Knives Out on Sulaimaniyah's Streets

Twenty-one-year-old Harem Muhiyaddin remembers the time he lay bleeding, surrounded by emergency-room doctors. "I’ll never forget the pain,” he says.

Muhiyaddin is just one of an increasing number of victims of stabbings. Although guns firearms may provide the iconic image of violence in Iraq, knives are often the weapon of choice in street crime or brawls.

Since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003, the general lack of security has created more demand for cold steel, and porous frontiers have increased the supply and range of weapons on offer.

"Since Operation Iraqi Freedom, the number of patients wounded with knives has gone up," said Rebwar Rostam, an emergency doctor at Sulaimaniyah Emergency Hospital.

Homicide rates have shot up across Iraq as a result of the breakdown in law and order.

A survey conducted by Associated Press found that the northern city of Kirkuk had 34 reported murders a month last year compared with three a month in 2002. The figures for other towns reflected similar trends: Karbala in the Shia south, for example, had 55 such cases a month as against one a month in 2002.

These killings were of course carried out in different ways, but the prevalence of knives is a growing contributory factor when it comes to casual violence and petty crime, as they are cheaper than guns and easier to conceal.

"Large numbers of people get injured by knives,” said Sulaimaniyah doctor Hawrey Abdul-Sattar. He has treated many of the victims, including a woman wounded by her own brother and a mother stabbed by her son.

Social worker Hemin Aziz notes that young male adults are particularly quick to resort to such weapons, "The increased availability of combat knives is doubly harmful because in addition to the violence itself, they breed a spirit of aggression.”

That means that verbal disputes can swiftly escalate into physical violence. On March 16 this year, for example, five friends were drinking at the Safeen bar on a major street in Sulaimaniyah when a fight broke out among them.

One of the group, known as Big Kamal, ended up stabbed in the chest, and he was dead by the time police arrived. He himself is said to have knifed someone to death a few years ago.

The result of this widespread knife culture is that the accident wards are full of young men who have been stabbed.

"I’m on duty once a week at Sulaimaniyah Emergency Hospital, and we get knife-wound cases most of the time,” said Dr Rostam. “Sometimes four or five people get injured in a single fight, most of them young males."

In the Kurdish region, many of the weapons have been imported.

"We bring swords, medium-sized knives and small ones across the border, some of them from Turkey. And we pay customs fees," said Jamal Majeed, a wholesale trader who is catering for the increased demand.

As Majeed indicated, much of the import trade is perfectly legal as not many types of bladed weapon are actually illegal.

With knives so plentiful and violence still commonplace, young men will continue ending up in hospital and in the morgue.

Rubbing the scar on his left cheek, a recovering Muhiyaddin plans to add to the casualty figures personally.

"Just let me heal, then I’ll get my revenge. And I'll do them over even worse."

Rebaz Mahmood is an IWPR trainee journalist in Sulaimaniyah.