By IRNA,
Baghdad : The Iraqi government has dismissed 1,300 soldiers and policemen who deserted or refused to fight during last month’s battles in Basra, it said Sunday.
The announcement followed the admission that more than 1,000 members of the security forces had laid down their weapons during the fight, which Prime Minister Nouri Kamal al-Maliki characterized as a campaign to restore law and order to Basra, southern city.
Maj. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf, an Interior Ministry spokesman, said 500 soldiers and 421 policemen were fired in Basra, including 37 senior police officers up to the rank of brigadier general. Police officials said the remainder were fired in Kut.
However, American and Iraqi officials say the arrival of the security forces in larger numbers has restored order to the streets and the nearby ports vital to Iraq’s oil industry.
Some Iraqi policemen were seen evacuating their stations from the area now controlled by government forces.
On Saturday, police pickup trucks loaded with furniture, office materials and clothes headed out of Sadr City, along two exit routes.
The reason for their departure was unclear. Some said they had been ordered out because their loyalties had been questioned, and others because the army wanted to use their buildings.
Iraqi soldiers staffing one southern checkpoint confirmed that they had seen the police departing.
One of his colleagues said that as the police drove past their position, they shouted complaints that the army “is pushing us out of our bases and our stations.”
The soldier said that they said, “The government is dealing with us as if we were terrorists, and we are honest people.”
The Iraqi government is being careful to portray the crackdown as an operation against criminals and illegally armed militias and not against Mr. Sadr’s forces, although the Mahdi Army is the most powerful armed force in Sadr City.
Sadrists say Prime Minister Maliki and his American allies are using the pursuit of criminals as a pretext to weaken the Sadrist movement before coming elections.
Ali al-Dabbagh, an Iraqi government spokesman, said he would not say “how many days or how many months” the government troops would continue their operations in Sadr City, but said “they will not come out until the gangs and criminals are finished.”