BASRA Ominous Signs Remain in City Run by Iraqis

BASRA Ominous Signs Remain in City Run by Iraqis


[The Lyon of Babylon]

uruknet.info
اوروكنت.إنفو

Update on the fighting in Basra
Roads to Iraq

March 25, 2008

The situation right now is nothing to do with "Iraqi government" or "Iraqi Army", it is a Shiite-Shiite war, Mahdi Army with primitive arms and "Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution" [formed by Iran] with an army and supported by the Americans.

Remember the so called Iraqi government can not start this campaign without taking accord from Iran and the U.S., I told about the there is some kind of agreement between [The U.S. and Iran] few posts before.

Just few hours ago the Sadrists issued a new statement, signed by Al-Sadr himself and it says an initiative for peace contains six points:

- To distribute Quran and olive branches on police and army check points, and ask the security forces to not involve in this fighting trick used by the occupation.

- All the political, social and religious figures to take their responsibilities to stop these attacks

- Tribal chiefs to not to be involved in the fighting and to remember that they are the grandsons of 1920 revolution

- Iraqi parliament to stand beside the Iraqi people who chose them

- Political Parties to be beside the Iraqi public and not beside the occupation

- Call for all Iraqis to demonstrate, the next step is public disobedience, as for the third step then it will be announced in later time.

As for the last point [the public disobedience], the government announced that disobedience will be charged with terrorism law, the Sadrists representatives in the parliament announced they will start the procedures to withdraw their confidence in Maliki if this law put in practice.
The fights

Mahdi Army start to attack Badr and SCIR offices in Baghdad [the media reported that the attacks are in Sadr city only but according to my mother the attacks are everywhere at least in Risafah part of Baghdad].

Mahdi Army managed to control few neighborhoods in Kut city, Al-Mahmoudiya, Al-Yousfiyah.

:: Article nr. 42390 sent on 25-mar-2008 21:12 ECT
www.uruknet.info?p=42390

Link: www.roadstoiraq.com/2008/03/25/update-on-the-fighting-in-basra/

:: The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Uruknet .


UPDATED ON:
TUESDAY, MARCH 25, 2008
15:15 MECCA TIME, 12:15 GMT

Iraqi forces battle Basra militias













Nuri al-Maliki is personally overseeing the military operation against Shia militia in Basra [AFP]



Iraqi security forces have clashed with fighters from the Mahdi Army of Shia leader Muqtada al-Sadr in the southern city of Basra, amid demands by the group that detained members be released.



Mortar and gun fire was heard on Tuesday after security forces entered the neighbourhood of al-Tamiya, a Mahdi Army stronghold, the AFP news agency said.



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Clashes later spread to five other neighbourhoods, including al-Jumhuriya, Five Miles and al-Hayania, the Mahdi Army's main stronghold in Basra, 550km south of Baghdad.



At least four people have been killed and 18 wounded in the fighting, Abbas Youssef, police major, said.



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The fighting started at 2am (0500GMT) soon after a night-time curfew was imposed on Basra province, and hours after Nuri al-Maliki, the prime minister, arrived in the city on a visit.

At least four people were killed and 18 wounded, Major Abbas Youssef, a police commander, said.



Al-Maliki in Basra



Al-Maliki is said to be personally overseeing the operation in Basra against the Mahdi Army, a British army spokesman said.

Major Tom Holloway said: "The prime minister came down to Basra from Baghdad yesterday along with a delegation. He is overseeing the operation. He is at an Iraqi military base."

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Basra province was handed over to Iraqi control by British forces in mid-December.

James Bays, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Iraq, said: "[The British forces] are sort of on standby if they are really needed ... they could help out this operation in a number of ways, with air support for this operation, either with bombing or surveillance useful to Iraqi forces on the ground."



"There are groups of competing militia on the ground. The main ones are al-Sadr's fighters ... but there are lots of other splinter groups. On top of that there are criminal gangs and smugglers in Basra."



