An Eye For An Eye
The dead do tell stories--of abduction, torture, execution--And it's not just the insurgents who are on a killing streak
BAGHDAD--Death here comes in many ways: by sniper fire, suicide bomber, roadside explosives. By military shootouts. None, however, is as personal, as chillingly intimate, as the killings by sectarian assassins and gangsters whose victims, mainly civilians, turn up daily along Baghdad's streets, floating down the Tigris River, or placed in shallow ditches on the city's outskirts. "It's relatively common to find dead bodies throughout the battlefield that show signs of torture and execution," says Capt. Jennifer Williams, a U.S. Army intelligence officer, whose area of responsibility includes much of West Baghdad.
The intensity of this war in the shadows is growing--both in numbers and in viciousness--fueling anger that further divides Shiite and Sunni Muslims and edges the country closer to civil war. Sunni leaders' anger at what they say are targeted killings by Shiite authorities threatens to sink prospects for a political deal, while Shiites blame Sunnis for actively or tacitly supporting murderous insurgents. Both sides have plenty of blood on their hands. "We usually find ... bodies every three or four days," says Col. Muhammad Faek Raouf, a Shiite who commands an Iraqi battalion in West Baghdad's predominantly Sunni Ghazaliyah neighborhood. Raouf knows the situation all too well. His father-in-law was kidnapped last month. His body, which Raouf says had been "cut up," was found a few weeks later.
Body count. Increasingly divided in life, Shiite and Sunni are united in death--in Baghdad's grim city morgue. It's a busy place. According to the United Nations, 1,673 bodies were brought to the morgue in the last two months of last year; 1,034 had bullet wounds. That's in a city of about 5 million--or nearly two-thirds the size of New York, which had 94 homicides in the same period.
Who's to blame? It is clear that Sunni insurgents target both moderate Sunnis and Shiites who are seen as cooperating with the American-supported government. And there is substantial evidence supporting Sunni complaints that Shiite authorities--and allied militias--carry out abductions and killings. Adding to the toll is kidnapping for ransom, as well as retribution involving tribe or family. "It escalates," says the chief of the U.N.'s Human Rights office here, John Pace. "The principle of revenge is still very much a part of this culture. It's an eye for an eye."
Sunni leaders say their communities are being terrorized by the Iraqi police, Army, and allied militias. In a predawn raid in a Sunni neighborhood last week, Iraqi authorities broke windows, grabbed computers, took cars, and hauled away, without explanation, 13 males between the ages of 15 and 60. Family members weren't told where the men were being taken and fear they will turn up dead.
Such fears are not unfounded. Last week also saw the discovery of the bodies of two Sunni Arab brothers. They reportedly had been taken from their homes earlier by men claiming to be Interior Ministry commandos. Sunni leaders say there is a pattern to this sort of thing. "The police vehicles and National Guard vehicles come after the curfew and raid the houses," says Adnan al-Dulaimi, a prominent Sunni politician. "They arrest people and take them. After two or three days, we find those people are killed--blindfolded, their hands tied, and their bodies thrown on the pavement of the street." On February 1, moderate Sunni leader Tariq al-Hashemi of the Iraqi Islamic Party threatened mass Sunni civil disobedience if the Iraqi interior minister, Bayan Jabr, did not retire. Sunnis say the Interior Ministry under Jabr's command is responsible for killings and that more than 1,600 men are missing after being taken in raids by government forces.
In a gesture to ease Sunni complaints, Iraq's most influential Shiite politician, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, used a televised speech just ahead of the Ashura holiday to urge "faithful security services ... to continue strongly confronting terrorists but with more consideration to human rights." Earlier, incumbent Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafari told Sunni leader Hashemi that he had formed a new government committee to study the issue of security abuses, but Hashemi said Jafari dismissed claims that the Interior Ministry might be behind the killings and instead blamed "criminals and ex-Baathists."
Who's who. It's hard to tell at a glance the difference between criminals, government forces, and militias. Iraqi police and soldiers wear black ski masks and balaclavas to protect their identities. The various branches of the security forces wear dozens of different uniforms, which can also be bought on the black market, making it hard for even U.S. soldiers to quickly spot bad guys. Says one U.S. officer: "It's not easy to identify that some operation tonight was legitimately directed by somebody in a security organization of the Ministry of Interior or Ministry of Defense or whether it was some people in stolen uniforms or somebody's posse, somebody's militia ... that decided to go attack the opposite number in some other tribe, religion, or neighborhood."
U.S. officials have become increasingly concerned about the level of police abuses, particularly by counterinsurgency commando units assembled quickly and, as a result, populated with Shiite militia members. President Bush last month acknowledged as much when he announced a new effort to give "human rights and ethics" training to Iraqi police, noting that some have used their positions "to take it out on others because of past grievances."
Across Iraq, the U.S. military has been working to step up the training and create new teams of military police to partner with Iraqi police officials. The problem is that while there are thousands of police officers who need training, the American MPs are one of the most overstretched categories of soldiers, and there are far too few to go around.
For now, it's a murderous free-for-all. "It's basically gang warfare," says the U.N.'s Pace. "The real cause is a breakdown of law and order in the absence of any effective police force that can do the job of protecting people."
This story appears in the February 20, 2006 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.