Iraq: Sorting Out Events in Amarah
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Iraq: Sorting Out Events in Amarah
Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit
Electronic Iraq - Oct 21, 2006
http://electronicIraq.net/news/2554.shtml
Sorting out events in Amarah
by Jeff Severns Guntzel
Time to sort out this week's events in Amarah--beginning with a little bit
of history.
When I was last in Amarah it was 2000, and I was visiting the city's
decrepit main hospital, which was right off a main highway that took you
south towards the ancient city of Ur, the Shi'ite holy city of Najaf, or
the Iraqi port city of Basra.
Amarah, with a population somewhere between 300,000 and 400,000, was a city
ballooning with refugees from Iraq's marshlands, which Saddam Hussein had
drained in the mid-1990's, destroying one of the world's most unique
ecosystems and ancient cultures--that of Iraq's "Marsh Arabs." The act was
Hussein's retribution for years of marshland resistance to his regime.
As far back as the Iraq-Iran war, enemies of the regime had used the
marshlands as a safe haven. The same happened during the massive Shi'ite
uprising in the south that immediately followed the 1991 Gulf War--an
uprising which Hussein's regime crushed with the now legendary (especially
in Iraq) non-resistance of the U.S. military, which still had a presence in
the south.
Amarah lies at the northern tip of Iraq's marshlands and so it is that
large numbers of Iraqis driven out of the marshlands settled there.
And so it was in 2000 that the hospital and the rest of the city was
sometimes deprived by Saddam Hussein of key government attention. At the
hospital in Amarah, it was dual deprivation--the crush of a dictator's
negligence and the crushing effects of economic sanctions on all of central
and southern Iraq (sanctions especially effected Iraq's hospitals, where
essential equipment was often kept out of the country--rejected by a U.N.
committee as "dual use"--that which may have a legitimate civilian purpose,
but which also might be used for a weapons of mass destruction program).
After the war, the British took control of Amarah, a city already quite
loyal to the young Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr (whose father was killed
by Hussein). It was not long ago that the British handed control of Amarah
over to the Iraqi government (it may be more accurate to say that the
British abandoned Amarah--the British camp there had been the frequent
target of mortar fire believed to be the work of Mahdi Army fighters).
With the British gone, responsibility for security in Amarah fell to the
Iraqi police. The Iraqi police in Amarah and elsewhere in Iraq have long
been infiltrated--and significantly so--by the powerful Shi'ite militia the
Badr Corps.
The primary rival to the Iranian trained Badr Corps is Sadr's nationalist
Mahdi Army. By now you see where this is headed, no?
The Mahdi Army was responsible for the recent assassination of a man with
dual loyalties to Iraq's police force (he was a police officer) and the
Badr corps (he was a member). The victim was Qassim al-Tamimi, the head of
police intelligence for Maysan Province (Amarah is the provincial capital).
In retaliation, Badr Corps captured the brother of a Mahdi Army commander
in the province.
In retaliation to that, the Mahdi Army captured three police stations in
Amarah, killing members of the Badr Corps-infiltrated Iraqi police force in
the process. The Mahdi Army then reportedly "flattened" the police stations
with explosions.
It was militia against militia in Amarah and for a time it seems the Mahdi
Army dominated--due no doubt to Sadr's popularity in Amarah.
So perhaps the most common take on events in Amarah, repeated yesterday in
this blog, that Sadr's Mahdi Army had "taken" Amarah was imprecise. It
seems more appropriate to report that Sadr's forces had "risen to the top"
in an ongoing struggle between two powerful Shi'ite militias.
Still, there was some confusion yesterday about who was controlling the
city. The Iraqi army arrived with British "advisors" and Iraq's prime
minister sent a delegation to talk with Sadr's representatives.
According to the Independent, Mohammed al-Alaskari, an official with Iraq's
Ministry of Defense, said "All the parties have started a truce but the
situation remains very tense and we have dispatched two companies from
Basra."
Also according to the Independent: "Dr. Zamil Shia, director of Amarah's
department of health, 22 civilians, three of them children, have been
killed in the clashes. He said his staff were able to cope for the time
being, but may need more supplies if the fighting continues."
Events in Amarah raise important questions about militias in Iraq, the
effectiveness and integrity of Iraqi government forces, and the terrible
folly of U.S. and British occupation.
Amarah also raises important questions about Sadr's unique power in Iraq.
