[lbo-talk] NYT: Being an Iraqi Policeman

Michael Pollak mpollak at panix.com
Sun Nov 9 03:10:33 PST 2003


http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/09/international/middleeast/09POLI.html

The New York Times November 9, 2003

For Iraq Police, a Bigger Task but More Risk

By ALEX BERENSON

B AGHDAD, Iraq, Nov. 8 - In an empty office in a bombed-out station,

the lieutenant colonel in the local police force was explaining the

miseries his officers face.

Two weeks ago, a car bomb blew up the police station, killing at least

13 people. One police officer lost a leg and could lose the other; he

does not know how he will pay for his care.

"We don't have weapons," said Muhammad Hashem Rahma, the lieutenant

colonel at this station here in the Khudra neighborhood in western

Baghdad. "We don't have flak jackets. We don't have good cars. And we

are face to face with death, because everybody thinks we are

supporting the Americans." He said he himself had received a death

threat three days after the bombing.

Then a rocket-propelled grenade exploded 200 yards away and Colonel

Rahma ran to investigate, ending the interview.

The police are the core of the American plan to restore civil society

in Iraq, but they are staggering, and not only at this station and the

two others hit by devastating bombs on Oct. 27.

The Americans, who are promising to increase the number of officers,

are leaning on the police and other Iraqi security forces to help them

root out the guerrillas plaguing the 150,000 international troops in

Iraq. But while the demands on the police have grown, their resources

have not kept pace.

Easy Targets

Accustomed to dealing with common criminals, the police now face

terrorists who see them as easy targets. Officers have no bulletproof

vests; their pay arrives late; and even though the occupying

authorities have raised their salaries, officers say they still cannot

make ends meet.

They chafe under new American rules of evidence, and with only about

40,000 officers, many of whom are corrupt holdovers from the Saddam

Hussein era, the force is badly understaffed for a nation of 25

million people.

"I need new police," said Gen. Ahmed Ibrahim, national commander of

the force. "Not police from the Baath Party," he added, referring to

the party of Mr. Hussein's government. "Many police right now are from

the Baath Party." But no new officers are currently in training,

General Ibrahim said.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has promised to increase the

number of Iraqis serving in the nation's security forces to more than

200,000 within a year.

He said last week that 118,000 Iraqis were now serving in the security

forces, though Iraqi officials say the number is lower. Besides the

police, the forces include tens of thousands of poorly trained

security guards who watch hospitals and other buildings, as well as

700 soldiers in the new Iraqi Army and other minor forces.

The United States-led occupying authority is working to ease the

pressures the police face, said Charles Heatly, a spokesman for the

authority.

"The coalition and the Interior Ministry are fully committed to

improve training and support for the police as soon as possible," Mr.

Heatly said. For example, 50,000 flak jackets have been ordered and

are scheduled to begin arriving this month.

Many officers are doing heroic work under difficult circumstances, he

said, but a modern police force cannot be created overnight.

"They need more training, equipment, management, and direction, and

this will take time," he said.

Colonel Rahma and other officers say they are willing to work, even at

great risk. But in Khudra, a neighborhood of 120,000 people, the

burdens seem overwhelming. Since the car bomb, the police here have

stopped patrolling. Most officers spend their days sitting outside the

station, on a street still strewn with twisted cars and shattered

glass.

The American military police who worked with the Iraqi officers at the

station before the bombing have disappeared, moving on to stations

that are still functioning.

At 9 a.m. on Monday, Oct. 27, the first day of Ramadan, which is the

holiest month of the Muslim calendar, Razzaq Rashid Abbas, a 31-year

police veteran, was standing at his usual post outside the front door

of the Khudra station. A Toyota Land Cruiser raced by, then tried to

break through concrete barriers into a parking lot behind the station.

The barriers blocked the Land Cruiser, and the driver jumped out.

"When he opened his door, I say, `God bless us, maybe he will make an

explosion,"' Mr. Abbas said from his bed at Baghdad's main teaching

hospital. "There was a huge fireball."

The blast left a crater seven feet deep outside the station,

destroying virtually any evidence that the vehicle carrying it had

ever existed. Mr. Abbas passed out.

Hospital Bills Pile Up

When he came to, he found that the explosion had severed his left leg

and torn out his intestines. Doctors at nearby Yarmuk Hospital

stabilized him and transferred him to the teaching hospital. For the

last 10 days, surgeons have been trying to save his right leg, which

was shattered in the blast.

