Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
New York Times
April 9, 2008 By Stephen Farrell and Erica Goode
BAGHDAD — The radical Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr on Tuesday called off a huge demonstration in Baghdad, citing fears for his supporters’ safety if they confronted Iraqi government and American forces, while his fighters continued to battle those forces.
Mr. Sadr’s decision came only 24 hours before a march he had called for the fifth anniversary on Wednesday of the capture of Baghdad by United States troops, which would have coincided with the second day of testimony to Congress by Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker and Gen. David H. Petraeus.
As it has been for almost two weeks, Mr. Sadr’s stronghold of Sadr City on Tuesday remained a neighborhood encircled by a ring of American and Iraqi military steel, its entryways blocked by lines of Humvees and nervous Iraqi soldiers who stood in groups and smoked cigarettes, their AK47s and M-16s slung over their shoulders.
The sound of heavy gunfire was punctuated every few minutes by heavy bursts of artillery fire, and there were reports that Iraqi forces pushed into central areas, clashing with fighters of the Mahdi Army militia Mr. Sadr leads, who were trying to stop their advance.
A pair of armored Strykers, resembling giant metal pods, sat silently in Mudhafer Square just outside Sadr City’s main gate, its American crew invisible inside.
Families fleeing the neighborhood with belongings stuffed into plastic bags streamed in one direction, while men returning from work in other areas of the capital walked in the other, returning to wives and children inside the embattled district.
As shells landed or shooting erupted, pedestrians scattered for cover. Hospital officials in Baghdad said at least 12 people, including three children, had been killed and 37 wounded in fighting, The Associated Press reported.
Rahim Ali, 40, headed south out of the district clutching the hand of his young daughter, her orange dress a startling flash of color on a drab, trash-strewn street.
“I’m leaving the neighborhood because of the shooting and the victims, and there is random gunfire,” he said, adding that he would stay away “until our God ends this crisis.”
The overwhelmingly Shiite eastern district is one of three Baghdad areas that have been encircled by troops since heavy fighting in Basra spilled over into the capital last month. Dozens of Iraqis have been killed as those clashes reignited in recent days.
Even as the two top American officials in Iraq were in Washington outlining what Mr. Crocker termed “signs of progress,” the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki imposed a vehicle ban across the capital for Wednesday’s anniversary, from 5 a.m. until midnight.
Many people interviewed on the outskirts of Sadr City said they were relieved to hear the news. A standoff between a large crowd and American and Iraqi soldiers, they said, could lead only to more violence.
Three miles southwest of Sadr City, Mr. Sadr’s spokesman, Salah al-Obaidi, held a hastily convened news conference in Paradise Square, where the statue of Saddam Hussein was toppled in 2003. The turbaned Mr. Obaidi blamed the Iraqi government for the cancellation of the march, saying his movement feared that the police and soldiers would hurt demonstrators.
Mr. Obaidi said his movement had to take account of “the size of the security deployment made by the government of Maliki.” He added, “That is why I call on our beloved Iraqi people who wanted to demonstrate against the occupation to postpone it, because I fear for their lives and blood and because, by God, I fear for Iraqi hands being raised against you.”
Responding to a question, Mr. Obaidi denied that his movement had miscalculated by calling the march in the first place, and then embarrassed itself by having to abandon it.
He said that despite agreeing to all the conditions imposed by the security forces, the Sadrists “were surprised this morning with the ban imposed by the government against our sons who were coming to Baghdad.”
Nevertheless, the cancellation suggests that Mr. Sadr has backed off from the latest in a series of confrontations with the government, the most serious being the heavy Shiite-on-Shiite fighting that broke out in Basra last month when government forces tried to curb armed militias there, principally Mr. Sadr’s.
Mr. Obaidi warned that Mr. Sadr could call off his seven-month cease-fire at any time. The cease-fire is a key ingredient of what General Petraeus termed Iraq’s “fragile and reversible” security improvement.
“If we need to lift the freeze in order to carry out our goals, objectives, doctrines and religious principles and patriotism, we will do that later,” Mr. Obaidi said.
As he spoke, Sadrist mosque loudspeakers in Sadr City were calling upon the overwhelmingly Shiite district’s population to fight United States forces. The death toll has left many funeral tents around the district.
Many residents support Mr. Sadr and blame the Iraqi government and the American military for the clashes over the last week.
“Tell the American officials that we got hurt a lot during this period, and they need to help us,” said Salah Turki, 37, adding that some of those who were killed in the fighting were “simple poor people like us.”
Jassim Hatem, 55, said that for more than a week, since a curfew prevented any vehicles from entering or leaving Sadr City, he had walked eight miles every day to his job as a tea seller.
Supplies of food in Sadr City are short; a huge fire in the neighborhood’s Jameela market, set off by a mortar or rocket strike on Monday, has worsened the situation. Mr. Hatem said he worried about feeding his children but said he could not afford to leave.
“Where would I go?” he asked. “I’ll try to stay here with my nine kids, and if I have enough bread for them I will feed them and if not, they will go to sleep without food.”
An Iraqi military spokesman, Brig. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi, said 82 militants, 36 civilians and 37 soldiers had been killed since March 16 during fighting in Baghdad, mostly in Sadr City, The Associated Press reported.
The United States military said one soldier was killed Tuesday in Baghdad by a bomb that struck his vehicle in northeast Baghdad, where American forces have been fighting the Sadrists. It also said three airstrikes had hit mortar-launching sites in the same area, killing 12 suspected fighters.
Mudhafer al-Husaini, Ahmad Fadam, Muhammed al-Obaidi and other Iraqi employees of The New York Times contributed reporting.
