11 Afghan Police Killed in Taliban Attack

By TAIMOOR SHAH and CARLOTTA GALL

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — Taliban insurgents attacked a police checkpoint north of the city early Monday, killing 11 police officers and burning their vehicles before disappearing into the night.

The attack, on the main road between the southern provinces of Kandahar and Oruzgan, where the Taliban remains strong, was another illustration of how weak Afghanistan’s police force remains despite efforts to improve training and upgrade its equipment.

The policeman on watch on the roof was strangled, and was found in a room with two other policemen who had been bound and shot in the head at close range, said Nazar Jan, a policeman on guard at the scene Monday morning. Eight other policemen were found shot dead in the room where they slept, he said. Their bloodied blankets still lay in the room. One policeman escaped and was shot in the feet as he fled, Mr. Jan said.

Mr Jan said he had heard the shooting from his checkpoint, but since it did not last long, he and his colleagues did not think much of it. He did not appear surprised that the Taliban had attacked, saying there were insurgents present in the district, Argandab. The Taliban took the officers’ weapons, he added.

A spokesman for the Taliban, Qari Yousuf Ahmadi, claimed responsibility for the attack by telephone. The Interior Ministry confirmed the details in a statement issued in the capital, Kabul.

After their attack the Taliban left for their sanctuaries, and auxiliary police retook the checkpoint, the ministry said, adding that the wounded policeman was out of danger.

The Afghan police continue to bear the brunt of the Taliban insurgency, since they are often posted in small stations and come under attack at night. Eight more police officers were killed in two separate attacks in other areas of southern Afghanistan on Saturday.

In a separate attack Sunday west of Kandahar, two British soldiers were killed in an explosion and two others were wounded, the British Defense Ministry announced in a statement issued in London. The deaths brought to 93 the number of British soldiers killed since 2001. Forty foreign soldiers have died in Afghanistan this year.

The president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, Jakob Kellenberger, said his organization had seen an increase in war wounded since 2006 and through 2007, in particular in a hospital it supports in Kandahar, where, he said, 27 percent of hospital patients are war wounded. During his weeklong visit to Afghanistan he called on all parties in the conflict, including NATO and American military representatives and members of the “armed opposition,” to protect civilians and medical facilities.

Because of the increase in fighting, the Red Cross was concerned that many civilians in remote areas were suffering unseen, and it and is expanding its first aid posts in the southern provinces.

“Our suspicion is that there are a lot of uncovered humanitarian needs related to the conflict in remote areas,” he said. “There must be made a distinction between civilians and those who are participating in the combat,” he said.

Mr. Kellengerger said he always emphasized that attacks should be proportional to the threat, a reference to some of the heavy bombardment NATO and United States forces have used against insurgents, which often results in heavy civilian casualties.

Union Killings Peril Trade Pact With Colombia

By SIMON ROMERO

BOGOTÁ, Colombia — Lucy Gómez still shudders when speaking of the murder of her brother, Leonidas, a union leader and bank employee who was beaten and stabbed to death here last month. His murder was part of a recent increase in killings of union members in Colombia, with 17 already this year.

“I want those who did this to pay for their crime,” said Ms. Gómez, 37, a seamstress, clutching a faded photograph of her brother, an employee of Citigroup’s Colombian unit who was 42. “But I feel in danger myself,” she said. “This is not a country where one can express such a wish without fear of being eliminated like my brother.”

Ms. Gómez’s fear and similar dread felt by union members and their families have long been features of labor organization during this country’s four-decade civil war. More than 2,500 union members in Colombia have been killed since 1985, with fewer than 100 cases resulting in convictions, according to the National Labor School, a labor research group in Medellín.

Now those killings are emerging as a pressing issue in Washington as Democrats and Republicans battle over a trade deal with Colombia, the Bush administration’s top ally in Latin America.

Colombia’s government is already struggling to recover from the latest salvo in this fight, a vote by House Democrats on Thursday to snub President Bush and indefinitely delay voting on the deal.

Since President Álvaro Uribe’s conservative government took office in 2002, there has been a marked decline in union killings. That has accompanied a broader decline in overall murders and kidnappings as the civil war, between leftist rebels on one side and government forces and right-wing paramilitary groups on the other, has eased somewhat from its peak in the 1990s.

Still, 400 union members have been killed since 2002, and dozens of Mr. Uribe’s supporters in Congress and his former intelligence chief are under investigation for ties to paramilitary death squads, which are classified as terrorists by the United States and responsible for some of the union killings.

