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thedrifter
05-06-03, 07:15 AM
May 05, 2003

Troops placed in middle of property disputes

By Paul Wiseman
USA Today



BAGHDAD, Iraq — Three nervous-looking, middle-aged Iraqis pulled up to the Army checkpoint in a dusty red Volkswagen Passat. They climbed out of the car and approached Staff Sgt. Dennis Snyder, who was standing behind a coil of razor wire in blazing heat beneath a brilliant blue sky.
The three men needed help. Two gunmen had just occupied an empty house in the Qadisiya neighborhood nearby, moving in with one woman and four children and threatening to kill anyone who questioned what they were doing.

Snyder, 25, had heard it all before. Thugs and opportunists are seizing houses across the Iraqi capital — sometimes simply moving into abandoned homes, other times ousting families at gunpoint — in another sign of the chaos gripping Baghdad following the collapse of Saddam Hussein’s government.

The sergeant promised to dispatch U.S. troops to investigate. The specter of gunmen seizing houses is perhaps the No. 1 threat to security and public confidence in Baghdad.

“Before, we knew our neighbors,” says Am Ahimid, 50, a housewife in down Baghdad’s affluent Jadiriya neighborhood, where intruders have been occupying homes left empty by families fleeing the war to Jordan or Syria, or by Saddam loyalists running for their lives. “Now, we are scared to see these new neighbors. Where did they come from? We don’t know.”

Soon the U.S. troops should be able to turn over some of their policing chores to Baghdad’s police. Hundreds of Baghdad officers returned to their posts Sunday, answering a call from U.S. authorities to help restore order to the capital.

But the officers, wearing new uniforms that bear no resemblance to those worn during the Saddam Hussein era, expressed concern about whether they’ll get paid and whether they’ll be outgunned by looters and thugs.

There is no way to quantify the extent of the property-grab problem, but it is widespread. Residents in Baghdad’s middle- and upper-class neighborhoods say squatters or gunmen have claimed homes on their streets. In some apartment complexes, dozens of units abandoned by families during the war have been taken over by strangers. The land and property grabs also will present a huge headache when the next Iraqi government tries to sort out who owns what in the capital.

Breakdown in law and order

The intruders are helped by the breakdown in law and order since the government collapsed, by the cover of darkness in streets that until recently had no electricity and by the destruction of property records in the looting and burning of government offices.

Snyder says some charlatans have even tried to get U.S. troops to evict legitimate occupants from their homes, falsely accusing them of being intruders. An investigation usually clears things up. “You could tell by the pictures on the walls that the people already in the house were the ones who owned it,” Snyder says.

U.S. authorities say different types of people are behind the land grabs:

• Poor or opportunistic Baghdad residents trading up to a better life by occupying the empty apartments and homes of the rich and powerful who fled during the war, perhaps for good.

• Figures from the past suddenly reappearing to reclaim property they say was confiscated from them years, even decades, ago by Saddam’s regime.

• Gunmen from political groups, some allied with the United States, seizing houses that belonged to Saddam’s cronies or his government.

Out of work for months, former military police officer Khalil Ibrahim, 33, could no longer afford the $50-a-month rent in his working class neighborhood here. So when Saddam’s personal guards fled Baghdad before the U.S. military onslaught, leaving behind their spacious flats along the Tigris River, Ibrahim knew what to do: He packed up his wife and his 7-year-old son and moved into a two-bedroom apartment rent-free.

For the first time, his son has a room of his own, and the family is enjoying the riverside view once available only to Saddam’s inner circle.

His new neighbors are all squatters from Baghdad’s working class. Many have hung white flags outside their apartments to claim ownership. When the father of one of the former tenants showed up to reclaim his son’s apartment, the squatters shoved him out the door and shouted that the new Iraq didn’t need Saddam loyalists.

Nidal Abis, 40, a housewife who occupies one of the riverside flats with her unemployed husband and five children, says she has no intention of leaving. “If they want to kill me, I will die here,” she says.

Out of the past

Under Saddam’s regime, those who fell into disfavor were often banished from the capital and their property confiscated by the government and sold. Now, the old owners are starting to return to the capital — from Kurdish territory in northern Iraq, from Iran and from points beyond — and they want their property back. Trouble is, the current occupants have lived there for years and have paid for the property.

Adel Murad, a leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), lost his childhood home in Baghdad nearly three decades ago after his father was assassinated by the regime.

Now, he’s back after being banished to northern Iraq: “There are other people in my house. I told them, ‘Stay in my house two to three months until you find a new house.’ “ (There are widespread reports, however, of PUK gunmen trying to seize houses forcibly.)

The sudden reappearance of long-forgotten property owners is creating havoc. In Baghdad’s main market, Fatah al-Beldoui, 35, had the misfortune of paying two years’ rent on his shop (about $1,200) in advance at the beginning of 2003.

