Religious vigilantes strike fear in Iraqi town (Feature)

By dpa correspondents Aug 16, 2010, 3:06 GMT

Nasiriyah, Iraq - Simply wearing jeans, listening to pop music or having too much fun in the southern Iraqi city of Nasiriyah now can can elicit the wrath of self-appointed religious vigilantes.

The Islamist vigilantes, wearing black hoods to conceal their identity, seize phones containing pop music or 'immoral' pictures. They punish those wearing Western clothes. A trendy haircut can also land a youngster in trouble.

Anonymous and unofficial by nature, it is not clear who backs the groups - who give themselves sinister names such as The Sword of Righteousness, The Promotion of Virtue, or Men of the Sword.

These unofficial patrols come out at night and accost people they deem to be in violation of strict Islamic rules.

Around the city, people speak of punishments meted out, ranging from warnings and confiscations of items, to the use of swords.

These clandestine vice squads in the otherwise peaceful city of Nasiriyah have sparked fear in the local population.

'We are more and more concerned, especially us women,' said Kawthar Kadhim, a 44-year-old civil servant.

She says her independence has been lost as she now feels scared to go on trips around town unaccompanied.

'We go home with our husbands after work, and we rarely go shopping or to public parks,' Kadhim said.

For many residents, the new wave of armed vigilantes marks a return to more worrisome days. Militias who ran the streets since 2006 finally disappeared about two years ago as government forces took over security.

A majority Shiite city, which lies around 370 kilometres southeast of Baghdad, Nasiriyah was a major battleground in the US-led occupation of Iraq in 2003. While militias ruled the roost for several years, the city has seen little major armed conflict in recent times.

Some of the restrictions imposed by the vice squads echo those of neighbouring Iran, where personal freedoms have been curtailed in the name of religious virtue since the Islamic revolution in 1979.

Police forces have now begun reacting to tip-offs about the masked men, and arrested some of those believed to be behind the vigilante movements.

'Security forces arrested around 44 suspects who belonged to the Promotion of Virtue group during three separate raids,' announced Sajad Sherhan al-Asadi, head of the security committee on the local council of Nasiriyah, recently.

Seven confessed to belonging to the squads and were sent to the interior ministry department that deals with internal terrorism suspects, al-Asadi said.

Struggles between political parties for dominance, compounded by the stalemate in central government following inconclusive elections in March, have - inevitably - led to conspiracy theories.

Some whisper that the 'virtue squads' are actually meant to endear the police to the local population at a time when they are increasingly disillusioned with national politics.

'I think somebody in the city wants to distract us with this phenomenon so that we do not think about the delay in the formation of the new government,' said Raad al-Zuheiri, aged 41.

Others contend that the nighttime patrols are a fabrication.

'Statements by some security officials and political blocs are far from reality ... promoting such phenomenon is media propaganda,' said Hamid al-Ghozi, the local head of a political party close to the radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

Major General Sabah al-Fatlawi, director of the Nasiriyah police, said that at least one person recently arrested in connection to running a morality patrol was actually connected to the authorities.

'He is a police officer and led the group with the pretext of promoting virtue and prevention of vice,' al-Fatlawi said.