His army. I encountered Ghaith on the street in front of the Ministry of Oil, where members of the Jeish Al-Mehdi were holding a demonstration to protest the shortage of cooking and heating oils, as well as petrol. Saleh al-Obaidi, the Sadrieen’s official spokesman, wore a light grey dishdasha rather than his cleric’s robes. “Of course, there are older and more educated people in the Sadr movement who believe in using weapons. The Euphrates River city with a population of about 300,000 was leveled by air power and house-to-house fighting in 2004 and then encircled by barriers, with entry to the entire city controlled by the US until last year. The 1-68 Armor Battalion, 3rd Combat Brigade of the 4th Infantry Division was tasked with clearing roadside bombs on Al Quds Street and other roads Arabs will never accept democracy; their societies are too violent, too tribal and too culturally backwards to build the necessary institutions (see Oil Stealer’s comment #4). The Sadrist parliamentary bloc has staged a number of walkouts, primarily over the Iraqi government’s refusal to demand a timetable for a complete US withdrawal. Beginning in 2003, the streets of the slum saw a succession of uprisings against and counteroffensives by the US military and Iraqi government. “You keep getting the message to continue the “Do you see any dead Iranians here?” the man asked rhetorically. Jaffer Shaab, a Sadr City resident, paints the background of a mural on a wall around Joint Security Station Thawra 2 near Circle 55 in the Sadr City district of northern Baghdad Aug 2. I had arranged to meet al-Obaidi at the Sadr office in Khadhmiya, but when I arrived at the checkpoint to enter the neighborhood, the Iraqi police insisted that there was no longer a Sadr office in Khadhmiya. Simply because Barack and the NYT’s says they will. The Americans began building the wall a month ago, working east to west. Meanwhile, SIIC and virtually every other Iraqi party stands accused of the same: simultaneously operating military and political wings. The US, finally forced to take Sadr seriously, dropped a warrant it had issued for his arrest and redoubled overtures for him to join the political process. (Baghdad: Richard Engel) The risk for US troops who are building a wall around Sadr City to contain radical Shiite militias featured; scenes shown of Charlie Company firing at snipers and erecting concrete slabs. on the faultlines, and civilians caught in the middle. The party’s representatives call the base a violation of the cease-fire agreement. The poor are still very poor—and even worse than before—but now they are below the poverty line.”. From 2003 to 2008, it had been a place people came to offer support or seek assistance; to sit in its lobby and observe the foot traffic was to understand how Sadr City operated. They won’t care what the outcome of this war is as long Of course, their goal is to curb our freedom, to control our movement. Arab levies were also employed by the British, a tactic the US finally arrived at in 2006 and 2007 as it looked for ways to use sectarian fighting to its advantage. Maybe then we Americans would learn what really goes on when our troops invade another nation so that big campaign contributors can get to resources they want. 100 meters there was 11 total I.E.D.s. Sadr had agreed to a cease-fire, albeit a shaky one, in September of the previous year, and Ghaith told me he had at one point been forced to stand in front of an American tank to prevent some of the young men in his neighborhood from attacking it. Other soldiers, now out of the other two Humvees, trained their guns on the unarmed crowd. walls” would be needed to segregate the Shiite residents of Sadr City from each other and from other adjacent areas of Bagdad? Soldier of 1-6 battalion, 2nd brigade, 1st Army Division, patrols near the wall in the Shiite enclave of Sadr city, Baghdad, Iraq, on Monday, June 9, 2008. area in Iraq. Without question, the Jeish al-Mehdi is weaker now than at any moment since its rise, shortly after the invasion. knew they were out there,” said First Lt. Millard Stewart. Read more…, A former Marine Corps officer argues that good leadership makes all the difference in smoothing the integration of women into combat units. The apartment was on Palestine Street, a major thoroughfare bordered by nice, planned neighborhoods south of Sadr City. mission.”, “A sure fire way to get shot is to get out of your vehicle,” Staff Sgt. ground in Iraq who may have heard it from another that read it somewhere. But they saw what happened when they tried to fight.” Al-Obaidi and other SIIC members denied the government was using the military for political purposes. Insurgents kill civilians, Earlier this year, rockets were be fired from Sadr City into the Green Zone on a regular basis. Bill – we do this so people like you and I are able to blog or post comments on these websites and not stand all day long on lines just to get toilet paper. All this outrage? They insist that they have only been serving in a particular area a short amount of time and cannot comment on the conduct of the previous unit. But the trend of taking down walls was soon reversed. members of Congress whether Democratic or Republican. A T-barrier wall provides security for residents of the Sadr City District of Baghdad. Read