Killer gangs leave cops quaking
2004-08-23 21:03
Latifiya - This small farming town, en route from Baghdad to the holy cities of Najaf and Karbala, has become Iraq's capital of kidnapping and murder, a place where police live in constant fear of brutal death.
A senior police officer in Latifiya said: "The area is dangerous for us and we don't go out in our uniforms.
"We don't even want to eat in a restaurant for fear of being shot down at every street corner," he said.
Refusing to give his first name and jumping back in horror when asked if he could be photographed, he went to great lengths to explain that the daily attacks in the area were the work of unknown "Arab fundamentalists", not Iraqis.
"We change our clothes to go home and slip out of the police station through a backdoor," said the policeman.
"This region is a battlefield, where fundamentalists are active, perpetrate attacks against foreigners working in Iraq and against all Iraqi security forces.".
Foreigners often don't come out the other side
The stretch of motorway ,which runs through the towns of Latifiya, Mahmudiya and Iskandariya, has become a lucrative backyard for criminal and militant cells who have already rid their Fallujah stronghold of Iraqi or US authority.
The area, like Fallujah populated by Sunni Muslims, has become a new Bermuda triangle for foreigners.
When they embark on a drive south and enter Latifiya, they don't always come out the other end.
It is thought several of the latest disappearances took place in the region.
Spanish government agents and a Polish journalist were killed there and scores of others have been kidnapped along the fatal stretch of road.
Policemen face the same chilling threat on their doorstep, for daring to work under the orders of the Iraqi government, perceived by radical militants as a proxy for United States-led occupation forces.
The police officer said: "A few days ago, we found a dead body in front of the police station.
"Then, when we got closer to remove the body, it exploded.
"Some people had managed to booby-trap the corpse," said the petrified policeman.
"Many truckers come to knock on our door to report that their vehicles were stolen at gunpoint by criminals who sped off towards Fallujah," (the infamous Sunni Muslim bastion west of Baghdad), he said.
Had to be smuggled home
In Iskandariya, 15km further south on the road to Iraq's Shiite Muslim heartland, the situation is much the same.
Police were dressed in plain clothes even inside their headquarters, so far has carrying Iraqi police shoulder pads become suicidal.
The only one still wearing his uniform was a police colonel.
Yet, far from being a defiant leader trying to maintain morale among his troops, the officer nervously eludes all questions about the lawlessness which has gripped his area.
After a day of work spent holed up in his office, he stands on the side of the road, waiting for a compassionate driver to smuggle him home alive.