The Sunni side of Tikrit: progress in Iraq

A little after 2 a.m., in the small town of ad Dawr, south of Tikrit, Captain Ahmed of the Iraqi army was leading his troops on one of their regular arrest raids. Half a dozen men from one particular house were dragged out, hands bound with plastic flexi-cuffs, and lined up. But the man they’d come for wasn’t there.

‘Listen, donkey-f—”,’ said Captain Ahmed, addressing the head of the household, ‘I know your eldest son is with the terrorists because he keeps sniping at my men.’ Pointing his Kalashnikov at the abject row of detainees, he continued: ‘And if you don’t bring him down to the JSC [Joint Command Centre], I’ll be back here tomorrow night and I’ll shoot every last one of you fâ”s.’

The US officer relating this story gave a wry smile. ‘And guess what? The next day the old man arrives at the JSC â” with his son two steps behind.’ Having met Captain Ahmed, I wasn’t surprised. Young, tough, with a chiselled physique from hours of pumping iron at the American gym, he’d spent the last three years happily ‘killing bad guys’, he told me. He’d had many close calls, as his battered, bomb-damaged Humvee showed. A threat from Captain Ahmed was entirely believable.

The American officer, part of the effort to mentor and train the Iraqi army, admitted there were ‘some problems’ with Captain Ahmed’s methods but ‘at least he’s someone we can work with’. In fact, US troops in this area have been fired on by both the Iraqi army and the Iraqi police, the outgoing commander for ad Dawr told me, although it was the police, by a long way, who worried him the most.

I went along to the Americans’ weekly meeting with the local police chief, a harassed-looking figure in a brown suit, with a bad comb-over, yellow, nicotine-stained fingers and a tremor in his right hand.