A step to rein in the Iraqi FPS?

If this really happens, it would be a big step towards reining in one of the sources of a lot of the sectarian violence.

U.S. military commanders in Iraq are attempting to get under control the Facilities Protection Service, whose 150,000 members are paid to guard the 26 Iraqi ministries and serve as personal security to ministers and important government officials but also provide manpower for sectarian party militias and death squads.

I keep referring back to this foundational Newsweek article from April.

Jabr and others say the FPS began as a force to protect public buildings and facilities. But as time passed, individual units became beholden to the institutions they protected. New ministers would bring in their own loyalists to fill the ranks of their FPS contingents and fund them separately. ....

U.S. officials tell NEWSWEEK that the Ministry of Transportation, which is run by an openly anti-American ally of Moqtada al-Sadr, employs large numbers of FPS soldiers. Thousands of them have been issued AK-47s or pistols, and they wear the sky-blue shirts and blue trousers of the Iraqi police. The thousands of police vehicles that are available to the Transportation Ministry are now also available to the FPS—and perhaps to Sadr's militia.

Two notes: First, the FPS were Bremer's idea. He believed they could do the job after he disbanded the army.

Second, I keep forgetting that 2006 is "the year of the police."

Also: I should probably add this NBC blog entry of a visit to Baghdad's morgue where the reporter got caught in a firefight between the Health Ministry FPS and the Electricity Ministry FPS.