US
Military Begins Operations In Baghdad’s Sadr City
By James Cogan
11 March, 2007
World
Socialist Web
American
and Iraqi government forces have initiated regular patrols this week
in northeastern Baghdad’s densely populated, predominantly Shiite,
working class suburb of Sadr City. More than 1,200 troops have entered
the area since Sunday, searching homes and establishing vehicle checkpoints.
Thus far, they have encountered no resistance.
The US entry into Sadr City
has considerable significance. It is one of the primary objectives of
the deployment of over 17,000 additional US troops to Baghdad, which
was announced by President George Bush on January 10. Having moved in
forces, the intention of the US commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus,
is to establish permanent bases and impose US control over the two million
people who live in the district.
A potentially explosive stage
of Bush’s Iraq “surge” has therefore begun. Sadr City
has effectively been a no-go zone for the US military, due to the mass
opposition of the Iraqi working class toward the occupation. It is the
stronghold of the Shiite fundamentalist movement headed by cleric Moqtada
al-Sadr, which developed a mass following in the 1990s by opposing both
the Baathist regime of Saddam Hussein and the UN sanctions on Iraq.
Following the US invasion in 2003, the Sadrists rapidly took control
over Baghdad’s eastern Shiite suburbs and formed an armed wing,
the Mahdi Army militia.
In April 2004, in response
to calculated provocations by the US occupation authorities, thousands
of Mahdi Army fighters took up arms and fought bloody battles against
the US military in Sadr City, as well in the southern cities of Karbala
and Najaf. The fighting ended with a negotiated settlement, with the
Sadrist leadership agreeing to participate in the US puppet regime in
Baghdad. Sadr City was left in the control of the Mahdi Army and government
police loyal to Sadr.
Hundreds of millions of dollars
have since been spent on economic projects in the suburb, providing
a lucrative pay-off to the Sadrists for ending the short-lived rebellion.
With 30 legislators, the Sadrists emerged in 2006 as the largest faction
within the Shiite coalition that dominates the Iraqi parliament and
were given six ministries in the government of Prime Minister Nouri
al-Maliki.
The focus of the Mahdi Army
over the past year has been a vicious civil war against Sunni Muslim
opponents of the US occupation and Shiite rule. The militia is alleged
to be directing many of the Shiite death squads that are carrying out
sectarian killing and evictions against the Sunni population of the
city.
The Sadrist hierarchy has
demonstrated its willingness to accommodate itself to Iraq’s transformation
into a US client state. Nevertheless, there have been incessant calls
in US political and military circles for its political influence to
be shattered and the Mahdi Army eliminated.
The recriminations against
the Sadrists stem primarily from the volatility of its social base.
The workers and urban poor of Sadr City are bitterly hostile to the
presence of foreign troops and plans to hand over Iraq’s state-owned
oil industry for exploitation by major transnational energy corporations.
This class hostility is fuelled by the mass unemployment, malnutrition
and chronic lack of services and infrastructure. Sadr and his lieutenants
periodically reflect this mass sentiment with denunciations of the US
occupation and rhetorical calls for a timetable for the withdrawal of
American troops.
The fear in Washington is
that tensions are so acute in Sadr City that the US occupation could
find itself confronted with another rebellion by the Shiite working
class and poor, under conditions where its military forces have proven
incapable of suppressing the insurgency in predominantly Sunni Arab
areas. The Mahdi Army, which has anywhere between 10,000 and 60,000
potential fighters, is considered an unacceptable threat.
The demands for a crackdown
against the Sadrists have intensified as the Bush administration has
accelerated its preparations for a war against predominantly Shiite
Iran. Any US attack on their co-religionists could well unleash an uprising
by Iraqi Shiites. The Baghdad “surge” is, in many respects,
a pre-emptive strike, aimed at weakening the Mahdi Army and positioning
the US military inside Sadr City for any confrontation with the militia.
On Thursday, the Pentagon
announced it had approved a request for an additional 2,200 US military
police to be rushed to Iraq to help cope with the thousands of prisoners
expected as operations in Sadr City escalate. The Iraqi government claimed
in January that over 400 Sadrist militiamen had been detained. There
have been no subsequent reports on the extent of operations against
the militia.
Since being installed as
prime minister, Maliki has come under intense pressure to sanction a
crackdown on the Sadrists—who were previously his key allies within
the Shiite coalition. His persistent refusal in the second half of 2006
provoked a stream of leaks and statements indicating that the Bush administration
and its ambassador in Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, were actively plotting
his removal. Talk of a coup reached its zenith in November, when Maliki
ordered US troops to dismantle roadblocks they had set across the main
roads leading into Sadr City.
The Iraqi prime minister
has since backed down. His government has both authorised the entry
of US forces into the Sadrist stronghold and requested that three brigades
of Kurdish troops be sent from northern Iraq to take part in operations
in Baghdad. Many units of the Iraqi army are made up of Shiite troops
who may mutiny if ordered to fight in Sadr City.
The Sadrist leadership has
also manoeuvred to avoid a confrontation. In February, Sadr ordered
his movement to cooperate with the entry of American and government
troops into Sadr City. The Mahdi Army, according to on-the-spot accounts,
has effectively gone to ground. US troops who entered the district this
week saw no sign of the militiamen who previously maintained well-defended
positions at intersections and in major buildings. The initial deployment
was reportedly negotiated with the mayor of Sadr City. Many Sadrist
leaders are rumoured to have fled the country to Iran, Lebanon or elsewhere
in the Middle East.
However, the current calm
may not last much longer. Sadr, who had not appeared in public for more
than three weeks, issued a statement on Thursday from Najaf calling
on his supporters to use a religious festival on Friday to “demand
the occupier leaves our dear Iraq so that we could live in independence
and stability”.
Several reports indicate
that the Maliki government is preparing to move against the Sadrist
leadership. This week, a prime ministerial adviser leaked to Associated
Press that Maliki intends to sack the Sadrist ministers from his cabinet.
The Arabic website KarbalaNews.net has reported that the Iraqi government
is preparing arrest warrants against a number of Sadrist parliamentarians,
charging them with directing sectarian violence. The last time the US
occupation attempted to marginalise the Sadrists was in March 2004,
when an arrest warrant was issued against Moqtada al-Sadr and the movement’s
newspaper closed down. The result was an armed uprising in Baghdad and
southern cities.
The US operation in Sadr
City may have an additional motive. One of the pretexts being fabricated
in Washington for a war with Iran are unproven US allegations that Tehran
has been supplying Shiite militias with arms and explosives used in
attacks on American troops. Any arms caches found in Sadr City could
well be used to further heighten tensions with Iran and pursue demands
for US military retaliation.
James Cogan is SEP candidate
for Heffron in the NSW election