Azer Nadji has plenty to worry about. On the kidnapping market, he's worth his weight in gold. With the double feathers in his cap of business man and university professor, this resident of Basra, in Iraq's south, is among the favorite targets of every kind of bandit. "I don't trust anyone," he says. Nature has, however, spoiled him, at 5 feet 11 inches tall, with a physique like a tank. But when he leaves his office to go the Arabian-Persian Gulf Studies College where he teaches, he's always accompanied by his body guard and armed with a pistol camouflaged under his jacket. He has no choice, he says. "The Iraqi police is having trouble protecting itself, so how can anyone count on it, if necessary, to protect us!" he exclaims.

Since the fall of the Baghdad regime in April 2003, abductions of foreigners have become a sad reality in the new Iraq. In the shade of alleys or on unprotected roads, however, dozens of Iraqi civilians are also kidnapped every week, without the local press's even having the time to relate the facts. According to semi-official statistics that are circulating, at least 5,000 Iraqis have been kidnapped during the year and a half that has gone by. Struck by these alarming figures, the new Iraqi satellite television channel, al-Sharqiya, has even made kidnappings the subject of a filmed series based on events from the daily news: televised confessions of kidnappers in the framework of a program entitled, "Terrorism in the Hands of Justice."

It happens that the reasons for the abductions may be political. That's the case for Iraqis working for American or foreign companies, targeted by certain members of the guerrilla. But most of the kidnappings remain criminal. Money is in play, with ransom demands going as high as $50,000.

Mayada Farho, a 23-year-old Christian Iraqi woman knows all about it. Not long ago, right in the middle of the capital, several armed men fell on her and forced her to get into their car. "I didn't have the time to realize what was happening to me," she confides. After several weeks trying to track down and identify the kidnappers, her uncle, Behnam, ended up paying a ransom of $10,000, a colossal sum, collected thanks to the help of distant cousins. Today, Behnam is in the process of moving heaven and earth to move his family to Syria. "There's no longer a place for us in Iraq," he says.

Many doctors, who constitute one of the hostage-takers' favorite targets, have begun to pack their bags. According to a report published in October 2004 by the Ministry of Health, more than a hundred doctors had been kidnapped or killed since April 2003. Professors like Azer Nadji also know that they're on the list of a multitude of gangs who have made abductions a business. Without counting Iraqi officials. "Under Saddam Hussein, I didn't take my daughters out in the evening, since they are beautiful and I was afraid they'd fall into the claws of Ouday," (the deceased son of the tyrant, known for his uncontrolled penchant for women) confides Raja Habib al-Khuzai, a member of the Iraqi Parliament. "Now, I'm afraid for them top go out at any time of the day, since you're never safe from a mafia or political kidnapping."