Cafes shut, sports fields empty as war returns to Iraq

(Ahlul Bayt News Agency) - In an evening in late June, Yasir al-Nuaimi draped an Iraqi flag over his shoulder and headed out to watch a soccer match being shown on television at a cafe in western Baghdad. The 20-year-old told his mother to pray for his team to win.Later that night a bomb hidden inside a grocery bag tore through the cafe where he and other football fans had gathered to watch the Iraqi national youth team play against Egypt.One minute the men were cheering for their team and the next screaming in terror and pain, witnesses said.“Why did they kill my young son?” Yasir’s father Ahmed said. In tears, he sat in the family home holding Yasir’s Iraqi flag, stiff with his son’s dried blood.“He was only watching a game! They killed me and his mother too, not just him. They broke our hearts.”Iraqis have endured extreme violence for years, but since the since the start of 2013 the intensity of attacks on civilians has dramatically increased, reversing a trend that had seen the country grow more peaceful.Attacks have spread to some of the few places left for public entertainment, turning Baghdad into a giant fortified prison of concrete blast walls, where once again few now dare to socialise in public.The attacks have raised fears of a return to full-blown sectarian conflict in a country where ruling Shias and minority Sunni Muslims and Kurds have yet to find a stable way of sharing power.More than 1,000 Iraqis were killed in July, the highest monthly death toll since 2008, the United Nations said last week.The past four months have all had higher death tolls than any in the five years before April, leading the Interior Ministry to declare last week that Iraq was now once again in “open war”, 18 months after U.S. troops pulled out.Most of the violence has been perpetrated by the Iraqi wing of al Qaeda, the strict Sunni Muslim jihadi group which was defeated by U.S. forces and their allies in 2006-2007 but has been reborn this year to battle the Shia-led government.Strict Islamists of both major sects are hostile both to sport and to cafes where women and men mix in social situations.Sectarian tensions have also escalated as a result of the civil war in neighbouring Syria, where Iraq’s al Qaeda branch has merged with a powerful Sunni Islamist rebel force fighting to overthrow a leader backed by Shia Iran.“Insurgents now are changing rules of the game,” said Ali al-Bahadli, a former Iraqi army general and military analyst who works as an adviser to the Ministry of Defence. “With the recent attacks of cafes and football pitches, the message is directed at civilians is that security forces are unable to protect you.”Security analysts say the Sunni insurgents are targeting cafes and football pitches as a way to undermine the Shia-led government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, wrecking its claims to have restored normal life after a decade of war.Recent bombings have targeted men playing in local soccer fixtures and watching matches, after spates of attacks on Sunni and Shia mosques, markets and the security forces. According to figures from the Interior Ministry, around 37 cafes across Iraq have been attacked since April.People have begun to avoid public places like cafes and busy markets, fearing from bombs and suicide attacks. After an easing of violence in the past few years led places to reopen, many cafes have now closed again after losing customers.“I can endure the hardship of being without work, but I will never forgive myself if a bomb went off and killed innocent people inside my cafe,” said Haider Kadhim, a cafe owner in central Baghdad who decided to close his business down.Going to a cafe has now become the subject of dark humour: “Don’t force me to go to a cafe”, goes the local joke, comparing a trip out for coffee to a death sentence.“With more security measures cutting Baghdad into pieces, attacks on cafes, mosques and sport areas, we feel we’re living deadlocked inside homes,” said ceramics artist Mahir Samarrai, who used to haunt the cafes in eastern Baghdad, where men sip strong coffee, puff on water pipes and discuss the day.Amateur football players are also targets, with dozens killed in recent months.“I used to play football and enjoy hanging out with friends, but now my parents would punish me if they knew I’m still playing in secret,” said 22-year-old Hussain Abid-Ali, from Sadr City, a vast, poor Shia district in northeast Baghdad.His mother has even taken to hiding his training shoes to prevent him from playing at the neighbourhood pitch.“Our eyes are focusing more on what is going on outside the pitch rather than on the ball,” he said. Last time he played, the teams fled the pitch in horror after hearing a blast.The Interior Ministry has stepped up security near soccer pitches, cafes and mosques to try to prevent more attacks. /129