Sunni recruits to police volatile Abu Ghraib

By Dominic Evans

ABU GHRAIB, Iraq (Reuters) - Hundreds of Iraqi police recruits, some of them coaxed back from the anti-U.S. insurgency, graduated on Tuesday and pledged to help stabilise the volatile Abu Ghraib region just west of Baghdad.

Waving flags and chanting patriotic slogans the volunteers celebrated the end of their month-long training, which marked the first major police recruitment in an area which was once a stronghold of al Qaeda supporters.

"Today (you) represent the national Iraqi efforts ... to confront al Qaeda and terrorist cells and all the enemies of Iraq," Lieutenant-General Abboud Qanbar told the recruits.

The 800 local volunteers who graduated on a dusty parade ground in front of senior U.S. and British commanders will join 750 others who completed their course last week.

They will beef up an under-strength police force which U.S. officials say until now has been manned mainly by Iraqis from outside the region, chiefly because the largely Shi'ite government in Baghdad distrusted the local Sunni population.

"There's been a concern with the histories (of the recruits). Abu Ghraib's been a very volatile area," said Lieutenant-Colonel Kurt Pinkerton who helped train the recruits.

"The fact is some of these guys did resist (U.S. forces). The fact is some of these guys that are volunteers with us had disagreements with us," Pinkerton told Reuters.

"But when we screened them through all our intelligence agencies and through all the Iraqi intelligence agencies there was only 54 out of 2,400 that came up with what we consider too significant of a record."