Al-Sadr Suspends Militia Activity in Iraq

BAGHDAD (AP) - Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr has ordered a six-month suspension of activities by his Mahdi Army militia in order to reorganize the force, and it will no longer attack U.S. and coalition troops, aides said Wednesday. The aide, Sheik Hazim al-Araji, said on Iraqi state television that the goal was to "rehabilitate" the organization, which has reportedly broken into factions, some of which the U.S. maintains are trained and supplied by Iran. "We declare the freezing of the Mahdi Army without exception in order to rehabilitate it in a way that will safeguard its ideological image within a maximum period of six months starting from the day this statement is issued," al-Araji said, reading from a statement by al-Sadr. In Najaf, al-Sadr's spokesman said the order also means the Mahdi Army will no longer launch attacks against U.S. and other coalition forces. "It also includes suspending the taking up of arms against occupiers as well as others," Ahmed al-Shaibani told reporters. Asked if Mahdi militiamen would defend themselves against provocations, he replied: "We will deal with it when it happens."
Full story : http://apnews1.iwon.com/article/20070829/D8RANPB01.html

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US troops in Iraq go on the offensive : By Ross Colvin

BAGHDAD, June 20 (Reuters) - Thousands of U.S. troops swept into the northern and southern beltlands of Baghdad on Wednesday in simultaneous operations against militants that the military said was the start of a "summer of hard fighting" in Iraq. The operations signal a new phase in Washington's Iraq strategy. The military is going on the offensive to crush al Qaeda and other militants, who have defied a major crackdown to secure Baghdad by hiding out in the lush green farmlands and towns bordering the Iraqi capital. North of Baghdad, 10,000 mostly U.S. troops supported by attack helicopters, Stryker and Bradley armoured fighting vehicles pressed on with a two-day-old offensive against al Qaeda militants in volatile Diyala province. Thirty militants have been killed so far and large quantities of weapons seized, the military said. South of the capital, soldiers, including airborne troops in Chinook helicopters, killed four suspected insurgents, detained 62, seized 10 weapons caches and destroyed 17 boats, disrupting militant operations on the Tigris River, the U.S. military said. "Our forces are on the offensive ... but we face a summer of hard fighting," U.S. military spokesman Admiral Mark Fox said in Baghdad. The U.S. military launched the operations after the fifth and final reinforcing brigade of U.S. troops arrived in Iraq, completing its troop "surge" or build-up. "We are now seeing the true surge in full force," Fox said. "You are going to see operations simultaneously conducted and well co-ordinated through all the different provinces." U.S. President George W. Bush has sent 28,000 extra soldiers to help curb sectarian bloodshed and buy Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki time to reach a political accommodation with disaffected minority Sunni Arabs, who are locked in a cycle of violence with majority Shi'ite Muslims. The four-month-old security crackdown is focused on Baghdad, epicentre of the violence. While U.S. and Iraqi forces have reduced the levels of bloodshed in the capital, militants have shifted the fight to other provinces such as Diyala. Al Qaeda fighters have used Diyala as a launchpad for large-scale suicide and car bomb attacks on the capital, such as the one that struck a Shi'ite mosque in central Baghdad on Tuesday, killing 87 and wounding over 200.

