The BBC has an interesting first-person story — just a taste of violence in Iraq:

bakers have become the latest casualties in Iraq’s seemingly unstoppable slide into communal blood-letting.

The reason is simple – traditionally most bakeries in the city have been run by Shia families.

So, for Sunni insurgents trying to stir the sectarian demon, or seeking revenge for Shia attacks on their own communities, bakers make an easy target.

They do not say why bakers are usually Shia, but the “easy target” comment is very revealing as it spells out the widening chasm of domestic conflict. My guess is that a baker is as much an economic target as a religious one, as the insurgents are trying to disrupt daily lives/routines and establish control of neighborhood supply-lines. Barbers apparently also work in fear of attack:

in recent months, a growing number of barbers have been killed or intimidated – on religious grounds.

They are accused of breaking Islamic codes by cutting hair in a certain way and shaving men’s beards, an echo of similar edicts issued by the Taleban in Afghanistan.

The threats are coming from both Sunni and Shia extremists – the same people are behind much of the sectarian violence.

This seems more related to religious extremism than the baker killings, but the barber also shared his memory of how business was before the US invaded:

“It’s very sad,” he says. “Before the war, we would just cut hair the way people wanted. Now we’re not allowed to.”

And he went on: “Before we would never talk about whether someone was Sunni or Shia or Christian. You would never hear those words, we all lived peacefully. I don’t know what is going to happen now.”

Will the bakers and barbers stop working or will they stock weapons and hire “protection” and add it to the cost of goods? That might have been the question three or four years ago, but the market is so broken now and the violence escalating so much that it is a wonder anyone goes to work in the open or identifies themselves as a baker. I wonder what bank security must look like:

On Sunday, a day after at least 36 people were killed in a spate of bombings in Baghdad, gunmen stormed a city bakery and kidnapped the ten employees in the early morning hours.

“Gunmen in five civilian cars stormed the bakery in the Shiite neighborhood of Kadhimiyah and took away the ten employees,� an interior ministry official said.

Police also found nine bodies of men who were tortured to death, an indication that sectarian killings were continuing without halt between the Shiite and Sunni communities.

When the US first invaded, they accused anyone who was in the Ba’athist Party of being a loyalist to Saddam. Nevermind the fact that people working in the public sector (schools, hospitals, etc.) had no choice but to publically support Saddam, since he required their loyalty and punished dissent. Sadly, instead of bringing freedom to these people, the Bush administration policy led by Bremer was to remove all “loyalists” and create a flat, open market. Into this vacuum rushed the extremists and resistance fighters and thus became the foundation for violence today. Moreover, I think it important to note that the resistance forces appear to be taking the same tactics as the Bush administration and declaring anyone with any affiliation to the government a potential target:

Electricity is a big problem. Many big private generating sets are providing homes with power. The terrorists forbid the operators to do their work because they think this will strengthen the government position.

It is the same with other services. Even Shia bakers are being killed, they don’t want them to feed Shias.