Lovelorn Iraqi Men Call on a Wartime Skill
By ROD NORDLAND
By ROD NORDLAND
BAGHDAD It goes like this: Boy meets girl. They exchange glances and text messages, the limit of respectable courting here. Then boy asks girls father for her hand. Dad turns him down. Boy goes to girls house and plants a bomb out front. The authorities call it a love I.E.D., or improvised explosive device, and it is not just an isolated case. Capt. Nabil Abdul Hussein of the Iraqi national police said that six had exploded in the Dora neighborhood of Baghdad alone in the past year. These guys, they face any problem with their girlfriends, family, anyone, and theyre making this kind of I.E.D., Captain Hussein said. There have been no reported deaths or injuries from the devices used in this way, in Dora or elsewhere. Usually theyre putting them in front of the doors of their houses, not to kill, but to scare them, Captain Hussein said.
Someone needs to teach Iraqi men that no means, no Seriously, what a bunch of selfish, psychopathic entitled bullys they are. :irked: Why on earth would a girls family give her to a nut job who sets off a bomb on their front step? Yeah, that's good son-in-law material. She'll be safe with him. . . NOT!After six years of war, Iraq is a society with a serious anger management problem. That, along with a lot of men with a lot of experience fashioning bombs and setting ambushes, makes for a lethal mix. The police say that many of the men are former insurgents who are no longer trying to kill foreign troops but who have an array of bomb-making skills and a stash of TNT. Even without explosives, a popular type of explosive device can be made from common household items including gasoline, a soda can and a plastic water bottle, with the innards of a cellphone as a remote detonator.Im a detective, and I dont even know how to make one of these, but all these kids do, the captain said. There was a percentage of young men who were cooperating with the Al Qaeda organizations, or the Shia militias. Theyve changed their minds about fighting now, but they still have good experience in how to make I.E.D.s.As in the days when the insurgency raged, it is pretty hard to trace a homemade bomb, of any variety, to its perpetrator. Once a device explodes, forensic evidence pretty much goes up in smoke.