REVENGE ATTACKS

In the aftermath of the attack, three Sunni mosques were targeted in Iskandariya and Jbela, two towns south of Baghdad, police said on Wednesday. Two of the mosques were badly damaged. With the violence continuing to exact a deadly toll on Iraqis and U.S. soldiers, Bush is under growing pressure from Democrats in Congress to show progress in his new Iraq strategy or start pulling out troops, something he has rejected so far. The top U.S. general in Iraq, General David Petraeus, and U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker are due to deliver a report in September and make recommendations. Analysts say it will be a watershed in the unpopular four-year-old war. Fox said Operation Marne Torch, the offensive south of Baghdad, was aimed at preventing "insurgents from entering the southern Baghdad belt and ... moving bomb parts into Baghdad". The operation north of Baghdad, dubbed Operation Arrowhead Ripper, is focused on Baquba, one of the most dangerous cities in Iraq and an al Qaeda stronghold. Residents reported heavy clashes between U.S. troops and militants in districts on the western bank of the Diyala River that splits the city in two. Police Colonel Raghi Radh said masked members of the 1920 Revolution Brigade, a Sunni insurgent group that has clashed with al Qaeda, were seen operating with U.S. troops and had set up base in deserted houses to interrogate suspects. Radh said the U.S. troops were being hampered by roadside bombs and were having to detonate them as they proceeded. "For the first time we feel that al Qaeda is weak. Up until two days ago we thought they would control everything over us," said resident Rami Abdullah.

Mahdi Army militia, loyal to Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, battled the joint forces.

British, Iraqi forces kill 20 insurgents in southern Iraq

British and Iraqi forces backed by aircraft raided insurgents' hideouts in the Maysan province in southeastern Baghdad early on Monday, killing at least 20 insurgents, the U.S. military said. The raids targeted members of a "secret cell terrorist network known for facilitating the transport of weapons and explosively formed penetrators, or EFPs, from Iran to Iraq, as well as bringing militants from Iraq to Iran for terrorist training," the statement said. Six more suspected insurgents were injured and another detained on the operations in Amarah, the capital city of Maysan province, and the Majar al-Kabir area, 30 km south of the city, it said. During the raids in both areas, the British and Iraqi forces came under heavy small-arms fire and rocket-propelled grenade attacks, prompting the joint forces to call in close air support, the statement added. Local Iraqi police source told Xinhua that up to 40 people were killed in both areas and dozens more wounded during the raids when Mahdi Army militia, loyal to Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, battled the joint forces. Intelligence reports said that the two targeted areas were known as safe havens and smuggling routes for "Iranian surrogates, or Iraqis that are liaisons for Iranian intelligence operatives into Iraq," according to the statement.
Coalition forces in Iraq frequently accused Iran of providing Iraqi Shiite militia with weapons and parts for sophisticated armored-piercing bombs, which has been denied by Iran.
Source: Xinhua

Uneasy Peace Leaves Intentions of Mahdi Army in Question : By Kelley Beaucar Vlahos

