Lining Up for Dangerous Work

Two weeks ago, 25-year-old Maysan was heading to a police recruiting station on Haifa Street when a suicide bomber detonated his explosives-laden car near a long line of aspiring officers. The blast killed 47 people and wounded 114.

Maysan, who arrived after the blast, recalled scraping the remains of some would-be recruits into banana crates. The next day, he returned to the police academy -- to apply again, he said.

“Why should I worry?” he asked with a shrug last week, standing in the shade outside another recruiting center in the Dora district of the capital. “God will protect us.”

Hundreds of potential recruits have been killed in attack after attack by insurgents, but the spiraling body count has failed to scare away large numbers of young men, who still line up to join Iraq’s nascent security forces. On Monday morning, a car bomb outside a recruiting center in Baghdad killed at least 15 Iraqis and wounded 80. Most of them were aspiring officers.

Iraqi officials boast that applicants for positions with the police and national guard far exceed vacancies. A Western diplomat in Baghdad marveled at the “high societal threshold for pain” that keeps the recruits coming back.

But many young Iraqis say they flock to recruiting stations not because they’re brave or patriotic. Applying to the police and guard merely offers them a chance to join one of the few paid occupations in the country.

“It’s either the army or the police, or you become a thief,” said Jaafar, a 31-year-old applicant who, like Maysan and others, declined to give his full name.

Survivors of Monday’s attack said high unemployment left them little choice but to line up for police work.

“We have become stuck between the hammer of unemployment and the anvil of terrorism,” said Riyadh Mehdi Salman, who traveled from the southern town of Nasiriya to apply. “We all know that several explosions targeted these centers, and even when we join our posts, we will be targeted as well, but we have no other choice.”

U.S. and Iraqi officials are pushing hard to boost the ranks of the security forces to ease the burden on the 138,000 American troops in Iraq. The U.S. military hopes to have more than 60,000 police officers on duty before the elections planned for January.

The Iraqi police force now has 40,000 officers, but fewer than a quarter have taken the full eight-week training course. The rest have been given a three-week “transition integration program,” a U.S. military official said.

A U.S. military official said militants had killed at least 700 members of Iraq’s security forces since Jan. 1. Many of the 35 insurgent car bombings in September targeted security forces and would-be recruits.

The crowds outside recruiting centers provide easy targets for militants, who are almost guaranteed carnage when they detonate their bombs.

Applicants who do get jobs find themselves in the crosshairs of insurgents who see them as collaborators with the Americans.

Recruits acknowledge that working as police officers carries risks, but they are quick to point out that ordinary Iraqis endure a steady wave of kidnappings, suicide bombings and intense clashes between guerrillas and U.S.-led forces.

“All of Iraq is dangerous. Life is dangerous. What’s the difference?” said Uday, 27, one of several men gathered outside a recruiting center in the former mansion of Khayrallah Tulfah, a relative of deposed President Saddam Hussein.

Recently, Iraqi officials have sought to protect would-be officers from attacks by reducing the number of recruiting stations and varying locations and dates. For example, the recruiting station in the former mansion was open for only three days. It is expected to reopen in several weeks. Recruiters plan to give applicants short notice before showing up, to avoid tipping off attackers.

At a recent recruiting session at Tulfah’s former home, Iraqi national guardsmen patrolled the entry road in pickup trucks mounted with guns.

American soldiers positioned their tanks closer to the mansion. Soldiers passed out MREs (meals ready to eat) and packs of cigarettes bearing stickers urging smokers to report suspicious activities to a counterinsurgency hotline.

Uday and his companions arrived after recruiters had selected 120 applicants and then slammed the doors shut. They were lured by the prospect of earning $220 a month, a living wage in Iraq. Despite the locked doors, the other hopefuls waited outside, clutching pink folders that contained their applications.

“Maybe they’ll need another person or two,” Uday said.

Before the U.S.-led invasion, Uday worked as a commercial photographer in a Baghdad studio. Maysan, balding and with a droopy mustache, was in nursing school. Another applicant said he was a vegetable farmer who was driven to the recruitment line after his business failed amid a lack of seed and pesticide subsidies after Hussein’s regime fell.

The young men said they had never previously thought of joining the police and planned to return to their former professions “after the situation calms down,” as Uday put it.

Sabah Kadhim, an Interior Ministry spokesman, credited the glut of aspiring officers to a recruiting drive launched by the interim government after the U.S. restored Iraqi sovereignty in June. Kadhim said many Iraqis wanted to help stabilize the country in order to speed the withdrawal of coalition forces.

“They see that the sooner we get our own forces going, the sooner the multinational forces can go home.”

But Kadhim acknowledged that “a sense of desperation” fueled much of the recruiting program. “The fact that they might die doesn’t really worry” recruits.

The rush has reportedly slowed amid a government campaign to weed out criminals, incompetent officers and those with links to the insurgency.

Kadhim denied media reports that as many as 30,000 police officers were being fired, with payoffs to ensure they didn’t join the resistance. He acknowledged that the security forces were reviewing their enrollment but said it was being done in an ad hoc manner from province to province.

“We continue to recruit, and we continue to sack people,” he said.

Indeed, successful applicants are not guaranteed a lengthy tenure, for various reasons. Standing outside the Dora recruiting center, Qassim Mohammed grimaced as he tasted an MRE of salsa cheese spread, tossing the package behind him. He recounted that he was a member of the national guard’s first class of recruits.

But shortly after joining, the 22-year-old said, he began receiving death threats. A letter slipped under his door urged him to quit.

“We know you,” it read. “You’re a son of the area. We know your family.”

He kept the job until several men stopped him on his way home from work, pointed an assault rifle at him and offered him a last chance to quit.

“I walked straight back to the base and turned in my ID,” he said. The men who threatened his life “drove me home from the base.”

Asked what he would do if the same thing happened after he joined the police, Mohammed said, “I’d quit again.”