http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/12/AR2007121202766.html(Another Scarf Accounting)
Iraq's Youthful Militiamen Build Power Through Fear
Schoolgirls Told to Wear Scarves, Under Threat of Death
On the first day of class, two male teenagers entered a girls' high school in the Tobji neighborhood, clutching AK-47 assault rifles. The young Shiite fighters handed the principal a handwritten note and ordered her to assemble the students in the courtyard, witnesses said.
"All girls must wear hijab," she read aloud, her voice trembling. "If the girls don't wear hijab, we will close the school or kill the girls."
That October day Sara Mustafa, 14, a secular Sunni Arab, also trembled. The next morning, she covered up with an Islamic head scarf for the first time. The young fighters now controlled her life. "We could not do anything," Sara recalled.
The Mahdi Army of Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr is using a new generation of youths, some as young as 15, to expand and tighten its grip across Baghdad, but the ruthlessness of some of these young fighters is alienating Sunnis and Shiites alike.
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"We have to show people we are not weak," said Ali, a 19-year-old Mahdi Army fighter in Tobji.
'I Was in Control. I Ruled'
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"They can convince anybody," Ali said. "If they tell you that your father is a bad man, you will be more than happy to kill your father."
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Another neighbor, a divorced woman, was killed after Ali mentioned that he had heard on the street that she was a prostitute -- a crime in the view of the militia -- although he had no proof. One of her assassins, Ali said, was a 17-year-old named Saad, who had joined at age 15.
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"Why plant extremist ideas in children?" Salih asked bitterly.
Today, Sara's head scarf has become a metaphor for the militia's grip on her neighborhood. "It feels like someone is choking me," she said.
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religiously insane men and boys are choking you
weed the religiously insane men out of your societies