Crime Wave Adds to Iraq Post-War Woes

Out of the blazing heat of a Baghdad lunchtime, three young men walked into a gold merchant’s shop in the capital’s bustling Karrada district.

One pulled a gun, shot the owner dead, and the three grabbed all the jewelry on display before escaping through streets jammed with traffic.

It was the most serious incident yet in a growing crime wave that is adding to Iraq’s post-Gulf War social and economic woes and that President Saddam Hussein has just publicly acknowledged for the first time.

In some world cities, the murder of a gold merchant may not have attracted much attention. But in Iraq, traditionally a land of little crime and where a powerful security apparatus has operated for years, it was an aberration meriting splash treatment in the national press. Police said they had quickly caught two of the three suspects.

Hussein told a meeting of his ruling Baath Party recently that there had been a breakdown of law and order in some parts of the country since the Gulf War.

With its economy weakening daily under the grip of a 13-month-old U.N. trade embargo, the effects of Iraq’s seizure of Kuwait and subsequent expulsion are spreading through society like a shock wave.

Begging was little known until recently in a country where ample staple food for all was imported and sold at heavily subsidized prices.

But food supplies are drying up, prices have skyrocketed and beggars, often young mothers clutching infants, are now a frequent sight on the streets of Baghdad.

Many Iraqis, distrustful of banks, keep gold, jewelry and cash at home, particularly old pre-Gulf War notes, which are less likely to be forgeries.

New 25-, 50- and 100-dinar bills were issued after the August, 1990, invasion of Kuwait as prices started to rise. But there have been a large number of forgeries, and every establishment with a cash register has a long list of the serial numbers of known fakes.

Stolen cars are often driven over the border to Iran or Turkey, where they are sold for dollars--the currency of a burgeoning black market that authorities seem powerless to control despite a call by Hussein to stamp out “the profiteers and criminals who are taking advantage of the poor and needy.”

Iraq has some of the toughest penalties for crime in the world, with thieves facing life imprisonment or even death.

Recently, Iraq’s Supreme Court discussed whether to drop prosecutions of homeowners who kill burglars within their premises. But the penalties seem to have little effect.

“The amount of work is huge. We’re not used to dealing with 20 to 30 burglaries a night,” said a police officer working in one district of this sprawling city of 5 million.

Some Baghdad residents say economic necessity is not the only cause of the growing crime wave. They say there has been a general decline in standards of behavior since the systematic sacking of Kuwait last year and the appearance of truckloads of looted goods and cars in Baghdad.

One luggage shop off the city’s Rashid Street still has a large display of brightly colored shoulder bags bearing the words “I love Kuwait.”

Others say a major factor is the hopeless future faced by growing numbers of young men in their 20s and 30s. Discharged from the military, where many have spent most of the last 11 years fighting in one war or another, they have no qualifications, no money and no prospect of work.