Drizzt
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Associated Press Online
April 23, 2003 Wednesday 2:08 PM Eastern Time
SECTION: INTERNATIONAL NEWS
LENGTH: 796 words
HEADLINE: Iraqis Buying AK-47s for Self-Defense
BYLINE: ELLEN KNICKMEYER; Associated Press Writer
DATELINE: BAGHDAD, Iraq
BODY:
Gunshots heralded what the men in the New Baghdad market were selling Wednesday, among the oranges and the eggs - AK-47s, Beretta submachine guns and Browning 9mms, for as little as $10.
Massive arms caches abandoned by Iraqi forces and cleaned out by scavengers have put automatic weapons in the hands of anyone who covets one, endangering any return to peace and stability in Iraq. Even widows and other peaceful Iraqis are buying AK-47s for self-defense.
"Every Iraqi I'd estimate now has two or three guns. And we will use these guns against Britons and Americans, if they do not go out of Iraq," car mechanic Dhiab Hamad Khaleifa said Wednesday.
He spoke along a dusty roadside at a Kalashnikov market outside Baghdad - an impromptu affair of pickup trucks and men waving assault rifles. Potential customers blasted rounds into the air to test the wares.
The Iraqi military, once the Mideast's largest, simply abandoned its arsenal when officers and other soldiers slipped away ahead of U.S. forces. Looters were quick to appropriate mortars, 50-caliber machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades and guns from abandoned bunkers, trenches and depots.
Policing all those weapons or trying to round them up through amnesty programs could be difficult.
When a nationwide financial scandal drained the savings of Albanians in 1997, enraged citizens there raided army depots and stole an estimated 550,000 weapons, 839 million rounds of ammunition and millions of explosive devices. Six years later, many of those weapons remain unaccounted for, and as many as 150,000 weapons are believed in the hands of ethnic Albanian militants fighting in neighboring Kosovo and Macedonia.
When the Marines entered Baghdad this month, Kalashnikov rifles literally littered the roadsides.
Marines found schools and hospitals stacked to their ceilings with mortar rounds and grenades. Officials of Saddam Hussein's regime had placed the caches in civilian sites to fend off American attacks.
Stockpiles left in populated areas often proved too big for U.S. forces to blow up safely. In many cases, stretched-thin U.S. forces had to leave them.
"Our blood and our money were taken by Saddam, and now we're reclaiming them," said one seller at the roadside market, nine miles west of Baghdad.
An AK-47 in each hand, he hoisted one high, and pointed one down. "Because our money paid for these guns."
Around him, a vendor held aloft a green metal ammo box printed with U.S. military markings. Shoppers and sellers fired rounds. For the benefit of Western reporters, buyers and vendors screamed vows to use the weapons against U.S. soldiers if they stay in Iraq too long.
The scene was the same at bustling New Baghdad market in the center of the Iraqi capital.
Gun merchants took up business on the sidewalks there two weeks ago. Fearful women shopping for their families have abandoned the crowded blocks of stalls and shops - leaving them to riffraff hawking TVs and sports clothes at deep discounts, stolen in the mob pillaging that followed the fall of Baghdad.
Saddam helped broaden trade in guns and other pillaged goods in October when he emptied prisons nationwide - freeing common criminals as well as political detainees.
At the Baghdad market, less than $10 bought a stolen license plate and registration papers for a government vehicle - leaving the buyer the task of locating the vehicle and making away with it.
Men fired into the air with Brownings, and teenage boys jabbed jagged bayonets a fistful at a time to demonstrate their killing effectiveness.
With so many arms on the market, homeowners say they have no choice but to buy weapons. Nightly, Baghdad resounds with duets of AK-47s - families, letting off bursts of automatic weapons to let would-be robbers know they, too, are armed. Widows and elderly retirees privately admit to toting the weapons.
"It's dangerous," said Mosaab Abdul-Wohab, son of an imam at a large northwest Baghdad mosque. He shakes his head at the thought of a city full of stirred-up young men and guns.
Abdul-Wohab's Sunni Muslim mosque, like many across the city, fully recognizes the threat. With neither Iraqi police nor American soldiers yet filling the role, religious communities have stepped in to do their own policing.
Mosque leaders enlist young male worshippers to gather the abandoned Iraqi arms out of schools and houses. "They worked for days, until their backs ached," said Abdul-Wohab, a doctor in general practice.
Religious leaders then called upon U.S. soldier to dispose safely of the wares.
"We were promised by the American forces they will come and take all the weapons ... to collect them and destroy them," Abdul-Wohab said. "But they didn't come. They didn't keep their promise."
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I guess we need to go over there and buy all of them up, to keep the Iraqi children safe.....
