COMMENTARY BY BANADIR.COM April 14, 2003

The world watched with horror the large scale of looting and maiming in Baghdad and other towns in Iraq that would be unacceptable elsewhere except by the Somali warlords and their demon militia gunmen.

Like Somalia, there are the good (the innocent civilians) the bad (those by-standers who do nothing to stop the looting spree) and the demons (the looters who will stop at nothing to steal anything that’s not nailed down).

And like Somalia, there’s total chaos and anarchy with no holds barred. The Looters smashed hundreds of irreplaceable treasures at the National Museum of Antiquities, including Sumerian clay pots, Assyrian marble carvings, Babylonian statues and massive stone tablet with intricate cuneiform writings. “If five American soldiers were at the door, everything would have been fine,” lamented Nabhal Amin, the museum’s deputy director.

Like Mogadishu, throngs of angry and impoverished Iraqis ransacked government offices, banks and private businesses. An avalanche of worthless banknotes and coins are scattered on the streets in front of the main banks, another shade of Mogadishu’s banks, which prompted me to write this comparison. I can’t forget the sight. Today the Iraqi Dinar is as worthless as the Somali shilling. Like the Somalis, the Iraqis are using them as confetti! “We were ready for the bombs. Not the looters,” Nabhal Amin told reporters from the Washington Post newspaper.

But what about the US Marines and other American servicemen who now occupy Iraq under the banner of “freeing the Iraqi people from a repressive regime?”

The answer given by Centcom Generals is that the US Marines are not trained for police work and that they are busy pursuing the remnants of Saddam Hussein’s Special Republican Guards who continually engage suicide car bombs against the Marines at checkpoints, Hamas-style. Other top Pentagon officials say the looting is a bent up anger against the regime of Saddam Hussein.

Now the vexing question is that if the Americans can’t stop the looting of hospitals, the great historic museum in Baghdad, the banks, hotels and other businesses, who can?

Like Somalia, UN agencies and other NGOs, including the Red Cross, withdrew from Baghdad, citing insecurity. They say “chaos” would be the wrong word to describe the orgy in Iraqi cities with clouds of cordite covering the skies.

But wait a minute. Where is an Iraqi warlord? Yes, he who beats the daylight out of everyone without even so much as a strand of hair getting out of place.

Yes, like Mogadishu, those trapped in Iraq, a long agony is only beginning. They are waiting for the emergence of a bunch of cut-throat warlords, ”godfathers” and arms bazaar, a replica of the sprawling Bakaaraha in Mogadishu, where weapons to arm a whole battalion are on sale at a bargain price.

Let’s hope that the Iraqi people would not follow the same road that destroyed Somalia.