Iraqis Learn to Distrust Uniformed Men with Guns

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Iraqis Learn to Distrust Uniformed Men with Guns

Postby StarmanSkye » Thu Aug 03, 2006 6:23 pm

... maybe I'm being overly cynical and suspicious, but I hardly think this 'lesson' (with all the consequences and deep-politics implications) is accidental -- even as I suspect this tactic of disseminating terror under the veil of deniable anonymity is being codified and may well be used at some point in the good ol' US of A to keep the population disorganized, intimidated, frightened and check-mated.<br><br>The only thing is -- As in Africa, Latin America, and the former Yugoslavia, the 'bad guys' may be wearing Dockers as well as tailored camo. The point is the same -- Social Control under conditions of constructive chaos.<br><br>Starman<br>******<br><br>The New York Times - Aug 3, 2006 <br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/03/world/middleeast/03uniforms.html">www.nytimes.com/2006/08/0...forms.html</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--> <br><br>Security <br>In Iraq, Its Hard to Trust Anyone in Uniform <br><br>By DAMIEN CAVE <br><br>BAGHDAD, Iraq, Aug. 2 The camouflaged Iraqi commandos who kidnapped 20 people from a pair of central Baghdad offices this week used Interior Ministry vehicles and left little trace of their true identities. <br><br>Were they legitimate officers? Members of a Shiite or Sunni death squad? Or criminals in counterfeit uniforms bought at the market? <br><br>Majid Hamid, 41, a Sunni human rights worker whose brother was kidnapped and killed by men in uniform four months ago, said he doubted that the answer would ever be known. Now, he said, the authorities normally trusted to investigate may be responsible for the crime. <br><br>Whenever I see uniforms now, I figure they must be militias, Mr. Hamid said in a recent interview. I immediately try to avoid them. If I have my gun, I know I need to be ready to use it. <br><br>Such is the attitude of Iraqis in this capital shellshocked and made fearful by violence that seems to be committed almost daily by men dressed as those who are supposed to protect and serve. The audacious kidnapping on Monday was just the latest case of men using the signals of law and safety a uniform, a vehicle with blue lights, a patch on the sleeve to attack and abduct. <br><br>Everywhere Iraqis in uniform go, from ice cream shops to checkpoints, people now flee. The mottled mix of green, blue and khaki camouflage, along with the blue shirts of the local police, have all blurred into a flag for alarm. En eles, Iraqis in Baghdad now say when a friend has been taken; in traditional Arabic it means chewed up, but in the streets it has come to mean taken by mysterious men without explanation. <br>American and Iraqi officials have been promising for weeks to address the problem. This week, the interior minister, Jawad Bolani, acknowledged that rogues were among his ranks. He told Parliament that new uniforms and identification cards would soon be supplied to hobble those who carry out bad activities under the cover of this institution. <br><br>The first 2,000 of 25,000 new uniforms are scheduled to be handed out later this month, officials said. Made with imported camouflage cloth and intricate patches and insignias, they are designed to be difficult to copy. Their source, as well as other details about them, is being <br>kept secret in part to reduce the risk of counterfeiting. But only a small percentage of the 145,000 Interior Ministry officers from the national police, public order brigades and other forces will get them. <br><br>Even if they all had new uniforms, trust would be hard to resuscitate in Baghdad, where dozens of people are killed or found dead every day. With more forces being added to the streets as part of a security plan begun two months ago, the permutations of officialdom have spiraled. <br><br>On a recent afternoon at the Interior Ministrys headquarters in Baghdad, three white pickup trucks with generic police lights drove by carrying men in a half-dozen versions of official dress. A handful of Toyota sport utility vehicles carrying men in various uniforms also passed. <br><br>I bet even the Interior Ministry cant tell who is in the trucks and who belongs to which brigade, said Mr. Hamid, who has been working with the American military to find his brothers killers. <br><br>Under Saddam Hussein, it was simpler. Into the early 1990s, both the national police and the Iraqi Army wore olive fatigues; a silver star on the cap and shoulder denoted the police; a golden eagle meant the army. According to several Baghdad tailors, two markets in the capital had licenses to sell the uniforms and no one dared copy them. Later, though, privately made uniforms began to appear when sanctions kept the government from providing all forces with the official ones. <br><br>The American invasion in 2003 and the rush to fill Iraqi security forces opened the door to a flood of private production, some of it legitimate, some of it not. Ali Muhammad, 22, a tailor in the poor Shiite district of Sadr City, said that six months after the