A rchive Date
[ 13-10-2003 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Iraq ]
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[http://www.msnbc.com/news/979594.asp?0bl=-0
Iraqis who cooperate are targeted
Working with U.S. proves dangerous
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
THE WASHINGTON POST
BAGHDAD, Oct. 12 - Sitting on a sofa in his fourth-floor room at the Baghdad Hotel on Sunday, Mowaffak Rubaie had been talking about how to solve what he regarded as Iraq’s biggest challenge: writing a new constitution that would please Sunnis and Shiites, Arabs and Kurds, religious hard-liners and moderates, men and women.
“IT WILL not be easy,” Rubaie, a member of Iraq’s U.S.-appointed Governing Council, said with a sigh.
Then, as he was about to outline his proposed path to compromise, a thunderous blast jolted the hotel, shattering the window and sending Rubaie flying to the floor. As his security detail hustled him and a Washington Post reporter into the hallway, fearful of a second explosion or a small-arms attack from across the street, the practical challenges of politics at its highest form were eclipsed by the crudest act of dissent.
“What did we do to deserve this?” Rubaie asked as he sat on a blanket in the hallway, clutching his right arm, which had broken his fall.
To those fighting the U.S. presence in Iraq - loyalists of former president Saddam Hussein, religious extremists, foreign terrorists - Iraqis cooperating with the U.S.-led occupation have become the new target of choice. From police officers to Governing Council members, they are regarded by opponents of the occupation as collaborators - and as much easier prey than U.S. soldiers and civilian reconstruction workers, whose compounds are now encircled with tall concrete barricades, dirt-filled barriers and miles of razor wire.
‘THEY CAN’T GET TO THE AMERICANS’
“They are targeting the new leadership of Iraq because they can’t get to the Americans, because the Americans are very well protected,” Rubaie said an hour after the explosion, as he sat in a windowless room, his arm in a sling.
Sunday’s car bombing of the Baghdad Hotel - home to five Governing Council members and several cabinet ministers - was the latest in a series of attacks on Iraqis who are working with the occupation authority.
Vehicles packed with explosives have been detonated outside two Baghdad police stations, including an attack on Thursday that killed eight people. The leader of Iraq’s largest Shiite Muslim political party was assassinated in August outside the country’s holiest Shiite shrine by a massive car bomb that killed more than 80 other people. And last month, one of Rubaie’s colleagues on the Governing Council, Akila Hashimi, was gunned down as she drove to work.
For Rubaie and other Iraqis who want to build a democratic nation with American assistance, the challenge they face is not only one of new constitutions and elections, but also protecting themselves without isolating themselves from the rest of the country.
Rubaie, an opponent of Hussein’s who fled Iraq in the late 1970s and lived in Britain until just a few months ago, wants to build a political base, particularly with his fellow Shiites. A supporter of moderation and modernity among tradition-bound Shiites, he knows he needs to be out about, meeting sheiks and clerics, touring the country, doing what politicians everywhere do.
It would be easy, he said, to retreat into the Green Zone, the high-security swath of Baghdad housing the occupation authority headquarters and the Governing Council’s offices. The area is protected by U.S. forces, and ordinary Iraqis are forbidden to enter without permission.“The Americans don’t need to be intermixed with people,” he said. “This is our job. We have to continue mixing with people.”
As he sat in the windowless room, sipping an orange soda, he received a call on his tiny mobile phone from L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. civil administrator of Iraq. Bremer wanted to know how he was doing.“Had the bomber managed to get closer to the hotel, it would have been a calamity,” Rubaie said.
‘U-TURN IS NOT AN OPTION’
The hotel, situated on a busy commercial street in central Baghdad, had tall concrete walls designed to absorb the impact of car bombs, but the driver of the explosives-packed car managed to sneak around that barrier. As the car neared the entrance to the hotel’s driveway, Iraqi guards shot at the driver, who detonated the bomb.
Security at the building was provided not by U.S. troops but by Iraqis trained by an American defense contractor, DynCorp of Reston. Gun-toting Iraqi men searched cars and patrolled the perimeter - to avoid the impression that council members were being shielded by Americans - while well-armed Westerners kept watch from a discreet distance inside the hotel compound.
Despite the precautions, the building was not nearly as fortified as American compounds, which are set back farther from civilian traffic. “We need to be removed from here,” Rubaie told Bremer.
But Rubaie said he does not have other good options. Unlike the leaders of large political parties, he does not have his own militia or houses commandeered from Hussein’s Baath Party. Because he is not a Baghdad native, he does not have an ancestral home to which he can return.“I don’t know where I should go,” he told Bremer.
Rubaie insisted he would not shirk from his role on the council, even as he predicted terrorists “will do it again.” “This is not going to deter us from leading our people and building a new Iraq,” he said. “This is a one-way system we’ve got. We don’t have a choice. A U-turn is not an option. You can’t go back. Democracy is well worth paying this cost.”
Not every Iraqi working with the occupation shares that view. Several Iraqis serving as translators for the military have quit out of fear they will be targeted. Police officers have become increasingly apprehensive about showing up to work, particularly when they have to patrol alongside U.S. troops.
Rubaie, a usually chatty man with a graying beard, walked out of the windowless room, looked down at the lobby, where maids were scrubbing away bloodstains and sweeping up broken glass, and paused for a moment. “You know,” he said, “you can’t make security 100 percent.
“If you make it 100 percent, then you’re isolated from your own people, and that’s exactly what the terrorists want. We’ll never succumb to that.”
Then, as his security detail swarmed around him, he offered one final thought: “There’s only so much you can do, and you leave the rest to God.”
© 2003 The Washington Post Company
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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