IRAQ: High hopes for Hit stymied by corruption

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Hope was in the air in February when the U.S. Marines turned security responsibility for the city of Hit back to the Iraqis.

The Marines and the Iraqi security forces had wrested control of the Euphrates River Valley community away from insurgents. Now the local government, backed with advice and money from the U.S., could begin improving the lives of Hit residents, repairing damage done by decades of neglect under Saddam Hussein and then months of bloody fighting with insurgents.

The optimism has proved misplaced.

Instead, according to Marine and State Department officials, the Americans have gotten a lesson in the tangled alliances between local officials, Sunni sheiks, oil smugglers and remnants of the insurgency movement.

The Americans quickly concluded that the mayor, police chief and one of the region’s dominant sheiks were corrupt. The mayor owns two palaces formerly owned by Saddam’s family. He visits Lebanon frequently and boasts about enjoying the company of women selling their favors on a retail basis.

The U.S. succeeded in having the police chief arrested and replaced. The sheik fled. But the mayor persists. An arrest warrant was quashed by the governor of Anbar province.

‘He’s Iraq’s version of Tony Soprano,’ says Col. Patrick Malay, commander of the 5th Marine Regiment, whose area of responsibility includes Hit. ‘He has a goon squad to muscle people with AK-47s.’

Unable to dislodge the mayor, the U.S. has withdrawn much of its support. As a result, Hit is not seeing the same kind of business revival and infrastructure improvements as other Anbar communities, including onetime insurgent hotspots such as Fallouja, Ramadi, Haditha and Husaybah.

John Matel, the State Department official in charge of reconstruction projects in much of Anbar province, says Hit is the ‘dark twin’ of communities that are thriving.

‘Hit suffers from especially poor and corrupt leadership at the top, which has been a significant impediment to our efforts,’ Matel wrote on his blog. ‘The [U.S.] avoids all projects directly involving the mayor, which limits our reach.’

The U.S. is convinced the Hit mayor is tied in with oil smugglers who, in turn, are bankrolling what is left of the insurgency. There are also indications he is in contact with former Baathist leaders now in Jordan, Malay said.

When Marines, who still provide ‘over-watch’ for Iraqi forces, began to be targeted by snipers, the mayor ‘quite frankly steered us down a rat hole’ in the Marines’ efforts to find the shooters, Malay said.

The mayor, Hikmat Jubair Gaoud, is tied by marriage to powerful local families. And he is an ally of Anbar Gov. Mamoun Sami Rasheed, who quashed an arrest warrant.

If nothing else, Hit may be proof that there are some Iraqi problems that the U.S., despite its wealth and military might, cannot solve. Malay hopes that Hit residents realize that corruption is keeping their city of 120,000 residents from enjoying the improvements seen elsewhere in Anbar: hospitals, schools, roads, garbage removal, increased availability of water and electricity, etc.

‘I think they’ll figure it out sooner or later,’ Malay said.

-- Tony Perry, in San Diego