Militias steal new recruits with better pay and perks

[Robbien]

SOON after he graduated near the top of his class at the American-run police academy, Alah defected. He did not bother to inform his superiors. The young Iraqi police officer simply walked into a recruitment office in a rundown neighbourhood of Baghdad and signed on for al-Mahdi Army, the private militia run by the radical young cleric Moqtada al-Sadr that has been blamed for some of the most savage atrocities in this city in recent weeks.

The 23-year-old absconder described it as “a career move”. The pay was better, the duties less onerous and there was, he said with a grin, “far less chance of being killed”.

. . .

Hardened by years working on building sites and a stint as a conscript in Saddam’s army, Alah was out of work when he was picked to join the elite ranks of the police rapid reaction force, dealing with riots and terrorist attacks. He knew the risks. No police force on Earth has suffered more casualties this year, but he felt that the £140 a month salary was worth it. Pulling a bundle of banknotes from his pocket, he boasts how al-Mahdi pays him a lot more.

Alah was brought up in a Shia neighbourhood but laughs at the idea that it was religious conviction that encouraged him to join the ranks of al- Mahdi Army. “It is an attractive package,” he says, weighing up the economic advantages offered by the militia, such as a pledge to take care of Alah’s family if anything happens to him. He and his colleagues do as they please. They do not bother with warrants before searching premises, and can open fire at will.

As well as dispensing rough justice, al-Mahdi is behind the increasingly oppressive campaign against “antisocial behaviour”, which means harassing young women in the street. Yet in its heartland of Sadr City, a teeming slum northeast of the capital, there is no denying that Alah and the dozen other young men in his platoon enjoy the respect — and fear — of local families who claim to have lost faith in the police.

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http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-2159349,00.html

[saigon68]

1. means harassing young women in the street.

He'd fit right in in right wing amerika

[dusmcj]

2. "enjoy respect, err, fear, of local families" - that's where we'll fail

in the smirking cynicism of finding a reaffirmation that everything devolves to power, and that we should look inside ourselves to see that we all have that dynamic within ourselves (the whiny editorial given by the New Yorker regarding a recent serial killer atrocity or some such) we will misplace our will to terminate this dynamic, both abroad and here at home. Because we cannot bring ourselves to make a decision to reject it, because when pressed we still believe that it brings advantages in terms of serving individual and mutual self-interest that we cannot forego. And so we will continue living like animals, and continue to spread our degeneracy to people who have an unpolluted view of how culture and society should operate. The moment of a man telling a woman stranger to him how she should dress or behave is such a crystallizing event - it encapsulates the dynamic that individuals should sacrifice their inherent rights to serve a collective hierarchy built about subsistence survival mechanisms. People actually worth something have been striving against this inclination since time immemorial; those not are identifiable when they soil those efforts.