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April 11, 2003
Looting, policing and the rule of law
We’ve all seen the video – hundreds of Iraqis looting everything from desks to mattresses to refrigerators to vases of plastic flowers from public and even private buildings in Baghdad, Basra and other liberated Iraqi cities. There are cries for policing, cries for order in the chaos. Those are reasonable requests, but the way they are often couched implies that the coalition forces are callous in standing by and letting it happen. It’s not that simple. Some of the analyses about the looting, and general disorder, make the necessary point that the collapse of the Hussein regime has left a vacuum in the structure of Iraqi society, and since there is no temporary rule sweeping in to keep order, chaos is the result. But still the point of much of the analysis seems to be that if the US really wanted to they could fix this problem relatively easily. So let’s look at that a little more closely – what would order entail? What are the options? Order in any society comes about in one way: Rules are set by the ones with the power to enforce them, and the ones under the rules are aware of the consequences of going outside them. Identifying the group with the power to set the rules is virtually the same exercise as identifying what type of government a country has – ultimately the people decide in a representative republic or democracy, while on the other end of the spectrum one man makes the rules in a dictatorship. There are always people who disagree with some or all of the rules, and when enough people disagree, they have the power to challenge the status quo unless (as Saddam did) the one(s) in power make sure no such group can coalesce. That is another difference between democracy and dictatorship. When a leader like Saddam is deposed by a group outside the population he governs, there are not indigenous people ready to step into the vacuum and operate the structure of government in a cohesive way because the old government officials are tainted, and the rest of the populace has not been allowed to form cohesive groups or alternative consensuses. Then there is really one choice – for the outside group to either impose structure itself or install a temporary “bridge” group that is in a sense a false government until one with the will of the people at its foundation can be formed. It could take quite a while to build a real government, because not only are you missing the structure of the government, but you’re missing the laws the government runs on. Everything has to be reviewed, from the criminal code to the building code. And it’s not just the laws and people to enforce them, but a courts system to evaluate evidence, a penal system to house the ones deemed guilty, and at its base a consensus of the people that they should obey these laws. All of that has to be in place, at least in rudimentary form, before order can be restored. So what to do in Iraq? If the coalition troops begin policing the civilians, there will be clashes. Will those be trumpeted about the world as signs of the “oppressors”, that the US is showing its true colors, that they’re taking the war to the people? Of course they will. What laws do you enforce? The very basic ones – even murder, rape, robbery or serious personal crimes of that nature – are to a degree culturally determined even in the United States, from state to state. There’s a general consensus, but not a point-by-point national one. Do we impose Western legal limits on the Iraqi culture? If we did, would we then be decried again as trying to Westernize, Christianize, the new Iraq? And if we don’t impose some order – the only order we know well being a Western form – will we be accused of wanting Iraq to tear itself apart, or not really caring because, after all, it’s all about the oil? To get some idea of the complexity of restoring order, look at just policing in Baghdad. First, again, you must determine what laws you will enforce – most likely the main crimes against person and property listed above. You must make it clear to the population what the limits are, and who is responsible for enforcing them – so one person in a community can’t set himself up as the local “authority” and threaten arrest of others as a means of protecting his own theft turf. Then you have the issue of sheer volume. In any society the majority of crimes are prevented by two things: the general consensus that the laws are correct and necessary, and the likelihood of getting caught. Both of those things will be in effect in Baghdad – millions of people there are not looting, but thousands are because they know they won’t be stopped. In New York City, a place where the rule of law is firmly established and the vast majority of its population follow the most serious restrictions without oversight, there is a police force of 40,000 for a population of roughly 10 million. Baghdad has a population of 5 million, which would indicate a force of 20,000 law enforcement officers necessary for a fine restoration of order. I would estimate that a force of at least a fourth of that – 5,000 – would be necessary to give strong protection from major crimes. A somewhat smaller group could restore a modicum of order, but sheer land mass would require a fairly sizable force. What would