WASHINGTON — U.S soldiers encountered no resistance and found few weapons during recent patrols through the Shiite stronghold of Sadr City — all signs indicating that the powerful al-Mahdi militia originating there, at least for now, is on an indefinite vacation. But while the cleric Muqtada al-Sadr’s militia may appear restrained in Sadr City, home to 2 million Iraqis in the heart of Baghdad, the cleric’s fighters are everywhere in the police force, the military and even the government. Defense policy analysts said those militia members are just biding their time to return to some sort of legitimate, controlling authority when the moment is ripe. “There are a number of favorable outcomes for (Sadr)” if he doesn't fight, retired Col. Thomas X. Hammes, who served in Iraq and is the author of The Sling and the Stone: On Warfare in the 21st Century. “The only people who win if (the Mahdi Army) fight us are the Sunni.”“They made a decision not to confront us and to wait out the surge,” said Vali Nasr, Islamic scholar and professor of national security studies at the Naval Postgraduate School in California. “They in essence said, ‘If the U.S wants the responsibility for guaranteeing security, let them have it.'” Al-Sadr may have cut a deal with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki or else he saw the writing on the wall when President Bush announced his plan to increase U.S troop levels by 21,500. House-to-house searches conducted by U.S soldiers in this packed neighborhood were the first since the beginning of the war four years ago. Once the site of vehement anti-American protests, the searches that began in early March were met with one peaceful protest outside a Sadr City mosque on March 16, reportedly spurred by statements sent by al-Sadr himself, who has been absent for weeks. Reports suggest he is in Iran, though many of his supporters refuse to believe it. More recently at the request of Maliki, the U.S military last week released a major Sadrist leader, Sheik Ahmed Shibani, who had been in prison for 2 1/2 years. Observers note this is all part of the delicate dance all sides are doing to keep the peace and move toward a more permanent reconciliation. Lt. Gen. William E. Odom (Ret.), who advanced counterinsurgency efforts nearly 40 years ago in Vietnam, is wary of the silence. “Sure, those guys are going to get out of the line of fire,” he said of the Mahdi. "They'll wait and see what happens and then design a way to come back and attack the U.S. position with tactics more favorable to them.” Yet the calm in Sadr City it is the first sign of an unofficial, albeit uneasy truce between the U.S military and the militia that first attacked American positions in 2004. Frederick Kagan, a military expert with the American Enterprise Institute who authored a blueprint for the surge into Baghdad earlier this year, said the latest sequence of events may be cause for optimism. “We have not been allowing (the al-Mahdi Army) to lay low. We have been picking off the leaders in their senior organization. We have established a joint security station" in Sadr City, he said. “That means we are operating on their home turf and tripping their networks.” Kagan said he believes al-Sadr is losing face with his people by not being there, creating opportunities for Shiite leaders who are more amenable to working with the central government and the United States. One of those leaders, Sadr City Mayor Raheem Darraji, was almost killed in an assassination attempt on March 15. He was involved in the negotiations with Iraqi and U.S. military that cleared the way for American troops to come into the city.
Who Are the Mahdi?
