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You can imagine how stressful it is to have one go off and then go look for another one.”. After the February 2006 bombing of the revered Askariya Shrine in Samarra, a Shiite pilgrimage site in a restive city with a majority Sunni population an hour north of Baghdad, the Mehdi Army and other Shiite militias attacked more than a hundred Sunni mosques in Baghdad, killing hundreds and beginning a process that drove thousands from their homes. be placed in a position where you have to decide in a split second whether to fire your weapon or not at what appears to be a target that is engaging you after an ambush with the sun glaring at your face. But already his anger was laying the groundwork. We have clearly wasted our blood and money trying to civilize those people (or “make them safe for democracy” as we prefer to say in the post colonial era). We need people like you Bill, people that enjoy the benefits and joy of calling themselves Americans but never doing anything for America. Soft-spoken and likeable, he saw heavy combat while serving in Anbar province in 2005 and 2006. “My friend was an imam in Zafraniya—he had a very good relationship with the Jeish al-Mehdi. Ghaith and the other men that led the fighting in Najaf became heroes. Then an explosives ordnance disposal team During this time I was able to piece together the story of his rise within the Sadrieen. “If we get one minister or one member of parliament, it doesn’t mean that our political situation has changed for the neighborhood. As the crowd of chanting men grew around us, my translator gave me a sidelong glance. “They are afraid that during the coming elections, they will not have the same results as in the last elections. Whether you like Bush and his policies, feel joy that a pluralistic democratic nation might emerge from this after all. When I asked him what his role had been, he smiled and pointed an imaginary rifle, making little popping noises. The class arguments and anticolonial sentiments initially advanced by many of the followers of Sadr, the Sadrieen, were acceptable, even supportable. mission.”, “A sure fire way to get shot is to get out of your vehicle,” Staff Sgt. 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. Supporters of Moktada al-Sadr, the anti-American cleric, denounced the wall as a nefarious effort to divide the city. Explosively formed penetrators are a type of charge designed to shred through armor. “On the bus, people talk about the American soldiers losing the war,” he said. Whether rightful or wrongful, those boys and girls that are over there “I don’t think our troops ought to be used for what’s called nation building.”, George W. Bush, presidential candidate Oct. 11, 2000. “People know that it’s not tolerated by coalition forces or the Iraqi Army to display propaganda that shows guys with weapons … You still will see propaganda like what you see on the wall right there,” he said. 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? Some militia leaders and political figures were exempted from arrest, and time was given for militia leaders to flee and for weapons to be hidden before the Iraqi army entered Sadr City. They had taken me for an Iraqi journalist. 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 general feeling that all Sunnis were being targeted led some neighborhoods to form larger, more open militias of their own for protection. Everything is so easy for you keyboard jockeys, taking your potshots. There is a vastly improved civil situation in Iraq with 15 of the 18 benchmarks having been fullfilled. I nodded. At TRT World, audiences can expect balanced, in-depth reporting with a focus on global responsibility. “The Americans … the Americans … This is their plan, not Iraqis. For many worshipers, the presence of the army at Friday prayers, the same place the militia first rallied in 2003, conjures memories of the previous government. ), Staff Sgt. As long as this amoral policy is espoused by our “representatives” in Washington, there will continue to be US occupation of Iraq, Afghanistan The previous spring and summer had seen the first two Sadrist intifadas against the US military culminate when the Jeish al-Mehdi took over the Imam Ali shrine in Najaf. Leaving aside the Pink Floyd references that jump to mind, there has been a very intense level of fighting going on in Baghdad over the past few weeks. can. “Someone else must fight the terrorists.”. 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. Some of them came to him and asked him to leave. If they were not excited to share power with the lower-class Sadrieen, they certainly didn’t mind letting the militia take on mutual enemies. 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’…. You can’t police a nation the size of California with a 150,000 soldiers. The troops motioned for me to follow them behind the Humvee, and when I did, the shouting grew. 