Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
New York Times
April 14, 2008
Pg. 6
By Stephen Farrell and Qais Mizher
BAGHDAD — The Iraqi government has dismissed 1,300 soldiers and policemen who deserted or refused to fight during last month’s Shiite-on-Shiite battles in Basra, it said Sunday.
The announcement followed the admission that more than 1,000 members of the security forces had laid down their weapons during the fight, which Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki characterized as a campaign to restore law and order to Basra, a strategic and oil-rich southern city.
Maj. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf, an Interior Ministry spokesman, said 500 soldiers and 421 policemen were fired in Basra, including 37 senior police officers up to the rank of brigadier general. Police officials said the remainder were fired in Kut.
“Some of them were sympathetic with these lawbreakers, some refused to battle for political or national or sectarian or religious reasons,” General Khalaf told The Associated Press in Basra.
The Basra campaign was widely criticized as poorly planned after it failed to disarm Shiite militias, in particular the Mahdi Army loyal to the radical anti-American cleric Moktada al-Sadr.
However, American and Iraqi officials say the arrival of the security forces in larger numbers has restored order to the streets and the nearby ports vital to Iraq’s oil industry.
The clashes in Basra pitted the country’s two most powerful Shiite forces against each other: the Mahdi Army and the government security forces dominated by Mr. Sadr’s most powerful Shiite rival, the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq.
The clashes also spilled over into the Iraqi capital, 300 miles north of Basra, particularly in Mr. Sadr’s stronghold, Sadr City, which is surrounded by Iraqi and American soldiers.
Sadr City has been effectively divided in two since American and Iraqi troops moved into the southern edge of the district to stop rocket fire aimed at Baghdad’s high-security Green Zone. The rest of Sadr City is still under the control of the Mahdi Army and its allies in the heavily infiltrated police and security forces.
Sadr City, a large and overwhelmingly Shiite urban sprawl of cheap housing and open street markets, has long presented a major security problem for the Americans and Iraqis, with ambushes and roadside bombs a favorite tactic.
Last week, reporters saw Mahdi fighters burying artillery shells in the road as bombs to use against government forces if they pushed farther into the Mahdi-held areas. Those preparations continued in recent days as the militia appeared to be setting up an elaborate network of booby traps.
On Sunday, wires from roadside buildings were visible leading to newly dug strips in a major road, in some places about every 100 feet.
Mr. Sadr’s office in Sadr City would not allow Western journalists to enter the district on Sunday, refusing to give an explanation.
Some Iraqi policemen were seen evacuating their stations from the area now controlled by government forces. On Saturday, police pickup trucks loaded with furniture, office materials and clothes headed out of Sadr City, along two exit routes.
The reason for their departure was unclear. Some said they had been ordered out because their loyalties had been questioned, and others because the army wanted to use their buildings.
Iraqi soldiers staffing one southern checkpoint confirmed that they had seen the police departing.
“We have taken the police stations in the area that is under our control,” said one soldier, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release information.
One of his colleagues said that as the police drove past their position, they shouted complaints that the army “is pushing us out of our bases and our stations.”
The soldier said that they said, “The government is dealing with us as if we were terrorists, and we are honest people.”
The Iraqi government is being careful to portray the crackdown as an operation against criminals and illegally armed militias and not against Mr. Sadr’s forces, although the Mahdi Army is the most powerful armed force in Sadr City.
Sadrists say Prime Minister Maliki and his American and Iraqi allies are using the pursuit of criminals as a pretext to weaken the Sadrist movement before coming elections.
Ali al-Dabbagh, an Iraqi government spokesman, said he would not say “how many days or how many months” the government troops would continue their operations in Sadr City, but said “they will not come out until they are finished.”
The United States military said that one of its Hellfire missiles had accidentally hit an American vehicle in the eastern district of New Baghdad on April 12, wounding three Iraqi civilians and two American soldiers. A statement in Baghdad said that a first missile had hit its intended target, killing two members of a team planting a bomb, but that the second “overshot,” setting fire to the vehicle and nearby houses. It said investigators were examining the cause of the “misfire.”
An Iraqi judicial panel dismissed the last remaining criminal charge against a photographer for The Associated Press, Bilal Hussein, on Sunday, and ordered him released from custody, two years after he was detained by the United States military, The Associated Press reported.
The committee said there should be no further action on allegations that Mr. Hussein, 36, may have had improper contacts with insurgents. In December 2004, Mr. Hussein and two other journalists were stopped by armed men and taken at gunpoint to photograph a body propped up with armed insurgents standing over it.
Mr. Hussein has maintained his innocence and has said he was only doing the work of a news photographer in a war zone.
Asked about the ruling, the United States military had no immediate comment. Previously, spokesmen had said officials would review the panel’s orders before deciding whether to release him.
Hosham Hussein contributed reporting.