Unions were often pulled into Colombia’s war when faced with suspicions among paramilitaries that their ranks had been infiltrated with leftist guerrilla sympathizers. Or sometimes union members suffered simply because they opposed the paramilitaries’ brutal assertion of control over large parts of Colombia.

In recent weeks a new wave of threats has emerged, from groups identifying themselves as a new generation of private armies, against human rights and labor organizers. Many of those organizers have opposed the trade deal, raising the specter of still more anti-union violence to come.

This year, 17 union members have been killed, a rate that suggests a substantial increase in anti-union violence compared with 10 such killings in the same period the year before. Several killings occurred in the days surrounding unusual protest marches against paramilitary forces here last month.

Complicating matters further, leftist guerrillas, who have sought to topple the government in Colombia’s long war, have also made union officials targets for assassination. Union leaders who are in favor of the trade deal, largely from export-oriented industries, have suggested some of the recent killings may have been carried out by factions opposed to stronger trade ties with the United States.

Some supporters of the trade deal are quick to point out that union members are still statistically less likely to be killed than members of the general population. But that ignores geographic and socioeconomic factors — poor rural residents in the country’s war zones bear a disproportionate risk from violence — and it is clear that union officials continue to be specific targets for intimidation and violence.

The case of Leonidas Gómez, Ms. Gómez’s brother, is one of several examples of union officials killed in recent weeks who were involved in organizing rare protest marches last month against paramilitaries. Government investigators here said they were investigating all the recent killings but had not yet identified those responsible.

Carlos Burbano was a vice president in the hospital workers’ union of the municipality of San Vicente del Caguán in southern Colombia who disappeared March 9. His body was found four days later in a garbage dump in an area considered paramilitary territory. Mr. Burbano, who had received threats before from paramilitaries, had been stabbed multiple times and burned with acid.

Like Mr. Burbano, Mr. Gómez, a member of the Bank Workers’ Union here in Bogotá, was an outspoken critic of the paramilitaries. He had also traveled throughout Colombia to speak against the trade deal, which he expected to raise salaries of senior Citigroup executives while eroding the benefits of employees, said Luis Humberto Ortiz, a fellow union official and Citigroup employee.

Mr. Gómez, last seen at a meeting with leftist politicians on the night of March 4, was found dead in his apartment on March 8, with stab wounds and his hands tied behind his back. Missing from his apartment were his laptop computer, U.S.B memory sticks and cash from his pockets, said his sister, Ms. Gómez.

Mr. Gómez’s family and his colleagues from the Bank Workers’ Union said they were convinced that he had been killed because of his union activities. But Maria Isabel Nieto, a vice minister of justice, said in an interview that investigators could not rule out a “crime of passion.”

Such uncertainty surrounds many union killings here, and critics of the unions insist that some of the killings are simple criminal cases rather than political violence. Union leaders say that despite a recent increase in murder convictions in cases involving union deaths, there are still relatively few convictions and that prison terms have been too lenient.

“Colombia has a horrible record of bringing the vast majority of those responsible for these killings to justice,” said José Miguel Vivanco, Americas Director for Human Rights Watch.

Some of the killings linger over commercial ties with the United States, Colombia’s largest trading partner. Paramilitaries, for instance, killed three union leaders in 2001 who were employed by Drummond Company, an Alabama coal producer with operations in northern Colombia. A jury in Birmingham, Ala., cleared Drummond last year of claims that it was responsible for the killings.

No one denies that assassinations of union members have dropped significantly from the 1990s, the worst years of Colombia’s war, when more than 200 such killings a year were reported.

In 2007, union killings fell to 39 from 72 the previous year, according to the National Labor School in Medellín. They were expected to decline further this year until the recent spike in killings. (Figures from Colombia’s government are often lower because of methods that refrain from including killings when motives are unclear; so far this year the government has counted 15 union killings compared with 17 documented by labor groups.)

“We must remember that these killings are not a matter of state policy,” Vice President Francisco Santos said in an interview here in March. “On the contrary, we abhor these acts and are doing everything we can to bring the number down as low as possible,” he said, citing an unprecedented increase in prosecutions of union killings in the past year.

For 2008, the government budgeted $45.7 million for protecting people at risk of assassination, of which about a third goes to threatened union members. Under the program, more than 200 unionists have armored cars or bodyguards, and more than 170 union buildings and homes of union members have bulletproofing improvements.

Still, revelations of ties between the private militias and some of Mr. Uribe’s most influential political supporters haunt official efforts to lower union killings. For instance, Jorge Noguera, Mr. Uribe’s former intelligence chief, is under investigation for handing over lists to paramilitaries of union leaders and other left-wing figures who were singled out for assassination.