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. Again less than half the rate. Through 21 days of July – 12 americans and 275 Iraqi’s have been killed. One of the buildings they have occupied is a former youth center a few blocks from where Friday prayers take place, still bearing above the gate a portrait of Sadr’s father ringed by Technicolor flowers. Representatives from the Sadr office had to link arms to hold back young men at prayers from confronting the army. Guests were welcome. The very least required of a truly “civilized” nation would be to beg the Iraqis’ forgiveness and get out of their country immediately. (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. The party’s representatives call the base a violation of the cease-fire agreement. But, in this case, at which side are democracy and dictatorship? For all the intrigue, all the cloak-and-dagger, al-Obaidi was surprisingly frank in describing the continued necessity of the Sadr movement. The Iraqi Army had parked a Humvee next to the gap. Well, you knew it was coming, and it sure didn’t take long. The American presence, per se, was not a problem for most people—but American attempts to extend power and to control ground were. on the faultlines, and civilians caught in the middle. When I asked if all this was really attributable to the containment wall, one of my friends chimed in, smiling now too, “It is like zoo.”. We will all live in peace after the Berlin Wall, the Baghdad Wall. At War is a reported blog from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and other conflicts in the post-9/11 era. “And they told us exactly where they were and there was E.F.P.s there.”. I Obviously neither presidential candidate is proposing any such thing, since both men continue to support the basic doctrine of US military domination of the world favored by the current Administration and most I told her there was nothing I could do. A few months after the demonstration, Ghaith moved to an apartment outside Sadr City, where he and some other clerics had taken up residence. 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 The Mehdi Army. All this outrage? In America we call that hearsay, meaning that who ever is making the statement is merely repeating what he heard. Sectarian killings in Bagdad are almost down to zero. “On May 12, my birthday, we had to clear four of the barriers,” he said. After a deal was brokered, the militia melted away in Najaf but remained in control of Sadr City. At the time named Revolution City (Arabic: مدينة الثورة‎, romanized: Al-Thawra), it provided housing for Baghdad's urban poor, many of whom had come from the countryside and who had until then lived in appalling conditions. 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. Within a year, the palace complex—what would later become the Green Zone—went from a compound guarded by a handful of soldiers who had sandbagged small machine-gun emplacements to miles of walls and wire, choking traffic, causing confusion and increasingly making areas “no-go” for the average Iraqi. That changed in May when the Iraqi government, backed by 10,000 Iraqi Army Sadr City to focus on the later years of strife and violence in Sadr City. is the abbreviation for rocket propelled “The US sent more troops to Iraq,” he said. In Sadr City, which was emphatically called “Saddam City” under the dictator’s reign, the neighborhood’s population far exceeds the number of people its infrastructure was designed to serve, and on three of its four sides it has sprawled to house newcomers, some in little more than one-room cinderblock dwellings with no running water and jury-rigged electricity. developing alternative fuels so we can ignore this part of the world and let them people go back to killing each other instead of our soldiers. 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. 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. “Irja—irja! 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 These were the poorest of the poor, reviled by most Iraqis as uneducated, as rabble; I could understand how the rhetoric of being God’s chosen ones would appeal to them. Today’s post focuses on the role of U.S. soldiers. After her came another, a man carrying a canister of cooking gas who tossed his purchase over the wall to a helpful bystander before squeezing through the crack and continuing on his way. By 2008, that dynamic had changed, and as I walked around their sector, it occurred to me that some of Slack’s men hadn’t been old enough to drive when US tanks first entered Sadr City. Meanwhile, SIIC and virtually every other Iraqi party stands accused of the same: simultaneously operating military and political wings. and go show them how things are done. “You know that was a show, I guess to the civilians not to The Americans have started to think of reduction of their troops. 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. In almost 7 months in 2008….220 Americans have died, less than half the rate of 2007. By the time I met Ghaith, I already sensed the nature of Shiite resistance shifting. “Just being outside your truck in that area is never a great thing.”. 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. “Their capabilities are severely, severely degraded,” Captain Andrew Slack of the First Armored Division told me. We are not anti-American, we are not anti-British, but at the same time, we want the liberation of our country.”. The poor are still very poor—and even worse than before—but now they are below the poverty line.”. Inside Sadr City: The Wall. Two days later the mosque was shot up.”