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Death Squads Terrorize Baghdad
Shiite death squads are spreading fear in Baghdad's Sunni
neighborhoods. Meanwhile, politicians and police are growing
powerless as the outbreak of a civil war becomes ever more likely in
Iraq.
By Erwin Decker in Baghdad
03/16/06 "der
Speigel" -- -- Death squads are stalking Sunnis in
Shiite-dominated Baghdad neighborhoods.
When the men in black drive down his street, Ali Hasan al-Mahawish
calls out to his playing children to come into the house
immediately. He bolts the door, scared. This time it might be his
family's turn. The men drive past at walking speed, clutching their
guns. It's obvious they know exactly which houses the Sunnis live
in. Mahawish is an engineer and a Sunni -- a potential victim of the
death squads.
Death squads are becoming part of everyday life in Baghdad's Sunni
neighborhoods. Sunnis living in the Khadamiya neighborhood are
terrorized daily. Sometimes the men in black shoot randomly into
their houses and backyards. Sometimes they give the residents five
minutes to leave, then set fire to the house. Those Sunni's who
aren't simply executed by their neighbors are being systematically
driven out of the city's Shiite neighborhoods.
"Ethnic cleansing" in Baghdad?
According to a recent United Nations report, this type of "ethnic
cleansing" has spread dramatically in Baghdad, a city of 6 million.
And no one can stop the death squads, least of all the police. Six
neighborhoods have already fallen prey to organized terror. Weeks
have passed since the police was last seen in these neighborhoods,
and Sunnis are now more afraid of the men in black than of the daily
air raids.
You can protect yourself from bombs by not leaving the house, but
the black-clad men come into your home. They claim to be avenging
their murdered Shiite brothers. And there is no escape for their
victims. Sunni politicians and clerics are their main targets. In
the western suburb Abu Ghraib, a Sunni cleric was found shot in
front of a mosque. Eye witnesses have identified the killers as
members of one of the death squads.
Ali Hasan al-Mahawish lives right next to Al Aimma bridge, which
connects his neighborhood with that of Adhamiya, on the other side
of the Tigris River. The bridge acquired notoriety when more than
500 pilgrims died on it during a mass panic last year. "My house is
sitting right on the border between Sunnis and Shiites. Every day
I'm reminded of the dangerous frontier that's been drawn right in
the middle of Baghdad. It's already become a genuine front line."
A few days ago, sandbags were placed at the foot of the bridge,
which has become a kind of shooting range for the Shiite militias.
In the afternoon, civilians position themselves behind the sandbags,
and gun barrels point in the direction of the Sunni neighborhood.
Sometimes shots are fired. No car drives over the bridge after five
in the afternoon. "It's worse than during the war three years ago,"
Hasan al-Mahawish says.
A Sunni, he once lived peacefully among his Shiite neighbors until
about six months ago. "All of a sudden my neighbors have become
suspicious," he complains, "even though they know I was never even
in the Baath Party and was constantly harassed under Hussein." Ever
since the black-clad men have started shooting through windows at
night, Mahawish's family of nine has moved to the back of the house.
The family, which has access to water and electricity for only an
hour a day, regularly spends this hour watching television to find
out about the situation in Iraq. "If I want to have reliable
information about my country, I watch foreign TV channels or go to
an Internet café," the engineer says. There are now more than 170
newspapers, but none of them report independently. Every newspaper
and every radio and TV channel depends on funds from the United
States or from a political party. None of them criticize the
occupation, and the Iraqi press has yet to report on the death
squads.
The death squads
The death squads are well organized, and it's believed that some of
the men may be renegade troops of the Interior Ministry. Kamal
Hussein, an official at the Interior Ministry, has stated that the
black-clad men are not acting on the orders of the government. But
Interior Minister Bayan Jabr has long ceased to control his
subordinates. The failure to create a new cabinet after the Dec. 15,
2005 elections has resulted in genuine power vacuum. General Rasheed
Flayih, the commander of the Shiite-dominated Interior Ministry
forces, claims they are independent of the Iraqi army. He doesn't
deny the existence of death squads. Instead, he euphemistically
refers to them as "Field Intelligence Units."
What is certain is that large parts of the death squads were
recruited out of the Mahdi Militia of Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr.
For several months in 2004, al-Sadr's militia conducted a guerrilla
war against the Americans in the holy city of Najaf, from where they
were eventually forced to retreat.
During a vehicle check in the neighborhood of New Baghdad, Americans
recently found a hit list with the names of several hundred Iraqi
ministry officials. The hit list was being carried by a policeman
who is also a member of al-Sadr's Mahdi Militia.
Things don't look much different on the Sunni side. There, too,
citizens are taking up arms. After several of their mosques were
destroyed last week, the Sunni militias have attracted many new
members, including a number of former soldiers. Help and support
have been promised from the cities of Ramadi and Fallujah. Large
numbers of weapons and fighters are said already to have arrived.
And there's no shortage of recruits. "I'll be the first to go to
Baghdad and help my fellow Sunnis make sure there won't be any more
attacks on mosques," says Mustapha Adnan, a 27-year-old engineering
student from Fallujah. Sunni clerics claim that more than a hundred
of their Baghdad mosques have already been damaged or destroyed.
The Sunni minority ruled Iraq for more than thirty years before
Saddam Hussein was overthrown. But the balance of power has shifted
since the elections. The Shiites -- who make up 60 percent of the
Iraqi population -- control the new government. Human rights
organizations and the US Army have criticized the crass human rights
violations of the Interior Ministry. The situation in Iraq is
becoming harder and harder to control. According to the Americans,
the police and the army have been infiltrated by insurgents. Often
terrorists force members of the police and the army to cooperate
with them -- by kidnapping their children, for example.
With each incident, the authority of the state dwindles, and people
no longer trust it to protect them. Every party and every
organization -- no matter how small -- has its own militia. Every
Iraqi is legally permitted to keep a Kalashnikov in his home. Even
the US ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, said recently that the
US and its coalition partners have opened a "Pandora's box" by
overthrowing Saddam. Ethnic tensions, he added, could not only cause
a civil war in Iraq, they could also ignite the entire region.
Mahawish, the engineer, doesn't care what the politicians say. What
he cares about is survival for himself and his family. The
black-clad men on the frontline between Sunnis and Shiites have
already achieved their main goal. Everyone is afraid, every day.
© SPIEGEL ONLINE 2006
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