A month ago, Qawliya’s collection of perhaps 150 homes in southern Iraq contained a small red-light district, an isolated warren known for prostitution and gunrunning and as a haven from the law. Today, it is destroyed, the few sounds of life made by barking dogs and scavengers piling bricks from razed homes.
Its residents — hundreds of men, women and children, mostly members of Iraq’s tiny Gypsy minority — were driven out by a militia controlled by a militant Shiite Muslim cleric, residents and police say. Neighbors systematically looted it. Some accounts say the village was burned, though the militia denies it.
No one has been punished, police say. The U.S.-led occupation, which learned of the raid soon after it happened on March 12, has yet to make it public. Qawliya’s residents, most of whom fled to other cities, largely remain in hiding, fearful to talk.
Go look at the picture – the destruction is unbelievable.
No one has been punished, police say. The U.S.-led occupation, which learned of the raid soon after it happened on March 12, has yet to make it public. Qawliya’s residents, most of whom fled to other cities, largely remain in hiding, fearful to talk.
Qawliya’s fate is a grim tale about the forces that are shaping southern Iraq as the civil occupation nears an end — the ascent of religious militias, the frailty of outgunned police and the perceived reluctance of foreign peacekeepers to play an assertive role. Making those factors more combustible, residents say, is the question of whose law rules Iraq’s people.
This situation with al Sadr is getting progressively more grim. Right now, Sadrists are protesting in Baghdad and the newswires are reporting that American tanks have run over some protestors. The protests are over Bremer’s closure of al Sadr’s newspaper.