With its origins in a small group of al-Sadr followers in Saddam City — now Sadr City — the al-Mahdi organization flourished after the 2003 fall of Baghdad, providing aid and security to Shiite Iraqis in Baghdad and other cities in southern Iraq. Often called the "rebel" cleric, al-Sadr is the son of the Grand Ayatollah Muhammad Muhammad Sadeq al Sadr, who was allegedly murdered by Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s henchmen in 1999. Sadr City is this elder al-Sadr's namesake. As his son sermonized against the U.S. occupation and rival Shiite groups began to scramble for authority, the al-Mahdi organization grew, and in June 2003 al-Sadr formalized the group into what is now the al-Mahdi Army. In April 2004, following the shutdown of his newspaper by the U.S. military, al-Sadr incited attacks on coalition forces in several Shiite cities. After months of fierce fighting, the militia was defeated and forced to retreat from the cities it had managed to overtake. Al-Sadr, who has close ties with Iran, then went into to politics, backing candidates who eventually won 30 seats in the new Iraqi parliament in 2005. Al-Sadr loyalists also hold six cabinet posts. The militia, according to varying reports, has grown from a small cadre to 10,000 in 2004 to anywhere from 40,000 to 80,000 today. It continues to provide social services to Shiite followers. Up until now it has also provided primary security for the city's Shiites and has been blamed for much of the systematic violence and displacement of Sunnis in Baghdad. "The real problem is, three or four years ago, it was a rag-tag bunch of the poor and dispossessed," said Michael Rubin, a Middle East expert at AEI. "Now, around 40,000 have received basically professional training. … They have gone, been trained by the Revolutionary Guard in Iran, and come back. They are no longer amateurs. These are the ones we need to worry about." In March, unnamed senior military officials told the Associated Press that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and Quds Force were training Mahdi militiamen just over the border and splinter groups that were even more anti-American than their old boss had started to emerge. Recent reports say the Mahdi militiamen have engaged in gun battles with fighters from one of those groups in Basra. On Wednesday, U.S officials announced that several Shiite militiamen were arrested in connection to the killing of five U.S soldiers in Karbala in January. There have been conflicting reports over whether they are Mahdi, or part of one of the splinter organizations. Trouble on the Horizon? Some analysts insist the Mahdi in Sadr City just melted more completely into their day jobs as policemen and even Iraqi soldiers. Some may now be working alongside the very American soldiers they once targeted. Meanwhile, they are letting the Americans take the lead in fighting their Sunni rivals, and really have no interest in sharing power if and when stability finally comes to Iraq, said military author Bill Lind. "They are in the catbird seat and they know it," said Lind, who believes the Shiites are using the Americans to destroy Sunni opposition for them. Kagan said the Americans are not doing the Shiite militia's dirty work by destroying their Sunni opposition. Rather, "we are going after Al Qaeda," and in some places, local Sunnis are going after Al Qaeda too. Kagan did not deny that the Mahdi militia have infiltrated the police and military ranks. But, he said, "When they are operating alongside our military ... they are not out of control." Mahdi fighters could disrupt coalition supply lines from Kuwait and have convenient support from their neighbors in Iran, Lind charged. But if they bide their time, they could play a bigger role in a new Shiite-dominated government that pays little or no lip service to the Sunni minority. "The real question is, how much patience and restraint will Shia Arabs continue to exercise with the U.S. military presence?" asked retired Col. Douglas MacGregor, who led armored cavalry troops in the first Persian Gulf War. "No one harbors any illusion about the degree of distaste for the American occupation. The minute we turn our attention to serious action towards the Shia militias, all bets are off." Hammes argued, however, that the increased American presence was a "huge step forward," and the "even-handed approach" to the mixed population in Baghdad, including Sadr City, is the right one. It's just going to take a long time, he said, predicting it will last well beyond the next year. On the other hand, if Sunni insurgents in Baghdad continue to maim and kill Shiites, the Sadrists are going to get restless for the old Mahdi security, said Nasr. "We still have the challenge of providing the protection the Mahdi Army was giving, and we are a long way from being able to make one or two incursions into Sadr City and being able to hold it."

