Pressure Eases for Those Forced to Spy

They packed Zuhair Abid Chiad into a cramped space with 60 other prisoners for days. They tied his arms behind his back and yanked them up over his head. They threatened to execute him.

But the real torture for Chiad began when the security agents said they wanted him to sign up as a special friend, a euphemism for informant. His new job would be to spy on relatives, friends and neighbors, then report back to a regime that based its power, in part, on knowing everything and forgetting nothing.

“I, Zuhair Abid Chiad,” read the document he signed, “undertake to be honest and committed to the glorified 17th of July revolution and to the Republic of Iraq and to provide any information connected to the security and the safety of the party and the revolution.”

Sitting recently in the living room of his family’s house, surrounded by relatives and friends, Chiad recalled that day more than a year ago when he signed the document. The collapse of Saddam Hussein’s regime has brought a special sense of relief to the 30-year-old artisan.

“Maybe happiness will come to you for an hour,” he said of his newfound freedom, “but agony and suffering come for years.”

Huge tasks lie ahead in rebuilding Iraq, but part of that process will involve Iraqis confronting their years under Hussein. They are just beginning to examine the ways in which their leaders corrupted them, exploited their natural desire to survive, and, in the end, turned them against one another.

When the regime fell, its victims rushed to the security offices where they were detained for questioning, the jails where they were tortured and the filing cabinets that stored the chronicles of it all. Everything was documented, including the executions and the investigations, all in handwriting, bound with string and straight pins between pieces of colored paper like an arts-and-crafts project.

Despite the innocent look, those files are being scrutinized by former prisoners -- and in some cases destroyed by those with secrets to hide. Amid the public anger and a collective desire for vengeance against the men and women who profited from Hussein’s system, there is mostly pity for men like Chiad.

“These people had two choices,” said Mehdi Sales, 36, a chemical engineer from Baghdad whose two older brothers were executed. “Either they die -- they execute them -- or they sign this paper.”

Chiad’s ordeal began March 19, 2002, when he was working in a carpentry shop in Baghdad. He and his colleagues were listening to a banned religious cassette when the security police barged in. From that moment until the regime fell, Chiad and anyone who crossed his path found themselves caught in the web of Hussein’s security services.

The system was relentless and unforgiving; it never forgot. Long after an accused criminal was hung, shot or tortured, family and friends continued to pay. A student couldn’t attend university because his parents were executed -- when he was 5 months old. Jobs were denied. Medical care limited. Travel abroad banned.

Hussein’s agents grabbed hold of people, of whole families, using whatever leverage they could find to pry their way into their lives. Every arrest was a chance to recruit informants. Every execution a chance to win over a family. The system created a climate of fear and uncertainty. That was the point. It kept people divided.

Said Mohanid, 38, grew up with Chiad in a middle-class neighborhood. They are Shiite Muslims. Their families knew each other for years. But the day Chiad was released from confinement was the day Mohanid could no longer trust him.

“Imagine, Zuhair is a friend and we couldn’t come and say hello after he was released,” Mohanid said. “It became a monitored family and that would cause big problems for me. Deep inside my heart I had fear.”

When he did bump into Chiad in the neighborhood he was always cautious. “He would criticize the regime in front of me after he was released,” Mohanid said, suggesting that his old friend was trying to get him to agree with the criticism so that he could report it. “I always tried to steer the conversation away.”

Shiites, who are a majority of the country, were a special target of the regime, which was dominated by Sunnis, a rival branch of Islam. The Sunnis are a minority in Iraq though a majority in the Islamic world.

Aref Hashem, 23, was 5 months old when his parents were executed. His father, Hashem Abid, was 18 and his mother, Amal, was 17. The authorities said they belonged to Al Dawaa, the banned Shiite political party.

Hashem knew what happened to his father and mother because the authorities treated him as though he had been contaminated by his parents’ purported crime. As a youngster he went to school in a different neighborhood so teachers would not know about his family’s past.

A few years ago, Hashem applied to Al Mustansiriya University, a teaching college in Baghdad. Like all students, he needed a reference from the local Baath Party office for admission. Hashem went to the office and was handed an envelope with a party seal over the flap. He was nervous about what might be inside, so he opened the flap, figuring he could seal it up again later.

The note said: “Observation of Party Headquarters: His father was executed because he was a member of the traitor Al Dawaa Party.”

That was it for Hashem’s dream of attending Al Mustansiriya University.

Omran Hassan Hussein was executed in 1980 for alleged membership in Al Dawaa. His family members were never told if he was dead or alive, and for years the security services tried to co-opt them. In 1986, an agent reported that the family’s “stance is not good to the revolution. The party tried to gain them as members but they refused. Even their behavior and conduct with party members was not good.”

The security forces kept the pressure on with constant visits and intimidation and within a few years started to see results. In 1995, an agent reported that Omran’s brother, Mohammed, “is useful to our security work. We notice this family is conservative and decent.”

In another case, authorities looked at Hussein Mohammed Azawi, a grieving father whose two sons, Dhaher and Mohammed, were taken away in 1983. The brothers were executed for alleged membership in Al Dawaa, and the family was sucked into the system. In 1986 an agent concluded that the family was so poor that a small amount of financial aid would help win its allegiance.

“We can recruit the father of the two executed sons, but it seems that he is an old man and we don’t expect he could submit and provide information for us despite the fact that he is responding positively,” a security agent noted in a report.

Chiad, the Shiite craftsman, and his family survived on the pension his father, Abid Chiad, 78, earned from his 40 years driving a train in Baghdad. As they sat in their house, they recalled the pressure they felt during Zuhair Abid Chiad’s detention.

They had never run afoul of the government before. The family received visits from security agents, and Chiad was supposed to report regularly to his handlers at the security service. He says he never gave them any information, but with his family and friends seated around him, it seemed unlikely he could admit to having turned anyone in.

As Chiad spoke, his relatives and friends seemed embarrassed for their loved one. They said they forgave.

“Of course, we can understand and comprehend such cases,” said Nadhim Abid Chiad, a brother. “We will not consider him a traitor. He is a victim.”