[Marxism] Maliki claims to hold Basra; Sadrists said to leave positions; Iran Amb. backs Maliki actions

["Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/world/middleeast/20iraq.htm

April 20, 2008 (est. 60 minutes ago)
Iraqi Army Seizes Basra From Militia as Cleric Threatens New Uprising 
By JAMES GLANZ and ALISSA J. RUBIN
BAGHDAD - Iraqi soldiers took control of the last bastions of the cleric
Moktada al-Sadr's militia in Basra on Saturday, and Iran's ambassador to
Baghdad strongly endorsed the Iraqi government's monthlong military
operation against the fighters. 

By Saturday evening, Basra was calm, but only after air and artillery
strikes by American and British forces cleared the way for Iraqi troops to
move into the Hayaniya district and other remaining Mahdi Army militia
strongholds and begin house-to house searches, Iraqi officials said. Iraqi
troops were meeting with little resistance, said Maj. Gen. Abdul-Karim
Khalaf, the spokesman for the Iraqi Interior Ministry in Baghdad.

Despite the apparent concession of Basra, Mr. Sadr issued defiant words on
Saturday night. In a long statement read from the loudspeakers of his Sadr
City Mosque, he threatened to declare "war until liberation" against the
government if fighting against his militia forces continued. He compared the
Iraqi government to that of Saddam Hussein and said that the government had
become the enemy along with Sunni extremists and the Americans. 

The developments followed a pattern that has been seen again and again in
the Basra fighting, where Mr. Sadr's Mahdi militia has battled Iraqi
government troops to a standstill and then retreated. Why his fighters have
clung to those fight-then-fade tactics is unknown. But American military and
civilian officials have repeatedly claimed that Mahdi Army units trained and
equipped by Iran had played a major role in the unexpectedly strong
resistance that government troops met in Basra.

Whether to counter those allegations or simply because, as many Iraqis have
recently speculated, Mr. Sadr's stock has recently fallen in Iranian eyes,
the Iranian ambassador, Hassan Kazemi Qumi, on Saturday expressed his
government's strong support for the Iraqi assault on Basra. He even called
the militias in Basra "outlaws," the same term that Prime Minister Nuri
Kamal al-Maliki has used to describe them.

"The idea of the government in Basra was to fight outlaws," Mr. Qumi said.
"This was the right of the government and the responsibility of the
government. And in my opinion the government was able to achieve a positive
result in Basra."

Strikingly, however, Ambassador Qumi simultaneously condemned American-led
operations against the Mahdi Army in the Shiite enclave of Sadr City, where
major new clashes broke out on Saturday. He said the American-backed
fighting in that densely populated district was only causing civilian
casualties rather than achieving any positive result. 

"The American insistence on coming and having a siege on a couple of million
people in one area and striking them with warplanes and shell them randomly
- many innocent people will be killed through this operation," Mr. Qumi
said. "The result of this operation will be the sabotage and destruction of
buildings, and many people will leave their homes."

The events in Basra, in contrast with the Mahdi Army's continued fighting in
Sadr City, renewed questions about where the Sadrist movement stands in
Iraq's unstable political landscape. While his faction has often played the
spoiler in Baghdad's Shiite political structure, his followers also
represent the poor and disenfranchised, who were battered under Saddam
Hussein, making it difficult for the government to write them off.

In his statement on Saturday, Mr. Sadr seemed to be claiming the moral high
ground despite having to cede territory in Basra. "You are using the
politics of Saddam and his followers when he banned the Friday Prayer and
displaced women and children; when he created divisions among groups of
Iraqis and used the politics of assassination," the statement said. "If you
do not stop we will announce a war until liberation." 

But with the Sadr movement under so much pressure from Baghdad to Basra, it
was hard to tell whether the words were a threat with muscle behind them or
more of a desperate effort to prove that his group is still a feared force.
At one point in the statement he sounded an almost plaintive note, saying,
"This government has forgotten that we are their brothers and were part of
them." 

