Muqtada al-Sadr Issues Final Warning

[Two additional related articles follow - MW]

2008-04-21 - The Real News Network
http://therealnews.com/web/index.php?thisdataswitch=0&thisid...

Transcript:

VOICE OF CARLO BASILONE, PRODUCER:
US and Iraqi troops backed by US aircraft raided the Baghdad Shiite neighbourhood of Sh'la early on Sunday. The fighting left at least six people dead, including two children.

Sheikh Ala Mutliq Hamad, Local resident:
[']As we were sleeping at our homes, the American pigs (troops) raided our area and the aircraft bombed our homes. Moreover, American armoured vehicles entered our alleys.[']

VOICE OF CARLO BASILONE, PRODUCER:
[I]n the Sadr City area of Baghdad, six more people were killed and more than 15 wounded as a result of an air strike and sporadic clashes.

Um Hussein, local resident:
'Why do aircraft and missiles pound us? They destroyed our houses and our properties.'

VOICE OF CARLO BASILONE, PRODUCER:

The previous day in Sadr city, at least 14 people were killed and 84 wounded In clashes, with US and Iraqi forces battling militia fighters.

On Saturday night Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr issued a "final warning" to the government to halt the US-Iraqi crackdown against his followers or he would declare "open war until liberation."

Nassar Al-Rubai, Spokesman for Al Sadr block in Najaf:

"I direct my last warning and speech to the Iraqi government to refrain and to take the path of peace, and abandon violence with its people. Otherwise it will be similar to Saddam's government, if everybody sided with the government - they were our allies in the past and they will be our allies in the future - since there are no feelings in politics. If the government does not refrain and does not leash the militias that have penetrated it, we will announce an open war until liberation".

VOICE OF CARLO BASILONE, PRODUCER:

Reactions on Sunday were hopeful.

Ju'ma al-Quraishi, Local resident
'We are for peaceful solutions, we want to get out of this current crisis. Tension and war are not good, they are unacceptable. We hope that the government and Sadr bloc will sit together at a roundtable and find a positive outcome.'

VOICE OF CARLO BASILONE, PRODUCER:
With some expressing support for the cleric.

Abbas Fadhil, local resident
'I fully support Sayyid Muqtada al-Sadr's letter. The Iraqi government and US army have destroyed Sadr city. They also harmed the whole Iraqi people in Basra and Sadr city.'

VOICE OF CARLO BASILONE, PRODUCER:

And as US Secretary of State Condileezza rice made a surprise visit to Baghdad to meet with Iraqi, A US military spokesman said that al-Sadr, had been a significant contributor to a decrease in violence in Iraq.

Rear Admiral Patrick Driscoll, spokesman for Multi-National Force - Iraq:

"In terms of Muqtada al-Sadr, I just want to say that his pledge that he made last year for the freeze has been a contributor, a significant contributor, to the decrease in violence that we've seen since 2007. When the surge hit its peak in 2007, we've seen a decline on the violence and one of the contributing factors of that is the fact that Moqtada al-Sadr pledged that his followers would freeze."

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Al-Sadr's followers denounce wall in Baghdad

By LEE KEATH - The Associated Press
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/iraq/2004359737_iraq19...

BAGHDAD — Followers of anti-U.S. Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr denounced the American military's construction of a concrete wall through their Sadr City stronghold in Baghdad, the scene of renewed clashes Friday between his militiamen and U.S. and Iraqi troops.

Meanwhile, the U.S. military said a roadside bomb killed a U.S. soldier just north of Baghdad on Friday. At least 4,037 members of the U.S. military have died in the Iraq war, according to an Associated Press count.

The wall — a concrete barrier of varying height up to about 12 feet — is being built along a main street dividing the southern portion of Sadr City from the northern, where al-Sadr's Mahdi Army fighters are concentrated.

American commanders hope that construction of the Sadr City wall, which began Tuesday, will effectively cut off insurgents' ability to move freely into the rest of Baghdad and hamper their ability to fire rockets and mortars at the Green Zone, the central Baghdad district where government offices and the U.S. Embassy are located.

Such walls have gone up in many other Baghdad neighborhoods and have been effective in cutting violence as the movement of insurgents was curtailed. But they have also raised some complaints from residents over difficulties in moving in and out through checkpoints.

Sadr City has become a chief battleground between U.S. and Iraqi forces and the Mahdi Army after a trouble-plagued Iraqi crackdown on Shiite militiamen in the southern city of Basra last month.

