Deadly job in a dangerous place

[thedrifter]

That's how many police officers are working the streets of Qaim. You cannot see a blue uniform or a white Nissan pickup with red and blue lights on the roof.

But you will. Soon.

About 200 Iraqi men have completed training at two police academies and are in the process of returning to Qaim to start up a new police force. The governor of Anbar province recently appointed a new police chief for the town. There's a newly renovated, albeit empty, police station and a local populace desperately in need of security.

"I'd love for people to see this place in six months," said U.S. Army 1st Lt. Jason Wyant. "I think they'd be impressed."

Wyant, a military police officer based at Fort Riley, Kan., is the leader of a group of U.S. soldiers called a PTT, for police transition team. There are dozens of such teams sprouting up all over Iraq with the goal of developing, training and modernizing this nation's police force.

Gen. George Casey, the U.S. commander in Iraq, has declared 2006 as the "Year of the Police." The top priority is to get local police departments up to speed and to take a more active role in the safety of the nation's communities.

It's part of the American push to build up the Iraqi police and army so that, theoretically, U.S. troops can leave the country. In addition to the PTTs, there are military transition teams, special police transition teams and border patrol transition teams.

The military transition teams working with Iraqi army units are the furthest along. The police and border patrol units are in their infancy. There are, of course, many Iraqi police departments in cities across the nation, but the American transition teams are just getting situated, and many are not yet fully embedded with those departments.

In some cases, it's because of security -- it's just too dangerous. As a result, there is a real question about whether and how the new police forces can stand on their own, without U.S. logistical and financial support.

These days, being a cop in Iraq might be the most dangerous job in the world.

Insurgents target police stations and recruiting centers. Suicide bombers infiltrate police compounds to blow themselves up and scatter police body parts for blocks around. Or insurgents kidnap and kill police. Police generally live and work in the same community, so their families may be threatened, injured or killed.

Soldiers, by contrast, typically are based far away from home. They must take leave to go see their families, who are better protected that way.

That's why there is no police department in Qaim, a dusty town right at the Syrian border.

Lt. Col. Nick Marano, the 43-year-old Philadelphia native who commands the Marines throughout the western edge of Iraq's Anbar province, said there was a significant police force in the aftermath of the American-led invasion three years ago.

For a time, there was peace, he said. But the tribal leaders did not like Americans occupying their land. After a time, he said, they invited in the serious jihadists, the al Qaeda types, in the hopes that they would drive out the Americans.

What the tribal leaders didn't expect was the severity and savagery of the insurgents, Marano said. They ran roughshod over the locals, enforcing their own brand of Islam on residents and telling them how to pray and act.

"They were cutting off heads out there," Marano said. "It was some really rough stuff."

The insurgents also targeted the Iraqi police and army in what Marano called a "murder and intimidation campaign."

"They were extremely ruthless," he said. "There were cases where they would take a guy's family out and shoot his daughter in front of him and then let him go back."

It didn't take long for the police department to disappear into the population.

Meanwhile, the insurgents were still there. The U.S. Marines tried to maintain security, but they are a military force, attuned to military strategy and tactics. In addition, they're spread thin across the border region.

Finally, the local tribes started turning on the foreigners, Marano said. Even the largest tribe in the region, the Abu Mahal, who had been stridently anti-American, started siding with the Marines and helping them flush out insurgents.

"The local tribes don't like anyone telling them what to do," Marano said. "They didn't want Americans here until they saw the extremism of the foreign fighters. After that, we didn't look so bad."

The Marines and army launched several offensives along the border last year, most recently in November, to drive the insurgents from the region. Fighting was heavy and bloody.

"We killed a lot of them," Marano said. "The rest got forced out."

Qaim is still far from safe. The Marines come across improvised explosive devices -- hidden roadside bombs -- almost daily. Marano was going through town the other day on an inspection tour of Marine and Iraqi army outposts when an explosion rocked the neighborhood nearby. The source of the blast was not known.

But the situation has improved since last year, he said. Most importantly, the local sheikhs agreed to recruit a couple hundred young men to become police officers. They supplied the men based on each tribe's representation in the region.

The recruits were flown to police academies in Baghdad and Jordan. They returned Saturday after completing their training. They have a couple weeks of leave coming up and then some more training by Wyant's transition team.

Then it's time to hit the streets.

Along the way, they will be mentored by a couple of retired American police officers who were hired by the State Department to bring professional law enforcement tactics and techniques to the force.

The military transition team is there to advise the Iraqis on certain military aspects of their job, such as defense and protection, weapons training, logistics and supply.

But the new officers also need help with things like patrolling, professional ethics, investigations and such.

That's where Gregory Murphy comes in.

The 55-year-old former police chief from Wisconsin -- he asked that the exact place not be printed, for security reasons -- is in Qaim to try to help make the new department work.

"We're starting from scratch with a bunch of people who have never been police officers before," Murphy said. "We're talking about establishing civil authority out here -- that is, law enforcement and courts. Without it, you can't bring law to your citizens. This is important work that will help bring our kids home sooner."

Murphy said he would teach the new officers how to patrol and how to work with the residents of Qaim. He'll try to teach professional ethics, investigations, processing evidence and generally how to function as police officers.

He said he has learned to blend professional police training with cultural sensitivity. You can't just issue orders. There is an Arab way of doing things.

"You have to have meetings, and you have to abide by their ways," he said. "You have to offer refreshments, cigarettes and polite conversation. Eventually, they will say, 'Yes, Mr. Murphy, what can I do for you?' If you don't understand their ways, they'll tune you out."

Apart from the technical details of policing, Murphy said a major part of his work is instilling a professional ethic in the new force. People around here are used to offering, and taking, bribes for services. They're called "gifts." Murphy doesn't imagine that the practice will go away, but he thinks it's important to limit it to small favors -- and not for major crimes or to let people get away with violent acts.

What will be good about having a local force in Qaim, he said, is the Iraqi police officers' ability to perform true community policing. In Iraqi communities, everyone knows everyone. They know their mothers, fathers and grandfathers.

More importantly, they know who belongs in a neighborhood and who doesn't.

"Ultimately, it won't matter much what we teach them," he said. "It all depends on the populace. If they don't accept the police, this won't work."

Murphy estimated that the new department could be fully functioning in six months to a year, if everything goes right.

It will be difficult, he said, because the new cops will have to deal with a continuing insurgency that sees them as collaborators with the American military.

As one U.S. soldier put it: "The insurgents will try to bloody their noses soon, to see if they cut and run."

E-mail John Koopman at jkoopman@sfchronicle.com.

Ellie