Iraqis are learning the deadly cost of working for the US

[Barrett808]

Iraqis are learning the deadly cost of working for the US
By Patrick Cockburn in Mosul
05 February 2004

In the northern city of Mosul, Mustafa al-Sheikh, a businessman turned television producer, has just received a letter warning that he will be killed if he works with the Americans.

Mr Sheikh has been hired by the US military to make a film for local television lauding the Iraqi police in Mosul. He did not plan to tell the police about the death threats. "They cannot even defend themselves," he said.

...

Col Mohammed Khaeri, the police chief of Mosul province, said that 37 of his men had been killed and 105 wounded since the US reconstituted the police last year. He added: "One of our officers was shot and killed the day before yesterday. We asked his name but nobody could remember it." They later found out that he was called Salwan Jalami.

In the past two weeks two unarmed traffic policemen were shot dead not far from The Independent office in Baghdad. Another casualty in the same area was Abdullatif Ali al-Mayah, a human rights campaigner who opposed the occupation. It did not save him. His car was stopped by seven or eight men and he was shot. Competition for jobs is so intense that anybody promoted by the Coalition Provisional Authority or the Interim Iraqi Governing Council may be at risk from the person they replaced. Mr Sheikh suspected that the anti-American resistance wanted to kill him because people in the media thought he was taking work away from them. Sometimes the motives for killings are obscure. There has been a rash of killings of former senior bureaucrats in Saddam's government. "Nobody knows if they were killed because they were co-operating with the coalition or not co-operating," said the relative of one man who had just been shot.

...

It is not clear how Iraqi police will react with little or no US military support. The omens are not very good. On the road into Mosul from Baghdad there is an Iraqi police checkpoint. There is a picture of a young officer in police uniform. A message below said he had died a martyr. A policeman explained: "He was run over by an American tank."

(more)

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=487924

[DrWeird]

1. I wonder if they know...

what the french did with nazi collaboraters.

[JuniorPlankton]

2. What?

[TolstoyAndy]

3. Killed them

Now don't get me wrong: I am not in favor of killing anyone.

But I understand 100% why anyone in Iraq who works for the occupiers is targeted for death.

They are collaborators, enablers, and traitors. It's that simple.

Given the lack of jobs there, I know why people decide to work for the illegal occupation, but I have no sympathy for them.

Having said that, I firmly believe killing is wrong.
Understanding what drives people to it, and approving of it, are totally different things.