Iraqis fearful of aiding U.S.
Some pay with life for cooperating with occupation
Vivienne Walt, Chronicle Foreign Service Sunday, September 14, 2003
Baghdad -- For months, the warnings from his neighbors were clear: Stop working with the American military, or you will die.
But Haider al-Rashed, a 31-year-old member of the local council in Baghdad's Al-Adil district, continued organizing Iraqi security guards to patrol the neighborhood gas stations, supermarkets and power plants. He ventured out daily, armed with his Kalashnikov rifle and a pistol, telling himself that he could fend off any attacker.
Late on the steaming night of Aug. 29, his tormentors fulfilled their promise. As the 11 p.m. curfew neared, al-Rashed hopped into his gleaming white off-road vehicle two blocks from his home and turned the key in the ignition. The seat under him exploded, turning the vehicle into a flaming tangle of wires and steel and killing the councilman.
"I heard this loud blast," said his mother, Surour al-Rashed, 50, lowering her head to her hands as she sat in her living room in west Baghdad with her orphaned grandchildren. "I knew Haider had been threatened," she said. "But he was so brave. I was sure that he could fight back."
Five months after U.S. soldiers seized Baghdad and toppled Saddam Hussein's government, Iraqis employed by the U.S.-led occupation authority as local officials, police officers and translators say the danger of working for the foreigners is increasing.
"In the beginning, Saddam's supporters were hidden," said Ali Radhi al- Haidari, 46. As president of the Al-Adil local council on which al-Rashed served, he has also been threatened with death. "But when they saw they weren't being arrested, they began crawling out into the open and began attacking."
The U.S. military commander in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, has said there are about 12 to 15 attacks a day against American soldiers. But neither the Pentagon nor Iraqi officials keep statistics on attacks against Iraqis working for the occupation.
FEAR STYMIES ASSISTANCE
U.S. officials have said repeatedly that they regard Iraqi assistance as essential to ending the violence and stabilizing the country, but Iraqis warn that attacks against those who cooperate with the coalition are frightening off tipsters and others who would like to help.
That assessment contradicts the upbeat pronouncements offered by U.S. military commanders and by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld during a tour of the country earlier this month. U.S. officials have repeatedly pointed to the recruitment of more than 55,000 Iraqi police officers, security guards, soldiers and others as a clear sign that the occupation is successfully transferring some responsibilities to Iraqis.
Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator in Iraq, said recently, "It's absolutely essential to engage Iraqis."
Yet the price for their getting involved remains high, Iraqis say.
Two mornings after al-Rashed's death, al-Haidari awoke to an envelope under his front door. Inside was a rifle bullet and a handwritten note saying, "We've chopped off the head of the snake. You are next. Let us see what your American friends can do for you."
U.S. soldiers admit they cannot protect officials like Al-Adil's councilmen.
"The threats against them are always there," said Army Capt. Christopher Hockenberry, commander of the 1st Armored Division regiment that controls the district. He said U.S. forces were willing to guard the homes of Iraqi officials, but that was ruled out because it was considered dangerous for the Iraqis to be seen as having American protection. "It could be the worst thing we could do," Hockenberry said.
DEATH LISTS ON STORE WINDOWS
In Abu Ghuraib, a heavily Sunni Muslim town on Baghdad's western outskirts where support for Hussein still runs high, typewritten death threats appear on store windows and walls almost daily, according to local residents.
A notice pasted around town last Sunday read: "These people have betrayed the country and gone like dogs after U.S. dollars." Below was a list of 10 Iraqis, titled: "Names of spies," and signed by an unknown group calling itself Patriotic Organization to Liberate Iraq.
Locals say they remove the notices daily -- in order to avoid U.S. scrutiny,
not because they disagree with the threats.
"The people who are giving information to Americans should be dragged through the streets -- dead, of course," said Salam Shalal, 32, a food trader in Abu Ghuraib. "The military translators are OK," he added. "We need them."
But translators say they, too, are targets and are assumed by many Iraqis to be spies.
"I cannot go shopping alone in the market because it's too dangerous," said Adil Salman Hamza, 35, a translator for the 1st Armored Division near Abu Ghuraib. On July 31, Hamza's car was chased by a group of men as he pulled away from a military base, and he was shot in his right hand.
U.S. officials have said they believe that better local intelligence -- rather than more American troops -- is the key to stopping attacks, both against U.S. soldiers and against Iraqis sympathetic to the occupation.
MILITARY BUREAUCRACY
But in interviews, Hamza and others working for the Americans faulted the military for mishandling many tips about the armed insurgency. They say U.S. troops are slow to act on information and that tips get lost in the labyrinthine military bureaucracy. Other times, informants are not treated as valuable, they say.
"People who come to tell us information are worried about their safety," Hamza said. "But sometimes the soldiers keep people waiting at the gate for an hour."
During a recent visit to a base of the Army's 82nd Airborne Division in south Baghdad, this reporter watched as an Iraqi man arrived at the gate to share details of a hidden weapons cache in his neighborhood. An Iraqi interpreter, relaying the information from the gate by walkie-talkie to a commander inside the base, told the visitor after about 15 minutes that the weapons were not in that area and sent him away.
Al-Haidari, the local council president, said people were now terrified of sharing information. "They want guarantees of protection," he said. "But I can't even protect myself. So how can I offer them protection?"
He said U.S. forces sometimes arrest people on the basis of tips and then release the suspects for lack of evidence, leaving the informants vulnerable to revenge.
U.S. soldiers say Iraqis still expect suspects to be treated as they were under Hussein, when people were jailed for years without trial. "We have to have proof that someone's done illegal things to keep him in jail," said Hockenberry. "We can't just hold them forever."
Al-Haidari said he thinks he knows who sent him the Kalashnikov rifle bullet on Sept. 1. For now, he is counting on faith, rather than GIs, to keep him alive. "If God wants me to die, I'll die," he said.
For al-Rashed, the slain councilman, a host of advance warnings failed to prevent his death.
Shortly after the war's end in April, al-Rashed led U.S. forces to a house behind his, where Hussein's military intelligence officers had stored rocket- propelled grenades, ammunition and computer disks detailing their intelligence activities. The Americans hauled away boxes of evidence, al-Rashed's mother said.
For months afterward, neighbors with close connections to Hussein's relatives visited al-Rashed's home, telling him that his days were numbered. Al-Rashed told his American colleagues about the threats.
"We were afraid for him, always afraid," his mother said. "But Haider didn't stop. He said he wanted to bring peace and humanity to this neighborhood." |
