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Revue de Presse-Press Review-Berhevoka ęape-Rivista Starnpa-Dentro de la Prensa-Basin Ozeti

International Herald Tribune

Monday, August 16,2004

Baghdad slum fuels power of radical cleric

By Sabrina Thvernise

BAGHDAD: Moktada al-Sadr’s challenge sińce his first uprl-.ing against the Americans in the $p r    has been based

on two trump cards: his control of the shrine in Najaf in the Shiite heartland, and his unchallenged primacy in Sadr City, the immense and destitute Shiite neighborhood that is home to two mil-lion of Baghdad’s 5.5 million people.

Even if the twists of negotiations or the resumption of the American and Iraqi military operation shake Sadr’s grip on the Imam Ali shrine, his Principal power base in Sadr City, which is named for his father, will remain, poised like an arrow at the capital’s heart.

To deprive him of that would reąuire a full-scale American assault on Sadr City’s heavily populated neighborhoods and attacks on the mosąues used as ar-mories and strongholds. Neither United States military commanders nor Ayad Allawi, prime minister of Iraq’s interim govemment, seems likely to hazard moves like that.

Last week, Sadr’s militia, known as the Mahdi Army, gave a foretaste of the destabilizing potential their control of Sadr City gives. After American commanders imposed a 16-hour-a-day curfew on Sadr City, Sadr responded

with a curfew order of his own — over all Baghdad. Streets in the Capital emp-tied after the 1 p.m. deadline the cleric’s aides had set for businesses to close and workers to go home.

The Sadr fighters seemed to thumb their noses at the U.S. curfew.

Even in daylight, they drive deep into the center of Baghdad in groups of two or three vehicles, firing rockets at the huge intemational compound along the Tigris River’s west bank where the U.S. Embassy, the U.S. military command and Allawi are hunkered down.

It is becoming routine for Mahdi fighters to stage attacks in other neighborhoods. In Baghdad’s Shaab area last week, militiamen drove to a police sta-tion, surrounded it and began shooting, killing one officer and wounding two, an officer frora the station said. When Mahdi fighters demanded that a market in Shaab close the next day, vendors im-mediately complied.

Nighttime is particularly hazardous. Mortar fire torments the U.S. post, For-ward Operating Base Eagle, at the east-em edge of Sadr City. Soldiers there are required to wear body armor when ven-turing outside. The violence in Sadr I City takes its toll. For the week ending on Friday, an average of nine people a day were killed in the district, accord-.ing to Iraq’s Health Ministry.

Many middle-class lraqis emphasize that the Mahdi militia is a volatile mix of religious fighters, Iraqis showing solidarity with Sadr and criminals re-leased from jail under Saddam Hus-sein’s amnesty shortly before the war.

“The constitution of this army is a mix of many groups/’ said Thaier al-Su-dani, a Sadr City resident who works as an English translator for Baghdad Uni-versity. "Many of them are dealing with alcohol. It is hard to find a graduated man among them.”

Fighters brush off those accusations, saying the army is better organized and morę focused than people think. Uday Hashem, a 22-year-old former car me-chanic who is now with the militia, said fighters communicated with other groups by mobile telephone.

The militia has divided Sadr City into 79 sections, with each Mahdi com-mander controlling four of them, said Ali Abdul-Hussein, 22, who commands a checkpoint of about 10 men.

Even medical care and food are coor-dinated. Local men and women cook for the units that keep watch at the check-points, and when fighters are wounded in attacks outside the district they sometimes take them to prwate hospit-als with doctors friendly to their cause.

Unraveling the Mahdi Army has proved particularly difficult, in part be-cause of the elaborate web of patronage and tribal systems that crisscrosses the closely knit neighborhoods of Sadr City. Police officers are relatives and friends of the fighters, and for the most part do not interfere with their activities, even though it is their job to do so.

The officers’ consideration for fellow Shiites in Sadr City was evident at a demonstration on Friday in which thou-sands of Shiites gathered in a central square in Baghdad to protest the U.S. siege of Najaf. Two police stations near the area allowed posters of Sadr to be propped up on rooftop watchtowers. The aftemoon prayer was broadcast from speakers hooked up to a police vehicle.

Abdul Rakhman, a 42-year-old fur-niture maker, described the army fighters as Robin Hoods who helped people pay for cooking gas and directed traffic.

“I swear to you, the Mahdi Army is for the people,” he said.

But their attacks have cost American occupiers and the new Iraqi authorities dearly, as the violence and unpredictab-ility slowly erodes Iraqis’ patience.

"We’re living without our dignity,” said Haidar Abd, a 19-year-old who was standing at Al Karkh Hospital with a friend wounded in a firefight between the Mahdi Army and U.S. troops. "How long will we have to live like this?”

The New York Times

Karim Sahib/Assocłated Press

i Moktada al-Sadr’s fighters in Najaf on Sunday, beside a picture of his leader.

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