invasion, requests for <br>camouflage uniforms began pouring in. At first, he refused. But the money was good nearly twice what he could earn sewing suits and with sectarian violence scaring away other customers, he said he needed it. <br><br>About a year ago, he began buying material at a wholesale market and making uniforms for 50,000 Iraqi dinars, about $33. He emphasized that the 20 to 30 outfits he had sold went only to trusted customers. But he said he still feared the consequences. <br><br>If I discovered that someone used my uniform for all of this, he said. He waved his hand to refer to the violence. If this happened, it would be like I participated. <br><br>Asked how long he thought it would take for tailors to copy the ministrys new uniforms, he said, A day. <br><br>Brig. Adnan Abdul-Rahman, chief spokesman for the Interior Ministry, has higher hopes. He said the ministry expected to foil the counterfeiters for six months. He declined to say what color the uniforms would be or where they would be imported from. <br><br>He said there would also be an advertising campaign to inform people about the new uniforms, new identification cards for officers and fresh hard-to-copy paint jobs for some of the ministrys white pickup trucks, though he would not provide figures or a timeline for the proposals. <br><br>Mr. Bolani, the interior minister, also promised to root out officers accused of corruption and torture and to deliver results this month. <br><br>Sunnis, in particular, now out of power, question whether the ministry is serious. Omar al-Jabouri, who runs the human rights office for the Islamic Party, said the Shiite-led government would never end corruption and killings by officers or impersonators until it broke with Shiite militias. <br><br>Like many Sunnis, he contends that these militias now make up the backbone of the Interior Ministry. The new uniforms, ID cards and other plans, he said, are a false certificate of reform its a way to claim they are innocent. <br><br>For more than a year, he has been collecting stories of atrocities committed by uniformed Iraqis. In a recent interview, he produced a book of case studies with color photographs showing gruesome evidence of torture and killings by men in uniform: a sheik with a power drill driven into his temple; 14 laborers abducted from a checkpoint in <br>Baghdad and killed; dozens of men beaten, burned with acid and shot. <br><br>Nowadays, there are a lot of neighborhoods that wont allow commandos into their neighborhoods without American escorts, he said. <br><br>Sheik Akrim al-Dulaimi, a Sunni imam at the Holy Mecca mosque in Dawra, one of Baghdads most violent areas, said many of his Sunni neighbors had been taken from their homes in the middle of the night. <br><br>They come after the curfew wearing camouflage uniforms with Interior Ministry commando insignias, he said. But when we go the next day to the government or to the headquarters of the brigade, they deny it. <br><br>The need to decide whether to trust or flee has become an ingrained element of life for many Iraqis. <br><br>Bashar Hassan, 41, a Sunni merchant in Baghdad, said that after men in police cars took him away last summer, he became aware that it was a kidnapping only when they demanded $30,000 in ransom. His family paid. <br>They came into my shop and told me I was supporting the insurgents, then they took me away in police cars, he said. He said he doubted that he would ever trust Iraqis in uniform again. He said he hoped that the additional American soldiers being sent to secure the capital would help us honestly this time, and not let us kill each other while they stand by and watch. <br><br>In the meantime, he and other Iraqis said they moved through life with constant dread. If the police enter a shop, customers quickly leave. Drivers reroute around checkpoints. To report a crime, if they are brave enough to do so, many Iraqis are turning to American commanders or neighborhood militias that are sprouting up despite recent prohibitions from the Ministry of Defense. <br><br>Even Brigadier Abdul-Rahman, the Interior Ministry spokesman, admits that when he sees men in uniform in Baghdad, he makes sure to keep his distance. I just know, he said, that they are authorized to shoot. <br><br>[Edward Wong, Sahar Najeeb and Hosham Hussein contributed reporting for this article.] <br><br>Copyright 2006 The New York Times <br><br><br> <p></p><i></i>
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Re: Iraqis Learn to Distrust Uniformed Men with Guns

Postby dbeach » Thu Aug 03, 2006 9:12 pm

I learned to not trust uniforms growing up and plus attending Catholic schools<br><br>"the authorities normally trusted to investigate may be responsible for the crime." <br><br><br>My Dad said be respectful of the police but don't speed.<br>.so we was ALWAYS watching for the cops ,..radar traps when they started ...<br><br>Come to think of it he NEVR has any traffic tickets<br><br>What is happening in Iraq ,Afi and Leb is soon coming to a US city near U..At least thats the plans..<br><br><br>cull the hurd to feed the MONSTERS.<br><br> <p></p><i></i>
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