Widespread ambivalence, bordering at times on hostility, persists in Colombian society over the role of unions. Many Colombians still view unions as redoubts of privilege for union leaders at a time when the private sector is driving an economic boom, through exports of legal commodities like coal and illicit ones like cocaine.

“Why don’t the Democrats worry about Chinese products that take jobs away from Americans or about trade with countries with terrible human rights violations?” asked Rafael Jordán Rueda, 54, a management consultant here. “I’m completely convinced Colombia has become a victim of the struggle for power in the presidential elections in the United States.”

Faced with the delays in Washington, senior government officials here are somewhat more cautious in expressing their shock at the possibility that Colombia might be denied the trade pact. “If the United States takes the rug out from under us, we would look like imbeciles internally and in the region,” Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos said in an interview.

El Espectador, an influential weekly newspaper in Bogotá, said in an editorial on Sunday that such a move would be misguided. “Blocking a tool like the free trade agreement, which seeks to foment development, does not seem like the best mechanism for defending Colombian trade unionists,” the editorial said. Instead, the newspaper suggested redirecting American aid to strengthen the Colombian judicial system’s investigations of human rights violations.

Still, for union leaders like Rafael Boada who are living with threats, the focus on political violence is welcomed as part of the debate over the trade pact. Mr. Boada, a bank employee in Bucaramanga in northeastern Colombia, escaped March 7 after two men on a motorcycle shot at him, their bullets lodging in the windshield of his car.

“We are a stigmatized group,” said Mr. Boada, explaining his role in helping to organize last month’s march against paramilitaries. “I am certain this happened because of my union activities.”

Jenny Carolina Gonzalez contributed reporting.

Iraq Dismisses 1,300 After Basra Offensive

By STEPHEN FARRELL

BAGHDAD — The Iraqi government announced Sunday that it had dismissed 1,300 soldiers and policemen for refusing to fight or performing badly during last month’s offensive against Shiite militias in the southern city of Basra.

Maj. Gen. Abdul-Kareem Khalaf, an Interior Ministry spokesman, said that 500 soldiers and 421 policemen were fired in Basra, including 37 senior police officers up to the rank of Brigadier General. Police officials said the remainder were fired in Kut, where fighting also spread.

“Some of them were sympathetic with these lawbreakers, some refused to battle for political or national or sectarian or religious reasons,” General Khalaf said in Basra.

The dismissals were an implicit admission of failures during the government offensive, which was widely criticized as being poorly planned. Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki’s forces failed to disarm Shiite militias, in particular the Mahdi Army militia loyal to the cleric Moktada al-Sadr. However, they claim to have restored order to the streets, and the nearby ports vital to Iraq’s oil industry.

American officials, who praised the Iraqi forces’ progress in being able to move 6,600 reinforcements south to Basra so quickly, conceded that they had not been fully consulted in advance.

The Basra clashes pitched the country’s two most powerful Shiite forces against each other — the Mahdi Army and the government security forces dominated by Mr. Sadr’s most powerful internal Shiite rival, the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq.

On April 3, Mr. Maliki promised to dismiss and prosecute the worst offenders among the more than 1,000 who deserted, laid down their weapons or refused to fight against their fellow Shiites and tribesmen. At the time one of his senior officials acknowledged that fear of the militias was a principal factor. “One of the main reasons is that they felt the other party was too strong, and too courageous and they couldn’t confront them,” he said.

Putting further political pressure on Mr. Sadr, Ali al-Dabbagh, an Iraqi government spokesman, said Sunday that the cabinet had agreed on a draft law that would ban any party from taking part in the October provincial elections unless they disband their militias. But it was unclear how much effect any law could have, given that the two dominant Shiite parties in government — the Sadrists and the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq — are both closely affiliated with their armed wings.

In Baghdad, the Mahdi Army’s Sadr City stronghold was reported to be quieter on Sunday, after a week of heavy clashes with Iraqi government and American troops.

The Iraqi and American forces have taken control of southern neighborhoods in an effort to deprive the Mahdi Army of areas from which it can fire rockets and mortars at Baghdad’s high-security Green Zone three miles to the west.

In Fallujah, Peace Through Brute Strength

Iraqi City's Fragile Security Flows From Hussein-Era Tactics

By Sudarsan Raghavan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, March 24, 2008; A01

FALLUJAH, Iraq -- The city's police chief, Col. Faisal Ismail al-Zobaie, a husky man with a leathered face and a firm voice that resonates with authority, ordered an aide to shut his office door. He turned to his computer. Across the screen flashed a video, purportedly made by the Sunni insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq.

