Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
August 22, 2004
BAGHDAD — The singing could be heard from more than a block away as the
pickup truck careened along the unpaved streets of District 10 deep in the
heart of Sadr City.
Crammed into the flatbed, 25 mostly young men
hoisted their semiautomatic weapons, a few of them carrying
rocket-propelled-grenade launchers.
Despite a five-day onslaught by
U.S. troops intent on clearing the poor Baghdad neighborhood of supporters of
Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada Sadr, late Saturday they were still visible, they
were still armed, and they were singing. "The Shiites will be victorious,"
they sang, smiling broadly with a campfire look of good cheer.
Residents waved at the men, pointing and saying, "Mahdi army" — referring
to the militia loyal to Sadr, whose supporters are occupying the Imam Ali
Mosque in Najaf, south of the capital.
Even as the takeover of the
shrine has dwarfed all other news from Iraq, the U.S. military has launched
what it calls one of its largest urban initiatives yet in the neighborhood
where Sadr has his biggest base of support. Scores of Iraqis reportedly have
been killed in the sweep.
The military estimated Friday that in the
preceding 24 hours, 50 Al Mahdi fighters had been killed, but that number
appeared high given the relative scarcity of the black banners usually posted
to notify the neighborhood of a death.
And the jubilant singing of
the young men told a story of continuing defiance.
Sadr City appeared
more supportive of Sadr on Saturday than it did before the U.S. sweep and the
Najaf standoff. Because much of the cleric's appeal to poor Shiites has been
his willingness to stand up to the Americans, the U.S. operations here and in
Najaf have only served to rally support for him. That is all the more true in
Sadr City, where the Americans appeared to have received little or no help from
Iraqi security forces or police.
"What he's doing in Najaf makes us
stronger," said Khalid Jassim, a 39-year-old tailor who was talking with
friends at a car repair shop as the sun set. "Everybody now is part of the
Mahdi army."
That is far from true, but in Sadr City, with a
population of about 2 million, widespread anti-American sentiment has hardened
in recent days. On the walls of the houses, even the graffiti are committed to
protest. "Yes, yes … to the IED that terrified Americans," reads one
message, referring to what is known as an improvised explosive device. Another
says, "Peace upon the IED." Some children carry toy rocket-propelled grenades,
pretending to be Sadr's insurgents.
In the sprawling neighborhood, the
stench of open sewers is pervasive; water merely trickles out of many taps,
making it difficult to wash, and that water can cause typhoid and intestinal
diseases. Electricity is off much of the time.
Only a small
percentage of Sadr City residents belong to Sadr's militia, but there appeared
to be wide community support for the fighters' activities even among people who
are not followers of the cle ric. The slum is named after the cleric's father,
who was assassinated under the Saddam Hussein regime.
"When people
buy food, they buy a bag for their families and a bag for the Mahdi," said
Mohammed Sugheir, 35, who was at the car repair shop with Jassim.
Taha Saddoun, 37, who has a small storefront where he repairs refrigerators,
described himself as a supporter of the moderate Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah
Ali Sistani, but he said he also admired Sadr's fighters. "The Mahdi guys are
really brave men," he said.
What happens next in Sadr City, Saddoun
said, will depend on Najaf. "If there is fighting in Najaf, things will
escalate again here," he said. "The Americans are trying to scare off the
Mahdi army, but this is the Shiite resistance, and it is all over Iraq
now."
Residents say Sadr is not about to go into politics, as sought by
Iraqi officials who are trying to negotiate a peace deal with him. "He will
not enter politics until the occupation has ended," said Jassim, the tailor,
his tone confident.
As for a political program, Sugheir, like several
Sadr City residents, noted only one tenet: "He wants the American troops to
leave."
Saddoun said he believed that the Americans were so
antagonistic toward Sadr's militant stance that they were willing to punish all
of Sadr City to ensure the cleric was defeated. "The Americans don't want the
Sadr [approach] to be effective. The evidence is all around you
— look," Saddoun said. He pointed to the bare lightbulb in his shop,
which was dark because there was no electricity, and gestured to the curb,
where rotting food and debris lay heaped.
Underpinning this view, a
number of Sadr City residents said, is the harsh reality that Americans have
accomplished little to improve the living conditions despite repeated promises
by U.S. officials of jobs and reconstruction.
From the American
standpoint, the lack of security in Sadr City has made it all but impossible to
do any major projects. "We've told them, we'll come and rebuild if their guys
will stop shooting at us," a U.S. diplomat said in Baghdad.
For most
residents, the reality is the unfulfilled promises.
"Electricity,
sewers, road works — these are what the people need — and
foodstuffs. Even if the Americans provided these things, we would be happy,"
taxi driver Saleh Haider Ajeel said from his bed at Ibn Nafees Hospital on the
edge of Sadr City.
Ajeel was shot Wednesday morning. He said U.S.
troops had fired on him as he was walking to his garage to start the day's
driving. Because the bullet entered under his arm and exited through his
chest, it was impossible to determine whether the bullet had come from the
Americans.
Still, the phenomenon of Iraqis being shot simply because
they are in the wrong place at the wrong time has been a recurring problem for
the Americans. Each time such incidents happen, it deepens the anger and
skepticism among Iraqis about the Americans' reasons for being in the country.
In the same hospital as Ajeel was a mentally disabled man who had been
walking with his father and a push-cart operator, both of whom had been seeking
work. As the cart operator moved from shop to shop, he said, the Americans
opened fire. He said he crouched down and tried to run to safety but was hit.
The other man was in the hospital with a shrapnel wound.
In theory,
both men could have been Al Mahdi fighters, but their stories and their
politics suggested otherwise. Both said they supported neither Sadr nor the
Americans.
A major issue that the Iraqi interim government and the
Americans have yet to grapple with is that even if Sadr was defeated, his
followers would remain, most of them angry, poor and with little sense of hope.
"Look at all of us," Sugheir said, gesturing to the 12 men at the car
repair shop. "Every one of us is unemployed, and every one of us has a family
to care for."