Word: captained
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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...
...Captain Rahman's story captures, in microcosm, the complex religious and political conflicts that continue to roil the Iraqi security forces even as the country's security situation improves - and the challenges facing the U.S. military in working 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...
...Captain Rahman, himself a Shi'a, refused to be intimidated. He added 70 Sunni officers to what had been a 225-strong, exclusively Shi'ite 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...
...While Captain Rahman was willing to endure threats and harassment from street thugs, the fate of his career, he says, was decided by Sadrists and other radical Shi'ite elements in the police chain of command. The trouble began, Rahman recalls, when his superiors urged him to lighten up on the Mahdi Army, and balance arrests of of Shi'ites by collaring more Sunnis. When he refused to arrest by quota, he says, the police department began investigating claims by Shi'ite detainees that he had abused and stolen from suspects. "None of this is true," he says, "They...
...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...