Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
New York Times
June 15, 2008
Pg. 12
By Andrew E. Kramer
BAGHDAD — Aiming at a power base of a rival Shiite leader, Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki sent troops into the southern city of Amara on Saturday.
The operation in Amara, a city that is dominated politically by the radical Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, was the fourth initiative this year in which Mr. Maliki has sent troops into a city dominated by Shiite or Sunni militias.
The launch of the operation came a day after Mr. Sadr announced that he was reorganizing his Shiite movement.
In a statement read by aides during Friday Prayers, Mr. Sadr said the movement would be divided into two branches. One group will remain armed and operate as an underground force, continuing to oppose the presence of American troops. The other branch would concentrate on politics and providing social services to Iraqis.
The armed wing, he said, will be drawn from experienced Mahdi Army fighters and be limited in size. Mr. Sadr said that fighters would have to have his written permission to carry weapons.
Mr. Sadr is a mercurial figure who leads a movement that is at once a guerrilla group fighting Americans and an important political force in the parliamentary democracy that the United States hopes to help create as a lasting government in Iraq.
The decision to divide the Mahdi Army into political and armed wings recalled similar evolutions in movements like Hamas in the Palestinian territories and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
In Amara, residents awoke Saturday to helicopters thudding overhead, dropping leaflets that told them to stay indoors and to cooperate with Iraqi soldiers who would be arriving shortly.
Amara is the capital of Maysan Province, the only province in Iraq where the local government is run by politicians aligned with Mr. Sadr, whose movement competes with other Shiite parties.
Several experts speculated that Mr. Sadr was acting to formally separate his political movement from the militias in anticipation of electoral laws likely to ban parties from having armed wings.
The military operation, planned for weeks, did not appear related to Mr. Sadr’s decision to remake his organization. But both actions reflected less tolerance in Iraq for the mixture of politics and guns outside a better trained military.
For months, Mr. Maliki has been cracking down on what he calls “criminal elements,” many of which have ties to Mr. Sadr, but it is not clear if he is working against Mr. Sadr himself.
An Iraqi general said the operation in Amara would unfold along the lines of an initiative this year against Shiite militias in the nearby city of Basra. There, Iraqi soldiers entered but relied on air support from the American military and small teams of American advisers.
Then, as now, commanders took pains to clarify they were targeting rogue elements of the Mahdi Army rather than Mr. Sadr’s supporters in the general population.
With a population of about 350,000 people, Amara is smaller than Basra and the sites of other operations initiated by Mr. Maliki: the predominantly Shiite neighborhood of Sadr City, in Baghdad, and Mosul. But Amara is tactically important as a suspected conduit for weapons smuggled across marsh lands along the border with Iran.
The Iraqi soldiers assembled at an airport six miles to the northeast of Amara, and at a local stadium, a local police official said.
By early evening, the troops had fanned out in the city center. The district police chief said security forces raided 68 homes in the province and found ammunition and explosives.
In the early months after the United States invaded Iraq, rival militant groups engaged in frequent gun battles in Amara, sometime overrunning government buildings. The militias seized control of the city, over which the central government in Baghdad had limited control.
Gen. Hameed Nabeel, the commander of the Iraqi Army First Brigade, which is garrisoned in Maysan Province, said in an interview that the purpose of the operation was to serve court-issued arrest warrants.
He said soldiers would try to detain militants who had fled north to Amara from the earlier fighting in Basra.
“This operation will be just like the operations in Basra and Mosul,” General Nabeel said.
But a senior Sadr official, Luaa Smaisem, the head of the movement’s political commission, said he believed the operation would go beyond targeting militia fighters. He said it would be used to weaken the Sadrists politically before provincial elections in the fall.
“Unfortunately, the executive system is used by political parties to strike the Sadr movement,” he said.
In violence on Saturday, a female suicide bomber blew herself up in a village market in Diyala Province, where people had gathered to watch the Iraqi national soccer team defeat China 2-1 in a World Cup qualifying match.
At least 25 people were wounded, 12 of them critically, a police official said.
Because police officers and soldiers are reluctant to search women, female suicide bombers have succeeded in slipping into gatherings where male bombers might have been stopped.
Insurgents have been turning increasingly to the use of female suicide bombers.
Alissa J. Rubin contributed reporting from Baghdad, and an Iraqi employee of The New York Times from Amara.
