BAGHDAD, 25 May 2003 — Col. Ted Spain may have the toughest mission in the US military right now: Restoring order to the lawless streets of this huge and troubled city. “We’re the main effort,” said Spain, who commands 4,000 US military police in the Iraqi capital. “I am the de facto police chief of Baghdad right now.”
It’s an exotic position for a man who describes himself as a son of “Mayberry RFD,” a reference to the old television show set in small-town North Carolina. Spain, whose father was a game warden in that state, walks the beat in Baghdad and listens to Iraqis complain about “Ali Babas,” as they have labeled the thieves and looters who dominate the nights here.
Spain does not command the biggest US military unit here. His MPs are dwarfed in number and firepower by the troops and tanks of the 3rd Infantry Division, which conquered Baghdad last month, and the 1st Armored Division, which is arriving this week to become the main occupation force in the city.
But Spain’s MPs, trained as soldiers and policemen, are seen as the vanguard of the US pacification effort. By themselves, they’re hardly enough to calm any city of 5 million people, let alone a recently hostile foreign capital. So the US military calculates that the key to success is using Spain and his troops to help the Baghdad police force — which disappeared when Saddam Hussein’s government fell on April 9 — reappear on the streets.
To encourage the shaken police force, Spain’s MPs began to back them up this week, with two Army Humvees following Baghdad police cars that ventured out on patrol. Likewise, the MPs and Iraqi forces plan to cooperate on search-and-seizure operations, with the military setting up the cordon and Baghdad police going in and conducting the arrests.
So far, however, few Iraqi police officers have returned to the streets of Baghdad, in stark contrast to the heavy police presence visible here before the war. Spain has soldiered on nevertheless, putting the best light on a security situation that Iraqis still describe as tenuous.
“We’ve had unbelievable progress in the last two weeks,” Spain said while preparing for a meeting with the heads of the various sections of the Baghdad police force — traffic, neighborhood patrols, criminal investigation and police training, and the commanders of Baghdad West and Baghdad East.
Even the fact that his weekly meeting was happening was a positive sign, he said. When he first tried to meet with the police at the beginning of May, almost no one showed up. “I was told they thought it might be a sting operation,” he said. Spain’s session with the police division chiefs, held at a round table in the half-ruined National Police College, was businesslike. Much of it focused on management, addressing such issues as weaponry, communications, organization and discipline. But just when it seemed reassuringly bureaucratic, something would pop up and remind everyone of the ethnic and religious tensions straining the country.
When the meeting moved to the subject of stolen cars — a sore point in a city where carjackings have become commonplace — one police officer told Spain the vehicles were being driven to Kurdish areas in the north and to Iran, “where there is more money.”
Some of the 10 Iraqis speaking at the meeting, all sporting moustaches, nodded in agreement. The four Americans, all wearing battle fatigues, looked thoughtful. Another issue, said Spain, is that “you tell me you have 7,000 Baghdad policemen. I ride all over Baghdad and I don’t see them.”
“They don’t feel safe,” responded Maj. Gen. Kais Mohammed Naief, head of the traffic police. One of his officers had been shot just that morning while patrolling on his motorcycle, Naief said. Spain told them to find safety in numbers. “If you can’t put out one of your police officers safely, put out two, put out three, put out four together.”
The division chiefs protested that they needed gasoline for their patrol cars. Fine, replied Spain — but, he warned, “If you black-market fuel, or use it for personal use, we don’t need you as a Baghdad police officer.”
Flies buzzed in and out of the room, in which the temperature rose to 98 degrees as the meeting progressed. Spain, who suffered a bout of dehydration this month when he was still acclimating, sipped water steadily through the meeting. The session was typical of the work that keeps Spain, 48, working 18 hours a day, seven days a week.
After the meeting, Spain was asked whether any of the Iraqis attending the session had been major figures in Saddam’s Baath Party. He said that was not his concern. His objective was to restart the police patrols, he said, and these were the guys who knew how to do it. “I’m in their world, and I’ve got to operate in their world, short-term,” he said.
In the longer run, officials here say, there will be a thorough effort to weed out former government and party officials. Although some of the officials he is working with might have committed abuses, others are professional law enforcement types, Spain said. “I believe they are cops,” he said.
After the meeting, Spain led a two patrol of two Humvees around two sections of west Baghdad for two hours, during which he saw only one Iraqi police officer on the street. That officer was accompanied by US troops in one of the joint patrols that are just beginning. When Spain dropped into several shops, he was barraged by complaints about nightly looting. “The things we need most are security and electricity,” said Muhee Munaam, a retired brigadier general in the Iraqi missile forces who now operates an appliance repair shop.
At a convenience store, a group of men bunched around Spain, who at 6 feet 4 towered over them in his flak jacket and helmet. They didn’t appear intimidated. “If America is so powerful, why can’t it restore the electricity?” said one man, waving his cigarette in the air.
