When evil men are striking daily at the heart of your community, exacting a mounting toll in blood and misery, the urge to strike back blindly at the suspected source of this wickedness must at times be overwhelming. The incredible patience of the Shiite and Kurdish communities targeted by terrorists who are largely from the once politically dominant Sunni community, has been remarkable. Disturbingly there are now signs that this grim determination to heed the advice of community leaders and avoid revenge is beginning to crack.
It has yet to be confirmed but among the bodies of 12 men found yesterday on a Baghdad rubbish dump are some believed to be of Sunni farmers from the Madain region who recently disappeared on their way to market. All the murdered men were blindfolded and shot in the head. There has been a number of intercommunal kidnapping and killings in the Madain area in the past months but this latest crime will, if the identity of the victims is confirmed, be the worst revenge attack yet on the Sunni community.
Before yet another spiral of violence is initiated in Iraq, the men who murdered these hapless individuals must be diverted from their bloodlust. Even though Iraqis continue to pay a terrible price for the botched US-led occupation; even though the Iraqi police and army are still struggling feebly to confront the bloody insurrection; even though any decent Iraqi must be full of despair and white-hot rage at the impunity with which the terrorists still act, turning to acts of random revenge is not the answer.
Indeed if this vigilantism is not stamped out quickly, far from bringing the insurgency to heel, it will give it a fresh infusion of innocent blood. The terrorists have achieved their aims so far by playing on the fears of ordinary Sunnis that in a new multicommunity Iraq, the Sunnis will be victimized for their past ascendancy, privileges and discrimination. Thus far that has proved not to be the case. The new political leadership, for all their protracted horse-trading, has recognized that only by building a genuinely inclusive society can Iraq’s future be assured.
If, however, the murderers of these supposedly Sunni farmers are not brought to heel by their own community, if indeed they are not brought to justice at all, they will be going after more innocent Sunni Iraqis who will probably fight back by using the same coin of kidnapping and murder. In no time, such tit-for-tat depravity will reinforce the insurgents’ primary claim that they are acting to protect the entire Sunni community.
What angry would-be vigilantes from the Shiite or Kurdish communities have to understand is that by stepping outside Iraq’s already fragile rule of law, they are actually undermining rather than protecting their country’s future. Nothing could suit the terrorists better than revenge attacks against their own community. They do not care how many of their people die as long as it reinforces their bigoted campaign of violence. The awful truth is that any Shiite or Kurd who murders innocent Sunnis is not fighting against the men of violence; he is actually fighting for them.
