Looting Spurs Demands for Allies’ Help

Although they are committed to restoring stability in Iraq in the months ahead, U.S. and British troops are coming under growing criticism for failing to stop the looting and rioting spreading across the lawless country.

International aid groups, the United Nations and Iraqis themselves are demanding that the 125,000 allied troops intervene to stop the disturbances that are inflicting injuries, destroying property and disrupting the efforts of overwhelmed aid workers and hospitals.

Military officials insist they cannot spare the troops while hostilities continue, although they plan to assign some forces to peacekeeping as reinforcements arrive. This presence might exceed 210,000 troops, one Pentagon official said.

“We don’t need food or water. What we lack is safety and protection,” said Dr. Janan Peter al Sabah, head of surgery at Basra Teaching Hospital. “Our message to the coalition troops is to take responsibility for the security of the people, of the homes, of the facilities.”

As it became clear that Saddam Hussein’s regime was falling, jubilant crowds in Baghdad and Basra pillaged government offices, emptied shops and schools and robbed homes. They made off with mattresses, air conditioners, U.N. vehicles and copper wiring, among other items.

Many residents say they are afraid to leave their homes for fear of losing their possessions. Some aid organizations have temporarily halted operations because of the dangers that have supplanted bombs and artillery shells.

Some Iraqis say there could be continuing violence as residents seek to settle scores with neighbors who, as part of the deposed Baathist regime, hurt them. There are predictions that the lawlessness could lead to the destruction of records needed for war crime prosecutions.

The International Committee of the Red Cross and the aid group Doctors Without Borders, which remained in Baghdad during the three weeks of bombing, suspended operations Wednesday because of an “unpredictable and chaotic” situation. A top Red Cross logistics official, Vatche Arslanian, 48, was killed Tuesday when a convoy of cars came under fire in an unexplained shooting incident on a Baghdad road.

U.S. and British military officials have ordered troops to protect themselves first and remain focused on destroying the remaining pockets of resistance. They say that troops fresh from combat are not well suited for a shift to police duties, which require different instincts and far more caution.

“Obviously, soldiers who have just fought for two or three weeks are not going to be the best marriage counselors in Baghdad,” a Pentagon official said.

But officials are already laying plans to hand the job first to reinforcement troops, then to an Iraqi police force. “We want to hand this over to a credible police authority just as soon as we can,” the Pentagon official said.

U.S. military leaders portrayed the lawlessness as partly the outgrowth of joy.

“We’re seeing a lot of jubilation [from] people who have been oppressed for years and years.... We believe that this will settle down in due time,” said Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks, deputy director of operations for U.S. Central Command.

But some aid officials said the troops’ inaction would seriously set back the coalition’s goal of helping Iraqis and convincing them that the regime change was in their interest.

Kenneth H. Bacon, president of the aid group Refugees International, said the military’s decision was “hard to defend ethically ... and doesn’t make a lot of strategic sense” for the coalition, given its goals of restoring stability and winning Iraqis’ “hearts and minds.”

“It seems to me this makes us look either out of control or callous,” said Bacon, who was assistant secretary of defense for public affairs during the Clinton administration. He contended that the troops were well suited for a security role because they are “well trained, well disciplined [and] well armed,” with access to “the best intelligence money can buy.”

Basra residents, meanwhile, complained that British troops had flushed out the old enforcers of civic order -- the Baath Party and the city’s police and security forces -- without providing any replacement. In the streets, looting appeared to have shifted from obvious targets such as school ministries and public institutions, which have been stripped clean, to homes, cars and personal property.

“Anyone with a car has to sleep inside or post a guard all night if they want to keep it,” said Sattar Tamini, 33, a trader, outside his home near the Basra Military Hospital. “They’re even stealing our license plates. We have no medicine, no hospitals, no police. This is a poor area and things are very, very bad. We’re afraid for our safety.”

Many Basra residents expressed anger to any Westerner for the security vacuum and the lack of water.

“We want to speed up the U.N. coming in,” said Saef Ali Ahmed, 25, a student. “We need protection so we don’t get killed, so our hospitals and schools aren’t destroyed. It’s turning into a jungle. I just finished university but I can’t get my documents because the school has been destroyed.”

At Basra General Hospital, doctors were forced to drop their scalpels and act as policemen.

“Someone tried to steal from the hospital and we caught him,” said Dr. Kazem Mohamed, 50. “There’s looting everywhere of people’s houses. The coalition opened the bank for everyone to steal on purpose.”

As soon as fighting ends, the U.S. and British forces have the legal duties of an occupying power to maintain order and to ensure the populace has food, water and medicine, according to international law.

Since the 1907 Hague Convention, the law has drawn a sharp distinction between a military invasion and an occupation.

When fighting is under way, soldiers have the sole duty to destroy the enemy. They cannot be expected to maintain order in the civilian populace.

But the duties change as soon as the enemy is killed, captured or driven away.

“We are in the twilight zone ... between invasion and occupation,” said Robert K. Goldman, a law professor at American University in Washington. “But when the resistance ends, the authority of governing -- and the responsibilities that go with -- pass to the occupying force.”

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Richter reported from Washington, Magnier from Basra. Times staff writers David G. Savage and Esther Schrader in Washington contributed to this report.