June 15, 2008
Pg. 12
By Andrew E. Kramer
BAGHDAD — Aiming at a power base of a rival Shiite leader, Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki sent troops into the southern city of Amara on Saturday.
The operation in Amara, a city that is dominated politically by the radical Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, was the fourth initiative this year in which Mr. Maliki has sent troops into a city dominated by Shiite or Sunni militias.
The launch of the operation came a day after Mr. Sadr announced that he was reorganizing his Shiite movement.
In a statement read by aides during Friday Prayers, Mr. Sadr said the movement would be divided into two branches. One group will remain armed and operate as an underground force, continuing to oppose the presence of American troops. The other branch would concentrate on politics and providing social services to Iraqis.
The armed wing, he said, will be drawn from experienced Mahdi Army fighters and be limited in size. Mr. Sadr said that fighters would have to have his written permission to carry weapons.
Mr. Sadr is a mercurial figure who leads a movement that is at once a guerrilla group fighting Americans and an important political force in the parliamentary democracy that the United States hopes to help create as a lasting government in Iraq.
The decision to divide the Mahdi Army into political and armed wings recalled similar evolutions in movements like Hamas in the Palestinian territories and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
In Amara, residents awoke Saturday to helicopters thudding overhead, dropping leaflets that told them to stay indoors and to cooperate with Iraqi soldiers who would be arriving shortly.
Amara is the capital of Maysan Province, the only province in Iraq where the local government is run by politicians aligned with Mr. Sadr, whose movement competes with other Shiite parties.
Several experts speculated that Mr. Sadr was acting to formally separate his political movement from the militias in anticipation of electoral laws likely to ban parties from having armed wings.
The military operation, planned for weeks, did not appear related to Mr. Sadr’s decision to remake his organization. But both actions reflected less tolerance in Iraq for the mixture of politics and guns outside a better trained military.
For months, Mr. Maliki has been cracking down on what he calls “criminal elements,” many of which have ties to Mr. Sadr, but it is not clear if he is working against Mr. Sadr himself.
An Iraqi general said the operation in Amara would unfold along the lines of an initiative this year against Shiite militias in the nearby city of Basra. There, Iraqi soldiers entered but relied on air support from the American military and small teams of American advisers.
Then, as now, commanders took pains to clarify they were targeting rogue elements of the Mahdi Army rather than Mr. Sadr’s supporters in the general population.
With a population of about 350,000 people, Amara is smaller than Basra and the sites of other operations initiated by Mr. Maliki: the predominantly Shiite neighborhood of Sadr City, in Baghdad, and Mosul. But Amara is tactically important as a suspected conduit for weapons smuggled across marsh lands along the border with Iran.
The Iraqi soldiers assembled at an airport six miles to the northeast of Amara, and at a local stadium, a local police official said.
By early evening, the troops had fanned out in the city center. The district police chief said security forces raided 68 homes in the province and found ammunition and explosives.
In the early months after the United States invaded Iraq, rival militant groups engaged in frequent gun battles in Amara, sometime overrunning government buildings. The militias seized control of the city, over which the central government in Baghdad had limited control.
Gen. Hameed Nabeel, the commander of the Iraqi Army First Brigade, which is garrisoned in Maysan Province, said in an interview that the purpose of the operation was to serve court-issued arrest warrants.
He said soldiers would try to detain militants who had fled north to Amara from the earlier fighting in Basra.
“This operation will be just like the operations in Basra and Mosul,” General Nabeel said.
But a senior Sadr official, Luaa Smaisem, the head of the movement’s political commission, said he believed the operation would go beyond targeting militia fighters. He said it would be used to weaken the Sadrists politically before provincial elections in the fall.
“Unfortunately, the executive system is used by political parties to strike the Sadr movement,” he said.
In violence on Saturday, a female suicide bomber blew herself up in a village market in Diyala Province, where people had gathered to watch the Iraqi national soccer team defeat China 2-1 in a World Cup qualifying match.
At least 25 people were wounded, 12 of them critically, a police official said.
Because police officers and soldiers are reluctant to search women, female suicide bombers have succeeded in slipping into gatherings where male bombers might have been stopped.
Insurgents have been turning increasingly to the use of female suicide bombers.
Alissa J. Rubin contributed reporting from Baghdad, and an Iraqi employee of The New York Times from Amara.