Newsweek reports today on Iraq’s Facility Protection Services (FPS), a large police group accountable to, apparently, no one.

According to Newsweek, the FPS “is a mutant security agency that has grown from a 4,000-man group of “night watchmen”—the description given to them last year by Lt. Gen. Martin Dempsey, who is in charge of training all Iraqi security forces—into a large, amorphous force that seems to lack any centralized control.”

Not one ministry contacted by NEWSWEEK would accept overall responsibility for the FPS. The Americans don’t oversee them either: “We really don’t get anywhere near them,” says Tim Keefe, a U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad.

Although it’s not clear how Newsweek arrives at their estimate of the organization’s total strength, the magazine claims the FPS “now apparently numbers a staggering 146,000 men.”

Presumably that number is in addition to the regular police forces, which are, depending on who’s talking, either heavily infiltrated or controlled by the various sectarian Kurdish and Shia militias. Now we can add to that mix a heavily armed, largely independent police organization loyal to individual ministers within the government along with whatever other affiliations they may have.

What appears to be happening is that at every turn, the various militias — and probably the insurgents, since some of the ministries served by the FPS are controlled by Sunni politicians with links to organizations involved in the insurgency — are seizing the opportunity to swell the ranks of their armed followers in anticipation of further sectarian and political violence. If Newsweek’s estimate of FPS numbers is even close to accurate, it also means that substantial government monies, already tight, are being diverted from providing services to supporting ministerial paramilitaries.

The possibilities for mischief here are limitless.

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