пятница, 20 июня 2008 г.

Apocalypse Now?

Hijacking, murder, kidnap. Last week anarchy seemed to have gripped 'post-war' Iraq. Mark Franchetti reports from Baghdad on the revolt that gained momentum as it spread.

The barrels were long and the slogans menacing. As several American tanks hunkered together in Sadr city, the lawless slum near the centre of Baghdad, the words daubed on two were clear. "Anger Management" read one; "Analyse This" read another.

For the three marines nervously uncoiling barbed wire around the position last Wednesday, the analysis was all too uncomfortable: anger management, American-style, was not working. The locals were just getting more vengeful, more bloodthirsty.

A few hundred yards down the road a horde of armed Shi'ite Muslims were spoiling for a fight. Clustered on a rooftop, they were dressed in black and laden with rocket-propelled grenades, AK-47s, sabres and other weaponry.

"Come and get us if you dare," they chanted at the tank crews. "We will fight you to the death." Below, the street crowd cheered and children set fire to truck tyres built into a barricade.

The fighters were members of the al-Mahdi army, an outlawed militia loyal to Moqtada al-Sadr, the fiery Islamic cleric blamed for the bloody rioting that erupted last week throughout central and southern Iraq. Inside the building al-Sadr's local representative was holding court.

Surrounded by aides and wearing a thick black turban, Said Amir al-Husseini looked more warlord than cleric as people queued to offer him their help. One woman, her face covered with a veil, came in cradling an AK-47 saying she would fight the Americans. A man kissed the sheikh's ring and claimed he was willing to sell his house to raise money for al-Sadr. Some visitors offered food, others weapons and ammunition.

"This is a proper army defending our beliefs and our people," said al Husseini.

"The Americans are no longer welcome. They are killing and arresting innocent people. This is our country. We want to rule ourselves. And if they want to fight we have no shortage of volunteers."

It sounded like a declaration of war -and yesterday the battles were still raging. In the town of Falluja, west of Baghdad, men and teenagers brandished rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) as American planes screamed overhead. Explosions rocked buildings. Bodies and burnt-out vehicles littered the streets.

Inside Sadr city, tens of thousands of Shi'ite men performed prayers outside for the weekend's holy festival. In unison they raised their fists and pledged their lives to al-Sadr. It was a fearsome sight at the end of a bloody week in which militants across the country had battled the troops who had liberated them from Saddam Hussein. By last night 42 US troops and more than 500 Iraqis had died.

Civilians, aid workers and journalists all came under fire. Then a terrifying new tactic -kidnap -seemed to take hold. Three Japanese citizens were snatched by militiamen and an ultimatum was issued: Japan must withdraw its forces helping the coalition or the captives would be burnt alive.

Yesterday two US soldiers were reported missing, feared kidnapped. A British worker, Gary Teeley, is also missing.

In Hit, a town 110 miles west of Baghdad, a British security contractor called Michael Bloss emailed friends on Wednesday amid the rioting: "We are expecting to be overrun tonight and we may have to fight our way to a safe haven. Unfortunately all the safe havens are already under attack."

The next day, as Bloss guided workers to safety, he was shot dead.

In Basra, controlled by British troops, the Ministry of Defence claimed all was calm. Some calm. One unit commander contacted in the field on Thursday said: "I survived an RPG attack ... one of dozens of multi-weapon attacks in the last 48 hours. My regiment alone has had four wounded in action and two vehicles destroyed."

Even Paradise Square, where the toppling of Saddam's statue had symbolised triumph, was sealed off. "Warning, warning," blared loudspeakers in Arabic. "If anyone tries to get close to a military vehicle they will be attacked. If anyone is carrying a gun he will be shot. Thank you."

For Bush and Blair it was a grim anniversary of "victory". On Wednesday, on the secure videolink from the basement of No10 to the White House, they discussed what to do ahead of Blair's forthcoming visit to Washington.

Blair is said to have advised the president to be more conciliatory. But the American instinct was to be bold: al-Sadr's support was limited, they judged, and ordinary Iraqis wanted the process towards democracy, however imperfect, to continue.

This was no popular uprising or "intifada", the Americans argued. The trouble was being caused by a limited number of hotheads who had to be hit, and hit hard. They would either be martyred or driven to the negotiating table.

THE road to democracy in Iraq was always going to be spattered with blood. As Iraqi exiles returned after the fall of Saddam to vie for power with local politicians, the struggle quickly turned murderous.

Soon after allied troops began racing through southern Iraq towards Baghdad in March last year, Ayatollah Abdul Majid al-Khoei, a young, moderate Shi'ite Muslim, flew in from London. With American money behind him, he went to Najaf to hold talks with the most senior Shi'ite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. The two were seen as offering Iraq some of the best hopes for a prosperous future.

