Wolf Brigade (Iraq)
Iraq military unit
The Wolf Brigade (Arabic: لواء الذئب, romanized: liwaa' adh-dhi'ib), since 2006 officially Freedom Brigade, is a unit of roughly 2,000 special commando police officially under the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior.
History
Formation
The Special Police Commandos were an elite counter-insurgency unit answering to the Ministry of the Interior. In June 2004, the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) transferred sovereignty to the Iraqi Interim Government. Under the new prime minister, Ayad Allawi, the CPA appointed a new interior minister, Falah Hassan al-Naqib.
Al-Naqib sought to provide the MOI with effective Iraqi constabulary forces after the poor performance of the police in battles against Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army. Al-Naqib created "commando units" of former soldiers from elite units such as Saddam's Republican Guard.
These units, commanded by al-Naqib's uncle, Adnan Thabit, a former army general, were personally loyal to the minister. The commandos, raised initially without U.S. involvement, were under MOI control, and were outside the U.S. Civilian Police Assistance Training Team (CPATT) program. The U.S. military provided arms and logistical support to these units, which proved effective under Minister al-Naqib's stewardship in fighting alongside U.S. forces against Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias.
The unit was "formed" (or at least publicly revealed) in September 2004 and numbers about 5,000 officers.
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