The World's Toughest Beat

By Brian Bennett/Baghdad

Ali Salman Dhahir was wearing his new uniform the morning he was shot in front of his 15-year-old daughter. At 7:45 a.m. on Nov. 11, Dhahir, a Baghdad police officer, dropped Diana off at her high school. Sitting in one of his unit's blue-and-white Nissan pickups, he watched as she walked toward class to make sure she got inside safely. Suddenly a submachine gun fitted with a silencer opened fire from across the street. Glass shattered as the windshield became a web of cracks. Dhahir's driver took a bullet in the head and another in the neck and died. Dhahir was luckier. Three slugs went into his left shoulder and one punched a hole in his right hand, but he survived. "It was a well-planned operation," says Dhahir, who has returned to work at the station in downtown Baghdad. "They were terrorists."

Such are the dangers that Iraqi policemen routinely face. As soldiers from the American-led coalition increasingly pull back from the front lines, Iraq's newly reformed police force is moving in, trying to return security to a country that has been threatened by internal chaos. While it isn't clear who is behind the violence--foreign terrorists, loyalists of the former ruling party, a combination of the two--it's certain they have Baghdad's finest in their sights. More than 600 Iraqi cops have been killed since the beginning of the U.S. occupation, the Ministry of Interior estimates, exceeding the number of U.S. soldiers who have lost their lives (547 since March 20). One tantalizing possibility is that al-Qaeda may be fueling the attacks. In mid-January, U.S. officials intercepted a letter they believe was written by al-Qaeda operative Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi, who is thought to be based somewhere inside Iraq. The letter characterizes Iraq's new security forces as "the eyes, ears and hand of the occupier" and says they should be targeted "before their power strengthens."

Iraq's future stability depends in large part on whether the newly trained security forces can bring about peace. That will require overcoming age-old grievances that are bubbling to the surface as tribal, ethnic and religious groups jockey to fill the power vacuum left by the fallen police state. Some are taking the law into their own hands. Almost a year after the Americans arrived, newspapers still report the slayings of former Baathists, scientists and professors, as political and private scores are settled not by the gavel but by the gun. In recent weeks, attacks against police have continued unabated. On Feb. 10 a car bomb exploded outside an Iskandariyah police station 30 miles south of Baghdad, killing at least 55 people, most of whom were lined up outside waiting to join the force. The same day three policemen died when their checkpoint was sprayed with machine-gun fire. Just four days later, 23 policemen died in a pitched gun battle when insurgents launched a bold daylight assault on the police headquarters in Fallujah, west of Baghdad. The attacks have highlighted the deficiencies of the ill-equipped security forces and prompted many Iraqis to criticize the coalition for putting poorly trained Iraqi police in the line of fire before they are adequately prepared. But the fact is, the coalition is pulling back, so it's up to Iraqis to fill the void.

Dhahir believes that he and his fellow officers will rise to the challenge. The 25-year veteran of the force hopes the sense of pride and self-sacrifice he once associated with a policeman's uniform will return. "When we were young," he says, "we saw the police as a force to serve the people." His wife and three teenage daughters may pray for his safety, but they are proud of what Dhahir does, and every morning as he leaves for work, they hold back their admonishments. "They just wish me luck," he says.

Dhahir sits in his freshly repainted office, separated from the masses and the honking traffic below by layers of concertina wire and sand-filled barriers. The 42-year-old police colonel, his black hair specked with silver and combed neatly across his forehead, oversees a rough part of Baghdad known as "thieves market." A few blocks away, well-armed thugs do a brisk trade in guns, drugs and women, and vendetta killings are becoming commonplace. The police do their best to contain the rising power of criminal gangs--and are making some progress--but all too often the cops find themselves facing bigger guns and chasing faster cars.

The police are beginning to catch up. Dhahir proudly shows off his new $500 Austrian-made Glock pistol, now standard issue for Iraq's police. "The accuracy is great, especially at night," he says, pointing out glow-in-the-dark dots on the sight that line up a target. The Americans have given Iraq's police other equipment as well: Motorola walkie-talkies, Nissan Maxima patrol cars and bulletproof vests. But the technology can't come fast enough. The 259 men under Dhahir's command share 35 flak jackets.

It's not as though being a Baghdad cop has ever been easy. When Saddam was in charge, cops often found themselves dangerously exposed. Because power depended on connections with the ruling family, Dhahir and his colleagues unwittingly walked into traps. In May 1997, acting on a court order, Dhahir arrested a man who turned out to be the son of a prominent member of Saddam's ruling Baath Party. Dhahir was arrested in the man's place. He spent 17 days in jail, was demoted and got transferred 300 miles south to the city of Basra. (His arrest, he says, was ordered by then Minister of Interior Muhammad Zimam Abd al-Razaq, who on Feb. 15 was arrested by Iraqi police.)

The challenge of bringing order to Iraq is apparent as Dhahir's team makes the rounds of the capital. On a narrow, unpaved Baghdad alleyway lined with raw sewage, eight of Dhahir's colleagues set out to find two men who allegedly killed a shopkeeper. There's little doubt when they reach the right house. Scrawled in red paint across the length of a mud-brick outer wall is a warning: THIS HOUSE IS WANTED FOR BLOOD. Abdul Aziz Salman, a local grocer, says he painted the message after he watched the two men who live there gun down his brother at his cigarette stall just across the narrow lane. Salman looks on as the officers approach the house. They calmly keep a gathering crowd at bay, then stack up in front of the door and crash through like a well-practiced SWAT team. The house is empty, but police find a cache of stolen machine parts. Though the killers remain free, Salman is impressed. "The police are doing a good job now," he says. An officer on the scene, Lieut. Nasser Hamoud Ali, speaks confidently of tracking down the men. "We will find them," he says, as he loads up a Nissan pickup with the recovered goods. "We know the killers and the people know them, so it will be easy." It may not be easy to maintain such bravado amid the danger that Iraq's police face. But many Baghdad policemen believe things will soon get better. "If they stop the terrorists coming in," says Dhahir, "the police could control the situation inside Iraq."

Until that time, the threats are everywhere. Just four weeks ago, Dhahir narrowly escaped another attempt on his life on his day off. When his driver arrived at his home, Dhahir spotted something dark and rectangular, the size of a brick, on the driver's door. It turned out to be 2 lbs. of plastic explosives wired to a 9-volt battery and stuck to the driver's door with a strong magnet. It would have detonated by remote control or when the car radio was switched on. Dhahir called in two police officers to dismantle the bomb. Why does he keep at his job? "I don't think about the danger," Dhahir says later, back in his police pickup. "If I did, you wouldn't find me sitting here."