Iraqi Security Forces Torn Between Loyalties

[RamboLiberal]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A11809-2003Nov24.html

At the sprawling Baiji train station, long ago looted of everything but rail cars, the men of the city's Iraqi Civil Defense Corps lamented their first two months as a pillar of the U.S.-trained security forces that will inherit responsibility for keeping order in Iraq.

In a Sunni Muslim town suspicious of U.S. forces and often the scene of armed opposition, villagers have derided the men of the 3rd Patrol as traitors, pelting them with rocks as their trucks pass. Some were stopped in the market by men in checkered head scarves and warned that their commander faced death. Last month, U.S. Special Forces mistook them for guerrillas or thieves -- that point remains in dispute -- and opened fire on them. Worse, they feared, was what lay ahead if U.S. forces withdrew from this northern town.

"I swear to God, we'll be killed," said Hamid Yusuf, holding a secondhand Kalashnikov rifle.

"We all have the same opinion," insisted one of his commanders, Qassim Khalaf.

"One hundred percent," answered Jamal Awad, another patrol member.

"My family's already made a reservation on a plot of land to bury me," said Yusuf

Do these guys remind anyone of the ARVN that is going to collapse as US pulls out?

[UpInArms]

1. just as propped up as the ARVN

and it's a shame that these guys are going to lose - what a lousy position to be in - working with the dreaded coalition for oil -

[leftchick]

2. These poor guys....

.......It is a Hopeless situation for them .....

<snip>They grew up with Yusuf and some of the others, attending school together or playing soccer in the city's dusty streets. Suspicion is so intense in the city that they do their best to avoid contact with their old friends.

"I don't want to see them," Latif said, sitting in his home. "I'll see them in their house, but if I see them in the street or the market, I'll only stay a minute or two because I fear I'll become a target."

His brother nodded.

"Their destiny will be the same as it was in Vietnam," Wathban said. "The Americans left their allies there and they were killed. I think the same will happen here."

In the streets of Baiji, graffiti clutters the walls, tinted black by fires at the city's oil refinery. "Anyone dealing with the Americans will be killed," says one slogan, scrawled by hand. "Saddam will be back, you traitors," warns another.

[wellst0nev0ter]

3. Sproing

"As soon as they leave, I'm taking off my hat," he said, tipping his red baseball cap emblazoned with the corps' emblem, "and putting on a yashmak," the head scarf sometimes worn by resistance fighters.