Twenty years after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, much of the conflict and sectarian bloodletting it unleashed has subsided
BAGHDAD -- Nawal Sweidan quietly folded her son’s clothes and straightened the bedsheets in his room as she always used to do when he was out at work or at university. She still does it regularly, even though he hasn’t been home for almost 10 years since he was taken away by militiamen.
Her son Safaa vanished in late July 2014. At around 1:30 a.m., just days before the holy month of Ramadan was to end and holiday celebrations were to begin, a group of men showed up at the family’s doorstep and asked for Safaa, a law student and postal carrier in his early 20s.
“They told us they just wanted to question him and will return him soon,” Sweidan said.
Twenty years after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, much of the conflict and sectarian bloodletting it unleashed has subsided. But those years left a legacy of thousands of people — or perhaps tens of thousands, like Safaa — who went missing, and their families feel forgotten as they seek answers about their loved ones’ fates. As it tries to turn the page on Iraq’s troubled past, the government has not established a commission to look into the missing — in part, rights workers say, because politicians are intertwined with armed groups involved in kidnappings and killings.
Sweidan’s hometown, Mahmoudiya, was repeatedly an epicenter of sectarian violence over the past two decades. Situated along the main road that Shiite pilgrims take to reach the holy city of Karbala, it is a mixed town of Sunnis and Shiites. Residents say they generally coexisted before the 2003 invasion that toppled dictator Saddam Hussein.
Post-2003, it became part of the notorious “Triangle of Death” as Sunni and Shiite extremist groups targeted each other’s communities with vicious killings and Sunni al-Qaida insurgents attacked American forces. Sweidan’s daughter was killed in 2004 by a roadside bomb that tore through the town’s marketplace.
Safaa disappeared amid another wave of sectarian reprisals and tit-for-tat kidnappings in 2014. At the time, the Islamic State group surged nearby and seized areas as close as 20 kilometers (12 miles) from Mahmoudiya, bringing a backlash from Shiite militias. Sweidan’s family are Sunnis, and while Sweidan would not comment on who took her son, one relative said she believes it was Shiite militiamen.
For years, Sweidan looked through prisons across several cities and spoke to officials and whoever might give her clues. Whenever news came of prisoners being released after doing time, Sweidan would rush to the prison to see if her son was among them.
“Everywhere I looked, he just wasn’t there,” she said, struggling to hold back her tears. “So I’ve sat quietly ever since and decided to leave it in God’s hands.”
Sweidan’s next-door neighbor, Nidal Ali, is Shiite and faces the same pain. Her son Ammar was kidnapped around the same time.