Al-Sadr has instructed the Mahdi Army to maintain its ceasefire across Iraq in recent weeks.

However, the US military and Iraqi security forces have detained al-Sadr loyalists they accuse of belonging to breakaway armed factions.

Al-Sadr said that his group could lead a nationwide campaign of civil disobedience in response to the Iraqi security forces' operation in Basra.

He also said he would launch a nationwide strike unless attacks against members of his movement cease.

"We demand that religious and political leaders intervene to stop the attacks on poor people," a statement read by Hazam al-Aaraji, an al-Sadr representative, said.

"We call on all Iraqis to launch protests across all the provinces. If the government does not respect these demands, the second step will be general civil disobedience in Baghdad and the Iraqi provinces."

Motives questioned

Sheikh Ahmed al-Ali, a member of al-Sadr's office in Basra, said the group could not understand why Iraqi security forces had launched an operation against it.



"This ongoing operation in Basra appears to be security-related, while, in fact, it is a political one," he told Al Jazeera.



Basra was handed to Iraqi
forces in December [AFP]

"The al-Sadr trend in Basra has frequently said that it supports the Iraqi government and the Iraqi forces in Basra.



"Al-Mahdi Army is not a military army, as some believe. It is a doctrinal army that serves the society. And that is why al-Mahdi Army has had a great role in supporting the Iraqi security forces in Basra."



A number of presidential palaces and Iraqi security and military bases in Basra city came under intensive attack during the assault, Fadel Abdul Hassan, an Iraqi journalist, told Al Jazeera.



Mahdi Army forces also stormed the main Iraqi army base in Shatt al-Arab camp in the city, he said.

Ali al-Dabbagh, an Iraqi government spokesman, told Al Jazeera that the security forces were fighting against "those that are exploiting the name of the Mahdi, those that are exploiting the name of Muqtada al-Sadr".


"There will no be no dialogue with them [the fighters] but there definitely will be dialogue with Muqtada al-Sadr himself," he said.

Announcing the operation late on Monday, General Mohan al-Furayji, the Iraqi commander in charge of security in the south of Iraq, said vehicle access from neighbouring provinces would be temporarily closed during the evening hours from Wednesday and until Friday.

Schools closed



Teaching at schools and universities has also been suspended from Tuesday until Thursday.


Amid the security operation in Basra, hundreds of people marched through western Baghdad on Tuesday to protest against arrests of al-Sadr loyalists.

Leaders of al-Sadr's bloc in Baghdad called for its supporters to close their shops and businesses in protest at members' arrests.

The call was heeded on Monday in Amil and Baiyaa, two predominantly Shia neighbourhoods of Baghdad.

Police said Mahdi Army members issued general strike orders in three other areas of southwestern Baghdad and in Mahmudiya, about 30km south of the capital.

"This civil disobedience may be called for in the rest of Baghdad and maybe in southern provinces if the government does not free our detainees," Ali al-Mayali, a politician loyal to al-Sadr, said on Monday.





Source: Al Jazeera and agencies



Los Angeles Times - Home

latimes.com Babylon & Beyond blog
IRAQ: Sleepless in Baghdad

Gunfire

I had finished my work at the office and left for home because I knew the fighting could start at any moment in my neighborhood between the rival Shiite armed groups.

I stopped on my way at a computer repair shop to pick up my PC. When I reached my neighborhood, it was 7:30 pm. The streets were empty with the exception of a few motorcycles. I spotted some Mahdi Army fighters on foot. They were just kids. Some of them clustered in the alleys. They did not pay attention to me and they kept chatting. I put my computer on the ground and rested.

Finally, I reached home and my lovely 6-year-old boy greeted me, screaming, “Papa is here.” He opened the door. He asked me about my computer. I talked to him awhile and asked him if he ate his dinner. He answered yes. Then I put him to bed. He usually goes to sleep at 7 pm. I placed his doll beside him, lit his oil lamp and kissed him goodnight.

I watched TV until our block’s generator shut off at midnight.

