Irak, guerra azioni Nyt 06-05-10
Allarmati dai raid, in Irak i quartieri organizzano
turni di guardia
SABRINA TAVERNISE
A tre anni dall’invasione americana all’o.d.g. la guerra
civile, con gente prelevata dalle abitazioni e giustiziata sommariamente.
I sunniti non chiedono protezione al governo sciita
appoggiato dagli USA; nei quartieri di Baghdad ovest e dei centri delle sei maggiori
città sunnite, comprese Baquba nel Nord e Mahumudiya nel Sud, si stanno formando
squadre di giovani, spesso sunniti e sciiti assieme, che sorvegliano le strade
dopo il coprifuoco delle 11 per difendersi, anche con armi e barricate, dai commandos
segreti di forze speciali della polizia sciita o milizie sunnite che assaltano
ed assassinano.
Non si conosce il numero dei gruppi di autodifesa che si
sono costituiti in particolare dopo l’attacco di febbraio contro il santuario
sciita di Samara.
In marzo ci sono state 1294 vittime a Baghdad, più del
doppio del marzo 2005 (596); ad aprile le vittime sono aumentate dell’88%
rispetto all’aprile 2005, il 90% di morte violenta. Dopo la formazione dei gruppi di autodifesa
nei quartieri, i raid delle squadre di assassini sono diminuiti contro i
quartieri e sono aumentate nei luoghi di lavoro, negli ospedali e nei trasporti.
Diversi sunniti si fidano maggiormente delle forze armate
ritenute meno partigiane, che tollerano il porto d’armi illegale per autodifesa,
e che a volte proteggono i cittadini sunniti dalla polizia sciita.
I gruppi di autodifesa sono tollerati anche dagli americani.
Anche i quartieri sciiti hanno organizzato gruppi di guardia, ma si
fidano della polizia.
Nyt 06-05-10
Alarmed
by Raids, Neighbors Stand Guard in Iraq
By SABRINA TAVERNISE
BAGHDAD, Iraq, May 9 — It was almost 3
a.m. in Zubaida Square in central Baghdad last week when headlights signaled
one flash, then two, then one again.
From the darkness, someone signaled
back. The watchers were there.
– As evidence mounts that Shiite police commandos are carrying out secret killings, Sunni Arab neighborhoods
across Baghdad
have begun forming citizen groups to keep the paramilitary forces out of their
areas entirely. In large swaths of western
Baghdad, and in
at least six majority Sunni areas in its center, young men take turns standing in streets after the 11
p.m. curfew, to send out signals by flashlights and cellphones if
strangers approach.
In some cases, the Sunnis have set up barricades and have taken up arms against Shiite-led commando raids into their neighborhoods. In
other cases, residents have tipped off Sunni insurgents. Watch groups have been
assembled in other mixed areas, including Baquba to the north and Mahmudiya to the south,
residents and officials said.
Three years after the American invasion,
the war has settled here, in the quiet of neighborhoods, streets and Iraqis’
backyards. Dozens of bodies
surface daily. People are taken from their homes and executed. Assassinations
are routine. But instead of looking to the government for protection, ordinary Sunni Arabs are taking up
arms against it, perhaps the most vivid illustration of the depth of Sunni mistrust of the American
backed, Shiite-led security forces. "There is no bridge of confidence
between the government and the Iraqi people," said Tarik al-Hashimy, a
vice president of Iraq
who is a Sunni Arab.
The groups, informal networks of neighbors, are not tracked by the
authorities, and so are difficult to count. The Iraqi
Army’s battalions responsible for the northern and central portions of eastern Baghdad touched base with
groups in Fadhel, Qaera,
Waziriya and Adhamiya last Monday night. Many more neighborhoods, including
Khudra, Jihad and Ghazaliya, in heavily Sunni western Baghdad, report similar organization. The
residents emerge after dark, and are encountered by Iraqi Army night patrols
who check in on them.
The groups — with intricate webs of
cellphones, mosque loudspeakers, flashlight codes and handheld radios — mushroomed after the February
bombing of a sacred Shiite shrine in Samarra
that sparked several days of killing of Sunnis by Shiite militias.
"Samarra is the turning point in the security
file," Mr. Hashimy said.
In March, the Baghdad morgue received 1,294 bodies, more than
double the 596 received in March 2005. In April, the figure was up by 88
percent from the previous April. Nearly 90 percent died violently, most by
gunfire, according to the morgue.
"The killing, you can’t imagine the
killing," said Yusra Abdul Aziz, 47, a teacher, whose block, in Adhamiya,
organized its watch group in March, after four neighbors were shot dead over
several days. "Without
any reason. Cars come and shoot us. We run to the hospital and get our wounded.
We live in a nightmare, actually."
On her block, seven men, Sunnis and Shiites,
stand on rooftops and street corners from midnight to 6 a.m., stopping
suspicious cars. Palm tree trunks and pieces of trash are used to block roads.
Still, she is so afraid of
nighttime raids by both the special police and marauding criminals dressed like
police officers that she sleeps in her clothes.
– As a counterweight to
sectarian extremism, neighborhood watch groups often cross sectarian lines,
with Sunni and Shiite neighbors standing guard together. Sunnis have even
helped to protect Shiite neighbors from Sunni militias.
