GAIUTRA BAHADUR

By Gaiutra Bahadur
Knight Ridder

BAGHDAD – Supporters of Muqtada al-Sadr, the militant Shiite Muslim cleric responsible for two uprisings against the United States last year, clashed with Iraqi security forces in the southern city of Kufa on Friday, on a day of widespread violence in Iraq.

A mass grave was found at a dump near the Shiite slum that’s al-Sadr’s stronghold in the capital, and two suicide car bombs struck a market and a police checkpoint, killing at least 23.

Friday’s violence underscored the weakness of the new Iraqi government in the face of widespread challenges to its authority.

The clash in Kufa came after a defiant speech by al-Sadr that was read at Friday prayers, and it brought reminders of the chaos al-Sadr’s supporters caused last year when they revolted against U.S. troops in Najaf and elsewhere. The sermon said the Iraqi government had done nothing to win the release of al-Sadr’s followers in U.S. facilities or to stop raids on his offices and warned that he might again mobilize his Mahdi Army militia.

“We dropped our weapons, but our hands are still on the trigger,” al-Sadr said. “We have been patient and quiet with the truce, which (the U.S.) violated more than once. Consider the past period a training period for us, psychologically and morally.”

Accounts of what caused the clash in Kufa varied, but there was agreement that Iraqi police or army officials shot and wounded some worshippers emerging from prayers.

“After the prayers, the worshippers left the mosque and they started to chant,” said Sabah Shubar, 41, a car mechanic who was hit in the leg by three bullets. “We were surprised by the army opening fire.”

A spokesman for the Defense Ministry said that guards for Aws al Khafaji, the imam who delivered al-Sadr’s speech, were armed. Police questioned them, which led to a dispute that ended with an exchange of gunfire, the spokesman said.

The clash left at least four wounded, including a 13-year-old and a police officer, and created tension in al-Sadr’s strongholds across the country.

Meanwhile, a mass grave was discovered northeast of Baghdad, near Sadr City.

Police said early Friday that they recovered the bodies of 14 men who were buried in a garbage dump. Each victim had been blindfolded, handcuffed and shot once in the head.

The Muslim Scholars Association, a Sunni clerical group with ties to the insurgency, claimed that the victims were all farmers, members of the prominent Dulaimi clan, who’d been abducted from a grocer’s market the day before by Iraqi army and police officers.

The association issued a statement naming all the victims. The men, brothers and cousins, all between the ages of 25 and 40, had traveled to the Baghdad market to sell their goods, said Abdul Salaam al-Qubaisi, a spokesman for the association. They came from Madain, a town south of Baghdad that last month was the focus of reputed kidnappings that pitted Sunnis against Shiites.

The discovery of the mass grave raised further fears that bloody ethnic clashes are escalating.

On a bridge in Tikrit, Saddam Hussein’s hometown, a car bomb killed seven and wounded three near a police checkpoint at 8:10 a.m., the Iraqi Interior Ministry said.

In Suwayrah, about 25 miles south of Baghdad in an area known as “The Triangle of Death,” a car bomb exploded in a market, killing 16 and wounding 36, according to the ministry.

Also, Friday, the Arab satellite news station Al-Jazeera broadcast two videos of kidnapping victims that issued ultimatums for their countries to either withdraw troops or stop doing business in Iraq.

In one video, men wearing masks brandished rifles at Australian engineer Douglas Wood, 63, pictured with his head shaved and displaying his passport. Al-Jazeera reported that kidnappers had given Australia 72 hours to withdraw its 300 troops from Iraq. A banner visible to the left of the video read al-Mujahedeen Shura Council.

Another video showed six employees of a Jordanian company called Jaafar Ibn Mansour being held by a group called al-Baraa bin Malik. Two men pointed AK-47s at the employees, also pictured holding their passports. Al-Jazeera said the kidnappers were demanding that all Jordanian companies cease doing business in Iraq.

In the face of the increasingly grisly news, the U.S. military claimed significant progress in breaking the organization of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the most wanted terrorist in Iraq.

It released a statement Friday that highlighted the killing and capture of 20 top lieutenants in al-Zarqawi’s network in recent months and included excerpts of demoralized testimonies from several detained bomb makers, drivers, propagandists and terror cell leaders.

The statement also described the near capture of al-Zarqawi in a Feb. 20 raid between Hit and Haditha, near the Euphrates River.

Al-Zarqawi’s driver, Abu Usama, recounted that “Zarqawi became hysterical” as coalition forces closed in on his vehicle, according to the statement. The statement said al-Zarqawi grabbed an American-made rifle and U.S. dollars and escaped, leaving behind his computer, pistols and ammunition.

© Knight Ridder. All rights reserved.

By Gaiutra Bahadur
Knight Ridder Newspapers

BAGHDAD – Saddam Hussein’s rules for young and ambitious Iraqis were clear: If you want a future, you must join the Baath Party.Now, as the leaders of the new National Assembly parcel out Cabinet posts according to ethnic group and religious or political affiliation, students and recent college graduates worry that the government will become a collection of fiefdoms in which loyalties matter more than merit.

