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Bad Dreams, Alley Fighters •
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Iranian General Played Key Role in Brokering Iraq Cease-Fire
By Leila Fadel
McClatchy Newspapers
Sunday 30 March 2008
Baghdad - Iraqi lawmakers traveled to the Iranian holy city of Qom over
the weekend to win the support of the commander of Iran's Qods brigades in persuading
Shiite cleric Muqtada al Sadr to order his followers to stop military operations,
members of the Iraqi parliament said.
Sadr ordered the halt on Sunday, and his Mahdi Army militia heeded the order in
Baghdad, where the Iraqi government announced it would lift a 24-hour curfew starting
early Monday in most parts of the capital.
But fighting continued in the oil hub of Basra, where a six-day-old government
offensive against Shiite militias has had only limited gains.
So far, 488 people have been killed and more than 900 wounded in the offensive,
Iraqi Interior Ministry officials said.
The backdrop to Sadr's dramatic statement was a secret trip Friday by Iraqi lawmakers
to Qom, Iran's holy city and headquarters for the Iranian clergy who run the country.
There the Iraqi lawmakers held talks with Brig. Gen. Qassem Suleimani, commander
of the Qods (Jerusalem) brigades of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps and signed
an agreement with Sadr, which formed the basis of his statement Sunday, members
of parliament said.
Ali al Adeeb, a member of Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki's Dawa party, and Hadi
al Ameri, the head of the Badr Organization, the military wing of the Islamic
Supreme Council of Iraq, had two aims, lawmakers said: to ask Sadr to stand down
his militia and to ask Iranian officials to stop supplying weapons to Shiite militants
in Iraq.
"The statement issued today by (Muqtada al Sadr) is a result of the meetings,"
said Jalal al-Din al Saghir, a leading member of the Islamic Supreme Council of
Iraq. "The government didn't have any disagreement with the Sadrists when
it went to the city of Basra. The Sadrist movement is the one that chose to face
the government."
"We asked Iranian officials to help us persuade him that we were not cracking
down on the Sadr group," said an Iraqi official, who asked for anonymity
due to the sensitivity of the subject.
He described the talks as successful but said hard-line Sadrists could goad the
government into over-reacting and convince Sadr that the true aim of the Iraqi
Security Forces is to destroy the Sadrists.
"I will not be surprised if the whole thing collapses," he said.
In addition to Sadr, who is in Qom pursuing religious studies, Iraqi lawmakers
met Suleimani, said Osama al Nejafi, a legislator on the parliamentary committee
formed to solve the Basra crisis.
"An agreement was signed," Nejafi said, referring to Sadr. "Iran
was part of the problem and an effective part of the negotiations."
Sadr issued a nine-point statement Sunday saying he would renounce anyone who
carried arms against the government and government forces. The statement also
asked the government to halt all raids against the Mahdi army, end detentions
of militia members who had not been charged and implement the general amnesty
law.
To preserve the "unity" of Iraq Sadr called for an end to "all
armed manifestations in Basra and in all provinces."
The Qom discussions may or may not bring an end to the fighting but they almost
certainly have undermined Maliki - who made repeated declarations that there would
be no negotiations and that he would treat as outlaws those who did not turn in
their weapons for cash. The blow to his own credibility was worsened by the fact
that members of his own party had helped organize the Iran initiative.
"The delegation was from the United Iraqi Alliance (dominated by the Dawa
party and the Supreme Council of Iraq), and the Prime Minister was only informed.
It was a political maneuver by us," said Haider al Abadi, a legislator from
Maliki's Dawa party. "We had evidence (that Muqtada and Iranian-backed militants
were fighting security forces) and we sent people urgently ... If we had been waiting
for one year in Baghdad we wouldn't have had this result." The delegation
is expected to return to Iraq Monday.
Maliki welcomed Sadr's statement as a positive development, said his advisor Sadiq
al Rikabi. Anyone who abandons weapons and goes home would not be pursued, he
said, adding that the offensive would continue against a list specific targets,
but he would not give details, Maliki - who had said he would not leave Basra
until the Shiite militias were defeated - was expected to remain in Basra for
a few more days, he said.
Following Sadr's announcement a curfew was lifted in most of the capital, while
the Sadr controlled areas of Sadr City, New Baghdad and Kadhemiya remained under
24-hour lockdown. The U.S. military still surrounded the Shiite slum of Sadr City,
named for Sadr's father and a stronghold of support for Sadr. It was still unclear
what the effect the statement had Sunday night.
In another blow to Maliki, his security advisor, Saleem Qassim al Taee, known
as Abu Laith Al-Kadhimi, was killed in the fighting in Basra. The Dawa party member
had lived in exile under Saddam's regime for 20 years.
"With great sorrow the prime minister's office mourns one of its employees,"
it said in a statement. "(He) was killed by a treacherous shell during his
national duty which was launched by criminal hands who are stained by crime and
killing."
In Basra Mahdi Army militants fought to keep their strongholds but were overrun
by Iraqi Security Force in the eastern neighborhood of Tanuma. U.S. and British
aircraft conducted four air strikes in the city, the U.S. military said. In downtown
Basra in the area of al Timimiyah Iraqi forces surrounded the neighborhood as
coalition aircraft struck Sunday morning, residents said.
But the Iraqi security forces still couldn't penetrate the vast Shiite slum of
Hayaniyah or al Qibla, two Mahdi Army stronghold of Basra.
Following Sadr's statement both the Sadr office in Basra and Sadr City said that
their fighters would obey the orders and go home. But militants on the ground
in Basra said they would continue to fight in self-defense.
"We will stay in our positions because the government didn't stop the raids
and the attacks against the Mahdi Army and their areas," Abu Muamal said.
