US troops work on getting new Iraqi police to maintain order

“For once, the local police began acting like cops,” said US Army Capt. John Wrann, who commands the platoons and tanks stationed at the former offices of Saddam Hussein's deposed Baath Party in this town of 60,000.

Wrann's troops — Charlie Company, 588th Engineer Battalion of the 4th Infantry Division — are working with police in Khalis to try to restore order, but they must work around deep ethnic traditions as well as inexperience.

Many police in the new Iraqi force took jobs for the steady salary, and getting them to clamp down has not been easy, Wrann said. In a heavily tribal society, the new police officers were apparently worried that if they shot a suspect, the man's family would seek retribution.

“For the last seven weeks, anytime there was any crime we had to go with them,” Wrann said. “They kept wanting us to go on simple calls.”

A few days ago, after the Iraqi cops refused to search cars at a checkpoint aggressively, US Sgt. Greg Rockhill, using colourful vocabulary, questioned the police officers' courage. He brought in the best translator he could find to make sure they understood.

On Friday, when the four men rolled into town and began shooting at the vegetable store owner, the police acted, wounding one of them in the knee and capturing all of them.

“That's the end game,” said Wrann. “If these guys start maintaining their own security, I can go home.”

The job has been especially difficult because Wrann's men have been trying to do what even the Iraqi leadership couldn't: Control an area that is extremely volatile, both ethnically and religiously. It is home to anti-Saddam militiamen backed by Iran, pro-Saddam warriors who seek the overthrow of Iran's government, and pro-American Kurdish guerrillas.

“You've got tribal relations laid on top of religious affiliations, and you've got the former regime elements,” said Lt. Col. Mark Young, a battalion commander charged with overseeing a part of the Diala province that includes Khalis. “On top of that, you've got elements from other countries.”

There are also mysterious armed men possibly linked to the former regime who have fired rocket-propelled grenades and launched mortars at US troops.

Security has improved here since the first days after Saddam was ousted. The number of gunshot and stabbing victims treated at Khalis' hospital has dropped from about 10 a day to about two, said Ahmad Muhammad, a general practitioner.

But Charlie Company has been plagued by attacks recently.

On Wednesday night, a rocket-propelled grenade barely missed their building, hitting a nearby school.