This is from today's New York Times:
Mr. Sadr and his Mahdi Army have emerged as one of the biggest puzzles
of the war. He controls the largest bloc of seats in Parliament. At the
same time, 92 percent of the mortar and rocket attacks on the Green Zone
-- the protected area in Baghdad that houses the American military and
the Iraqi government -- from August to September came from Sadr City.
As the recent fighting in Amara shows, the group and its rogue elements
now present a serious challenge to the Iraqi government. It has settled
deeply into the crevices of Iraqi society, filling college security
offices and student unions, as well as the ranks of the police and army.
It is often at the center of spasms of sectarian killing, like the one
last weekend in Balad, and it frequently battles rival Shiite groups, as
in Amara, and earlier this month in another southern city, Diwaniya.
But in a measure of just how complex Iraq has become, it is impossible
to tell where loyalties to Mr. Sadr end and the crimes begin. Rogue
groups of his former followers now run underground fiefdoms of sectarian
killing and kidnapping -- and even a special market for victims' cars.
One of his senior aides was arrested by the American military earlier
this week on suspicion of having directed the killing and torture of
Sunnis.
The changes are so profound -- the American military estimates that as
much as a third of his army has been sliced off -- that the Mahdi Army
is becoming a generic term for Shiite militia. A senior American
military official estimated there were 23 militias operating in Baghdad.
"It's hard to understand the amount of groups who are moving around and
where they are getting their funding," said Col. Thomas Vail, the
American commander in charge of eastern Baghdad. "It's very complex
right now, more than when we first came."
The mechanisms for killing became sophisticated. A senior coalition
intelligence official at a briefing last month detailed an example of a
Mahdi Army death squad. Group leaders are issued instructions on order
forms listing a target person and an address, the official said. A group
can consist of 15 special-forces companies, eight intelligence
companies, and several punishment committees, complete with clerics who
impose sentences. Some of the leaders can be inside the Ministry of
Interior, the official said. Others work with their contacts within the
ministry to obtain equipment such as cars.
The military's task has been vastly complicated by the sheer
relentlessness of the violence. Ever larger portions of the Iraqi
population have been radicalized in three years of war, chopping ground
out from under the moderates. Now, even those whose job requires them to
take a position against militias reluctantly back them.
"Right now I support the presence of the Mahdi Army," said a senior
judge on Iraq's criminal court. "I know this is unacceptable in law, in
politics, in society, but in this unusual time we are living in, this is
the reality."
Sadr led his Mahdi Army in two bloody uprisings against US occupation
forces in 2004. He has undeniable influence in the country. What has
happened in Amarah--and what becomes of it--may well be a sign of things to
come in Iraq.
Citing Arab press, historian and blogger Juan Cole interprets events so
far:
..the Sadr Movement already dominated Amara politically, but the Badr
Corps had this unnatural niche in the police. It was Badr that had 'taken
over' the security forces in a largely Sadrist city. The Mahdi Army was
attempting to align local politics with local power.
Muqtada al-Sadr, the young spiritual leader of the Sadr Movement and the
Mahdi Army, demanded that his men stop fighting and said that he washed his
hands of anyone who disobeyed his orders, according to Aljazeera.
Ahmad al-Sharifi, a Sadrist leader, told al-Zaman that the fighting in
Amara is one of the consequences of the law on provincial confederacies
passed last week by the Iraqi parliament, to which the Sadr Movement was
opposed.
[Iraqi newspaper] Al-Zaman's contacts in the Iraqi intelligence
establishment warned that the clashes in Amara could spread to the cities
of Basra and Nasiriyah. He said that the Mahdi Army and the Badr Corps in
those two cities had announced their mutual dislike of one another, and
that they had begun recruiting further militiamen to replenish their ranks.
These sources said that the transportation and communications lines between
Baghdad and the south had been cut, leaving the capital isolated from the
south. The main highway leading south out Baghdad had been blocked.
They said that Basra is witnessing an unprecedented wave of weapons
smuggling across the border from Iran.
Stay tuned...Electronic Iraq will continue to follow events as they unfold.
[Jeff Severns Guntzel, a journalist based in New York City, is co-founder
and editor of Electronic Iraq. From 1998-2003, Guntzel made frequent visits
to Iraq as co-coordinator of Voices in the Wilderness, a campaign to end
the economic sanctions against Iraq. Guntzel returned to Iraq as a
journalist immediately after the invasion. He was last in the Middle East
in January 2006 to report on Iraqis fleeing the war and the demise of Ariel
Sharons political career.]
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