Provocative
US Attack On
Shiite Militia In Iraq
By James Cogan
12 October 2006
World
Socialist Web
An
attack over the weekend in Diwaniyah, a city to the south of Baghdad,
signals a major intensification in the operations of US forces in Iraq
against the Mahdi Army, the armed wing of the Shiite fundamentalist
movement nominally headed by the cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.
In the early hours of Sunday
morning, a convoy of tanks and armoured vehicles converged on the Diwaniyah
home of a Mahdi Army leader, Kifah al-Greiti. A six-hour pitched battle
ensued, with hundreds of militiamen defending their commander with rocket-propelled
grenades and small arms. The US military claims that 30 Shiite fighters
were killed. While there were no reported American casualties, the ferocity
of the fighting is indicated by the rare destruction of a heavily armoured
Abram tank.
In August, Diwaniyah was
the scene of two days of fighting between units of the Iraqi military
and the Mahdi Army, which controls large parts of the city. At least
23 Iraqi soldiers and 50 militiamen died before a ceasefire was worked
out that required the government troops to withdraw from the Sadrist
neighbourhoods.
The Sadrist leader in Diwaniyah,
Abdul Razaq al-Nadawi, accused the occupation forces of violating that
ceasefire by their raid on Sunday. He told Associated Press: “We
had an agreement with representatives of the prime minister [Nouri al-Maliki]....
The agreement states that the American forces do not enter our cities
or residential areas in Diwaniyah and all over Iraq. This has been followed
until now. We don’t attack [American troops], but when we are
attacked, we respond.”
Sadrist representatives have
warned that the events of the weekend are the harbinger of a nationwide
crackdown against their organisation, particularly their main powerbase,
the Sadr City district of eastern Baghdad. Nadawi declared on Sunday:
“The American forces intend to launch a wide-scale operation against
the Mahdi Army and will attempt to enter Sadr City.”
Sadr City is home to close
to 2.5 million predominantly working class Shiite Iraqis. The Sadrists
hold sway in the area through a network of mosques, charities, health
clinics and the Mahdi Army, which is estimated to have up to 10,000
well-armed fighters in the capital alone. Since early September, US
troops in Baghdad, whose numbers have been significantly bolstered,
have been conducting provocative intrusions into the suburbs adjoining
Sadr City, while staying out of the Shiite stronghold itself.
Tensions are being raised
to fever-pitch by the stepped-up repression. American patrols into Shiite
areas are being confronted by hundreds of youth, who chant opposition
to the occupation and hurl rocks and petrol bombs at their vehicles.
American commanders claim the Mahdi Army is behind the unrest in order
to prevent US forces approaching important militia facilities or to
divert them into ambushes. An officer whose convoy was being pelted
with rocks by children told Associated Press: “There’s probably
one or two snipers out there waiting for us to get in range”.
Ali al-Yassiri, a Sadrist
spokesman, dismissed the allegation, declaring that the street clashes
were the “spontaneous and the natural reaction from innocent children
who are witnessing horrible deeds committed by the occupation forces
in Iraq”.
Any full-scale US military
assault on the Mahdi Army in Sadr City would inevitably lead to hundreds
and potentially thousands of civilian deaths, as well as a sharp rise
in US casualties. There are ample indications, however, that such an
offensive is being prepared.
US troop numbers in Baghdad
have been doubled to 15,000. One of the main units deployed to the capital
is the 4,000-strong 172nd Stryker Brigade, whose armoured vehicles are
primarily intended for urban warfare. The brigade was due to leave Iraq
in July but had its tour extended for 120 days until the end of November.
Another armoured unit, the 4th Brigade of the Texas-based 1st Cavalry
Division, is replacing it later this month. The overlap will potentially
allow American commanders to use both brigades to spearhead operations
in Sadr City shortly after the US elections on November 7.
The Bush administration and
US military strategists have viewed the Sadrists as a threat since the
first months of the occupation. Contrary to predictions by figures like
Vice President Dick Cheney that Iraqi Shiites would welcome the invading
American troops with garlands of flowers, the Shiite working class and
urban poor, who make up the social base of the Sadrist movement, have
been overwhelmingly hostile to the presence of foreign forces.
Within months of the invasion,
Moqtada al-Sadr, a young and relatively unknown cleric, consolidated
his position as the principal spokesman for the Shiite opposition, making
regular demands for the immediate withdrawal of all American forces.
In April 2004, after an attempt was made to arrest Sadr and other key
Sadrist leaders, thousands of young Shiites took up arms across southern
Iraq to fight the US and other occupation forces, with major battles
being fought in Baghdad, Karbala and Najaf.
The Shiite uprising in 2004
was ended by a compromise. In exchange for an end to armed resistance,
the occupation forces agreed to allow the Sadrists to function as an
open political movement. As a consequence, the Sadrists have emerged
as the largest faction within the present Shiite-dominated government
of Nouri al-Maliki, with 30 seats of the 275-member parliament and control
over key ministries such as health and education. At the same time as
serving in the US puppet regime, however, they have refused to disband
the Mahdi Army and continue to issue populist denunciations of the occupation
to maintain support among the Shiite population.
From Washington’s standpoint,
the Sadrist presence in the government and the existence of thousands
of armed Shiite militants is an obstacle to its long-term agenda in
Iraq: a stable regime in Baghdad to allow US energy companies to dominate
the country’s oil and gas resources and to permit permanent US
military bases on its territory.
Shiite militia like the Mahdi
Army are fighting a bloody civil war against Sunni Muslim rivals to
ensure that political power remains in the hands of the Shiite parties.
The escalating sectarian carnage has prevented any viable compromise
being struck to end the largely Sunni insurgency that has been fought
against the US military since 2003. Instead, American officers are alleging
that their troops are coming under a growing number of attacks from
Shiite militias, as well as Sunni guerillas. An American officer told
USA Today that as the Mahdi Army “claims they control Sadr City
and attacks are coming from Sadr City”, then “either they
are doing the attacking or allowing others to”.
US preparations for possible
military action against neighbouring Iran have only heightened pressure
for a confrontation with the Mahdi Army. Sadr has openly threatened
that the Shiite militia would take up arms to defend Iran. In August,
as many as one million Iraqi Shiites, many of them Sadr loyalists, marched
in Baghdad to express their support for the Shiite Hezbollah movement
against the US-backed Israeli attack on southern Lebanon. The Sadrists
have since been demonised by US officials and generals as a “state
within a state” and a potential Iranian fifth column in Iraq.
The Maliki government is
under intense pressure from the Bush administration to give the go-ahead
for a crackdown on Mahdi Army, possibly by declaring it illegal. To
date, it has refused. Maliki and the other Shiite factions are in a
political alliance with the Sadrists and their dominant position within
the Iraqi state relies to a great extent on their support.
The reluctance of Maliki
to sanction a move against the Sadrists is a major element in the increasingly
open US recriminations against his government and implicit threats to
dispense with it. The possibility cannot be ruled out that an assault
on the Sadrists will be accompanied by a move to oust Maliki and install
a regime headed by elements of the Iraqi elite that are prepared to
endorse a bloodbath against the Shiite masses.
The prospect that a new and
even bloodier phase of the Iraq war may be imminent has not produced
any opposition from the Democratic Party or the broader American political
establishment. Three-and-half years after the US invasion, there is
a consensus in US ruling circles that extracting the American military
from the quagmire in Iraq, while preserving US interests in the Middle
East, will require a massive escalation in the violence against the
Iraqi people.
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