BAGHDAD, Iraq - "Give us $100,000, or we'll you give you back your son's head," the voice on the other end of the phone spat at Leon Katchader. "And if you tell anyone about this, we'll come and blow your house up."

Two days earlier, his 14-year-old son, Rami, was snatched from around the corner of their house. And the car repair shop owner was only just beginning to grasp the sophistication of the racket behind his son's kidnapping.

"Where am I going to get $100,000? Who told you I was some kind of millionaire?" Katchader pleaded with the man on the phone.

But the kidnappers knew he could afford to pay a ransom. They knew that three days earlier, the family had been in Syria, where one of Katchader's four daughters was married. They even knew Katchader's nickname, Levon.

"I can only afford $3,000. And as God gave me my son, God can take him away," Katchader said. Then he hung up the phone and collapsed.

While scores of foreigners have been kidnapped by militants as leverage in their fight against the government and coalition forces, Iraqis have faced their own epidemic of kidnappings in the chaos since the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime last year. The motive is simply money.

There are no accurate numbers on how many have been kidnapped, but most Iraqis have a story to tell about someone they know who was kidnapped - an immediate family member, a relative, or a next-door neighbor.

Iraqi police are struggling to equip themselves and carry out rudimentary tasks, especially given their own precarious safety. Insurgents have attacked police stations and recruitment centers, vowing to target anyone cooperating with coalition authorities.

Under a proper working legal system, the penalty for kidnapping under Iraqi law ranges from 10 years in jail to death, said Kamal Hamdoun, the head of the Iraqi Bar Association. But any sense of impending incarceration was absent when the kidnappers of Katchader's son strolled into his house with their faces uncovered, sat in his living room and returned the boy just over a week after abducting him. He ended up paying $15,000 in ransom.

"There's no government. There's no Iraq," Katchader said. He contends he went to the police the day after his son was taken but never received a response.

The dicey security situation allows kidnappers to operate unchecked, Katchader said.

"These people don't even deserve to live. Saddam knew this. I didn't like Saddam, but his was the name of security," his father said. "He was in control. I wish he'd come back."

Police like Col. Abdel Fatah Eisa say they are doing their best.

"It takes a long time to work this sort of thing," Eisa said. "The gangs spend a lot of time finding out as much as they can about the person, whether he's rich or poor, how much money he would have."

Eisa's words are little consolation for Ziyad Mohammed, a 25-year-old spare parts trader who was kidnapped in March as he left the house to organize his father's next chemotherapy session. After five weeks of torture, including electrical shock to his genitals, Mohammed's parents scraped together $30,000 to free him.

"When I see those kidnapped people on TV, I see myself in their eyes, as I see the fear that I suffered," he said. "I don't want anything more from this life. I just want to live in peace, and I don't think these terrorists are going to leave us alone."