Crowds Seize Loot to Return to Owners

Traffic backed up for blocks Wednesday on one of the main highways heading south from this capital as a crowd of young men armed with metal sticks surged into lanes, stopping most vehicles and searching them for looted goods.

It seemed that with every 10 vehicles the crowd uncovered more stolen items. The cars and vans would be ordered to the curb; then, as the embarrassed driver stared down at his steering wheel, people would drag the goods out and pile them near the roadway. From there, they took them to a nearby mosque, where a Shiite religious leader said the goods would be returned to their owners.

Organized at this site by Shiite leaders, the reclamation operation, which was also underway in several other parts of the city, was the latest effort to restore public order after the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime. Although the tactics looked somewhat rough, they reportedly followed rules agreed upon by the spiritual leaders, and there was no violence.

“All normal people volunteered to help stop all these [looting] incidents,” said Hussain Noor, who had joined scores of fellow neighborhood residents to watch the undertaking. “The situation is chaos; it is really a shame. But because we have no police, people have volunteered to help do this,” Noor said.

U.S. soldiers are also taking an active role now to stop the looting. In neighborhoods where they have sufficient manpower, the troops are responding to residents’ requests to fend off looters. They are also helping residents who, on returning to their homes, found that Iraqi soldiers left weapons before fleeing.

Looters caught with firearms are being held as prisoners of war, said Army 1st Lt. Scott Saucer of the 3rd Infantry Division. His unit arrived Wednesday morning at Yarmuk Hospital in a middle-class Baghdad neighborhood and by early afternoon had detained five men. Two of them were looting a home when they were discovered by local residents, who then turned to the U.S. military for help. Another was apprehended carrying firearms in his car.

But the efforts of local residents to reclaim looted goods appeared to be getting the most dramatic results.

In just a few hours, rice, flour and sugar in 100-pound sacks lined the highway. Balanced on top of them were cases of blank videocassettes, spare machine parts and packages of medicine.

Although the scene of stick-wielding crowds engulfing cars looked chaotic, the searches and seizures were carried out with systematic zeal, said Amir Kaleel Mohammed, who worships at the Ali Bayaa Mosque, where a Shiite spiritual leader was coordinating the activity.

“We ask [the drivers]: ‘Where did you get [the goods] from? Do you have a receipt for them?’ Often the people don’t even know what they stole,” he said. As he spoke, a young Shiite boy helped unload what appeared to have once been part of a kitchen appliance.

At one point, a minivan stuffed to the roof with medicine, bandages and cases of antiseptic was set upon by the crowd, but as the throng prepared to force open the door, the driver produced a receipt. One of the older men in the group inspected the document, nodded and gestured for the crowd to step back. The driver sped off.

“You see? He showed us he bought the medicines,” Mohammed said.

When asked if the driver might have bought the goods from a looter, he shrugged. “Maybe,” he said, “but if they have a receipt, we have to respect that.”

The scene drew the attention of officers from the 101st Airborne Division’s psychological operations unit, who mistakenly thought they had come upon more looting.

“We were headed into town to get information about attitudes toward coalition forces, what media they are using to get their information, and we came upon this. And at first we thought there was looting occurring here,” said Sgt. Michael Tsahiridis.

Gesturing toward the mosque, he added: “But the holy man here is instructing them [that] if they find more than three or four [100-pound] bags, to take them. It’s a good thing, but it can get out of hand.”

As the afternoon wore on and the crowd, joined by scores of small boys brandishing metal sticks similar to those hoisted by their fathers and older brothers, became more unruly, Sheik Kais Mohammed Mamori, who had called for the operation, ordered them to turn to the exhausting work of lugging the huge sacks of grain, sugar and other goods into the mosque compound for the night. The crowd melted away, but soon men and boys reappeared to move the goods inside.

Down the street, a second mosque handled the overflow.

Leaders of both major Islamic branches -- Shiite and Sunni -- took action because of the chaotic looting that had plagued the city for several days.

“With the absence of police, there was no way to control the situation,” said Mamori. “Now sheiks are doing this in every part of the city.”

Today, while more cars are being checked, the task of returning the stolen goods will begin.

If it is clear from the labeling where the items came from, they will be returned to those warehouses or supermarkets, the sheik said.

Aware that they would never know where the looters got some of the goods, the sheik turned to superiors in the holy city of Najaf, about 90 miles south of Baghdad. “They told me to divide it among the citizens, among the poor,” he said.