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April 4th,
2008 - Iraqi PM Freezes Raids Targeting Militia News article by the Associated
Press News article by Agence France
Presse News article by the New York Times |
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Iraqi PM Freezes Raids
Targeting Militia By Hamid Ahmed Associated Press April 4, 2008 Baghdad - Iraq's prime minister
on Friday ordered a nationwide freeze on raids against suspected Shiite
militants after the leader of the biggest militia complained that arrests
were continuing even after he ordered fighters off the streets. The announcement was a major
shift from comments Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki made a day earlier. It
came after Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr, whose Mahdi Army militia fought
government troops last week, hinted at retaliation if arrests of his
followers did not stop. Meanwhile, a suicide bomber
killed at least 15 people and wounded eight when he blew himself up during a
policeman's funeral in Sadiyah, a town 60 miles north of Baghdad on Friday.
Police said the bomber mingled among the mourners and then triggered an
explosive vest. Also Friday, military and
police officials in Basra said a number of Iraqi soldiers and police were
reported to have mutinied or refused to engage al-Sadr's militants during
last week's fighting. The officials said the
mutiny involved a full infantry battalion belonging to the 4th Iraqi Division
numbering about 500 men and some 400 policemen. The deserters also turned
over to the Mahdi militia some of their weapons and vehicles, said the
officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the
matter. The desertions cast new
doubt on the effectiveness of U.S.-trained Iraqi security forces. The White
House has conditioned further U.S. troop withdrawals on the readiness of the
Iraqi military and police. On Sunday, Al-Sadr ordered
his militiamen off the streets in a move that ended the weeklong fighting. He
also demanded that the government stop arresting his followers and free
detainees held without charge. Al-Maliki's statement did not
mention the Mahdi Army by name or give a timeframe for the freeze, saying
only that the move is designed to give a "chance to those who repented
and want to lay down their arms." Al-Maliki's move appeared to
be a goodwill gesture toward al-Sadr and his followers. But it was also a
dramatic turnabout: He said Thursday that he intended to launch security
operations against Mahdi Army strongholds in Baghdad, including Sadr City,
home to some 2.5 million Shiites and the militia's largest base. Last week, Al-Maliki said
that gunmen in Basra had until April 8 to surrender their heavy weapons, but
Friday's statement made no mention of that deadline. "Those who lay down
their arms and participated in the recent acts of violence will not be
prosecuted," said the statement. He also ordered the repatriation of
families forced to flee their homes because of the latest fighting and cash
donations to the families of those killed or wounded in the violence. He said Iraqis whose
property has been damaged in the fighting also would be compensated. Despite a drop in fighting,
Iraqi officials insist that the Basra crackdown will continue until it breaks
the stronghold that armed groups have had on the city since 2005. A U.S. military statement on
Friday said that during the operation Iraqi special forces had captured a
suspected militant leader who has been rallying insurgents in Basra to fight
against coalition forces. The statement said the
suspect was linked the kidnapping and murder of Iraqi security troopers and had
been involved in oil smuggling "and foreign fighter networks." No
further details were released. Maj. Tom Holloway, a British
military spokesman, said a roadside bomb targeted a British force
"supporting an Iraqi-led operation at the very fringes of Basra."