Many Sunnis say that despite their terror of the Iraqi special police, they tolerate the Iraqi Army, which they consider more
professional and less partisan. They say soldiers sometimes turn a blind eye to
their weapons, which are illegal outside the house. Some neighborhood watchers
interviewed said they had cellphone numbers of army commanders in their
speed-dial lists.
"Sometimes they talk to us,"
said a neighborhood guard. "They say, ‘Don’t let us see your weapons.’
"
The army has even protected Sunni residents from the Shiite police. Col. Ghassan Ali Thamir of the Third Battalion said he stopped
several Ministry of the
Interior sport utility vehicles from entering Adhamiya last year,
infuriating the ministry, which sent a memo demanding an explanation.
"The MOI says Colonel Ghassan
cooperates with the terrorists," he said, sitting in his office in a
former palace of Saddam Hussein in Adhamiya. "I
don’t want anyone taking anyone without a list. If they come for one, O.K.,
take one. But not more."
Sunnis also say they feel safer if
Americans accompany Iraqis. "The Americans will not let the Iraqi forces
kill us," one Ghazaliya resident put it bluntly.
American commanders say that the watch groups are benign, and that the
Iraqi Army does not permit them to patrol with weapons.
"You will see them — a guy standing
on the street corner," said Lt. Col. Paul Finken, of the 506th Regimental
Combat Team of the 101st Airborne Division, whose area of control includes
Adhamiya. "They are there, and it’s no issue for U.S. Army forces."
Still, to some Iraqi soldiers, the neighborhood patrols seem
indistinguishable, in the end, from the Iraqi insurgency. A soldier who patrols in Adhamiya lifted up his sleeve to show
scars from a hand grenade that had been thrown at him in the area.
"They show themselves as liking the
army, but it’s not true," said Second Lt. Ali Khadham of the Iraqi Army’s
Second Battalion, which patrols Adhamiya. "There’s a very big hate inside
them for government forces."
Sunnis say they have organized purely
out of self-protection, to defend their turf in a city where more and more
areas have become no-go zones. In the darkness of Zubaida Square, a guard, Adel Kareem, 38,
said he has given up work as a taxi driver because leaving his neighborhood with
his Sunni ID meant risking arrest and execution, a fear echoed in many other
Sunni areas.
"I can’t go to Kadhimiya, Shuala, Sadr City,
Shaab," he said, ticking off the city’s Shiite neighborhoods. "I
would disappear."
Sunni neighborhoods are just as dangerous
for Shiites, in part because of neighborhood watch patrols.
Shiites have also organized neighborhood patrols,
but their trust in the police is high, and guards are few. Lieutenant Khadham
said that in his majority Shiite neighborhood, Ur, about 15 neighbors guard an area of about 400 houses,
far less than in Adhamiya, where dozens of guards keep watch on each block.
Shiite areas breathe more easily at night. In
Greyat, a riverside Shiite enclave just north of Adhamiya, families with
children were out walking at midnight recently. Tea shops overflowed with
guests, bakeries exuded inviting smells and men sat talking in outdoor
restaurants. In contrast, just several blocks away in the largely Sunni Arab
neighborhood of Slekh, lights were out and blocks appeared vacant.
In the darkness of a quiet block in the
largely Sunni district of Waziriya in central Baghdad on Monday night, Ali Salah Mahdi, a
gangly, 21-year-old Sunni Arab, said his group had heard through its network
that extremists intended to attack a neighbor who was working as a translator
for American troops. They warned the man, who quickly fled with his family.
Shortly after, Mr. Mahdi said, attackers strafed the man’s house.
Paramilitary raids in the city appear to have eased in recent months, and
Sunni residents attribute the drop to neighborhood patrols obstructing them. The evidence, they say, is that killers are now striking targets at their workplaces, in
the hospitals and while they commute.
A recent example is the killing of 14 young
men from Slekh last month. The men, who commuted together in a minivan from
their shops in Sinek, another area, were returning home on April 15 when their
vehicle was stopped and they were led away. Their bodies, some with drill
holes, surfaced in the morgue several days later. Residents blame the Interior
Ministry, though with no survivors from the van, no witnesses remain.
The incident only hardened residents’
resolve for self-defense.
"I am dizzy from going to
funerals," said a guard at the Najib mosque, where neighbors came to mourn
the men two weeks ago.
And in a more violent, and perhaps more
telling, episode, on the night of April 17, uncontrolled gun battles raged in
Adhamiya for more than seven hours. Four men, who identified themselves as
local guards, said in interviews that shooting broke out after dozens of
Interior Ministry cars drove into Adhamiya, though no one acknowledged actually
seeing such a car.
Colonel Thamir said Sunni insurgents
started rumors that the police had come to arrest people, setting off the
battle. Five people were killed and many more were wounded.
Similar battles were reported in Khudra
and in Shuhada in western Baghdad,
during the days of sectarian rioting in February.
Insurgents started the fight, said
Second Lt. Ahmed Majeed of the Iraqi Army’s First Battalion Delta Force.
"The civilians started to
shoot," he said, looking frustrated. "What should we do?"
The problem, he said, is ultimately one
of trust.
"Everyone has a gun," he said.
"When I say, ‘I’m here to protect you,’ they say, ‘I’m not sure.’ "
Qais Mizher, Omar al-Neami and Sahar
Nageeb contributed reporting for this article.
New York Times