The clothes eight-year-old Ali Fadhil was wearing when he was grabbed by kidnappers from the street near his home in the wealthy Zayouna neighbourhood of Baghdad were left outside his mother’s door on Friday. She had washed them overnight before showing them to us on Saturday — a pale blue Mickey Mouse sweatshirt and tracksuit bottoms.
They were filthy when she found them, stinking from her youngest son’s captivity, somewhere in the city. But it was her first intimation in two weeks that Ali might still be alive.
Wafa Fadhil has all but given up hope that police can find him. Instead she is gathering the money being demanded for his release: ‘five books’ — Baghdad slang for $50 000 — is the going rate for kidnapped children. Anecdotal evidence suggests most gangs settle for $15 000. ‘We will negotiate, of course,’ she said, ‘but we will pay the money. We will do anything to secure his release.’
As we speak, an elder son sits by her. Fourteen-year-old Isa Fadhil knows all about the kidnap gangs that roam this city, targeting the children of the wealthy, the moderately wealthy or families of those with whom they have a grudge. For he too has been kidnapped.
The Fadhils feel their five children are under siege. What is clear is that someone is desperate to get their money — and they are targeting the children to get it.
Although Wafa’s husband is the owner of a metal-turning factory, the couple believe it is their inheritance of his dead mother’s land and apartment that has triggered the kidnappings.
The abduction of Isa in December coincided with the sale of some land; the second, of Ali, with the sale of the apartment. This has convinced them the gang has a knowledge of their affairs.
‘I was walking to my uncle’s house to join my cousins to go to school at 7am,’ said Isa of his abduction.
‘Some men drove by in a microbus. They said they had business with my uncle and offered me a lift. When I got in the car, one drew a gun and they took me to Al-Thawra [the vast poverty-stricken Shia area on the outskirts of Baghdad].’
Left in a building, Isa crawled through a broken fan vent at 3am and ran for help. Now the same gang, the family believes, has taken their youngest.
‘I was out of the house,’ said Wafa. ‘Ali had gone to a shop. When he didn’t come back we feared the worst. We checked the hospitals and police stations. And then we had a call. They said they had him. That he was sick. And that we were not to call the police or make a fuss.’
Wafa did call the police — and when the kidnappers called back, after midnight, they knew that she had. That was on 13 February, the last time they heard from the gang before their son’s clothes were dumped at the door.
In the central Saadoun police station, the case is one of five such being handled by First Lieutenant Hadi Mahdi. He has a theory to explain the sudden surge in kidnappings that began last autumn, forcing the police to post officers at schools. Most families settle without police intervention.
‘In the chaos after the war there were a lot of robberies and particularly carjackings. Now that police are much more visible on the streets, the gangs have turned from carjacking to kidnapping,’ he explains. ‘Stealing a child is a safer bet.’
For Wafa Fadhil there is some hope that her child may be rescued. In recent weeks Mahdi and his colleagues have — as they put it — liberated two children. But not without a cost.
Rafi Imad Jabra is 11. He was rescued on 16 February after being held for seven days in a chicken cage in a house in the Al Ameen district. During his captivity he was raped by one of his abductors.
Rafi was playing in the street when he was seized by four men in a Toyota Corolla.
Like many targets of abduction in Baghdad, Rafi is a Christian, whose father owns a liquor store. The Christians, so the gangs have rationalised, lack the tribal bonds binding many Iraqis and are thus a safer target from revenge.
Rafi was fortunate that a local charity, the Society for Saving the Children of Iraq, found someone who had seen the abduction and who could identify the men. Police were led finally to an alleyway with houses owned by two brothers.
‘We found the boy handcuffed and hidden in a chicken cage that had been covered with sheets to disguise it,’ said Mahdi. ‘The gang fired on us as we broke in to get the boy, and we were forced to fire back. It must have been terrifying for him. When we got him he just kept trying to sit down. He couldn’t stand.’
In this deeply conservative society, what has shocked the police as much as the kidnapping is that there were women in the house.
‘We sat Rafi on one of our cars where everyone could see him and let him fire one of our guns in the air,’ said Mahdi. ‘Then we gathered the neighbours and told them that these women had allowed a kidnapped boy to be hidden there and it was shameful. We said to the women: ”How could you allow a boy to be treated like this and deprive his parents of him?” I said we were now taking their sons away from them for a long time.’
The wider involvement of women is part of a worrying new pattern in crime in Iraq. They are used by the same gangs, say police, to carry out surveillance of kidnap targets.
Hassan Jamal, the director of the society that provided the tip-off that led to Rafi’s release, is concerned that children are not only being kidnapped for money, but that some are being seized for sexual exploitation.
‘There are hotels we have heard of where children are being held for sex,’ he said. ‘We are involved with the police in investigating gangs involved in that.’
For Wafa Fadhil, Ali’s kidnapping has convinced her of one thing: ‘When we get him back I am taking my family and I am leaving here. I will go to Syria or Lebanon. But I will not stay in Iraq.’ – Guardian Unlimited Â