BASRA, Iraq, 22 May 2003 — Finding criminals is not a problem for the joint British and Iraqi police patrols trying to keep order in the Basra slum district of Hayaniya — the problem is that there are more lawbreakers than they can cope with. The warren of streets on the western fringe of Basra is littered with looted scrap metal, as well as piles of rotting garbage where bony dogs scavenge and grimy children play. Raw sewage flows through the gutters, stinking in the fierce heat.

Crime is a way of life here for the impoverished residents who have lived through decades of war, dictatorship and sanctions. The British troops in control of Basra are trying to rebuild an Iraqi police force to restore a semblance of order. Aid agencies are clamoring for improved security. Residents are demanding restoration of law and order. The British say they are working on it - but it will not be achieved overnight.

“The best people to police Iraq are the Iraqis, but we have to restore the local police force gradually and with a lot of supervision,” said Lt. Col. Eddie Forster-Knight, commanding officer of the British military police in Basra.

Around 1,000 policemen of the city’s former force of 6,000 have returned to work. The British say they cannot be too choosy about employing police who served during Saddam Hussein’s rule — security needs to be restored as fast as possible and there is not enough time to train a new force entirely from scratch. “What we can’t do is go back to year zero. We have to deal with the reality of policing a city of 1.5 million people,” Forster-Knight said. “Like in any big city, every crime imaginable is being committed here.”

Old Basra police station lies just next to the city’s notorious “Ali Baba” market, where looted goods are openly on sale and illegal gambling is rife. British military police stationed there are trying to train their new Iraqi colleagues — a process fraught with misunderstandings and awkwardness. An informer arrives saying a robber has returned home in the Hayaniya slum with two brand new cars, a rarity in a district where the only vehicles usually to be seen are burned-out cars stripped of scrap metal and carts pulled by flea-bitten donkeys.

Iraqi policemen grab AK-47s from the armory and a joint British and Iraqi convoy sets off. Along with the policemen crammed into the Iraqi car is a young boy, the son of the driver, who peers excitedly out of the window.

Panicked looters scatter as the convoy swerves through the streets. But looting is so widespread that the police hardly notice. “There’s nowhere to detain them anyway,” said Sgt. Graham Smith. “So when we catch them we just untie their donkeys from their carts. We’ve freed about 50 donkeys so far.”

Meanwhile, the top UN relief official in Iraq, Ramiro Lopes da Silva, said yesterday it was crucial to restore law and order in the country, tying the humanitarian situation to security.

“It is fundamental to re-establish law and order,” da Silva, UN humanitarian coordinator for Iraq, said during a tour of a sewage plant, power station and World Food Program warehouse in Baghdad. “There was a fragile situation prior to the conflict but what was fragile is weakened every day. Basic services have collapsed.

“Hopefully the UN is going to lift the sanctions. We always advocated the lifting of the sanctions” slapped on Iraq in 1990 for invading Kuwait, da Silva said.

At the sewage plant, da Silva heard complaints from workers about daily looting incidents and the absence of coalition troops to protect them.

“This place can be rehabilitated. But arrest the thieves! They come every day, they steal motors, cables, submersible pumps,” engineer Nabil Jamil said. “We need protection. We asked the Americans to come but they replied that they didn’t have enough troops,” Jamil said.