“I guess now with so many political parties, and the way the different ministries are divided according to sects, one doesn’t know which party he should be a member in,” said Haider Ali, 24. “I will try my luck. If not, I will go abroad to find a job opportunity.”

Ali’s worries are one reflection of the broader problems of making a democratic Iraq a unified nation and creating a national identity that supersedes ethnic and religious allegiances.

The Baghdad resident was part of a garlanded caravan of al-Rafidain college seniors who recently made their way, heads bobbing to Arab pop music, to a graduation party in Baghdad’s Fardos Square. Despite their celebratory mood, several of them expressed anxiety about their career prospects.

They’ve reason to be pessimistic. Half of Iraqis are unemployed or underemployed, according to the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs, and recent college graduates already have been backed into jobs they think are beneath them.

An electrical engineer works in a plastics factory. A woman with a degree in business administration sews clothes to make ends meet. A would-be English teacher has cleaned streets.

They’d all like jobs in the government, which employed most Iraqis under Saddam and is now the homegrown employer with the greatest stability and highest salaries. They complain that they’ve lost out in the competition for government positions because they haven’t paid bribes or don’t belong to the right political parties or ethnic groups.

Parties mostly break down along ethnic lines, with Shiite Muslims, Sunni Muslims and Kurds forming their own blocs in the National Assembly. Iraq’s newly selected leaders have said they’ll divide 31 Cabinet posts among those three major groups based on their numbers in parliament.

That’s bad news for Sunni job seekers: Sunnis overwhelmingly stayed home from the polls in January’s elections and hold only 17 assembly seats.

Students and job seekers swap tales of friends who were told by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to produce letters of recommendation from the Kurdish Democratic Party or the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. Kurdish leader Hoshyar Zebari runs the foreign ministry, which resonates with the sounds of Kurdish rather than Arabic. He’s likely to retain the post.

“We know that ministry is for the Kurdish party,” said Kareem al-Saadi, 22, a graduating senior at Mustansiriyah University. “When you want to have a job in this ministry, you must get a notification from the Kurdish party.” Al-Saadi said it happened in all the ministries.

Hamid al-Bayati, a deputy at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said political parties had recommended candidates for diplomatic posts but he maintained that the ministry hasn’t become a stronghold for any one group.

The hiring committee relies on the parties to know who is “trustworthy,” he said, because “the last thing we want is infiltration from loyalists of the former regime.”

“We try to make it a mix to satisfy all sectors of Iraqi society,” said al-Bayati, a member of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a major Shiite party. “We always make sure there are Sunnis, Shias and Kurds. And we receive nominations from all different groups.”

Still, perceptions of bias run deep.

“The Ministry of Defense is just for those named Shaalan. Health is just for the Dawa party,” said Mazen Abd Sadr Mohamed al-Jorani, the would-be English teacher. “I must either get relations or dollars.”

In December, an internal auditor found that Health Ministry officials had hired widely on the basis of family, tribal or party ties. Adil Mohsen Abdullah, who was fired last month after making his report public, said there were thousands of unqualified employees throughout the ministry.

“Health is a technical field which needs experts to fill the proper positions,” he said in an interview. “And if we keep turning to the tribe or the family, we’ll give these posts to the nonqualified people who don’t deserve it.”

The Commission on Public Integrity, which American administrators created as a watchdog against corruption before they stepped aside last year, has received complaints about government jobs being handed out on the basis of ethnicity or membership in political parties. It hasn’t been able to act on the complaints, however.

“The people who complain do not assist us in our investigations because of the security situation,” said Judge Radhi Hamdan Radhi, the head of the commission. “They fear revenge if their identity is revealed.”

The Labor Ministry runs a center that’s supposed to serve – by a resolution of the interim government – as a clearinghouse for government workers, using a database of 650,000 unemployed doctors, engineers, teachers and others.

“They should come to us,” said Riyadh Hassan, the head of the center. But “there is not complete control. We send them all our lists and their qualifications, and (they say), `We are sorry. We haven’t a job.’ Then we find in the papers thousands of teachers have been hired. They’ve directly employed them.”

“Sometimes, it’s personal,” he said. “Sometimes a person would bring his own people, or his acquaintances, or maybe take money.”

Ali Jamil Haleel, a 25-year old waiter with a bachelor’s degree in history, founded the General Union of Graduated Students about six months ago to help jobless degree-holders. He said many of them had encountered partisanship.

“Students graduate from a certain branch and want to apply to the suitable ministry. The dominant party would ask for a recommendation from that party,” Haleel said.

He said Saddam started the practice of favoritism. “So this thing was planted in people’s minds,” he said. “So now the parties are acting in the same way. Each party is trying to bring the people of its own sect to its side.”

International observers also are worried.

“Sooner or later, this is going to create resentment and tension,” said Marina Ottaway, a democracy and Middle East specialist at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

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