BENZES IN BAGHDAD

Carjacking has become Baghdad's number one crime problem in the last two months. Police say hundreds of late-model or luxury vehicles are being stolen each week by gunmen who surprise drivers at busy traffic stops, on lonely stretches of road, or just outside homes and garages.

The carjackings are less spectacular and less deadly than the recurring terrorist attacks on U.S. troops and other foreign targets in the metropolitan area, but are far more frequent and unnerving to residents of a capital whose sprawling size and modern freeway system make it an ideal city for cars.

Police attribute the epidemic of armed car theft to a combination of causes: the high urban unemployment rate that has soared since Baghdad fell in April, the wide availability of guns, the large number of used luxury cars that have poured into Iraq, and the relative ease of committing quick, opportunistic crimes in a huge city with a newly trained and overstretched police force.

"It's a disease that is spreading fast, and we don't have the means to stop it," said Maj. Ehsam Salman, a veteran police officer in central Baghdad. "There are too many idle men with nothing to do, and too many cars coming with no controls. It's happening every day, all over the city, and we don't even have a working emergency number people can call."

Since mid-June, city police backed by U.S. troops have been conducting random roadside vehicle checks, in which they pull over new or expensive-looking cars, ask to see the driver's documents and search the trunk and interior for weapons.

One morning this week, Lt. Ali Hussain, a thin, serious-looking man of 23, waved down dozens of luxury sedans on a busy commuter bridge, many with no license plates and new import stickers on their windshields. In most cases, the owners were middle-class Iraqis who said they had recently purchased the vehicles here for between $3,000 and $7,000.

$3000-$7000 for Benzes and Beemers? Sounds to me like they were stolen to begin with.