Careless talk costs lives on Baghdad streets

Sydney Morning Herald ^ | January 29, 2005 | Paul McGeough

[ijcr]

Ahmed Resain has his back to the door, so he does not see the gunman alight from a car outside his rudimentary Al Pasha hairdressing salon, in Baghdad's dusty Al-Salam quarter.

The assailant strides deliberately into the shop and coldly turns to face Ahmed. He presses a pistol to the stunned barber's lower lip, carefully angling the weapon to ensure that the bullet exits through his left jaw.

Ahmed, 37, is still standing - but three shots to his legs as the gunman makes his getaway drop him to the floor in a pool of his own blood.

His survival is deliberate. The attack is intended to silence a critic of Iraq's Sunni-backed insurgency, but also to ensure that he stays alive as a warning to others in a predominantly Shiite area on the eve of tomorrow's national elections.

Days later, in a chilling interview, the chunky, Western-dressed son of a Palestinian refugee family in Baghdad informs me that it was he who sent the hit man for the hairdresser.

He sips a can of Pepsi as he talks of his victims - most of whom die. As he swings in a revolving chair, he condemns them all in the name of the insurgency and Iraq's displaced Sunni powerbrokers: "That hair-dresser says 'f---' the Islamic resistance and he says 'bulls---' to the Sunni people."

"Abdul" refuses to reveal his real name. But he identifies himself as a mid-level leader who acts on orders from a more senior figure who still operates from Falluja, the Sunni city west of Baghdad.

The Al Pasha is like barber shops the world over - Ahmed clips and snips, talking politics and sport with customers and friends who drop in. Regrettably, he pays little attention to a stranger who turns the debate to Falluja and the terrorist tactics of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

When I visit his home, Ahmed's bed has been brought into the sitting-room.

Ahmed cannot talk, but his brother Fadel, 30, explains: "The stranger was a Sunni spy and Ahmed talks too much."

The attack on his brother took place two weeks ago, Fadel says. Since then Abu Ali, a carpenter in a nearby street, was executed because he had pictures of the Shiites' spiritual leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, in his workshop and he too spoke ill of the insurgency when he chatted with customers.

Confirming the attack on the carpenter, "Abdul" nonchalantly rattles off other victims: "There was Nasir, another barber on Haifa Street, who we shot three times in the face; Naji, the head of a local council was calling in US tanks - so we killed him and his son, Firas, by setting their car on fire; we kidnapped and set fire to a woman who was an American spy; and I sent gunmen to kill another woman who was going in and out of the green zone too many times."

Fadel, the hairdresser's brother, says doctors are confident that Ahmed will be able to talk properly when his jaw heals. And in the face of the insurgency's attempts to frighten people away from the polls, he declares for the family: "We are not afraid - we'll still be voting."

So tomorrow, will this devout Shiite family vote for the Sistani List, a coalition of the key Shiite religious parties devised by the reclusive grand ayatollah?

Actually, no. Fadel reveals the family's political stance: "The religious men don't have the solution to Iraq's problems - maybe later. But now we need [interim Prime Minister] Iyad Allawi because he is strong and he knows how to deal with the terrorists.

"If we wait for the likes of Sistani who tells us 'wait, wait, wait' when we are attacked by the Sunnis, all the Shiites will be dead. The terrorists think we are weak because we do not respond, but Allawi knows what to do - kill, kill, kill."

[piasa]

From what I understand small arms, pistols, AKs, and the like are no problem to own and most people likely consider them essential, particularly shop owners. But not everyone owns them or keeps them handy 100% of the time. The problem isn't so much lack of means of self defense as it is a lack of neighbors willing to stand up and defend neighbors... Decades of decades of secret police, extensive files on all citizens, people spying on eachother in order to win favor with the police, official kidknappings and regime punishment of family and friends of "enemies of the state" have probably frightened people so much they fear to stand up for themselves or each other because standing up for one person places all their other loved ones at risk. No one wants to be the first person to lose his whole family over defense of their barber, not even if they are willing to die themselves. They believe the thugs are led by people who've read records and spied and know where their families are.

It takes a special person to lead the sheep into making a stand that even if successful in the long run will certainly cost them a lot in the short run.

[livius]

son of a Palestinian refugee family in Baghdad informs me that it was he who sent the hit man

Palestinians, bringing their signature charm to wherever they are. Of course, they were moved to Iraq by Saddam but, hey, if Teddy K. says Saddam was just an innocent little lovebug, why should we worry?

[poindexter]

"What's the RKBA situation there? All I hear is unarmed civilians being shot like dogs."

My understanding is that every household is allowed to have a couple of AK's around for self defense.

[ErnBatavia]

"Abdul" refuses to reveal his real name.

"Abdul" has got balls - right.

[xm177e2]

Simple solution: order all Palestinians in Iraq deported; any who stay, arrest or kill.

[I still care]

Actually, this reminds me of all the stories I heard about Germany when the Nazis were first coming to power.

My husband told me a story of how his grandmother once walked through a Nazi line to go into a jewish shop to do business. The people wanted to patronize the Jewish business owner, but they were afraid to go through the line. When his grandmother went through, they all went through.

I'm not sure of the ending of that story, but his family left Germany for the US a few weeks later. The parents would never teach the kids German, because they wanted them to be "American".

All the stories I have heard about Iraq remind me of the Nazis. I guess "Nazis" will arise periodically throughout world history, and good men must muster up the wisdom and courage necessary if they are to defeat them and their evil.

[piasa]

Speaking of Paul McGeough:

APRIL 2003 : (ROBERT FISKE PROPAGANDIZES FOR HUSSEIN) "Anyone who doubts that the Iraqi Army is prepared to defend its capital should take the highway south of Baghdad. How, I kept asking myself, could the Americans batter their way through these defenses?" -- Robert Fisk. With Fisk that day was SMH columnist Paul McGeough, who later reported: “Robert gets a bit windy from time to time."
[* my note: Paul McGeough is the guy who later claimed, using unsubstantiated and anonymous sources, that the future Iraqi leader Allawi at the time shot prisoners]