Iraqi neighbors form citizen groups to guard against secret paramilitary police raids

RAW STORY
Published: Tuesday May 9, 2006

Iraqi neighbors are forming citizen groups to keep watch and stand guard against secret paramilitary police raids, according to a front page story in Wednesday's New York Times.

Excerpts from the story written by Sabrina Tavernise:

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As evidence mounts that Shiite police commandos are carrying out secret killings, Sunni Arab neighborhoods across Baghdad have begun forming citizen groups to keep the paramilitary forces out of their areas entirely. In large swaths of western Baghdad, and in at least six majority Sunni areas in its center, young men take turns standing in streets after the 11 p.m. curfew, to send out signals by flashlights and cellphones if strangers approach.

In some cases, the Sunnis have set up barricades and have taken up arms against Shiite-led commando raids into their neighborhoods. In other cases, residents have tipped off Sunni insurgents. Watch groups have been assembled in other mixed areas, including Baquba to the north and Mahmudiya to the south, residents and officials said.

Three years after the American invasion, the war has settled here, in the quiet of neighborhoods, streets and Iraqis' backyards. Dozens of bodies surface daily. People are taken from their homes and executed. Assassinations are routine. But instead of looking to the government for protection, ordinary Sunni Arabs are taking up arms against it, perhaps the most vivid illustration of the depth of Sunni mistrust of the American backed, Shiite-led security forces. "There is no bridge of confidence between the government and the Iraqi people," said Tarik al-Hashimy, a vice president of Iraq who is a Sunni Arab.

The groups, informal networks of neighbors, are not tracked by the authorities, and so are difficult to count. The Iraqi Army's battalions responsible for the northern and central portions of eastern Baghdad touched base with groups in Fadhel, Qaera, Waziriya and Adhamiya last Monday night. Many more neighborhoods, including Khudra, Jihad and Ghazaliya, in heavily Sunni western Baghdad, report similar organization. The residents emerge after dark, and are encountered by Iraqi Army night patrols who check in on them.

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FULL ARTICLE HERE