The latest victim is Air Force Brigadier General Karim Kasim Mahmoud, shot dead Monday morning in Bakuba, 55 kilometers northeast of Baghdad. His friends blame the killing on increasingly proactive Shiite death squads.
"Since the Ibrahim Al-Jaafari government came into power, there have been carefully planned assassinations of former senior officers of the army, police, and security forces," General Abu Muhammad, a former high-ranking foreign ministry official in Saddam's government, said.
He said Shiite militiamen had blacklists and had recently begun targeting air force officers, especially those who took part in the raid on oil facilities on the Iranian island of Khark during the Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988). In those years, Mahmoud was the commander of an air base in the southern Iraqi city of An Nasiriyah. Mirage 2000 warplanes deployed there were used in the airstrike on Khark's oil storage facilities. That devastating attack is believed to have prompted Iran's spiritual leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, to start cease-fire negotiations.
The former senior officers of Saddam's army are not the only ones being targeted by Shiite death squads. Ex-members of the Baath Party, imams of Sunni mosques who are calling for an end to Iraq's occupation, academics, and even doctors are also in danger of being assassinated.
Representatives of Iraq's Sunni community, which formed the bulk of Saddam's government, say the Badr Brigade, an armed wing of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution, is behind the assassinations. During Saddam's reign, this Shiite party was in exile in neighboring Iran.
"Badr is fully responsible for these killings," said Kharis ad-Dari, head of the Committee of Islamic (Sunni) Scientists.
Badr responded to the accusation, saying, "Such statements are aimed at instigating a civil war to materialize the dream of [Iraqi Al-Qaeda leader Abu Musab] Zarkawi and members of the former Saddam regime."
It would be wrong to assume, however, that only Sunnis are blacklisted. Lists threatening Shiite "traitors and collaborationists" with reprisals are also out there. They can be found posted, for instance, in Baghdad's Dora neighborhood, currently controlled by the rebels.
Iraq's Shiites say they are the targets of explosions routinely staged by Sunni insurgents. This gives the Iraqi authorities grounds to classify the current hostilities as warfare. "What is happening in Iraq today is a full-scale war," Iraqi government spokesman Layth Kubbah said.
