Wednesday, May 11, 2005
Iraqi Police Recruiting Problems
Today a suicide bomber wearing a pack of explosives blew himself up outside a recruiting center in Hawijah, northeast of Tikrit. Thirty potential recruits were killed in the attck, and 31 were wounded, many of the dead or injured beleived to be from the outlying small villages who had come to join the new Iraqi army.
This wasn´t the first time a young man, posing as a new recruit, was able to infiltrate the system and injure others. And it seems to have little effect on recruiting activity, according to CNN, which recently reported that recruiting activity is up in Iraq. What is driving this activity? With unemployment hovering around 50%, the potential to improve one´s economic wellbeing is driving alot of Iraqis to stand in recruitment lines, sometimes for hours, knowing full well the threat that at any minute a suicide bomber may set off an explosion.
What can be done to stop this deadly series of attacks? Well for one, whenever I used to get in a fight at school with another child, the teachers would separate us, and call us into the principal´s office separately, mostly to hear our side of the story without the influence of the other. But the other reason was to prevent another fight from breaking out. Especially if there were more than one of us involved. The trick was to minimize the danger of another fight breaking out by separating the combatants, thereby diluting the potential of further violence.
If we apply these same principles to the current problems at Iraqi recruitment centers, we would minimise the damage of a potential suicide bomber by creating more recruitment centers with far fewer recruits (or targets) per center. Or why not change recruitment locations periodically, or conduct more one-on-one interviews? Why do the people in charge continue to make it easy for terrorists by herding these important assets into one location?
This wasn´t the first time a young man, posing as a new recruit, was able to infiltrate the system and injure others. And it seems to have little effect on recruiting activity, according to CNN, which recently reported that recruiting activity is up in Iraq. What is driving this activity? With unemployment hovering around 50%, the potential to improve one´s economic wellbeing is driving alot of Iraqis to stand in recruitment lines, sometimes for hours, knowing full well the threat that at any minute a suicide bomber may set off an explosion.
What can be done to stop this deadly series of attacks? Well for one, whenever I used to get in a fight at school with another child, the teachers would separate us, and call us into the principal´s office separately, mostly to hear our side of the story without the influence of the other. But the other reason was to prevent another fight from breaking out. Especially if there were more than one of us involved. The trick was to minimize the danger of another fight breaking out by separating the combatants, thereby diluting the potential of further violence.
If we apply these same principles to the current problems at Iraqi recruitment centers, we would minimise the damage of a potential suicide bomber by creating more recruitment centers with far fewer recruits (or targets) per center. Or why not change recruitment locations periodically, or conduct more one-on-one interviews? Why do the people in charge continue to make it easy for terrorists by herding these important assets into one location?