more…, An American soldier from the 3rd Brigade Combat Team looked for an enemy sniper firing across the concrete barrier along Al Quds Street in Sadr City, Baghdad on May 17, 2008. We were standing on the eastern edge of the Sadr City, near where another wall had been built, running almost the entire length of the district. The previous intifadas had been popular uprisings, difficult to control. “The law was imposed. “On May 12, my birthday, we had to clear four of the barriers,” he said. With the intervention of Shiite religious authorities, and more recently with the Iranians playing a possible role, the fighting has ended each time in a political resolution—allowing the militia to claim victory and each time emerge more visibly powerful. He cursed the soldier who shot his son, and he invoked his own father, who had fought in the revolution against the British. can. Beginning this month, the Baghdad Bureau blog Leaving Baghdad: What Should the Americans Do? not be sitting here in the comfort of my desk in an airconditioned room while another American right now is making that same call thousands of miles away from his family while you critizise how he performs his The battalion would slowly clear a portion of the road of I.E.D.s then return the next day to find that insurgents had added new explosives to the same location. North of the Sadr City wall, the area is patrolled by Iraqi soldiers from the 11th Division, the only division said to be operating “autonomously”—that is, without direct US support. David Enders has written for Men’s Journal, Mother Jones, and The Nation, as well as the (London) Sunday Times, Washington Times, and other newspapers. “Look around you,” one man told me, standing in the street of a village that had been destroyed by Israeli tanks and shellfire. It is also not the first time al-Maliki has acknowledged the power of the Sadr movement or the widespread popularity of their demands; in 2005, before he became prime minister, he led a coalition of members of the Iraqi parliament in calling for a timetable for withdrawal. No one knew where their sons were, and Slack’s soldiers were incredulous. So much for the “surge is working” Simply put, there has never been enough soldiers in Iraq to do the job properly. Read more…, A Vietnam-era veteran says presidential candidates should not be judged harshly just because they did not serve during that war. In some streets, the walls have been painted over with murals; in others they are covered with advertisements. side of the body burned and the memories of everyone they loved the most dying in immense horror and pain. America should spend their efforts Oh BTW, meanwhile back on Pak-Af border Bin ladin and al queda reconstitue and make raids into “liberated” Afgahanistan, where the U.S. has 18K, count ’em, 18,000 thousand strong! (Photo: Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images for The New York Times), Iraqi pedestrians walked through an opening in the concrete barrier along Al Quds and Fallah Streets in Sadr City on May 25, 2008. After a deal was brokered, the militia melted away in Najaf but remained in control of Sadr City. Well, you knew it was coming, and it sure didn’t take long. Sadr City Wall Day. Many cannot forget the chaos and looting that followed the invasion. That was every day.” (R.P.G. Inside Sadr City: The Wall. My guess is that you It was easy to believe this angry mob might suddenly use me as a stand-in for the American army they hated so much. After helping the Iraqi soldiers connect a digital projector to a laptop (both donated by the Americans), I sat through a PowerPoint briefing in preparation for a cordon-and-search operation that would begin before daylight. This is no longer a civil war. Really guys? Below the wall, American Their religious conservatism and belief in a state led by clerics were less appealing. Jonathan Williams is with the 62nd Ordnance Company. It was midday and the café was largely empty, save for a few young men smoking water pipes and watching a European soccer match on the satellite TV. The elections are about to take place, and this is all to prevent the Sadrieen from participating. My recollection of Times and other major media stories for the first three years of US occupation was that Sadr City was (apart from the Kurdish areas in northern Iraq) by far the most peaceful major population Al-Obaidi also addressed the issue of the Sadrieen’s links to Iran with surprising candor, an issue he had always been cagey about before. I am sure they are in need of capable intellectuals who have never worn a pair of combat boots in a 120 degree farenheit with sandstorms fillling their mouths and nustrils. So how exactly does the moderator judge abusiveness, if posts like 2, 3 and especially 4 here made the cut? (Photo: Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images for The New York Times). This blog post is the first in a series examining the people and places in Sadr City, the poor Baghdad neighborhood that is the center of the support for the radical Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr. Insurgents, their freedom of movement rapidly disappearing, were drawn into battle on disadvantageous terms. I have been to Baghdad and I have come under fire from hostile forces and I have directed fire at the enemy forces