The sound of Kalashnikovs awoke me a few hours later. I thought, "Oh no here it is. The fight has started."

This time, the shooting was close to our house. I raced to my son’s room before the shooting frightened him. He was covering his ears and cowering in bed. I started our house’s generator so he could watch TV. " I hate the terrorists,” he said. “I hope they die."

I held him close to my chest trying to calm him. I told him it was nothing; the gunshots were from a wedding party. The fight continued for another hour, but the gunmen had moved farther away.

When my child woke up in the morning, he covered his ears, screamed and ran away inside our house.

— A Times staff reporter in Baghdad

Photo: As Iraqis scramble for safety in a Baghdad commercial district, a boy crouches behind a U.S. soldier to avoid gunfire that broke out moments after a suicide car bombing last year. Earlier, hostage-taking gunmen battled security forces several blocks away. Credit: Khalid Mohammed / AP




The New York Times



February 23, 2008
Ominous Signs Remain in City Run by Iraqis
By SOLOMON MOORE



Essam Al-Sudani/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

An Iraqi soldier securing an area where a gunfight erupted between gunmen and Iraqi forces in Basra in January.







Essam Al-Sudani/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images


Members of Ansar al Mahdi, a millenarian cult, were detained in Basra after a gunfight with Iraqi troops in January. They are accused of attacking Shiites during the Ashura observance.



BASRA, Iraq — This southern port city has been, in effect, on its own since September, when British forces here moved to the outskirts, yielding authority to local leaders. British and American officials say Basra’s experiment in self-rule could serve as a model for Iraq’s future, but if so — many locals and outside advisers say — that future remains dark.

What makes the situation in Basra — Iraq’s second largest city and commercial hub — so alarming, they say, is that it is a test of Iraqi rule under relatively optimal conditions: Basra has the nation’s best economic base, little ethnic tension within a homogeneous Shiite population and no Western occupation force to inflame nationalist tensions.

Yet the city remains deeply troubled. Disappearances of doctors, teachers and other professionals are common, as are some clashes among competing militias, most of which are linked to political parties. Murder victims include judicial investigators, politicians and tribal sheiks. One especially disturbing trend is the slaying of at least 100 women in the last year, according to the police. The Iraqi authorities have blamed Shiite militiamen for many of those killing, saying the militants had probably deemed the women to be impious.

“Most of the killings are done by gunmen in police cars,” said Sheik Khadem al-Ribat, a Basra tribal leader who claims no party membership. He spoke of the militias in an antechamber of his downtown mosque, his voice barely above a whisper. “These cars were given to the political parties. There are supposed to be 16,000 policemen, but we see very few of them on the street, and most of the ones we do see are militiamen dressed as police.”

Two dozen Shiite political parties and their respective militias compete, often violently, over control of the oil sector, seaport profits, smuggling operations across the nearby Iranian border and political authority over Iraq’s economic nerve center. So while the sectarian tension that has marred life elsewhere is missing here, the strife itself is not.

A local leader pointed to a political dispute as an example of the difference between perception and reality here.

Rival Shiite political parties, led by the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq and followers of the cleric Moktada al-Sadr, tried last year to remove Gov. Mohammed Mosbeh al-Waeli over demands that he share more government jobs, particularly in the oil sector, among provincial factions.

British officials said they were heartened that the spat found its way into provincial council deliberations and Iraq’s court system and counted it as a sign that politics and law were starting to supplant bloodshed in Basra.

“They did all of that through the judiciary,” said Lt. Col. Michael Shearer, a British military spokesman. “Certainly there were no assassinations that anybody is aware of.”

However, according to Mr. Waeli’s political adviser, Sheik Abbas al-Zaidi, “They tried many times to kill the governor.” It was unclear who the attackers were, he added, but he was confident that they were rival militias. There were roadside bombs on Mr. Waeli’s way to work, shootings at home, and at least two bodyguards were killed. Militiamen also clashed last year over oil sector jobs, Mr. Zaidi said.

Still, he acknowledged, “The assassination attempts failed, and we won the case in the courts.”

