Iraq implodes, areas of Baghdad fall to militias
Iraq's Prime Minister was staring into the abyss on Mar. 28 after his operation to crush militia strongholds in Basra stalled, members of his own security forces defected and district after district of his own capital fell to Shia militia gunmen.
With the threat of a civil war looming in the south, Nouri al-Maliki's police chief in Basra narrowly escaped assassination in the crucial port city, while in Baghdad, the spokesman for the Iraqi side of the US military surge was kidnapped by gunmen and his house burnt to the ground.
Saboteurs also blew up one of Iraq's two main oil pipelines from Basra, cutting at least a third of the exports from the city which provides 80 percent of government revenue, a clear sign that the militias–who siphon significant sums off the oil smuggling trade–would not stop at mere insurrection.
US forces in armored vehicles battled Mahdi Army fighters on Mar. 27 in Sadr City, the vast Shiite stronghold in eastern Baghdad, as an offensive to quell party-backed militias entered its third day. Iraqi army and police units appeared to be largely holding to the outskirts of the area as US troops took the lead in the fighting.
Four US Stryker armored vehicles were seen in Sadr City by a Washington Post correspondent, one of them engaging Mahdi Army militiamen with heavy fire. The din of US weapons, along with the Mahdi Army's AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenades, was heard through much of the day. US helicopters and drones buzzed overhead.
The clashes suggested that US forces were being drawn more deeply into a broad offensive. As President Bush told an Ohio audience that Iraq was returning to "normalcy," administration officials in Washington held meetings to assess what appeared to be a rapidly deteriorating security situation in many parts of the country.
Followers of radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr staged noisy protests on Mar. 27 against the crackdown on Shiite fighters in Basra as the southern oil hub was rocked by a third straight day of fighting.
Demonstrations were held in Sadr City and Kadhimiyah, two Baghdad bastions of Sadr's Mahdi Army militia, even as preliminary contacts were held between the government and Sadrist officials in a bid to resolve the crisis.
An Agence France-Presse correspondent in Basra said heavy fighting erupted early on Mar. 27 in the central Jumhuriyah neighborhood, a Mahdi Army bastion, which was rocked by rocket-propelled grenade, mortar and small arms fire.
In Sadr City, an impoverished Shiite district of about two million people in east Baghdad, crowds gathered from 10am local time to yell slogans against Iraq's prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, who is in Basra overseeing the military operations.
"Maliki you are a coward! Maliki is an American agent! Leave the government, Maliki! How can you strike Basra?" the crowd chanted.
In the Kadhimiyah neighborhood of north Baghdad, followers of Sadr carried a coffin covered in red fabric with an attached photograph of Maliki set against the background of a US flag.
Under the picture were the words: "This is the new dictator."
Sheikh Ayad al-Kaabi, a Sadr official, said that the demonstration was called "to demand the resignation of the Maliki government."
"We demand the withdrawal of Iraqi forces from Basra and an end to the siege in Baghdad," he said.
Police spokesperson Colonel Karim al-Zaidi said the convoy of Basra police chief Major General Abdul Jalil Khalaf was hit by a suicide car bomber at about 1am local time on Mar. 27 as it passed through the streets of Basra.
"Three policemen were killed in the attack," Zaidi said, adding that Khalaf was unharmed.
A new civil war is threatening to explode in Iraq as the US-backed Iraqi government forces fight Shia militiamen for control of Basra and parts of Baghdad.
Heavy fighting engulfed Iraq's two largest cities and spread to other towns the day before as the al-Maliki gave fighters of the Mahdi Army 72 hours to surrender their weapons.
Al-Sadr's followers believe the government is trying to eliminate them before elections later this year, which they are expected to win.
With Iraq's top leaders directing the battle, Iraq's army and national police pressed a major operation on Mar. 25 to wrest control of the southern port city of Basra from al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia. Fighting between government forces and the militia quickly spread through Iraq's south and into Baghdad.
Al-Sadr has demanded that the country's prime minister leave Basra where he is overseeing a military operation to purge the southern city of its Shiite militiamen.
