BAGHDAD — The Iraqi Interior Ministry ordered police Tuesday to begin rounding up beggars, homeless and mentally disabled people from the streets of Baghdad and other cities to prevent insurgents from using them as suicide bombers.
The decision, which elicited concern from advocates for the mentally disabled, came nearly three weeks after twin suicide bombings against pet markets. Officials said those blasts were carried out by mentally disabled women who may have been unwitting attackers.
The U.S. military and the Iraqi government have claimed that Sunni insurgents led by al-Qaeda in Iraq are increasingly trying to use Iraq’s most vulnerable populations as suicide bombers to avoid raising suspicions or being searched at checkpoints that guard access to many markets, neighborhoods and bridges in the capital.
The people detained in the Baghdad sweep will be handed over to social welfare institutions and psychiatric hospitals that can provide shelter and care for them, Interior Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf said.
However, it is not clear that such people would be safe in psychiatric hospitals. American and Iraqi troops recently detained the acting director of the al-Rashad psychiatric hospital in eastern Baghdad on suspicion of helping supply patient information to al-Qaeda in Iraq.
The U.S. military has linked the insurgents’ willingness to use women or children as suicide bombers with their attempts to bounce back from losses in recent U.S.-led offensives.
The military said this week that attacks across Iraq have dropped more than 60 percent in the year since a joint campaign to cut down their influence began last February. But U.S. commanders have warned that al-Qaeda in Iraq is a resilient foe and acknowledged they have been unable to stop the group’s signature suicide attacks.
Women often aren’t searched at checkpoints because of a dearth of female guards. As a result, police said 1,000 female officers will be deployed among the pilgrims massing in the Shiite holy city of Karbala for a major pilgrimage next week.
Laurie Ahern, the associate director of Washington, D.C.-based Mental Disability Rights International, expressed concern that Iraqi authorities might be casting “an awful wide net.”
She noted that insurgents were recruiting women and children in increasing numbers — but said no one should suggest detaining them.
“To round up a group of people based on a disability . . . I’m not sure that’s the best way to handle the situation,” Ahern said.
