Nouri al-Maliki humiliated as gamble to crush Shia militias fail

The US backed is Iraqi government is starting to walking in the same foolish traps as the US has done in Iraq.


James Hider in Sadr City

The soldiers guarding the entrance to Sadr City were jumpy, despite a ceasefire announced by al-Mahdi Army Shia militia. And with good reason: a huge boom rolled across the militia stronghold as a roadside bomb struck a passing vehicle. American armoured vehicles sped off to the aid of stricken comrades.

Overnight al-Mahdi Army has melted back into the population in Baghdad and Basra after its leader, the antiAmerican cleric Hojatoleslam Moqtada al-Sadr, ordered it to stop fighting government forces. In Sadr City and other militia strongholds they do not need to be seen. Their presence is felt everywhere.

Walking across the lines separating the US and government forces from the barbed wire sealing off Sadr City, an Iraqi army major muttered: “You’re going in without guards? You’ll be kidnapped for sure.” The Sadr Office had, however, arranged an escort for visiting journalists: a police car with three officers. “Don’t worry,” the driver reassured his passengers. “We know where all the IEDs are.”

The police in areas controlled by al-Mahdi Army work closely with the militia and would never dream of interfering in its fights with the Government that pays their salaries.

At the Sadr Office in the centre of the massive slum in northeast Baghdad, home to 2.5 million impoverished Shias, the receptionists greeted visitors with sweets to mark their victory over Nouri al-Maliki, the increasingly isolated Iraqi

Prime Minister, who directed the assault on Shia rogue militias in Basra, the lawless southern oil city. “This is for victory over Maliki,” one said with a grin. “The fighting ended on our terms.”

Certainly Mr al-Maliki’s huge gamble appeared to have failed yesterday. Having vowed to crush Shia militias with a 30,000-strong force in Basra, he ended up suing for peace with the people he had described as “worse than al-Qaeda”. Al-Mahdi Army kept its weapons and turf.

Sheikh Salman al-Freiji, the head of the Sadr Office, said that Mr al-Maliki was a tool in the hands of the Americans. “The American project has been to split the Iraqi sects and community from Day_1,” he said. “They tried to split Sunnis from Shia. Now that has failed, they are trying to split the Shia.” He said that an al-Mahdi Army freeze on operations, introduced in August, was still in place but reserved the right to attack the “illegitimate American occupation”.

Hundreds of people died in Mr al-Maliki’s blitz to end the reign of militias in the south but after a week his army has failed to defeat them and his political capital has crashed through the floor. Having vowed to fight the militias to the end, he had to suffer the humiliation of talking peace with Hojatoleslam al-Sadr at his home in the Iranian city of Qom before the militia chief showed his true power and ended the war within hours.

Mahmoud Othman, an independent Kurdish lawmaker, said that the latest spasm of violence merely showed Iran’s huge influence in Iraq, holding enormous sway over al-Mahdi Army and the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, the main Shia party in the Government, as well as its own militia, the Badr Brigades. “It’s a big victory for Iran over America and for Moqtada over Maliki,” he said. “Iran has the upper hand in Iraq. They are choosing the time to start trouble and they are choosing the time to end it.”

Mr Othman said that the meeting with the Iraqi delegation – two members of the Sadrist bloc, a member of Mr al-Ma-liki’s Dawa party and Hadi al-Ameri, the head of the Badr Brigades – had been coordinated by Brigadier-General Qassim Suleimani, the head of the Quds Brigades, the foreign operations branch of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. “Iran is just trying to make Maliki weak so he will accept their conditions,” Mr Othman said. “And he did accept. The United States has made a mess for the last five years, it’s very clear.”

John McCain, the US Republican Presidential candidate, yesterday expressed surprise that Mr al-Maliki should have instigated a battle in Basra without notifying the US. “Maliki decided to take on this operation without consulting the Americans,” he said. “I am surprised that he would take it on himself, to go down and take charge of a military offensive.”

As a crippling, five-day curfew was lifted, thousands of people streamed into and out of Sadr City past American tanks and Iraqi armoured vehicles. Someone had spray-painted Rafah on a concrete barrier, a reference to the Gaza crossing point that bottles up Palestinians. People barely flinched as fresh shooting erupted in a distant gunfight, in which US forces killed 25 of an estimated 100 militiamen who tried to ambush them. In Baghdad few people put their faith in ceasefires.

Moqtada al-Sadr

— Youngest son of murdered cleric Muhammad Sadiq Sadr.

— Formed al-Mahdi Army in June 2003, declaring that his purpose was to protect Shia religious institutions in the city of Najaf. He also founded a newspaper that was banned

— In 2004 he led a bloody uprising in Najaf only fully quelled by the intervention of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the senior Iranian cleric

— Though supporters stood as part of the ruling United Iraqi Alliance Shia bloc in the 2005 elections, al-Sadr led a boycott of the Government and pulled out his six ministers