Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
New York Times
March 28, 2008
Pg. 1
By James Glanz and Steven Lee Myers
BAGHDAD — American-trained Iraqi security forces failed for a third straight day to oust Shiite militias from the southern city of Basra on Thursday, even as President Bush hailed the operation as a sign of the growing strength of Iraq’s federal government.
The fighting in Basra against the Mahdi Army, the armed wing of the political movement led by the radical Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, set off clashes in cities throughout Iraq. Major demonstrations were staged in a number of Shiite areas of Baghdad, including Sadr City, the huge neighborhood that is Mr. Sadr’s base of power.
Although Mr. Bush praised the Iraqi government for leading the fighting, it also appeared that the Iraqi government was pursuing its own agenda, calling the battles a fight against “criminal” elements but seeking to marginalize the Mahdi Army.
The Americans share the Iraqi government’s hostility toward what they call rogue elements of the Mahdi Army but will also be faced with the consequences if the battles among Shiite factions erupt into more widespread unrest.
The violence underscored the fragile nature of the security improvements partly credited to the American troop increase that began last year. Officials have acknowledged that a cease-fire called by Mr. Sadr last August has contributed to the improvements. Should the cease-fire collapse entirely, those gains could be in serious jeopardy, making it far more difficult to begin bringing substantial numbers of American troops home.
Although Sadr officials insisted on Thursday that the cease-fire was still in effect, Mr. Sadr has authorized his forces to fight in self-defense, and the battles in Basra appear to be eroding the cease-fire.
During a lengthy speech at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, near Dayton, Ohio, Mr. Bush praised Iraq’s government for ordering the assault in Basra and portrayed the battle as evidence that his strategy of increasing troop strength was bearing fruit.
“This offensive builds on the security gains of the surge and demonstrates to the Iraqi people that their government is committed to protecting them,” he said.
“There’s a strong commitment by the central government of Iraq to say that no one is above the law.”
Mr. Bush also accused Iran of arming, training and financing the militias fighting against the Iraqi forces.
Mr. Bush spoke after three days of briefings with senior advisers and military commanders on the situation in Iraq and the options for reducing the number of American troops there beyond the withdrawals already announced. It was one in a series of speeches he has been giving to build support for his policy before Gen. David H. Petraeus, the senior commander in Iraq, testifies before Congress next month.
In a videoconference with the president on Monday, General Petraeus recommended taking up to two months to evaluate security in Iraq before considering additional withdrawals, officials said Monday.
On Thursday, medical officials in Basra said the toll in the fighting there had risen to about 100 dead and 500 wounded, including civilians, militiamen and members of the security forces. An Iraqi employee of The New York Times, driving on the main road between Basra and Nasiriya, observed numerous civilian cars with coffins strapped to the roofs, apparently heading to Shiite cemeteries to the north.
Violence also broke out in Kut, Hilla, Amara, Kirkuk, Baquba and other cities. In Baghdad, where explosions shook the city throughout the day, American officials said 11 rockets struck the Green Zone, killing an unidentified American government worker, the second this week.
Another American, Paul Converse of Corvallis, Ore., an analyst with a federal oversight agency, the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, died of wounds suffered in a rocket attack on Sunday, a spokeswoman for the agency said Thursday.
The Iraqi government imposed a citywide curfew in Baghdad until Sunday.
Thousands of demonstrators in Sadr City on Thursday denounced Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, who has personally directed the Basra operation, and Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the Shiite cleric who leads the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, a political party that is a crucial member of the coalition keeping Mr. Maliki in power.
The Supreme Council’s armed wing, the Badr Organization, is one of the most powerful rivals of the Mahdi Army in Basra, where Shiite militias have been fighting among themselves for years to control neighborhoods, oil revenues, electricity access, the ports and even the local universities.
The third powerful element in the city is the Fadhila Party, which split from the Sadrists years ago and has its own militia. The three parties are expected to be rivals in the next round of provincial council elections, now scheduled for October. Many Sadr supporters pointed to those elections, and the possibility that their party might gain a majority of the seats, as a motivation for the Basra assault.
That assertion was rejected by Sadiq al-Rikabi, the prime minister’s political adviser, who said that the deteriorating security situation in Basra had left Mr. Maliki no choice but to act.
Witnesses in Basra said there was little evidence that security forces had moved the Mahdi Army out of neighborhoods they had long controlled. In the western Hayaniya neighborhood, where the Mahdi Army has fought with security forces, only gunmen and a few residents were seen on Thursday. Mahdi checkpoints were highly visible, often consisting of at least half a dozen fighters armed with weapons like rocket-propelled grenades.
“The gunmen are not allowing any military convoys to pass near the area,” said Ameen Ali Sakran, a Hayaniya resident.
Alaa Abdul Samad, an educational supervisor who lives in the Mahdi-controlled Kibla neighborhood a couple of miles south of the city center, said he had not seen any official army vehicles during the assault.
“The gunmen have controlled even the Kibla police station and taken all its weapons,” Mr. Samad said. “The area is now in the hands of the militias, and there is no army except some of the helicopters that fly around.”