It is this daily violence intermingled with normal politics that seems most worrying, experts here say.

“They have these overlapping spheres of gangsterism and politics, militias and legitimate businesses, and legitimate politics,” said Rob Tinline, a spokesman for the British Provincial Reconstruction Team.

Iraq’s security forces are the most conspicuous example of the tension between politics and violence in Basra, and the aptly named Serious Crimes Unit of the Basra Police is perhaps the most egregious example. The British Army determined that the unit was a death squad linked to Shiite militias and dispatched Warrior tanks in December 2006 to pound the rogue force’s headquarters to rubble.

But Iraqi arrest warrants for the unit’s members have never been executed. A warrant issued by Iraq’s Interior Ministry last month singles out Abdullah Najim, also known as Abu Muslim, and accuses him of orchestrating kidnappings, torture and assassinations while leading the police unit.

Mr. Abu Muslim escaped the 2006 British assault and is still a free man.

In fact, he is still a Basra policeman.

“Either he’s still operating as a police officer or he has gotten tacit approval to pose as a police officer,” said Jonathan Ratel, a Canadian contractor working as a justice adviser for the British Foreign Office in Basra.

Mr. Ratel has been working with provincial security and judicial officials for more than a year to help the Iraqi justice system weed out corruption in Basra’s justice system. He suspects that Abu Muslim is receiving protection from high-level members of the Mahdi Army, the armed militia of Mr. Sadr. The cleric on Friday extended a cease-fire declaration he had imposed on his militiamen in August, but Mr. Ratel said the militia’s domination of the Basra police is a kind of loophole.

“We never pretended to be handing over a white picketed province that resembles something out of the Stepford Wives,” said Colonel Shearer, the British military spokesman, in explaining British policy. “What we did is hand over a manageable situation; manageable by the Iraqis.”

Reported killings peaked in May, when 112 people were murdered. By December killings had declined to 38, finishing 2007 with a total of 848 known homicides. Basra also had 383 reported kidnappings in 2007, according to official provincial tallies.

But British officials, who had kept a lower profile in Basra even at the beginning of the war, now have virtually no presence within the city and acknowledge they are hard-pressed to monitor Iraqi governance on a day-to-day basis.

So although Basra residents generally agreed with the British military’s redeployment, no Iraqis interviewed for this article called the province’s complex and often militant factionalism “manageable.”

Because Mr. Sadr’s followers boycotted the 2004 elections that established the local government, they lack official representation in the local council. The Mahdi Army has compensated for its lack of official authority in Basra by pushing for jobs for Sadr followers in major government sectors, including health, oil, the port and education. Militia elements have also established protection rackets, ransom schemes and smuggling operations, according to American and Iraqi officials.

The militia has had the most success stacking Basra’s security forces.

“The only way to put together a police force was to talk to the militias and say to the agreed militias, ‘You get 100 guys, and you get 200, and you get 300,’ ” said Mr. Ratel, the adviser. He described the police force as “hired mercenaries for the militias,” most of whom are illiterate and have undergone little or no training.

The military withdrawal has made British training and monitoring efforts more difficult, Mr. Ratel said. For example, Westerners have not visited militia-controlled police detention facilities since September, and Mr. Ratel said he feared that human rights violations were taking place at the prisons.

He said three tribal sheiks and one internal affairs police officer were assassinated on one recent day. He blamed militiamen. Sheik Ribat, in the interview at his mosque, said he spent an inordinate amount of time negotiating with militia-affiliated policemen who had kidnapped Iraqi Army soldiers for ransom. He has assisted the release of at least 50 soldiers since the British transfer of authority, he said.

“The police can kidnap the soldiers because the soldiers are not militia, and so they are scared,” he said. “The soldiers just want their salaries, so they do not fight.”

Gen. Mohan Fahad al-Fraji’s Iraqi Army headquarters is at the old Shatt al Arab Hotel, built decades ago in the Art Deco style as a resort for Westerners. Recently the lobby was occupied by a dozen young men sitting on the floor handcuffed, with blindfolds over their eyes.

