Employment Opportunity: Police Chief

June 19, 2007

The job is interesting, well-paid and comes with lots of responsibility. Downsides are the location and the high probability of a sudden lay-off.

A new police chief would replace Maj. Gen. Mohammed Hamadi al-Moussawi on Monday, a Basra police officer said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information.
Iraq: Basra Police Chief Replaced, June 18, 2007

More than 1,000 British troops backed up by tanks carried out a dawn raid on Friday to seize an Iraqi police chief accused of leading a death squad that slaughtered 17 police trainers.
British troops seize Iraqi police chief in Basra, Dec. 22, 2006

The governor of the southern Iraqi province of Basra has suspended the city’s police chief, accusing him of links to groups involved in terrorism.
Basra security chiefs accused of terrorism, May 14, 2006

DEFENCE Secretary John Reid is planning to scrap the 25,000-strong police force in southern Iraq and replace it with a new military-style unit capable of maintaining law and order.
Scrap Basra police and start again orders MoD, Sep 25, 2005

When evaluating the health of a company, the turnover rate in management positions is indicative. Basra is sick, very sick.

It is gangland. There is a lot of money made through oil smuggling, regional interests competing with national interests, Fadhilla against al-Sadr party fights and various feuding tribes. Inbetween a few Brits who have no idea what’s going on around them.

A lot of blood will be lost before some normality may return there.

Posted by b on June 19, 2007 at 18:00 UTC | Permalink

Comments

Basra and Gaza seem to have a lot in common these days…

Posted by: ralphieboy | Jun 19 2007 18:26 utc | 1

Gives a whole new meaning to the word “high turnover” now, doesn’t it? Turning over into the grave (as distinct from its closely related linguistic antecedent, turning over in the grave).
And remember that Basra was the “poster child” for how to handle a military occupation in a “civilized” manner… the success story of the country… wasn’t it? The Brits supposedly had so many centuries of “ruling the natives” that they knew how to do things with the carrot not the stick… guess in the last analysis it didn’t make a whole lot of difference.

Posted by: Bea | Jun 19 2007 19:55 utc | 2

And things aren’t going so well at the heart of the occupation either:

While the major cities in southern Iraq have become veritable battlefields between militias vying to control the state agencies, reports from the Green Zone painted the enclosed area -– designed to be the seat of the Iraqi government, as well as the occupational establishment -– as an island isolated from the rest of the country, and practically besieged by mortar attacks and car bombs.
Al-Mada said that an explosion shook the building of the council of ministers while al-Maliki was holding a meeting with provincial governors and police chiefs. ‘Ali al-Dabbagh, the government spokesman, said that the “explosion” was the result of a gas leak in the kitchen, causing a small fire inside the building and injuring two people. Al-Mada did not specify whether the injured were among those present in the Prime Minister’s meeting.
(snip)
Az-Zaman also said that Iraqi state authorities have begun digging water wells in the Green Zone, because of “water scarcity” in the area. Az-Zaman quoted a memo by the secretariat of the council of ministers stating that “since water supply has been cut-off from the building of the general secretariat of the council of ministers … we are in the process of pumping water from wells for the purposes of washing and irrigation.”
The paper added that the Green Zone is constantly bombarded by mortars and that the areas surrounding the Green Zone (especially the restaurants along its perimeters) have been the target of numerous car bombs.

That was from Tuesday’s newspapers. This is what they’ll be reporting next morning:

Several mortar shells hit the fortified Green Zone area, which hosts Iraqi government offices, U.S. and British embassies, and residences of Iraqi politicians, in central Baghdad on Tuesday afternoon. A security official in PM Nuri Al-Maliki’s office said five shells landed near the office of PM Maliki and another near the American post exchange store. Residents living nearby reported massive explosions and smoke billows rising from the area, but no casualties were reported.

Posted by: Alamet | Jun 20 2007 0:22 utc | 3

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