Maj. Gen. Abdul Aziz Mohammed, the director of military operations in Iraq, echoed other Iraqi and American officials on Thursday by saying that the operation was not specifically aimed at the Mahdi Army but at any “criminals” who would not lay down their weapons. But witnesses said there was little fighting in neighborhoods that had been controlled by the Badr and Fadhila militias.
Estimates by Basra residents of how much of the city is in the Mahdi Army’s hands ranged from 50 percent to much higher. “We have soldiers in Basra, and they are doing fine,” said a militiaman in Baghdad named Abu Ali, who identified himself as a division commander for the Mahdi Army. “They are in full control.”
Those estimates of how much of the city was under Mahdi control were disputed by Mr. Rikabi. “No, this is not true, this is not true,” he said, though he offered no specific estimate.
But in another indication that parts of the south were slipping from the government’s hands, a major oil pipeline near Basra was struck with a bomb around 10 a.m. on Friday, igniting a huge fire, said Sameer al-Magsosi, a spokesman for the Southern Oil Company. Before the recent security gains, the southern pipelines had been frequent targets of insurgents, smugglers and militias, but few strikes had been recorded in the past year.
Mr. Bush, speaking at the National Air Force Museum, said he would not announce any decisions on the future in Iraq until after General Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker briefed Congress on April 8 and 9.
As before, however, he made it clear that he intended to maintain the maximum force needed to achieve what he called “a strategic victory.”
“As I consider the way forward, I will always remember that the progress in Iraq is real, it’s substantive, but it is reversible,” he said. “And so the principle behind my decision on our troop levels will be ensuring that we succeed in Iraq.”
One protester in Sadr City, Wissam Abdul Zahra, 27, made it clear that despite the wider implications of the Basra assault, he viewed it as a simple matter of local politics and power.
“We are expressing our freedom to defend the rights of our brothers in Basra under the pressure of Maliki and the Badr brigades.” he said. “They want to knock down the Sadrists before the provincial elections.”
Even the youngest participants in the protest seemed to have absorbed some of the reasons for the criticism.
“I watch the news with my family, and I see that Maliki is fighting the innocent people in Basra,” said Muhammad, 12. “I don’t understand it all, but it looks bad to me.”
James Glanz reported from Baghdad, and Steven Lee Myers from Ohio. Reporting was contributed by Qais Mizher, Ahmad Fadam, Mudhafer al-Husaini, Hosham Hussein, Erica Goode and Karim al-Hilmi, and employees of The New York Times from Basra, Kut, Baghdad, Hilla, Kirkuk and Diyala Province.
March 28, 2008
Pg. 1
By James Glanz and Steven Lee Myers
BAGHDAD — American-trained Iraqi security forces failed for a third straight day to oust Shiite militias from the southern city of Basra on Thursday, even as President Bush hailed the operation as a sign of the growing strength of Iraq’s federal government.
The fighting in Basra against the Mahdi Army, the armed wing of the political movement led by the radical Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, set off clashes in cities throughout Iraq. Major demonstrations were staged in a number of Shiite areas of Baghdad, including Sadr City, the huge neighborhood that is Mr. Sadr’s base of power.
Although Mr. Bush praised the Iraqi government for leading the fighting, it also appeared that the Iraqi government was pursuing its own agenda, calling the battles a fight against “criminal” elements but seeking to marginalize the Mahdi Army.
The Americans share the Iraqi government’s hostility toward what they call rogue elements of the Mahdi Army but will also be faced with the consequences if the battles among Shiite factions erupt into more widespread unrest.
The violence underscored the fragile nature of the security improvements partly credited to the American troop increase that began last year. Officials have acknowledged that a cease-fire called by Mr. Sadr last August has contributed to the improvements. Should the cease-fire collapse entirely, those gains could be in serious jeopardy, making it far more difficult to begin bringing substantial numbers of American troops home.
Although Sadr officials insisted on Thursday that the cease-fire was still in effect, Mr. Sadr has authorized his forces to fight in self-defense, and the battles in Basra appear to be eroding the cease-fire.
During a lengthy speech at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, near Dayton, Ohio, Mr. Bush praised Iraq’s government for ordering the assault in Basra and portrayed the battle as evidence that his strategy of increasing troop strength was bearing fruit.
“This offensive builds on the security gains of the surge and demonstrates to the Iraqi people that their government is committed to protecting them,” he said.
“There’s a strong commitment by the central government of Iraq to say that no one is above the law.”
Mr. Bush also accused Iran of arming, training and financing the militias fighting against the Iraqi forces.
Mr. Bush spoke after three days of briefings with senior advisers and military commanders on the situation in Iraq and the options for reducing the number of American troops there beyond the withdrawals already announced. It was one in a series of speeches he has been giving to build support for his policy before Gen. David H. Petraeus, the senior commander in Iraq, testifies before Congress next month.
In a videoconference with the president on Monday, General Petraeus recommended taking up to two months to evaluate security in Iraq before considering additional withdrawals, officials said Monday.
