April 11, 2003
U.S. pushed to restore order
By Sharon Behn
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Looters surged through the streets of Baghdad and a leading Shi'ite cleric in Najaf was brutally murdered yesterday, putting increased pressure on the Bush administration to speed up its plans to establish some sort of civil order in Iraq. Top Stories
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Looters in the capital grabbed everything from televisions to carpets and set buildings on fire, while international aid workers citing clean-water shortages warned of a sweeping humanitarian crisis.
President Bush yesterday sought to reassure Iraqis, telling residents in remarks televised throughout the Arab world that "the long era of fear and cruelty is ending. ... The future of your country will soon belong to you."
However, the Pentagon has put on hold plans to set up a U.S.-led civilian authority in Baghdad and divide Iraq into three administrative regions under retired Lt. Gen. Jay Garner, opting to wait until the country is secure enough for his arrival.
Keenly aware of the need to restore order, U.S. and U.N. officials were expected to meet with Iraqi opposition groups, religious leaders and tribesmen as early as this weekend in southern Iraq to try to set up a provisional council of Iraqi leaders.
Just 24 hours after jubilant Iraqis took to the streets celebrating the fall of Baghdad, the mood turned sour for some U.S. troops, with one Marine killed in a fierce firefight east of the city and four Marines injured in a suicide bombing at a checkpoint.
Aid workers from CARE, a nonprofit relief agency that has been active in Iraq for 12 years, said the country could quickly spiral into anarchy if the population's humanitarian needs were not quickly met.
"The hospitals are overwhelmed, water supplies are depleted, and if people turn to contaminated water, you're going to have rampant illness," said Lurma Rackley, a CARE spokeswoman in Atlanta who is in contact with the agency's regional workers.
"The situation is very critical. The military will have to take on basic law-and-order functions to prevent the looting from degenerating into what could be worse: score-settling," said Kevin Henry, CARE's advocacy director.
Ahmed Chalabi, head of the Iraqi National Congress and a favorite of the Pentagon to lead post-Saddam Iraq, called on Wednesday for the United States to move more quickly to set up an administration in Baghdad and other cities.
"Why are they not here? Why don't they work to rehabilitate the electricity and water? Why don't they start working on the curriculum?" he asked in the southern town of Nasiriyah.
Asked about Iraqi violence at a Washington news conference, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said, "We have always said that the forces will stay there to help provide security for the Iraqi people, and we mean it."
But, he said, the first priority of the combat forces in Baghdad was to fight enemy soldiers.
"We are still in the middle of an actual military mission. And suicide attacks took place in other places along the battlefield. This is a tactic that some of our enemies employ. And this remains a dangerous country," he said.
At the Pentagon, Army Maj. Gen. Stanley McChrystal said that while looting was a problem, it was not a major threat and would be addressed later.
"You can't do everything at once," he said. "Although you try to do as many things simultaneously as you can do safely, clearly the focus right now has got to be on getting the death squads and the Special Republican Guard elements identified and defeated and out of the city, because that is the major threat."
In the northern town of Najaf, leading Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Abdul Majid al-Khoei, one of the more prominent returned Iraqi exiles, was murdered along with a local cleric as they visited one of the holiest shrines for Shi'ites, the Imam Ali mosque.
"They stabbed him to death," said Fadhel Milani, a spokesman for Al-Khoei Foundation in London. Some in the foundation believe Saddam loyalists were behind the killing.
Mr. al-Khoei, based in London until April 3 when he decided to return to Iraq, was the son of the late Grand Ayatollah Seyyid Abulqasim al-Khoei, who led the country's Shi'ite population during the 1991 Gulf war. Known as a moderate, Mr. al-Khoei also was one of a small group of Iraqi exile advisers chosen by the State Department to help local government structures make the transition to a postwar authority.
"He was there as a voice of reason and from an acknowledged religious household, to rally the local people ... and assure them that everything they stood for, their legacy, their culture, was paramount," foundation spokesman Sayyed Nadeem Kazmi said in a telephone call from London.
The killing, swiftly condemned by the White House, was one of the most dramatic instances of the rapid deterioration of law and order in areas where coalition forces have managed to oust President Saddam Hussein's security forces but have yet to install an interim authority.
"I think it is a reflection of the fact that at the moment we are facing a situation that is extremely chaotic, with rogue elements of the regime able to infiltrate ordinary crowds," Mr. Kazmi said.
URL:http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20030411-95756328.htm |
