In March, the al-Furqan Institute for Media Productions issued footage of a group of blindfolded men, kneeling in a shallow ditch, being executed. They were said to be members of a group of 18 Iraqi soldiers and policemen who had been abducted two days earlier while on leave from their units in Diyala province. The group that claimed responsibility, the al Qaeda-led Islamic State of Iraq (ISI), had earlier issued an ultimatum to the Iraqi government: unless its demands were met, all the abductees would be killed within 24 hours. Four of the bodies that were later found had been decapitated.
The group's key demand was the handover of the officers of a public order brigade accused of raping a 20-year-old Sunni woman called Sabreen al-Janabi. In mid-February, Janabi had appeared on Al-Jazeera to describe her ordeal, and the Sunni Arab world went ballistic.
The television interview had been arranged by the Islamic Party of Iraq, the largest Sunni party in parliament, the head of which, Tariq al-Hashemi, is Iraq's vice-president. The story was pitched as an example of how the Shias had gone too far in molesting Sunni honour, as embodied by Janabi. A few days later, the chief of al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, released a video of a speech in which he claimed that "honour has been ruptured, and religion has been desecrated." After hearing about Janabi's rape, he said, "300 native Iraqi fighters have asked to be enrolled in martyrdom operations… 50 of them are from the Janabi tribe, and 20 of those have asked to marry you if you are not already married."
Not to be outdone, the emir of the Islamic Army of Iraq (IAI), the second biggest Sunni insurgent group, put out a speech announcing that his group's operations for the next month would be called "Sabreen's vengeance." Since these pronouncements, the ISI has launched several attacks under the banner of "Avenging Honour," while the IAI has dubbed its campaign "Aiding Our Sisters." Both groups claim to have inflicted hundreds of casualties on US and Iraqi forces.
…and the Shia floozy
But it turns out that there is no Sabreen al-Janabi, that the person claiming to be her is not a Sunni, and that it is very unlikely that she was assaulted. The Iraqi deputy interior minister for intelligence, a Kurd, has produced documents claiming to prove that the woman who appeared on Al-Jazeera is a Shia in her late twenties called Zaineb al-Shimmeri, who is wanted by the authorities for aiding insurgent and kidnapping gangs. The ministry also revealed that she is a divorcee currently married to two men—one of whom is in prison for insurgent activity. The "rape kit" evidence-gathering procedure administered in a US hospital in Baghdad concluded that no assault had taken place. It also turns out that of the three officers accused of the rape, at least one is a Sunni Arab.
It doesn't end there: according to government sources, a body has recently been exhumed from the garden of a house that al-Shimmeri used to live in with her detained husband, and a former kidnapping victim has come forward and identified her as a member of an abduction ring.
Two reliable Rivers of Babylon sources place al-Shimmeri in the mid-1990s at a brothel run by a madam called "Umm Liqa" in the Qadisiyya area of Baghdad, and another source describes al-Shimmeri as a prostitute who worked for a madam who once saved his life from Saddam's security services. Al-Shimmeri's place of work catered primarily to second-tier Baathists, a fairly rough crowd. By 2000 she was considered washed up, and had opened a hair salon.
So much for the "Sunni honour" bait that Al-Jazeera swallowed, and that the Wahhabist groups have allegedly avenged with blood. Had it not been for all the harm the episode has caused, it would have been rather amusing to see these Sunni jihadists and Baathists making common cause with a Shia floozy.
Sabreen's brothers
The orchestrators of this bogus outcry had more specific goals than simply fanning the flames of sectarianism and inciting Sunni men to take a stand for the honour of their womenfolk. They wanted to sabotage the hopeful atmosphere that has accompanied the new Baghdad security plan, which has been very effective at stopping death squads and sectarian cleansing, if rather less effective against car bombs. And they also needed to stem the increasing levels of jihadist-on-jihadist strife. The various Sunni insurgent groups, such al Qaeda and the IAI, have been coming to blows recently and Sabreen's honour was considered an ideal cause to unite their ranks. The emir of the IAI, for example, has made it clear that the "travesty" against "Sabreen" should compel all factions to steer away from arguing about future goals and go back to "fighting the apostates."
While the 20 gallant Janabi lads who signed up to wed this paragon of dubious virtue will have to find other brides, the affair has at least added to the Iraqi lexicon: some Baghdadi Shias, in a new spirit of fraternal love, are bridging the sectarian divide by calling Sunnis "Sabreen's brothers."