On Thursday, medical officials in Basra said the toll in the fighting there had risen to about 100 dead and 500 wounded, including civilians, militiamen and members of the security forces. An Iraqi employee of The New York Times, driving on the main road between Basra and Nasiriya, observed numerous civilian cars with coffins strapped to the roofs, apparently heading to Shiite cemeteries to the north.
Violence also broke out in Kut, Hilla, Amara, Kirkuk, Baquba and other cities. In Baghdad, where explosions shook the city throughout the day, American officials said 11 rockets struck the Green Zone, killing an unidentified American government worker, the second this week.
Another American, Paul Converse of Corvallis, Ore., an analyst with a federal oversight agency, the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, died of wounds suffered in a rocket attack on Sunday, a spokeswoman for the agency said Thursday.
The Iraqi government imposed a citywide curfew in Baghdad until Sunday.
Thousands of demonstrators in Sadr City on Thursday denounced Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, who has personally directed the Basra operation, and Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the Shiite cleric who leads the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, a political party that is a crucial member of the coalition keeping Mr. Maliki in power.
The Supreme Council’s armed wing, the Badr Organization, is one of the most powerful rivals of the Mahdi Army in Basra, where Shiite militias have been fighting among themselves for years to control neighborhoods, oil revenues, electricity access, the ports and even the local universities.
The third powerful element in the city is the Fadhila Party, which split from the Sadrists years ago and has its own militia. The three parties are expected to be rivals in the next round of provincial council elections, now scheduled for October. Many Sadr supporters pointed to those elections, and the possibility that their party might gain a majority of the seats, as a motivation for the Basra assault.
That assertion was rejected by Sadiq al-Rikabi, the prime minister’s political adviser, who said that the deteriorating security situation in Basra had left Mr. Maliki no choice but to act.
Witnesses in Basra said there was little evidence that security forces had moved the Mahdi Army out of neighborhoods they had long controlled. In the western Hayaniya neighborhood, where the Mahdi Army has fought with security forces, only gunmen and a few residents were seen on Thursday. Mahdi checkpoints were highly visible, often consisting of at least half a dozen fighters armed with weapons like rocket-propelled grenades.
“The gunmen are not allowing any military convoys to pass near the area,” said Ameen Ali Sakran, a Hayaniya resident.
Alaa Abdul Samad, an educational supervisor who lives in the Mahdi-controlled Kibla neighborhood a couple of miles south of the city center, said he had not seen any official army vehicles during the assault.
“The gunmen have controlled even the Kibla police station and taken all its weapons,” Mr. Samad said. “The area is now in the hands of the militias, and there is no army except some of the helicopters that fly around.”
Maj. Gen. Abdul Aziz Mohammed, the director of military operations in Iraq, echoed other Iraqi and American officials on Thursday by saying that the operation was not specifically aimed at the Mahdi Army but at any “criminals” who would not lay down their weapons. But witnesses said there was little fighting in neighborhoods that had been controlled by the Badr and Fadhila militias.
Estimates by Basra residents of how much of the city is in the Mahdi Army’s hands ranged from 50 percent to much higher. “We have soldiers in Basra, and they are doing fine,” said a militiaman in Baghdad named Abu Ali, who identified himself as a division commander for the Mahdi Army. “They are in full control.”
Those estimates of how much of the city was under Mahdi control were disputed by Mr. Rikabi. “No, this is not true, this is not true,” he said, though he offered no specific estimate.
But in another indication that parts of the south were slipping from the government’s hands, a major oil pipeline near Basra was struck with a bomb around 10 a.m. on Friday, igniting a huge fire, said Sameer al-Magsosi, a spokesman for the Southern Oil Company. Before the recent security gains, the southern pipelines had been frequent targets of insurgents, smugglers and militias, but few strikes had been recorded in the past year.
Mr. Bush, speaking at the National Air Force Museum, said he would not announce any decisions on the future in Iraq until after General Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker briefed Congress on April 8 and 9.
As before, however, he made it clear that he intended to maintain the maximum force needed to achieve what he called “a strategic victory.”
“As I consider the way forward, I will always remember that the progress in Iraq is real, it’s substantive, but it is reversible,” he said. “And so the principle behind my decision on our troop levels will be ensuring that we succeed in Iraq.”
One protester in Sadr City, Wissam Abdul Zahra, 27, made it clear that despite the wider implications of the Basra assault, he viewed it as a simple matter of local politics and power.
“We are expressing our freedom to defend the rights of our brothers in Basra under the pressure of Maliki and the Badr brigades.” he said. “They want to knock down the Sadrists before the provincial elections.”
Even the youngest participants in the protest seemed to have absorbed some of the reasons for the criticism.
“I watch the news with my family, and I see that Maliki is fighting the innocent people in Basra,” said Muhammad, 12. “I don’t understand it all, but it looks bad to me.”
James Glanz reported from Baghdad, and Steven Lee Myers from Ohio. Reporting was contributed by Qais Mizher, Ahmad Fadam, Mudhafer al-Husaini, Hosham Hussein, Erica Goode and Karim al-Hilmi, and employees of The New York Times from Basra, Kut, Baghdad, Hilla, Kirkuk and Diyala Province.