Iraqis Seeking Vengeance Against Hussein's Men

Discussion in 'Politics & Current Events' started by Ian McCracken, Nov 3, 2003.

  1. Ian McCracken

    Ian McCracken Member

    May 28, 1999
    USA
    Club:
    SS Lazio Roma
    Nat'l Team:
    Italy
    Iraqis Seeking Vengeance Against Hussein's Men

    BAGHDAD, Iraq, Nov. 3 — Until justice is done and Saddam Hussein is dead, Sadri Adab Diwan will carry with him the handwritten accusation that condemned his little sister to death.

    The sister, Hanaa, a high school student, "is conducting backward religious activity inside the school," a security agent wrote in black ink in October 1980, a time of widespread persecution of Shiite Muslims. "Please open a secret investigation."

    Soon afterward, Hanaa, a devout girl of 17, was arrested. She never returned home.

    It was only six months ago, after locating her yellowing case file in a government office, that her family finally learned why she had been taken. Hanaa, an informer reported, gave a Koran to a classmate.

    "The case of this girl, this pure-hearted girl, has been living with me for 20 years," said Mr. Diwan, who was the eldest of 10 children of whom Hanaa was the youngest. "If I catch Saddam I won't kill him. That won't be enough. I'll suck his blood. And if he escapes I'll follow him to the ends of the earth."

    Rage of such intensity courses through Iraq, where the dead, the maimed and the missing consume the thoughts of the living.

    Six months after President Bush declared that major combat was over, countless problems crowd in on Iraqis, not least unemployment and the absence of security. But nothing seems to preoccupy them quite as much as the urge to settle accounts with the old government.

    Suspected mass graves continue to come to light, replenishing the stores of grief and anger. Aided by forensic specialists and satellite imagery, American legal experts in Baghdad say they have found 262 sites that may contain multiple human remains.

    Some people have already extracted their vengeance for the killing fields in blood. Most recently there has been a wave of apparent revenge killings in Basra.

    While there is no official tally of vigilante actions, accounts from the police and monitoring groups suggest that perhaps several hundred former Baath Party officials have been murdered since fall of President Hussein's government.

    Yet there has been no orgy of bloodshed as was feared, given the scale of state-sponsored killings and expulsions that Iraqis say they have suffered in the last 25 years.

    The concept of compensatory justice was born here nearly 4,000 years ago. An eye for an eye, decreed the rulers of ancient Mesopotamia, and a tooth for a tooth. But Iraqis have mostly shown a willingness to set aside immediate vengeance for the relentless pursuit of justice.
     
  2. Matt Clark

    Matt Clark Member

    Dec 19, 1999
    Liverpool
    Club:
    Liverpool FC
    Hmmm.

    Good: General populace wants justice.

    Bad: Vigilantism ain't the answer.

    Possibly both: Allies have to provide another one.
     

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