The combination of the Iranian ambassador's stance stance and the retreat of
militia fighters in Basra may give fuel to accusation by some American and
Sunni officials that Iran has taken a powerful and increasingly open role in
Iraqi politics. 

Mr. Maliki's abrupt assault on Basra last month has been widely criticized
as being poorly planned. But it is believed to have been encouraged by the
Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, a crucial element of his governing
coalition. Many members of the armed wing of the council, called the Badr
Organization, joined the government's security forces early in the Iraq
conflict, and have been battling the Sadr-led forces. Mr. Sadr's political
movement is also an important rival of the Supreme Council.

Because leaders of the council and its armed wing spent years and sometimes
decades in exile in Iran during Saddam Hussein's regime, it was assumed that
the silence of the Badr Organization during the Basra offensive indicated
that Iran had given at least tacit approval for the move. 

Mr. Qumi's statements now give strong support to that view. They also
suggest that Iran, which has historically tried to play Shiite groups
against one another in Iraq, has decided to pull back on its support for the
group that American officials have continually pointed to as an
Iranian-trained troublemaker: Mr. Sadr's Mahdi Army.

Whether that means that the stock of Mr. Sadr himself has fallen is unknown,
although Mr. Qumi seemed to avoid discussing the cleric and certainly
refused to give him any credit for ending the fighting in Basra. At one
point during the fighting, members of the Iraqi Parliament traveled to Iran,
where Mr. Sadr is believed to be residing, and helped negotiate the terms of
a truce.

The developments came as fighting continued to rage in some parts of Sadr
City on Saturday night. Americans continued to strike Mahdi Army positions
in the district's southern sector, which Iraqi and American troops now
largely control.

Earlier, 66 wounded people were reported to have been brought to the Imam
Ali hospital in Sadr City as a result of fighting overnight Friday and
Saturday morning. Residents described mortar and rocket fire as well as gun
battles. The Sadr hospital, which is also in the neighborhood, reported
receiving 20 bodies from the fighting on Friday night and Saturday and many
wounded. 

The latest offensive in Basra started at 6 a.m. Saturday when American and
British warplanes and artillery pounded Hayaniya, in northern Basra. The
neighborhood had remained a Mahdi Army stronghold after earlier operations
had ousted them from the center of the city. "The assault was against known
criminal rocket and mortar sites west of Hayaniya," according to a statement
issued in Baghdad by the American military. 

The bombing campaign, which could be heard throughout the city, according to
residents, prepared the ground for Iraqi troops, who by evening were moving
through the district doing house-to-house searches for weapons caches and
materials for roadside bombs, also known as improvised explosive devices, or
I.E.D.s.

Lt. Gen. Mohan al-Freiji, who is one of the officers in charge of the Basra
operation, told reporters that "a few days ago, we told the insurgents to
give up their heavy weapons and the I.E.D.s. But until yesterday night they
shot mortar shells and planted improvised explosive devices in Hayaniya's
streets. They are gangsters who are fighting under the name of Mahdi Army."

Both Mr. Sadr's office in Basra and the Iraqi general in charge of the
operation said there had been little resistance from gunmen there. Aides to
Mr. Sadr said that that was because the cleric had ordered his fighters to
withdraw. "The Iraqi Army entered Hayaniya and the Mahdi Army did not resist
because they made a commitment to obey Moktada al-Sadr's order," said Harith
al-Athari, the head of the Sadr office in Basra. 

He added that they had also withdrawn from government buildings as required
by Prime Minister Maliki's request that all militias leave government
property. 

In a statement in Baghdad, the American military said that British and
American military training teams were working alongside Iraqi soldiers and
the Iraqi military consulted with senior British and American officers
before undertaking this stage in the battle. 

The consultation is a contrast to the early days of the Basra operation,
personally led by Mr. Maliki, when Iraqi troops moved in on Basra, with
little prior consultation with either the Americans the British, the
coalition troops who have a base in the area. Later, members of Mr. Maliki's
inner circle conceded that they had a communications problem, especially
with the British, that needed to be rectified.

Ahmad Fadam contributed reporting from Baghdad, and Iraqi employees of The
New York Times from Basra and Baghdad.




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