But the day after Saddam's statue fell in Baghdad, al-Khoei was emerging from a holy shrine in Najaf when he was stabbed. As people tried to get him to safety, he was stabbed again, near al-Sadr's offices. This time it was fatal.

Although the evidence of murder pointed at al-Sadr and his supporters, the coalition let them be. In October he denounced America as the "Bigger Satan", in an echo of the old Iranian chant of the US being the "Great Satan", but still he was left alone.

The cleric's power base is the Baghdad slum of Sadr city, home to some 2m Shi'ites who live in desperate poverty. A sprawling labyrinth of fetid streets, it is the poorest and most crime-ridden district of the capital.

It is to the dispossessed youth of this ghetto that al-Sadr owes his power. He has established a sophisticated welfare network there and "courts" that dispense sharia justice in his name.

It was his militia -the al-Mahdi army -he likes to remind people that protected the local Shi'ites from looters and Saddam loyalists in the wake of the war.

If the Americans thought that they could ignore or sideline al-Sadr, they were wrong. The young cleric has proved to be an adept media manipulator and his al-Mahdi army is now thought to number about 6,000 men.

"The word was put out in the mosques," said Abu Hammed, from Sadr city, who gave up his job to join the militia. He now heads a cell of 40 men. "The recruiting has been going on for months. I was given an AK-47 and joined overnight to protect our people and our land from the Americans. They are cheating us and have become occupiers, not liberators."

Al-Sadr fomented trouble by spreading his poisonous preachings through a weekly newspaper called al-Hawza. "We are still under the rule of Saddam but with an American face," began one article, which went on to accuse the coalition of spreading "moral corruption by the selling of pornographic movies and liquor and hashish that America brought with it to Iraq".

Another report claimed that American forces had started throwing dead soldiers into the sea (although Iraq is almost landlocked) to avoid bad publicity. Another railed against Freemasons for being in league with Zionists in a worldwide conspiracy.

More seriously, other articles accused America of deliberately killing Iraqi police and civilians. The newspaper also derided Paul Bremer, the American consul running Iraq, as a "third-rate intelligence agent" with a desire to "erase Islam from the Earth".

As al-Sadr grew more and more outspoken, Bremer and the Americans started to take an interest. Then on March 28 -without warning -Bremer acted: he ordered the newspaper to close for 60 days and arrested one of al-Sadr's most senior aides.

Shi'ites took to the streets in protest. Why did Bremer act then? Had he just had enough of al-Sadr or did he want to deal with the al-Mahdi "army" before it was too late?

Events were suddenly coming together with explosive results.

THREE days after the newspaper was closed, four employees of a private security firm called Blackwater set off from an army base in a convoy of vehicles. Their mission: to collect kitchen equipment.

According to Blackwater, members of the Iraqi Civil Defence Corps (ICDC) promised to help the contractors with safe passage through Falluja. But inside the town, masked men were waiting with guns and grenades.

Two vehicles caught fire and the occupants were dragged out. A mob descended. One body was tied to a car and dragged through the streets. Another was hacked to pieces. Some of the remains were strung up from a bridge as the mob chanted their delight.

"The bodies were hanging upside down on each side of the bridge," said one resident. "They had no hands, no feet, one had no head."

Blackwater now believes that the contractors were deliberately led into the ambush either by renegade members of the ICDC or by impostors. Regardless of whether the incident was engineered by al-Sadr or by Sunni extremists, it fuelled the terror.

The next day militants gathered in Najaf outside a coalition base and a three hour gun battle erupted against the Spanish, American and Salvadorian troops there. It left 24 dead and some 200 wounded.

Inside Sadr city, the militiamen also let rip with RPGs and small arms when they encountered an American patrol.

"There was shooting everywhere," said Hasen Keldar, who witnessed some of the fighting. "It was hell. I saw one Humvee take a direct hit from an RPG and explode. Minutes later an ambulance carrying a mother and daughter was caught in the crossfire. Both died."

The attacks spread across the country. In Ramadi, 12 US soldiers died. In al Kut, Ukrainian forces pulled out after a night of relentless mortar fire. It took American troops two days to retake the town. In Karbala, Polish forces were attacked.

In Falluja, hell and vengeance came to town as US marines moved in to quell the city where their countrymen had been butchered. Plumes of black smoke rose as helicopter gunships attacked dozens of targets. A mosque was hit by two 500lb precision-guided bombs. Some 40 people were said to have died.

As tanks and armoured vehicles sealed off the city, the hospital filled with hundreds of casualties, including children.

"It was terrible," said one witness speaking on a satellite phone from inside the besieged town. "People are holed up at home. Groups of insurgents are fighting in the streets firing at the Americans with RPGs. I saw the dead bodies of three Americans in the middle of the street. Militants poured petrol over them and burnt them."

