By Michael Georgy
Reuters, 09 February 2006
BAGHDAD - Paying your respects to the dead in Iraq can get you killed.
Tribal leader Rashid Safi and four relatives left the Arab Sunni town of Ramadi on Tuesday to attend a family funeral in a mostly Shi'ite district of Baghdad.
They returned home to their own funerals on Wednesday after their bodies were discovered dumped in a pile of garbage, relatives said.
Police said the identity of their killers is not known, but in recent days dozens of bodies have been found dumped across Baghdad as heightened sectarian tensions fuel fear of civil war.
The reaction of Iraqis to these gruesome discoveries illustrates where the country is headed as Shi'ite, Sunni and Kurdish leaders struggle to form a new government nearly two months after Dec. 15 elections.
As the five coffins were carried to their homes in the insurgent stronghold of Ramadi and then to shallow dirt graves, two words could be heard over the wailing of hundreds of people.
"Badr Brigades. Badr Brigades. It was the Badr Brigades," said some in the crowd of hundreds, their faces red with fury as they accused the Shi'ite militia of murder.
The Badr Brigades, which are closely tied to one of the Shi'ite parties that control the government, have denied Sunni accusations that they run death squads that kidnap, torture and kill Sunnis.
But the mourners in Ramadi, 110 km (68 miles) west of Baghdad, quickly made their own conclusions in a tribal area where revenge is a duty.
They didn't offer any proof that the Badr Brigades were responsible for the murders. But facts don't matter in Iraq, as it sinks deeper into the chaos of suicide bombings, shootings and kidnappings that have killed many thousands of people.
Familiar accusations flew as the crude wooden coffins covered in thick blankets were lowered into the brown earth.
"They are agents," one man yelled, suggesting that the Badr Brigades are servants of Iran, where they were trained to fight Saddam Hussein's troops in the 1980s.
Minutes later, a boy of about eight stood up and said: "We will take care of the Badr one by one."
Relatives said the five bodies showed signs of torture, talk that spreads quickly in Ramadi, home to some of Iraq's most ardent Sunnis rebels seeking to topple the government.
A teenager, stunned that Safi and his relatives met such a bloody fate in the Shi'ite Shu'la district of Baghdad, blamed the Badr Brigades but said he would let a Shi'ite sleep in his house if he visited.
But unity is an empty word in Iraq, where bodies have been dumped across the country; usually bound, handcuffed and shot or beheaded in tit-for-tat killings that show no signs of easing.
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Citation: Michael Georgy. "In Iraq's sectarian strife, funerals can be risky," Reuters, 09 February 2006.
Original URL: http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/GEO955052.htm
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