Kidnappings tear at Iraq's frayed social fabric

The kidnappers abducted three brothers and a cousin, then sent a text message that gripped one Iraqi family with a fear it had never known.

"Leave this area [you Shiites], or we will cut your necks so that the Americans can never help you," warned the message to the family last month at their palm-forested farm south of Baghdad. "We are watching your every step. You are the tail of the occupation."

The family - including 13 children of the four abducted men - fled immediately to the Shiite holy city of Karbala. Days later, the bodies of two of the victims were found floating in the Tigris River, shot in the head.

The number of kidnappings in Iraq is rising, gnawing away at a social fabric already frayed by violence and insecurity. Anecdotal evidence points to a recent marked shift in attackers' motives, from criminal to sectarian aims. The result is extended families torn by trauma and forced to move to "safer" neighborhoods, or out of Iraq completely.

They can face ruin by paying high ransom demands that do not always bring loved ones back alive.

Progress, life, and work are all put on hold, while distraught family members trek from morgue to local police stations and back again, in a grim ritual as hope fades by the day.

"It's a tragedy," says Akil Kadhim Moassin, his face contorting as he tells of finding his brother's corpse at the morgue after police retrieved it from the Tigris. "How do you deal with this? You hope you can find them [the two men who remain missing] and continue normal life."

But Mr. Moassin knows the chance of seeing those two grows less each day. The wife of one victim - ironically, a Sunni woman - gave birth to a fourth child, a boy, just a couple days after the father was kidnapped. Though "safe" now in the Shiite city of Karbala, the family has lost its moorings.

"The children can't continue their schooling, and we [adults] can't continue our jobs, because we are still looking" for the remaining captives, says Moassin. The mother wept over the body of her lost son, and asked: "Where are your brothers?"

High profile cases get the most newspaper ink: The 82-day ordeal of the Monitor's Jill Carroll earlier this year, for example, among 250 foreigners taken hostage; and the audacious daylight kidnapping of 50 Iraqis Monday on a Baghdad street. Fifteen of those Iraqis were found alive Wednesday, showing signs of torture; three were shot in the foot.

But as all those victims know - Western and local alike - most Iraqi abductions rarely get a newspaper mention, and many end in death. A senior police source says Baghdad is afflicted with a minimum dozen kidnappings a day, though the number is frequently much higher.

That growth matches the surge in official death statistics. The Baghdad morgue has so far this year tabulated 6,000 violent individual deaths, separate from mass casualties such as car bombs, according to local newspapers and a BBC report. Last month broke the record since the US occupation began, with nearly 1,400 dead.

Many say that those figures are being kept deliberately low for political reasons, as the newly formed government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki struggles to curb insurgent violence and rein in party militias - often blamed for sectarian killings. But internal power struggles mean that key cabinet security posts are not yet filled.

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