In the video, branches are thrown into a pit the size of a coffin, then doused with kerosene and ignited. The camera pans to three blindfolded men, kneeling, mouths sealed with tape. Six armed men in black masks stand behind them. One declares: "These three men fought and killed al-Qaeda. We will punish them according to Islam." The masked men then kick the three into the burning grave.

Zobaie angrily turned off the video. "How can we show mercy to those people?" he asked. "Do you want me to show mercy to them if I capture them?"

Zobaie, 51, knows the nature of the men in black masks. He is a former insurgent. Now, as the police chief, he has turned against the insurgency, especially al-Qaeda in Iraq. The U.S. military showcases Fallujah as a model city where U.S. policies are finally paying off and is spending hundreds of millions of dollars in the region to promote the rule of law and a variety of nation-building efforts.

But the security that has been achieved here is fragile, the result of harsh tactics recalling the rule of Saddam Hussein, who was overthrown five years ago. Even as they work alongside U.S. forces, Zobaie's men admit they have beaten and tortured suspects to force confessions and exact revenge.

In the city's overcrowded, Iraqi-run jail, located inside a compound that also houses a U.S. military base and U.S. police advisers, detainees were beaten with iron rods, according to the current warden. Many were held for months with no clear evidence or due process. They were deprived of food, medical care and electricity and lived in utter squalor, said detainees, Iraqi police and U.S. military officers, who began to address the problems three weeks ago. Last summer, the warden said, several detainees died of heatstroke.

In Zobaie's world, to show mercy is to show weakness. In a land where men burn other men alive, harsh tactics are a small price to pay for imposing order, he said.

"We never tortured anybody," he said. "Sometimes we beat them during the first hours of capture."

His men, he added, abuse suspects because "they don't surrender easily. They don't confess. They say: 'I am innocent. I haven't done anything.' They start to defend themselves."

The story of Zobaie and his police force opens a window onto the Iraq that is emerging after five years of war. American ideals that were among the justifications for the 2003 invasion, such as promoting democracy and human rights, are giving way to values drawn from Iraq's traditions and tribal culture, such as respect, fear and brutality.

"We don't have any Thomas Jeffersons here," said Capt. Sean Miller, a member of the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division from Fairfax, Va., who works closely with Zobaie. "What we do have here is generally a group of people who are trying to save a city. It won't fulfill our ideals or what we desire."

Once a member of Hussein's elite Republican Guard, Zobaie is driven by allegiance neither to the United States nor to Iraq's Shiite-run central government. He wants U.S. troops to leave Iraq. But for now, he needs the United States to bolster him with military muscle and funds. And the U.S. military today depends on men such as Zobaie to help bring about the order and security in Iraq that could eventually lead to the end of the American occupation.

"I have realized that Americans love the strong guy," Zobaie said.

A Turning Point

After the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Zobaie contacted other Republican Guards and military officers. Many had lost their jobs when U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer ordered the disbanding of the Iraqi army. For the next two years, Zobaie said he was a commander in the Sunni insurgency. "Everywhere I could reach, I fought the Americans," he said. "I didn't feel well until I hit the Americans. Then I felt comfortable."

But a turning point came in 2004. U.S. troops and insurgents fought fiercely in Fallujah. Zobaie battled U.S. forces in the nearby town of Zaidan, where he grew up. By mid-2005, he had grown wary of the foreign fighters and radicals, with their brutal tactics and rigid interpretation of Islam. They banned smoking, satellite television, even Pepsi, because the prophet Muhammad never drank it. One day, Zobaie said, he was stopped at a checkpoint in Zaidan and forced by fighters to watch three men saw off another man's head with a knife.

By April 2006, Zobaie had had enough. He joined the new Iraqi army and was appointed a brigade commander. Then senior Shiite officers had him removed. When al-Qaeda in Iraq militants learned he had enlisted, they kidnapped one of his cousins, who had also joined the army. Zobaie never saw him again. Zobaie said he decided to return to fighting, but against a new enemy: "On that date, it became a public war between us and al-Qaeda."

In November, a relative who was a member of al-Qaeda in Iraq kidnapped Zobaie's brother, Ahmed, and beheaded him with a shaving razor. Zobaie found his head and body four days later. The relative disappeared. A week later, Ahmed's wife gave birth to a daughter.

Zobaie become Fallujah's police chief that December. He sent his wife and seven of his eight children to Iraq's Kurdish semiautonomous region for their safety. When it was time to select a code name to speak over police walkie-talkies, he chose "Ahmed."

