IRAQ: Iraq's US-run administration believes it has the solution to the country's security crisis: the creation of a security apparatus as large as that used by Saddam Hussein to strongarm the country.
Plans are afoot to employ over 300,000 Iraqis for internal security. In the absence of any real intelligence on who is behind the spate of attacks, men on the ground are seen as the way to swamp the insurgency.
The move is welcomed by Iraq's Governing Council which yesterday called for a speedy handover of security to local forces after a week of devastating violence, culminating on Sunday in the downing of a helicopter, killing 16 US soldiers.
"The security situation is going downhill. That is why we are asking the Americans to consider a new approach," said a council spokesman.
Last night, there were explosions near the US headquarters in Baghdad but, according to US officials, there were no casualties. In Kerbala, however, a Shiite source said that a bomb at an hotel there killed three people. No further details were available.
US administrators would like nothing better than to scale back their own security operations. President Bush's governor in Iraq, Mr Paul Bremer, said over the weekend he wanted to accelerate the handover of authority to Iraqis. But privately officials concede it will be years before Iraq's security forces are in a position to defend the country.
"If 150,000 heavily armoured US troops can't keep a lid on the situation, what chance do Iraqi security guards have with nothing but a Kalashnikov and a uniform," said an American official.
Most of the new policemen and soldiers are given a few weeks' training, a gun and uniform if they are lucky, and told to stand on the frontline of Bush's war against terrorism.
Poorly armed and without armour protection, they have proved easy pickings for terrorists who accuse them of collaborating with the US-led occupation.
Iraqi police are now dying at the rate of over two a day, as they are caught up in attacks on coalition forces, or, as is increasingly the case, are the subject of the violence.
At al-Baya'a police station where six policemen were killed and more than 50 injured in one of a string of suicide bombs last week in Baghdad, patrols are co-ordinated beside the nine-foot-deep crater left by the bomber.
"We feel scared and vulnerable," said Lt Omar Khudair, supervising officer at the police station. He said that although they had 128 policemen, there were only 50 rifles.
At one of the many checkpoints on the outskirts of Baghdad a patrol unit from the Iraqi Civil Defence Force - a paramilitary group attached to the New Iraqi Army - manned a checkpoint.
Half were dressed in civilian clothes without guns, the other half wore the same uniforms as they did under the former regime.
Their task was to look out for would-be terrorists trying to enter the capital.
They hadn't found anything, although a sister unit had been ambushed a short distance up the road the previous day, killing one and injuring another.