Word: als
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...police chief of Haswah is on the verge of tears. Alone, out of uniform and lighting cigarettes one after another, Captain Abdul Rahman Kudhair Madloom Al-Timemi sits behind the large wooden desk of his dark office and ruminates on his imminent departure from this town of 30,000, about 25 miles south of Baghdad. He was fired, he says, for sectarian and political reasons. "I have done what I was hired to do," he says, his voice shaking. "I enforced the law. I was fighting for my country, but the government is filled people who fight for other motives...
...with them. A former army officer, Rahman joined the new police service after Baghdad fell to coalition forces in 2003. Promoted to captain 11 months ago, he arrived in Haswah with a mandate to retake the city from the Mahdi Army militia of the radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. "Every day, the Mahdi Army would kill between 3 and 12 people, just for being Sunni," Rahman says. "They didn't even hide it. They would leave the bodies right in the street. The second day I was here, five of them came to this office and told...
...force, and began aggressively patrolling the streets, in conjunction with the U.S. military, to rid the city of its criminal militias. Inevitably, he found himself accused of bias by the Mahdi Army and its media, which accused him of being an agent, alternately, of the U.S., Israel and al-Qaeda. Death threats soon followed, and his fiancee's family's home was robbed...
...Despite the fact that Haswah is safer now than it has been in years, Rahman was told a few weeks ago that he would be relieved of his command. Colonel Ali Zahawi Press Al-Sultani, district commander of the Iraqi Police, argued to TIME that Captain Rahman had not won over the townspeople - even though the reason for Colonel Ali's presence at the Haswah station on this day is to meet with a 100-strong delegation of locals protesting Captain Rahman's firing. The colonel rejects Rahman's claim that he has been fired for political reasons. "There have...
...version of events provided by Iraqi officials in Anbar. (The U.S. military will only confirm that a woman suicide bomber attacked the checkpoint at Kilometer 5 on July 23.) Sadiya and Shafiqa also allowed TIME to view, but not to record, two DVDs given to them by an Al-Qaeda fighter; one is Hasna's last statement, the other is a recording of her suicide mission. The picture that emerges is of a once strong woman driven mad with sorrow following the death of her brother, Thamer...