April 9, 2008 By Stephen Farrell and Erica Goode
BAGHDAD — The radical Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr on Tuesday called off a huge demonstration in Baghdad, citing fears for his supporters’ safety if they confronted Iraqi government and American forces, while his fighters continued to battle those forces.
Mr. Sadr’s decision came only 24 hours before a march he had called for the fifth anniversary on Wednesday of the capture of Baghdad by United States troops, which would have coincided with the second day of testimony to Congress by Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker and Gen. David H. Petraeus.
As it has been for almost two weeks, Mr. Sadr’s stronghold of Sadr City on Tuesday remained a neighborhood encircled by a ring of American and Iraqi military steel, its entryways blocked by lines of Humvees and nervous Iraqi soldiers who stood in groups and smoked cigarettes, their AK47s and M-16s slung over their shoulders.
The sound of heavy gunfire was punctuated every few minutes by heavy bursts of artillery fire, and there were reports that Iraqi forces pushed into central areas, clashing with fighters of the Mahdi Army militia Mr. Sadr leads, who were trying to stop their advance.
A pair of armored Strykers, resembling giant metal pods, sat silently in Mudhafer Square just outside Sadr City’s main gate, its American crew invisible inside.
Families fleeing the neighborhood with belongings stuffed into plastic bags streamed in one direction, while men returning from work in other areas of the capital walked in the other, returning to wives and children inside the embattled district.
As shells landed or shooting erupted, pedestrians scattered for cover. Hospital officials in Baghdad said at least 12 people, including three children, had been killed and 37 wounded in fighting, The Associated Press reported.
Rahim Ali, 40, headed south out of the district clutching the hand of his young daughter, her orange dress a startling flash of color on a drab, trash-strewn street.
“I’m leaving the neighborhood because of the shooting and the victims, and there is random gunfire,” he said, adding that he would stay away “until our God ends this crisis.”
The overwhelmingly Shiite eastern district is one of three Baghdad areas that have been encircled by troops since heavy fighting in Basra spilled over into the capital last month. Dozens of Iraqis have been killed as those clashes reignited in recent days.
Even as the two top American officials in Iraq were in Washington outlining what Mr. Crocker termed “signs of progress,” the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki imposed a vehicle ban across the capital for Wednesday’s anniversary, from 5 a.m. until midnight.
Many people interviewed on the outskirts of Sadr City said they were relieved to hear the news. A standoff between a large crowd and American and Iraqi soldiers, they said, could lead only to more violence.
Three miles southwest of Sadr City, Mr. Sadr’s spokesman, Salah al-Obaidi, held a hastily convened news conference in Paradise Square, where the statue of Saddam Hussein was toppled in 2003. The turbaned Mr. Obaidi blamed the Iraqi government for the cancellation of the march, saying his movement feared that the police and soldiers would hurt demonstrators.
Mr. Obaidi said his movement had to take account of “the size of the security deployment made by the government of Maliki.” He added, “That is why I call on our beloved Iraqi people who wanted to demonstrate against the occupation to postpone it, because I fear for their lives and blood and because, by God, I fear for Iraqi hands being raised against you.”
Responding to a question, Mr. Obaidi denied that his movement had miscalculated by calling the march in the first place, and then embarrassed itself by having to abandon it.
He said that despite agreeing to all the conditions imposed by the security forces, the Sadrists “were surprised this morning with the ban imposed by the government against our sons who were coming to Baghdad.”
Nevertheless, the cancellation suggests that Mr. Sadr has backed off from the latest in a series of confrontations with the government, the most serious being the heavy Shiite-on-Shiite fighting that broke out in Basra last month when government forces tried to curb armed militias there, principally Mr. Sadr’s.
Mr. Obaidi warned that Mr. Sadr could call off his seven-month cease-fire at any time. The cease-fire is a key ingredient of what General Petraeus termed Iraq’s “fragile and reversible” security improvement.
“If we need to lift the freeze in order to carry out our goals, objectives, doctrines and religious principles and patriotism, we will do that later,” Mr. Obaidi said.
As he spoke, Sadrist mosque loudspeakers in Sadr City were calling upon the overwhelmingly Shiite district’s population to fight United States forces. The death toll has left many funeral tents around the district.
Many residents support Mr. Sadr and blame the Iraqi government and the American military for the clashes over the last week.
“Tell the American officials that we got hurt a lot during this period, and they need to help us,” said Salah Turki, 37, adding that some of those who were killed in the fighting were “simple poor people like us.”
Jassim Hatem, 55, said that for more than a week, since a curfew prevented any vehicles from entering or leaving Sadr City, he had walked eight miles every day to his job as a tea seller.
Supplies of food in Sadr City are short; a huge fire in the neighborhood’s Jameela market, set off by a mortar or rocket strike on Monday, has worsened the situation. Mr. Hatem said he worried about feeding his children but said he could not afford to leave.
“Where would I go?” he asked. “I’ll try to stay here with my nine kids, and if I have enough bread for them I will feed them and if not, they will go to sleep without food.”
An Iraqi military spokesman, Brig. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi, said 82 militants, 36 civilians and 37 soldiers had been killed since March 16 during fighting in Baghdad, mostly in Sadr City, The Associated Press reported.
The United States military said one soldier was killed Tuesday in Baghdad by a bomb that struck his vehicle in northeast Baghdad, where American forces have been fighting the Sadrists. It also said three airstrikes had hit mortar-launching sites in the same area, killing 12 suspected fighters.
Mudhafer al-Husaini, Ahmad Fadam, Muhammed al-Obaidi and other Iraqi employees of The New York Times contributed reporting.