April 23, 2003 Wednesday 2:08 PM Eastern Time
SECTION: INTERNATIONAL NEWS
LENGTH: 796 words
HEADLINE: Iraqis Buying AK-47s for Self-Defense
BYLINE: ELLEN KNICKMEYER; Associated Press Writer
DATELINE: BAGHDAD, Iraq
BODY:
Gunshots heralded what the men in the New Baghdad market were selling Wednesday, among the oranges and the eggs - AK-47s, Beretta submachine guns and Browning 9mms, for as little as $10.
Massive arms caches abandoned by Iraqi forces and cleaned out by scavengers have put automatic weapons in the hands of anyone who covets one, endangering any return to peace and stability in Iraq. Even widows and other peaceful Iraqis are buying AK-47s for self-defense.
"Every Iraqi I'd estimate now has two or three guns. And we will use these guns against Britons and Americans, if they do not go out of Iraq," car mechanic Dhiab Hamad Khaleifa said Wednesday.
He spoke along a dusty roadside at a Kalashnikov market outside Baghdad - an impromptu affair of pickup trucks and men waving assault rifles. Potential customers blasted rounds into the air to test the wares.
The Iraqi military, once the Mideast's largest, simply abandoned its arsenal when officers and other soldiers slipped away ahead of U.S. forces. Looters were quick to appropriate mortars, 50-caliber machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades and guns from abandoned bunkers, trenches and depots.
Policing all those weapons or trying to round them up through amnesty programs could be difficult.
When a nationwide financial scandal drained the savings of Albanians in 1997, enraged citizens there raided army depots and stole an estimated 550,000 weapons, 839 million rounds of ammunition and millions of explosive devices. Six years later, many of those weapons remain unaccounted for, and as many as 150,000 weapons are believed in the hands of ethnic Albanian militants fighting in neighboring Kosovo and Macedonia.
When the Marines entered Baghdad this month, Kalashnikov rifles literally littered the roadsides.
Marines found schools and hospitals stacked to their ceilings with mortar rounds and grenades. Officials of Saddam Hussein's regime had placed the caches in civilian sites to fend off American attacks.
Stockpiles left in populated areas often proved too big for U.S. forces to blow up safely. In many cases, stretched-thin U.S. forces had to leave them.
"Our blood and our money were taken by Saddam, and now we're reclaiming them," said one seller at the roadside market, nine miles west of Baghdad.
An AK-47 in each hand, he hoisted one high, and pointed one down. "Because our money paid for these guns."
Around him, a vendor held aloft a green metal ammo box printed with U.S. military markings. Shoppers and sellers fired rounds. For the benefit of Western reporters, buyers and vendors screamed vows to use the weapons against U.S. soldiers if they stay in Iraq too long.
The scene was the same at bustling New Baghdad market in the center of the Iraqi capital.
Gun merchants took up business on the sidewalks there two weeks ago. Fearful women shopping for their families have abandoned the crowded blocks of stalls and shops - leaving them to riffraff hawking TVs and sports clothes at deep discounts, stolen in the mob pillaging that followed the fall of Baghdad.
Saddam helped broaden trade in guns and other pillaged goods in October when he emptied prisons nationwide - freeing common criminals as well as political detainees.
At the Baghdad market, less than $10 bought a stolen license plate and registration papers for a government vehicle - leaving the buyer the task of locating the vehicle and making away with it.
Men fired into the air with Brownings, and teenage boys jabbed jagged bayonets a fistful at a time to demonstrate their killing effectiveness.
With so many arms on the market, homeowners say they have no choice but to buy weapons. Nightly, Baghdad resounds with duets of AK-47s - families, letting off bursts of automatic weapons to let would-be robbers know they, too, are armed. Widows and elderly retirees privately admit to toting the weapons.
"It's dangerous," said Mosaab Abdul-Wohab, son of an imam at a large northwest Baghdad mosque. He shakes his head at the thought of a city full of stirred-up young men and guns.
Abdul-Wohab's Sunni Muslim mosque, like many across the city, fully recognizes the threat. With neither Iraqi police nor American soldiers yet filling the role, religious communities have stepped in to do their own policing.
Mosque leaders enlist young male worshippers to gather the abandoned Iraqi arms out of schools and houses. "They worked for days, until their backs ached," said Abdul-Wohab, a doctor in general practice.
Religious leaders then called upon U.S. soldier to dispose safely of the wares.
"We were promised by the American forces they will come and take all the weapons ... to collect them and destroy them," Abdul-Wohab said. "But they didn't come. They didn't keep their promise."
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I guess we need to go over there and buy all of them up, to keep the Iraqi children safe.....
pretty much sums up the AP...