Seven-year-old Mais and the rest of her family were murdered
THE slaughter of the al-Kaabi family last week horrified Iraqis who had prayed that the parliamentary elections next Sunday would be free from political violence.
Eight-year-old Ahmed was found hanging from a ceiling fan, blood dripping from slashed wrists tied behind his back. Little Rafel, her throat cut, was still in the purple and pink T-shirt she had worn to bed.
The killers had gunned down Hussein al-Kaabi, 46, the children’s father, when he opened the front door last Monday night. They then appear to have gone methodically through the house in the Al-Wehdah district in southern Baghdad, knifing his wife and six children, some of them as they slept.
Photographs from the scene are shocking. Pretty nine-year-old Rafel looks almost peaceful, with locks of her dark hair hiding the wound on her neck. Seven-year-old Mais has a scarf wrapped around her mouth, obscuring the bloody wound on her neck. Ahmed looks painfully young and fragile, his football shirt evidence of his obsession with the game.
Their mother, Widad, 36, was pregnant when she was shot and butchered. Family members said she appeared to have been running to help her husband.
Relatives said the only crime committed by Hussein, a guard for a wealthy farmer, was to have been hanging posters for Entifadh Qanbar, a candidate standing for the Shi’ite Iraqi National Alliance (INA).
The Kaabis were Shi’ites, living in a mixed neighbourhood, but family members said they believed the killing had political rather than sectarian motives. “It was an intentional, premeditated act of political terror,” said Abdullah al-Kaabi, 52, Hussein’s cousin. “The people who did this are trying to make people fearful of working for their candidates, or scared to vote.”
Abdullah said Hussein spent last weekend putting up posters for the Shi’ite party. Qanbar blamed former members of Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath party for the killings. They have been angered by the recent blacklisting of Sunni candidates because of alleged links to the outlawed party.
Tensions have been rising in recent weeks between Shi’ite and Sunni groups, although they have not yet exploded into the sectarian violence that saw thousands killed in 2006-7.
Many Iraqis had hoped the vote would be an opportunity to move past the old divisions but the slaughter of the Kaabis suggest they are still raw.
Nouri al-Maliki, the prime minister, who is running as head of a secular Shi’ite-led bloc, was already facing Sunni anger after a Shi’ite-led commission barred 440 candidates, mostly Sunnis, from standing because of suspected ties to the Ba’ath party.
Ahmed Chalabi, the former Iraqi deputy prime minister, who is third on the list of candidates for the Shi’ite INA, was a key player in the decision by the justice and accountability commission to bar the candidates, deepening Sunni anger.
Maliki, whose support has been slipping, made the unexpected announcement last week that 20,000 former army officers who were dismissed after the 2003 US invasion would be reinstated. It was a gesture billed as healing resentment among Sunnis, who although a minority, were dominant within the officer class under Saddam.
The timing of the announcement raised suspicions that Maliki was currying Sunni votes. His support has waned as his claim to have brought security to Iraq was undermined, not only by the murder of the Kaabi family, but also by a series of spectacular bombings.
Last month suicide bombers mounted co-ordinated attacks just minutes apart on Baghdad hotels that had been expected to house foreign election observers, killing 36 people and injuring 71. Following in the wake of similar attacks in August, October and December, they wrecked what had been a fragile but growing sense of security in Baghdad.
Since last summer, army and interior ministry security forces have assumed sole responsibility for security after the withdrawal of American troops from patrolling Iraqi cities. Officials had already warned that violence would escalate in the run-up to the vote.
Survivors of the blasts blamed hardline Ba’athists, believed to be allied with Al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia, a homegrown terrorist group linked to Osama bin Laden.
Maliki’s government, already under fire for a lack of tangible improvement in basic services, and allegations of corruption, is facing its toughest challenge from the INA, whose main partners are the pro- Iranian Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council and Moqtada al-Sadr, the anti-US cleric whose strength comes from the mostly poor Shi’ite majority.
An unlikely ally of Sadr in the coalition is Chalabi, the controversial politician once favoured by America but who now provokes vitriolic criticism from Washington.
If the INA emerges as the largest group in the 325-seat parliament, that would place Sadr in the role of kingmaker in a position to pick the next prime minister.
The Americans have announced plans to withdraw combat troops by the end of next year, but that process could be delayed if the unrest that has erupted over the election continues.
One signal the violence, however horrific, may be contained was the decision by Saleh al-Mutlak, the best-known Sunni candidate and leader of the National Dialogue Front, to rescind his earlier call to boycott the elections, saying he did not want the Sunnis to lose power in the new government, as they did in 2005 when they stayed away from the polls.
