Sale of hostages in Iraq makes tracing impossible
Anglican envoy urges Sunni, Shiite clerics to issue joint fatwa forbidding
kidnappings
By Nicholas Blanford
Daily Star staff
Thursday, June 10, 2004
BAGHDAD: Foreign hostages in Iraq are being sold onto militant Islamic groups,
making it almost impossible to trace their whereabouts, says an Anglican envoy
seeking their release.
With kidnappings showing little sign of ending, Andrew White, the canon of
Coventry Cathedral in England and director of the International Center for
Reconciliation, is urging senior Sunni and Shiite clerics to issue a joint
fatwa forbidding kidnapping.
"Our information-gathering makes us quite certain that these groups are handing
on their hostages," he said.
White, also an adviser to the American-run Coalition Provisional Authority,
believes the kidnappings are becoming more organized.
"If light-weights have hostages, they know they can sell them on to
Al-Qaeda-type groups," he said. "This will really complicate things for us
because these groups have little respect even for the Islamic authorities." A
regular visitor to Iraq for seven years, and an experienced troubleshooter in
the Middle East, White is using his long-standing ties with key Sunni and
Shiite clerics in the hope that their combined moral authority can persuade
kidnappers to free their hostages.
His team secured the release of Nabil Razouk, an Israeli-Arab from East
Jerusalem who was kidnapped in the Shiite shrine city of Najaf on April 7.
He also uses former members of Saddam Hussein's intelligence apparatus. It was
a tip from one of them, White said, that led to the release Tuesday of three
Italians and one Pole by US and Polish special forces.
"We learned the precise location of the hostages from our informer and we
passed the information onto the coalition," he said.
Up to 40 foreigners were kidnapped during a rash of abductions in early April
when US forces laid siege to the Sunni flashpoint town of Fallujah and fought a
Shiite uprising in the south. Several hostages were executed, including
Nicholas Berg, an American engineer whose videotaped decapitation US
authorities believe was carried out by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian
Islamic militant blamed for much of the violence in Iraq.
Although most of the hostages subsequently were released, the abductions have
not stopped. Three foreigners were abducted last week and seven Turks were
snatched Tuesday even as the three Italians and the Pole were being rescued.
There are an estimated 27 foreigners presently held hostage in Iraq, including
four Americans, a Canadian and a Dutchman.
The bulk of the kidnappings occur in the so-called Sunni triangle, particularly
the area between Baghdad and Ramadi, 100 kilometers west of the capital, and in
the dangerous belt just south of Baghdad containing the towns of Youssefiyeh,
Mahmoudiyeh and Latifiyeh.
While the kidnappers in those areas are almost certainly Sunni militants,
abductions have also taken place in the Shiite holy city of Najaf, 160
kilometers south of Baghdad and the scene of fierce fighting in recent weeks
between US troops and the Mehdi Army, loyal to firebrand Shiite cleric Moqtada
al-Sadr.
The search for hostages in Iraq is proving hazardous. White has received death
threats and his informers and Muslim clerics seen cooperating with him fear for
their lives.
Sheikh Abdel-Qader al-Anni, a prominent Sunni cleric who was helping White,
went into hiding last month after his home was partially destroyed in a bomb
blast. Another senior Sunni cleric, Sheikh Abdel-Latif Humayem, who was close
to Saddam Hussein, is staying in Amman, Jordan, fearing he will be killed if he
returns to Iraq. White had hoped that Humayem would issue the joint fatwa on
behalf of the Sunni community.
"This is interfaith relations at the cutting edge," he said. "This isn't a case
of nice people talking to other nice people and eating cucumber sandwiches in
suburbia. These people are taking risks." While obtaining a joint fatwa looks
doubtful, White said he has persuaded a sheikh from Fallujah to relay a plea
for the release of the hostages to be aired in all mosques in the Sunni
triangle on Friday.
The kidnappings in Iraq have ominous echoes of the hostage crisis in the
Lebanese capital, Beirut, in the mid-1980s when dozens of foreigners were
abducted by Iran-backed Shiite militants and, in some cases, held for several
years.
"I think the kidnappers have learned their lessons from Lebanon," said Robert
Baer, a former CIA operative who hunted for Western hostages in Beirut. "That's
how it happened in Beirut ... gangs pick them up then sell them on." The
kidnappings in Beirut were carried out by cells of Shiite militants connected
by family and clan ties which ensured almost air tight security. Such was the
secrecy surrounding the abductions that more than a decade after the last
Western hostage was released in Beirut, the precise identity of the kidnappers
is still unknown.
Western investigators face a similar problem in penetrating Iraq's complex web
of tribes, clans, sects and political groups. The State Department's
counter-terrorism chief in Baghdad has had little success in discovering the
whereabouts of the hostages and the identity of the kidnappers, despite having
the resources of the CIA and US military intelligence at his disposal. He is
returning to Washington shortly and is not expected to be replaced.
White said the coalition authorities are not giving sufficient attention to the
kidnapping problem.
"We need a proper coordinated team, we need offices and we need resources to
search for these people," he said. But Baer, the former CIA operative, expects
little progress in ending the kidnappings.
"They will never be able to negotiate with the kidnappers," he said. "They are
not going to stop it by intelligence. There's no way to get inside these
groups. As long as they have the energy, the kidnappings will continue."
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