Mahdi Army, Not Al-Qaeda, is Enemy No. 1 in Western Baghdad

[sabra]

Source: WP

BAGHDAD -- The lights were on in Baghdad. Something was wrong.

Two platoons were creeping through the southwestern neighborhood of al-Amil well past midnight last week. Headlights snapped off, night vision lenses lowered into place, they maneuvered their Humvees and Bradley Fighting Vehicles down narrow streets, angling for surprise. As they approached the suspected homes of the militia leaders they were hunting, their cover of darkness disappeared, fluorescent bulbs on the houses and street lights casting a glow on their vehicles. At 3 in the morning in a city notoriously hard up for power, these blocks were strangely bright.

Capt. Sean Lyons, the company commander leading the raid, said he knew why. "This whole area here is just absolutely dominated by Jaish al-Mahdi," he said, using the Arabic for the Mahdi Army, the Shiite militia led by the radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. "They control the power distribution."

In the 10-square-mile district of West Rashid, the Mahdi Army also controls the housing market, the gas stations and the loyalty of many of the residents, according to the soldiers from the 1st Infantry Division's 1st Battalion, 28th Infantry Regiment. The militia has a structure familiar to U.S. soldiers: brigade and battalion commanders leading legions of foot soldiers. Its fighters are willing and able to attack Americans with armor-piercing bombs, mortars, machine guns and grenades. Meanwhile, the political wing of Sadr's movement plays an outsize role in the national government.

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/15/AR2007071501248.html

[Fovea]

1. When you are patrolling the streets of a civil war

everybody not of your unit could be enemy No1.

The fact that we are looking to the Kurds to help stabilize Iraq while they engage Turkey in a escalating conflict shows how truely stupid our decision to invade was.

Brutal repression and a resigned optimism kept the civil war at bay in a nation literally designed to fall apart. How long have we been dealing dirt to Iraq? Ask Gen. Allenby.

And now little boots is telling us that we will be there for a long time. Iraq is our new fifty first through fifty third state. It is just like the Mason Dixon line, except that it is a triangle with allies and enemies surrounding it, eyeing their oil and licking their chops.

And we are doing what there again?

[rodeodance]

2. West Rashid confounds the prevailing narrative from top U.S. military

West Rashid confounds the prevailing narrative from top U.S. military officials that the Sunni insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq is the city's most formidable and disruptive force. While there are signs that the group has been active in the area, over the past several months, the Mahdi Army has transformed the composition of the district's neighborhoods by ruthlessly killing and driving out Sunnis and denying basic services to residents who remain. Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. military commander in Iraq, described the area as "one of the three or four most challenging areas in all of Baghdad."

Dominance by Shiite militias is typically associated with places in eastern Baghdad, such as Sadr City, while areas west of the Tigris River and south of the Baghdad airport road are home to large Sunni enclaves. Not long ago the western neighborhoods conformed clearly with this perception. U.S. soldiers estimate that a year ago, Sunnis made up about 80 percent of the population there and Shiites 20 percent. But those numbers have now reversed, after a concerted effort to cleanse Sunnis from the area, according to U.S. military officials. Graffiti marking the walls in these neighborhoods herald the new order: "Every land is Karbala, and every day is Ashura," read one slogan, extolling the Shiite holy city in southern Iraq and a major Shiite religious holiday.