http://news.ft.com/cms/s/f88120e6-981a-11d...000e2511c8.html
Shoot first, pay later culture pervades Iraq
By Awadh al-Taee and Steve Negus
Published: March 19 2005 02:00 | Last updated: March 19 2005 02:00

Two bursts of automatic gunfire rang out across a busy street in west Baghdad, echoing off the walls of the Australian embassy and one of the city's major hotels.


A few seconds later, a three-vehicle convoy belonging to a private security company, transporting a foreigner working to facilitate Iraq's parliamentary elections, began to drive away from the scene.

Askew in the centre of the street sat a civilian car, a neat line of bullet holes piercing its bonnet and windscreen. The driver lay some five metres away, wounded in the side and stomach, and going into shock. Later that day, he died in hospital.

Another motorist, who was driving with his two children in the car, stood dazed in the street, his head lightly grazed by a bullet.

Scenes such as this, witnessed by FT correspondent Awadh al-Taee on January 23, repeat themselves time and again across Iraq. This Baghdad neighbourhood of Kerrada alone, according to local police, sees one fatal shooting a week by either private security companies or the military.

Under constant threat from suicide attackers driving explosive-rigged cars, coalition soldiers and contractors follow combat zone rules of engagement to protect themselves: warn drivers who stray too close, but if that fails, shoot. With procedures designed to protect the identities of anyone who might be singled out for retaliation, the victim's families may never know what happened, let alone obtain justice.

In this case, the situation was eventually resolved to the satisfaction of the victim's family after negotiation with the security company. However, it is not clear if the parties would have found each other had foreign journalists not been involved.

While scores of Iraqi lives are claimed every month in this way, it took the killing of a westerner for the world to take notice of the brutal reality on Baghdad's streets. On March 4, the shooting of Italian intelligence agent Nicola Calipari, escorting a recently released hostage to freedom, provoked a storm of international revulsion and a rethink by US commanders of their rules of engagement in Iraq. Calipari was killed by US troops who mistakenly opened fire on his vehicle, under still-disputed circumstances.

The unarmed victim of the January 23 shooting was Abd al-Naser Abbas al-Dulaimi, age 29. Unmarried, he worked in the power station across the river to support his mother, two sisters, and the two children of an older brother who went missing in the 1991 Kuwait war. When he was shot, say police, he was out looking for petrol, which most Iraqis are forced to buy on the black market because of a shortage at the pumps. They found no weapons on his body or in his car.

In such incidents, the victims have little legal recourse. According to the coalition's Order 17, enacted by US administrators shortly after the invasion, military personnel and most private contractors working in Iraq cannot be brought before Iraqi courts.

In practice, the military and the security companies will often pay compensation. Privately, Iraq's interior ministry officials consider the law a bit of a national insult. However, changing it might persuade the few foreign contractors and organisations still working here to pull out.

It is a zero-sum situation: either Iraqis, or foreigners, can have their right to personal security guaranteed by law, and for the time being the authorities have decided it should be the foreigners.

After making inquiries following the January 23 shooting, the FT was contacted by the security company involved. Although willing to provide information, its country manager, "John" (a pseudonym) preferred that it not be named. Given the very real risk of retaliation, the FT agreed not to do so.

John at first was not aware that Mr Dulaimi had been hit, and did not believe that his company fired any shots that could have killed him. The vehicle that was fired on "forced its way through halted traffic to approach our convoy at speed", he stated in an e-mail.

The convoy, he said, attempted to ward the vehicle off with strobe lights and hand signals, then threw a water bottle and fired a flare, then finally fired into the engine and the empty passenger side of the car to disable it, John said. Security men in the convoy saw the vehicle come to a halt, and a driver exit, before they turned the corner and left the scene. They heard further shooting, but do not want to speculate on what happened.

Mr Dulaimi's family at first believed that armed guards posted at fortified buildings along the street, such as Australian soldiers in the nearby embassy, fired the fatal shot, the one that fragmented in his stomach. (The Australian military says that it was not involved in ashooting incident on January 23.) But they eventually decided that the convoy should take the blame for the shooting.

Like its counterparts in Iraq, John's company retains an intermediary, contacted through the local police, who can negotiate with the family of victims in such incidents. However, nearly two weeks after the shooting, neither Mr Dulaimi's family nor Maazen Hekmat Faeq, the second motorist who was hit, had been able to locate that intermediary.

They had obtained the initials of John's company, but all they were told about it is that it operated out of the heavily-fortified international zone in the centre of Baghdad, inaccessible to nearly all Iraqis.

At the request of both parties, the FT put Mr Dulaimi's family and the security company in question in contact with each other. In these situations, the amount of compensation is decided on a case-by-case basis. The US military's standard payout is $2,500 - about two days' pay for a western ex-military security man, or two years' wages for a mid-level Iraqi civil servant. Many security companies (although not necessarily John's) use this as a base. "This is the price of an Iraqi citizen," snorted one Kerrada policeman in disgust.

In fact, fasal - blood money - is often paid when an Iraqi kills an Iraqi, particularly in a rural area. Representatives of the victim's tribe will sit down with the killer's tribe and discuss among themselves the amount of compensation. In these disputes, $2,500 would be a fairly average payout.

However, while Iraqis resign themselves to the tribal system of arbitration in the absence of a functioning judicial system, when foreigners get involved the process can become insulting. Tribal arbitration sessions are meetings of equals, often held in bedouin-style tents with all the pomp and circumstance of traditional Iraqi society. For a relative of an Iraqi shot by a foreigner even to find out whom to contact for compensation, he must often stand for hours outside the barbed wire of bases and police stations and endure intense questioning and weapons pat-downs. When the money is paid, it seems more like a token payout to make a problem go away.

"Two thousand five hundred dollars," said a relative of the deceased Mr Dulaimi derisively. "Twenty-five million would not pay for a hair of his head. I have experience in fighting, and my friends have offered to fight with me. God willing, we will make an example of them."