Iraqi police walk perilous beat

Some scars from the bomb blast are easy to see: glass fragments tore Sgt. Kassim Madloul Shinjar's left ear and right hand; the Iraqi policeman still clings to the bloodstained shirt he was wearing that day.

But other scars remain hidden, and show how violence waged by Iraqi resistance fighters against US occupation forces - and Iraqi "collaborators" - is undermining efforts to restore calm.

Sergeant Shinjar survived. The chief of Karbala's traffic police and his deputy - both passengers in the car Shinjar was driving - were killed by the car bomb on Dec. 27.

Today a dilemma gnaws away inside Shinjar's mind: Is the risk of being targeted as a collaborator worth the satisfaction of helping your community in the aftermath of war?

"I haven't decided until now - maybe I will come back; maybe not," says Shinjar, beginning to tremble, as thoughts of ending a 16-year career as a traffic cop mix with memories of the explosion that killed his closest colleagues.

Shinjar's car bomb was just one of four that rocked Karbala that day. That violence is killing an increasing number of Iraqi policemen, who walk the front lines of the US occupation. Two more policemen were killed and three wounded thursday, in a drive-by shooting at a checkpoint west of Baghdad.

"Our work is humane. Sometimes people give us flowers, so I don't understand why they attack such a place," says Shinjar, his eyes glistening with emotion. "I can't express what kind of human being would attack us - they are not human beings."

Shinjar's dilemma is shared by the growing ranks of Iraq's police forces. Government sources indicate at least 280 police have been killed nationwide since the fall of Baghdad in April, 2003.

In the capital itself, police officials say that 60 have died and 367 were injured between May 2003 and Jan. 9. During the Saddam Hussein era, one or two lost their lives each year.

Shinjar's example is a case study in how terrorism works in Iraq, and how a single blast can have corrosive effects. He was among the first in Karbala to present themselves for duty to the new US authorities, after the spring 2003 invasion swept north over this holy city.

He says his favorite time has always been the start of the school year because "you feel you serve the people, to help kids cross the street. I feel so proud, so useful." Shinjar even kept a patrol car at his house during the war, to protect it.

But now Shinjar feels doubt.

"All the neighbors have come to visit and support me, so I feel I want to come back to my job, to be happy, that I need my job," says Shinjar. "My father and family ask visitors not to talk about it. I try to forget, watch CD movies and watch television."

That spell disappears whenever the door slams, sparking a memory that he says takes him right back to the fear. Shinjar says he is still undecided about returning, because - like many police in Iraq today - his professional job is seen through a political lens.

"All of us reject the occupation, as citizens and as policemen," says Rahman Mushawer, spokesman for the Karbala Police. "But there is an international agreement, a promise that the occupation will end this year. We trust [the Americans] and their promises. We don't think we are collaborators."

Still, some of Karbala's 2,000 regular policemen - like local units around the country - have been fitted with new bulletproof vests in recent months.

And each day, the Karbala town council and police must confront the opinion of the Iraqi insurgents, who see them as sellouts. Six Iraqi police officers and six coalition troops - four from Bulgaria, and two from Thailand - were killed Dec. 27, in an assault that combined attacks with four suicide car bombs, mortars, and grenades across Karbala.

Some 37 coalition soldiers were wounded, along with 135 Iraqi police and civilians, in the most serious attack to date in south-central Iraq. The Polish general in command there called it a "coordinated, massive attack ... intended to do much harm."

Shinjar saw the car bomb in his rearview mirror just moments before it went off: the suicide bomber drove an official-looking four-wheel drive, and followed Shinjar's car past security checks and inside the protective barrier.

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