On our way home tonight, we ran into no less than five Iraqi Police (IP) checkpoints. Out of those five checkpoints, the car I was in was stopped at least three times, each time for five to fifteen minutes.
The American occupation machine tried a full-frontal on Iraq. They hoped that they could "shock and awe" it into submission or something stupid like that. The strategy was to instantaneously instill a "democracy" that was functionally undemocratic - answering to American occupation forces but not to the Iraqi people. The strategy failed miserably, but it appears that the American occupiers are learning. By bringing in Iyad Allawi, they are falling back to the somewhat successful Latin American model.
Iyad Allawi is at least a convicted rapist, hit man and ex-CIA operative [ Arabic | English ], a CV most appropriate for any strong-man leading a junta. Right now, Allawi is reconstituting the police forces as they existed in Saddam's times. That's where the IP checkpoints come in.
Everyday, the police get more aggressive at the checkpoints, and the checkpoints are multiplying. Everywhere, people are talking less and less. They fear that when Allawi reconstitutes Saddam's old intelligence services, people will remember what was being said when people thought they were free to talk. It's the beginning of Nicaragua or El Salvador or Chile. I even find myself telling Iraqi friends that they should shut up. I hope to god I'm wrong.
tarek