The Toyota Mark II of Freedom
Basra, an oil port in southern Iraq, has long been held up as a big success story of British occupation. Its police are well funded, and their morale is high.
Independent journalist Steven Vincent wrote an Op-Ed in the New York Times from there four days ago, which added to the ever-increasing number of stories coming out of Basra about the rise of religious extremism, corruption, and death squads there:
At the city’s university, for example, self-appointed monitors patrol the campuses, ensuring that women’s attire and makeup are properly Islamic. “I’d like to throw them off the grounds, but who will do it?” a university administrator asked me. “Most of our police belong to the same religious parties as the monitors.”
Similarly, the director of Basra’s maternity hospital, Mohammad Nasir, told me that he frequently catches staff members pilfering equipment to sell to private hospitals, but hesitates to call the police: “How do I know what religious party they are affiliated with, and what their political connection is to the thieves?”
It is particularly troubling that sectarian tensions are increasing in Basra, which has long been held up as the brightest spot of the liberated Iraq. “Are the police being used for political purposes?” asked Jamal Khazal Makki, the head of the Basra branch of the Sunni-dominated Islamic Party. “They arrest people and hold them in custody, even though the courts order them released. Meanwhile, the police rarely detain anyone who belongs to a Shiite religious party.”
An Iraqi police lieutenant, who for obvious reasons asked to remain anonymous, confirmed to me the widespread rumors that a few police officers are perpetrating many of the hundreds of assassinations - mostly of former Baath Party members - that take place in Basra each month. He told me that there is even a sort of “death car”: a white Toyota Mark II that glides through the city streets, carrying off-duty police officers in the pay of extremist religious groups to their next assignment.
In rebutal, the Iraqis shot him in the head a few days later, which only goes to show. [Can we all please go home now?]
Steven Vincent was the author of “In the Red Zone: A Journey Into the Soul of Iraq.”
Full Op-Ed at The New York Times
July 31, 2005
Steven Vincent’s blog:
In The Red Zone
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