The emerging US administration in Baghdad intends to use screened members of Saddam Hussein’s municipal police force to keep order in the capital, in a move reminiscent of the allies’ use of Japanese troops to maintain peace after Tokyo’s surrender at the end of the second world war.
US forces appealed yesterday to members of the city’s police, fire and ambulance services to return to work, and began seeking engineers and managers to help restore water, sewerage and electricity.
Baghdad is temporarily divided into two sectors: the area east of the Tigris, occupied by the US marines; and the west, run by the US army. In the west, marine civil affairs officers began setting up a civil-military operations centre, in the Palestine Hotel.
”We’re trying to ID key local people,” said Major Frank Simone. ”The chief of police, the chief of water, the chief of fire, medical … we basically want to get these people in here and get them to get their people in to work.”
Explaining the decision to encourage the Iraqi police to return, another civil affairs officer, Major David Cooper, said: ”An awful lot of these people were police officers first and Ba’athists second. If we can identify those who were not hardline Ba’athists but are hardline Iraqi policemen, we can use them to maintain order.
”The first thing is to find out who they are and then see if we can work with them. We are not going to put war criminals in positions of authority.”
Looting went on yesterday and fires continued to rage unchecked across Baghdad. Among the sites looted were the German embassy and the French ambassador’s residence.
US forces are still concentrating on self-protection and have not begun systematic patrols, in vehicles or on foot.
Troops have been firing warning shots to clear looters from some sites, such as the main power station to the south of the city.
Maj Cooper said a number of looters who had stolen ambulances and fire engines had been detained.
Admiral Sir Michael Boyce, chief of the defence staff, has intervened with the commander of American forces in Iraq, urging him to protect the Red Cross compound in Baghdad, it emerged yesterday.
Sir Michael sent an urgent message to General Tommy Franks, the US commander based in Qatar, after the Red Cross expressed concern about looting in Iraqi cities.
The issue is believed to have been raised in the war cabinet by the international development secretary, Clare Short.
”I did have a request from the Red Cross to at least secure their compound because they have got lots of generators that are needed for power in hospitals and medical supplies, and that has been done,” she said yesterday.
In an interview with BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, she admitted it was ”politically unsustainable” to describe the Iraqi capital as having been liberated when people were looting heart monitoring machines from hospitals.
In Geneva, the International Committee of the Red Cross said it doubted any hospital in Baghdad was still working.
”Our great worry is the situation of chaotic insecurity in Baghdad. We don’t know how much of the infrastructure and medical services are still functioning,” an ICRC spokeswoman, Nada Doumani, told Reuters.
”We hope that the perimeters of these facilities can be secured by the Americans. Under the Geneva conventions, it is up to the occupying forces to impose law and order.”
The agency said on Wednesday that the Kindi hospital in central Baghdad was attacked by armed looters who had stripped it of everything, including beds, electrical fittings and medical equipment.
Restarting water pumping plants and sewage systems, which have their own generators, took priority over restoring electricity to the city, Maj Cooper said.
In Yarmuk, a relatively wealthy, predominantly Sunni district of Baghdad, residents were said to have organised armed vigilante groups to protect their property.
Throughout the looting, many of Baghdad’s buses, including the red double deckers, have kept making stops on their regular routes. Drivers are paid cash in hand. – Guardian Unlimited Â