Last month, U.S. officers took a list of missing Arabs and Turkmens to the Kurdish parties and asked for their release. The Kurdistan Democratic Party freed 42 prisoners. The Patriotic Union of Kurdistan has yet to free any. With hundreds of prisoners still unaccounted for, many families said their search had become increasingly desperate. In one Kirkuk neighborhood, Arab residents approached a journalist's car to ask for help locating their missing relatives.
"When we go to the Americans, they send us to the police," said Osama Danouk, 24. "When we go to the police, they send us to the Americans, and so on, and so on."
His father, Danouk Latif Jassem, was seized March 2 when U.S. soldiers and Iraqi police stormed into his stationery shop. Jassem, blindfolded and handcuffed, was held for 12 days in the jail of the Emergency Services Unit. From there, his son said, he was taken to the prison in Irbil. Jassem's wife and 12 children have yet to communicate with him, save for two letters he sent through the Red Cross.
"My health is good," he said in one worn letter dated May 17 and folded eight times. "I hope that you don't worry too much about me. This is the will of God."
The family traveled on eight successive Thursdays to Irbil but was barred from visiting him, they said. They sought help from Arab tribal leaders, human rights organizations, the provincial government, the U.S. military and even the Kurdish parties.
"Four months and no one can help us," said Danouk, grabbing the Red Cross letter. "Just this."
U.S. and Iraqi officials said the abuses were an outgrowth of Kirkuk's dysfunctional police force, a product of patronage and partisan loyalties. The head of the Emergency Services Unit, Col. Khattab Abdullah Arif, is a Patriotic Union of Kurdistan loyalist and former Kurdish militia fighter with no previous police experience. The provincial police director general, Sherko Shakir Hakim, most recently worked as a taxi driver. Abdel-Rahman, Kirkuk's police chief, said Hakim refused a central government order to retire two weeks ago after the Kurdish parties promised to pick up his salary.
"With all this, we should be insane," Abdel-Rahman said, smiling darkly.
Abdel-Rahman said he was concerned that the Americans were being duped by the Kurds, who he said have cloaked what is effectively a power grab as a crackdown on the insurgents. Their strategy, he said, is to bolster their alliance with the Americans.
"Unfortunately, they have succeeded," he said.
Blagburn, the intelligence officer, said that even though the Emergency Services Unit is largely responsible for the secret transfers, it continues to provide valuable assistance in the counterinsurgency. Blagburn termed the unit "a very cooperative, coalition-friendly system."
"We know we can drop a guy in there and he'd be taken care of and he's safe," Blagburn said. "That's the reason why the ESU is used most of the time. That's basically the unit we can trust the most."
