http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/04/03/news/guns.php
Gun glut in Iraq
By Jeffrey Gettleman The New York Times
TUESDAY, APRIL 4, 2006
BAGHDAD With chipped, painted fingernails, Nahrawan al-Janabi picked up a
cartridge and slid it into the chamber.
"Like this," she said, loading her new Glock pistol with a loud,
satisfying click. "You see, like this."
Akram Abdulzahra now keeps his revolver handy at his job in an Internet
café.
Haidar Hussein, a Baghdad bookseller, just bought a fully automatic
assault rifle and has been teaching his wife how to shoot.
Iraq has long been awash with guns. But after the bombing of a Shiite
shrine in Samarra in late February, sectarian tensions exploded, and more
Iraqis than ever have been buying, carrying and stockpiling weapons, adding an
unnerving level of firepower to Baghdad's streets.
The average price for a Russian-made Kalashnikov AK-47 assault rifle,
which is legal here, has jumped to $290 from $112 in the past month, according
to several gun dealers. The cost of bullets has climbed to 33 cents each from
24 cents.
Hand grenades, which are not legal, but are easy to get, cost $95.
Pre-Samarra, they were about half that. The swiftly rising prices are one
clear sign that weapon sales are hot.
Militia ranks are swelling, too, with growing swarms of young, religious,
mostly uneducated men taking to the streets with machine guns slung over their
shoulders.
Hussein Abdul Khaliq, a foot soldier in the Mahdi Army, a Shiite militia,
was guarding a strip of curb in eastern Baghdad the other day and violating
several laws in the process - all within sight of a police patrol.
For starters, Khaliq did not have a permit to carry the AK-47 his militia
had issued him. He also had many more than the authorized limit of 50 rounds.
And he was well below the minimum age for carrying a gun, which is 25.
"Let them try to take it from me," said Khaliq, a muscular 17-year-old.
The U.S. military has added to the arsenal also, by shipping in hundreds
of thousands of firearms and millions of rounds of ammunition, in an effort to
equip the fledging Iraqi security forces so U.S. troops will be able to leave.
Iraqi leaders are increasingly worried about this gun glut.
"We collected most of the heavy weapons out there, but we should have
collected all the light weapons," said Haider al-Ebadi, an aide to the prime
minister. "This is not good."
But the reality is that Iraqi politicians have been reluctant to disband
militias or to disarm the populace. One reason is that the Shiite leaders who
control the government rely on the support of militias to stay in power.
Another is that guns have become so embedded in Iraqi culture that they
are now as ubiquitous as palm trees.
Under Saddam Hussein, Iraq was one of the most militarized societies on
the planet. Saddam issued rifles to Baath Party loyalists and set up summer
camps for Baathist boys to learn how to kill.
One of his favorite photographs was a picture of him firing an antique
hunting rifle - with one hand.
After he was toppled, security evaporated, opening the floodgates for
looters, carjackers, kidnappers and thieves.
Baghdad became a place where the good guys wore masks and the bad guys
wore police uniforms; at least that was how it often looked as officers covered
their faces to protect their identities and kidnappers posed as police
officers.
In response, many civilians bought guns, and a frontier mentality set in.
"Maybe I'm kidding myself," said Haidar Hussein, the bookseller. who is
teaching his wife to shoot. "But having a gun makes me feel safer."
L. Paul Bremer, the former top U.S. administrator in Iraq, did not try to
step between Iraqis and their weaponry. He issued an order in 2003 that
essentially upheld Iraqi law: Every man and woman 25 and older with a "good
reputation and character" was entitled to own one firearm, including a fully
automatic AK-47 assault rifle, the world's most popular killing machine.
Shortly after arriving in Iraq, Bremer disbanded the Iraqi Army.
Days later, Baghdad was transformed into a weapons bazaar, with kiosks
popping up across the city offering bargains on pistols, carbines, rifles,
shotguns, machine guns and rocket-propelled grenade launchers - essentially,
just about anything with a trigger.
As crime rose, insurgent attacks increased and a sense of lawlessness
began to creep across the country, more people armed themselves. Office clerks
started strapping leather holsters under their armpits, and elderly, veiled
women started stashing Kalashnikovs under their beds.
But the destruction of Askariya Shrine in Samarra uncorked a different
kind of bloodshed and a different kind of fear, ratcheting the personal arms
race even higher. Mobs of mostly Shiite men surged through the streets, killing
hundreds of Sunni civilians. Some Sunnis fought back, killing Shiites.
Sectarian revenge has become the new common form of violence in Iraq.
Baghdad's homicide rate since the Samarra attack has tripled, to 33
killings per day, from 11. Nearly every morning, dozens of bodies, many
sadistically mutilated, surface in the streets.
"Baghdad is the battlefield," said Major General Rick Lynch, a U.S.
military spokesman.
Few killings have been investigated, eroding what little faith there was
in law enforcement. The suspicion is growing that officers in the
Shiite-controlled police forces are linked to the death squads, which leaves
people feeling even more vulnerable.
"I don't believe anyone can protect me," said Janabi, the new Glock
owner. "Not the Americans, not my government."
Janabi, 27, is a television journalist. She is East-meets-West, coming
from a religious Shiite family but favoring snug jeans and insisting that women
should carry guns - though, she admits, "it makes you feel a little like a
boy." A friend in the Interior Ministry showed her how to use her 9-millimeter
pistol. She appears quite smooth - and proud - loading it.
Until recently, Janabi resisted owning a gun, because she felt safe in
her neighborhood in central Baghdad, where she lives with her parents in a
walled compound.
But Samarra "was a spark that turned the sects against each other," she
said. "Now, each day, when I go to work, I fear I might not come home."
Just to make sure, she rides the bus with her pistol in her lap.
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