The firefighters of Baghdad

Washington Post:

On the day American troops entered Baghdad three years ago, Laith Abbas, a neighborhood fire chief, pulled up a chair outside his station house in the center of the city and sat down. The streets were deserted. No one knew what the Americans would do and a cloud of fear hung over the city. But Abbas figured that whatever happened, firefighters would be needed. So he waited.

That afternoon, U.S. tanks rumbled up the street and jerked to a stop. Dirty, battle-clad soldiers scanned the area from their hatches. A U.S. commander, surrounded by heavily armed Marines, walked toward him.

"I was afraid. I thought maybe they are going to kill me," Abbas recounted in a recent interview. "I was thinking, I'm crazy, but if there's a fire, who will put it out? We're still needed and God will help me."

"Hello. Are you the chief?" asked the commander, a Marine major, Abbas recalled.

Yes, the local chief, Abbas responded.

"We love firefighters in the U.S. We think of them as heroes," the commander said. "And we love firefighters in Iraq, too."

They made a pact. Abbas would keep working, and the Americans would protect his station house and help him.

Today, despite the killings of 25 firefighters by Sunni Arab and Shiite Muslim extremists, the murders of his driver and bodyguard, and the fact that his children must be escorted to school by armed security personnel, Abbas, 40, is still honoring his word -- now as fire chief for the entire city.

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There is more. An interesting story.