When Hate Lives Next Door

• Share

(2 of 3)

He speaks from experience. Mohammed's family fled its home in Baladiat, in northeastern Baghdad, in the aftermath of the Samarra blast. Once a mainly Sunni enclave adjoining the Shi'ite district of Sadr City, Baladiat gradually turned into a mixed neighborhood after the fall of Saddam Hussein. "We made lots of friends among the Shi'ites," Mohammed says. "On their festivals, we would invite them to feasts at our home." The day after the shrine bombing, he was at work when his uncle called. "He said, 'Come home at once.' He sounded frightened." But Mohammed was on duty and could not return until the following morning. It was too late. The previous afternoon, Shi'ite militias had stormed the home and taken away his uncle's three eldest sons. "Somebody had told them ours was a Sunni home, with adult men," says Mohammed. "We were betrayed."

In Iraq today, when your relatives disappear, you head first not to the police but to the hospitals and morgues. After a day's searching, Mohammed found the bodies of his cousins in the city's main morgue. "They had been brutally tortured, cut and burned," he says. "Even their genitals had been mangled." The bodies were buried the next day in the family hometown of Fallujah. Despite a daytime curfew, Mohammed says, many neighboring Shi'ites attended the funeral. "Some of them were very helpful. They helped us make all the arrangements," he says, his voice breaking. Even so, the family decided not to return to Baladiat. "The only Sunni families left there are those who have many sons and many weapons," Mohammed says. "And even they know the time will come when they have to leave."

Victims of the sectarian violence have little faith that the country's politicians will find a way to stop the killings--and hold no hope of getting justice from a largely corrupt and inept police force that many Sunnis believe has been infiltrated by Shi'ite militias and death squads. "Those who killed my cousins will be punished," says Mohammed, "but not by the police or the government. They will answer to God." Many others are pinning their hopes for revenge on armed vigilantes or sectarian militias like the Mahdi Army and Sunni insurgent groups. Although politicians and religious leaders have called on the militias to end the violence, reports from across the country indicate that many fighters are ignoring those appeals and instead responding to the growing resentments in the street.

Fear of the militias is palpable, even in neighborhoods where there have been heartening signs of Sunni-Shi'ite comity. In Shi'ite-majority al-Shulla, militias damaged the tiny al-Haq Sunni mosque with rocket-propelled grenades. Afterward, members of the local unit of the Shi'ite Mahdi Army surrounded the mosque, guarding it from further attack. "That afternoon and night the Shi'ites prayed in my mosque," says the grateful local imam, Jawhar Omar al-Zibari. "They told me they would die before allowing another attack." But the imam's Sunni flock is streaming out of the area. A year ago, at least 50 people went into the mosque for the five-times-a-day prayers; now it's a good day when 10 people show up. "Fear has taken over our lives," says al-Zibari. "People tell me they are leaving for the sake of their children, their lives, and in the hope of getting a night's sleep without fear."