April 14, 2008
Pg. 6
By Stephen Farrell and Qais Mizher
BAGHDAD — The Iraqi government has dismissed 1,300 soldiers and policemen who deserted or refused to fight during last month’s Shiite-on-Shiite battles in Basra, it said Sunday.
The announcement followed the admission that more than 1,000 members of the security forces had laid down their weapons during the fight, which Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki characterized as a campaign to restore law and order to Basra, a strategic and oil-rich southern city.
Maj. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf, an Interior Ministry spokesman, said 500 soldiers and 421 policemen were fired in Basra, including 37 senior police officers up to the rank of brigadier general. Police officials said the remainder were fired in Kut.
“Some of them were sympathetic with these lawbreakers, some refused to battle for political or national or sectarian or religious reasons,” General Khalaf told The Associated Press in Basra.
The Basra campaign was widely criticized as poorly planned after it failed to disarm Shiite militias, in particular the Mahdi Army loyal to the radical anti-American cleric Moktada al-Sadr.
However, American and Iraqi officials say the arrival of the security forces in larger numbers has restored order to the streets and the nearby ports vital to Iraq’s oil industry.
The clashes in Basra pitted the country’s two most powerful Shiite forces against each other: the Mahdi Army and the government security forces dominated by Mr. Sadr’s most powerful Shiite rival, the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq.
The clashes also spilled over into the Iraqi capital, 300 miles north of Basra, particularly in Mr. Sadr’s stronghold, Sadr City, which is surrounded by Iraqi and American soldiers.
Sadr City has been effectively divided in two since American and Iraqi troops moved into the southern edge of the district to stop rocket fire aimed at Baghdad’s high-security Green Zone. The rest of Sadr City is still under the control of the Mahdi Army and its allies in the heavily infiltrated police and security forces.
Sadr City, a large and overwhelmingly Shiite urban sprawl of cheap housing and open street markets, has long presented a major security problem for the Americans and Iraqis, with ambushes and roadside bombs a favorite tactic.
Last week, reporters saw Mahdi fighters burying artillery shells in the road as bombs to use against government forces if they pushed farther into the Mahdi-held areas. Those preparations continued in recent days as the militia appeared to be setting up an elaborate network of booby traps.
On Sunday, wires from roadside buildings were visible leading to newly dug strips in a major road, in some places about every 100 feet.
Mr. Sadr’s office in Sadr City would not allow Western journalists to enter the district on Sunday, refusing to give an explanation.
Some Iraqi policemen were seen evacuating their stations from the area now controlled by government forces. On Saturday, police pickup trucks loaded with furniture, office materials and clothes headed out of Sadr City, along two exit routes.
The reason for their departure was unclear. Some said they had been ordered out because their loyalties had been questioned, and others because the army wanted to use their buildings.
Iraqi soldiers staffing one southern checkpoint confirmed that they had seen the police departing.
“We have taken the police stations in the area that is under our control,” said one soldier, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release information.
One of his colleagues said that as the police drove past their position, they shouted complaints that the army “is pushing us out of our bases and our stations.”
The soldier said that they said, “The government is dealing with us as if we were terrorists, and we are honest people.”
The Iraqi government is being careful to portray the crackdown as an operation against criminals and illegally armed militias and not against Mr. Sadr’s forces, although the Mahdi Army is the most powerful armed force in Sadr City.
Sadrists say Prime Minister Maliki and his American and Iraqi allies are using the pursuit of criminals as a pretext to weaken the Sadrist movement before coming elections.
Ali al-Dabbagh, an Iraqi government spokesman, said he would not say “how many days or how many months” the government troops would continue their operations in Sadr City, but said “they will not come out until they are finished.”
The United States military said that one of its Hellfire missiles had accidentally hit an American vehicle in the eastern district of New Baghdad on April 12, wounding three Iraqi civilians and two American soldiers. A statement in Baghdad said that a first missile had hit its intended target, killing two members of a team planting a bomb, but that the second “overshot,” setting fire to the vehicle and nearby houses. It said investigators were examining the cause of the “misfire.”
An Iraqi judicial panel dismissed the last remaining criminal charge against a photographer for The Associated Press, Bilal Hussein, on Sunday, and ordered him released from custody, two years after he was detained by the United States military, The Associated Press reported.
The committee said there should be no further action on allegations that Mr. Hussein, 36, may have had improper contacts with insurgents. In December 2004, Mr. Hussein and two other journalists were stopped by armed men and taken at gunpoint to photograph a body propped up with armed insurgents standing over it.
Mr. Hussein has maintained his innocence and has said he was only doing the work of a news photographer in a war zone.
Asked about the ruling, the United States military had no immediate comment. Previously, spokesmen had said officials would review the panel’s orders before deciding whether to release him.
Hosham Hussein contributed reporting.