He said the British were "mentoring and monitoring" the Iraqi
operation, but provided no further details. The action came a day after
Iraqi troops killed seven militants and detained 16 in three separate
incidents in the same general area. In a separate firefight, a
coalition warplane was used to bomb insurgents engaging Iraqi special forces
in the city. The air strike killed two militants, the U.S. statement said. Iraqi officials have
insisted the crackdown is against criminal gangs and not al-Sadr's political
movement. Elsewhere, a roadside bomb
early Friday killed four policeman and wounded one in Hillah, a town about 60
miles south of Baghdad, a police spokesman said. Copyright © 2008 The
Associated Press. External link: http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gkx-3oYeFwuWKCusr2jrojs98w8wD8VR3GH80 Sadr calls mass anti-US
protest in Baghdad Agence France Presse April 4, 2008 Najaf, Iraq - Moqtada
al-Sadr Friday called a mass rally for April 9 in Baghdad against US forces
in Iraq, as Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki ordered his troops to halt raids on
the Shiite cleric's militiamen. The venue for the protest
had earlier been set as the central shrine city of Najaf but a Sadr spokesman
said it would be more effective in the Iraqi capital and allow more people to
take part. April 9 marks the fifth
anniversary of the overthrow of Saddam Hussein's regime following the US-led
invasion of March 20, 2003. "The Sadr movement has
decided to change the venue of the huge demonstration that had been announced
for Najaf on April 9," said Salah al-Obeidi, spokesman for Sadr's office
in Najaf. "A protest in Baghdad
will be more effective because it is in the capital, and secondly, a protest
there will allow people of other sects to participate," Obeidi told AFP. "This demonstration is
not limited to the Sadr movement. We want all Iraqis to take part. The target
of the protest is the (US) occupation," he added. The announcement came after
crowds of people spilled on to the streets of Shiite areas of east Baghdad
following the main weekly Muslim prayers to denounce Maliki and demand that
US troops quit their areas. "No! No! to occupation.
Yes! Yes! to Islam," chanted the crowd in Sadr City, the cleric's main
Baghdad bastion, many of them carrying posters showing a caricature of the
premier bearing the words "Maliki is a puppet of Hakim." Sadr's supporters accuse Maliki
of siding with rival Shiite politician Abdel Aziz al-Hakim in the battle for
control of Basra - Iraq's main oil hub - ahead of provincial elections in
October. Maliki meanwhile tried to
calm tensions by ordering his troops to stop random raids across the country. He said in a statement he
was allowing time to those wanting to surrender their weapons after fierce
clashes between his security forces and Shiite militiamen last week which
killed at least 700 people, according to the United Nations. "To give a chance to
those who wish to lay down their arms, all raids and search operations will
be stopped in all areas," Maliki said. The prime minister had
earlier given residents of the second city of Basra an April 8 deadline to
hand over heavy and medium weapons in return for cash in a bid to cut the
supply of weapons to militiamen. Reiterating a similar order
issued earlier this week, Maliki, however, ordered his forces to "chase
those who have returned to arms." His statement came as aides
of Sadr accused the security forces of continuing to arrest members of the
Mahdi Army, the radical Shiite cleric's militia, in Basra and other Shiite
areas of Iraq. Protestors in Sadr City
Friday also demanded the withdrawal of US forces from the sprawling shanty
town of some two million people, which is still under curfew. Residents charged that
American troops had launched random raids and had deployed snipers on
rooftops who were shooting at residents. US commanders acknowledged
operations were under way in Sadr City but said these were linked to creating
conditions for the distribution of humanitarian relief and denied
emphatically that civilians were being targeted. "We protect the Iraqi
people and aggressively pursue armed criminals, Al-Qaeda in Iraq and Iranian-supported
Special Groups who are committing violent acts or are planning to," a
military spokesman, Lieutenant Colonel Steven Stover, told AFP. "We have been in
operating in the southern portion of Sadr City around the main thoroughfare
in order to protect the Iraqi people," he added. US commanders use the
expression Special Groups to refer to what they say are renegade units of
Sadr's Mahdi Army who failed to heed his order to stand down last August. In his latest order, Maliki told
the security forces to "guarantee the safety of those who have
surrendered their arms from the perpetrators of violence." He also urged troops to help
families displaced during the violence and promised compensation. Meanwhile, a US air strike
in Basra killed three people - a man and two children, AFP pictures showed. British military spokesman
Tom Holloway confirmed the strike but not the casualties. He said the strike was
carried out to support Iraqi forces who were fighting militants in the city's
Al-Haiyaniyah neighbourhood. Copyright © 2008 AFP. External link: http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5jguy7kUNUYCi8yJQEALGNbPYpImA More Than 1,000 in Iraq’s
Forces Quit Basra Fight By Stephen Farrell & James Glanz New York Times April 4, 2008 Baghdad - More than 1,000
Iraqi soldiers and policemen either refused to fight or simply abandoned
their posts during the inconclusive assault against Shiite militias in Basra
last week, a senior Iraqi government official said Thursday. Iraqi military
officials said the group included dozens of officers, including at least two
