While some Iraqi officials defended the dismissals, saying there had been no political motivation, others pointed to the secrecy involved as supporting their view that those removed had lost their posts without good cause. Each of Iraq’s 30 cabinet-level ministries has one inspector general. These oversight officials are supported by varying budgets and staffing.

Although some of the inspectors general have been notably quiet, others have vigorously investigated both current and former ministers and other senior officials, and the top echelons of Iraqi officialdom have found ample reason to fear them.

In one case, investigations of a former electricity minister landed him in jail before he escaped and fled to the United States, and an Oil Ministry inspector general detailed extensive smuggling and extortion schemes that he said bedeviled the industry. A former public works minister, a Kurd, complained before she fled the country that her ministry’s inspector general at the time, a Shiite, had been hyperactive and had brought charges based more on political considerations than actual wrongdoing.

How many of the ministries have received orders to dismiss their inspectors is a matter of disagreement among Iraqi governmental officials, but their estimates range from a handful to as many as 17. Several senior Iraqi and American officials agreed that seven to nine inspectors general had already been dismissed or forced into retirement. In one case, at the Education Ministry, the post became vacant when the inspector general died.

Senior Iraqi officials and four of the dismissed officials, many of whom asked not to be named for fear of government reprisals, said inspectors had already been removed in the Ministries of Water Resources, Culture, Trade, and Youth and Sport. In addition, inspectors have been removed from the cabinet-level Central Bank of Iraq, and from two religious offices, the Sunni Endowment and the Christian Endowment, whose leaders carry the rank of deputy minister.