Iraqis furious over unrelenting violence

BAGHDAD, Iraq – They have been bombed, shot, kidnapped and bombed again. They don’t know who’s an enemy and who’s a friend. After 15 months of unrelenting violence that has killed civilians and terrorized much of the country, Iraqis are furious.

There are signs the bloodshed could be creating a backlash against the militants waging the attacks in Iraq’s name, but many here also blame the presence of U.S. forces for the turmoil in the country, and others believe the U.S. government is actually behind the attacks.

“I wish someone would tell me who is responsible for these acts. Believe me, I would drink his blood,” said Firas Salah Mahmood, a 24-year-old civil engineer.

Like Iraqis across the country, Mahmood watched in horror Wednesday televised scenes from Baqouba, where a suicide bombing killed 68 Iraqis.

After the attack, Iraqis swarmed the street, wild with anger and grief. They cursed the attackers and called them terrorists.

“These were all innocent Iraqis. There were no Americans. What was their guilt?” shouted an angry man, pounding his hands against his head.

Many of the attacks target coalition forces or Iraqi authorities, who have become more visible since the United States transferred sovereignty to an interim government last month.

But most of the victims are Iraqi civilians.

Iraqis are finding it hard to point the finger at themselves, fiercely clinging to the notion that foreigners, or the U.S. military, are behind devastating bombings that have killed hundreds in the last 15 months.

“What honorable Iraqi would kill another Iraqi?” asked Inaam Mahdi, who lives near a police station in Baghdad where a bomb killed nine people July 19.

Rumors accompany virtually every bombing. Some people insist they saw U.S. aircraft fire rockets that left huge craters and overwhelming destruction. Others assert U.S. soldiers place explosives in car trunks when they stop Iraqis at checkpoints, then detonate the bombs by remote control.

Even Iraqi officials are loath to acknowledge the vast majority of insurgents are their countrymen, as U.S. intelligence officials have recently confirmed.

“It is clear that terror groups targeting Iraq are imported from abroad,” Berham Salah, the deputy prime minister for national security, said Wednesday.

Most Iraqis say that if U.S. troops leave, the attacks would end. They claim the United States is instigating attacks to justify its presence.

It’s a point that religious factions are keen to capitalize on. They condemn kidnappings and explosions while calling for a U.S. withdrawal.

Mohammed Bashar al-Faidhi of the Association of Muslim Scholars, an Iraqi Sunni Muslim group with close ties to insurgents, walked this line when condemning hostage-taking recently.

“If a hostage is unrelated to occupation forces, their abductors should free them. If they are to respect Islamic religious principles,” he said, tacitly endorsing the kidnapping of coalition forces and their allies.

The bombing in Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, was the deadliest attack since the hand-over of sovereignty. Mahmood said his first reaction upon seeing the attack — which targeted applicants for the police force — was to cry.

“I felt really angry after I saw all those innocents falling. Why us?” he said.

A similar scene hit the Seidiyeh neighborhood in southwest Baghdad just over a week ago, when a fuel tanker truck plowed toward a police station and blew up.

Mahdi, who lives nearby, has had enough. She’s had to replace the windows in her home three times because of bombs: U.S. forces blasted the Baath Party headquarters during the war and two car bombs since then shattered her windows, burst water pipes and turned her living room floor into a sea of uneven tiles.

“We don’t care who is behind the attacks. We just want them to end,” she said.

Iraqi authorities said residents have increasingly been calling them with tips about possible attacks. This week, residents of Baghdad’s upscale Amariyah neighborhood sent police to check on a suspicious house. Authorities discovered four cars packed with explosives, said Sabah Kadhim of the Iraqi Interior Ministry.

Taxi driver Lu’ay Abdul Amir is as much afraid as angered by the attacks.

“A month ago someone hired me and said: ‘I want you to take me on a tour in Baghdad and I will give you 25,000 dinars ($18)’ and I agreed. I noticed that he was wearing a coat while it was very hot that day,” Amir recalled.

After driving around for eight hours, Amir said he was tired and dropped his passenger off. The man got out and opened his coat to reveal an explosives belt, which he had not detonated because they never came across an American or Iraqi patrol, Amir said.

“You just missed a lunch with the Prophet Mohammed,” the would-be attacker said, according to Amir.

“I really wanted to kill him,” Amir said, growing agitated at the memory. “People like this guy should die.”