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| Then there was the day he went with a group of officers to check out a tip that a kidnapping ring was operating out of a house in a Baghdad neighborhood ...We went in there, and we found a man and a woman tied up separately. The woman - they had pulled out her fingernails. The guy they beat real bad." |
He is one of dozens of Iraqi Americans who are back.
By Ken Dilanian
Inquirer Staff Writer
BAGHDAD - In the six years that Nouman Shubbar spent as a patrol officer on some of the meanest streets of North Philadelphia, no one ever shot at him.
It only took three months for that to happen here.
Shubbar, 39, is one of dozens of Iraqi Americans who have returned to help with the reconstruction of their native country. On leave from his job as Philadelphia police sergeant, he works for Bernard Kerik, the former New York City police chief who is the senior U.S. adviser to the Iraqi Interior Ministry, which runs the police.
Shubbar fled Saddam Hussein's Iraq for the United States in 1981. He is one of two U.S. officers on Kerik's small staff who speak Arabic, and the only one who understands Iraqi culture. So he finds himself in all sorts of sticky situations.
He recently was dispatched to investigate what turned out to be a mass grave of more than 500 bodies in the southern city of Najaf. A few weeks ago, he helped run a sting operation on some arms dealers.
Then there was the day he went with a group of officers to check out a tip that a kidnapping ring was operating out of a house in a Baghdad neighborhood.
Police surrounded the building, and Shubbar, who wears a military haircut and a khaki vest over his weightlifter's build, knocked on the door. A man peeked out and ran back in, and within seconds gunfire was blasting from the house in Shubbar's direction.
The police returned fire, and "a bad guy got hit," Shubbar said. "Two other ones tried to escape, but we got 'em. We went in there, and we found a man and a woman tied up separately. The woman - they had pulled out her fingernails. The guy they beat real bad."
It is all in a day's police work in Baghdad, one of the world's most crime-ridden cities. According to the director of statistics at the central morgue, 734 people died of gunshot wounds in the capital city in July. That is more than the number of killings in New York City all of last year, or in Philadelphia in the previous two years.
And for every dead body, there are uncountable kidnappings, carjackings, rapes and muggings. The U.S.-imposed curfew is 11 p.m., but many Iraqis are afraid to go out after sundown.
Coalition troops, who patrol mainly in armored vehicles, have been unable to solve Iraq's crime problem. Most experts think that job must fall to the new Iraqi police. That is where Kerik's people, including Shubbar, come in.
The force of 39,000 officers is expected to grow to 65,000. While U.S. military police units protect Iraqi police stations and National Guard troops help train recruits, Kerik and his staff are working on the big picture. They are trying to implement American-style rules and methods in place of the corrupt and abusive habits of the old regime.
It is tough going: The Iraqi police still lack basic necessities, such as radios; some don't have guns. A few weeks ago, two uniformed officers mistakenly were shot and killed by U.S. troops as they were chasing some criminals.
Shubbar thinks the military should turn over policing functions to the Iraqi force faster than it has been. But overall, he is hopeful.
"My sense is, it's getting better by the day. Seriously."
Shubbar came to Iraq under a Defense Department program that hired Iraqi Americans who wanted to help rebuild the country. He took leave from the Philadelphia police and flew into Baghdad on May 9, a week before Kerik arrived and a month after Hussein's regime fell.
He was shocked at the devastation: the bombed and looted buildings, the poverty and filth. It was a different city from the one he grew up in.
When he and other Americans first went to the Iraqi police headquarters, "We had these groups of policemen who each had loyalty to a boss... . Nobody listened to one guy. Nobody would give up anything," he said.
With the help of some military police officers, Shubbar cleared everyone out of the building.
"And then I picked one guy - a guy I thought was honest... and we said, OK, you control access."
That man was Ahmed Ibrahim, who is now the chief of the Iraqi police.
Shubbar was born and raised in Baghdad, where his father ran a department in the Agriculture Ministry until he ran afoul of Hussein and was jailed for six months in the 1970s. At 18, with the Iran-Iraq war raging, Shubbar applied to study in the United States and never came back.
"I got out just in time," he said.
His parents soon followed, and they settled in Philadelphia. Shubbar got an electrical-engineering degree from Temple University, but desk work was not for him. In 1992, he joined the Philadelphia police, where he worked for six years as a patrol officer in the 25th District, which includes the city's West Kensington section. After Sept. 11, 2001, he joined the counterterrorism unit.
He lives in the Holmesburg section with his wife, Nancy, a Feltonville native, and their two sons, Ali, 8, and Zaid, 6.
"I'm happy that I came and was able to contribute something," he said. "My thing is, I really want this to work for both the United States and for the Iraqis. I actually believe that if Iraq becomes a democratic, free society, it can affect the rest of the Middle East. If we do this right."