senior field commanders in the battle. The desertions in the heat
of a major battle cast fresh doubt on the effectiveness of the
American-trained Iraqi security forces. The White House has conditioned
further withdrawals of American troops on the readiness of the Iraqi military
and police. The crisis created by the desertions
and other problems with the Basra operation was serious enough that Prime
Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki hastily began funneling some 10,000 recruits
from local Shiite tribes into his armed forces. That move has already
generated anger among Sunni tribesmen whom Mr. Maliki has been much less
eager to recruit despite their cooperation with the government in its fight
against Sunni insurgents and criminal gangs. A British military official
said that Mr. Maliki had brought 6,600 reinforcements to Basra to join the
30,000 security personnel already stationed there, and a senior American
military official said that he understood that 1,000 to 1,500 Iraqi forces
had deserted or underperformed. That would represent a little over 4 percent
of the total. A new National Intelligence
Estimate on Iraq cites significant security improvements but concludes that
security remains fragile, several American government officials said. Even as officials described
problems with the planning and performance of the Iraqi forces during the
Basra operation, signs emerged Wednesday that tensions with Moktada al-Sadr,
the radical cleric who leads the Mahdi Army militia, could flare up again.
Mr. Sadr, who asked his followers to stop fighting on Sunday, called Thursday
for a million Iraqis to march to the Shiite holy city of Najaf next week to
protest what he called the American occupation. He also issued a veiled
threat against Mr. Maliki’s forces, whom he accused of violating the terms of
an agreement with the Iraqi government to stand down. Estimates by Iraqi military
officials of the number of officers who refused to fight during the Basra
operation varied from several dozen to more than 100. But three officials
said that among those who had been relieved of duty for refusing to fight
were Col. Rahim Jabbar and Lt. Col. Shakir Khalaf, the commander and deputy
commander of an entire brigade affiliated with the Interior Ministry. A senior military official
in Basra asserted that some members of Colonel Khalaf’s unit fought even
though he did not. Asked why he believed Colonel Khalaf did not fight, the
official said that the colonel did not believe the Iraqi security forces
would be able to protect him against threats to his life that he had received
for his involvement in the assault. “If he fights today, he
might be killed later,” the official said. The senior American military
official said the number of officers was “less than a couple dozen at most,”
but conceded that the figure could rise as the performance of senior officers
was assessed. But most of the deserters
were not officers. The American military official said, “From what we
understand, the bulk of these were from fairly fresh troops who had only just
gotten out of basic training and were probably pushed into the fight too
soon.” “There were obviously others
who elected to not fight their fellow Shia,” the official said, but added
that the coalition did not see the failures as a “major issue,” especially if
the Iraqi government dealt firmly with them. Mr. Maliki, who personally
directed the Basra operation, which both American and Iraqi officials have
criticized as poorly planned and executed, acknowledged the desertions
without giving a specific number in public statements on Thursday. “Everyone who was not on the
side of the security forces will go into the military courts,” Mr. Maliki
said in a news briefing in the Green Zone. “Joining the army or police is not
a trip or a picnic, there is something that they have to pay back to commit
to the interests of the state and not the party or the sect.” “They swore on the Koran
that they would not support their sect or their party, but they were lying,”
he said. On Sunday, Mr. Sadr gave the
prime minister a somewhat face-saving way out of the Basra fight by ordering
the Mahdi fighters to lay down their weapons after days in which government
forces had made no headway. Mr. Sadr simultaneously made
a series of demands, which senior Iraqi politicians involved in the talks said
they believed that Mr. Maliki had agreed to in advance. But the prime
minister has since denied any involvement in the talks, and government raids
on Mahdi Army units - something Mr. Sadr had said must stop - have if
anything become more frequent in Basra and Baghdad. Accordingly, Mr. Sadr’s
latest statement began by quoting a section of the Koran promising doom to
those who make promises and then break them. He then complained bitterly that
his followers were being unjustly suppressed and arrested, and warned that
nothing would force them to completely withdraw. But he did not explicitly
call for new fighting. American support for Iraqi
government forces has also continued, and on Thursday the American military
said it had carried out two airstrikes on Wednesday in Basra, one “to destroy
an enemy structure housing a sniper engaging Iraqi security forces in Basra”
and another to destroy a machine gun nest. The Iraqi police said one of
the strikes leveled a two-story house in Basra’s Kibla neighborhood, killing
three people and wounding three, all in the same family. The police made no
mention of hostile activity. Ryan C. Crocker, the United
States ambassador to Iraq, said Mr. Maliki took the lead in talks with Shiite
tribes and said that the turnout of thousands of security applicants in Basra
was testament to his success. “It is very clear that they
have moved over toward the prime minister in a very significant way,” Mr.