Shiite Militia May Be Disintergrating : By HAMZA HENDAWI

BAGHDAD (AP) - The violent Shiite militia known as the Mahdi Army is breaking into splinter groups, with up to 3,000 gunmen now financed directly by Iran and no longer loyal to the firebrand cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, adding a potentially even more deadly element to Iraq's violent mix. Two senior militia commanders told The Associated Press that hundreds of these fighters have crossed into Iran for training by the elite Quds force, a branch of Iran's Revolutionary Guard thought to have trained Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon and Muslim fighters in Bosnia and Afghanistan. The breakup is an ominous development at a time when U.S. and Iraqi forces are working to defeat religious-based militias and secure Iraq under government control. While al-Sadr's forces have battled the coalition repeatedly, including pitched battles in 2004, they've mostly stayed in the background during the latest offensive.
The U.S. military has asserted in recent months that Iran's Revolutionary Guards and Quds force have been providing Shiite militias with weapons and parts for sophisticated armor-piercing bombs. The so called EFPs - explosively formed penetrators - are responsible for the deaths of more than 170 American and coalition soldiers since mid-2004, the military says.
In the latest such attack, four U.S. soldiers were killed March 15 by a roadside bomb in eastern Baghdad.
At the Pentagon, a military official confirmed there were signs the Mahdi Army was splintering. Some were breaking away to attempt a more conciliatory approach to the Americans and the Iraqi government, others moving in a more extremist direction, the official said. However, the official, who was not authorized to be quoted by name on the topic, was not aware of direct Iranian recruitment and financing of Mahdi Army members. The outlines of the fracture inside the Mahdi Army were confirmed by senior Iraqi government officials with access to intelligence reports prepared for Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. The information indicates a disintegrating organization yet a potentially even more dangerous foe, they revealed, on condition that their names not be used. The militia commanders and al-Maliki's reports identify the leader of the breakaway faction as Qais al-Khazaali, a young Iraqi cleric who was a close al-Sadr aide in 2003 and 2004. He was al-Sadr's chief spokesman for most of 2004, when he made nearly daily appearances on Arabic satellite news channels. He has not been seen in public since late that year. Al-Sadr has been in Iran since early February, apparently laying low during the U.S.-Iraqi offensive, according to the U.S. military. He is not known to be close to Iran's leadership or Iraq's top Shiite cleric, Iranian-born Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. While Al-Sadr's strategy appears to be to wait out the government offensive and preserve his force, his absence has left loyal fighters unsure of his future and pondering whether they had been abandoned by their leader, the commanders said. Al-Sadr tried to return to Iraq last month but turned back before he reached the Iraqi border upon learning of U.S. checkpoints on the road to Najaf, the Shiite holy city south of Baghdad where he lives. ``Conditions are not suitable for him to return,'' said an al-Sadr aide, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject. ``His safety will not be guaranteed if he returns.'' The Mahdi Army commanders, who said they would be endangered if their names were revealed, said Iran's Revolutionary Guards were funding and arming the defectors from their force, and that several hundred over the last 18 months had slipped across the Iranian border for training by the Quds force. In recent weeks, Mahdi Army fighters who escaped possible arrest in the Baghdad security push have received $600 each upon reaching Iran. The former Mahdi Army militiamen working for the Revolutionary Guards operate under the cover a relief agency for Iraqi refugees, they said. Once fighters defect, they receive a monthly stipend of $200, said the commanders. Alireza Jafarzadeh, a spokesman for an Iranian dissident group, told reporters in New York on Tuesday that Iraqi Shiite guerrillas and death squads were being trained in secret camps in Iran with the blessing of top Tehran government leaders and at least three senior Iraqi political figures. Inside Iraq, the breakaway troops are using the cover of the Mahdi Army itself, the commanders said. The defectors are in secret, small, but well-funded cells. Little else has emerged about the structure of their organization, but most of their cadres are thought to have maintained the pretense of continued Mahdi Army membership, possibly to escape reprisals. Estimates of the number of Mahdi Army fighters vary wildly, with some putting the figure at 10,000 and others as many as 60,000.
The extent of al-Sadr's control over his militia has never been clear. Like many of Iraq's warring parties, it's a loosely knit force. The fiery cleric inspires loyalty with his speeches and edicts, and the Shiite gunmen are also bonded by the goal of maintaining Shiite dominance in a country long controlled by the rival Sunni Muslims, most recently Saddam Hussein. Commanders thought to have disobeyed Mahdi Army orders or abused their power are publicly renounced during Friday prayers, a move that has forced them to quit their posts or go into hiding. Mahdi Army militiamen also could be attracted by the cash promises of the splinter group. They don't receive wages or weapons from al-Sadr, but are allowed to generate income by charging government contractors protection money when they work in Shiite neighborhoods. The two Mahdi Army commanders blamed several recent attacks on U.S. forces in eastern Baghdad on the splinter group. The commanders also said they believed the breakaway force had organized the attempt last week to kill Rahim al-Darraji, the mayor of Sadr City. Al-Darraji, who is close to the Sadrist movement, was involved in talks with the U.S. military about extending the five-week-old Baghdad security sweep into Sadr City, the Mahdi Army stronghold in eastern Baghdad that was a no-go zone for American forces until about three weeks ago. Al-Darraji was seriously wounded and two of his bodyguards were killed when gunmen ambushed their convoy in a mainly Shiite district near Sadr City. There was no claim of responsibility. The commanders said recruitment of Mahdi Army gunmen by Iran began as early as 2005. But it was dramatically stepped up in recent months, especially with the approach of the U.S.-Iraqi security operation which was highly advertised before it began Feb. 14. Many Mahdi Army fighters are believed to have crossed the border to escape arrest. Calls by the AP to seek comment from the Iranian Foreign Ministry have not been returned. The Iranian recruitment of the Mahdi Army fighters appears to be an extension of its efforts to exert influence in Iraq, in part to keep the U.S. bogged down in a war that already has stretched into its fifth year. Iran already has the allegiance of the Badr Brigade, a Shiite militia founded and trained in Iran in the 1980s that maintains close links to Iraq's ruling Shiite politicians. The Bush administration has carefully not ruled out military action against Iran, but the war in Iraq keeps U.S. ground forces at least stretched thin.