ANIMAL PEOPLE is the leading independent newspaper providing original investigative coverage of animal protection worldwide. Founded in 1992, ANIMAL PEOPLE has no alignment or affiliation with any other entity. |
This site built and maintained by: GREANVILLE ASSOCIATES and CRESCENT COMMUNICATIONS • Rev. 12.1.05 Copyright ANIMAL PEOPLE, INC. 1992--2005
 |
 |
ESSENTIAL DESTINATIONS
|
MONTH: June 2006
Dogs & donkeys carry bombs
BAGHDAD––“Even the most virulent clerical opponents of the U.S. presence in Iraq have decried the use of canines as proxies in the war,” Los Angeles Times staff writer Borzou Daragahi reported from Baghdad in August 2005, after several incidents in which insurgents used dogs to carry bombs.
“Our religion does not permit us to hurt animals, either by using them as explosive devices, or in any other manner,” Muslim Scholars Association spokesperson Abdel Salam Kubaisi told Daragahi.
Daragahi described the MSA as “a hard-line Sunni Arab clerical organization sympathetic to insurgents.”
The bombings by dog reportedly occurred in Latifiya, south of Baghdad; in Baqubah, in central Iraq; and in and around the northern city of Kirkuk. Neither the Sunnis nor the Shi’ites seemed eager to claim the bombings.
“The daily newspaper Al Mada recently published an editorial cartoon showing an insurgent who strongly resembled [deposed dictator] Saddam Hussein trying to persuade a dog to strap on a belt bomb to advance the cause of the Baath Party, which once ruled Iraq,” Daragahi wrote.
“It is such a simple task,” the insurgent tells the terrified dog. “All you have to do is to put on this explosives belt, repeat the party’s slogans, and may Allah have mercy on your father’s soul!”
A donkey was used to carry a bomb to attack Israelis near Palestinian territory in 2003, prompting PETA to protest to the late Palestinian leader Yassir Arafat. After the bombings by dog in Iraq, a donkey in December 2005 carried a land mine close to a German aid agency vehicle in the northern Afghanistan city of Faizabad. That bomb only killed the donkey.
The isolated nature of the incidents, their timing, and their geography make possible that a single terrorist might have been responsible for all of them, wandering from one theatre of jihad to another.