After hearing the first reports on his walkie-talkie that US tanks were rolling into Baghdad, Hussein Zubaidi of the Baghdad Police abandoned his post, rushed home and stripped out of his olive-green uniform. ‘‘The Americans might have mistaken me for a soldier,’’ he said, ‘‘and shot me.’’ Sunday, another radio report prompted him to don his uniform again. The BBC’s Arabic-language short-wave service said US forces were appealing for Iraqi policemen to help stem lawlessness.So Zubaidi, wearing his black beret and silver lapel stars, went to the posh club mentioned on the radio expecting to sign a paper or two and reclaim his old assignment. What he found was more chaos. Hundreds of men were in the club lounge, shouting and shoving for a chance to sign a registration list. There were active-duty officers, retirees and even a few unemployed men hoping to land a new job and a gun.Some of the generals and colonels who tried to take charge were heckled. ‘‘He’s a murderer,’’ one man in the crowd yelled. ‘‘He’s dirty,’’ another screamed. ‘‘He’s taken too many bribes.’’ The bedlam provided a glimpse of the challenges that confront US troops as they begin to resuscitate civil services in this war-ravaged country.Although US military officers here say they want to have Iraqi policemen patrolling the streets, Iraqi electricians fixing the power grid and Iraqi engineers working on the water supply, making that happen has turned out to be far more complicated than saying: ‘‘Back to work.’’‘‘We have to approach this in a step-by-step way,’’ said Maj Mark Stainbrook, a LA police officer and Marine reservist who is part of a civil affairs team trying to screen Iraqi cops. ‘‘We’re going to make an honest attempt to interview each person.’’But there is hope. ‘‘We all want to cooperate to get things back to normal,’’ said Faek Baedhani, a mechanical engineering professor at Baghdad University who has no previous experience in running a municipal power service but nevertheless was selected by Marine officers to temporarily lead the electricity task force. (LAT-WP)