Mr. Abbas and his family are nervously adding up the bills that come

each day to his bedside. Each night in the hospital costs 5,000 Iraqi

dinars ($2.50). Food is 1,000 dinars (50 cents) a day. Ampules of

pethidine, a painkiller, are a crushing 25,000 dinars ($12.50) each.

Saad Abd Zaid, Mr. Abbas's uncle, estimates that the hospitalization

will cost at least 625,000 dinars, or about $300. That is far more

money than Mr. Abbas or his family have.

"I must borrow some money," Mr. Abbas said. "And later, I don't know

how I'm going to pay it back."

Mr. Zaid said the family might be forced to sell its house. "Even if

we have to sell our clothes, what can we do?" he asked.

But the United States has told the Iraqi Ministry of Health that it

will pay the bills for any police officer wounded in the line of duty,

said Lt. Col. John F. Garrity, who commands the American military

police for western Baghdad, including the Khudra station.

Colonel Garrity said he was troubled that neither Mr. Abbas nor the

officers in the Khudra station knew about that pledge.

Even General Ibrahim, the head of all the Iraqi police forces, did not

know of the American promise. Wounded officers like Mr. Abbas must pay

for their own care, General Ibrahim said.

"We wish that we have enough of a budget to deal with the wounded

police," he said. "But we can't, because we don't have enough money."

On Saturday night, Mr. Heatly said the occupying authority and the

Interior Ministry "strongly believed" that any police officer wounded

in the line of duty should be compensated.

Despite his wounds, Mr. Abbas said he was proud to be a police

officer, if a relatively lowly one: after 31 years in the force, he

held the rank of sub-lieutenant. But, he said, "I like my job, and I

was honest with my job."

Now, Mr. Abbas hopes only to survive and return to his family.

"I will go back home and just stay home with my children," he said.

"It's God's choice. It's his choice for everybody."

Three days after the blast, Colonel Rahma found a letter taped to his

house. Its print was uneven but its message was clear.

"From all honest people in this dear country to the weak agents who

have sold their consciences to the Americans and Jews, we warn you for

the last time," it said. "Look at yourselves and what you are doing.

You are fighting God, his prophet, and his followers. The time has

come to liquidate you."

The note ended by politely asking anyone who saw it on the ground to

hang it back up. It was signed, "Saddam's Fedayeen."

Domestic Guard Duty

This was not Colonel Rahma's first warning. On Oct. 16, a bomb was

placed outside his home, a spacious house he shares with his wife, 4

children, 4 brothers and 22 other family members. Since then, his

brothers have shared guard duty outside the house, which is just a few

hundred yards from the police station. He has pulled his children from

school because he fears they will be kidnapped. But he has kept

working, even this week, when he was supposed to be off, recovering

from the headaches and ringing ears that have beset him since the

blast.

"I have a vacation, but I couldn't leave the station," he said in his

house, a few days after the recent rocket-propelled grenade attack,

which narrowly missed a passing American patrol and smashed into a

wall near a school.

Colonel Rahma has been a police officer for 18 years. He is a Shiite

Muslim, a rarity among senior Iraqi officers, who are mostly Sunnis,

like Mr. Hussein. He is the operational commander of the Khudra

station, which has 92 officers.

To be fully effective, the station needs three times that number, he

said. At the moment, though, he is simply hoping to repair the station

and find enough police cars for patrols. All but two of Khudra's

vehicles were destroyed in the blast.

Morale has been further damaged by the fact that officers' salaries

for October are already 10 days late, Colonel Rahma said, adding: "It

will create a dullness, an upset among the officers: `Why do I have to

work?' "

In addition, Colonel Rahma and others complain that they do not have

enough officers or forensic equipment to conduct investigations

properly. Under Mr. Hussein's government, they covered those gaps with

interrogation tactics not allowed in the United States. Now the

Americans have told them they must respect the rights of the accused.

In theory, the American way makes sense, Colonel Rahma said. But in

reality, the Iraqi police do not have the resources to solve crimes

without tough interrogations, he said.

As a result, officers feel caught between increasingly brazen

criminals and American forces that neither protect them nor allow them

to protect themselves, the colonel said.

Before the attack, the American military police did not respond to his

repeated requests for concrete barriers for the station, he said. So

Colonel Rahma bought and installed a set of flowerpot barriers

himself, a decision that may have saved the station from complete

destruction. Even now, the Americans have not provided enough barriers

to block the road properly, he said.

"The military police, they are trying, but they are very slow," he

said.

The United States has only a few months to restore security, he

warned, or it faces the prospect of an open revolt.

But Colonel Rahma said he would not quit, declaring, "It's very

important that we secure the situation despite all these problems, to

let the children go to school, to have a normal life back."

Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company



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