Baghdad turned upside down with fear the only certainty
Baghdad turned upside down with fear the only certainty, John Lyons, June 21, 2014
(In the Battle for Islam, none of the combatants are our friends. Please see also Guarding American Interests in the Sunni-Shiite War. — DM)
Iraqi special forces in West Baghdad.
The police are in fear. The Sunnis are in fear. The Shias are in fear. People with guns are in fear. People without guns are in fear. Baghdad, this cursed city, is descending yet again into chaos.
THE Battle for Islam is being waged in these blood-drenched streets. As the sun sets over Baghdad, this city swings into a grim night-time ritual based on fear.
Many shopkeepers have decided the night-time is too dangerous — they pull down the shutters and impose their own curfew.
The Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) has changed the natural order of this place — in good times, summer nights in Baghdad are when people head out after the searing 45C heat of the day to walk or shop.
But not these days in this city of fear. Driving around Baghdad yesterday as night fell, I could see the reason for the fear.
In the up-market shopping area of Karrada the corner of one building had been ripped off by a car bomb; further along the road, a burnt-out car sat next to rubble where a restaurant had been bombed, killing three; every few blocks there is rubble, with soldiers manning nearby checkpoints.
These are instant graveyards in the Battle for Islam.
While ISIS, who are Sunni, have been beheading and executing in the north of the country, here in Baghdad — which is mainly Shia — it’s the Sunnis who are copping it.
Two days ago the residents of Ghazalia, in the west of the city, woke to find four bodies lying in the street. Sunnis, of course — blindfolded, with bullets through their heads. But part of the fear is that Shias cannot feel safe just because they’re in Baghdad.
Five days ago, at one of the main bus terminals in central Baghdad, a sniper with a silencer picked off people — perhaps hunting Sunnis, perhaps hunting Shias, or it could have been random.
People rushing to catch a bus saw a man in their midst suddenly drop to the ground — dead, shot in the head. A few minutes later another man dropped to the ground.
Where was the sniper? Which way could they run so they were out of his sights?
In Baghdad at the moment there’s nowhere to hide, nowhere to be completely safe.
“Everybody now wants to stay home,” says oil industry executive Saad Abdul Wahab.
“It’s not just the Sunnis in Baghdad who are scared — everybody is because nobody knows what could happen next.”
Part of the insanity of Baghdad is that even the greatest of hatreds — between Sunni and Shia — is being blurred.
It seems there are those who don’t care whether they shoot dead Sunni or Shia — they just want chaos. The battle within Islam that has been going on for hundreds of years has now broken out in all its horror.
The Sunni extremists, led by ISIS, smell blood, sensing a chance to topple the Shia government. They have seized vast sections of the north and now they want the capital.
A city drenched in blood for decades but which has had something of a respite in recent years has returned to the daily horror of car and suicide bombs.
“The mornings are the worst,” says cameraman Amar Murdan. “That’s when the army and the police who’ve been up through the night go home to sleep so ISIS know they can do more things.”
June — the height of summer — is normally a peak time for weddings here. But wedding operators report that the number has dropped dramatically over the past week.
Baghdad can be deceptive. As you drive through Karrada, if you look one way you see the burnt-out cars and rubble from recent explosions while if you look the other way you see the magnificent sunset over the historic Tigris river.
The army is everywhere — soldiers sit atop army trucks with machine guns at the ready.
The fact that ISIS this week brought the frontline to within 35km of Baghdad put fear into many in the city. As I drove around Baghdad suddenly there was some sort of drama, with police cars in front of us — they held up their hands to indicate to us and others to slow down so there was more room between them and us in case of a bomb.
The police are in fear. The Sunnis are in fear. The Shias are in fear. People with guns are in fear. People without guns are in fear. Baghdad, this cursed city, is descending yet again into chaos.
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