they drive? What forms of force would be used (guns? Pepper spray? Nightstick?) by the officers? Where would they take prisoners? If the officers are not Iraqi – and initially not many are likely to be – who would be used as translators? How do you yell “stop, thief!” in the native language? The coalition forces initially allowed the same type of disorder that often accompanies anti-government or anti-war rallies in the US to occur in the major cities, on a larger scale – breaking windows, looting stores – for several reasons: They were still looking for bad guys. They didn’t want to engage the civilians and emotions were high in the populace. They didn’t want to feed the fire of international fury by appearing as if they were establishing a military grip on a people supposedly freed. And not unimportantly, they aren’t trained for law enforcement. One example of how important that is: Modern policing includes training in the types of holds you can use on people under restraint, because a number of deaths in custody have happened as a result of suffocation or other side-effects of immobilization techniques used with no intent to harm. Would someone trained as an accountant or truck driver or store manager now with the military in Baghdad know not to put his knee on the back of a handcuffed prisoner lying face down? And how quickly would the international media jump on an in-custody death as more evidence of cruelty to the population? The generals and others in charge of this liberation and transition are not unaware of these difficulties – I would say these issues have been discussed in many meetings, and the options are being weighed based on how the war progresses and the transition unfolds. When we evaluate how they are handling the disorder in Baghdad and other parts of Iraq, we have to take into consideration the complexity of the issues the coalition forces have to deal with. It’s not as simple as putting a man with a machine gun in front of every government building and pastry shop. Canada’s Prime Minister Jean Chretien has offered the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) as a transitional policing force. It’s not the only reasonable option , but I think that’s a very good idea. They’re trained in law enforcement, have a history of success in building policing organizations in former Soviet bloc countries, and do not labor under the critical, sneering regard of the world’s governmental and media elites. That still leaves the issue of what laws to enforce and to what extent, but it’s a start. And the next time you see someone looting a building with a soldier standing nearby, consider the complexities of restoring order, and don’t just think, “That soldier should stop him!” Posted By susanna cornett at April 11, 2003 03:37 PM | TrackBackComments
You are right, no matter what course we take, we will be held up by the world court as in violation of their opinion. If they want to set up their own government, then they better start now. If they want us to leave as soon as possible, they better start policing themselves. Those that judge, should put their money/solution where their big mouth is! I was always taught that if you were the one to bring up the problem, then you better be the one with the solution. If we were to pull out, as some say they want, there would be an outcry because we did not help them enough. Posted by: miss pepper at April 11, 2003 04:11 PMBrilliant. Very well said. Posted by: Brent M Krupp at April 11, 2003 04:12 PMThis all seems obvious, doesn't it? But it has not stopped the Red Cross from wailing that we are not protecting hospitals in Baghdad when we only had troops in a third of the city, or various others wailing about the lack of law and order, or saying we are not fulfilling our obligations as an "occupying power" while simultaneously decrying our actions as those of "an occupation force" (Fisk managed to do both in a single article!). The antis continue their game of expectation inflation. Susannah does a nice job of showing how absurd this latest attempt is. Posted by: T. Hartin at April 11, 2003 04:41 PMVery well thought-out and succinctly put. I agree that the policing force from Canada is a very good idea. It also brings in other world "powers" into this US/UK dominated situation, without bowing to those in the UN who seem to think they can just step in and take over when they wouldn't back us in the first place. Posted by: Carol at April 11, 2003 05:00 PMBringing in the RCMP may or may not be a good idea, but for us to consider such a measure NOW would mean that we really had no plan A, and I would consider that a very serious oversight. I don't really care how much the ICRC whines, but I do think our strategic objectives in the war will be put at risk if this doesn't come under control relatively soon. Posted by: Hunter McDaniel at April 11, 2003 05:24 PMSaddam is probably laughing through his mustash, The US govt says that the looters Need to have a I cry for the people but then I laugh at the Going to be Interesting to see if the Turks Troll alert! Troll alert! Posted by: Jrm at April 11, 2003 05:48 PMOur local film festival in the Midwest went to the trouble of hiring a few off-duty cops to provide security at the event. Wasn't really needed in the end but we were prepared. I am surprised that the Red Cross/Crescent