Smuggling surges in Iraq

2003-07-06 10:11

Samawah, Iraq - A junkie with a stab wound staggers into a hospital. He wants care, he wants drugs, he wants it all right now, so he goes berserk. He flails wildly, breaks free of the orderlies, threatens everyone in sight.

A clutch of local cops springs into inaction, shrinking back and cowering before the addict's twitchy, strung-out dance of desperation.

One lawman stands his ground.

Steven Gallagher, a police officer from the Milwaukee, Wisconsin suburbs and a major in the US Army Reserves, goes after the invader and takes him down, but not before the wild-eyed man has sunk his teeth into Gallagher's right hand, breaking the skin.

Arrgh, he thinks. Now he'll have to face a series of worrisome blood tests.

"That guy had tracks on his arm," says a wincing Gallagher as he recounts the incident. He's referring to the trail of needle marks indicating intravenous drug use.

Iraq has a crime problem. But it's not just the looting unleashed after the US-British invasion crushed Saddam Hussein's police state - which has mostly run its course.

The emerging crime problem is subtler and scarier: theft, extortion, and drug- and arms-smuggling operations that have become more sophisticated, more clandestine and, yes, more organised. In Baghdad, one team of thieves recently burned down a warehouse filled with the hot booty of another group. It was one mob sending a message to another.

Not exactly the Mafia, not yet. But US Army officials believe that beneath the random street crime and the patternless potshots taken at American soldiers are the raw materials for gangsters in the making.

Here are some trends that emerge from dozens of interviews with traders, crime experts, local leaders, relief workers, former regime officials and US military operatives during a monthlong tour of postwar Iraq:

Trends

Heroin, hashish and prescription drug smuggling from Afghanistan, Iran and Syria is making a comeback through transit points such as Samawah - the closest town to the Saudi Arabian border - after being interrupted by a 2000-01 crackdown by Saddam and the subsequent US-led war to oust him.

Without Saddam's all-seeing security apparatus, drug pushers are becoming bolder and more numerous, helping Iraq become not just a way station for narcotics, but a market.

Looters, ex-convicts and nihilistic, jobless youths are coalescing into gangs who realise that banding together gives them a collective power to mug, rob and otherwise get a foothold in the local economy.

The tribes that dominate much of society outside the diverse capital, Baghdad, include clans that specialise in thievery, and are trafficking in much of the artillery and heavier weapons left behind by the collapsed Iraqi army.

Like Russia, the Balkans, East Germany and other places where an established order imploded in a historical blink of an eye, Iraq has many of the key ingredients for gangland warfare and organised crime to grow quickly.

"It's already started, and it's going to be a big problem, especially in a big city like Baghdad," says Chief Warrant Officer 2nd Class Greg Bruce, 40, a reservist assigned to the US Marines' 2nd Battalion, 5th Regiment.

The Marines are in Samawah to protect a US Army civil affairs unit that is building a district government that includes a police department and judicial system.

Nests

Bruce's job as a Marine reservist is basically the same as his full-time occupation: patrolman of a special anti-gang unit for the Los Angeles Police Department, where his turf includes one of the most infamous nests of gangs, guns and drugs in the United States.

"I basically do the same thing here: I go out, talk to people and find out where the bad guys are," says Bruce, who has had similar stints in Bosnia, Korea and Panama during the US war on General Manuel Noriega.

Samawah has never been short of bad guys. It is the closest city to the long, indistinct Saudi border and has been a key transit point on a Middle Eastern smuggling route for centuries - in recent decades for heroin and hashish and, even more recently, for weapons.

Saddam Hussein cracked down on the drug trade in Samawah in 2000, said Samawah police Captain Nagib Ali Najam, who held the same post for 20 years under the previous regime.

There is much debate about why Saddam tried to stanch a smuggling operation that Najam said had "become rampant". One reason may have been that local leaders of Saddam's ruling Baath party had become rich - without giving Baghdad a sufficient cut, Najam said.

Noticeable rise

With the collapse of social order and an occupation force spread thin just keeping the country together, there has been a noticeable rise in heroin, hashish and weapons moving to and from the Saudi border, Bruce says.

"I've even had some of my men offered heroin and hashish on the street," he says.

Gallagher, who is in charge of developing a public safety system in Samawah, says the police department is not yet up to the job. He noted the city is on its third police chief is less than two months, after the first turned out to be a secret police agent under Saddam and the second "couldn't even get his men to stand in a straight line".

The new chief, Colonel Fadel Abbas Ali, used to head the fire department and became a local legend by continuing to fight fires even as the US-led coalition was on the attack and keeping his department from being looted after the war.

Yet, as chief for only six weeks, he is clearly in over his head. Around a table, his top men snicker and elbow each other as a reporter reads him a list of names of reputed drug dealers picked up in interviews with area residents.

"Well, you apparently have more information than I do," he said, smiling slightly.

- SAPA