Thieves of Baghdad

Lt Cody Williams and half of his platoon in their two Abrams tanks rumbled up to a nondescript, three-story apartment building early on Frid...

Lt Cody Williams and half of his platoon in their two Abrams tanks rumbled up to a nondescript, three-story apartment building early on Friday.

Williams had a hot tip: Someone had parked luxury cars belonging to Saddam Hussein’s son, Uday, inside 49 Al-Masbah Street, then built false walls of cinderblock to hide them. It seemed as likely as anything else in this city where anything is possible, so Williams and his men started chopping into the walls.

Patrol to be divided into three zones, Powell in Syria

WASHINGTON/DAMASCUS: Iraqis to be divided into three sectors patrolled by troops led by the US, Britain and Poland under plans to impose post-war stability, a senior US official said. Ten nations offered troops for the stabilization force, which would be separate from the 135,000 combat troops still in Iraq. The exact size of the new force has not been determined, but the US, Britain, Poland, Ukraine, Italy, Spain, Denmark, Bulgaria, the Netherlands and Albania have offered troops for the policing effort. The three sectors of Iraq have not yet been drawn up.

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Meanwhile, US Secretary of State Colin Powell met Syria’s President in Damascus on Saturday to demand that Syria stop supporting anti-Israeli guerrillas and conform to US plans for the Middle East after the war in Iraq. Powell dismissed suggestions that Syria was next after Iraq on any list of US military targets. He said on Friday that if Syria did not change its policies, it could face sanctions. (Reuters)

By day’s end, they’d found a 2003 fire-engine red 500 SEL Mercedes-Benz and a new burgundy BMW, each with a built-in television, VCR, satellite phone, plush leather interior and a photograph of Saddam taped inside. William ordered them towed and rolled away from the sleepy middle-class neighbourhood just before sunset.

Soon after, the building’s owner returned in a new white Mercedes. He asked a few questions, pulled out a sleek Kalashnikov and opened fire at the person across the street he suspected of contacting the Americans.

It was just another day on the beat for US troops in lawless Baghdad. Combat teams like Williams’ are the closest thing to the law on Baghdad’s streets.

Williams said he figured it was either the fruit of a car-theft ring or, perhaps, a key link to Uday. He figured that if the cars were Uday’s, they may have been stashed there to speed a future getaway. And even if it was just a car-theft cache, confiscating more than $100,000 worth of hot cars would send a message of security to the neighbourhood.

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A senior Pentagon official in Baghdad said that Iraqi police would return to their jobs Sunday wearing part of their old uniforms, but with new white shirts and regime insignias removed from their hats. Military officials here also were preparing to send a large group of US military policemen into Baghdad to take over basic law-enforcement functions in the coming days. (LAT-WP)