Iraq Border Town Awash in Violence, Desperation

At least 18 suspected members of the dreaded Iraqi secret police have been arrested at refugee camps in this border community, and three have admitted paying residents of the camp for information about the movement of American troops in southern Iraq, according to U.S. military officials and refugee spokesmen.

As the number of displaced Iraqis packed into the border outpost approaches 15,000, groups of armed bandits have begun preying on refugees, and at least two men have been found shot dead on the outskirts of Safwan in what officials believe may be factional violence between supporters and opponents of the regime of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

A third man was found with his throat slit along the highway west of Safwan in one of a series of robberies that have plagued the region as gangs of Iraqi deserters armed with AK-47s roam the highway, officials said.

“This is not just a sleepy little border town. There’s a lot going on in there,” said Lt. Col. Michael Deegan, commander of the U.S. Army regiment that until two days ago was posted just north of Safwan.

“There’s a refugee current, the misery and that, and then there’s a political current, there’s a criminal current. There’s a lot of forces moving around in there,” Deegan said. “That’s why we don’t keep anybody in there at night.”

A dusty, ramshackle village of perhaps 17,000 residents surrounded by tomato and onion farms, Safwan looks like many Iraqi communities in the wake of the Persian Gulf War. Distracted dogs and unruly children rush up and down the dirt streets, and here and there a house has been reduced to rubble by the thundering American bombing raids.

Merchants have begun setting up stands along the main street, hawking cans of spaghetti, chicken nuggets and soup distributed by American soldiers. Skinny youngsters in filthy white dishdashas rush after American cars, offering cartons of cigarettes and souvenir Iraqi dinars.

On the south end of town, two teeming refugee camps stretch off into the distance, filled with Iraqis fleeing the violent reprisals sparked by Islamic fundamentalist uprisings elsewhere in Iraq.

But appearances, U.S. officials say, can be deceiving. Safwan before the war was the headquarters of an Iraqi military garrison, and many of its residents were not only farmers, but civil servants who depended on Baghdad for their livelihood.

Now, after this week’s pullback of American troops to a nine-mile-wide buffer zone along the border with Kuwait, Safwan is the only remaining headquarters for the U.S. military in southern Iraq.

While the vast majority of refugees camped south of town are pleading with the American troops to stay and protect them against potential reprisals from the Iraqi government, a number of Safwan’s permanent residents are opposed to the American military presence. U.S. officials admit that the tension between the two groups is a potential recipe for violence.

Earlier this week, a group of resistance fighters began beating an Iraqi soldier and, when he fled to a U.S.-operated clinic in Safwan, they pursued him there, an American medic said. “They said, ‘We want him back,’ ” he recalled. “They made their intentions very clear that as soon as we let this guy go, they were going to continue to beat him, I think with the intention of killing him.”

But the violence has also been directed the other way. A Kuwaiti army captain said four suspected members of the Iraqi mukhabarat , or secret police, were arrested last week after attempting to rape and beat a resistance fighter from Basra.

Maj. Tom Grubbs, head of the U.S. Army civil affairs unit that oversees the American-run camp of perhaps 8,000 refugees, said 18 suspected secret policemen have been arrested over the last three weeks.

Two of them, said a senior Army officer in Safwan, admitted offering money to residents of the camp for information about the U.S. Army: How many troops were in the area, when they changed shifts, who were the leaders.

Others were reported to be taking names of refugees and residents who were cooperating with the Americans, the official said.

Residents of the southernmost refugee camp, administered by the Kuwaiti army and the Red Crescent Society--the Muslim equivalent of the Red Cross--said a man was grabbed three days ago by two other men in an apparent kidnaping attempt. The men tried to drag him to a car waiting outside the camp but fled when he began screaming, they said.

“To be sure, it’s difficult to know if it was the mukhabarat ,” said a university professor from Baghdad, a resident of the camp, who refused to give his name. “But they suspect it. Who else would do it?”

“This is a very great problem. We haven’t any peace, any safety in our camp now,” said another refugee, who identified himself only as Haider.

“You have to remember that Iraq has been a very efficient police state under Saddam Hussein for more than two decades,” said Grubbs. “There are a lot of secret police and informants in Iraq, and it would be very difficult to say none of them have come in here.

“There are a lot of people who have been identified as secret police, and when they’re identified, they’re turned over and processed through prisoner-of-war channels,” he said.

U.S. officials say many farmers in the countryside have been fearful of entering Safwan because of the reportedly large number of residents there sympathetic to Hussein’s government.

“How many guys are dancing to the tune of the Baghdad government? I don’t know,” said Deegan. “But there are a lot of people out there who won’t even go into Safwan, I’ll tell you that.”

On Wednesday, associates of the mayor of Safwan said he is refusing to talk with reporters because he had received a written death threat the night before--penned, they believe, by resistance fighters.

The mayor’s son, Mansour Obeid Kathem, said residents are looking forward to the departure of American forces and the return of Iraqi civil police to Safwan.

“That’s what everybody wishes here. There is no order here. Nobody controls anything: stealing, looting, killings,” he said. “The American soldiers don’t know the town like the Iraqi soldiers. They don’t speak the language. They don’t know how to handle the people. The Iraqi police, when they come, they will take charge of things.”

Nasser Abed, another Safwan resident, said: “The land is Iraqi, and as long as the Iraqi land goes back to the Iraqis, we’re happy for that. If part of American land was occupied, would you be happy for that?”

He scoffed at the Safwan clinic’s current operation by American soldiers and the U.S. military’s help in reopening Safwan’s schools two weeks ago. “It’s one of the things the Americans are doing to ask for forgiveness for what they did, because they killed a lot of civilians here,” Abed said.

“The real people of Safwan, they’d like to see Safwan returned back to Iraq,” said Maher Dhaef, a mechanical engineer. The town did not celebrate this week’s traditional festival at the close of Ramadan, the Eid al Fitr, he said, because of the presence of U.S. troops.

U.S. officials are remaining in Safwan, providing humanitarian and security services, until a U.N. observer force arrives, perhaps within the next several days. At that point, theoretically, civilian law enforcement responsibility will return to the Iraqi police--a prospect that has instilled fear in the refugees, who believe that the U.N. observers will not be able to protect them.

“I guess with goddamned good cause, these people are worried that if they’ve crossed Saddam, he’s sooner or later going to find them and kill them,” Deegan said. “Maybe the U.N. for them just represents a stay of execution, because they just can’t go anywhere.”

“If I was a refugee, I would have very little faith in the ability of UNIKOM (the U.N. Iraq-Kuwait Observer Mission) to prevent Iraqi government organizations . . . (from) exacting revenge on the refugees,” said a Western diplomat in Kuwait city.

Until UNIKOM arrives, American military officials say, they will continue to exercise responsibility for law enforcement in Safwan and throughout the buffer zone, and will prevent Iraqi civilian police from operating in the area.

“I can tell you that if an Iraqi policeman shows up with a gun, I am taking the gun,” said Col. John Kalb of the 4th Battalion, 32nd Armored Regiment of the 3rd Armored Division.

But the limits of U.S. authority and protection in the wake of this week’s pullback are made clear by a sign now posted just north of Safwan. “American Sector Ends Here,” it reads. “Iraqi Checkpoint 4 Kilometers.”

To which Kalb adds parenthetically: “Good luck.”