police was still in tact to give orders to the units to
continue on with their operations. In October, the U.S. took
stronger action when it disbanded the 8th Brigade of the 2nd
National Police Division and arrested its officers for abuses. It was blamed
for a raid on a Baghdad factory where it kidnapped 26 Sunni workers and killed
seven of them. Later in the year the Americans began another process with the
National Police that involved taking each brigade off line to go through three
week of training and vetting that included human rights, policing, patrolling,
and other skills.