Crocker said during a briefing in the United States Embassy in Baghdad. “The tribal element he
managed himself, as far as I can see,” he said. “You may recall he had a
series of meetings with different tribal leaders, three or four of them,
maybe more. That was something he focused on almost from the beginning, and
pressed it hard straight through and has seen it pay off. Did he have counsel
to do it, I don’t know. But he is the one who did it.” Two southern tribal sheiks
said that by providing recruits for the security forces, they were expressing
support for the government. But the sheiks made clear that the promise of
good-paying jobs for the largely unemployed young men in their tribes had
also been a powerful inducement. Sheik Kamal al-Helfi, head
of the Basra branch of the Halaf tribe, said by phone that he was still
bargaining to increase his tribe’s allotment of 25 jobs in the security
forces. “Many people faced a bad situation since the time of Saddam, and they
have no jobs,” he said. Another southern tribal
leader, Sheik Adel al-Subihawi, said larger and more powerful tribes had
received quotas as high as 300 jobs. Mr. Maliki also announced
$100 million in economic assistance to Basra, to be administered by the
central government in partnership with the provincial government, and said
the government would create 25,000 jobs in the city over the coming year. Citing that promise of
assistance and the tribal discussions, Mr. Crocker said, “Were there deals?
Like everything else, that is not an engagement you win purely by military
means. The prime minister is employing the economic dimension of power right
now, and good on him, I think. Money is in many respects his most important
weapon and he is using it.” Mr. Maliki said that the
tribal recruits would be carefully vetted. But that was not enough to satisfy
some Sunnis farther north who have been waiting for months to see comparable
numbers of their tribesmen accepted into the government security forces. Tens
of thousands of these Sunnis, including many former insurgents, are working
alongside Iraqi and American troops in a so-called tribal awakening movement
- clearly a model for the tribal outreach in Basra. “Recruiting large number of
young people in Basra to fight the JAM proves once again that the government of
Nuri al-Maliki is a sectarian government, a double-standard one that favors
one sect at the expense of other sects,” said Abu Othman, a senior member of
Fadhil Awakening Council, referring to the Mahdi Army by its Arabic acronym. Abu Othman said four months
ago he had presented 100 Sunni names for enrollment in the Iraqi police and
had received no reply. “The Maliki government wants
security forces that are controlled, manipulated and moved by them,” he said. Reporting was contributed by
Michael Gordon, Qais Mizher, Ahmad Fadam and Karim al-Hilmi from Baghdad, and
Iraqi employees of The New York Times from Basra. Copyright 2008 The New York
Times Company External link: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/04/world/middleeast/04iraq.html By Al-Jazeera The Mahdi Army is an armed
group loyal to Muqtada al-Sadr, a Shia leader from a dynasty of revered
clerics persecuted under Saddam Hussein - Iraq's former president. The group was formed in 2003
to protect Shia areas due to the collapse of public order in the aftermath of
the US-led invasion of Iraq. Its members are often
popular in neighbourhoods they control because the group offers services that
the Iraqi government is often unable to provide. "This is an army of
volunteers ... They are clerics at night and heroes during the day," Abu
Bakr, a resident of Baghdad's Sadr City district, said. "This army is helping society.