'Difficult Decisions'

Zobaie opened his office door. Outside, policemen in blue and white uniforms saluted. Down a narrow corridor he walked past 126 small portraits of officers killed on duty. A tall, wiry policeman followed Zobaie -- his 21-year-old son, Saif. He's the man Zobaie trusts most on his force.

The police headquarters, built with U.S. funds, sits inside a large compound ringed by layers of blast walls in the heart of Fallujah, a dusty city of tan buildings, palatial houses and wide streets about 35 miles west of the capital, Baghdad.

Zobaie lives here and sees his family once every 40 days. He wakes at 5 a.m. to pray and polishes his shoes every morning. He's gracious, but once he threw Saif in prison for showing up to work late. When they visit neighborhoods, Zobaie and his senior officers hand out soccer balls and candy to children.

The jail is to the left of his office; to the right is a building housing U.S. advisers and police trainers. U.S. Marines also live nearby in a joint security station.

A year ago, snipers awaited anyone who wandered outside. Hand grenades were often thrown at the gates. Mortar shells landed nearly every day.

To fight back, Zobaie recalled, he began to think like the insurgents. He ordered his force of 1,200 men to monitor car mechanic shops to avert bomb-making. He ordered oxygen tanks inside hospitals counted at the end of each day because the canisters were often used for bombs. Backed by U.S. troops, his men staged raids and detained scores of al-Qaeda in Iraq members. He has also launched a network of intelligence operatives around the city, a system that was the backbone of Hussein's security apparatus, police officials said.

"He made very brave and difficult decisions," said Maj. Mohammed Fayadh al-Esawi, police commander in the city's Andalus neighborhood. "He proved that in a critical era, he was the right person, at the right time, to be police chief."

A City 'Like a Big Jail'

Fallujah today is sealed off with blast walls and checkpoints. Residents are given permits to enter the city. All visitors and their weapons are registered, and police check every car. The U.S. military has divided the city into nine gated communities, each with its own joint security station staffed by U.S. troops and Iraqi police. It also has been buying the loyalties of former Sunni insurgents, paying them $180 a month to join a neighborhood force that works with the police.

Those tactics have damped down the violence. Shops stay open longer, streets are clogged with traffic, and soccer fields brim with children and young men. But for many residents, Fallujah remains a shadow of its former self. "The city is like a big jail," said Abu Ahmed, a well-known doctor who asked that his nickname be used because he has treated people who were brutalized by Zobaie's men.

Zobaie ordered imams at mosques to stop preaching in support of the insurgency and against American troops. The mosques have long been a breeding ground for insurgents. Sheik Abu Abdul Salman, an influential 67-year-old imam, didn't like Zobaie's order. "He's worse than Saddam Hussein," Salman said.

When Zobaie heard of the remark, his voice rose in anger. "Sometimes people are just saying that I did this, I did that. . . . Okay, I tell them, 'Where were you when al-Qaeda was running this city?' "

Meeting the Public

Zobaie drove out of his compound in a gray sport-utility vehicle, with a Glock pistol, issued by the U.S. military, on his left hip. A blue and white police pickup truck mounted with a large machine gun followed. His son Saif manned the gun.

Zobaie's convoy pushed through the city center along a wide, dusty road, past buildings pocked by mortar rounds and bullets. At a taxi stand, Zobaie stepped out, with Saif behind him. A crowd, recognizing the police chief, gathered around him.

"How's the situation?" he asked, smiling as he shook hands. Some said it was good. But a man pushed through the crowd and confronted him, complaining of mistreatment by the police as he entered the city. Zobaie turned serious. He realized, he said, that he had to gain people's trust and confidence.

"Any policeman who does something bad will be punished," he assured the crowd. He then yelled out his cellphone number, in case anyone had more complaints about his men. Many punched his number into their phones.

Obeying 'Only the Force'

Inside a joint security station in the Sinaa neighborhood, Wissam Fezaa, 20, was screaming into a police radio: "Arrest him! Arrest him!" A man did not have the proper badge to drive his truck.

"He will stay for 30 to 40 days in prison as punishment so he'll never do it again," said Fezaa, who was wearing a blue T-shirt with "Fallujah Police" emblazoned on the back. Asked whether the punishment was too harsh, he replied, "If we were not strong, we cannot control the city."

That is how Zobaie's men control Fallujah. With two U.S. Marines a few feet away, Fezaa said that if he caught a criminal or terrorism suspect in front of people, he would not hurt him. And if he captured him alone? "I wouldn't even let him walk afterward," he said. He pulled an electric stun gun from his leg holster. "I've used this before," he declared.

Capt. Mohammed Yousef, a ruddy-faced police investigator in another joint security station, said he sometimes has to beat suspects to make them confess. He has interrogated suspects since 1994, he said, and sees no need to change his methods.

