Kidnappings and death squads continue to tear Iraqi families apart, reports Firas Al-Atraqchi They had been watching him for two weeks before their Passat rammed into his Toyota and with AK-47s pointed menacingly in his direction barked orders for him to get into their car. Mehdi, a Shia businessman who was setting up a company in Amman (also referred to as "Little Baghdad" because of its surging Iraqi community) knew he was being kidnapped on his way to the commercial Mansour district of Baghdad. Stories of kidnappings for profit had become commonplace in early 2005 and he hoped his abductors were after money only, and not prompted to seize him for political reasons. "He was gone for three weeks," his brother-in-law Abdullah told me last year. At that time, the family in Iraq, and those living and working abroad, scrambled to conjure up funds to secure Mehdi's release -- some $65,000. The ransom was paid and he was released unharmed. When Mehdi returned to his family he revealed his abductors knew of his business dealings in Jordan and had set up an intricate system for monitoring the family and determining whether his kidnapping was a financially lucrative endeavour. A year later, kidnappings have rivalled suicide car bombings, and military operations, in gravity and deadliness. Although the media has for the greater part focussed almost exclusively on the plight of Western hostages in Iraq, the suffering of Iraqi families who lost loved ones to the spectre of abductions is often not told. In December 2005, 10-year-old Faris, a Christian, was kidnapped a few blocks from his Mosul home by abductors who demanded his family pay a $10,000 ransom. The middle class family who had fallen on hard times since the 1990 sanctions insisted they had no money, but the abductors informed them they had received "intelligence" information to the contrary. After a few phone exchanges, the abductors gave up and dumped Faris in a junkyard a street away from his family home. His throat was slit. A day later, a botched kidnapping attempt at the home of a Kurdish businessman in the same neighbourhood resulted in the killing of a teenage boy. It is not known if the same gang was behind both kidnappings. These stories, although largely unreported, are in stark contrasted to the media spectacle that has followed freelance reporter Jill Carroll, who having been finally released after more than 80 days in captivity in Iraq, returned to the US on 2 April. Her homecoming to family and friends follows the safe return of three members of the Christian Peacemaker Teams to their families and friends. In the week between both liberations, some 250 Iraqis were kidnapped. According to estimates of the Iraqi Interior Ministry, some 5,000 Iraqis were kidnapped in Baghdad between December 2003 and April 2005 -- just over 10 kidnappings a day, on average. The Brookings Institution, a "non-profit organisation devoted to independent research and innovative policy solutions", says kidnappings increased from two a day in December 2004 to 10 a day in January 2005 in Baghdad alone. Kidnappings have become such a daily hazard for a host of reasons. First and foremost, the lack of a viable police infrastructure and the infiltration of the police force by criminal gangs and death squads has created a vacuum in the security environment in which such occurrences have become commonplace. In the first days following the fall of Baghdad, two types of kidnappings occurred, both motivated by political inclinations. The first can be considered "revenge kidnapping", as scores of Baathists, or those thought to have worked with the Baathists, were kidnapped at gunpoint from their domiciles, places of work, etc. The outcome was always the same; a body riddled with bullets would turn up in a ditch somewhere. The second type of kidnapping was resorted to as a form of political intimidation. Rival tribes and religious factions jockeying for power kidnapped family members. This was usually resolved peacefully. Quickly, a more deadly form of kidnapping emerged. Lawlessness coupled with unemployment, the release of thousands of criminals from jails prior to the invasion and the disbanding of the army meant many criminals were now armed and unable to earn income. Some joined security forces and militias and gained nearly free access to surveillance and counter-insurgency information. Various armed groups also kidnapped foreigners suspected of espionage or most likely for financial gain, which some experts say were funnelled into procuring arms and materiel. Some Iraqis who had suffered from attempted abductions claimed that kidnappers were given assistance by Iraqi security forces, but this has not been independently verified. For W M, the past two years in Iraq have been nothing short of a nightmare as two of his brothers, both merchants, were kidnapped and killed. His brother, M A M, 44, father of four, was kidnapped inside his small poultry shop in Sinak, a main trade centre of Baghdad, in June 2005. According to his business partner, several heavily armed men donning special police uniforms entered the shop and asked for M A M by name, before dragging him out in front of dozens of passers-by and patrons. A day later, the kidnappers called S M, another brother, demanding a $50,000 ransom. S M could hear his brother being tortured in the background. S M turned to the police and the Interior Ministry for assistance in securing his brother's release. The police arranged a drop-off of the ransom hoping to apprehend the abductors but they never showed up, having been tipped off by someone in the Interior Ministry. After finally succumbing to the abductors' demands, S M delivered the $50,000 ransom. M A M's body was later found bruised and tortured outside the Firdaws mosque in the eastern Baghdad suburb of Ur. But the family tragedy did not end there. On 13 March 2006, S M, 52, a father of five (the youngest of which is only three years old) was himself abducted by eight men in two sedans outside his home. "We received a call demanding $100,000 ransom and we tried our best to do whatever they asked, but from our last bad experience we feared that the outcome would be the same," W M said. He appealed to a Shia family friend to help find and secure S M's release. The friend, identified as Hajji R, contacted elements of the Badr Brigades and the Mahdi army and was able to determine that S M was being held at the Al-Mustafa Husseiniyah -- a makeshift area or domicile usually used for worship by the Shia community. S M's body was later found at the Baghdad morgue bearing clear signs of torture and violent death. The US military has blamed death squads operating within the Iraqi Interior Ministry with support by the Iranian government. US ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad last week reiterated his charges that the Iranians had helped set up death squads commissioned to carry out assassinations and kidnappings of Iraqis. Iraqi Interior Minister Bayan Jabr Solagh responded to Khalilzad by promising to cleanse the ministry of death squads, but said it would take considerable time. The US military, apparently, was in no mood to wait. Two weeks after S M was kidnapped, Iraqi Special Forces backed by US troops attacked the Al-Mustafa Husseiniyah where he had been held, after saying they were fired on from the religious compound. The US military says 17 heavily armed militia members were killed in the attack, but Iraqi Shia leaders, who denounced the attack, said the dead were worshippers. For W M, however, the attack was justified and came as retribution for the kidnapping and savage killing of his brothers. "God has avenged us from the murderers of my brothers," he said.