They clean the streets, protect our schools and distribute fuel and
gas." Sadr City is one of the
group's strongholds and there the Mahdi Army has banned black markets, which
are rampant in the rest of the capital, and members man strict neighbourhood
security checkpoints to search for car bombs. "Ask anyone
around," one of its fighters said, "they will tell you that without
our presence, they will not be able to sleep at night, [and] students will
not be able to go to school, like in the rest of the capital, where people
are scared." Anti-US stance The Iraq Study Group, also
known as the Baker-Hamilton Commission, last year estimated that the force
had 60,000 members, but others put the number much larger, saying that the
Mahdi Army is present in every city and town - from Baghdad to the southern
border with Kuwait. Al-Sadr is against the
presence of foreign troops in Iraq and has demanded a timetable for the
withdrawal of US forces. He told Al Jazeera that the
Mahdi Army will only disarm when an administration that can "get the
occupier out of Iraq" is present. The Mahdi Army is capable of
"liberating Iraq", he said, maintaining that the US-backed
government is as "distant" from the Iraqi people as Saddam
Hussein's. Many Sunnis are fearful of
the group, which they accuse of carrying out a relentless campaign against
them. Abdullah, a Sunni student in
Baghdad, told Al Jazeera: "If anyone from them [the Mahdi Army]
recognised that I am Sunni, then I will be targeted." The group is accused of
infiltrating the security forces and its members have reportedly used police
uniforms to set up fake checkpoints and hunt down Sunnis. The Mahdi Army had in the
past concentrated on fighting US troops, and on two occasions sent aid to
Sunni fighters in Fallujah during military offensives led by US forces. But that support dried up in
February 2006, when the Askari mosque, a holy site for Shia Muslims in
Samarra, was bombed. Within hours of the bombing, young people were riding
around the capital on the back of pick-up trucks, parading guns and vowing
revenge. Al-Sadr, however, insists
that Sunni fighters are allies of the Mahdi Army and that he stands with them
politically. "I am an admirer of the
Sunnis and one of them," he told Al Jazeera. Accused of being influenced
by Shia neighbour Iran, al-Sadr says he has told the country's supreme
leader, Ayatollah Ali Khameini, that he does not approve of the
"political and military interests" that Tehran's government has
pursued in Iraq. Mahdi Army commanders,
though, say they have accepted arms and cash from Iran. Unchecked force Al-Sadr withdrew from public
view in 2008, in part to study to become a religious authority like his
ancestors. He says, however, that he
maintains control of the group through a ruling committee. Nuri Al-Maliki, the Iraqi
prime minister, has been reluctant to confront the Mahdi Army. Politicians loyal to al-Sadr
form a 30-member bloc in the Iraqi parliament. Last year saw a significant
drop in violence across Iraq, largely due to a ceasefire between the
government and the al-Sadr's followers, according to the US military. However, a recent bout of
fighting between Mahdi Army and government forces broke out on March 25,
after hundreds of al-Sadr supporters in the southern city of Basra were
arrested for what US commanders say were ties to Iran and for attacks on
American soldiers. Al-Sadr's followers accused
rival Shia parties in the government of trying to crush their movement before
provincial elections this fall. After six days of clashes,
which left almost 300 people reported dead across the southern part of the
country, Mahdi Army fighters were ordered off the streets by al-Sadr. The Mahdi Army and its
leader have been branded by the US as one of the biggest threats in Iraq, and
whether al-Maliki will be able to subdue the group remains to be seen. External link: http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/361C19D2-2910-45E8-BD3D-8660E6E14465.htm |