In Iraq’s sectarian strife, funerals can be risky

By Michael Georgy

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Paying your respects to the dead in
Iraq can get you killed.

Tribal leader Rashid Safi and four relatives left the Arab
Sunni town of Ramadi on Tuesday to attend a family funeral in a
mostly Shi’ite district of Baghdad.

They returned home to their own funerals on Wednesday after
their bodies were discovered dumped in a pile of garbage,
relatives said.

Police said the identity of their killers is not known, but
in recent days dozens of bodies have been found dumped across
Baghdad as heightened sectarian tensions fuel fear of civil
war.

The reaction of Iraqis to these gruesome discoveries
illustrates where the country is headed as Shi’ite, Sunni and
Kurdish leaders struggle to form a new government nearly two
months after December 15 elections.

As the five coffins were carried to their homes in the
insurgent stronghold of Ramadi and then to shallow dirt graves,
two words could be heard over the wailing of hundreds of
people.

“Badr Brigades. Badr Brigades. It was the Badr Brigades,”
said some in the crowd of hundreds, their faces red with fury
as they accused the Shi’ite militia of murder.

The Badr Brigades, which are closely tied to one of the
Shi’ite parties that control the government, have denied Sunni
accusations that they run death squads that kidnap, torture and
kill Sunnis.

But the mourners in Ramadi, 110 km (68 miles) west of
Baghdad, quickly made their own conclusions in a tribal area
where revenge is a duty.

They didn’t offer any proof that the Badr Brigades were
responsible for the murders. But facts don’t matter in Iraq, as
it sinks deeper into the chaos of suicide bombings, shootings
and kidnappings that have killed many thousands of people.

Familiar accusations flew as the crude wooden coffins
covered in thick blankets were lowered into the brown earth.

“They are agents,” one man yelled, suggesting that the Badr
Brigades are servants of Iran, where they were trained to fight
Saddam Hussein’s troops in the 1980s.

Minutes later, a boy of about eight stood up and said: “We
will take care of the Badr one by one.”

Relatives said the five bodies showed signs of torture,
talk that spreads quickly in Ramadi, home to some of Iraq’s
most ardent Sunnis rebels seeking to topple the government.

A teenager, stunned that Safi and his relatives met such a
bloody fate in the Shi’ite Shu’la district of Baghdad, blamed
the Badr Brigades but said he would let a Shi’ite sleep in his
house if he visited.

But unity is an empty word in Iraq, where bodies have been
dumped across the country; usually bound, handcuffed and shot
or beheaded in tit-for-tat killings that show no signs of
easing.

(Additional reporting by Reuters Television)