They came for Nabras Hamid just after sunset, one car blocking the entrance to Dabbash street, the other two stopping outside his shop. Witnesses did not hear the gunmen say anything before opening fire. There was no need. Hamid’s crime was self-evident: he was a barber.
In Baghdad these days that is enough to warrant assassination. Dozens of barbers have been murdered in the past year and the tempo appears to be increasing, with more than 10 reported killed in recent weeks.
”A note was put under my door telling me to quit but I won’t. I keep an AK with me at the shop now,” Abu Sajjad (66) a colleague of Hamid, said on Wednesday.
Different groups are believed to be responsible for the attacks but they use the same excuse: shaving beards and giving western-style haircuts is haram — forbidden — under Islam.
Notes stamped with crossed swords and a logo — ”Our swords are thriving for the neck of barbers” — have warned them to cease such practices and to put up notices in their windows announcing the fact. Those who refuse are visited by masked men who repeat the threat at gunpoint.
Security forces have had little success beyond parading one alleged barber-killer, an officer in Saddam Hussein’s old army, on television.
There is a dispute over whether Hamid (21) newly married and with a pregnant wife, received such a warning. His mother, a beauty salon owner who encouraged him to become a barber, told friends he was not threatened.
The manner of his killing last month in the northern suburb of Huriya was typical. The gunmen shot a customer, a university student, in the shoulder. The family said he died but locals suspect he survived and is now in hiding.
A few days after that attack, again at sunset, two cars stopped outside the shop of Abdul Raham Saddam in the southern suburb of New Baghdad. Gunmen killed the barber and at least one customer before blowing up the shop, according to police.
Officials at Baghdad’s morgue said six barbers from Sh’ab, a town north of the capital, were killed last month. Two barbers in Baghdad’s Adhamiya district were gunned down two weeks ago, according to residents.
The more detailed threats have warned against doing a French-style haircut called the ”carré” and doing what Iraqis call the hiffafa, in which a length of thread is used to extract fine hairs on the cheek for a closer shave.
Similar incidents were reported in Afghanistan under the Taliban and in Fallujah, a city west of Baghdad, when it was controlled by Islamist radicals last year.
Many shops in the capital now have signs in the window stating they do not perform haram practices. Some barbers continue to do so in clandestine home visits but others, like Sajjad, carry on as before.
”I’ve been in this business for 50 years. I’m not scared,” he said. Some clients have asked him to put up a sign to give the impression he has heeded the warnings, for their safety as much as his.
Arthin Barsun (63) head of the barbers’ union in Karrada district, said he was considering emigrating to Syria or Jordan. ”We cannot afford guards,” he shrugged.
Women’s beauty salons have also been targeted. Three were blown up in Doura, causing no casualties but prompting the rest of the neighbourhood’s salons to close, said one owner, Um Marwan. ”This is not about Islam. It’s about terrorising the people. Close a salon and everybody in the area hears about it. It’s another way to keep people indoors.”
Her view is gaining ground. Some of the barbers targeted recently had apparently obeyed the insurgents’ edicts, prompting colleagues to wonder if religion was a pretext for violence which perpetuated the sense of insecurity.
”Everybody goes to the barber. Hit him and you hit the community; it is an effective way to spread fear,” said Abdul Sahib, a union official. – Guardian Unlimited Â