ROVING
IN THE RED ZONE Leave, or we will
behead you By Pepe Escobar
BAGHDAD - The message comes in the dead of
night, a scrawled piece of paper slipped under the
door: "If you don't leave, we will behead you."
This is what remaining Iraqi Christians face and
fear in Dora, Baghdad's vortex of ethnic and
confessional cleansing. Terrified residents, who
insist on their anonymity, paint a picture of hell
worthy of Hieronymus Bosch: "The good have all
gone; only the savages remain."
Dora is a
middle-class neighborhood by the Tigris,
predominantly
Sunni, in southwest Baghdad.
It's a collection of small farms, groves, orchards
and fruit gardens in essence peopled by two large
tribes - al-Dulaimi and al-Jobouri. The groves
extend all the way to Madan, and connect to other
Baghdad neighborhoods. Some very comfortable
houses - property of local sheikhs - are located
in these farms. Saddam Hussein once had a house in
Dora.
Dora is thus a perfect setting for
the muqawama - the Sunni Arab
resistance, as it is referred to by most Iraqis -
to thrive; in Mao Zedong's terms, the "sea" where
the "fish" thrive. Residents identify the favorite
guerrilla regions as the Elbu area, where
"Shi'ites have always been killed", Hura and Arab
al-Jubour. So not only Christians are victims:
according to non-official numbers,
no fewer than 1,682 Shi'ites
have been killed in Dora since 2003 - most of them
on their pilgrimage to Karbala - and 894 have been
kidnapped (and most subsequently killed).
During the months in 2002 when he was
preparing for the real war in Iraq - after the
inevitable US invasion - Saddam sent countless
messengers to farmers in areas like Dora, and
bought small plots of land everywhere. Then, in
the middle of the night, Revolutionary Guards
would come and bury loads of weapons and cash for
the future resistance.
Zarqawi in the
neighborhood But Dora also became a haven
for al-Qaeda in Iraq. Former bogeyman Abu Musab
al-Zarqawi, residents say, was always lurking in
Dora. Sheikh Abu Risha - the leader of the Anbar
Sovereignty Council who is fighting al-Qaeda in
Iraq in the province - had already expelled them
from Ramadi once, and also after the assault on
Fallujah in late 2004. Their preferred destination
was Dora.
This all ties with Saddam's
policies since he climbed to power in 1979. He
expelled virtually all Shi'ites from west Baghdad.
In the arc from north to west and southwest around
Baghdad, there are only Sunnis. This has assured
ample support for the Saddamist front in the
resistance, and has also assured a "Sunni
corridor" for the mobile, ever-morphing
Salafi-jihadis.
The Salafi-jihadist front
itself now comprises three main currents. There's
the Sururiyyah movement, which is a cocktail of
Salafi Muslim Brotherhood fighters. There's the
Islamic Front of the Iraqi Resistance - which is
basically Hamas in Iraq. And there's the Islamic
Emirate of Iraq, which contains al-Qaeda in Iraq.
The latter is responsible for the terror in Dora.
Residents identify a key terror figure as
one Najra, a son of one of the Dora sheikhs - a
former Ba'athist who has pledged his allegiance to
al-Qaeda in Iraq. But the top man may be Sheikh
Tahan al-Jubouri, who is very close to Abu
al-Masri, the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq who was
reported killed (unconfirmed) recently.
A
Dora resident says, "Everyone here can be a victim
of random shootings; they attack people in the
markets, or people walking in the streets." A
middle-class Sunni woman - with a Shi'ite husband
- living in her own family's house, not her
husband's, tells how her husband was attacked
right in front of the house. Not only was he
killed, she was forced to leave and now has
resettled in another Baghdad neighborhood.
At the last count, in 1977 - before even
the Iran-Iraq War - 1,684,000 Christians were
living unmolested in Iraq. After the first Gulf
War of 1991, 12 years of United Nations sanctions
and the 2003 "shock and awe", all that is known is
that the remaining majority still lived in the
neighborhoods of Dora and New Baghdad, including
the 6,000 families who live near a church in Dora.
Residents say the horror stories started
toward the end of 2004 - about the time of the
assault on Fallujah - with attacks on five big
churches plus another one in Mosul, which is
considered by many in Iraq to be the first church
ever built in the world. Iraqi governments tend to
play down the confessional cleansing: according to
official numbers, of 122 Christians assassinated
since the US invasion in 2003, only 18 have been
certified in Baghdad.
Yet since late 2005,
"a lot of people" have left, residents say. "Now
there is no market, no vegetables, no bakeries,
everything is closed." Indeed it is. During the
day Dora is an eerie, ghostly shadow of its former
garden incarnation. There's no chance of seeing an
unveiled woman in the streets on the way to buy
groceries; if that's the case, one resident says,
kids riding bicycles force her to wear the
hijab.
Members of a well-to-do
family tell how they received the infamous "letter
under the door". The whole family left Dora for
Shi'ite Kadhimiya - site of a revered shrine - and
left the house empty; it has been noted by
"scouts", and is now probably occupied by
Salafi-jihadis. Now they share a house with other
families, paying the astronomical rent of 1
million dinars (almost US$10,000) a month.
Mizar Yalda, a 48-year-old priest, says
that according to his calculations, 190 Dora
residents have been kidnapped since the 2003
invasion, and have paid a collective ransom of
more than $480,000.
Convert or
else If you are a Christian and you want to
keep living in Dora, you must convert to Islam.
Not only that, you must also cooperate with
al-Qaeda in Iraq, and must accept al-Qaeda
refugees into your house when they are trying to
escape hot pursuit. If you refuse, you will be
killed.
By some perverted math, al-Qaeda
in Iraq has established that if you don't want to
convert, you must pay $1,600 per person - plus the
assurance that you won't denounce anything
concerning al-Qaeda in Iraq's activities.
Residents confirm that "some people paid" and are
still in Dora. But "some converted"; recently
there has been talk of 24 men, six women and three
girls who did so. What is certain is that the
majority of Christians have left. Amel Zaya paid
$7,600 to Jobouri to stay in Dora with her family,
and also for "protection". She now runs a
restaurant.
So how is the US occupation
army reacting to all this madness? The bombastic
way. Less than two weeks ago, the Buaitha area of
Dora was subjected to an artillery barrage and no
fewer than 24 explosions from US Base Falcon - in
broad daylight. There's no evidence that al-Qaeda
in Iraq has been debilitated by this "tactic" -
not exactly the subtlest way to fight confessional
cleansing and win hearts and minds.
Head
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no fewer than 1,682 Shi'ites
have been killed in Dora since 2003 - most of them
on their pilgrimage to Karbala - and 894 have been
kidnapped (and most subsequently killed).
