Fear behind the wheel in
Iraq By Sami Alkhoja and Charles
Recknagel
BAGHDAD - The business of
reconstructing Iraq has lured a lot of foreign
entrepreneurs to the country. But now these same
individuals find themselves targeted by insurgents
seeking to sabotage the new interim government by
driving both foreign troops and civilians from the
country. As evident by the ongoing hostage dramas, few
of the foreign contractors have suffered more than truck
drivers, whom insurgents find particularly easy to
seize.
Muhammad al-Sudani was standing in a
Baghdad freight yard beside the truck he had just driven
from Egypt with cargo for some Iraqi entrepreneurs. He
was resting after an exhausting, several-day haul across
desert highways in temperatures that at noon hovered
around 45 degrees Celsius.
"I was never
kidnapped or robbed," he said. "But I have heard about
the kidnappings. I saw the resistance. Once when I was
transporting a container from Egypt to Baghdad, the
resistance stopped me and asked what I was carrying, and
if I was carrying anything to the Americans. I told them
that I was transporting goods to an Iraqi businessman. I
was scared, of course. When I looked around me I saw
about 50-60 gunmen. Of course I was scared."
It
is a trip that, until he crosses the Iraqi border, is
safe and routine. But as soon as he enters Iraq, fear
takes over.
Al-Sudani is a brave enough man to
admit when he's scared. And he said having 50 armed and
hostile men surround you while their chief studies your
cargo list is a terrifying experience. He knew he was
free - and alive - now only because the list proved he
was not hauling anything for US troops or foreign
contractors.
Al-Sudani's boss - truck owner Imad
Rashad Salim - was standing nearby. Like many truck
operators in the Arab world, he is a small independent
businessman whose transport company consists of his
single vehicle. He takes turns at the wheel and decides
how many hours they drive before they stop.
Salim said that in Iraq his truck doesn't move
after nightfall, though it's the coolest time to work.
In the dark, the danger of gunmen, kidnappings and death
is too great: "Of course these incidents have affected
our work. There is no security on the motorway. Being
scared for our lives and the goods that we are carrying,
it's our responsibility, the truck is mine. I was never
threatened [but] we try not to put ourselves in danger
and we stop at night."
Kidnapping is much on the
truckers' minds these days after a week of exceptionally
bad news. This Monday, Islamist extremist websites
showed a videotape of Turkish driver Murat Yuce urging
Turkish companies to pull out of Iraq and criticizing
the presence of US forces in the country. The tape,
provided by Yuce's kidnappers, ended with one of them
shooting him in the head with a pistol.
After
the killing, the Turkish company that employed Yuce said
it is withdrawing from Iraq. And one association of
Turkish truckers (UND) that represents some 40 companies
said its members would stop transporting cargo for US
forces until their security is guaranteed.
Many
Turkish drivers have complained that while US forces
provide escorts for convoys of trucks traveling toward
US military bases, they provide none for the truckers as
they return home. Yuce was taken hostage as he was
homeward bound.
But most drivers know that -
despite their anger over the killings - there is little
real pressure they can exert to change the situation. If
some truck companies try boycotts, competing firms
simply take their business. This week, a much larger
Turkish truckers association representing some 670
transport firms (RODER) said its members will keep
driving to Iraq.
The head of the association,
Saffar Ulusoy, said: "It would not be possible for us to
give up transporting goods to Iraq unless a war broke
out between Turkey and Iraq. This is a route on which
50,000 Turkish families depend [on to make] a living."
He noted that Turkish trucks made some 700,000
trips to Iraq last year, earning Turkey billions of
dollars in exports.
Driver al-Sudani put his own
position on hauling goods to Iraq in simple, more
personal terms. So long as nothing happens to directly
scare him away, he said, he will keep working: "Look, as
long as it is safe and we don't see anything [too
frightening], we will [continue to] come to Baghdad. But
whenever there is an incident, of course we get scared.
[And if it is too bad] then we will never come to
Baghdad [again]."
