Iraq: Troops give tacit nod to vigilante justice
uruknet.info-AFP:"Who killed Sheikh Saad?" the US army captain asks Sayed Malik, America's partner in the lawless Baghdad district of Dura.The 45-year-old Shiite tribal leader, shrouded in a checkered white keffiyah and grey robes, brushes off the US requests for information about which insurgent group murdered the representative of hardline cleric Moqtada Sadr.
Instead, the powerbroker suggests the Americans stand aside.
He tells the officers: "Right now, if we hit one group, the others will run away ... The Mehdi Army [of Sadr] will take care of it."
The US captains, both in their early 30s, nod an assent to Malik's recommendation that locals employ the blend of tribal and paramilitary justice that has evolved in this wild Baghdad suburb.
"These guys operate like a mob, if they [insurgents] kill one of their's they have to take revenge, they have to. They kill the guy and everything will be fine, the vengeance stops," says Captain Doug Hoyt, charged with local governance for the 3rd Infantry Division in Dura.
Here, the revenge killings and vigilante justice that Iraqi national leaders speak out against for fear of sparking a civil war are becoming a regular fact and have received at least a tacit nod from US troops. Hoyt says the Americans have had little choice in Dura where tribal traditions run deep and insurgents regularly blow up police stations, ambush convoys and murder people.
..But prominent Iraqis have warned that the American policy of cultivating tribal leaders can often undermine the democratic process.
"It is not the direction we want to go ... It was the policy of Saddam," says Iraq's UN Ambassador Samir Sumaiydah, referring to the ousted Iraqi president. Link
Instead, the powerbroker suggests the Americans stand aside.
He tells the officers: "Right now, if we hit one group, the others will run away ... The Mehdi Army [of Sadr] will take care of it."
The US captains, both in their early 30s, nod an assent to Malik's recommendation that locals employ the blend of tribal and paramilitary justice that has evolved in this wild Baghdad suburb.
"These guys operate like a mob, if they [insurgents] kill one of their's they have to take revenge, they have to. They kill the guy and everything will be fine, the vengeance stops," says Captain Doug Hoyt, charged with local governance for the 3rd Infantry Division in Dura.
Here, the revenge killings and vigilante justice that Iraqi national leaders speak out against for fear of sparking a civil war are becoming a regular fact and have received at least a tacit nod from US troops. Hoyt says the Americans have had little choice in Dura where tribal traditions run deep and insurgents regularly blow up police stations, ambush convoys and murder people.
..But prominent Iraqis have warned that the American policy of cultivating tribal leaders can often undermine the democratic process.
"It is not the direction we want to go ... It was the policy of Saddam," says Iraq's UN Ambassador Samir Sumaiydah, referring to the ousted Iraqi president. Link
posted by exoplanet at 7:05 AM
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