. Wall builders attacked. It’s like Putin did to Chechnya or what is done to Palestinians. 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. 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. The elections are about to take place, and this is all to prevent the Sadrieen from participating. Learn more about him and how you can contribute here. “The government does nothing.”. The constant attacks from side streets made the job of looking for I.E.D.s even more difficult. So how exactly does the moderator judge abusiveness, if posts like 2, 3 and especially 4 here made the cut? Beginning this month, the Baghdad Bureau blog I looked around at the crowd, continuing to swell. The defeat led Sunni militias to declare a cease-fire with the US, which in return has supported the Sunni militiamen in protecting their neighborhoods from the Jeish al-Mehdi. This was the era the US had promised to end when they overthrew Saddam. A Husky mine-detecting vehicle was used to locate the explosives. area in Iraq. 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 … 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. as for the concentration camp idea i say “how would u like to be in one”? They have started to change their thinking, and we have to change our thinking. “Of course, there are older and more educated people in the Sadr movement who believe in using weapons. Referring to the Iraqi Islamic Party, the Sunni party with the most seats in the Iraqi government, Abu Ali al-Tamimi, the leader of the Mehdi for Baghdad at the time, said, “If they are good people, why don’t they condemn the killing of Shiites?”. How did you become so educated on the subject Bill? It was easy to believe this angry mob might suddenly use me as a stand-in for the American army they hated so much. The work started at night but soon extended into the day as American commanders sought to speed up the construction. Have their empty slogans expired? Within those 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. To diminish our humanity in the neighborhood and instill fear in us again. walls” would be needed to segregate the Shiite residents of Sadr City from each other and from other adjacent areas of Bagdad? “We are the underclass here in the east. “And shortly after they gave us that information there was an R.P.G. Sadr’s decree went out at noon prayers, still a veiled threat at the time, but the message was clear. Just because its popular to diss the war doesn’t mean you shouldn’t still think about whats Then they began to appear in other parts of Baghdad, blocking roads and choking a city already beset by traffic problems. Download Images of Sadr city - Free for commercial use, no attribution required. They aim to keep us haunted with fear—to dominate us and force us into submission. there. Today’s post focuses on … But I called one of my friends in the Ministry of Electricity, and it was fixed the same day.”. “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. Iraqi Army troops were positioned at major intersections and public buildings. He handed the IDs back along with my camera without a word. “You keep getting the message to continue the 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. The neighborhood is also one of the most important places to visit for people seeking to understand the mood of Shiite Muslims, long oppressed but the majority in Iraq. Below the wall, American What is decidedly unpopular are Baghdad’s walls. The allied construction of the wall along a key route changed the dynamics of the battle. 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. Just like the infamous Berlin Wall before it, the Sadr City Wall is used to "protect" the troops, it serves as a "checkpoint" and it slows the flow of people in and out of the area. 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." (Photo: Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images for The New York Times). “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. They are well aware that the Iraqi military has shut down many of the Sadrists’ mosques and arrested hundreds in parts of southern Iraq, and they are increasingly suspicious that similar efforts are afoot here. This was their home-base,” Slack explained. He was on the frontline, and the city was “falling” again, this time to the Sadrieen. But we are not the followers of the Iranian decision,” he said. David Enders traveled to Iraq with support from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. 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 U.S. needed about 750,000 soldiers for about 10 years to do the job required…, “You smug-faced cowards with kindling eye Who cheer when soldier lads march by, Sneak home and pray you’ll never know The Hell where youth and laughter go”, -From “Suicide in the Trenches” by Sigfried Sassoon. 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. The neighborhood is already suffocating. Jonathan Williams is with the 62nd Ordnance Company. Insurgents kill civilians, knew they were out there,” said First Lt. Millard Stewart. 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. facet to this war and they can’t report the whole story each and every time. “Go ask the army,” the men in the office told her. 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