that seek to kill us for whatever reason (whether justified or not) and let me tell you American The Mehdi took full of control of Sadr City in 2005 and began moving into other neighborhoods in preparation for a wider offensive. Explore Sadr City in Baghdad, Iraq as it appears on Google Maps as well as pictures, stories and other notable nearby locations on VirtualGlobetrotting.com. talk to us, because they blew up the building.”, Concrete blast walls, barbed wire, what a mess we’ve made over there with our ‘nation building’…. Could you be overstating your point just a bit? “It might have taken weeks to get it fixed. It reminds me of the walls the Israeli government has constructed in the West Bank. Instead of the hit-and-run tactics of the Sunni resistance fighters, who rarely gave the military a chance to shoot at them, the Mehdi adopted a strategy of full frontal attacks. On this particular day, before Friday prayers, worshipers used chains and trucks to pull down two of the twelve-foot-tall T-barriers, which broke apart as they hit the ground, exposing rebar skeletons. By the time I met Ghaith, I already sensed the nature of Shiite resistance shifting. They banned the presence of al-Sharqiya, a Baghdad-based satellite station deemed sympathetic to Saddam’s government and hostile to the current administration, and discouraged other journalists from attending. “If an insurgent is thought to be in a house, air crews who might not arrive until many hours later when conditions are completely different”. The New York Times's award-winning team provides insight — and answers questions — about combatants After the fight over the building of the wall, which turned most of the buildings on both sides of the corridor to rubble, the Iraqi government and the Sadrieen negotiated a settlement whereby only Iraqi soldiers could patrol north of the wall. [Image: U.S. Begins Erecting Wall in Sadr City, New York Times, photo by Joao Silva, 2008.] “You know that was a show, I guess to the civilians not to To me, he displayed an understanding of the dualities, complexities, and contradictions of the military’s years of occupation—a subject many officers and soldiers refuse to discuss. Wall builders attacked. They want to dismantle and shut down the Friday prayers so that we cannot take part.” After prayers, men demonstrated, shouting epithets at the Iraqi military, waving Iraqi flags and reciting poetry. Have their empty slogans expired? The couches were threadbare and saggy. The young men shared his expression. the NYT does an article on a US war crime or civilian casualty you get people complaining how the NYT just loves reporting their anti-war agenda. i believe that really was theproblem was we never realized that in a sick fact that iraq worked better with sadam. He handed the IDs back along with my camera without a word. Just like the Berlin… The Sadrieen have seen their cabinet ministers purged from their posts, accused of misusing government funds and weapons. When I asked him what his role had been, he smiled and pointed an imaginary rifle, making little popping noises. Finally Bill if you think you can do a better job why don’t you stop typing and wasting time blogging and instead do something about it and join the Army or Marines or the Air Force for that matter At the time of the battle, Sadr City contained an estimated population of between 1.6 to 2.4 million residents. I asked about the support the group received from Iran and accusations by its detractors that it would wither without it. But, in this case, at which side are democracy and dictatorship? “We are prosecuting the outlaws even if they are in the mosques,” he said. With a raised first, he promised bloodshed. A Husky mine-detecting vehicle was used to locate the explosives. Thats down from a surge peak of 126 in May of 2007 and a surge peak of approx 3000 per month in the spring of 2007. “During the days of Saddam there was oppression, suffering, and misery—and they still exist,” he said, sitting in an open air café in the middle of one of the district’s markets. Why we wanted to be like Japan in WW2 is beyond me. from “free people? actually happening. Aylmer Haldane, the British general who commanded forces in Iraq against insurgents in 1920 and 1921, wrote frequently of his requests to the Ministry of Defense for more troops. The US response to the uprisings in the western part of the country was to wall off neighborhoods in various cities, most notably Falluja. On the Iraqi officer’s desk sat a miniature T-wall, a model of the blast barriers that have gone up all over the city. With a raised fist, he promised bloodshed. But during multiple visits last July, I encountered only one other visitor—a woman from the neighborhood who came in complaining that her new neighbors were prostitutes. It Is really simple if you dont like the U.S for And it truly was a revolution against poverty—a revolution against despotism. Since you’re talking about the bad things that happened last May, why don’t you include the horrible attacks on family homes by airborne military? That Sunni members of the government were allied with the militias responsible for sectarian cleansing became a major complaint of the Shiite underclass. Occupiers were not. Read more…, Hundreds of letters from an Army private named Harold Grove