The Iraqi army's offensive against the Shia militia of the radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr in Basra is failing to make significant headway despite a pledge by the Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to fight "to the end".

    Instead of being a show of strength, the government's stalled assault is demonstrating its shaky authority over much of Baghdad and southern Iraq. As the situation spins out of Mr Maliki's control, saboteurs blew up one of the two main oil export pipelines near Basra, cutting by a third crude exports from the oilfields around the city. The international price of oil jumped immediately by $1 a barrel before falling back.

    In Baghdad, tens of thousands of supporters of Mr Sadr, whose base of support is the Shia poor, marched through the streets shouting slogans demanding that Mr Maliki's government be overthrown. "We demand the downfall of the Maliki government," said one of the marchers, Hussein Abu Ali. "It does not represent the people. It represents Bush and Cheney."

    The main bastion of the Sadrist movement is impoverished Sadr City, which has a population of two million and is almost a twin city to Baghdad. The densely packed slum has been sealed off by US troops. "We are trapped in our homes with no water or electricity since yesterday," said a resident called Mohammed. "We can't bathe our children or wash our clothes."

    The streets are controlled by Mehdi Army fighters, many of whom say they expect an all-out American attack, though this seems unlikely since the US says that an attack on the Shia militias is a wholly Iraqi affair.

    In Basra, Iraqi forces have cordoned off seven districts but appear stalled in their effort to dislodge the Mehdi Army fighters. Masked gunmen in some cases have captured or seized abandoned Iraqi army vehicles and painted pro-Sadrist slogans on their armour.

    A co-ordinated mortar bombardment struck the main police base in the city beside the Shatt al-Arab waterway and there was heavy shooting in the main commercial street of Iraq's southern capital. An Interior Ministry source said that 51 people had been killed and more than 200 wounded in three days of fighting in Basra. There was an attempt to assassinate Basra's police chief in which three of his bodyguards were kille

    Mr Maliki's surprise offensive against the Mehdi Army is likely to have repercussions far beyond Iraq. The Americans must have agreed to the attack though they had previously praised the six-month ceasefire declared by Mr Sadr on 29 August and renewed in February as being one of the main reasons why violence had fallen in Iraq. Although Mr Sadr has said the truce is continuing it is ceasing to have much meaning.

    President George Bush praised Mr Maliki yesterday saying he faces a "tough battle against militia fighters and criminals". He said that the Iraqi Prime Minister had taken a bold decision "in going after the illegal groups in Basra".

    But the rapid increase in violence may puncture optimism in the US over the "success" of the surge in leading to a turning point in the five-year-long war.

    The Green Zone, the heavily fortified centre of American power in Iraq, was wreathed in smoke yesterday as it was struck by rockets and mortars fired from Shia neighbourhoods. In a further blow to the belief that the surge has restored law and order, one of the two Iraqi spokesmen for the Baghdad security plan, which is at the heart of the surge strategy, was kidnapped and three of his bodyguards killed before his house was set on fire. The victim was Tahseen Sheikhly, a Sunni who often appeared with American officials to proclaim the success of the surge.

    Clashes are now taking place across Iraq and most of the Shia districts in Iraq. In the middle of last year a Mehdi Army commander said that his militia controlled 80 per cent of Shia Baghdad and 50 per cent of the capital as a whole. This is probably only a slight exaggeration. There has also been heavy fighting in Kut on the Tigris, where 44 have been killed and 75 wounded, and in Hilla on the Euphrates where 60 people died. In past months the Sadrists have been locked in a struggle for Diwaniya, also on the Euphrates south of Baghdad, where they have been fighting police units controlled by Badr, the militia of the other great Shia party, the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI).

    When he first came to power, Mr Maliki balanced between ISCI and the Sadrists but has steadily become closer to the first party and has shown growing hostility to Mr Sadr. The last great battle between the Sadrists and the Iraqi government backed by the Americans was in Najaf in 2004 and was ended by the intervention of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani who wanted the Sadrists humbled but not crushed. He also did not want to see the Shia community divided into warring factions. It is possible that the Grand Ayatollah may seek to mediate again but Mr Maliki may find it difficult to compromise after his claim that he will win control of Basra.

    The government has about 15,000 soldiers and the same number of police in Basra but this is not a great number in a city of two million. The police are closely linked to the militias and are unlikely to prove a resolute ally against the Mehdi Army.

 

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    Iraqi Police in Basra Shed Their Uniforms, Kept Their Rifles and Switched Sides
    By James Hider
    The Times UK

    Friday 28 March 2008

Mehdi Army fighters loyal to cleric Moqtada al-Sadr hold their weapons while flashing the V sign in Basra.

