BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) – The U.S. military is avoiding once-common arrest techniques like bagging suspects’ heads, the U.S. commander in charge of the Iraqi capital said, because such actions are considered humiliating by Iraqis and pushing new recruits into the insurgency.

“You’ve got to see it from a force protection standpoint: You’re making more enemies,” U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Peter Chiarelli told The Associated Press. “When we mistreat one person I’ve got a net increase of nine enemies.”

Soldiers are told to avoid handcuffing or blindfolding suspects – often done by placing a cloth sack over a suspect’s head – in front of their families, said Chiarelli, who commands the Texas-based 1st Cavalry Division, which controls security in Baghdad.

The Army’s 1st Infantry Division, which guards a swath of the Sunni Arab homeland north of Baghdad, started a similar “dignity and respect” initiative in April. Its commander, Maj. Gen. John Batiste, asked soldiers to be more courteous at traffic checkpoints and to stop putting bags over detainees’ heads, division spokesman Maj. Neal O’Brien said.

Especially insulting is the practice of subduing Iraqi men by stepping on them.

“The worst thing in the world is to put him on the ground and put your boot on his head,” Chiarelli said in an interview Thursday at 1st Cavalry headquarters near Baghdad International Airport. “Honor is so critical in this society. You don’t take away a man’s honor.”

Baghdad residents, asked Friday about the changes, loosed a litany of complaints about the unpopular U.S. presence in Iraq, from the blocking of roads and bridges to aggressive driving and capricious detentions. Halting humiliating arrest techniques is a positive development, they said, but too little, too late.

“The detainee is not an animal to put a bag over his head,” said Qusai Talha, a 35-year-old laborer interviewed at Tahrir Square in central Baghdad. “Detention should be done politely, until the prisoner is proven guilty – or not. The Americans should have considered this from the start.”

“The Americans will only change Iraqis’ opinions toward them when they leave Iraq,” said Ahmed Kadhim, a 45-year-old teacher leaving a Shiite mosque in west Baghdad.

The division hired Iraqis to instruct the 32,000 U.S. troops under Chiarelli’s command in the cultural traits and taboos of Iraq’s 26 million inhabitants. Soldiers are told to separate a man being arrested from his family by asking him to go outside his home and speak to soldiers.

“If you really need to put him in flex cuffs, that’s where you do it, not in front of his family,” Chiarelli said.

About 10 percent of the division’s troops “just don’t get it,” the commander said, but most understand the importance of treating Iraqis with dignity, even those accused of killing Americans or others. If soldiers humiliate a man being arrested in front of his family or neighbors, word spreads and hostility swells.

“It’s not just a matter of being nice to the Iraqi people, it’s clearly a force protection issue,” Chiarelli said.

The arrest policy appears to conform with an emerging picture of Iraq’s insurgency that paints it as a growing movement of nationalist Iraqis, angry at the presence of foreign troops.

U.S. and Iraqi officials have often underestimated the number of rebels and misleadingly described them as radical Islamists or foreign fighters vying to install a regime akin to Afghanistan’s former Taliban government.

If ordinary Iraqis are tempted to join the guerrillas, U.S. troops would be wise to avoid provoking them.

“You can’t allow (the insurgency) to get bigger. You can’t let them recruit,” Chiarelli said.

Chiarelli, 54, of Seattle, commands the third U.S. Army division to control security in the Iraqi capital. The 1st Cavalry has nearly completed half of its one-year stint in Baghdad.

The Iraqi capital’s insurgency began to appear in mid-2003 under the yearlong tenure of the Germany-based 1st Armored Division, which turned the city over to the 1st Cavalry in April. Chiarelli said 1st Armored passed along some of its arrest techniques, which his division has since refined.

Under the general’s orders, troops who violate Iraqi cultural norms are told to mitigate the damage by apologizing or offering to perform a favor for the offended family.

For instance, when soldiers raid a home by breaking down a door, a combat engineer is supposed to quickly fix the door, on the spot if possible. When the raid is a mistaken one, perhaps sparked by faulty intelligence, the attitude is supposed to be one of contrition.

“You say you’re sorry when something bad occurs. You say ‘Can we make up for the fact that we disturbed your family tonight?”‘ Chiarelli said. “‘Can we come back and do anything for your family?”‘

Chiarelli said he’s had to adjust his own behavior. He greets Iraqi men with strong, warm handshakes, sometimes using both hands. If he’s especially friendly with the man, Chiarelli said he follows the Iraqi custom – a smooch on both cheeks.

“I kiss them,” he said.

But not Iraqi women.

“The biggest problem I have is when I meet women,” he said. If a woman doesn’t offer her hand, the general said he fights the urge to shake hands, forcing himself to keep his arms at his sides. He gives women a cursory greeting, avoiding looking into their eyes.

“If I did that in the States you’d call me a chauvinist pig,” he said. “But that’s their culture.”

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On the Net:

http://www.hood.army.mil/1stcavdiv

AP-ES-09-03-04 1620EDT