Fear of crime holds up US effort to disarm Iraq

It was about noon when a man slid into the back seat of Mohammed Abdul Razak's taxi and held a knife to his throat, while an accomplice jumped up front and put a gun to Mr. Razak's head.

"They said, 'Get out,'"the victim recalls. "I was scared for my life, so I did."

Now Razak's Nissan is gone, along with his livelihood and peace of mind. And for this, he blames the US military. If the soldiers who searched his car at a checkpoint Thursday had not confiscated the handgun he kept in the glove compartment, he could have defended himself when the carjackers attacked two days later, Razak says.

The episode illustrates the difficulty the US is encountering as it tries to reduce the number of weapons in Iraqi hands as part of efforts to restore stability here.

As Razak tells his story, the Iraqis manning the police station in the al-Saleikh neighborhood nod sympathetically then shake their heads. Sunday, they were supposed to begin collecting Iraqis' weapons, as part of a nationwide amnesty program launched by US and British forces.

According to the coalition forces' new rules, effective June 1, Iraqis must turn in guns, rifles, and heavier weaponry by June 14 - or face detention and criminal charges.

But at thinly staffed police stations that are supposed to serve as collection points, Iraqis say the plan looks dubious: Many people still say they feel a total lack of security in the country, and there is little incentive to hand in the family firearms, considered important assets in a time of disarray.

"How will they give up their weapons if they don't feel secure?" asks Maj. Kadh Hassan Ashumari, a former Iraqi Army officer who runs the police station in al-Saleikh, in cooperation with coalition forces.

So far, he says, only one elderly man has come to turn in his worn-out Kalashnikov. A US military official, interviewed Sunday, confirmed that the turnout has been scant.

"How do you provide security for the neighborhood without weapons? When people feel 100 percent safe, and law and order is back again, then they will give up their guns," Major Ashumari says.

The trouble in implementing the weapons policy over the next two weeks here, in what may be one of the most widely armed cities on earth, may boil down to something of a chicken-and-egg argument. US military officials say that security will come when the number of weapons in Iraqi hands decreases. But many Iraqis say that only when they feel safer can they consider volunteering to turn in their weapons.

Instead of bring filled with people coming to give up their guns, police stations are busy with Iraqis complaining about being victims of crime - as well as people who say they want their confiscated weapons back. Although it seems unlikely that Razak could have defended himself against two armed men, he insists that being armed would have helped: In recent weeks, he had used the gun to scare off thieves who at times seem to have free reign in Baghdad.

It is possible that Razak was targeted by thieves who watched him lose his weapon to a US soldier. But US military officials maintain that the only way to fight the crime spree here is to take weapons out of circulation.

"You need to have a better form of protection than vigilantism and your own gun," says Capt. Dave Connolly, a public affairs officer with the US Army. "It's not a program to disarm all Iraqis. It's a program to bring security and reduce the number of weapons."

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