Shi'ite Muslims from Baghdad set out to take food and other supplies to the Sunnis in Falluja. Other Shi'ites were said to be donating blood to help. It seemed as if the country was uniting against the Americans. Sheikh Qais al-Qazali, one of al-Sadr's senior aides, said: "The Americans have managed to achieve in one year what Saddam did not in more than 30 years of brutal rule: an alliance between Sunni and Shi'ites. We are all brothers in arms."

As fear gripped the towns, al-Sadr was reported to be holed up in Najaf, where his militia manned checkpoints at the city gates and had full control of the main police station.

Outside al-Sadr's main offices opposite the Iman Ali mosque, one of the holiest Shi'ite shrines, dozens of heavily armed men stood guard in open defiance of the Americans who have branded them outlaws. Others were digging in and stockpiling weapons. Among them was Ali Hassani, 29, who a year before had been jubilant at the fall of Saddam.

He had watched the bronze statue of the Iraqi dictator torn down in central Baghdad and had been among the throng that jumped onto the toppled monument and thumped the dictator's face with his shoes. It had been an exhilarating day.

Now all that was forgotten. Hassani was sitting in the back of a pick-up truck, clad in black with an AK-47 cradled in his lap. Hand grenades and ammunition magazines were strapped to his chest. Anger and hatred were in his heart -and their target was America. "If the Americans dare provoke us we will turn ourselves into human bombs," he said. "There will be a bloodbath. I welcomed the Americans when they got rid of Saddam. But they have become an army of occupation. They must leave. Now."

For some the fury and violence seemed beyond resolution. "The international civilians here are not robust," said one leading security adviser in Iraq last week.

"Okay, they like to get a share of the $18billion on offer (in reconstruction aid) , but they're not that keen on ritualised murder. A lot of them now are just sitting in holes, keeping their heads down and doing the accounts. There's no reconstruction going on whatsoever and I can't blame them."

As ever, though, the bombs and killings that grabbed the television headlines and prompted the best soundbites did not tell the whole story. The silent majority in Iraq was not heard. Away from the bloodshed, other moves were afoot.

"THE Americans have made many mistakes, but it would be terrible if they left now," said Raad al-Khafagi, a writer in Baghdad. "There would be civil war.

Al-Sadr is trading only on his father's and grandfather's good name. He does not represent the opinion of most Shi'ites."

It was a view echoed by another middle-class Iraqi, Haider al-Jelaui, an engineer.

"We don't need a new war," he said. "We need negotiations. I am Shi'ite. We have clerics like al-Sistani. He is a wise and respected man.

Our interests are best served by him not by radicals like al-Sadr."

To many moderates, engaging with the American drive towards democracy makes sense since the Shi'ites are the majority in Iraq. So as the fighting raged last week, calmer Shi'ite leaders were putting pressure on public opinion and on al Sadr's support. Al-Sistani urged "all involved parties to refrain from resorting to intrigues". Another moderate, Ayatollah Sayed Hayeri, said that all sides "should observe patience and wisdom".

The language was quaintly restrained but the message was clear: do not join al-Sadr's fight. Certainly there has been no general uprising of the population so far.

Reliable figures for the size of al-Sadr's militia are hard to obtain, but Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, reckoned that it numbers no more than 6,000 active members in a country of some 25m people. American generals vowed to "destroy" the militia while Bremer ordered al-Sadr's arrest.

Behind the scenes the Iraqi Governing Council was trying to cut a deal with al-Sadr, promising to give him a fair trial in return for his surrendering to the council (rather than the Americans) and calling off his militia. According to one well placed source, al-Sadr's family was negotiating with members of the governing council for much of last week. At the time of going to press, al-Sadr was said to be talking directly to representatives about handing himself in.

However, in public he remained defiant. On Friday he issued another call for Iraqis across the country to rise up against the "occupiers".

This weekend the country remains on a knife-edge. The Americans have some 70,000 combat troops to hand; the British have a total force of 8,700. Detachments from other nations number in the low thousands or hundreds.

Military commanders admit that these numbers are too small to control Iraq if large swathes of the population turn hostile. Some evidence, however, shows that many of the population are more interested in cooling things down than firing them up.

In Basra, although violence was never far from the surface last week, the shops are now full of refrigerators and air-conditioning units. Such is the demand for them that the electricity supply cannot keep up. Sales of mobile phones and cars are also rising. Satellite dishes abound.

True, there are problems with crime and black markets, and some observers worry that a lack of electricity to run all the air-conditioning units will be blamed on the coalition, leading to more discontent this summer. But the flourishing of consumer goods may be a glimmer of hope amid the chaos.

This week Blair is determined to stand by Bush, despite some aides advising him not to travel to Washington to gladhand the president while Iraq is in turmoil.

Both the president and the prime minister must be hoping that among ordinary Iraqis the long-term desire is for fridges, not firearms.

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