"Since Saddam Hussein until now, Iraq obeys only the force," Yousef said. "We are practicing the same old procedures."

Abu Rahma, 43, a taxi driver and father of four, was a victim of that approach. He was taken into custody last March and tortured in Fallujah's jail. "They kept beating me to force me to confess," he said. "I told them I am not with al-Qaeda, and neither is my brother. They beat me everywhere on my body. . . . Some of my nails were taken out."

Abu Rahma spent 64 days in the cell. On the 65th day, he was released. "It was like being born again," he said.

Zobaie's harshest critics also acknowledge that Fallujah needs a man like him.

Salman, the imam, said Zobaie controls the city with "a fire fist."

"But to be honest, security is restored under this guy," he said. "We have a saying in Iraq: 'Fever is better than death.' We were dead. Life stopped at 2 p.m. Everybody was afraid of themselves, including me. If he didn't use the force, the security wouldn't be restored. We don't like the weak man."

Dire Conditions

The U.S. military advisers give courses in ethics, the rule of law and human rights to Zobaie's force. They teach the men how to gather evidence, write proper records and follow judicial procedures. But newly arrived senior U.S. officers were stunned when they made a surprise visit to Fallujah's jail last month.

Inmates were not given meals. For food, they relied on relatives or bribed corrections officers. There was no money to buy fuel for generators, no power for air conditioners and heaters. Last summer, six detainees died of heatstroke, said Lt. Col. Daoud Suleiman, who was promoted to warden two weeks ago.

Prisoners suffered from skin diseases, Suleiman said. The sewage system was broken. Corrections officers beat the soles of detainees' feet with rods. Doctors visited only once a month.

Iraq's central government, which has long neglected Fallujah, offered no funds for the prison. U.S. military officers had visited routinely for months but taken no action. "It's a typical Iraqi jail," said Maj. Mike Cava, a military judge advocate. "Their standards are different than ours. They just do things the Iraqi way."

Suleiman said he had asked U.S. military officers for help several times. Lt. Col. Mike Callanan, who works on rule of law issues, said fixing the jail was not a focus of the U.S. military until recently. Three weeks ago, the U.S. military started providing meals, clothing, blankets and hygiene kits to detainees.

Callanan said the U.S. military has warned police officials that it does not "condone torture and beatings of prisoners."

Zobaie denied that conditions were bad at the prison and offered to give a tour to a reporter. "This is my prison. This has nothing to do with the Americans," he said. Moments later, he turned to Suleiman and said: "Take him and show him the prison. The Americans are hurting our reputation." But the Marines who secure the compound barred entry to the jail, despite repeated requests to their commander.

Zobaie didn't fire the abusive jail staff. He transferred them to other precincts.

"If you go through the history of Iraq, you will see that only the tough guy can control the country," he said. He rattled off the names of every leader since Iraq's monarchy ended in 1958 with a bloody coup. Hussein, he said, had lasted the longest in power.

Aid and Mistrust

With American help, Zobaie's influence is growing. He presides over school graduations and launches municipal projects. He helps approve reconstruction contracts and meets with tribal sheiks. Last week, a member of parliament visited his office: He needed Zobaie's help to settle a land dispute.

"This politician came to me to solve the problem and not the city council," Zobaie said, beaming. He was wearing a dark suit with a black and silver tie, not his uniform.

An hour later, Zobaie met Maj. Robert C. Rice, of the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, and a Fallujah government official to plan a sports day for next month. "You will need to spend a lot of money on it," Zobaie told Rice. "We want this to be a special day." Then, with a wave of his hand, he said he would donate his monthly salary and send a team of policemen to play in the soccer tournament.

Rice was wary. U.S. commanders are concerned that Zobaie's force could become a militia someday. Ninety-five percent of the men are Sunnis from Fallujah, more loyal to sect and tribe than to the government. Three weeks ago, U.S. troops raided the office of Suleiman, the prison warden, searching for illegal weapons, Suleiman said, exposing the mistrust. Rice, referring to the sports day, told Zobaie, "We want to be careful that it does not come across as an Iraqi police-dominated event."

Zobaie has asked the U.S. officers to help obtain more aid for the city from the regional and central governments. Already, the U.S. military is employing street cleaners, building schools and putting up $9 million worth of solar street lights. But some U.S. officers question why insurgents once determined to kill them have so quickly embraced them.

"Every time they talk to you there's an agenda," said Miller, the captain who works closely with Zobaie. "You have to figure out what they want right now. If it is this easy, it begs the question: What are we giving them that we don't know that we're giving them?"

