Al Amarah shows just how tough it can be to hand over security to local forces in Iraq. With public support waning for the U.S. occupation and casualties mounting, the Bush administration tentatively plans to draw down U.S. troop strength to roughly 100,000 by May. To replace them, Coalition administrator L. Paul Bremer intends to expand Iraq’s total police force from 50,000 officers to 75,000 and its Army from a single battalion to 40,000 troops. “The Coalition is… going to turn sovereignty to the Iraqi people as quickly as practicable,” he said recently. The Iraqis have cause to worry. Many of their local police departments, plagued by equipment shortages, inadequate training, religious hatred and tribal rivalries, are little more than squabbling militias.
Building a professional police force in Al Amarah was never going to be easy. When British troops arrived last April, 3,000 Shiite fighters calling themselves the Fawj had already taken control of the whole province and set up a rudimentary security force. The British commander decided to merge the Fawj–actually three separate militias–with the remnants of the city’s Saddam-era police. He placed the new department under the control of a charismatic anti-Saddam guerrilla known as Abu Rashid, a former Iraqi Army officer who had spent the last decade in exile in Iran. “It’s an unhappy marriage,” says one British officer in Al Amarah. “You’ve got discredited cops from Saddam’s time–who at least knew the law–with bandits who fought and rescued the place but can’t write their own names.” The Fawj groups and the old police each occupy separate buildings, and they make no secret of their mutual contempt. “The [Saddam police] are good only for cashing their paychecks and for sleeping,” says Hamid, a member of the Fawj. “I earned every one of my stars,” responds one Saddam-era captain. “What did the Fawj ever achieve?”
Old animosities are only part of the problem. Seven months after the department’s creation, its 5,000 officers have a total of three mobile phones, a handful of Coalition-issued weapons and 20 vehicles–only six of which are operable. “Sometimes we walk or take bicycles,” says Deputy Police Chief Jassim Abdul Hassan. “Sometimes we get lifts from friends.” The Iraqi in charge of the Treasury Ministry’s local branch, a Baath Party holdover, has refused to release $800,000 in police funds–because, he’s explained, the paperwork wasn’t done properly. Last week the Coalition Provisional Authority’s local office finally wrested $200,000 in emergency funds from the regional office in Basra, and earmarked some of it to buy more pickups for Al Amarah’s police.
They need any help they can get. Though far calmer than Baghdad, the city of 300,000 is a stew of former Baathists, followers of the anti-Coalition Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, feuding tribes, common criminals and the still undisciplined Fawj. “There’s no law anymore,” one Saddam-era cop grumbles. The city and its surrounding villages are averaging a murder or two every day. One of the department’s deputy chiefs, a Saddam-era holdover, had to pay protection money to local tribal leaders after he was threatened with death for arrests he had made under the old regime. And on Oct. 24, the department’s chief, Abu Rashid, was shot dead outside the al-Sadr faction’s mosque after Friday prayers. The assailant or assailants escaped on foot.
That evening a virtual gang war erupted between the police and al-Sadr’s followers. Gunmen in blue police uniforms broke into the al-Sadr faction’s offices and shot up the place, abducting two al-Sadr clerics and holding them overnight. Before the clerics were freed, a gun battle raged across the Tigris between al-Sadr loyalists and the police. British troops had to roll into town in armored personnel carriers to reimpose order. The chief’s murder remains unsolved, like every other recent killing in the area. But the province’s representative on the Iraqi Governing Council, a former guerrilla leader like Abu Rashid, says he suspects power-hungry Fawj leaders, not the al-Sadr faction. The militia heads didn’t want to give up their gunmen to the police force, Abu Maithen al-Majdi explains. “The militias will never be tamed,” he adds. “They’ll act against every form of order.”
The forces of order aren’t giving up. CPA officials say the Treasury Ministry should hand over the $800,000 soon. That, they say, will go a long way toward equipping the cops properly. The British intend to begin putting the cops through rigorous training at a new academy in Basra. The local council has appointed a new police chief, a highly respected cop from the old regime. The chief, Sabir Abdul Nebi Gaid, won’t carry a weapon and says he doesn’t believe his life is in danger. “I’m good to everyone,” he told NEWSWEEK. “I don’t have any enemies.” That, say several comrades, is just what Abu Rashid thought.
