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Peace Eludes Baghdad Again •
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On a Baghdad Street, Palpable Despair
By Sudarsan Raghavan
The Washington Post
Monday 31 March 2008
Residents embittered by politicians' choices.
Baghdad - The mortar shells sailed across the sky Sunday evening and ripped through
the corrugated tin roof of the barbershop. They shattered brick walls, mangled
beams and knocked over leather chairs. Smoke, debris and glass covered the street
outside.
There was blood on Abu Ghadeer's shirt. He had pulled out of the wreckage a boy
who had come for a haircut but instead received a body full of shrapnel. Twenty
minutes later, after an ambulance had taken the boy away, Abu Ghadeer struggled
to understand.
"A week ago, life was good," he said. "Now, nobody knows what will
happen."
For Iraqis, widespread clashes this past week have exposed their nation's brittleness.
After months of relative calm and declining violence, many people were locking
themselves inside their homes and shops again as Shiite gunmen battled U.S. and
Iraqi forces. Curfews restricted their movement, yet they were still unable to
escape the mortar and rocket fire.
In Baghdad's Karrada neighborhood Sunday, the despair was palpable. In alleyways
and storefronts, people spoke about their frustration and dread, and about the
misguided politics they blamed for running Iraq into the ground. Many said they
were worried not about sectarian conflict but about war erupting right in their
community.
Karrada, a mostly Shite enclave that is considered one of the safest areas of
the capital, is a stronghold of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's Dawa party and
the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, a powerful Shiite party that is part of the
ruling coalition. Yet many Shiites here said the government's offensive in the
port city of Basra, which sparked violence across southern Iraq and in Baghdad,
showed that their politicians cared more about eradicating rivals than tending
to the needs of their constituents.
"Every political party wants to control the situation and to be on top,"
said Adnan Radhi, 60, a municipal employee in Baghdad. "And the people are
paying the price."
On Sunday, shortly before noon, Radhi and two friends sat in a grimy alley near
Karrada's main commercial road. People walked past carrying bags of bread, and
old women begged for food. A round-the-clock traffic ban was in place, leaving
only police vehicles on the road. Piles of trash lay everywhere.
A few minutes earlier, a mortar had thundered nearby. In the past week, all three
men had had close experiences with mortar attacks.
Radhi questioned why Maliki had launched the Basra offensive. There were so many
other priorities, he said.
"They promised us a rise in salaries and pensions. It was all lies,"
he said as his friends nodded. "There's hunger everywhere. No electricity,
no water, no cooking gas, no kerosene. It's only promises. No action."
He paused, and sighed: "It's a crisis now."
Attacks on Karrada have increased in the past week. The Mahdi Army, loyal to Shiite
cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and the main rival of Maliki and the Supreme Council, has
been firing mortar rounds and rockets into the Green Zone across the Tigris River.
But many shells and rockets have also struck Karrada, an enclave peppered with
posters of Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, leader of the Supreme Council. Sadr's followers
say their rivals are trying to weaken them politically ahead of provincial elections
later this year.
And so inevitably, conversation turned to politics and conflict.
"He rushed," Radhi said, referring to Maliki's decision to launch the
offensive last week. "He should have sat at a table and negotiated, and solved
the crisis."
"It's all for the oil in Basra," said Muthanna Hadhi, 46, a vegetable
seller.
"Four days ago, a mortar killed a small girl near here," said Ahmed
Mahmoud, 45, a fish seller.
Radhi listened to his friends. He had heard their laments all week. He stood up,
said goodbye and walked away, passing two empty carts.
The carts belonged to Hadhi and Mahmoud. They have not gone to the wholesale market
in a week because of the battles in Baghdad's Shiite districts.
"We can't leave Karrada," said Hadhi, a slim man with a stubbly beard.
The market was in the Dora neighborhood, once a haven for Sunni extremists, he
explained. A year ago, Shiites like him feared to go there. Now, he fears going
to certain Shiite areas, where being perceived as part of the wrong political
party can lead to death. "Dora is safer than Shiite neighborhoods now,"
he said.
