Neighborhood watch groups guard Iraq

updated 6:40 p.m. ET March 31, 2006

BAGHDAD, Iraq - As the sun goes down and most Baghdad residents take refuge in their homes, Maamoun Abdul Wahab takes to the streets — a pistol tucked in his clothes.

For about 12 hours, he prowls the narrow alleys of Baghdad’s heavily Sunni Azamiyah district, part of a neighborhood watch group formed to fend off Shiite militias and Interior Ministry commando units considered by many Sunnis as little more than death squads.

“If the militias or the commandos set foot here, we will fight them — either they die or we die,” Abdul Wahab declared. “If we let them in, they will kill us anyway, so we might as well defend ourselves.”

Neighborhood watch groups formed after the collapse of Saddam Hussein’s regime to guard against looters and criminals. Many re-emerged after the Feb. 22 bombing of a revered Shiite shrine in Samarra sparked reprisal attacks against Sunni mosques, raising fears of civil war.

Shortly after the Samarra attack, word spread in Azamiyah that Shiite militiamen took over a nearby Sunni mosque, plastering it with photos of Shiite clerics, Abdul Wahab said. Squatting on the floor with a group of friends in the neighborhood’s Abu Hanifa Mosque, the men decided to take matters in their hands.

By day, Abdul Wahab sells construction and plumbing materials. He returns home at about 4 p.m., eats and sleeps for a few hours before his guard duties begin. He said he started off as a volunteer, but the Sunni Endowment, a government agency that takes care of Sunni religious sites, decided to pay him about $65 a month to keep an eye on mosques and neighborhood streets.

Residents grateful
Residents are happy to see the group standing guard, he said. Some make them tea. Others offer cake.

Abdul Wahab has made other friends on the streets too: army soldiers who he says patrol the area unarmed. He plays backgammon and sips tea with them.

“I trust the army, but not the police. The police detain Sunnis. They torture them with electric drills and execute them,” he said.

The army falls under the Defense Ministry, which is led by a Sunni Arab.

Sunni insurgents have for long targeted Shiites, who dominate the government, with bombings and kidnappings. The campaign, said to be aimed at dragging Iraq into a sectarian war, has spawned tit-for-tat killings. Acts of revenge drove members of both communities out of their homes and triggered Sunni accusations that Shiite militias and security forces torture, kidnap and kill Sunnis.

In some Shiite neighborhoods, residents or militiamen establish watch groups to keep out car bombers and other attackers.

In mixed neighborhoods, fear of violence sometimes transcends sectarian differences.

In the Jihad area of Baghdad, Jawad Kadhim oversees a 25-member neighborhood watch group that he said includes Shiites, Sunnis and Christians. Each family pays the group about $6.50 a month.

Group formed after assassinations
Kadhim said the group came together after the Samarra bombing spawned assassinations in his neighborhood.

“Please don’t ask me if I am a Shiite or a Sunni. We don’t have such distinctions,” Kadhim said, though he earlier said he was a Shiite and a former member of the Iraqi army.

When a Sunni mosque in Jihad was attacked by men “in commando uniforms” after the Samarra bombing, Shiites and Sunnis repelled the assailants, Kadhim said.

“We cannot feel safe at night as long as these militias they brought us from abroad are here. Nowadays, you cannot tell who is a militiaman and who is with the government forces.”

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