What Zobaie wants is for the U.S. military to hand over full control of Fallujah. He believes Iraq's current leaders are not strong enough. Asked whether democracy could ever bloom here, he replied: "No democracy in Iraq. Ever."

"When the Americans leave the city," he said, "I'll be tougher with the people."

Special correspondent Zaid Sabah contributed to this report.

New ICG Report: Reforming Afghanistan's Police

REFORMING AFGHANISTAN’S POLICE

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS

Policing goes to the very heart of state building, since a credible national institution that helps provide security and justice for the population is central to government legitimacy. However Afghanistan’s citizens often view the police more as a source of fear than of security. Instead of emphasising their coercive powers, reform should focus on accountability, ethnic representation and professionalism, along with an urgent need to depoliticise and institutionalise appointments and procedures. It is counter-productive to treat police as an auxiliary fighting unit in battling the insurgency, as has been happening with increasing frequency in the troubled south. Afghanistan, like any other democracy, requires police service more than police force.

The state of the Afghan National Police (ANP) nearly six years after the fall of the Taliban reflects the international community’s failure to grasp early on the centrality of comprehensive reform of the law enforcement and justice sectors, despite similar hard-learned lessons in other countries attempting to emerge from years of armed conflict. President Karzai’s government still lacks the political will to tackle a culture of impunity and to end political interference in appointments and operations. Attempts to shortcut institution building are compounded by an exploding narcotics trade – partly symptomatic of the state of policing but even more clearly a major corrupting influence on attempted reforms. At the same time, the challenges of a growing insurgency are pushing quick fixes to the fore.

There have certainly been some changes and improvements. In some urban centres, at least the “hardware” of equipment and buildings is visibly improved; the police have new uniforms and some are better equipped. New systems and structures at the interior ministry (MOI) provide at least a shell of professionalism. However the return on invested human and financial capital is modest.

Rooting out corruption and ensuring operational autonomy – with oversight – are critical if the police are to provide a professional, consistent service to citizens rather than acting as a coercive tool of governing elites. Properly equipping police is important for efficiency and morale but ultimately it is an ethos of community service that can make the real difference by fostering wider trust. A trusted law enforcement institution would assist nearly everything that needs to be achieved in the country from security, through gender rights and minority rights, to building investor confidence and development goals. Part of earning trust and building a true national institution is ensuring that the population is reflected in the make-up of the command and control structures. Both ethnic and gender imbalances also need to be addressed urgently.

Testing and vetting of police leadership through the pay and rank reform (PRR) process is vital to professionalising the service. However, it is proving an uphill battle as factional networks and drug alliances compete for posts, particularly lucrative ones that oversee smuggling routes. These challenges underscore the necessity of depoliticising the service, ensuring professional development and institutionalising command and control. To meet these goals, the reform process should include the appointment of a police commissioner and strengthened civilian oversight. The international community, which provides the funds, has the right – indeed duty to the Afghan people and its own taxpayers – to insist that agreed processes and criteria are followed.

However, the international community’s competing and conflicting visions of reform, with training and numbers often put ahead of more difficult political issues, is undermining progress and highlights the lack of experienced, flexible institutions to oversee police reform. The U.S. decision to give a leading role in its police programs to the Department of Defense has further blurred the distinction between the military and police. Other donor nations and institutions will only be able to assert more influence if they are prepared to step up with commitments, resources and a clear strategic vision. The European Union Police Mission to Afghanistan (EUPOL) has just taken over from Germany as key partner on police reform but so far lacks numbers and a robust mandate. All programs and donor countries must now commit to work together in the International Police Coordination Board (IPCB), make development of an overarching reform strategy a priority and back that strategy by multi-year financial pledges with disbursement of funds conditioned to measurable progress.

It is promising that the international community recognises the vital need for reform but the urgency is driven by the growing insecurity, and the police are being asked to take on roles for which they are neither equipped nor trained. As a result, police casualties are increasing, even as counter-insurgency responsibilities undermine their main task of working with and protecting communities. Kabul and its partners need to acknowledge that different security arms of the state have different roles. The creation of an auxiliary police has further blurred distinctions between the security agencies and prioritised boots on the ground – any boots – over building quality. Good policing is vital for democracy, and democratic functioning is vital for counter-insurgency; the two are not and must not be seen as mutually exclusive. If police reform in Afghanistan is to succeed, the goal should be creation of a trusted, civilian service, which enforces – and is accountable to – the rule of law.

