Baghdad policemen patrol the streets of the Iraqi capital with US Marines, yesterday. In response to widespread looting, local police have made a swift return to service. - Reuters BAGHDAD, (Reuters)l:
HE DRIVES a hotwired yellow truck, carries a stolen AK-47 rifle and goes on patrol with heavily armed American invaders.
Thamer Mahmoud is the new face of Baghdad justice.
The Iraqi policeman was one of several officers who joined US Marines in their first joint patrol - aimed at convincing a sceptical public they are working together to stop looting.
It was a unique, if chaotic, experiment in law and order in a city where the overthrow of Saddam Hussein has created something close to a thieves' paradise.
Within minutes of rolling out of a Baghdad police college, the convoy of three US Marine "Humvee" off-roaders and a white Iraqi patrol car screeched to a halt outside the Rasheed bank.
Marines with M-16 rifles stormed in. Three young men rushed out with their hands up, open-mouthed with fear.
Much to the disappointment of a pair of anxious depositors, the Marines and police let the looters go. With Baghdad's prisons in disarray, there was no way to detain them.
"You can see with your own eyes, they are the thieves," said Maged Mohammed, 40, pointing to men loitering under a motorway bridge. "If you go away, they will come back and steal."
"In a little while, somebody will come and shoo them away," replied Marine First Lieutenant David Popielski, 33, in soothing tones. There was no sign of any reinforcements.
HUNTING LOOTERS
Moving again, the patrol swung onto a main road through the city. It halted immediately. Mahmoud had spotted looters - lots of them - making off in a stream of cars crammed with goods.
The policeman flagged down a blue saloon, piled with three mattresses on the roof and with a trunk full of light fittings and a gold-painted coat stand. The driver was indignant.
"I can't prove that these things are mine because I don't have my name written on them. My flat was bombed and I'm moving my furniture to my brother's house," said Razzaq Said, a contractor, spreading his palms in a gesture of innocence.
Before long, as more vehicles were stopped, arguments were raging and the patrol was hearing excuses to explain why one might possess three air-conditioning units or where the new Renault lorry came from.
"It's turning into a zoo," said Popielski, an upstate New Yorker, who calmly smoked amid the chaos. Mahmoud waved down a brand new ambulance he suspected had also been pillaged.
It was about then that Mahmoud, 34, commandeered the yellow flat-bed truck - saying it was a looted government vehicle.
Tempers flared and a small boy in one van wailed, but despite the pandemonium, the sight of Marines working with police was something that would have been unthinkable just a few days ago.
MORE PATROLS PLANNED
Marines had considered the police a potentially hostile force, but said they planned more patrols yesterday with rank-and-file officers whose senior commanders have fled.
The Marines made a formidable deterrent, with machine-guns and an anti-tank missile. Mahmoud started out with a rubber cosh, making up in enthusiasm what he lacked in firepower.
The plan was for the police to carry handguns at most, but when Mahmoud found an AK-47 in one vehicle, nobody objected. A 24-year-old Iraqi named Ahmed working for the Marines as an interpreter saw fit to grab a Russian SKS 7.62 mm rifle.
Any Iraqi with a gun in Baghdad is liable to be shot by US troops, but Marines said the patrol aimed partly to familiarise them with the green police uniforms to avoid mistakes.
The convoy rumbled on - the next target a man rolling a wooden drum of stolen wire cable down the road. After giving him a ticking off, the patrol hit the Zauna City suburbs.
