wacky
[博客]
[个人文集]
游客
|
|
|
作者：Anonymous 在 罕见奇谈 发贴, 来自 http://www.hjclub.org
Bandits Hindering British Peace-Keeping Process
By Keith B. Richburg
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, March 28, 2003; 1:53 PM
BASRA INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, Iraq, March 28 - As British troops sweep the countryside for remnants of President Saddam Hussein's army and militia, and as the stalemate continues in the city of Basra, a new problem is emerging in the effort to restore a sense of normalcy here in the southeast: banditry and lawlessness that seems close to tipping some areas into anarchy.
Villagers now complain of roving bands of armed men - "Ali Babas," in local parlance - who steal tractors, hijack trucks, loot factories and terrorize local residents with near-impunity.
And after American Marines swept through southern Iraq in their rapid push north to Baghdad, they left behind a vacuum of power and authority that the British troops stationed here say they are reluctant to fill.
"I'm getting pissed off about it, really," said one British Fusilier, a member of the famed "Desert Rats." He added, "This is getting to be peacekeeping duty, like in Bosnia and Kosovo. I came here to fight a war."
Another member of a Challenger II tank crew described how on his first day in the village of Mushirij, less than 10 miles west of Basra, he was called on to help track down a man who stole a villager's tractor. "I had to chase it down with this thing," he said, pointing to the reinforced 100-ton British tank. "The tractor was going about 10 miles an hour."
Villagers in Mushirij gathered outside the command post of the Fusilier's "Zulu Command" today, complaining loudly that while the American-led invasion of Iraq, dubbed "Iraq Freedom," promised them a better life, after just one week they have seen only heightened insecurity.
The main problem, many complained, is that while the British troops patrolling here confiscate weapons from ordinary villagers, the thieves - many of them deserters from the Iraqi army's 51st Division that was based here - roam outside the control of any law, preying on villagers.
"The Americans occupied us. They said they would protect us," said a 47-year-old Iraqi man, an engineer in blue jeans and black sandals with a moustache streaked with gray. "But the thieves come and steal from our companies. How can we restart our companies?"
"We are afraid from both sides," said the man, who asked that his name not be printed. "We are afraid of the thieves, and we are afraid of them," pointing at the British troops garrisoned in what was the headquarters of the ruling Baath Party. "The thieves have guns," he said, "but we have no guns."
He added, ominously, "If this continues, in seven days or more, we will fight" the British soldiers. "We have no guns, but we can get guns. If this place is still without water, still without electricity, we will fight them. Even this child," he said, patting the head of an eight-year-old who was listening intently in the crowd. "He can fight," the engineer said of the child. "He is an Iraqi."
Most of the people in this area work for one of the four complexes that belong to the Iraqi state oil company. The largest one, the refinery, employs 3,500 people, although there has been no work here since the start of the war. Now the abandoned facilities have become a favorite target of the bandits.
"They stole from our company - air conditioners, machines, cars, trucks," said another middle-aged man, also an engineer with the company. "And this force here doesn't protect."
Before last week, he said, security was not a problem. "There were police, and they had stations around this area." But now, he said, "There are no Iraqi police. And no one can carry a pistol - it is a crime now."
At one of the smaller facilities of the oil company, workers today were using a bulldozer to build a dirt wall around the entrance to prevent the thieves from entering. "We are closing this, so the thieves won't come," said Kadim Kassim, 59, an employee of the oil company for 26 years. "There's no policeman, no watchman. No anything."
He said the village did not lack food or medicine, only fresh drinking water since the supply was cut when the war started. But the main issue, he said, is security. "We need police," he said. "We want police to save this place."
The British troops here do apprehend some thieves, when alerted by the local villagers. On a drive here down a gutted and muddy path, reporters saw British soldiers forcing several Iraqi men out of a truck. The men were made to stand with their hands against a wall while they were frisked.
Just after noon in Mushirij, British troops marched four other suspected thieves through the crowd to the Zulu Company headquarters, where the villagers outside jeered them and shouted "Ali Baba!" Ali Baba!"
The suspects were young men with light beard, and with their heads wrapped in red-and-yellow checked keffiyahs.
And in just three minutes - from the time they were brought in at 12:15 until 12:18 - the men walked out the gates, free, smiling.
British commanders say there is little they can do, since at the moment they are not here to provide police functions. For punishment, "We give them a ticking off, in a very robust British manner," said Maj. Duncan McSporran, who concedes that his role has become something like that of a Wild West sheriff. "I am the sheriff, aren't I?" he said. "That's one of my many functions."
But with troops still engaged in a military operation, disarming the population, searching for weapons caches, and continuously fighting low-level guerrilla-style attacks, he said the soldiers have their hands full without the added burden of taking prisoners for low-level crimes. "We don't have the manpower. We don't have the resources," he said.
With southern Iraq still insecure, he said, his primary responsibility as commander has to be the safety of his own soldiers.
The initial plan, at the start of the war, was for British military police to move into southern Iraq quickly and begin building a new Iraqi police force. "We were told to plan on being here four to eight months," said a British military policeman stationed at the border town of Safwan, in the early days of the war. "Our job is to work with the local police. Not to change all their practices, just to make sure they're not killing people. The plan is to get rid of the hierarchy and to work with the others."
The continuing guerilla attacks appear to have complicated that plan of reforming a police force here, soldiers now say.
Still, the British are not budging on their "no weapons" policy and will continuing its forced disarmament of the population. "They don't need them," McSporran said. "I've told them, if they believe there are thieves, come and tell me."
?2003 The Washington Post Company
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
作者：Anonymous 在 罕见奇谈 发贴, 来自 http://www.hjclub.org |
|
|
Bandits Hindering British Peace-Keeping Proces
