Professionals are new targets of kidnappers

Six-month old Salua Ahmed was kidnapped recently when four gunmen forced her mother to give her up while shopping in a crowded neighbourhood in the capital. “They put a gun to the head of my five-year old son and said that, if I didn’t give Salua up, they would kill him,” said Majida Sami, the girl’s mother. “Three days later, the kidnappers phoned my husband and asked for US $100,000, saying that, since he’s a doctor, he must have the money.” “After a week of negotiations, my husband finally paid US $70,000 dollars to the kidnappers, who released my daughter,” Sami continued. “Now my husband pays bodyguards to protect us and has forbidden us to leave the house.” Amid ongoing violence throughout the country, kidnapping and intimidation have become commonplace. According to Ministry of Interior officials, kidnappers have especially targeted academics, intellectuals and their families. On 5 April, Koichiro Matsuura, director-general of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) condemned the “campaign of violence waged against Iraqi academics and intellectuals”. Matsuura went on to call for international solidarity and mobilisation in support of the country’s educators. Doctors, artists and journalists have also been the frequent target of kidnappers. “Professionals are being forced to leave Iraq,” lamented Salah Abdullah, a senior official on the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research. “This is leading to a scarcity of knowledge and competence in our universities and hospitals.” According to Abdullah, nearly 100 university professors have been killed since the US-led invasion of the country in 2003. In the past five months alone, 350 school teachers were killed countrywide, bringing the total number of slain educators to more than 700 in the past three years. “The number of professionals in Iraq is dwindling because they’re either being killed or they’re fleeing the country after receiving threats,” said Abdullah. “Because of this, the education and health sectors are going from bad to worse.” Health ministry officials say that about 200 medical workers have been killed since mid-2004, while more than 800 have been kidnapped – 200 of the latter within the past three months alone. According to the Iraqi Journalist Association, meanwhile, some 125 people working for media organisations, both local and foreign, have been killed either by insurgents or US-led military forces since 2003. “Since January, the number of kidnappings has increased unabated, along with attacks and threats against certain communities,” said Ra’ad Hassan, a senior interior ministry official. A lucrative market According to Hassan, roughly 50 kidnappings take place countrywide every day, usually accompanied by ransom demands ranging from US $20,000 to US $250,000 per person. Hassan noted that professionals – doctors, businessmen, university teachers – and their relatives are often the preferred targets for criminal gangs. Members of the professional class, said Hassan, are perceived to be better off than other would-be targets, and thus more likely to provide large ransoms. Most of them run businesses associated with their professions. “If the family pays the ransom, the kidnapped person is released – but if no payment is made, the kidnappers send a part of the victim’s body to his or her family,” Hassan explained grimly. “If payment still isn’t forthcoming, then nothing is heard of the victim again.” Hassan added that only about 30 percent of kidnapping cases are generally reported to police. Baghdad shop owner Kamiran Ahmed, 32, was abducted from his shop in March by four men toting machine-guns who tied him up, blindfolded him and shoved him into a waiting car. "They forbade me from using the bathroom and gave me only one meal a day,” Ahmed recalled. “They told me that if my family didn’t pay, they would torture me, cut off my hands or pull my eyes out.” A week later, after his family paid US $20,000, Ahmed was released. “Kidnapping has become a lucrative trade because of the feeble punishment meted out to the kidnappers by the authorities,” complained Hussein Salihi, a police investigator. “But the relatives of the victims are also to blame for often not informing the police.” Some communities have been targeted by kidnappers for reasons other than ransom money. One local NGO reported that members of Iraq’s small gay community, for example, had received more than 70 threats from kidnappers in the past two months, while 12 have been killed. “We’re trying to help these people, but it’s getting very difficult, and our organisation has been targeted twice since last month,” said Mustafa Salim, spokesman for Rainbow for Life, a local NGO dealing with homosexual issues. “We know for certain that those killed were targeted because of their sexual preferences.” In an effort to combat the phenomenon, the government has imposed a curfew from 6am to 8pm. Police, meanwhile, have been granted the right to shoot anyone found walking or driving at the proscribed times. Nevertheless, kidnappings continue, often in broad daylight. Last week, an armed group broke into a secondary school in Baghdad’s Resafa district and abducted three female students in front of their teachers and class mates. Until now, there has been no news on the girls’ whereabouts. “After this incident, many students – especially the girls’ friends – have stopped coming to school, afraid that they could be the next victims,” said Sua'ad Muhammad, a teacher who witnessed the incident.