Back Into Baghdad’s Streets

The desert moon is a thumbprint in the sky and Safa abu Ahmed has watches in his window again on Sadoon Street.

Alleys are tangled with vendors and shoppers; the fruit juice stands and the money-changers are busy. Women in black stroll past the flames of chicken roasters in the dusk. The robbers and the carjackers are not around -- at least not now -- and life on the sidewalks, despite the U.S. tank on the corner, moves with the brisk nonchalance of normality.

“There is a big difference from a few months ago,” Ahmed said. “I used to close my shop at 1 p.m. because of thieves and bandits. My window used to be like a theater -- I would see people get robbed right on the street. But now police patrols are passing and I’ve put my watches back in the front window.”

Crime in Baghdad is vicious and difficult to gauge, but perceptions of Ahmed and other shopkeepers suggest Iraqis feel safer these days.

The capital’s police force -- patrolling in blue-and-white cars with stenciled numbers -- has grown to 7,000 officers. That is less than half what it was before the war, but increased police visibility in recent months has brought a sense of calm to places such as Sadoon Street, once a strip bristling with criminal gangs and gunfire.

Interviews with police officers around this city of 5 million people indicate that crime overall has tapered slightly. Their assessment, however, is more sobering than Ahmed’s. And it reflects the dual dangers that Iraqis live with: crime fueled by poverty and retribution, and opportunism played out against an unfinished war -- punctuated by suicide bombers and rocket-propelled grenades -- between insurgents and U.S. troops.

Navigating such violent currents has led to months of psychological trauma. This is a nation, after all, where sandbag bunkers and high walls protect police stations from attackers. A place where former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein emptied his jails of nearly 30,000 criminals before losing power, and where a conversation on a street corner or a meal in a restaurant could end in an armed robbery or an insurgent attack. Skeins of barbed wire have become as common as date palms, and explosions flare like match strikes in the night.

“It’s getting a little better, but you never know when a bandit will get you or a car bomb will go off,” said Siham Hussein, who the other day wore an embroidered head scarf and shopped for cameras off Sadoon Street. “The Iraqi feels as if his soul is in a glass bottle. We don’t know who will break the glass and take our lives.”

There are no accurate statistics on robberies, kidnappings and other crimes -- the police department is only now computerizing its files. The murder rate has dropped significantly since summer but remains 16 times higher than in the months before the U.S. invasion in March. According to the Baghdad morgue, 518 people were killed by firearms in August. That number fell to 258 in November and climbed to 336 in December.

“I want to be optimistic, but when I am, the rate goes up again,” said Dr. Faik Amin Bakr, the city’s director of forensic medicine.

Despite such fragility, Iraqis seem to be steeling themselves against crime, venturing into the streets in defiance of danger. Neighborhoods are no longer ghostly at dusk; children stray farther from their mothers. People are putting more trust in the U.S.-trained police force, which under Hussein was rife with corruption and incompetence. There is still talk of officers on the take, but mostly Iraqis are happy to see a flash of blue lights and hear whistles in the traffic.

“There is more tranquillity these days,” said Mohammed Ali, owner of a photo shop on Tahrir Square off Sadoon Street. “There are more police in the streets. There is a strengthening bond between the police and the people. I used to close at 4 p.m. Now, I stay open until 8 p.m.”

Ali’s neighbor Rashid Qasim Esmail runs a closet-sized camera shop near shoeshine boys. His curious take on crime epitomizes how many Iraqis have come to rationalize the contradictions of life in a perilous land. Rough experience is often tempered by the will to believe that circumstances will improve.

“I feel crime is coming down,” he said. “Five months ago, you’d see robberies in the morning, noon and evening. But police are making efforts.” He paused. “Ten days ago, I saw two men pull a knife and rob a man right in front of my window. They took his money and his jacket. I didn’t report it to the police because I am afraid of retaliation from these gangs.”

Esmail’s door opened. In stepped Abdullah Ali Mohammed, a raconteur with a high-pitched voice and a lot of time on his hands. Mohammed’s store was looted and burned during the war. “April 9, 2003,” he said. “I had had it since the 1970s.”

The other day he was mugged. “I was hailing a taxicab,” he said. “A man stumbled by, pretending to be drunk, and then he stopped and said, ‘Give me your money.’ He had a gun. He took my money but left me 2,000 dinars for the cab.... Police are getting a little better, but still there is trouble.”

Across town in the Bayaa district, workmen with bricks and mortar were repairing a police station. Eleven police officers were killed there in late October, when a car bomb exploded, leaving a crater and scattering shrapnel through the neighborhood. The 128 policemen and office staff had nowhere else to go, so they continued working out of a headquarters with shattered walls and no electricity or running water.

Lt. Umar Tariq was happy, though.

Hours earlier, he had shot the leader of a kidnapping gang twice in the leg. It was a small victory for a unit otherwise besieged by criminals and insurgents.

“Gradually, maybe things are getting better,” said Maj. Abbas Abidali, who directs the detectives in the community of 600,000. “In June, we sometimes investigated 12 or 13 murders a day. In December, we had six or seven murders the whole month. A lot of them are retaliations against former Hussein loyalists and Baath Party members.”

“Only murders are decreasing,” said Ali Tahseen, a senior investigator who sat next to Abidali beneath a kerosene lamp. “Robberies and carjackings are almost the same. The police are weak. We don’t have enough supplies. The public is still afraid to cooperate with us. They fear tribalism and retribution.”

A file plunked on the desk.

“Look,” said Tariq, a stocky man with thick hands and a smooth face. “A guy was killed today in the public market. He was shot four times in the head. He has no identification. We don’t know who he is. The killing happened in a big market, and no one called police to report it. Our traffic police found him.”

The detectives in the Bayaa district say that crime has fallen noticeably in the center of Baghdad -- near the area known as the “green zone” patrolled heavily by U.S. troops. The criminals, they say, especially gangs of carjackers and bandits, have migrated to outlying neighborhoods. Several police officers said they were stunned by a string of recent attempted bank robberies, a phenomenon that rarely occurred when Hussein’s security and intelligences forces were in power.

“How can I say there is security and safety?” said appliance store owner Amer Abdeen, who carries a Browning pistol on his waist and has hired four guards with Kalashnikovs.

“A gang kidnapped my worker three days ago and wants a $200,000 ransom.... The lack of a regime and stable government has put us in this chaotic situation.”

Maj. Ali Adnan of the police internal affairs unit said some crimes are declining because of changing dynamics as Iraqi society opens up to the wider world. The carjacking trend has faded a bit, he said, because cheap cars from Jordan and the United Arab Emirates are flooding the market.

“I cannot say the average Iraqi is 100% safe, though,” Adnan said.

“There are broken links in the security chain. If you’re waiting in line for hours to buy gas, you get angry. Then you go home to a house with no electricity and your family is complaining. Your hospital is in bad shape. You don’t have a job. All this is building pressure and contributing to our crime.”

On Sadoon Street, neon hums in the dusk and boys with trays ferry sugared tea to shop owners. The spice dealers, the chicken roaster and the man selling leather purses and shoes are tending to customers. Music drifts from open windows. The sidewalks are crowded with the poor and the rich, and no one seems in a hurry to go home.

Taha Shariff sits at a small wooden desk scattered with sunflower seeds and a calculator. A money-changer, he is attuned to the street’s changing rhythms.

“It’s 90% better than before,” he said.

“I deal in money, and I know that eyes are always on me. But these days I feel safe.... It’s better than the days of Saddam’s regime. If I changed money back then, I’d have had my hands cut off.”

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Samir Zedan of The Times’ Baghdad Bureau contributed to this report.