Then a man showed up from Iran after Saddam’s regime fell, claimed the property was rightfully his and forced al-Beldoui’s landlord to flee at gunpoint.

Now, al-Beldoui reckons he has lost the advance payment and possibly the right to lease the storefront where he has been selling candy, toothpaste and other convenience items since 1992.

“I look to God for help,” al-Beldoui says, rolling his eyes toward the sky.

New political heavies

Armed anti-Saddam groups such as the PUK are cruising the streets of the capital and trying to force their way into the abandoned homes of former top officials. They say they are aiding the search for fugitive leaders of the fallen regime, but their thuggish behavior is terrifying the neighbors.

The U.S.-backed Iraqi National Congress (INC), for instance, has sent teams of Kalashnikov-wielding men — volunteers recruited from Iraq’s exile community — in camouflage pants to occupy dozens of properties across Baghdad.

Sometimes, the Army has to kick the INC men out. Friday, a team of four INC militants approached the house of the son of Baath Party official Latif Nusayyif Jasim. (No. 37 on the U.S. list of the 55 most-wanted Iraqi leaders). The militants ordered a security guard to flee or die and then moved in. U.S. troops were sent to the scene and ousted the intruders without resistance.

The INC men, convinced they had U.S. backing, couldn’t understand why they were under arrest. “We just wanted to take care of this house,” said one of the detained gunmen, Ali Hammed, 25, a Shiite.

Hammed had been living in exile in Iran when he heard INC leader Ahmad Chalabi’s call for volunteers, he said, and now he’s here.

Army Ranger 1st Sgt. Jeff Moser of Detroit tried to explain to the gunmen why it wasn’t a great idea for armed men to be prowling through residential areas and breaking into houses. “We want to make sure the families in this neighborhood do not get bothered by guns,” Moser said.

Neighbors fight back

Some neighborhoods are fighting back on their own.

In the affluent Mansour area of west Baghdad, worshipers from the local mosque are protecting the home abandoned by the director of Iraq’s intelligence service, Tahir Jalil Habbush (No. 14 on the most-wanted list).

The imam, Waleed al-Azawi, 34, sent a mosque guard — who took along his family — to live inside the mansion, which is designed to resemble a 13th-century fortress and has gardens behind dust-colored stone walls. Imam al-Azawi also set up a medical clinic inside an adjoining home that belonged to Habbush’s son.

Despite his service in Saddam’s regime, Habbush is revered in Mansour as a pious man and a generous benefactor: The local mosque, built two years ago and financed entirely with Habbush’s personal money, bears his name.

Local residents have put an Arabic slogan in white paint on the home’s gate: “This house is under the protection of the people who belong to the mosque.” When INC and PUK gunmen tried to break in, neighbors — some armed with handguns — forced them away. The PUK gunmen threatened to use their satellite phones to call in a U.S. airstrike.

Neighbors just laughed.

continued.........

thedrifter
05-06-03, 07:16 AM
Help from U.S. troops

Mostly, though, Baghdad residents are relying on help from thinly stretched U.S. military forces. Four hours after the three men in the red Passat registered their complaint with Staff Sgt. Snyder, a team of nine soldiers moved in on the house that had been occupied in the Qadisiya neighborhood.

Some troops watched the house from a distance, and when they saw the women and children move into a side room on the first floor, they stormed the building, surprising the two gunmen as they came downstairs.

One gunman made the mistake of trying to wrestle with Army Spc. Tony Semeatu, a burly 25-year-old American Samoan, and was subdued with one punch. The other gave up without a struggle. The two men’s hands were tied in nylon bonds that tighten when prisoners struggle.

The women and children were released, the two men taken into custody. They had a Kalashnikov, ammunition, igniters for rocket launchers (harmless by themselves) and uniforms bearing the red triangular insignia of the Iraqi Republican Guard.

The house was returned to its owner, a prosperous lawyer.

U.S. troops say they are willing to evict armed intruders, but they are reluctant to get involved in property disputes they’re in no position to mediate fairly.

Sgt. 1st Class Mike Shirley, 36, of Tulsa, Okla., says: “We don’t want to play police force.”


Sempers,

Roger

firstsgtmike
05-06-03, 09:16 AM
These incidents here demonstrate the problems between the Israelis and the Palestinions. (I never said I could spell.)

Yhe older generatin of Palestinions left, or were forced out of Israel during their War. Israelis took over their land and homes.

Who do they belong to now?

An Israeli could say; "You left a mound of rocks in the desert, I turned it into an agricultural paradise. Even if I were to agree, how do you plan to pay for the improvements?"

Other than the difference between individual and tribal land ownership, it compares with "homesteading" in the United States if the Indians could validate their claims.

There is NO easy answer!