- BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Since
guerrillas used donkeys to outwit the high-tech defenses of the U.S. military
in Iraq, the life of the beast of burden has never been so miserable.
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- Attackers used donkey carts to launch Katyusha rockets
at the Oil Ministry and two fortified Baghdad hotels Friday. Two other
donkey carts were stopped -- one carrying more rockets, the other a donkey-bomb
wired up with explosives.
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- Every donkey in Baghdad is suddenly under suspicion as
President Bush wages a global war on terror.
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- In a crackdown on an animal that already suffers multiple
daily whippings, U.S. soldiers with automatic rifles regularly stop and
search donkey carts for weapons.
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- Donkey owners say petrol stations have been refusing
to sell them kerosene for resale since the rocket attacks. The animals
salivate and wheeze with exhaustion as they pull their owners and heavy
loads across the potholed streets of the Iraqi capital in a desperate search
for kerosene.
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- "I have five daughters to feed. I used to make 7,000
dinars ($3.50) a day. Now I earn only 2,000 since the Americans started
pressuring us after the rocket attacks," said Jabar Mahdi.
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- "We ask the petrol station managers for kerosene
and they refuse. What did we do to get treated like this?"
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- NO RESPECT
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- Even before the rocket attacks, donkey cart drivers were
some of the least respected people in Iraq, living on the fringes of society
in teeming slums.
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- Some fear Iraqis will now look down on them even more
as they navigate their battered, bloodstained donkeys through chaotic traffic.
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- "When they see us ride by they call us terrorists.
They accuse us of being Saddam's guerrillas and causing all of the security
problems in Iraq," said Hikmat Sabeeh, 30.
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- "We had nothing to do with the rocket attacks."
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- The attacks could not have come at a worse time for donkey
cart owners, who can barely afford to buy newspapers to read about the
rockets and bombs that have shaken Baghdad.
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- U.S. troops are pounding the country in major operations
designed to root out guerrillas who have killed 185 of their comrades since
Washington declared major combat over on May 1.
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- They are not taking any chances so donkey owners fear
getting caught up in a security crisis in postwar Iraq.
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- Ali Kathim woke up two days after the rocket attacks
to find his donkey was missing.
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- "My friends said they saw the Americans take my
donkey away," he said. "I have not been able to work for four
days. I just sit around. I don't know if I will get the donkey back."
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- Donkeys are not alone. Horses also face new checks.
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- "The Americans always check our horse carriages.
Every time we ride around they stop us and check our wooden boxes for weapons,"
said Ali Hassan, in the muddy streets of the Sadr City slum, as horse owners
bought kerosene among piles of rotten garbage swarming with flies.
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