Infernal Triangle by Paul McGeough

Author:Paul McGeough
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: War on Terrorism, Journalists, General, 2003, 2001, Middle East, Iraq War, Afghan War, 2001-2009, History
ISBN: 9781742375632
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Published: 2012-03-31T22:00:00+00:00

Of all the savage stories of the twenty-month-long Iraqi insurgency, the story of how a young disabled boy was turned into a human bomb is one of the cruellest. His mother is unable to forgive herself for mistaking the intentions of the strangers whose promises of help for her desperately poor family ultimately led her nineteen-year-old son to his fate as a weapon in the war against America.

Fatima al-Zubaidi thinks long and hard. She stares into a darkened corner of her tiny room—but she methodically examines every last minute of her unfortunate son’s life. It is night-time in Baghdad’s Al-Askan quarter, and Fatima, 45, huddles on a cold floor, shrouded in black. Grief and guilt tear at her but, between bouts of quiet sobbing, she finds a firm voice to answer difficult questions.

She is trying to remember, with hindsight, if anything in her teenage son’s behaviour might have hinted that he was being trained for a terrorist mission against his own people. Her strength is ebbing and, as she bites her finger, she finally whispers: ‘No. I don’t think so.’

Amar Ahmed Mohammed, a Shiite who had Down’s syndrome, was a perfect target for the ruthless men of the insurgency. Unable to speak, because of the severity of the condition, he could not tell anyone he was being groomed for death; and, well-known from his daily wandering in local streets, he was beyond suspicion as he tried to penetrate tight election-day security with explosives under his coat.

While the family buried his broken body in the shrine city of Najaf last week, a relative speculated to me that Amar’s abduction was an opportunistic snatch by total strangers from the insurgency while his parents were a couple of blocks away, celebrating their new-found right to vote at a family lunch. But, in an interview yesterday, the mother revealed the veiled brutality of an elaborately planned seduction, in which her family was made to believe Amar finally had found benefactors who could dramatically improve his lousy lot in life.

As the insurgents planned their campaign for the day of the Iraqi elections, it was clear the security shutdown would hinder the use of their weapon of choice, the suicide bomb. But a young boy known to neighbours and locals could wander the streets without attracting attention. And so it was that Amar’s fate was sealed. He was preyed upon to turn him, unknowingly, into a human bomb.

The family spent the last twelve years of Saddam Hussein’s rule on the run because Fatima’s 50-year-old husband, Ahmed, was an army deserter. They fled to Baghdad from the southern city of Basra but, without local residency papers, Ahmed was unable to find work. Six years ago they found this room and opened a tiny shop at the front window; well-meaning local traders advanced them stock.

Accustomed to living on charity, they were not entirely surprised when, ten days before the election, two men got out of a car that pulled into their alley to announce that they were from the local Sunni mosque and they wanted to help Amar.

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