Thursday, Jun 09, 2005
On the bullet-pocked walls of Baghdad's Haifa Street, graffiti reading "Long live the Resistance" has beenscribbled out and replaced with "Long live the National Guard".
Surrounded by his men, Major Fouad, a company commander of the 302nd battalion, the Iraqi National Guard unit charged with garrisoning this former insurgent stronghold, summons citizens to attest to how safe their neighbourhood has become.
"Everything is secure, everything is much better," says one matron, as Maj Fouad looks on. "Our thanks to the National Guard for ridding us of the terrorists and saboteurs."
Haifa St is one of several former guerrilla controlled areas that Iraqi forces now patrol. And, despite the upsurge in bombings in the Iraqi capital over the past few weeks in which at least 700 have died, the areas of the country where insurgents can operate freely appear to be declining.
"To go here in January you might need hundreds of soldiers backed up by American tanks," says Captain Hadi Fadhel, who heads a patrol comprising a mere 20 infantrymen through the broad boulevard and arcades of Haifa St, the alleys around the Sheikh Maarouf cemetery, and other landmarks of the Baghdad insurgency.
Whereas three months ago, the Iraqis say, the housing developments around Haifa St emptied at sundown to avoid crossfire, now they are filled with young girls on rollerskates and families taking the evening air. Patrols that used to trade fire with snipers in the upper floors of the street's tower blocks now hand out little Iraqi flags and sweets to children.
The predominantly Sunni slums surrounding the boulevard have always had a tough reputation. In the days before Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath party took power they provided the future ruling party with some of its toughest street fighters.
Mr Hussein himself hid here from the authorities during his revolutionary youth and, after taking power, lavished patronage on the district, creating a housing development known as the "Saddamiyat" that reportedly supplied many of the area's guerrillas.
Insurgents set up makeshift checkpoints, pulled government workers from cars and shot them dead in broad daylight, or used the area's cemeteries and back alleys to launch mortar attacks on the heavily- fortified Green Zone, just 3km away.
However, the Iraqi officers say, five big joint US-Iraqi operations, mixed with constant patrolling, quashed resistance in this district, either capturing the fighters or driving them else-where.
The Iraqi troops "smothered" the insurgency, says Lieutenant Colonel Mark Kerry, a US adviser attached to the brigade, convincing them that it was too much trouble to operate in Haifa St and forcing them to relocate to other neighbourhoods in west Baghdad.
The main challenge now, he says, is for the Iraqis to increase the manpower and logistical support to be able to quash the insurgency in several areas at once.
Today the guardsmen launch daily foot patrols through the district, keeping an eye out for signs of insurgent infiltration while troubleshooting neighbourhood disputes, such as a wife thrown out of her house by her husband or a housing block that has tapped into another block's electricity supply.
"There are no police here, so we are the police. We are the government," says Cap Fadhel. "We do everything."
But, in spite of its success in the field, the 302nd is a troubled outfit.
At the battalion headquarters the brigadier-general in charge of the 302nd's parent unit came down to deliver a speech on allegations of corruption among the unit's officers. "Our code of chivalry does not accept taking bribes," the brigadier says - although he nonetheless emphasised he was not going to replace a certain veteran officer "just because there have been some accusations".
Terrorists still threaten Haifa St, he says, so "we must stop digging holes for each other".
Shortly afterwards one of the unit's senior non-commissioned officers smiled bitterly when told of the brigadier's anti-corruption speech, as another NCO and a junior officer looked on. "The officers take whatever benefits they can from their posts," he says. "I've been 20 years in the army, and I've never seen anything like this."
Some officers, he says, sell ranks to their friends, starting at Dollars 500 (Pounds 272, Euros 405) for a lieutenancy, charge recruits Dollars 100 apiece to enlist, and take bribes from captured insurgent suspects - "who always have lots of money" - to let them go.
Another soldier in the 302nd's parent brigade says that he turned down Dollars 3,000 to release a suspected Syrian militant - only to hear later that the unit to whom the prisoner was transferred had accepted the money. "That's why you should kill terrorists instead of capturing them," he concludes.
Military corruption has become a national issue as the Iraqi army goes on the offensive.
In the wake of a recent Baghdad-wide crackdown, residents of the capital have complained that their homes were pilfered by Iraqi soldiers searching for weapons and suspects.
The defence ministry yesterday announced it had set up a hotline through which citizens could report any abuses by military units.
But although the locals of Haifa St have complained about such behaviour, they much prefer it to the chaos that reigned before. "They are willing to accept a little corruption as the price for peace," a resident says.
By STEVE NEGUS
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