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