That crackdown saw some 1,000 Iraqi soldiers refuse to fight the militiamen, and the Mahdi Army was largely able to battle troops to a standstill. The outcome raised questions whether Iraq's Shiite-majority police and army can stand up to Shiite militias despite millions of dollars spent by the U.S. to train and equip government forces.

At the same time, this week has seen a string of suicide bombings in Sunni regions that have killed 110 people, breaking a reduction in violence blamed on Sunni insurgents and al-Qaida militants.

The U.S. military on Friday issued a rare warning that it had specific intelligence of al-Qaida plans to carry out suicide bombings in Baghdad "in the near future."

An Iraqi army spokesman, Maj. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi, told government television that the most likely targets were outdoor markets and other public places.

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Trying to Hold Together Iraq's Army

By Mark Kukis/Baghdad; April 18, 2008 - Time Magazine
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1732227,00.htm...

Sandstorms whipped through Baghdad again Friday, cloaking the city in a reddish shroud through which the sounds of gunfire from the bloody power struggle in Sadr City continued to echo. Thursday had seen the most intense sandstorms in the capital in many months, as gales swept in from the desert. The blinding winds closed Baghdad International Airport, emptied streets and left many Baghdadis struggling for breath.

But one part of the city where things continued as normal was the Shi'ite neighborhoods of east Baghdad, where militiamen fighting Iraqi and U.S. forces plunged into the squall to launch rocket and mortar attacks on the Green Zone throughout the day as U.S. military helicopters remained grounded. And, late Friday night, fighters from the Mahdi Army of radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr staged a ground attack against Iraqi forces that had been pressing into the militia's Sadr City stronghold. Police said Iraqi troopers fled during the assault, which killed two and left nine other wounded.

Reports of desertions, retreats and insubordination by Iraqi forces deployed against the Mahdi Army have become commonplace, as fighting between the two sides continues in Baghdad and southern Iraq. Gen. Babakir Baderkhan Zibari, chief of staff of the Iraqi Joint Forces, acknowledged that some Iraqi troopers had been refusing to fight Sadr's forces. An estimated 1,300 Iraqi soldiers refused to fight or even switched sides during confrontations between Iraqi forces and the Mahdi Army in Basra last month. And twice in recent days, Iraqi troops were reported to have abandoned posts in Sadr City.

The Mahdi Army, clearly out to take maximum advantage over divisions in the ranks of Iraq's predominantly Shi'ite security forces, issued a statement Friday urging soldiers and policemen to desert.

"To all brothers in the government's forces of army and police commandos, we invite you to repent and rejoin the national line and embrace your suffering people," said the Mahdi Army statement, which appeared on leaflets scattered around Baghdad. The statement said the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki was "just like Saddam's."

Meanwhile, as the Shi'ite-led government battled the militias of the country's largest Shi'ite political movement, Sunni militants continued to press their own agenda through a series of vicious bombings in different parts of Iraq. A suicide bomber attacked a funeral near Kirkuk Thursday, killing some 50 people. The attack, the third such strike this week in Iraq, targeted members of the so-called Awakening movement, the Sunni tribal formations that have broken with al-Qaeda in Iraq and now cooperate with the Americans. And in Baghdad on Thursday, Sunni militants gunned down three other members of the movement, and killed five more with a roadside bomb.

In a statement that emerged on the Internet Friday, Osama bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, ridiculed the Awakening movement. "Weren't these Awakening [Councils] supposed to hasten the departure of the American forces, or are these Awakenings in need of someone to defend them and protect them?" said al-Zawahri. In the message, he also jeered recent congressional testimony by the commander for U.S. forces in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, who wants U.S. forces to remain in Iraq at pre-surge levels at least into next year.

"The truth is that if Bush keeps all his forces in Iraq until doomsday and until they enter hell, they will only see crisis and defeat by the will of God," said al-Zawahri. "If the American forces leave, they will lose everything. And if they stay, they will bleed to death." Of course, the Qaeda leadership hiding in wilds of Pakistan is unlikely to have any decisive impact on events in Iraq. But when the dust settles in Baghdad, the U.S.-backed government's own authority will look even shakier, under growing pressure not only from challengers among the majority Shi'ites, but even from the very Sunnis who make up the Awakening movement on which the American strategy has been so dependent.