Death squads deepen division in Baghdad

Three apparently coordinated car-bomb attacks in Baghdad and Karbala killed around 30 people Sunday, as Iraqi politicians said they were near agreement on cabinet posts for a new government that they promise will come to grips with the country's deteriorating security situation.

The morning blasts were accompanied by reports that the bodies of about 45 men were found in various parts of Baghdad within 24 hours from Saturday morning. Most were bound, some bearing signs of torture, and all shot in the head.

Ever since the Feb. 22 bombing of a major Shiite shrine in the city of Samarra touched off dozens of reprisal attacks on Sunni mosques, Iraqis have reported a sharp rise in attacks at the hands of both Shiite and Sunni Arab death squads.

A Baghdad health official says there have been at least 2,500 murders in the capital since the Samarra shrine attack, adding that those numbers don't include the victims of mass-casualty attacks like those Sunday.

Today, Baghdad appears to be more divided and war-torn than at any point since the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime. Most basic services are at an all-time low (Baghdad is averaging about three hours of power a day) and traditionally mixed Shiite and Sunni Arab neighborhoods continue to feel the impact of the slow seeping away of their diversity as families flee across the city's confessional front lines.

Now, in addition to the four or so well-organized and armed nongovernment militias operating in this diverse city, small armed neighborhood militias are springing up in dozens of neighborhoods.

At around 9 p.m. each night, they roll palm trunks, rusty barrels or other obstacles onto the streets, trusting their protection to no one but themselves, say many residents of Baghdad.

"We've been told over and over that the political process is going to make us safer, but all we see are parties fighting over ministries so they can get jobs and money for themselves,'' says Ahmed, who helped organize a neighborhood militia in Baghdad's Al-Amal district. "If we don't protect ourselves, no one will."

Ahmed, a Shiite who asked that his full name not be used, says his decision to take action came after two pickup trucks with machine guns mounted in the back and filled with men wearing Interior Ministry commando uniforms streamed down his street at the end of February and took 17 men away.

His father's best friend - "we weren't related but I called him uncle" - was one of the men taken, after the men came to his door and asked for him by name. And Ahmed was among the young men that found the bodies of all 17 in a ditch the next morning, most bearing signs they'd been tortured with drills before their deaths.

"We called the ministry as soon as they were taken,'' he says. "They said they didn't know anything about it."

The good news about Ahmed's group is that it is a mix of Shiites and Sunni Arabs, and is being given a relatively free hand to control the neighborhood. He says a friend in the government got them the frequencies for 20 hand-held radios that they use to coordinate their checkpoints, and US patrols don't bother them.

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