BunkBlog

For those who don’t want to register for the NYTimes site, here’s an interesting article about how the US has graciously decided to allow our Second Amendment rights for the Iraqi populace. Still not sure about the First Amendment.

From the New York Times
June 1, 2003

Allied Officials Now Allow Iraqi Civilians To Keep Assault Rifles

By Edmund L. Andrews

BAGHDAD, Iraq, May 31 – In a significant retreat in American efforts to seize weapons held by Iraqi citizens, American and British officials said today that Iraqis would be allowed to keep AK-47 assault rifles in their homes and businesses.

While American officials gave no public explanation for amending what had been a much tougher plan to rid postwar Iraq of heavy weapons, military officials have said they recognize the difficulties in disarming citizens at a time when Iraqis feel their security is still at risk.

The civilian disarmament policy is central to efforts by the American and British occupation authorities to reduce the high level of violent street crime here. The policy is also aimed at stopping sporadic guerrilla attacks that have killed or injured American soldiers in recent weeks.

The continuing threat was evident today when American troops arrested 15 high-ranking Iraqi police officers, including six generals, and charged them with trying to reorganize elements of the once-ruling Baath Party.

American officials said that the group’s apparent leader was Maj. Gen. Akram Abdul Razak, dean of Iraq’s national police academy, and that the group had been holding clandestine meetings at the academy every Saturday morning. Today’s developments highlighted the contradictory demands of restoring security in Iraq. On the one hand, American officials are urgently trying to restore law and order by building police forces and banning weapons. At the same time, law-abiding Iraqis are vociferously complaining that they need to defend their homes and businesses. Potentially undermining all these security efforts is the specter of former high-ranking Baathists who may be seeking to destabilize the country.

The disarmament policy was announced in general terms on May 22 by L. Paul Bremer III, the top civilian administrator in Iraq. According to a draft of the directive given to leaders of Iraqi’s main political groups, the original plan sought to impose a broad ban on the owning or trading of “automatic firearms of any caliber” by civilians.

The directive, however, did allow ordinary Iraqis to retain some light arms, including pistols, rifles and shotguns.

At the time, the list of automatic weapons to be banned specifically included AK-47 Kalashnikovs, the Russian assault rifles that are nearly ubiquitous in Iraq. But that approach came under heavy criticism from many Iraqis, who argued that families and business owners badly needed the weapons to defend themselves from looters and organized criminal gangs. That criticism apparently had an effect. Under a two-week amnesty program that begins on Sunday, Iraqis are being urged to voluntarily bring in prohibited weapons to police stations around the country. But an Arabic-language flyer now being distributed in neighborhoods says Iraqi citizens can keep certain automatic weapons inside their homes and businesses.

Asked today whether Iraqis would be allowed to keep assault rifles in their homes, a spokesman for Mr. Bremer said, “Yes, they will be allowed to keep their AK-47’s.”

“It is not a program for the disarmament of the Iraqi people,” added the spokesman, who requested anonymity. “It is a weapons-control program.” The nuances are confusing to many members of Baghdad’s new police force. At a police station in the Dora neighborhood today, Iraqi officers said they had only learned the day before that an amnesty program for weapons was about to begin.

Many officers struggled to interpret the instructions on the new flyer. Some said the flyer only seemed to permit automatic weapons with a caliber of less than 7.62 millimeters, which is the caliber of a standard Kalashnikov. Others said the directive seemed to give a more general approval for keeping automatic weapons at home.

Iraqis will still be allowed to keep handguns, rifles and shotguns. But the new instructions contain a lengthy of list of much heavier weapons that would be prohibited to most people: machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades, shoulder-fired missiles, antiaircraft guns, mortars, land mines and grenades.

The new weapons policy appears to be the outcome of a debate among top military officials in Iraq. Lt. Gen. David D. McKiernan, commander of allied land forces in Iraq, told reporters two weeks ago that he was skeptical about simply trying to disarm Iraqi civilians. “For one thing, I don’t think it would be enforceable,” General McKiernan said at the time.

But Mr. Bremer, keenly aware that his political priority in Iraq is to restore law and order, strongly suggested that he wanted to prohibit most weapons in civilian hands.

Today’s arrest of the Iraqi police officers reflected a similar quandary on the issue of what American officials call “de-Baathification.” Almost immediately after his arrival last month, Mr. Bremer issued a tough new decree banning senior Baath party members from jobs in the new government. But most if not all of those arrested today had retained their jobs after American and British forces took control of Iraq. In addition to General Razak, the dean of the police academy, the officers arrested included three generals who also worked in the academy and a number of others whose jobs were unclear but whose ranks ranged from colonel to sergeant. American officials said the arrests had been made based on information provided by lower-ranking officers at the police academy. The officials did not disclose what they believed that those arrested were trying to accomplish, but said they had been found with documents bearing the letterhead of the Baath Party.

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