Doug Lorimer
Under the headline "3 million Iraqis under militia rule", the July 17 Houston Chronicle reported that rebel Iraqi Shiite leader Sayed Moqtada al Sadr's Madhi Army has taken control of Baghdad's largest neighbourhood in defiance of demands by US officials and their puppet Interim Government of Iraq (IGI) that the militia group disband.
Sadr's office in the huge slum neighbourhood, the Chronicle reported, rather than "the beleaguered police station, is often the first stop for Sadr City residents who want to report a crime in this teeming slum of 3 million... Most residents interviewed said the Mahdi Army — named after the Shiite Muslim messiah — doesn't need to carry weapons anymore because it's in charge."
In late March, US occupation officials shut down Sadr's weekly paper Al Hawza, alleging it was inciting armed attacks on the US occupation forces by its comparison of the rule of Coalition Provisional Authority chief Paul Bremer to that of ousted dictator Saddam Hussein.
When, in early April, the Madhi Army launched an uprising in Sadr City and took control of the centres of a number of Shiite holy cities in central southern Iraq, Bremer announced the existence of a three-month-old arrest warrant, supposedly issued by an Iraqi judge, claiming that Sadr was responsible for the killing of a pro-US cleric in April 2003. The warrant itself inspired further opposition to the CPA, as the US-appointed Iraqi justice minister stated that he had no knowledge of it, and the Iraqi Jurists Association declared it "illegal".
After a prolonged stand-off and then a few weeks of fierce street battles with the Madhi Army in and around the Shiite holy city of Najaf, US commanders announced on May 29 that they were seeking a ceasefire.
The May 29 Chicago Tribune reported that Major General Martin Dempsey, commander of the US troops besieging Najaf, had told the paper: "It pretty clear [Sadr] was trying to take what was a fairly small — let's call it narrow — uprising [and] was trying to expand it to a popular uprising."
While claiming that Sadr had little popular support, Demsey said that the US military was seeking to negotiate a ceasefire with him so as "not to allow this thing to become a popular uprising, because if he gained broad support of the Shiite population, there truly would have been nothing we could have done".
A week later, the Chicago Tribune carried an article reporting that, "If elections were held today, polls and interviews on the street suggest, the virulently anti-American al-Sadr would command a big percentage of the vote".
Since then, in an effort to get Sadr to drop his demand for US and other foreign occupation troops to leave Iraq, the US occupiers — via their stooges in the IGI — have had to make one concession after another to Sadr.
The US military has given up any attempt to capture Sadr or disband the Madhi Army. On July 7, IGI justice minister Malek al Hassan suggested that the puppet regime would be willing to suspend for three years the murder warrant seeking the arrest of Sadr. On July 18, the IGI lifted the ban imposed by Bremer on the publication of Al Hawza.
Since the June 28 "handover" to the IGI, US soldiers in Iraq have been dying at a rate of two a day — the same overall rate as prior to the "handover". On July 21, the US military death toll in Iraq reached 900, according to a count kept by Associated Press, with the number of US soldiers wounded approaching 6000.
A large portion of the US troop deaths since June 28 have been in the province to the west of Baghdad, in attacks launched by resistance fighters around Fallujah, controlled by an insurgent army led by former Iraqi Army officers, and in the disputed city of Ramadi.
"Most US Army officers interviewed this week said the patrols in and around the province's capital, Ramadi — home to many Iraqi military and intelligence officers under Saddam Hussein — have stopped largely because the troops and commanders there were tired of being shot at by insurgents who have refused to back down under heavy American military pressure", the Knight Ridders Newspapers wire service reported on July 21.
"I'm tired of every time we go out the gate, someone tries to kill me", US Marine Staff Sergeant Sheldon Rivers told KRN. "I don't have any idea of what we're trying to do out here. I don't know what the goal is, and I don't think our commanders do, either", said another marine sergeant.
"If the Americans stay here, the same thing that happened in Fallujah will happen in Ramadi", said Colonel Adnan Allawi, commander of one of the Iraqi National Guard battalions stationed near the city.
"Many of those interviewed in Ramadi recently", KRN reported, "said they would welcome a Fallujah-style rule by insurgents".
From Green Left Weekly, July 28, 2004.
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