The curfew imposed Friday was supposed to end Sunday morning. Hadhi woke up at
5 a.m. to go to the wholesale market. But as he tried to leave Karrada, a policeman
stopped him and told him that the curfew had been extended. "I was so frustrated,"
Hadhi said.
"When they impose a curfew, it shows there's no effective government,"
Mahmoud said.
"Everything is going downhill, day by day," Hadhi agreed.
Iraq's leaders, Mahmoud said, had spent too many years in exile before the U.S.-led
invasion in 2003 allowed them to return and take power. They are out of touch
with the people, he said.
"They came for revenge, not to help the people," he added.
Mahmoud, who has a round, wrinkled face and a gray-speckled beard, remarked how
quickly their lives had reversed in a week. "Suddenly a guerrilla war erupted,"
he said. "It's not easy to control street fighting."
"The situation is like Lebanon in the 1970s," said Hadhi, referring
to the civil war there. "It took years to stabilize."
But Mahmoud noted that the conflict erupting across Iraq today is very different
from the violence between Sunnis and Shiites in 2006.
"Now, people are hating each other more," he said. "It's not sectarian.
It's within sects."
Both men said they felt safe in Karrada because the Badr Brigade, the armed wing
of the Supreme Council, had secured the area.
"There would be a problem if Badr was not here," Mahmoud said. "The
Sadrists would march into Karrada."
In a pet store down the street, Abu Zainab, a 47-year-old blacksmith, wondered
aloud why he had voted for the ruling Shiite coalition led by Maliki.
"I blame the government. Why did they go to Basra?" he said. "The
security situation is worse in Diyala province and in Mosul. They should send
soldiers there."
Abu Zainab said he believed Maliki was responding to U.S. pressure to go after
Sadr. "This government is taking orders from the Americans," he said,
shaking his head in disgust.
"It's been five days. They are still fighting the militias. What if they
have to fight a country? The very next day the foreign troops will enter our houses,"
he said.
As he spoke, mortar shells crashed down on Karrada.
Although Abu Zainab is a Shiite, he reminisced almost wistfully about life under
Saddam Hussein, who favored the Sunnis. Back then, there was electricity for 22
hours a day. Abu Zainab said he hasn't had any electricity in eight days.
Farther along the street, though, shopkeeper Hadhi Fadhil had it worse. He does
not live in Karrada and has slept on the floor of his store since Thursday because
of the curfew. "Life was getting better gradually," Fadhil said. "Then
things changed overnight. Now I am stuck here.
"The next time, I am not going to vote for anybody. I don't like anyone anymore."
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Peace Eludes Baghdad Again
By Tina Susman
The Los Angeles Times
Monday 31 March 2008
With gunfire in the streets, a period of relative
calm has come to a shuddering halt. A 24-hour curfew is to be lifted Monday, easing
movement for the first time in four days.
Baghdad - Stray bullets streaked through the sky. Mortar shells and rockets
thundered into residential areas sapped of street life except for the few people
willing to venture beyond their front gates.
A walk in his own backyard proved deadly for one man. He was hit by a wayward
bullet in his neighborhood in Baghdad, where fighting between Shiite Muslim militias
and Iraqi and U.S. forces has revealed how shaky Iraq's security situation is.
An around-the-clock curfew was eased today, giving Baghdad's 6 million people
the freedom to move about for the first time in four days. Psychologically, though,
the lockdown is likely to last far longer. Iraqis had embraced a relative calm
in recent months, only to find themselves prisoners in their homes and offices.
For five years, U.S. and Iraqi officials have cautioned that progress takes time.
Just as it seemed that progress on the security front, at least, was tangible,
everything turned around again.
The capital's normally traffic-choked streets were deserted. People risked being
caught in crossfire, walking for hours to check on relatives or reach their jobs.
Neighborhoods resembled ghost towns.