Moss, whose tour of duty spanned Pearl Harbor to the surrender of Japan, have been transcribed and posted online by his daughter. Without protest, I took out my military-issued press pass and American driver’s license and handed them to one of the soldiers. A concrete blast wall was built in April on Al Quds Street in the southern half of the neighborhood. Soft-spoken and likeable, he saw heavy combat while serving in Anbar province in 2005 and 2006. Get out in the real world and you’ll experience nothing is black and white, and everyone is doing the best they “The Mehdi Army was kind of able to step into that vacuum,” Slack said, “and they became the government that provided fuel, basic needs and services, all the essentials that people needed. Estimates indicate it will take two weeks to complete this segment. On the outside wall of the base, someone had plastered a poster of Sadr. by US military forces for as long as our Government deems necessary. In most of Baghdad’s other neighborhoods, it is clear that the militia is not missed, and that if walling in Sadr City is what had to be done, then so be it. I have no doubt that many of the men I have met inside the movement, especially during that first uprising, were certain paradise awaited them. At TRT World, audiences can expect balanced, in-depth reporting with a focus on global responsibility. For more information on Enders’ reporting from Iraq, visit the Pulitzer Center’s website. And they put these stones to suffocate it more?” As we talked, an old woman squeezed through an opening in the barrier just large enough for a single person. But I called one of my friends in the Ministry of Electricity, and it was fixed the same day.”. The very least required of a truly “civilized” nation would be to beg the Iraqis’ forgiveness and get out of their country immediately. People are drinking again in public in Baghdad for the first time since 2003; at a newly opened nightclub only ten minutes’ drive from Sadr City, the owner smiled broadly. Our unit was building a wall that cut off North Sadr City, Iraq, and would deny the Mahdi Army Special Groups fighters the ability to fire rockets into the green zone. “From the beginning when the city was founded, it was called Revolution City. A few months after the demonstration, Ghaith moved to an apartment outside Sadr City, where he and some other clerics had taken up residence. This article unfortunately ignores that history of several years of peace in Sadrist-patrolled The building was surrounded by heavily armed guards, including uniformed policemen, and the streets leading to the mosque had been blocked off. The British also exploited sectarian divides, something the Shiites of Sadr City well remember; the Empire emplaced and empowered the minority Sunni tribes that would set the political tone of modern Iraq and oppress all who opposed them. “They banned prayers in Amara and Diwaniya and now they want to ban them here?” another preacher asked, speaking from a podium in front of a ten-foot-tall picture of Sadr’s father. But in 2005, how far the militia would spread across the city was only just being realized. As violence continued in Baghdad’s Sadr City district on Friday, attention turned to the wall US forces are building through the neighborhood–a wall that is reminiscent of the one Israel built around the Palestinian territories, as well as US military tactics used during the Vietnam War. from ours that it is hard to work with them. Those killed were mourned as martyrs, their faces added to the signs dotting the median strips in Sadr City that already held the faces of men martyred by Saddam during the Shiite uprising in 1991, immediately after the first Gulf War. Just read the following article titled "US Begins Erecting Wall in Sadr City".. here's the link: Protected content "Trying to stem the infiltration of militia fighters, American forces have begun to build a massive concrete wall that will partition Sadr City, the densely populated Shiite neighborhood in the Iraqi capital." They directed the Iraqi government to do this—to hurt Sadr City and especially the Sadr movement. “We are the underclass here in the east. As the guerilla war against the US and its allies became more violent, Sunni rebels attempted to create a ring of territory around Baghdad from which to operate, driving out Shiites and claiming they were collaborators with the US military. What is to be gained by the Times gathering information from Sadr City residents when we all know that not even the expressed views of Prime By late afternoon, hundreds, if not thousands, of young men swarmed the Sadr office in Sadr City—and Sadr offices all over the country—to become members of the Jeish al-Mehdi. have never set foot in Iraq and although you talk about Sunni and Shias as if you know their differences intimately, I doubt you would recognize one from the other if you were to find two in downtown Baghdad. We will all live in peace Despite the chaos taking place across Baghdad, when the militia was in control, attacks inside Sadr City dropped considerably and many residents credited the Mehdi. And this is the norm? He invoked his own father, who had fought against the British. Williams said. Hmmm. The Japanese at that time invaded Asia to get to large resources claiming they were saving it from Communism, but their brutal tactics, of course ensured that communism was the favored government in much of job. look like a square dance. He looked serious. As the violence grew, distinctions Iraqis had once ignored became sharper. “Their capabilities are severely, severely degraded,” Captain Andrew Slack of the First Armored Division told me. Those who were aware of my presence, the presence of a foreigner, did not look happy. After heavy fighting during March and April 2008, the US military erected a wall along the southern edge of Sadr City, part of a spree of wall building across Baghdad. “They have talking power—threats, graffiti—but they don’t have the means to contest coalition forces right now.”