    Baghdad - Abu Iman barely flinched when the Iraqi Government ordered his unit of special police to move against al-Mahdi Army fighters in Basra.

    His response, while swift, was not what British and US military trainers who have spent the past five years schooling the Iraqi security forces would have hoped for. He and 15 of his comrades took off their uniforms, kept their government-issued rifles and went over to the other side without a second thought.

    Such turncoats are the thread that could unravel the British Army's policy in southern Iraq. The military hoped that local forces would be able to combat extremists and allow the Army to withdraw gradually from the battle-scarred and untamed oil city that has fallen under the sway of Islamic fundamentalists, oil smugglers and petty tribal warlords. But if the British taught the police to shoot straight, they failed to instil a sense of unwavering loyalty to the State.

    "We know the outcome of the fighting in advance because we already defeated the British in the streets of Basra and forced them to withdraw to their base," Abu Iman told The Times.

    "If we go back a bit, everyone remembers the fight with the US in Najaf and the damage and defeat we inflicted on them. Do you think the Iraqi Army is better than those armies? We are right and the Government is wrong. [Nouri al] Maliki [the Iraqi Prime Minister] is driving his Government into the ground."

    The reason for his apparent switch of sides was simple: the 36-year-old was already a member of the al-Mahdi Army which, like other militias, has massively infiltrated the British-trained police force in the southern oil city. He claimed that hundreds of others from the 16,000-strong force have also defected to the rebels' ranks.Abu Iman joined the new Iraqi police force after the invasion, joining the Mugawil, a special police unit infamous for brutality, kidnapping and sectarian murders.

    "We already heard two weeks ago that we were going to attack the Mahdi Army, so we were ready," he said. "I decided to take off my uniform and join my brothers and friends in the Mahdi Army. All these years, we were like a scream in the face of the dictator and the occupation." He said: "I joined the police because I believed we have to protect Basra and save it with our own hands. You can see we were the first fighters to take on Sadd-am and his regime, the best example being the Shabaniya uprising."

    Abu Iman said that the fighting raging in Basra yesterday was intense because the al-Mahdi Army was operating on its own turf. He was confident that the Shia militia would prevail because its cause was just.

    "The Iraqi Army is already defeated from within. They come to Basra with fear in their hearts, knowing they have to fight their brothers, the sons of Iraq, because of an order from Bush and his friends in the Iraq Government. For this reason, all of the battles are going in the Mahdi Army's favour."

    Major-General Abdelaziz Moham-med Jassim, the director of operations at the Ministry of Defence, played down reports of defections in the Basra police force. "The problem of one policeman doesn't make up for the whole of the force," he said.

    In recent months Major-General Abdul Jalil Khalaf, Basra's police chief, has tried to shake up the force and drive out militia infiltrators, who have wrought havoc in the past, often turning police stations into torture cells in which factions settled vendettas and power struggles with murder and abuse. But he only narrowly escaped an assassination attempt yesterday when a suicide car bomb attack in Basra killed three of his policemen. A local tribal leader said the police directorate building was later gutted by fire.

 

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    Shiites March in Iraq to Protest Crackdown
    By Tina Susman
    The Los Angeles Times

    Friday 28 March 2008

The government imposes a curfew as tens of thousands take to the streets of Baghdad. Sadr says he's still committed to his militia's cease-fire.

    Baghdad - In a sign of growing rage against the Iraqi and U.S. governments, tens of thousands of Shiite Muslims marched Thursday in their Baghdad strongholds to protest a crackdown on Shiite militiamen that has led to more than 125 deaths.

    The government announced a curfew in the capital until Sunday in an attempt to quell the violence that has spread to several cities since the offensive began Tuesday in the southern city of Basra.

    Loyalists of Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr rejected U.S. and Iraqi assertions that the Basra operation was aimed at rogue militiamen, instead insisting that it was targeting Sadr's Mahdi Army militia. A statement released late Thursday by Sadr's political office said the cleric remained committed to the cease-fire he imposed on his militia in August.

    "Muqtada Sadr is calling on everyone to follow political solutions and peaceful protest, and not to spill Iraqi blood, to reach a solution to the current crisis," the statement said.

    But a fourth day of ferocious rocket and mortar attacks in and around the U.S.-guarded Green Zone, home to the U.S. Embassy and most Iraqi government offices, underscored the anger among Shiite fighters who believe the United States and Prime Minister Nouri Maliki are working to cripple Sadr's movement before local elections planned for this fall.

    The U.S. military said the attacks were launched from Shiite areas of east Baghdad and that American forces had killed two "terrorists" suspected of involvement in the barrages. A U.S. civilian working with the embassy was among those killed Thursday when a rocket was fired into the Green Zone, in central Baghdad.

