A quarter of a million Iraqis have registered as refugees in the past seven months. "The registered refugee figures showed 40,000 families--240,000 people--claiming assistance," Reuters reports, "up from 27,000 families in July."
And on the streets, Iraq's Sunnis have developed a number of tricks to hide their identity from Shi'ite militia checkpoints.
From today's Washington Post:
Every time he drove, he feared this moment. Now, it was too late.
As Omar Ahmed neared the checkpoint, he recalled, he saw armed men dressed in black ordering passengers out of a minivan and checking their identity cards. Some were told to get back into the van. Others were taken to a Shiite mosque across the street. The gunmen clutched Glock pistols, normally used by the Iraqi police.
Ahmed, 30, was a Sunni Muslim. And he was in Shaab, a volatile, Shiite Muslim-dominated neighborhood. Questions raced through his mind: Was the mosque a base for a Shiite militia? Were the men members of a Shiite death squad?
So Ahmed set in motion a ritual that many Sunnis across a divided Baghdad now practice. He pushed in a cassette tape with Shiite religious songs and turned up the volume. He wrapped a piece of green cloth that he brought from the Imam Ali shrine in Najaf, one of Shiite Islam's holiest sites, around his gearshift.
And he hung a small picture of Imam Ali, the son-in-law of the prophet Muhammad and the most revered Shiite saint, from his rearview mirror.
To the world outside, he was now a Shiite.
In a city riven by religion, violence and politics, fearful Sunnis and Shiites are hiding their identities to survive. Their differences -- some obvious, most subtle -- have become matters of life or death in ways never before seen in modern Iraq.
As he reached the checkpoint, Ahmed recalled, he was petrified. His wife, his mother and two small daughters were with him in their gray Honda. He pulled out his fake identity card, on which his Sunni tribal name, al-Obeidi, was changed to al-Hussein, a Shiite tribe.
"Deep inside, I was frightened," he said.
For centuries, from the Ottoman Empire to the British-installed monarchy to the republic eventually ruled by Saddam Hussein, Sunnis were the elite who got the bulk of government jobs. Shiites, in Hussein's time, were badly persecuted.
Yet in daily life hardly anyone cared about telling Sunnis and Shiites apart. It was considered rude to ask a person's sect, and it is practically impossible to discern from their looks, speech or dress. For generations, the two sects intermarried, making it difficult to differentiate them by surnames. They attended the same schools and lived in mixed neighborhoods.
Now, in the fourth year after a U.S.-led invasion toppled Hussein, a struggle for power is unfolding between Sunnis and Shiites in the political arena and in the streets of Baghdad. Since the bombing of a Shiite mosque in Samarra in February, sectarian strife and lawlessness have escalated.
At checkpoints set up by police or by sectarian militias, Iraqis said in interviews, it is common to hear questions such as "What is your sect?" or "What is your tribal name?" A wrong response could prove deadly.
On July 9, in Baghdad's al-Jihad neighborhood, Shiite militiamen allegedly killed 40 Sunnis after erecting checkpoints and checking identity cards. Three days later, unknown gunmen attacked a bus station in the northeastern town of Muqdadiyah and separated Sunni men from Shiites. They blindfolded and handcuffed the Shiites, then shot them in the head.
"People are basically killed or taken away simply because of their name, their identity or specific affiliations," said Gianni Magazzeni, head of the U.N. human rights office for Iraq.
In Baghdad, it is difficult to tell a real checkpoint from a fake one. Police uniforms and badges are easily available on the black market. Shiite militiamen have infiltrated the Iraqi security forces, while Sunnis have largely remained outside them. Sunni insurgents have set up checkpoints and targeted Shiites.
A Fake ID and 12 Tips
"It is like Russian roulette," said Omar al-Azzawi, 33, a tall, broad-shouldered Sunni computer technician, who curled his fingers into the shape of a gun and pressed it against his temple. "I like my country, I like my people. But these days things are really different. To be in Iraq is to tempt fate."
* * *
Ahmed al-Karbouli, a reporter for Baghdadiya TV, was the fourth journalist killed in Iraq this month. More than 130 have been killed since the invasion in 2003.
The New York Times reports today that "these days, men with guns are not Iraqi reporters' only threat. Men with gavels are, too."
Under a broad new set of laws criminalizing speech that ridicules the government or its officials, some resurrected verbatim from Saddam Hussein's penal code, roughly a dozen Iraqi journalists have been charged with offending public officials in the past year.
Currently, three journalists for a small newspaper in southeastern Iraq are being tried here for articles last year that accused a provincial governor, local judges and police officials of corruption. The journalists are accused of violating Paragraph 226 of the penal code, which makes anyone who "publicly insults" the government or public officials subject to up to seven years in prison.
On Sept. 7, the police sealed the offices of Al Arabiya, a Dubai-based satellite news channel, for what the government said was inflammatory reporting. And the Committee to Protect Journalists says that at least three Iraqi journalists have served time in prison for writing articles deemed criminally offensive.
The office of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki has lately refused to speak with news organizations that report on sectarian violence in ways that the government considers inflammatory; some outlets have been shut down.
In addition to coping with government pressures, dozens of Iraqi journalists have been kidnapped by criminal gangs or detained by the American military, on suspicion that they are helping Sunni insurgents or Shiite militias. One, Bilal Hussein, who photographed insurgents in Anbar Province for The Associated Press, has been in American custody without charges since April.
And all Iraqi journalists have to live with the fear of death, which often dictates extreme security measures. Abdel Karim Hamadie, the news manager for Al Iraqiya Television, said he sometimes went months without leaving the station's compound.
"The last time I went home was three weeks ago," he said, showing off a small room adjacent to his office where he sleeps each night. "Before that, I spent three months at work. I used to hit my chair because I was so angry. But then I got a new chair."
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