They were suspected of being members of Ansar al Mahdi, a well-armed millenarian cult whose members assaulted Shiite pilgrims during the observance of Ashura last month. The organization emerged nearly two years ago throughout the Shiite south, but most Iraqi security officials believe that it is a fringe group without mass following. During several hours of intense firefights, Basra security forces put them down convincingly and followed up with hundreds of arrests. British officials argued that the incident proved the ability of Basra’s security forces to protect the public.

But General Mohan worries about the more existential threat of the militia-packed police force. He acknowledged that they routinely kidnapped his soldiers. He also complained of militias within his own force.

“Seventy percent of the army is pure,” he said. “The other 30 percent, I don’t know. The militias are like a smoldering fire. They can explode at any time.”

Jaleel Khalaf, a police general, believes that his own men are trying to kill him. The general, who has a penchant for berets and camouflage scarves, leaned back on one of his overstuffed office couches and nonchalantly recounted the 10 assassination attempts he had survived since he started his job in July. He blames militia-affiliated policemen for some of those attempts, most of which were bomb attacks.

General Khalaf said his main challenge was to professionalize the police force and root out corruption. But he acknowledged that serious problems remained beyond his control. When he took over last year he said he discovered that 250 police cars and 5,000 pistols had been stolen by Basra’s various Shiite political parties and that they were being used by militia death squads.

And General Khalaf criticized his police colleagues who “came to their jobs poor, and are now very rich.”

“I have fired many of them,” he said. “Hundreds. But we still have militias here. We push them out of the door and they come back through the window.”

Qais Mizher, Ahmad Fadham and an Iraqi employee of The New York Times contributed reporting.

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company











The New York Times



February 23, 2008
Iraqi Shiite Cleric Extends Cease-Fire by His Militia

By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr.

BAGHDAD — The Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr ordered his Mahdi Army militia on Friday to extend its cease-fire for six more months, bolstering hopes that a recent trend toward sharply lower Iraqi civilian and American military deaths in Baghdad would continue.

His announcement, read by Sadrist clerics at mosques throughout southern and central Iraq, came precisely two years after the bombing of a revered Shiite shrine in Samarra that unleashed a wave of sectarian violence and plunged Iraq into civil war. After the bombing, Mr. Sadr’s huge militia rampaged in Sunni neighborhoods of Baghdad, killing hundreds of Sunnis every week and seizing control of three-quarters of the city.

The decision to extend the cease-fire was immediately welcomed by the American military, which called for dialogue with Sadr officials and predicted the renewed cease-fire would make it easier for the nation’s antagonistic political factions to come together. The Americans also said it would allow the military to focus more efforts on Sunni guerrillas, who still dominate parts of northern Iraq.

In the early days of the occupation, American officials frequently dismissed Mr. Sadr as a thuggish phony trying to capitalize on the memory of his venerated father, Grand Ayatollah Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr, a leading Shiite cleric who was assassinated in 1999 on orders from Saddam Hussein.

But as the occupation wore on and the Mahdi Army proved to be the most effective — and most bloody — armed force in Baghdad, American officials leaped to embrace any hint of restraint offered by Mr. Sadr.

The cease-fire has also benefited Mr. Sadr, who is believed to be in his mid-30s. As the Mahdi Army’s killings spun out of control, many Shiites who once favored the protection it brought from roving Sunni insurgents grew troubled by the movement’s increasingly bloodthirsty activities and the thuggish and criminal behavior of many fighters. Mr. Sadr was widely seen as losing control over much of the force.

Under the cease-fire, Mr. Sadr has sought to wipe some of the stain away from the militia’s more brutal past activities.

But the cease-fire has been deeply unpopular with many Sadrists in southern Iraq, where militiamen loyal to a powerful and rival Shiite cleric, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, dominate many elements of the Iraqi security forces.

