Over at The Guardian:
In the second of two remarkable dispatches from behind Baghdad’s front lines, Ghaith Abdul-Ahad meets the commander of a Shia death squad
Saturday January 27, 2007
The GuardianFadhel is a slim, well-muscled 26-year-old Mahdi Army commander with a thin goatee beard and smoothed down hair that looks like a flat cap. One day last month he described how he and his men seized a group of three Sunni men suspected of killing his fellow Shia. “I followed the group for weeks and then one of them crossed the bridge to Karrada [a Shia district]. We first informed a nearby Iraqi army checkpoint that we were arresting terrorists then we attacked them and put them in the boots of the cars. We only have six to seven minutes when we grab someone – we have to act quickly, if he resists we shoot him.”
In this case, he said, the men were taken to Sadr City, the Shia slum to the north-east of Baghdad, where they were interrogated by a “committee” which ordered their execution. “We ask the families of the terrorists for ransom money,” said Fadhel. “And after they pay the ransom we kill them anyway.”
Kidnapping in Baghdad these days is as much about economics as retribution or sectarian hatred. Another Shia man close to the Mahdi Army told me: “They kidnap 10 Sunnis, they get ransom on five, and kill them all, in each big kidnap operation they make at least $50 000, it’s the best business in Baghdad.”
An interesting read. The sad truth is this: we can give in to their demands every now and then, we can try to reason… but it won’t work. It will not end their violence and hatred. The only thing that will stop them is for us to give in to all their demands… and that’s something we don’t want.
Others blogging:
Robert Spencer
Ayn Clouter of at The American Street
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