For the truckers, it's a
gamble in which high profits are balanced against the
odds of losing everything.
Since a wave of
kidnapping began in April, at least 70 foreigners have
been taken captive by gunmen and nine have been brutally
murdered. They include two Pakistani truckers killed a
week ago.
On Wednesday, there was some good news
to improve the record slightly. Militants said they
freed four Jordanian and two Turkish drivers after
taking them hostage to put pressure on their companies
to stop working in the country. About 20 other foreign
nationals are still being held captive in Iraq.
What about Muslim brotherhood? At the
Baghdad freight yard, the Egyptian truckers were
preparing to make their long drive home. Here in the
sprawling compound of warehouses and mechanic shops -
guarded 24 hours a day - they unloaded their cargo and
the Iraqi businessmen who had ordered it sent small
trucks to fetch it. The men's lives appeared temporarily
calm and normal.
The other drivers at the
freight yard had come from Lebanon, Egypt, Syria and
Jordan. Like the drivers who have been killed by the
insurgents, they were all Muslims.
Truck owner
Salim said he just can't understand how being a fellow
Muslim counts for nothing with the kidnappers: "The
[kidnappers'] story is that the kidnapped person helps
the Americans and the coalition forces and that this is
the proper punishment for a Muslim collaborator. But if
[a driver] helps the Americans, does that give them the
right to do anything to him? I'm a Muslim and the Iraqi
[kidnapper] is a Muslim and I'm an Arab and the Iraqi is
an Arab. How can I use the knife to kill my brother?"
Still, to be on the safe side, Salim said he was
going to keep carrying freight only for Iraqi
businessmen. The money is less than he could made from
the Americans, but the security is greater.
In
an attempt to quell this kidnapping trend, the United
States has announced that all 32 countries in the
multinational force in Iraq have agreed not to give in
to the demands of hostage-takers. The US State
Department announced on Wednesday that "we are united in
our resolve to make no concessions to terrorists".
State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said
the idea for a common policy statement on hostage-taking
was first proposed by Bulgaria. The US had then followed
it up with each of the other governments in the
multinational force and reached an agreed principle to
be expressed by individual nations in their own words.
Security shows no sign of
improving Meanwhile, violence continues
throughout Iraq, with guerrillas frequently targeting
Iraqi police and security forces. On Thursday morning, a
car-bomb attack on a police station in the town of
Mahawil, about 65 kilometers south of Baghdad, killed at
least five people and wounded 21.
In the
northern city of Mosul, 14 civilians and eight gunmen
were killed in clashes between Iraqi police and the
gunmen early Wednesday afternoon. Dozens of masked men
with assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenade
launchers are reported to have clashed in the streets
with Iraqi security forces. The fierce battle broke out
in the southwestern part of the city on the west bank of
the Tigris River amid loud explosions and heavy gunfire.
Iraqi police sealed off two scenes of the battle and
shop owners closed their businesses.
But despite
Iraq's dismal security situation, United Nations
Secretary General Kofi Annan said on Wednesday that he
will send his special representative to Iraq ahead of
the planned national conference this month. Annan told
reporters that his representative to Iraq, Pakistani
diplomat Ashraf Jehangir Qazi, will arrive with a small
team to assist Iraqis in running the conference.
But the secretary general said no countries have
yet offered troops for a special UN protection force
envisaged in a Security Council resolution passed in
early June.
"We haven't had much success
attracting governments to sign up for the dedicated
force to protect the UN personnel in Iraq and our
property, so for the time being, for practical measures,
we have no other choice but to rely on the multinational
force," Annan said.
UN experts are expected to
assist Iraqi leaders in organizing elections in January
for a provisional government. The national conference is
supposed to pick members of an interim council to
monitor the transitional government until elections.
Copyright 2004 RFE/RL Inc. Reprinted with the
permission ofRadio Free Europe/Radio Liberty,
1201 Connecticut Ave NW, Washington, DC 20036.
