Date: August 9, 2006 6:19:13 PM PDT
Subject: [SPY NEWS] Death squads push Baghdad to the brink
Death squads push Baghdad to the brink
Published: Wednesday, 9 August, 2006, 01:06 PM Doha Time
By Patrick Fort
BAGHDAD: In a network of secret torture cells and ad-hoc religious courts, Iraqi death squads are carrying out scores of punishment killings a week and filling Baghdad’s canals and sewers with the dead.
Tit-for-tat murders have set Shia versus Sunni on the streets of the city, pushing Iraq towards a sectarian civil war that could sound the death knell for attempts to rebuild the country as a united, stable democracy.
After a few false starts, Iraqi and US forces have responded to the menace with a beefed-up security plan and reinforced their troops in the capital. On Sunday night they raided an alleged torture cell in Shia east Baghdad.
But Iraqi and US officials warn that the death squad networks are extensive, enjoy the backing of some religious leaders and are hard to track.
They operate with the support of the militias, which control large tracts of the city, and with the complicity of corrupt or terrified Iraqi police units.
When Iraqi troops and US advisers attempted to storm the suspected hideout in the impoverished Shia district of Sadr City late on Sunday, they came under fire from radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr’s militia.
"Many police sympathise with the death squads, but mainly it’s that many live in Sadr City. If they they close their eyes, they’re well thought of, sometimes even paid," an Iraqi military intelligence officer told AFP.
"If they try to do their jobs, they put themselves in danger and their families are threatened," he said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Some of the death squads’ targets are political.
Shia gangs target former members of ousted president Saddam Hussain’s hated Baath party or security services. Sunni extremists kill those who are seen as collaborators with US-led coalition forces or Iraq’s coalition.
Other killings are more purely sectarian. The numbers of dead and tortured corpses turning up in the streets of Baghdad have spiralled since February 22 when suspected Sunni bombers destroyed a revered Shia mosque in Samarra.
Many of the bodies are thrown in giant sewer that crosses Sadr’s territory in Sadr City. From there they float, many of them in a terrible state following beatings and torture, towards a treatment plant near a US base in Rustamiya.
Lieutenant Colonel Mark Bertolini, who commands the US base Camp Rustamiya, said: "There was a significant increase after the Samarra shrine bombing." In April, Bertolini ordered some access channels to the sewer to be sealed off. "It doesn’t stop people from killing each other but at least it isn’t as easy to get rid of them and it doesn’t go completely unnoticed," he told AFP.
Many of the bodies are found bound and blindfolded. Some are decapitated or have their throats cut, others burned or mutilated with power tools.
Nevertheless, many of the gangs follow what they regard as a proper trial process before doing away with their victims.
"They target someone – and kill them if there is a difficulty in the kidnapping – but they usually bring the person to a safe place to be interrogated before the execution," the Iraqi intelligence officer said.
"A sheikh or imam comes and listens briefly to what the accused and accusers have to say and then gives his decision - usually death. It only lasts a few minutes. They kill the victim minutes later," he said.
Many of the killings carried out by Shia gangs are seen by them as reprisals for attacks – such the Samarra bombing or suicide car bombs in crowded Baghdad markets – carried out by Sunni extremists.
Mainstream Shia parties have won power since a US-led invasion in 2003 toppled Saddam’s Sunni-dominated regime, and foreign fighters inspired by the Al Qaeda Islamist network have stirred the resentment of Iraqi Sunnis.
Observers fear, however, that the death squads’ reign of terror has now developed a self-sustaining logic of attack and response all of its own.
"People are angry because of the car bombs and suicide attacks on the markets. But you have to face the facts: Sadr city is controlled by the Mehdi Army and the Iraqi police are their accomplices," the Iraqi officer said.
Checkpoints have been set up around Sadr City’s sprawling slum, but an American officer patrolling the area agreed with his Iraqi colleague, noting: "The Iraqi police are not doing their job".
If Sunday night’s raid is any guide, the security forces are now more determined and able to take on the death squads. But until they succeed, Baghdadis will pull corpses out of their waterways every day. – AFP
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