Fate of Iraq Education Ministry abductees remains unclear

Some have been released, but reports conflict on how many. Kidnappings highlight threat to Iraqi academics.

By Arthur Bright  | csmonitor.com

At least some victims of Tuesday's mass kidnapping in Baghdad have been freed, but the situation is still largely unclear as reported figures for both the number kidnapped and the number released vary dramatically.

The Los Angeles Times writes that despite early reports of over 70 abductions, the government says only 39 were kidnapped from the Higher Education Ministry building, located across the Tigris River from the high-security Green Zone.

[Government spokesman Ali Dabbagh said Wednesday morning that] a total of 39 were kidnapped: five visitors to the office, 16 staff and 18 guards.

He confirmed earlier reports that 20 were released by Tuesday evening and said 17 more were freed overnight. The whereabouts of two remained unknown, and he did not say who they were.

Dabbagh said the Interior Ministry had been arresting suspects in various locations, leading to freedom for some of the abductees. He said the U.S. military also was involved in the investigation.

CNN reports similiar statements from the Iraqi government, but adds that "on Wednesday, an emergency police official in the Iraqi capital said no more than 20 people had been released."

The confusion over how many have been freed is likely compounded by the uncertainty over how many there are. The Associated Press writes that the number reported by government officials has ranged from 45 to 150. AP reports that while the 150 number "appears to have been inflated," lower figures were equally suspect as they "included only employees known to have been at work in the building and did not count an unknown number of people in the offices on business."

The mass abduction took place Tuesday when gunmen dressed in Iraqi police uniforms and driving Interior Ministry vehicles entered the building's compound, reports The New York Times.

Witnesses said as many as 50 gunmen arrived at the Ministry of Higher Education compound at midmorning, forced their way past a handful of guards and stormed through a four-story building, herding office workers, visitors and even a delivery boy outside at rifle point. After women were separated, the men were loaded aboard a fleet of more than 30 pickup trucks and two larger trucks, then driven away through heavy traffic toward mainly Shiite neighborhoods on the city's eastern edge, officials and witnesses said.

Reuters reports that the gunmen appeared to be targeting Sunnis.

One witness, a civil servant at the Office of Delegations and Cultural Relations at the Higher Education Ministry, said he stepped out briefly and returned to see dozens of gunmen in uniforms separating Shi'ite men from their Sunni colleagues. They then drove off with mostly Sunnis aboard their vehicles.

Senior officials insisted people from both Muslim sects were taken, however, and Shi'ites were among distraught relatives who gathered at the scene for news of kidnapped family members.

"They were checking identity cards in the car park," the civil servant said. "They picked only the Sunni employees. They even took the man who was just delivering tea," said the man, a Sunni himself who is well known to a Reuters employee but did not want to be identified for fear of retribution.

The witness added that he saw "two police patrols watching, doing nothing." The Guardian reports that the government arrested five Iraqi police officers in connection with the raid.

Major General Jalil Khalaf, the interior ministry spokesman, said those arrested included the police chief for Karrada. Also held were the commander of the police brigade in charge of the area and three other officers, he added. The gunmen were wearing interior ministry commando uniforms specifically designed to prevent counterfeiting.

Reuters reports that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki felt the incident was a dispute between militias. He said in a televised appearance that "What happened was not terrorism, rather it was due to dispute and conflict between militias from one side or another." However, AP writes that some believe the kidnapping to be "retribution for the abduction three days earlier of 50 Shiite passengers who were snatched off minibuses by Sunni gunmen" 20 miles outside of Baghdad. Ten of the passengers were killed.

Regardless of the motive, the kidnapping highlights the vulnerability of Iraq's academic community. The San Fransisco Chronicle reports that "More than 100 academics – more than 180, by some estimates – have been slain since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, and 40 percent of Iraq's professional class has fled the country since that year, according to an estimate by the Brookings Institution."

Abdul Sattar Jawad, former editor of the defunct Baghdad Mirror and onetime dean at two universities in Baghdad, blamed Shiite militiamen for the harassment and threats that drove him from Iraq last year.

"This is the rule of the militias, the mob, the riffraff of people. They don't like education, they don't like intellectuals," Jawad, now a fellow at Duke University, said from North Carolina. "And now the campuses are overruled by the firebrand clerics, by the religious militias."

Kamran Bokhari of the security consulting group Stratfor adds that political factors also need to be considered when examining the abductors' motives.

While the attack's planners may have used sectarianism and anti-intellectual religious motivation to rally their troops, Bokhari said, Tuesday's attack fits neatly into the larger political struggles defining Iraq and the region.

In that context, he said, the ministry building may have been selected simply because it presented a target of opportunity -- less defended than the police stations and bases that have been under constant attack.

"To me, it seems like the perpetrators are trying to send a message that we can escalate this," he said. "It is one side telling the other that if we don't reach a conclusion here, some kind of settlement, nobody is going to be safe -- and here's a sample of it."