goes into a war zone without security to protect them from looters (let alone aggressive attacks!) -- did they expect that protection to come from elsewhere? From who? Did they even plan for this? One big problem is that not only are the existing government officials tainted by Saddam's regime, but the entire police system is tainted as well. For twenty-five years, the mukhabarat and other police organizations have kept the order by murdering and torturing countless thousands. It is completely unreasonable to expect the people in the old police organizations to move into a new, kinder, gentler police force. So the coalition is going to have to recruit, train and equip an entirely new police force, and have them build a rapport with the people that are understandably wary of police because of decades of bad experiences. Posted by: Meldroc at April 11, 2003 06:33 PMThis fascinates me. I try to think about what would be the first couple of steps... I think you would start by writing the obvious rules (no violence, no destruction of property, no stealing) and asking the people to honor them. I'm baffled that we haven't used our broadcasting abilities to do this. Then things get harder... Can you take nominations for citizens willing to be police? Maybe you interview them, spend a day teaching them how to give verbal warnings and how to arrest bad guys? Then send them out in pairs to enforce the rules? I think some simple punishments would suffice at the beginning... No trials, just jail people for a few days. Maybe I'm dreaming but that should be enough to cut the looting to a minimum. I'm also thinking that the same civic-minded people that become police might end up advancing to higher government positions once they are established. Okay, i've dumped my very ignorant "plan" on you. Now tell me how it REALLY should be done. Posted by: Paul Chamberlain at April 11, 2003 07:13 PMAs true as your look on things may be, and I will certainly not conflict with that, it seems to me that these are things that could have been taken into account before going of to war. In the end, isn't this just the best way to get a more US-friendly dictator in the palaces that survived? Or am I now being overly cynical? Posted by: Nelleke Groen at April 11, 2003 07:48 PMNelleke, what exactly makes you think that this hasn't been forseen? This sort of lawless behavior is universal and virtually inevitable after a war that frees people from decades of totalitarian rule. (Heck, some people loot and riot over football games, a much flimsier excuse.) I'm certain that the millitary is very familiar with the reality of looting and the realities of policing a civillian population. They're treading carefully, as they should. The people who are in a panic over this (or who pretend to be) are the same ones who insisted that "the plan" for every phase of the war was doomed to be a horrible failure. They assumed the people in charge were blind idiots, basically, and they were wrong every single time. They're also wrong about this. The looting in Basra is already under control, and the situation in Baghdad will settle down soon, too. And yes, you are being overly cynical in your last statement. Dictatorships never work, and there's no reason to install a deliberately flawed form of gov't when we have the opportunity to do so much better. Posted by: Bryan at April 11, 2003 08:57 PMNelleke may have a point. We've only really done this two times before. In Japan we were able to leave the local governments pretty much intact because repression was focused on conquered lands, not the home islands. In Germany most of the would be looter had joined the Nazi party and done their looting in France, Austria, and Czechoslovakia. Posted by: anon at April 11, 2003 09:41 PMLooting in the wake of a military sweep is as old as Scripture. Posted by: brule at April 11, 2003 10:19 PMIs it a quagmire yet? Is it a quagmire yet? I honestly think one of the MAJOR problems with reporting on this war is that it seems reading military history must be very unfashionable. All of these behaviors are expected, and more or less inevitable for a short time. Think about Baghdad 5 million people. The US is going to "make them behave". Oh yeah? How? Short of killing them or terrorizing them, you can't make them behave. People mostly obey laws because they think it's a good idea, not because there's a cop standing at their shoulder 24x7. The Iraqis themselves are going to have to take control of themselves and their country. We are there to help them, and we will, but they have to realize, internally, that they have to be in control of themselves. That's what freedom is all about. It'll happen, shortly. Iraq is as much in anarchy now as our troops were bogged down a week ago. Posted by: DSmith at April 11, 2003 10:50 PMCitizens are already organizing their own Posse to protect their neigbouroods. Anarchy cannot stand for long in any society. Already there are volonteers to take up police jobs. With US/UK supervision the Iraqis will be able to re-establish order by themselves. If the US take it upon themselves, then they will be perceived as "foreign invading occupiers from the bottomless pits of Zionist hell", as Baghdad Bob would say. Posted by: Avary at April 12, 2003 11:19 PMPost a comment
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