Hands up! Satirical paper takes on Iraq's woes

By Ahmed Rasheed

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - An Iraqi man stands with his hands up in surrender, surrounded by a U.S. soldier, Iraqi security forces, a militiaman, an al Qaeda fighter and a faceless thug.

"Hands up! Legs up! Head down!" they all bark at him as the cartoon takes a satirical swipe at how poorly ordinary Iraqis are treated by those who are meant to protect them as well as by insurgents and common criminals.

The cartoon featured on the front page of a recent edition of "al-Karouk", or "The Cradle", a new, fortnightly satirical newspaper circulating in Baghdad.

Such a publication, with its sharp observations of life in Iraq and biting political cartoons, would have been unthinkable for much of the past three decades.

Kadhim al-Muqdadi, Karouk's chief editor and publisher, sees his newspaper as filling a void in Iraqi life. It has a tiny print run of 1,500 copies and has published three editions.

He chose the name because of its association with childhood and innocence, and because cradles are rocked, just like Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's government appears to be as it stumbles from one crisis to another.

"Shaking represents our government and childhood is a message to our officials to remember that once they were weak and helpless like the people of Iraq," Muqdadi, who was educated at the Sorbonne and lived in France for 14 years, told Reuters.

Journalists have paid a heavy price for their work since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion to topple Saddam Hussein, with media watchdog Reporters Without Borders saying 201 journalists and media workers have been killed since then.