The recent spate of kidnappings in Iraq, 58 since the beginning of April, has sent a chill through the community of foreigners still living and working in the country. Some hostages have been snatched out of cars. Others have been nabbed from their guarded homes. Two weeks ago a group of armed, hooded men–a kidnapping party–roamed through a Baghdad neighborhood asking residents, “Where are the Jews?” Those claiming responsibility have used names like the Mujahedin Brigades or Brigades of the Hero Martyr Sheik Ahmad Yassin, but the real identity of the kidnappers, and how they may be linked, is still unclear. So far only one group, the Association of Islamic Clerics, with Kubeisi, 55, acting as point man, has spearheaded a successful drive to get hostages released.
Twelve hours after receiving the late-night phone call, Kubeisi picked up the three Japanese hostages, rattled but unharmed, at a mosque in western Baghdad. Two days later, on Saturday, April 17, two other Japanese hostages were released into his custody. In all 22 hostages, including seven Chinese workers, a French journalist and nine drivers of mixed nationality, have been brought to Kubeisi’s mosque. No direct negotiations have taken place with kidnappers, Kubeisi insists, and no money has changed hands. Instead, he says, kidnappers have heeded a religious call issued by the association on April 10, stating that hostage taking is against Islamic law. The message was disseminated through clerics at regional offices around Iraq. “We are well respected, particularly in western Iraq,” says Kubeisi, decked out in a gray cloak and a white turban, leaning forward to make his point. “The hostages who were released were taken by the resistance. They never ask for ransom. The only thing they want is to free their people in Fallujah.” Kubeisi and his fellow clerics are also worried about the ongoing U.S. military campaign in the city: the association called on worshipers to bring aid to the Um al-Qura mosque in the past three weeks and has sent more than 50 trucks of medical supplies and food.
Rescuing foreigners wouldn’t seem to be Kubeisi’s calling. Though persecuted by the Baathist regime, he does not support U.S. efforts in Iraq. In fact, after he helped form the Association of Islamic Clerics, a Sunni body, in April of last year, he became an outspoken critic of the occupation. “The Americans are also kidnappers,” Kubeisi says matter-of-factly. “Look at how many Iraqis they’ve detained with no consideration for their rights.” U.S. soldiers in the hands of insurgents are not hostages, he says; they are POWs and should be treated according to the Geneva Convention. In early March he met with a representative of Moqtada al-Sadr, the radical Shiite cleric who has stoked an armed insurgency against Coalition forces, to organize a mass anti-occupation rally of both Shiites and Sunnis in Baghdad. Dr. Hajim al-Hassani, one of the Iraqi Governing Council’s mediators in Fallujah, sees Kubeisi as a fringe player who uses inflammatory rhetoric. “I wouldn’t take [Kubeisi] anywhere,” he says. “The way he talks is not the right way to talk at this difficult time.”
But it is this criticism that has likely earned Kubeisi and his fellow clerics some leverage with kidnappers, particularly Islamist groups. Kubeisi explains that French journalist Alexandre Jordanov appears to have been handed over from members of a nationalist group to Saddam supporters and eventually to an Islamist group, which brought him to the mosque. The Association of Islamic Clerics “has a spiritual, emotional impact on at least some groups in the resistance,” says Wamidh Nadhmi, a political-science professor at Baghdad University. For now, Kubeisi may be the best shot some hostages have.