Relations between al-Sadr and Maliki have deteriorated sharply as the two men clashed over fighting between Iraqi forces and gunmen in Sadrist communities in Iraq.
Maliki gave followers of Sadr and other Shiite gunmen 72 hours to surrender their weapons and renounce violence or bear the brunt of a military crackdown.
"We are not going to chase those who hand over their weapons within 72 hours," said Maliki. "If they do not surrender their arms, the law will follow its course."
The reaction from Sadr's camp was swift. At a press conference in the holy city of Najaf, three of the cleric's top lieutenants condemned the government offensive and accused Maliki, a Shiite, of carrying out a US agenda. Since Mar. 24, they have embarked on a nationwide campaign of protests and civil disobedience if US and Iraqi forces continue to fight the Mahdi Army. A spokesman for al-Sadr said his movement had appealed to Maliki to reduce tensions in the city by returning to Baghdad and sending a parliamentary delegation to seek an end to fighting.
Liwa Sumaysim, a spokesman for Sadr said: "al-Sadr has asked prime minister Maliki to leave Basra and to send a parliamentary delegation to resolve the crisis in the city." Sumaysim described as "preposterous" US claims that it was only targeting splinter elements of the Mahdi Army.
In Najaf, protesters chanted, "Oh Nouri, you coward. You spy of the Americans" and "The army is with America..."
Fighting has raged in Basra since the morning of Mar. 25. Police said that seven people died in fighting in Basra on Mar. 26 while hospital sources put the total death toll at 40 and the number of wounded at 200.
A military operation targeting Mahdi affiliates was also underway in the Sadr City area of Baghdad, where four deaths were have been reported. On Mar. 25, all shops in the Mahdi Army stronghold neighborhoods–Bayiaa, Iskan, Shuala, and Washash–were shuttered. Leaflets saying "No, no to America" were plastered on each storefront. Anti-US banners hung right next to Iraqi government checkpoints.
"Those killed and wounded included men, women and children," said an interior ministry official. "The wounded have been admitted to five different hospitals in and around Sadr City."
Residents of the sprawling city said those involved in the fighting were Sadr's Mahdi army members but the US military said it was targeting "rogue terrorist and criminal elements."
Police said 218 militiamen had been detained since the launch of the security sweep, which has been codenamed Saulat al-Fursan (Charge of the Knights.)
The fighting has threatened to destabilize a long-term truce that had helped reduce the level of violence in the five-year-old Iraq War. Mahdi Army commanders have protested continuing US and Iraqi raids and detentions of militia members. If the cease-fire were to unravel, there is little doubt about the deadly mayhem that could be stirred up as a result.
Supporters of Moktada al-Sadr protested in Baghdad's Amil district on Mar. 26 with signs that read: "No, No to governmental militias," "No, No, America," "No to terrorism," and "Yes, Yes, Iraq."
There were also serious clashes in the southern cities of Kut and Hilla. Armed followers of al-Sadr seized control of five districts in the southern Iraqi town of Kut on Mar. 26, police sources said. The sources said Sadr's Mahdi Army militia were in control of the Jihad, Shuhada, Zahara, Sharqiya and Hawi districts of the city, which has 18 districts in total. At least 16 people have been killed in fighting in Kut in the last 10 days, police said.
In Basra, US and British jets roared through the skies, providing air support for the Iraqi military. A British Army spokesman for southern Iraq, Maj. Tom Holloway, said that while Western forces had not entered Basra, the operation already involved nearly 30,000 Iraqi troops and police forces, with more arriving. "They are clearing the city block by block," Major Holloway said.
The scale and intensity of the clashes in Baghdad kept many residents home. Schools and shops were closed in many neighborhoods and hundreds of checkpoints appeared; in some neighborhoods they were controlled by the government and in others by militia members.
Barrages of rockets and mortar shells pounded the fortified Green Zone, the seat of US power in Iraq, for three days, seriously wounding three Americans. One US embassy employee was killed. Two rockets also hit the parking lot of the Iraqi cabinet.
