Chicago Daily Herald: ECC Professor's Observations of Iraq

http://www.dailyherald.com:80/story.asp?id=283269

ECC professor's observations of Iraq
Posted Tuesday, February 20, 2007

Editor’s note: Jabria Jassim, an Elgin Community College chemistry professor, recently visited Baghdad to see relatives. She left Iraq years ago. Here is an edited essay on her observations.

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The shortages of electricity, fuel and water are tolerable among the Iraqis when compared to the concerns for security and safety. People in Baghdad and other cities who leave their houses face any of the following disasters:

1. Being kidnapped for a hefty ransom. This is a huge business and a very good source of income for insurgents. The minimum ransom demand is $20,000 and often goes up to a million dollars. Talk on the street is that if the ransom is not paid within 24 hours, those kidnapped are simply killed. One FBI agent also said that 90 percent of the kidnapped people don’t return alive to their families. A daily task by some police units is to retrieve bodies from the Tigris River. An office at the American Embassy in Baghdad was established to help with ransom demands, in extreme cases.

2. Being hurt or killed by a car bomb. Car bombs go off in every corner of the city a few times a day.

3. Being injured or killed by suicide bombers: … The goal was to kill those who escaped the first blasts and also those who rush to rescue the victims will be killed the second time around. The suicide bombers are religious extremists who belong to a certain branch in Islam, and they believe strongly that killing even innocent people is a short cut for them to get to heaven, where they get awarded with villas and virgins galore. So the more they kill, the better their rewards.

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