"We are waiting for clear orders from our command and we will not withdraw
until the situation is clarified."
--------
McClatchy Special Correspondents Ali al Basri contributed from Basra,
Qassim Zein from Najaf and Laith Hammoudi from Baghdad.
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Alley Fighters
By James Glanz
The New York Times
Sunday 30 March 2008
Baghdad - Sometime during my four years of traveling to Iraq, I developed
a recurring dream in which a Middle Eastern country invades the United States
and occupies, among other places, my old neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago.
The dream flashed briefly through my mind on Thursday as I walked the dirty, broken
streets of Sadr City, a teeming Baghdad slum that forms the power base of Moktada
al-Sadr, the radical Shiite cleric.
Here is what happens in the dream: Because I know a little Arabic, I somehow find
myself a translator for the invaders, even as some of my Chicago buddies are in
the alleys plotting against my employers. And each night when I walk home along
my beloved Dearborn Street under the rusty elevated tracks and past the White
Hen grocery store, I wonder what the guys poring over maps in their armored vehicles
plan to accomplish against a few million South Siders fighting in their own alleys.
That's usually when I wake up.
That dream, a nightmare, really, flashed through my mind as I stood at the end
of a filthy, pothole-riddled alley talking with a small-time deputy commander
in the Mahdi Army, the militia that is the armed wing of Mr. Sadr's political
movement. Standing there with his arms folded over his potbelly as his fighters
scurried about behind him, the man who called himself Riadh, 34 years old, was
effectively deputy commander of an alley.
"We can't face the armored tanks of the Americans face to face, because
all we have is light guns," he said. "So we just wait for a chance
to attack something."
He could be dead now, because the next day at least one American helicopter swooped
over Sadr City and engaged in a gun battle that killed four, according to American
military officials, although Iraqi police put the toll much higher. Or the potbellied
deputy could still be out there, plotting his next move. Either way, before dismissing
the ragtag Mahdi fighters, it would be well to remember that - partly because
the alleys of the neighborhoods they control are too narrow for the Iraqi Army's
armored vehicles - Mahdi units like Riadh's have been fighting Iraq's
federal forces to a standstill in Basra, the country's southern port city,
for nearly a week now.
Alleys: they are dangerous only when used by those who grew up in them. That is
the basic reason Mr. Sadr and his fighters simply will not go away in this war.
What makes the case so difficult is that it is not just a question of a battle
with American troops, here from half a world away carrying out operations that
Mr. Sadr and his fighters consider an abhorrent occupation. Some 3,500 troops
in the Basra fight are Iraqis from outside the province, and witnesses say it
is clear that few if any of the Iraqi security forces in the assault know the
neighborhoods the way the Mahdi Army does. Its fighters literally pop in and out
of alleys, battling a federal force of nearly 30,000 to what is, so far, a stalemate.
What might be called the Alley Effect also has its influence in the political
realm. Many of Iraq's senior political leaders are former exiles, nearly
all of them highly intelligent and well educated, and some extremely Westernized.
(Although I can't mention names, some of the most senior leaders of this
Muslim country are very fond of a drink now and then. Johnny Walker Red Label,
for example, is a particular favorite of one of them - one of the most pleasant
and effective, in fact.)
No one has ever accused Mr. Sadr of being brilliant, charismatic, or even above
average in the intellectual realm. But he has one thing few of those leaders have:
he never left, even in the worst years of Saddam Hussein. And that does not just
give him credibility on the streets. In a country where sheer social, religious,
political, historical, geographic and psychological complexities are what seem
to defeat all easy solutions, Mr. Sadr is one of the few who have been here continuously,
absorbing the shifting lessons of the place. He has done his homework, he has
put in his time.
And he has received the kind of props that must make an alley fighter proud. Two
weeks ago, when I learned of the impending assault during a trip to Basra, senior
Iraqi officials said that the crackdown would be unrelenting. "Whoever gets
in the way will be dealt with swiftly, decisively and with no mercy," one
of them said.
But when Iraqi forces made little progress in Mahdi-controlled neighborhoods after
the offensive began on Tuesday, Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, who staked
his political credibility on the operation by traveling personally to Basra to
direct it, issued a curious 72-hour ultimatum to the fighters to lay down their
weapons - or face consequences.
It was hard to imagine, after the start of an assault involving 30,000 troops,
what more severe consequences could be. If the emptiness of the ultimatum was
not enough to suggest that Mr. Maliki had left himself no way out of the alley
except to back down, on Friday he said that he would offer money to anyone in
Basra who turned in a weapon over the following ten days.
American forces have also found that they have little choice but to respect Mr.
Sadr. After years of referring to him as little more than a thug - including
a vicious battle against his fighters in Najaf in 2004 - the American military
has begun referring to him as "Sayyid," the honorific title accorded
to a Muslim holy man. This is particularly true when military officials praise
a loophole-riddled cease-fire that Mr. Sadr ordered last August, when he said
that his militia should stop fighting but could respond in self-defense if attacked
first.
"We have and will continue to show restraint in dealing with those who honor
al-Sayyid Moktada al-Sadr's pledge of honor to halt attacks," Maj.
Gen. Kevin J. Bergner, a spokesman for the American military in Baghdad, said
in a press briefing on Wednesday in response to a question.
As I sit here writing this piece, listening to the intermittent whooshes and booms
of rockets and mortars fired into the Green Zone, almost certainly by Mr. Sadr's
fighters, I can no more predict where the conflict is headed than I can say what
will be in my dreams tonight during the few hours of sleep that this war and my
editors allow me. But when it comes to Mr. Sadr's loyalists in the alleys
of Basra and Baghdad, one thing is irrefutable.
In those alleys, waking up will not end the dream.
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