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World






Posted on Wed, Dec. 17, 2003
Security concerns continue to grow in Iraq after Saddam's capture

The Dallas Morning News

(KRT) - With supporters of Saddam Hussein seething over the former dictator's capture, Iraqis say their list of security concerns seems to be growing by the day even though they feel safer knowing he is behind bars.

Until Saddam's dramatic capture on Saturday, Iraqi civilians and police listed street crime, daylight car hijackings and for-profit kidnappings as the biggest security problems threatening the pace of the nation's reconstruction.

Now, police say they are confronting a new wave of violence that includes unprecedented armed riots outside police stations by hordes of Saddam's supporters and stepped-up bomb or rocket attacks in urban centers. In addition, Baghdad residents say inter-Muslim religious strife is an increasingly worrisome sign of a brewing civil conflict.

On Wednesday, protesters in the northern city of Mosul overran and burned down the offices of two anti-Saddam political parties. Assailants also shot and killed a policeman there, police said.

International aid agencies cite the safety of staff members as their top reason for staying out of Iraq or curtailing their efforts to help rebuild the country. U.S. officials acknowledge the high risk of working in the current environment has caused reconstruction costs to skyrocket.

"It is the worst feeling to stand behind these barriers and watch 7,000 people shouting, shooting rifles and pistols and calling you a traitor," said Haidar Naim, chief sergeant of the Doura police station in southeastern Baghdad, describing a mob scene that developed Monday night.

He said the heavily sandbagged station remained under siege for two hours before U.S. troops chased the crowd away.

"We were helpless. We were sitting here in the dark," he added. Police radios that U.S. soldiers donated to his staff were largely useless for calling in reinforcements, he said. With as little as four hours a day of electricity, there is not enough time to recharge the radio batteries. Ironically, the city's biggest power plant is only a block down the road.

Naim said his forces have discovered four car bombs outside their station in recent weeks along with two rockets aimed and primed, but inexplicably not fired. Car-bomb explosions outside police stations are an almost daily event. Glass-rattling explosions can be heard around the capital four or five times a day.

Although some of them are controlled blasts set off by U.S. troops to destroy collected, unexploded ordnance, Iraqis say the effect is to heighten their sense of vulnerability.

"I think their concern about security is legitimate," said Sgt. Michael Lawzano, whose U.S. Army Military Police unit provides training for a new major-crimes investigation unit of the Iraqi police.

"The Iraqi people got a taste of freedom. There are less-moral people using this new freedom to do whatever they want, even when it infringes on the freedoms and rights of others. When you add terrorism into that, their concerns about security are very legitimate," he said.

Brig. Gen. Thamer Saadoun, deputy commander of Baghdad's police force, said the mixing of common criminals with the guerrilla cells of Saddam's supporters, known as the fedayeen, is adding to the sense of insecurity.

"We can't tell the difference between the fedayeen and criminals. My guys can't figure out who is the criminal now," he said. "Civilians cannot move around the city at night. They need to see shops open and cars in the streets. At night, after 9 o'clock, the streets are deserted. That hurts us."

Issa Hamdi, a pipe fitter in Doura who lives down the street from the scene of Monday's disturbance, echoed the opinion of many Iraqis that common street crime has fallen and security improved in recent months.

"Right now, it's OK. The biggest problem is the guns. Whatever happens, they bring out the guns and start shooting. If people are happy, they start shooting. When people are angry, they start shooting," he said.

Tensions also are rising between Muslims of Iraq's predominant Shiite sect and the minority Sunnis, who held sway under Saddam's regime but now find themselves increasingly sidelined in the new, U.S.-appointed government.

Nashuan Amir Ishalk Isaac, a Christian from eastern Baghdad, said bands of Sunnis - some carrying assault rifles - have begun threatening Shiites in his neighborhood. Others entered his Church recently and warned Christians to leave.

Hamdi, a Sunni, acknowledged that tensions are rising in his neighborhood.

"This is muscle-flexing," he said. "I don't support Saddam Hussein, but the Sunnis don't like being pushed around by the Shiites. Sunnis have to do something to show that we are still strong, even if we don't have the power anymore."

He said Shiites have begun searching Sunnis for weapons outside mosques, adding to the Sunnis' sense of humiliation.

"I don't want to praise the Americans, but if they were not here, there would be a bloodbath," Hamdi added.

In addition, random street crime is adding to the public's sense of fear. Gen. Saadoun estimated two to five people are killed every day through common crime.

He pulled out an overnight crime report to describe a typical night in Baghdad:

"Let's see. Three bombs or explosive devices captured. One defused. One person killed. Two car hijackings. One suicide. Nine street fights. 10 people arrested by the MPs."

Across town in the Aamriya district, Lt. Col. Abduljabbar Anwar Abu Natiya, chief of Baghdad's major crimes investigation unit, identified kidnapping and car-theft rings as the two biggest threats to long-term stability.

Iraqi criminal gangs and extortionists reap huge profits off the thousands of wealthy Iraqis returning to the country, along with the billions of dollars poured into major reconstruction projects, he said. Compounding the problem are thousands of hardened criminals, released by Saddam from prison just before the war, who still roam the streets.

"The most common major crime is kidnapping. Before the war, this crime didn't even exist," Natiya explained. Ransom demands typically begin at $1 million but actual payments tend to be around $10,000 to $60,000, he added.

Unlike other countries, where kidnappers generally use telephones to relay their ransom demands, Iraqi gangs have had to develop innovative ways to communicate with the families of their victims. Iraq's telephone system has not been repaired since it was knocked out by U.S. bombs and ravaged by looters during the war.

Kidnap victim Hamood Ayad, 20, said his abductors tied him up, then hit the "record" button on a small cassette tape deck.

"They beat me with a rubber hose, then hit me with a stick that had a nail on the end," he said. "I screamed and cried while they recorded."

The kidnappers had planned to deliver the tape to his family. Iraqi police, acting on a tip about criminal gang activity and backed by U.S. military police, raided a western Baghdad house and were shocked to find Ayad and another kidnap victim inside.

Ayad said he was returned to his relatives even before they knew he had been kidnapped.

Most of the MPs working with the Iraqis are themselves police officers and detectives back in the United States, said Sgt. Lawzano, a member of the 2175 MP Company based in Hannibal, Mo. He and Natiya were interviewed together at the investigative unit's headquarters in Aamriya, in western Baghdad.

Lawzano said the Iraqis lack of basic tools - such as telephones, listening devices and computers - is a serious challenge to fighting major crime.

Another obstacle is getting the families of kidnap victims to cooperate with police. Since kidnapping is such a new phenomenon, families don't understand how to behave, Lawzano said.

Many are reluctant to trust police with the negotiations. As a result, families often pay the ransoms quickly without informing police. The criminals remain free to kidnap again.

Natiya hesitated when asked whether police corruption had contributed to the public's sense of distrust.

"Yes, the Iraqi police are involved," Lawzano interjected. "He's embarrassed to say that the people he works with are, in some cases, no better than the criminals. … But I try to tell him that arresting those policemen is a good way to show the people that we will not stand for that. Even though, in the short term, it embarrasses us, in the long term, it's helpful."

Six days after they were interviewed, a car bomb exploded outside their offices, injuring 11 officers. Lawzano and Natiya escaped injury. A second bomb, timed to explode shortly after the first in order to inflict maximum casualties, failed to go off.

---

© 2003, The Dallas Morning News.

Visit The Dallas Morning News on the World Wide Web at http://www.dallasnews.com

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.

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