RECOMMENDATIONS
To the Government of Afghanistan and the International Community:
1. Reshape fundamentally the approach to policing by creating and strengthening bodies to depoliticise the service and provide civilian review, including:
(a) a police commissioner and clear lines of authority down to district level, so that the police service is at operational arm’s length from the executive;
(b) a national-level police liaison board, with representatives of civil society, including academics, lawyers and human rights activists, including meaningful female representation, to advise on community needs;
(c) provincial community police liaison boards to inform local police of local priorities and problems, report on local trends to the national police liaison board and oversee local civic education campaigns on citizens’ rights and police responsibilities;
(d) an independent police ombudsman, appointed by the president on recommendation of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) to investigate serious cases of police abuse, including deaths in custody and excessive use of force; and
(e) a reinforced police internal affairs department.
To the Wolesi Jirga (the lower house of the National Assembly):
2. Hold widely-advertised public hearings, consult technical experts and prioritise passage of the Police Law, which should create the new bodies listed above and include:
(a) clear delineation of authorities and responsibilities in relation to other security agencies and judicial organs; and
(b) an emphasis on accountability and respect for constitutionalism, rule of law and international human rights principles.
3. Create a policing subcommittee consisting of members of the internal affairs, defence, justice and women’s affairs, civil society and human rights committees and including at least one-third female membership, with functions including:
(a) questioning the police commissioner and other officials on policing matter; and
(b) holding public hearings on annual reports by the police commissioner, the International Police Coordination Board (IPCB), the Police Liaison Board and the independent police ombudsman, as well as on the police organisational staffing plan (tashkeel).
4. Bar parliamentarians under the rules of procedure from attempting to influence police appointments, operations or investigations and impose stiff penalties.
To the President’s Office:
5. Ensure police professionalism through the pay and rank reform (PRR) process and vetting of appointments by the Afghanistan Advisory Board on Senior Appointments where appropriate.
6. Refrain from interfering in police operational matters and direct governors likewise not to interfere.
7. Help raise police prestige and morale by visiting those wounded and families of those killed in the line of duty and publicly recognising acts of bravery.
To the Interior Ministry (MOI) and Police Commissioner:
8. Ensure meaningful pensions are paid to the families of policemen killed in the line of duty and public honours given to those responsible for acts of bravery and outstanding service.
9. Require all senior police officials to declare their wealth and income and submit to random audits of their tax declarations by the internal affairs department.
10. Prioritise accountability by ensuring all police display ID numbers, so the public can more easily file complaints; widely publicising a short, simple code of conduct; and ensuring the internal affairs department’s autonomy and assigning the most professional officers to it.
11. Seek greater professionalism and diversity by:
(a) commissioning a report into ethnic imbalances in officer training, including why some ethnic group do not seek police careers;
(b) devolving training for Satanman (non-commissioned officers) and enhanced in-service professional development opportunities to the regional centres; and
(c) providing ethnic minority and female leadership candidates mentoring and professional development opportunities to improve their prospects for promotion.
To Donors:
12. Emphasise professional civilian policing, including by:
(a) long-term commitments to the Law and Order Trust Fund for Afghanistan (LOTFA), including police salaries on a par with those of the Afghan National Army (ANA) and danger allowances;
(b) continued improvement of payroll systems to cut fraud and ensure police receive their full salaries;
(c) a conference in Kabul on police accountability and oversight mechanisms, drawing on regional expertise;
(d) instituting a mass literacy program for the police and mentoring and long-term professional development programs, subject to merit-based tests, to help female officers gain experience and skills necessary for promotion;
(e) strengthening the MOI’s internal affairs department;
(f) recruiting international personnel experienced in strategic change and management of police; and
(g) providing technical advisers to civilian review bodies and National Assembly committees.
To the Council of the European Union:
13. Consider building the EUPOL mission into a comprehensive rule of law mission covering the full justice sector.
To the International Police Coordination Board (IPCB):
14. Prioritise developing an agreed, overarching strategy on approaches to police reform, including:
(a) assisting the MOI to standardise police curriculum;
(b) coordinating mentors and advisers to avoid duplication and creating a standard orientation course for all new appointees;
(c) creating mechanisms for nationwide verification of police numbers; and
(d) working with the National Security Council (NSC) and interior ministry to rework security strategies so as to emphasise the civilian nature of police and differentiate them from other security services.
15. Create systems for international personnel to monitor police and report suspected abuse, corruption or narcotics involvement and ensure information is securely saved when staff rotates and can be passed to appropriate authorities when actionable.
16. Ensure citizens’ voices are heard and oversight capacity is built through regular consultation with the Police Community Liaison Board and the proposed parliamentary subcommittee, including on drafts of planning documents.

Kabul/Brussels, 30 August 2007