Among the varied armed security men on Baghdad’s streets these days, you cannot miss the police commandos. In combat uniforms, bulletproof vests and wrap-around sunglasses or ski masks, they muscle through Baghdad’s traffic jams in police cars or camouflage- painted pickup trucks, clearing nervous drivers from their path with shouted commands and the occasional gunshot in the air.
The commandos are part of the Iraqi security forces that the Bush administration says will gradually replace American troops in this war. But the commandos are being blamed for a wave of kidnappings and executions around Baghdad since the spring. One such group, the Volcano Brigade, is operating as a death squad – under the influence or control of Iraq’s most potent Shiite factional militia, the Iranian- backed Badr Organization, say Iraqi government officials and Baghdad residents.
In the past six months, Badr has heavily infiltrated the Interior Ministry under which the commandos operate, the sources said. Badr also was accused of running the secret Interior Ministry prison raided Sunday by US troops.
About 2am on August 23, men in Volcano Brigade uniforms and trucks rolled into the streets of Dolay, a mixed Sunni-Shiite neighborhood of western Baghdad, residents say.
“I got a call from my cousins” around the corner, said Ahmed Abu Yusuf, 33, an unemployed Sunni. “They told me to stay hidden because the Volcano were in the streets, arresting Sunnis.”
For three hours, the raiders burst into Sunni homes, handcuffed dozens of men and loaded them into vans. They ended the assault and drove out of the neighborhood just before the dawn call to prayer, Abu Yusuf said.
Two days later and 145 kilometers away, residents of the desert town of Badrah, near the Iranian border, found the bodies of 36 of the men in a gully, their hands still bound and their skulls shattered by bullets.
Two were the cousins who had phoned him the warning, Abu Yusuf said.
The Volcano Brigade’s commander, Bassem Gharawi, has denied his force committed the massacre. But Shiites and Sunnis close to the unit – some of them high-ranking security officials – said the Volcano Brigade was involved on its own or with the Badr militia.
These days, the streets of Dolay and adjoining neighborhoods look like battle zones. Many Sunni businesses, including the tire repair shop once run by Abu Yusuf’s cousins, never open. Remaining Sunnis have closed off their streets with barricades of logs, debris and razor wire. At night, neighbors stand guard with assault rifles. NEWSDAY