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Iraqi forces deploy in Baghdad neighborhood after kidnapping Abduction of Americans in Iraq raises fears about security
(about 11 hours later)
BAGHDAD — Iraqi security forces fanned out across the Baghdad neighborhood Monday morning where three Americans were reportedly kidnapped over the weekend, closing streets and conducting house-to-house searches. BAGHDAD — The abduction of three Americans from a Baghdad apartment over the weekend is the latest in a series of brazen high-profile kidnappings undermining confidence in the Iraqi government’s ability to control state-sanctioned Shiite militias that have grown in strength as Iraqi security forces battle the Islamic State group.
An Iraqi government intelligence official told The Associated Press the Americans were kidnapped from their interpreter’s home in the southern Baghdad neighborhood of Dora. The kidnapping occurred, the official said, after the Americans were invited into the home of their interpreter. The individuals were then taken to Sadr city, the official said, “after (the kidnapping) all communications and contact stopped in Sadr city.” Witnesses said men in uniform carried out the kidnapping in broad daylight Saturday, 100 yards (meters) from a police station.
The official spoke on condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to brief the press. “Gunmen in military uniforms came in five or six SUVs, they entered the building and then left almost immediately,” said Mohammad Jabar, 35, who runs a shop down the street from the three-story apartment building where the Americans had been invited by their Iraqi interpreter.
A local policeman in Dora said the individuals were taken from their car on Saturday along a highway in southwest Dora while driving to Baghdad International Airport. The two differing accounts of the events could not immediately be reconciled. The policeman spoke on condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to brief the press. “A few hours later we heard that three foreigners had been kidnapped by these gunmen,” Jaber said.
The U.S. Embassy confirmed Sunday that “several” Americans have gone missing in Iraq, after local media reported that three Americans had been kidnapped in the Iraqi capital. The three were abducted in Dora, a mixed neighborhood that is home to both Shiites and Sunnis. However, they were then taken to Sadr City, a vast and densely populated Shiite district to the east, and there “all communication ceased,” an Iraqi intelligence official told The Associated Press. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to reporters.
U.S. Embassy spokesman Scott Bolz said, “We are working in full cooperation with Iraqi authorities to locate the missing Americans.” A similar scene unfolded in September, when masked men in military uniforms abducted 18 Turkish workers from a construction site in a Shiite neighborhood. A hostage video later showed the men standing before a banner that read “Death Squads” and “Oh, Hussein,” a Shiite religious slogan. The workers were released later that month.
Bolz did not identify the missing Americans or say what they were doing in Iraq. In December, gunmen driving SUVs raided a remote camp for falconry hunting in Iraq’s overwhelmingly Shiite south, kidnapping 26 Qataris, who are still being held. Iraq’s Interior Ministry said at the time that the abduction was “to achieve political and media goals,” without providing further details.
State Department spokesman John Kirby said that “due to privacy considerations” he had nothing further to add about the missing Americans. “The safety and security of Americans abroad is our highest priority,” Kirby said. Baghdad authorities said in a statement that the three Americans were kidnapped from a “suspicious apartment” without elaborating, and have provided no other details.
Col. Steve Warren, the Baghdad based spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition against the Islamic State group, confirmed that the individuals were civilians. The U.S. Embassy confirmed Sunday that “several” Americans went missing in Iraq, after local media reported that three Americans had been kidnapped in the Iraqi capital. U.S. officials have declined to provide further details, and have neither identified the Americans nor said what they were doing in Iraq.
The comments by U.S. officials came after the Arab news channel, al-Arabiya, citing its own sources, reported that three Americans had been kidnapped by militias in Baghdad. There were no immediate claims of responsibility. Besides Shiite militias, the perpetrators of kidnappings in Iraq have included the Islamic State group, as well as criminal gangs demanding ransom payments or disgruntled employees seeking to resolve workplace disputes.
There were no immediate claims of responsibility. Kidnappings in Iraq have been carried out by the Islamic State group, Shiite militias and criminal gangs often demanding ransom payments or seeking to resolve workplace disputes. The kidnapping of the Americans comes at a time of deteriorating security in and around the Iraqi capital after months of relative calm. Last week two Iraqi journalists were killed within sight of a police checkpoint in Diyala province north of Baghdad.
Following the IS takeover of Iraq’s second largest city Mosul and large swaths of territory in the country’s north and west, Iraq has witnessed a deterioration in security as government forces were sent to front lines and Shiite militias were empowered to aid in the fight following the collapse of the Iraqi military. The scale and sophistication of the recent kidnappings of foreigners suggest those responsible are operating with some degree of impunity, said Nathaniel Rabkin, managing editor of Inside Iraqi Politics, a political risk assessment newsletter.
Last month a Qatari hunting party was kidnapped in Iraq’s south by unidentified gunmen and their whereabouts are still unknown. In September 18 Turkish workers were kidnapped from their construction site in Baghdad’s Sadr city by masked men in military uniforms. Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi blamed organized crime for the kidnapping. The workers were released later that month. “You kidnap 26 Qataris out in the desert, that’s not like four or five yahoos out in the south. ... That’s a pretty well-run operation. It must be some relatively established group that did it,” he said.
The only groups operating in Iraq with those capabilities, Rabkin said, are the country’s powerful Shiite militias.
Shiite militias have played a key role in battling the Islamic State group, filling a vacuum left by the collapse of the Iraqi security forces in the summer of 2014 and proving to be some of the most effective anti-IS forces on the ground in Iraq.
The government-allied militias are now officially sanctioned and known as the Popular Mobilization Committees. But many trace their roots to the armed groups that battled U.S. troops after the 2003 invasion and kidnapped and killed Sunnis at the height of Iraq’s sectarian bloodletting in 2006 and 2007. Rights groups have accused them of kidnapping and in some cases killing Sunni civilians since they rearmed in 2014, charges denied by militia leaders.
Although the militias are fighting on the same side as the U.S.-led coalition against IS, many remain staunchly anti-American. When the Pentagon announced an increase in the number of U.S. special forces in Iraq last month, the spokesman for one militia vowed to attack them.
“Any such American force will become a primary target for our group. We fought them before and we are ready to resume fighting,” said Jafar Hussaini, spokesman for the Iraqi Hezbollah Brigades, one of the most powerful Shiite militias.
Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has struggled to balance the power and popularity of Shiite militia groups with the government’s dependence on the U.S.-led coalition’s contributions to the fight against IS. Unchecked, continued brazen shows of Shiite militia power in the Iraqi capital could further undermine the already weak leader.
“I think there’s a growing sense that al-Abadi’s not in charge, that nobody in Iraq is really in charge anymore or in a position to rein in these militias,” Rabkin said.
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Associated Press writer Murtada Faraj contributed to this report. Associated Press writers Muhanad al-Saleh, Murtada Faraj and Sinan Salaheddin contributed to this report.
Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.