By Steve Negus
Financial Times, 31 March 2006
Colonel Shaaban Barzan al-Ubaidi, police chief of the district of Baghdadi, declares how he will destroy the "criminal, terrorist, Saddamist, Zarqawist" insurgents who murdered his kinsmen.
"We will wage jihad upon them,'' he says, his eyes displaying the force of personality that has earned him the confidence of the US marines in their bid to establish Iraqi government control in the middle Euphrates Valley in the province of Anbar.
He and his eight surviving brothers - one was murdered in a car bomb attack last week - are part of the province's small police force, mostly from his home town of Jubba, that is setting itself up to fight insurgents in this stretch of valley. The US says the area is a transit route for foreign volunteers and money moving from the Syrian border to Baghdad.
This overwhelmingly Sunni far-western corner of Iraq is often thought of as a heartland of the insurgency. But in the last year, the Americans say, they have been able to make allies of some of the region's powerful tribes who will assist them to establish police forces.
In the past they have had mixed success - policemen in this region have been assassinated, have quit, and in some cases even arrested for working with the insurgents.
But in Col Ubaidi they hope they have found a leader who has reason to fight. Much of the police force set up after the 2003 war melted away in late 2004, as US forces were withdrawn from the region to blockade and eventually assault Falluja.
Now the marines are redeploying in the valley, and the police are being rebuilt from scratch.
In many cases, they say, they draw support from tribes who suffered from the insurgents. The colonel says he took the job in December at the behest of local sheikhs. "We could not take it any more,'' he said. Forty-two of his relatives had been killed after trying to join the army or police. However, his conflict with the men who run the insurgency goes back further.
The colonel says that Jubba had been persecuted under the former regime, as it was home to several prominent communists who opposed Saddam Hussein. In contrast, many of the local insurgents come from the al-Jawana tribe based around the district capital, "which always boasted of its closeness to Saddam'' and whose members joined the ruling party and security services.
Now, he says, these one-time Ba'athists have turned Islamist. "When the regime collapsed, they grew their beards, donned the robe [favoured by Salafi puritans], and said 'God is great' '' to lead the insurgency and court the support of al-Qaeda.
His statements seem to reflect a political dynamic common in areas such as western Anbar where the central state is weak and tribes are the most powerful institutions, where the ebb and flow of national politics leave some communities winners and others losers in a never-ending struggle to secure enough power to protect their members.
The colonel's men fight mostly with their own weapons and have yet to collect any salary - the result, he says, of bureaucratic "routine".
He claims the support of 41 local tribal sheikhs who he says co-operate with the police and turn over any of their supporters who are wanted, but admits to rocky relations with provincial officials in Ramadi.
Col Ubaidi claims some key arrests since taking over, including a cousin who assisted the insurgents, but he has also suffered casualties, including a brother killed by a car bomb at a checkpoint only last week.
According to the colonel's account, his brother noticed the car moving suspiciously and ordered his fellow officers to fall back before firing and killing the driver.
The passenger however was able to detonate its load. "Thank God it was my brother who was the martyr . . . He gave his life for his brothers,'' Col Ubaidi says.
Unlike many residents of Anbar, who may not endorse the insurgency but are also weary of foreign military occupation, Col Ubaidi praises the marines as his comrades-in-arms.
-------------------------
Citation: Steve Negus. "Home-grown police force takes on Iraq insurgents," Financial Times, 31 March 2006.
Original URL: http://news.ft.com/cms/s/11e8de38-c052-11da-939f-0000779e2340.html
-------------------------