Quotes of the Day
As violence raged in several Sunni towns west of Baghdad on April 8, Mohammed Rifat steered his green Jeep Cherokee out of the gates of Abu Ghraib prison, where he worked as a construction foreman for a Kellogg Brown & Root subcontractor. Rifat, 41, who returned to Iraq in February after 24 years in Toronto, was heading home to care for his aging mother. He never made it. Somewhere in the night, his family believes, kidnappers stopped his vehicle and spirited him away. This is everyone's worst nightmare in the new Iraq. A bewildering variety of groups — some seeking money, some pushing a terrorist agenda — have kidnapped dozens of foreigners since the end of the war last year. The hostages then become commodities in a deadly human trade that links street gangs to local mafias to insurgents like Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi, the al-Qaeda — linked jihadi thought to be behind many of the recent terrorist attacks in Iraq. Victims are sold up the chain, and each handler scores thousands of dollars, money used to finance gun running, drug smuggling and the insurgency. There are indications that Rifat may have been caught up in such a chain.
There is a science to getting hostages back alive. Although every case is unique, tactics that have worked include broadly disseminating information, exploiting political and religious connections and ponying up cash. Sometimes luck prevails. Above all, it's critical to act quickly. Of the 52 hostages who have been abducted in the past year, 35 have been freed, most in the first days after capture. In Rifat's case, the top Canadian representative in Baghdad could offer little help, so Rifat's brother-in-law Abdullah al-Khazraji has taken charge. Venturing almost daily into the netherworld of Fallujah, the restive Sunni city where many of the hostages end up, al-Khazraji has met an assortment of shadowy informants. Some claim to know Rifat's whereabouts; others say they can deliver him for cash. "I feel like I'm hanging by a thread in this web," says al-Khazraji. "And I am dealing with ghosts."
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The West generally is aware of only kidnappings that are politically motivated, like the abduction and subsequent beheading of American businessman Nick Berg. But the practice is far more common, and the kidnappers — the men who initially seize the innocents — are often petty criminals. "Those who take the hostages are not sophisticated," says Andrew White, director of the Iraqi Center for Dialogue, Reconciliation and Peace. "They're thugs, gangsters."
The best hope for springing a hostage comes at the initial stage. Groups like White's contact mosques, tribal leaders, militias and even former intelligence agents in search of news about the victim. Because the low-level gangs are after cash, a quick payout might free the hostage before he is "sold up" to groups with less easily deciphered, deadlier agendas. Such deals can be lucrative: prices paid range from $10,000 to $100,000, according to White, with U.S. soldiers fetching the highest rate.
In Rifat's case, his brother-in-law papered Fallujah's mosques in May with notices of Rifat's disappearance. Al-Khazraji received a phone call from someone who claimed to have seen Rifat. The man had gone to a Baghdad residence to buy a green Jeep Cherokee, apparently Rifat's car. Rifat, the man reported, was inside the house. When the buyer returned two days later to conclude the deal, Rifat was no longer there. "Where's the guy who was here?" the car buyer asked the sellers. According to al-Khazraji, the men told the buyer: "We gave him as a present to one of the religious sheiks." While such details are impossible to confirm, the account suggests that Rifat may have been passed from a gang of car thieves into the hands of Muslim extremists.
Quick action may have saved the life of a Pakistani national, Amjad Yusuf Hafeez, a driver for a Saudi Arabian company. He was released last week after only a few days in captivity. Picked up on June 26 in Balad, about 50 miles north of Baghdad, Hafeez fell into the hands of a group calling itself the 1920 Revolution Brigade, an apparent allusion to the uprising against British rule in the area. In a videotape widely broadcast on Arab TV stations, his captors demanded the release of comrades from Iraqi jails and, for unclear reasons, the closure of Pakistan's embassy in Baghdad. Otherwise, they said, Hafeez would be killed in three days.
Pakistani diplomat Muhammad Iftikhar Anjum immediately contacted well-connected Iraqi religious figures. The kidnapped driver's firm started contacting sources among tribal leaders, sheiks and others. "Surprisingly enough, people seem to know, in most localities, who is doing this," says Sabah Kadhim, spokesman for Iraq's Interior Ministry. Imams put out appeals in Friday sermons and on al-Jazeera TV for Hafeez's safe return. These may have been not simple humanitarian calls but rather signals to the kidnappers that the driver's firm and Pakistan were open to a deal. As White says, "The people who can really deliver are the bad guys." Back in Pakistan, Hafeez told reporters he had witnessed captors beheading three hostages, including two English-speaking foreigners. Who they were is still unknown.
Not surprisingly, the efforts to free hostages tend to be most successful if the victim is Muslim. Of the 35 hostages who have been freed or rescued, 19 either were Muslims or came from predominantly Islamic countries. In addition to Hafeez, 13 Turkish hostages have been freed, including two last week after their company promised to stop doing business in Iraq. Others released include two Lebanese, an Egyptian, a Syrian Canadian and an Arab Christian from East Jerusalem. Filipino hostage Angelo dela Cruz was being held last week by militants who demanded that the Philippine government pull its troops out of Iraq by July 20--a month ahead of schedule. (Then there's the strange case of U.S. Marine Corporal Wassef Hassoun, a Lebanese American who disappeared and was reportedly held hostage before turning up safe last week in Lebanon.)
The handover of power to Iraqis has done little to curb the appalling trend. Sayed Muhammad Sayed al-Gharbawi, an Egyptian truck driver, was seized last week. Two Bulgarian truck drivers, Ivaylo Kepov and Georgi Lazov, are being held by a group loyal to al-Zarqawi. And others who have been missing longer, including Rifat, are still unaccounted for. Al-Khazraji says his source, the man who tried to buy Rifat's car, offered to lead him to his brother-in-law in exchange for $10,000 up front. "I said, 'First I need to see Rifat in the arms of his mother, and then you will get your $10,000,'" al-Khazraji says. The intermediary disappeared. Al-Khazraji later found new potential links to Rifat. In the mosques of Fallujah, young men calling themselves "the shebab [youth] group" offered to try to find Rifat. Al-Khazraji took Rifat's elderly mother to meet the shebab in a Fallujah mosque. Wrapped in a black aba and white head scarf, she stood there weeping while he kissed several members. "I said, 'Please, tell [the kidnappers] this woman of 70 has lost her child. Please help her to bring him back home,'" says al-Khazraji.
Privately, diplomats fear that Rifat could be dead. No one has reported seeing him for months, and jihadi groups haven't released any video images of him, as they have done for other hostages. "It doesn't look encouraging," says a Western diplomat in Baghdad. But al-Khazraji says he won't give up until Rifat returns home or until his body is found. Meanwhile, he is continuing his daily hunt.
- Christopher Allbritton and Vivienne Walt/Baghdad