. Al Quds was formerly a four-lane major thoroughfare in Sadr City. Initial campaigns to clean streets and provide aid and security for refugee families also increased Moqtada al-Sadr’s popularity. of Sadr City in particular and the people of Iraq in general. And while the Askariya bombing was provocation, plans for many of the attacks against the mosques had been made far in advance. Moqtada al-Sadr preached a boycott of the government appointed by the Americans, and the prayers often took on the air of a political demonstration. His book, Baghdad Bulletin (Michigan, 2005), is an account of the first year of the occupation and the English-language magazine he co-founded in Baghdad. Seven Marathons in Seven Days, Crossing Each Finish Line for Fellow Marines, Combat Amputees, and Their Therapists, Find Roads to Happiness, Focusing on Leadership as Marine Corps Mandate to Integrate Women in Combat Units Nears, Letters From the Pacific, From Pearl Harbor to Okinawa, How We Judge Those Who Served, or Didn’t, in Vietnam. is the abbreviation for rocket propelled Above the wall, the Iraqi Army maintains order for more than two million residents, many of them poor. “It’s sort of a contained area now.”. Hahaha, all these pro-insurgent people make me laugh. During this time I was able to piece together the story of his rise within the Sadrieen. Eight months later, the Jeish al-Mehdi engaged US troops in Baghdad and Najaf, bloody battles that cost the US few troops but proved that the Mehdi were far more interested in fighting than in strategy. Sadr City is a dense Shiite area in eastern Baghdad whose boundaries with adjacent Sunni-dominated neighborhoods represent sectarian fault lines. This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions. “They said, ‘Hey, we don’t want any problems. The constant attacks from side streets made the job of looking for I.E.D.s even more difficult. But somehow I could forgive that. “At soon as we came up at least five I.E.D.s went off in a span of seven minutes,” said First Lt. Emily Shockley, 25, with the 62nd Ordnance Company. Baghdad began as a walled city—and perhaps it will always be. Abu Zeinab is a journalist who lives and works in Sadr City. “A lot of gangsters and militias controlled the neighborhood and the poor people,” their commander Colonel Nadum Khadim told me. Ghaith had been present in Najaf and nearby Kufa when the fighting was taking place, and inside the shrine during the siege. Since he was arrested, I have been to Ghaith’s house twice. », Marine Corps Captain Calum Rammhe, a longtime marathon runner, ran seven marathons on seven continents in seven days to raise money for a charity that supports wounded Marines and their families. Now they do, and they do not want the local councils dominated by certain political parties,” al-Obaidi said, referring to SIIC. On the Iraqi officer’s desk sat a miniature T-wall, a model of the blast barriers that have gone up all over the city. Naziha al-Dulaimiwas instrumental in turning the vast slums of eastern Baghdad into a massive public works and housing project that came to be known as Revolution … Get back—get back. If one considers that the Jeish al-Mehdi’s offensive was an important dynamic in driving many of Baghdad’s Sunnis into cooperating with the US military, it is arguable that the Jeish al-Mehdi has been, since 2004, the most powerful force in the Iraqi political landscape. SIIC has been successful, however, in legitimizing its militia’s presence by “integrating” it into the Iraqi military, special police forces, and death squad units, all with the training and backing of the US. He refuses to be photographed or appear on camera, fearing reprisals from the Iraqi government and military. Such gatherings had been present in Najaf but remained in control of Sadr abusiveness! Fact that Iraq worked better with sadam underclass here in the past 30 days designed to shred through armor noises... Charisma – and I ’ m sure the murdering islamist terrorist will lay down their weapons on the subject?! Government has constructed in the post-9/11 era it might have taken weeks to get it fixed was. Joy that a pluralistic democratic nation might emerge from this after all hurt Sadr City news coverage hours! A mosque less than half the rate of 2007 small thinking and bias neighborhood, its mosques its! But I felt the urgency too, wore a light grey dishdasha rather his... 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The building of the government were allied with the Jeish al-Mehdi, ” their commander Colonel Nadum Khadim told it!
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