Law and disorder
Too many robbers and too few cops create lawless conditions in Baghdad
BAGHDAD--Hanan Hassan is a woman who has lost everything. Before the war, she sold her house and bought more than 2 pounds of gold jewelry--it was her entire life's savings. For this 32-year-old widow, the gold was the future for her and her two children. But a customer at a jewelry shop overheard her two weeks ago making an appointment to sell the gold to buy a house. When she arranged for a taxi to take her to the shop, the driver stopped along the way and picked up the eavesdropping customer. He put a gun to her head and demanded the jewelry. Then he threw her out of the moving car. Now, she has nothing--even her parents are dead. Sympathetic U.S. troops took her report but have not done more. The skeleton crew at the local police station says it has no weapons and cannot help her. "I have no money and two kids," she sobs. "I don't know what to do anymore."
More than a month after U.S. troops seized Baghdad, this city of 5 million people remains dangerously on edge. The initial orgy of looting has mostly run its course, with ministry buildings, palaces, and many factories stripped bare in the early days. "It's not so much looting now as all-out robbery," says Capt. Chris Carter of the 3rd Infantry Division, leading his platoon on a routine patrol through Baghdad.
The worst comes at night, when gunfire regularly echoes off Baghdad's gray concrete buildings. Looters and unidentified bands of armed men roam the streets, robbing, carjacking, and even abducting women. Drunks harass girls on their way to and from school. Reports of revenge killings have started to race through the rumor mill. "I was optimistic a few weeks ago, but the security situation is getting worse," says Sahar Kharuffa, an Iraqi architect who spent some of his childhood in Utah. "More people than I expected are voicing opinions sympathetic to the old regime."
Several forces came together to turn a bad situation into an even worse one. Few government workers have been paid, telephone lines are down, and more guns than ever are available for sale. Thousands of criminals hit the streets when Saddam Hussein emptied the prisons in October. Many in Baghdad fear that Kurds from the north and Kuwaitis have come to take revenge. "The Americans took Saddam out but put many Saddams in the street," says Abu Khis al-Jami, an office manager for a doctor. Moreover, many of the Kurdish and exile opposition groups are armed, including Ahmed Chalabi's controversial Iraqi National Congress. Some have occupied offices, clubs, or even private homes to house their party headquarters, with the apparent consent of U.S. forces. "Most of the opposition are carrying guns," says one prominent Iraqi businessman. "You don't know who is opposition or a criminal."
Ultimately, U.S. officials acknowledge, there are simply too few U.S. troops to enforce real security in the city. While there are 49,000 combat troops in the Baghdad region, at the beginning of last week Americans soldiers were a surprisingly rare sight in many of the city's sprawling neighborhoods. Fewer than 2,000 trained military police were on duty. And the Iraqi police were barely functioning, with 60 of their 61 stations completely looted and destroyed.
Progress. The instability in Iraq has ricocheted back to Washington, bringing criticism upon Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's decision to maintain a small occupying force in the country and his assertions that the U.S. military footprint was adequate. At week's end he was calling Iraq's security his "No. 1 priority" and declaring that 15,000 more soldiers and 2,000 additional military police troops would arrive in Baghdad by mid-June. And by late last week, some progress was visible. U.S. troops significantly boosted their presence on the streets of Baghdad, patrolling more frequently and guarding banks and gas stations. They began detaining looters for three weeks at Baghdad's airport, instead of releasing them within hours as they had previously done. "You will see more soldiers, day and night," says Gen. David McKiernan, the commander of American land forces in Iraq. "We will stay until a secure peace is achieved."
Not everyone thinks this will be easy. "We didn't expect to be facing a situation this bad," confessed a senior official from the U.S. Office of Humanitarian and Reconstruction Assistance. Even some top commanders are expressing their doubts. In a recent press briefing, Lt. Gen. David McKiernan pointed out the difficulty of bringing law and order to a country this size with the numbers of troops given to him by the Pentagon. "Ask yourself if you could secure all of California with 150,000 troops," he said. "The answer is no. The ultimate answer rests with Iraqis being in control of their country."
U.S. military officials insist that they were conscious that the United States had a short time window in which to bring stability to this war-ravaged nation. But the overall effort has been slow and marred by protracted infighting in Washington about who is in charge and how Baghdad's interim government should be structured. Consequently, as the reconstruction office spins its wheels, the needs of Iraqis go unmet. Just last week, a new U.S. official arrived to take control of Iraq's rebuilding. Paul Bremer, a former top counterterror official at the State Department, took up the job of provisional administrator from retired Gen. Jay Garner. Bremer lost no time in announcing stepped-up patrols, arrests of more looters, and a goal of reincarcerating the common criminals Saddam had released from jail. But it was unclear whether security had been much enhanced.
Meanwhile, progress is frustratingly slow for troops with little training in police matters. Soldiers in the 3rd Infantry Division's Outlaw Platoon have been trying to police their gritty working-class neighborhood. One day, they received a promising tip from two Iraqi informants--a poor man who had never even owned a donkey was driving a 2003 Chevrolet Suburban. The soldiers cased the suspected looter's street at 2 a.m. and found the car parked outside the man's house. They waited until the next morning to raid the house to avoid terrorizing the neighbors. But by then, the car had disappeared. "This is just another sign of us becoming cops, not soldiers," says Lt. Brian Johnson, Outlaw Platoon's commander. "We're working grand-theft auto."
New role. For these combat-hardened soldiers, it has been a difficult shift to peacekeeping. Many are exhausted from their brutal dash through the desert. Outlaw Platoon lost four soldiers in the first suicide bombing of the war, yet now find themselves rubbing elbows with Iraqis. They respond to everything--determined looters, property disputes, and managing massive lines for gasoline. They started guarding girls schools last week after a drunken man--newly free to consume in public--accosted several girls on the way to school."All the families need Americans to take care of safety because they are all afraid," says Iptisam Zamil, the headmaster of the Al Wafa secondary school for girls.
But the ultimate solution rests with Iraqis. And after weeks of complaints, some of Iraq's returning police force were finally issued weapons, mostly pistols. American military police and Iraqi police launched their first joint patrols. Many Baghdad cops, however, are still afraid to operate against Iraq's criminals, who are often armed with AK-47s. They also have to counter their image as a marginal and corrupt force. "Many people see us as Saddam's police, so we don't have help from them," says Brig. Gen. Jamal Abdullah, patrol chief for Baghdad's new police department, adding that the police are wearing new uniforms and painting their white patrol car doors blue. "We have to make them like us and trust us. That takes time."
With Mark Mazzetti
This story appears in the May 26, 2003 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.