    Thunderous booms rocked the capital throughout the day, and police and U.S. military reports indicated that as many as 18 mortar rounds had landed in the city.

    The showdown has placed Iraqi and U.S. officials in an awkward position. Both have described the crackdown by Iraqi security forces as a sign of Maliki's determination to stabilize areas plagued by fighting between rival Shiite militias. But they also say Sadr's fighters are not the problem, despite his militia's role in such unrest. Mollifying Sadr is crucial to his continuing the cease-fire, which is credited with helping reduce violence nationwide.

    U.S. Embassy spokesman Philip Reeker blamed the violence on a "subset" of the Mahdi Army.

    "They really are essentially criminal militias, and they are the ones that have been the difficulty in Basra," said Reeker, who used the honorific "sayyid" in reference to Sadr, a sign of the United States' attempts to remain on relatively good terms with him.

    But such statements have been met with skepticism from Sadr supporters.

    "They made this crisis because the Sadr movement, they feel, will be an obstacle in the upcoming elections. They feel they won't succeed in the elections," said Abu Ali, a Mahdi Army member in Sadr City. The Baghdad slum is a stronghold of Sadr, and thousands there took part in Thursday's marches.

    Ali said violence would soar if Maliki did not halt the operation and meet Sadr's demands for negotiations. "We will be more determined. Enough humiliation," he said.

    Maliki reiterated his demand that "criminal gangs" causing unrest in Basra disarm by Saturday.

    "We are capable of facing any forces everywhere. We are determined to eradicate these criminal gangs. There will not be any negotiations with them," he said. Maliki also made a point of not naming Sadr's Mahdi Army as the troublemaker.

    Scores of people have died since the fighting erupted early Tuesday, including at least 80 in Basra, Iraq's second-largest city, police said. They said 45 people had died in Kut, the capital of Wasit province, in clashes between militiamen and Iraqi security forces.

    In Baghdad, the dead have included at least two Americans injured by rockets fired into the Green Zone on Sunday and Thursday. The State Department on Thursday ordered employees not to go outside without helmets and flak vests, harking back to the summer, when daily bombardments were the norm.

    At least five barrages hit the Green Zone or nearby neighborhoods Thursday, the U.S. military said. Rocket attacks on three U.S. bases elsewhere in the capital injured at least four American soldiers. In addition, a U.S. soldier was killed by a roadside bomb in east Baghdad, bringing to at least 4,004 the number of American forces killed in Iraq since the start of the war in March 2003, according to the independent website icasualties.org.

    Most of southern Iraq's major cities remained under curfew. In Basra, a major oil port city 275 miles southeast of Baghdad, residents reported gunmen patrolling the streets.

    Residents said food prices were soaring because it was difficult to get goods into the city, where clashes continued Thursday. In

    "What food remains in the markets has become very expensive because of the lack of supply," said one man, who refused to give his name because he feared for his security. He said the price for a kilo of tomatoes (a little more than 2 pounds) had gone from about 20 cents to about $3.30.

    Other witnesses said downtown Basra was empty of civilians and vehicles.

    The Sadr movement has long vied for power in Basra and most of southern Iraq with the rival Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, a U.S.-allied political movement whose armed wing enjoys support from the Iraqi government. The rivalry has frequently led to violence between the two groups' militias, most notably in August, when more than 50 people died in fighting in the holy city of Karbala.

    Sadr announced his truce afterward, saying he needed time to rid his militia of rogue elements. Since then, he has denied involvement in violence and said Iraqi and U.S. forces have taken advantage of his cease-fire by detaining his followers.

    His followers say the recent passage of legislation clearing the way for local elections by October has exacerbated the situation as Maliki seeks to undermine Sadr's power and influence in the south.

    "I blame Maliki, SIIC and the Americans" for the violence, said Abu Dhiya, a member of Sadr's militia who took part in the Sadr City demonstration. "SIIC receives orders from the Americans, and Maliki obeys and fulfills them."

    In what appeared to be a retaliatory attack on the government, gunmen Thursday broke into the home of Tahseen Sheikhly, a high-profile Iraqi government official, and abducted him. Sheikhly is a spokesman for the Baghdad security plan launched in February 2007 to quell violence in the capital, and he has frequently appeared at news conferences alongside U.S. officials.

    Sheikhly's brother, Ziad, said in a telephone interview that Sheikhly and his security guards had tried to fight off their attackers but surrendered when they ran out of ammunition. The kidnappers ransacked the house and set it on fire before fleeing with Sheikhly.

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    tina.susman@latimes.com

    Times staff writers Raheem Salman and Said Rifai in Baghdad and special correspondents in Hillah, Baghdad and Basra contributed to this report.