Sadr City, the Baghdad neighborhood that is the center of the Mahdi Army's power, was sealed off by a cordon of Iraqi troops and what appeared to be several US units. A New York Times photographer who was able to get through the cordon found more layers of checkpoints, each one run by about two dozen heavily armed Mahdi Army fighters clad in tracksuits and T-shirts. Tires burned in the city center, gunfire echoed against shuttered stores, and teams of fighters in pickup trucks moved about brandishing machine guns, sniper rifles and rocket-propelled grenade launchers.
"We are doing this in reaction to the unprovoked military operations against the Mahdi Army," said a Mahdi commander who identified himself as Abu Mortada. "The US, the Iraqi government and SCIRI are against us," he said, referring to a rival Shiite group whose name has changed several times, and is now known as the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI), which has an armed wing called the Badr Corp.
"They are trying to finish us," the commander said. "They want power for the Iraqi government and ISCI."
Although Sadr officials said the cease-fire was still in effect, on Mar. 24 al-Sadr called for a nationwide civil disobedience campaign in response to what his followers said was an unwarranted crackdown. Some Mahdi commanders referred to an edict by Sadr saying their militias had the right of self-defense.
In Najaf, hundreds of followers carrying Korans and olive branches mounted a sit-in, chanting, "No to occupation, no to terrorism."
A member of al-Sadr's political party in Basra, Sheik Abdul Sattar al-Bahadli, complained bitterly about the enormous operation, claiming that it was aimed at innocent people in Basra.
"We never witnessed such attacks even under the regime of Saddam Hussein," Bahadli said. "Maliki gave orders and said, 'Erase them.' "
A US military official said the US-led occupation forces had provided air transportation for the operation and were keeping "quick reaction forces" on standby.
Lt. Col. Steve Stover of the Baghdad-based 4th Infantry Division said that in the span of 12 hours on Mar. 26, 16 rockets were fired at the Green Zone and nine rockets and 18 mortar rounds fell on US bases and combat outposts on the east side of Baghdad. A mortar round hit a US patrol in the northern Adhamiyah district, killing one US soldier. A roadside bomb set a US Humvee on fire in Sadr City but all soldiers inside survived.
Context of the crackdown
In a battle in oil-rich Basra, a bomb blast destroyed an oil pipeline, al-Sadr's Shiite bloc walked out of parliament on Mar. 25 to protest the crackdown, and a Baghdad security plan spokesperson was kidnapped two days later. This anger threatens to end al-Sadr's pivotal cease fire, credited with much of the reduced violence across Iraq.
As Center for American Progress Senior Fellow Brian Katulis explained, the violence "brings into the open this long-running intra-Shia civil war." The fighting across southern Iraq has pitted al-Sadr's Madhi Army against Abdul Aziz Al Hakim's Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI) of the Badr Brigade, which has support from al-Maliki. Adding another layer to just one component of Iraq's many civil wars, "a third Shia faction, the Fadhila movement, is also engaged in the struggle for power in Basra," Katulis writes. The result is a show of force from al-Sadr. "If these violations continue, a huge popular eruption will take place that no power on Earth can stop," said Nassar al-Rubaei, leader of the Sadrist bloc in parliament.
The Bush administration has tried to simplify the violence into a government versus militia struggle. "The Prime Minister has gone to Basra.... to re-establish the rule of law," said National Security adviser Steven Hadley on Mar. 26. But as analyst Anthony Cordesman noted, it is not that simple. A better explanation is that the Iraqi government -- allied with ISCI militias -- is trying to suppress its political enemies. "[T]his is really a fairly transparent partisan effort by the Supreme Council dressed in government uniforms to fight the Sadrists and Fadila," said Joost Hiltermann of the International Crisis Group.
"Maliki in alliance with ISCI are doing their best to marginalize their political enemies locally -- in preparation for local elections in October 2008," argues historian Reidar Visser.
The Bush administration is trying to spin the new activity as a "by-product of the success of the surge." President Bush even called it a "positive moment" on Mar. 27. But the violence shows the surge's failure to contain Iraq's vicious internal power struggles.