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Red crescent intent on mission

By Susan Taylor Martin
Published December 20, 2006

Iraq is "now in total anarchy," but the Iraqi Red Crescent Society is determined to keep working in Baghdad and elsewhere even as nine employees are still held hostage, the organization's president said Tuesday.

"We have to set a good example for the rest of the world that we are not going to abandon Iraq at this critical moment," said Dr. Said Hakki, a Largo urologist who heads the society, affiliated with the International Committee of the Red Cross.

On Sunday, kidnappers dressed as police stormed the Red Crescent's main Baghdad office, separated men from women and took dozens of men hostage, including some civilians who had come to get free food.

"First they tied their hands and put them in their cars and took them to Sadr City," Hakki said, referring to a poor area of Baghdad controlled by radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. "They were interrogated, and the interrogation got a little bit physical for some of them."

Kidnappers asked the hostages if they were Sunni or Shiite Muslims, and if they had been affiliated with Saddam Hussein's Sunni-dominated Baath Party. "If they were Sunnis, they got more beating," Hakki said.

Most of the hostages were released Monday; five of those still held captive were rumored to have been killed, but as of late Tuesday no bodies had turned up.

The mass kidnappings apparently were carried out by Sadr loyalists, but Hakki called them "thugs" who likely were acting on their own. "We have contacted the high-ranking Sadr people and they know who we are and they respect us," said Hakki, an Iraqi-born Shiite. "But there are different factions and probably this faction is not under their control."

The targeting of the Red Crescent - a neutral aid organization - reflects the chaotic state of a country in which Sunnis and Shiites are attacking each other with impunity.

One of the society's main functions now is distributing tents, food and clothing to hundreds of thousands of people who have fled their homes as Iraq increasingly becomes divided into sectarian enclaves.

The society, which has 100,000 volunteers, has been able to continue working by using Sunni volunteers in Sunni areas and Shiites in Shiite regions.

"We segregate only because of the situation in Iraq," Hakki said from Jordan, on his way back to Baghdad after a brief visit home to Florida. "We do not look at our employees as Sunni or Shiite but as people who want to help."

The Red Crescent forbids its workers to carry weapons, but security will be beefed up around the society's offices, Hakki said. Ambulances and other vehicles will travel in convoys.

But as the only organization of any kind still operating in all parts of Iraq, it is imperative the society continue its ever-widening mission, Hakki said.

"We are literally the only ones doing the job," he said.

Susan Martin can be contacted at susan@sptimes.com.

[Last modified December 20, 2006, 01:07:38]