A Times staffer walked several miles Sunday to reach the funeral of his brother-in-law,
who had been killed in crossfire. Mahdi Army militiamen loyal to Shiite cleric
Muqtada Sadr had used bricksand the trunk of a palm tree to block the entrance
to his destination, the southwestern neighborhood of Bayaa. They let the staffer
pass after he explained that he was going to a funeral.
By Sunday night, kitchens were low on food. The few neighborhood markets open
had quadrupled prices of the scarce goods available. Generators were running out
of fuel. People who had been at work when the curfew was imposed Thursday night
were missing their families. Patience was wearing thin.
About half a mile from Leith Abass' home in Shula, a northwestern Baghdad neighborhood,
masked gunmen loitered. Occasionally, they traded fire with U.S. forces positioned
on the overpass of a nearby highway.
Food came from a tiny shop across the street from his house, but every visit to
the market was risky.
"There is shooting every now and then around us, and it starts and ends very
rapidly," Abass said in a phone interview. "You never know what could
happen."
There had been no electricity for four days, and his generator had run out of
fuel, forcing Abass to buy some from his neighbor "just so I could listen
to some news and cool the water in the refrigerator."
To the south, in the area known as Ilam, Haydar Ammar's anger was evident.
"The situation is unbearable," Ammar said as his baby screamed in the
background. But he added sarcastically, "Frankly speaking, we got used to
this kind of living during the past several decades," a reference to the
hardships under Saddam Hussein's dictatorship and since the U.S.-led invasion
in March 2003.
He told of his neighbor, Sawki Raad, who had gone into his yard Saturday night
to flip the switch on his circuit breaker after his power went out.
A stray bullet hit Raad and killed him. No one knew who fired it or why. Nobody
was willing to try to find out.
"I haven't gone out of the house during these past few days," Ammar
said. "I could hear shooting and explosions every now and then. I don't really
know where it's coming from. I'm not going to risk my life to find out."
Unlike the violence that enveloped Baghdad after the February 2006 bombing of
a revered Shiite mosque that pitted Shiites against Sunnis, the latest violence
has affected predominantly Shiite areas. That has left mainly Sunni areas far
more relaxed.
Children in Qadisiya, a predominantly Sunni district in southwest Baghdad, played
soccer in the streets while young men washed their cars and older people tended
their gardens. Unlike residents of Shiite neighborhoods, they did not have to
worry about mortar strikes or gun battles breaking out nearby.
"We are happy. We've been playing soccer from the morning till evening,"
said 13-year-old Ahmed Rawi as he kicked a ball with friends. "There is no
school, and we don't have homework or exams."
Iraqi security checkpoints were erected at the main roads leading into Qadisiya,
but pedestrians were allowed to pass unhindered.
Some U.S. military officials say that one result of the recent fighting has been
a growing disenchantment among Shiites with the militias involved in the unrest.
Scattered incidents seemed to bear that out.
In Shaab, a Shiite neighborhood near the Baghdad slum of Sadr City, gunmen from
the Mahdi Army ducked into an elderly woman's house while being chased by U.S.
forces. She screamed at the militiamen to get out, a resident said.
In the same neighborhood, a U.S. helicopter fired a missile at a group of militiamen
preparing to launch a mortar on a residential street. The airstrike killed some
of the men but also damaged a nearby house and injured a little girl inside.
"Why are you trying to show your bravery here among civilians?" her
father yelled as he tore out of his house and ran toward the surviving militiamen.
He challenged them to take their fight with U.S. forces elsewhere, such as to
an American military post nearby, "and fight them face to face!"
The next morning, pools of blood remained in the street where the missile had
struck.
On Sunday evening, loudspeakers blared the news across Sadr City that the Shiite
cleric had called for an end to fighting. Some people handed out candy as a symbol
of celebration, anticipating that Baghdad residents would once again be free to
do their shopping, go to work, and bury their dead.
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Times staff writers Alexandra Zavis, Said Rifai, Saad Khalaf and Saif Rasheed
and special correspondents in Baghdad contributed to this report.
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