Mahdi Army holds firm as Iraqi PM risks all in battle of Basra
The future of Iraq could be decided by the power struggle raging in the country’s second city
timesonline.co.uk
THE arrival of the Iraqi army supported by US warplanes did little to dent the defiance of Abu Sajad and his 22 comrades in a Shi’ite militia cell holed up in a mosque in Basra.
Alerted by a mobile phone call to the arrival of US military reinforcements, Abu Sajad calmly selected eight fighters and dispatched them to plant roadside bombs packed into red plastic fruit crates.
“We are to plant them throughout the Qaziza neighbourhood to welcome the army when they try to enter the area,” he told his men. He sent the bombers away on scooters and motorcycles which, he explained, were “quicker to move and less conspicuous . . . We have a great surprise for the army”.
As night fell after a fifth day of heavy fighting around Basra yesterday, Iraqi forces controlled by Nouri al-Maliki, the prime minister, were still struggling to subdue renegade Shi’ite fighters whose shifting loyalties and challenges to Baghdad rule have begun to pose a serious threat to American and British strategy.
Ragtag members of the Mahdi Army, a heavily armed militia loyal to Moqtada al-Sadr, the radical Shi’ite cleric with close links to Iran, vowed to fight to the death to prevent Maliki from imposing government control on the southern port at the heart of Iraq’s potentially hugely profitable oil industry.
“We have received a shipment of Strela antiaircraft rockets,” Abu Sajad boasted to a Sunday Times reporter.
“We intend to use them to prove to the world that the Mahdi Army will not allow Basra to be turned into a second Falluja [the former centre of anticoalition resistance that was crushed by USled assaults].” President George W Bush praised Maliki and described the clashes as a “defining moment” for the Baghdad government’s attempts to curb Sadr’s influence and assert its own authority. But despite Bush’s approval, American officials are concerned that Maliki’s military gamble may cause serious embarrassment for the coalition forces.
US officials said the Iraqi prime minister had launched the assault on Tuesday without consulting Washington, but yesterday it was the Americans under fire again after claims that eight civilians had been killed in a US bombing raid.
The SAS was in Basra alongside Iraqi commanders, calling in attacks from RAF and US aircraft on “enemy combatants” as the death toll from five days of fighting across Iraq rose above 300, with hundreds wounded.
British artillery units destroyed a militia mortar position in support of Iraqi forces yesterday, a spokesman said. The mortar, in the al-Hala district of northern Basra, was positively identified by the British before they opened fire from their base at Basra international airport.
Basra’s hospitals filled with civilian casualties and the violence continued to spread through other cities, including the suburbs of Baghdad. The coalition’s five-year effort to bolster Iraqi democracy was under threat from factional strife on a difficult urban battlefield where rebel gunmen have long held sway on streets too narrow for armoured vehicles.
Maliki had flown to Basra to take personal control of the military operation. But instead of sweeping to a decisive victory with American guns at his side, he was stumbling into something that looked dangerously like stalemate yesterday.
Having originally imposed a 72-hour deadline for rebels to hand in their weapons, he was forced to extend it until April 8. Yesterday he vowed to remain in Basra until the resistance was crushed. “This is a decisive and final battle,” he said.
Sadr issued an equally robust directive, ordering his fighters to ignore Maliki’s ultimatum.
At stake in Basra was not just the prime minister’s reputation, his prospects for provincial elections this autumn and control of the Iraqi oil fields, but also an entire coalition strategy of reduced troop levels, steady withdrawal and the turning over of Iraqi security to local troops.
If Maliki’s crackdown fails, both London and Washington may have to reassess Iraqi army capabilities and the risk of future disaster if coalition forces continue to withdraw. “This is a precarious situation,” one US official said yesterday. “There’s a lot to be gained and a lot to lose.”
Already this weekend there were reports that police officers and soldiers had left their posts, changed their uniforms and joined the Mahdi Army.
When a local journalist left his home in Basra this weekend to visit the city’s main hospital, he found the streets deserted except for cruising police vehicles whose occupants were randomly firing in the air.
He eventually hitched a ride with an ambulance carrying a 14-year-old boy whose leg had nearly been severed by a burst of machinegun fire. “Most of the injured are being hurt by gunshots and rocket shrapnel that hits their homes,” the driver said.
Inside the hospital, blood-stained bandages were scattered across the floor. A 50-year-old woman was sobbing. Doctors said she had been told three hours earlier that her daughter had died from gunshot wounds and she had not stopped crying.
