I’m sure you’ve all read the many stories lately of how death squads in police and interior ministry uniforms and equipment in Iraq have gone around abducting and killing Sunnis.
This culminated this week in the abduction of 50 sunni security guards from the headquarters of their security company. Despite being armed guards, they cooperated with thei kidnappers because they seemed to be genuine policemen.
In the light of such events, Iraq’s Sunnis have 2 options:
Continue to cooperate with Iraqi police and other government representatives, and risk that they could simply be being tricked and murdered like hundreds of other Sunnis in Iraq over the past year
Refuse to cooperate with the Iraqi police, and resist arrest with all available force until the Iraqi government can prove that people are safe from the police?
I’m sure that if those 50 securuty guards had opened fire on the “police” who came to arrest them, they would be alive today. Instead, they acted like good citizens and I’m sure they will soon be dead if not already.
Re: How should Iraq's Sunnis react to death squads in government uniforms?
It's a tough situation. Attacks carried out in police uniforms destroy the trust people have in the police, on the other hand defending yourself against people in police uniforms undermines the state's authority.
Especially with the reports that death squads do exist within Iraqi institutions like the police, this situation is really messed up.
When you know that some police officers are mass murderers who want to trick you and kill you, but you can't tell the difference between the honest cops and the corrupt cops, what do you do?
Do you give in to all cops and hope they won't kill you, or do you try and kill the cops and hope you're not killing honest cops?
Re: How should Iraq’s Sunnis react to death squads in government uniforms?
What’s apparently happened is that the Iraqi police has unknowingly recruited members of Shia militias. The militiamen joined the police owing their loyalty to militant organisations, not the iraqi government.
This basically means that the policemen in question were following government orders, until their militia leaders gave orders for the police to target sunnis for “revenge”.
At this point, the policemen ignored the government’s orders, and abused their rights and trust their uniform gave and used it in order to carry out revenge killings.
So basically, an unknown portion of the Iraqi police is not loyal to the iraqi government. They are members of shia militant organisations that have infiltrated the police service in order to get into positions of trust that they can use to safeguard the interests of their militant groups; even to the point of carrying out revenge killings.
Of course, the Shia militants are not the only ones to infiltrate the police. There was an article in a newspaper i read a few days ago that stated that the Iraqi police had set up a hotline that people should dial if they saw militants firing mortars at the government or Americans. (basically, a hotline to snitch on the sunni insurgency).
A sunni militant groups, had, however, infiltrated the police. Somehow, people who called the hotline would have their numbers traced by caller ID, would be cross-referenced against the records of the Iraqi phone company, and would within a few days receive a fatal visit from masked gunmen that stopped them snitching ever again.
In short… the Iraqi police service is infiltrated by militias of many different interest groups, all of whom are willing to abuse the trust their agents within the police have. Willing to use that trust to kill.
When the police is this badly corrupted - is it your friend or your enemy?
