TIME: The Most Dangerous Name In Iraq

[DeepModem Mom]

The Most Dangerous Name In Iraq
As sectarian violence rocks Baghdad, TIME looks at how Iraqis are changing their identities to survive — and why just having the wrong name can get you killed
By APARISIM GHOSH/BAGHDAD

....It's indicative of the danger of daily life in Baghdad these days that the very basis of your identity can mark you for death. For combatants in Iraq's low-boil civil war — which has erupted anew in the capital, with dozens of Sunnis killed by Shi'ite militants in the last few days — identifying the enemy can be difficult. Shi'ites and Sunnis share a common ethnicity and have a hard time telling themselves apart. And so the killers rely on a cruder vetting process: choosing victims based on their first name, which for many Iraqis is their only religiously distinguishing characteristic.

To the Shi'ite death squads responsible for many of the worst recent atrocities, no Sunni name incites more bile than Omar. (The original Omar was Islam's second Caliph and is reviled by Shi'ites who believe he worked against the interests of Ali, the son-in-law of the Prophet Muhammad.) More than a dozen Omars interviewed by Time say that when they produce identification cards bearing their name, they regularly endure harassment by Shi'ite policemen and government officials. Others have met a more gruesome fate. In a single incident last earlier this year, the bodies of 14 Omars were found in a Baghdad garbage dump. They had all been killed with a single bullet to the head, and their ID cards were placed carefully on their chests. It has, says Saleh Mutlak, a prominent Sunni politician, "become the most dangerous name in Iraq."

Because having the wrong identity can be fatal, more and more Baghdadis are taking steps to adopt new ones. The market for counterfeit IDs is booming....But Iraqis know that this may not be enough to protect them. In the days following Omar Farooq's harrowing experience (forced into a black Opel by Shi'ite militia, beaten, and miraculously let go when the car ran into a U.S. checkpoint), his family quickly acquired fake IDs for all its children. Seeking police protection was never an option—many of the cops in the neighborhood are former members of the Mahdi Army, the violent Shi'ite militia loyal to the radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. The family didn't feel it could turn to Shi'ite neighbors for support, either. Since the Feb. 22 bombing of the Shi'ite mosque in Samarra, relations between Shi'ites and Sunnis in mixed neighborhoods have turned frosty. Omar stopped speaking with the Shi'ite friends who used to be his soccer teammates.

Instead, the family locked itself indoors and set up a round-the-clock watch at the front gate. When the black Opel returned to the neighborhood one evening, Omar's older brother Mohammed chased after it, firing his Kalashnikov into the air. The car never returned, but the family decided it had had enough. Omar and his mother fled to Jordan. Speaking to Time shortly before leaving, Omar worried that he might never return. "To be forced (out) because of my name ...," he says, before his voice trails off. The grim reality is that for Omar and countless others like him, the only sure way to survive in Iraq is to leave it.

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1212291,00.html?cnn=yes

[Drum]

1. Yet another indigenous culture

accidently obliterated by imperialists.

[Redstone]

2. I'd say it's probably Bob. Or Frank, or Ed, or Susan.

Redstone

[The_Casual_Observer]

3. Yet, the bush supporters deny that any of this happens.

These kind of reports are everywhere but as far as the "leadership" concerned it's all just liberal hand wringing. Some really bad shit is bound to come down in Iraq, then they will say, "We never anticipated anything like this".