U.S. sweep a picture of oppression

The last of a group of 21 university professors and administrators caught in a sweep by U.S. forces here last month were released on Saturday in this former strong-hold of Saddam Hussain - and the tales they brought home of their captors were not flattering ones.

These will be added to the stories about people who inadvertently were killed by U.S. troops, homes that were damaged while they were being searched, and unexplained detentions by the foreign forces, as Iraqis paint an increasingly oppressive picture of the American occupiers.

Abdul Majid Shabab Ahmed, a courtly 60-year-old professor of economics who was released after 21 days in a U.S. detention camp, was quick to say he was not mistreated.

But he said he was humiliated by the constant barking of the prison guards, who demanded that prisoners stand, haul water and clean latrines.

Most upsetting was that he was unable to wash properly - a requirement for devout Muslims before their daily prayers. When he was released, a soldier apologised to him for the inconvenience.

Ahmed replied, "I hope you go home safely to your family." The typically polite Arab words carried a less positive message - if the Americans keep behaving the way they have been, there will be more attacks and fewer soldiers will go home.

"The Americans have to learn how to deal with us," he said. "At my age I can bear it, but younger people cannot."

For every person arrested and released, the Americans potentially make a new enemy despite an increasingly concerted effort to pair tough enforcement operations with efforts to help Iraqis and win them over.

In a massive crackdown last week on what U.S. Central Command described as "Baath Party loyalists, paramilitary groups and other subversive elements," hundreds of people have been detained and are being questioned.

Among them are 74 people detained in a raid in northern Iraq who are being described as "Al Qaida sympathisers" by the U.S. military. "Initial indications are that they are Al Qaida sympathisers," a U.S. Army spokesman said. "What we're trying to do is validate that through the interrogation process."

The spokesman declined to clarify whether the suspected Al Qaida sympathisers, detained near the city of Kirkuk, were Iraqis and precisely what sort of operational relationship they might have to the group.

The spokesman loosely elaborated that a sympathiser could be considered anyone with an operational, financial or personal relationship to Al Qaida.
Detention

In a separate arrest, the U.S. Central Command announced Saturday that the commander of the Iraqi air force had been taken into custody. It gave no other details about the detention of Hamid Raja Shalah al Tikriti, No. 17 on Central Command's most-wanted list.

More sweeps in the coming days seem likely. A two-week gun amnesty ended Saturday, and the military plans to arrest people who are carrying weapons other than personal arms and those who have weapons in their homes or cars.

It appeared doubtful that the weapons brought in represented even a sliver of those in the country.

In the province that includes Tikrit, one of the most heavily armed because it was the home of many of the paramilitary fighters known as the Fedayeen Saddam, just 40 weapons were brought in, said the chief of police Gen. Mizher Ghanam.

Overall numbers for the country were still being compiled, but by Friday the military said it had received 45 machineguns, 152 rocket-propelled grenade-launchers and 11 anti-aircraft weapons as well as 406 automatic rifles.

Now that the amnesty is over, the police and the military are free to take a more aggressive stand on weapons possession, said Ghanam, who is working with U.S. forces.

"The best thing would be if we can convince people to turn in their weapons," he said.

"But if that has failed," he warned, "we will have to inspect, and we will use force, we will use random checkpoints, and as we gather information about where weapons are located, we will conduct special operations to find them."

The Army is aware that it must fight this battle on two fronts, and so when it is not searching homes, confiscating weapons and detaining suspects, it is sending its soldiers into the community seeking to generate goodwill.

Maj. Jon Tao had that assignment Saturday. Tao normally is assigned to a chemical weapons unit, but these days he is helping to clean up farmers' fields from the debris of war. On Saturday, that included destroyed Iraqi armoured personnel carriers.

This region was to have been defended by Saddam's much-vaunted Republican Guard. But the soldiers fled when Baghdad fell, and there are now 55 fully armed tanks sitting in one farmer's field. Tao's soldiers plan to clear those away too.

If there is any frustration on Tao's part, it is with the Iraqi's expectations. "It took them 35 years to destroy this place," he said, "and they want us to fix it in two weeks."