In a ward on the first floor, patients were groaning in pain. Doctors had run out of pain-killers and many pharmacies in the city were closed.
“The stench was awful in the wards and corridors,” the journalist said. “Patients and family members were cursing the government in both Basra and Baghdad and some were even lamenting the ‘good old days’ of Saddam Hussein.”
The situation at another hospital was so dire that Leith Chasseb, a 36-year-old civil servant, could not find a doctor to treat his father, who had a shrapnel wound to his leg.
In the al-Tamimiyeh district, Um Hiba, a 38-year-old mother of three, was standing with two of her daughters in the garden when a mortar exploded nearby, injuring all three of them. “We called the ambulance but they couldn’t get to us,” she said. “The neighbours supplied us with bandages.”
Dr Salah Amad, director of the city’s medical operations, said hospitals were about to collapse because of exhausted doctors and a lack of supplies. “Ambulances are unable to distribute medical supplies stocked in warehouses,” he said.
There were conflicting accounts of the incident in Basra’s Hananiyah district, where two women and a child were reportedly among eight civilians killed by an air strike. Iraqi police claimed that a US aircraft had carried out the strike, but British planes were also seen in the area.
There was no immediate comment from either British or US military spokesmen. American aircraft carried out further raids yesterday, dropping two precision-guided bombs on a suspected militia stronghold north of Basra.
In a separate raid, Iraqi special forces were said to have stormed a house in Basra, killing a father and his three sons, the youngest aged 13, in front his wife.
Maliki’s decision to crack down on Basra followed at least three years of rebel subversion that British troops had quelled for long periods but never eradicated. US officers often criticised their British counterparts for their hands-off approach in Basra, but nobody in Washington was inclined last week to blame London for a crisis rooted in internal Shi’ite rivalries and almost certainly beyond any coalition-imposed solution.
Yet the British withdrawal from Basra – leaving the city effectively in the hands of Maliki’s opponents – presented the prime minister with a difficult challenge. He could ill afford to allow Iraq’s second city to remain in the hands of extremist factions. “Basra has been a mess for a long time,” one US official in Baghdad told The Washington Post yesterday, “and everyone has said to Maliki, ‘What are you doing about it?’ ” With provincial elections looming in October and his authority on the line, Maliki took advantage of the security lull spawned by the so-called “surge” – the increased US military presence directed by General David Petraeus, the top US commander in Iraq. Under pressure to demonstrate that Iraqi forces were capable of operating without US officers holding their hands, he sent his army into battle.
Some national and local officials complained that the offensive had come as an unpleasant surprise. “Maliki did not consult the president, he did not consult the cabinet, he did not consult the parliament,” said a senior member of the government. “Nobody is happy with what’s happening.”
It was not long before US aircraft were reported to be mounting air strikes on Basra and US troops in armoured vehicles appeared to be taking the lead against Mahdi Army fighters in their vast Baghdad stronghold of Sadr City.
As rockets fell on Baghdad’s Green Zone, the comparative calm that had enveloped the city for weeks – allowing residents to sit in street cafes – was shattered. US officials insisted that this was not their fight and their only role was to provide Maliki with back-up if he needed it.
Some officials even suggested that the Basra operation would prove a model for future cooperation, with Iraqis taking the leading role and American troops adopting what Petraeus once described as “overwatch” mode.
Yet as the week wore on the American unease was palpable, not least because nobody seemed entirely sure who was fighting whom and what was the ultimate prize.
While some officials interpreted the offensive as Maliki’s “first salvo in upcoming elections”, others saw a simple power grab for oil. The intricate differences between rival Shi’ite groups in Basra and their presumed links to Iran were all minutely examined by intelligence officers. Yet on Friday one administration official admitted: “We can’t quite decipher what’s going on.”
If Maliki can somehow crush the resistance of the Mahdi Army, he may well prove to be the answer to America’s prayers for a leader with the muscle and authority to keep a lid on Sunni-Shi’ite rivalries and ultimately to allow the US military to withdraw.
Yet Mahdi warriors such as Haidar Abdul Abbas did not look too worried about defeat last week. A 24-year-old expert at firing rocket-propelled grenades, Abbas was wearing funeral shrouds, signalling his willingness to die in combat.
“The Maliki government is now fighting on behalf of the [coalition] occupiers, forgetting that history is never kind to those who oppress,” he said. “Their fate will be the same as that of Saddam.”
Additional reporting: Tony Allen-Mills, New York, Marie Colvin, Michael Smith |
