Kidnapping in Iraq on the rise

Rhandi, a 10-year-old boy, was on his way to buy some snacks at the corner store when a red car pulled up next to him. The men in the car said they needed his help to check a tire, and when Rhandi came closer, they grabbed him and sped away.

"How did I feel? Almost dead," says his grandmother, Shimoni Nissan. "His father couldn't move."

The Nissans wrote down a friend's telephone number - they didn't have their own - and pasted it on their front gate. When the kidnappers called two days later and said they had the boy, his father asked for proof. Rhandi's blue-and-white striped football jersey appeared on their doorstep that night.

The kidnappers demanded $300,000, a startling sum even for families in this upper-middle-class neighborhood, home to many Iraqi Christians, like the Nissan family. After 11 days and many rounds of negotiations later, says Mrs. Nissan, the boy was returned in exchange for $20,000.

"We're not wealthy, but people think it's a place where rich families live. It's one of those things: Even if you don't have the money, you borrow it from your relatives and the neighbors to get your son back," says Nissan, sitting in a sliver of shade in front of her house with a few of her neighbors, who watch the children at play in a way they never have before.

"You can't even leave your house," nods Abdul Massih Salwa, who lives next door. "Crime in Baghdad was never like this."

Finding reliable crime statistics here, where the US-led occupation authorities are still scrambling to get a new Iraqi police running effectively, is almost impossible. But anecdotal evidence, interviews, local Iraqi media stories, and a new report from Centurion, a British security firm, suggest that crime in the capital has soared - and that kidnapping and abductions have become particularly lucrative.

Paul Bremer, the top US official in Iraq, acknowledged last week that crime was a formidable problem.

"This is a big job, not the least because Saddam Hussein let something like 100,000 prisoners out of all of the prisons in this country before liberation...." Bremer told reporters. "Many of them are murderers. Many of them are conducting the kidnappings and carjackings that are happening."

A new Iraqi police unit was set up in mid-July to deal with felonies like abductions and murders. So far, says Col. Raad Yaas, the head of the department, members of the task force arrested have three kidnapping gangs, including one, discovered last Thursday, with two abducted children.

"The target doesn't have to be a rich family. They kidnap children randomly, just on the basis of how they dress," says Mr. Yaas.

Indeed, fear of being targeted again - and low expectations of getting help from fledgling Iraqi institutions - keeps many families from turning to the police, who are absent from most neighborhoods anyway. Instead, they seek assistance from the only authority visible here - the US military, whose troops aren't trained to deal with crime.

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