Moreover, many fighters in Baghdad continue to resist the cease-fire, and carry out rocket and mortar attacks against American and Iraqi forces. The American military calls these cells “special groups” and says they have Iranian backing.

Separately on Friday, the military announced that a marine was killed in combat on Thursday in Anbar Province in western Iraq.

Khalid al-Ansary and Karim Hilmi contributed reporting.

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company















Havana. March 25, 2008






Fierce fighting in southern Iraq

BAGHDAD.— Members of the Mahdi Army, led by the cleric Moqtada al Sadr, faced off against Iraqi security forces in the southern city of Basora, reported police resources cited by press agencies.

According to PL, police agents stated that the battles were fierce after an operation was launched last Wednesday night, March 19, within the Al Tamiyah neighborhood, considered a stronghold of the Mahdi Army.

According to the commander Karim Al Zubaidi the confrontation left numerous civilians wounded.

The firing of mortars and automatics weapons continued for hours in Basora.

Residents of the city confirmed the mobilization of security forces to enforce a curfew imposed the previous day by authorities, but combatants of the Mahdi Army took up positions at entrances to the four neighborhoods they control within the city.

Despite the tension, a spokesperson for Moqtada al Sader, called today for bilateral negotiations.

The confrontations occurred within days of a statement by Muslim Shiite cleric Al Sader calling for the extension of the unilateral truce decreed in August of last year by the Mahdi Army.

Translated by Granma International

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Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Iraq: Fighting In Al-Basrah As Government Seeks To Oust Militias

There has been heavy fighting in Iraq's southern city of Al-Basrah, a key oil center and stronghold of radical Sh'ite Muslim groups.


The clashes are mainly between Iraqi government security forces and members of the Imam Al-Mahdi Army militia, loyal to radical Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

The seriousness of the situation is shown by the reported presence in Al-Basrah of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.

Iraqi security forces are making what appears to be a large-scale drive to oust the Al-Mahdi Army and other radical Shi'ite groups from the city.

Police spokesman Major Karim al-Zubaidi said ground forces started their assault before dawn, and fighting was reported in six areas of the city where the Shi'ite militias are strong.

The police say at least four people have been killed, and local hospitals are said to be filling up with wounded.

It's not clear why the government has chosen to launch its offensive now. The Sadrists recently renewed a unilateral six-month cease-fire, which they declared last August.

Declining Security

But security in Al-Basrah has been declining for months, with growing tension and clashes between the Al-Mahdi Army and other Shi'ite factions, as well as with criminal gangs seeking control of sections of the city.

A British military spokesman said British troops encamped near Al-Basrah airport are taking no part in the fighting. The British withdrew to that camp in December, when they handed over security matters in Al-Basrah to Iraqi forces.

British spokesman Major Tom Holloway said Iraqi Prime Minister al-Maliki is in Al-Basrah to personally oversee the operation. After touring the city on March 24, al-Maliki spoke of a "brutal campaign" by gunmen against the population of the city. He said their efforts at destabilization are going hand-in-hand with oil, arms, and drugs smuggling, and that the government intends to stamp this out.

Spokesmen for al-Sadr and the Al-Mahdi Army have reacted with outrage to al-Maliki's moves, saying the Al-Mahdi Army is being especially targeted. Harith al-Athari in Al-Basrah expressed regret at the fighting, and said the Sadrists are ready for negotiations to calm things.

In Baghdad today, pro-Sadr demonstrators took to the streets to show their support for their leader.

AP quoted unnamed U.S. officials as saying there is no quarrel with Sadrists who are observing the truce, but that they want to strike at renegade Shi'ite elements which they believe are linked to Iran.

The subject of Iranian interference in Iraq has also been raised by the senior U.S. military commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus. He said on March 24 that he has evidence that Iran was behind the bombardment of the Green Zone in Baghdad a day earlier.

Petraeus told the BBC that he believed Iran has trained, equipped, and funded insurgents who fired the barrage of mortars and rockets at the Green Zone, the center of Iraqi government and U.S. activities. He offered no evidence to support his allegations.