On April 4, Muhammad
Abbas closed his small shop in Baghdad's Sha'ala
district, bought a machine-gun, and joined the Mahdi Army of
radical Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr in its battle
against US troops.
Abbas - dressed in the
all-black uniform of the militia - says he is ready to
die for his leader and to do everything needed to
liberate Iraq from its occupiers. "I'm ready, not only
to be a martyr, but I will blow myself up if [Muqtada]
orders me," he said. "I will even burn myself, during
these events, in front of millions. I said, by God, if I
stand in front of my leader and my leader tells me to
put gasoline on myself and to burn myself, I'm prepared
to do that. I'm prepared to do anything."
Abbas
said that "with God's help, we will liberate not only
Iraq but also the whole world from the Americans".
Abbas is one of an unknown number of fighters
who have pledged their support for Muqtada and who have
been fighting coalition troops in a number of Iraqi
cities this week. US Secretary of Defense Donald
Rumsfeld said he has heard varying estimates that
Muqtada's militia contains between 1,000 and 6,000
fighters. While Rumsfeld calls the militiamen "thugs",
he has acknowledged that the coalition is facing a
"serious problem" with unrest in the country.
More than 20 US soldiers and dozens of
Iraqis have been killed since Sunday, April 4, in clashes between
coalition troops and Shi'ite insurgents believed to be
loyal to Muqtada. The unrest was triggered by the arrest
of a senior aide to the cleric and the coalition's
closure of Muqtada's al-Hawza newspaper, which it
accused of inciting anti-American violence.
On Sunday, Muqtada urged his followers to "terrorize" the
enemy. His forces are reported to be in control or
partial control of the southern cities of Alkut, Kufah
and Najaf.
The chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff,
General Richard Myers, said the actions of Muqtada's militia
do not appear to be well coordinated or
its soldiers well trained, saying only that "some
forces are better trained than others".
And the
commander of US forces in Iraq, Lieutenant-General
Ricardo Sanchez, said the Mahdi Army has no future in
Iraq: "There is no place within the democratic system of
Iraq for a renegade militia that chooses to intimidate
and terrorize the people while seeking to control the
basic institutions of the country with a violent power
play."
US State Department spokesman Adam Ereli
said Muqtada's militia does not represent the will of
the Iraqi people. "Muqtada al-Sadr has created a private
militia - the Mahdi Army. This is a militia that he has
armed, that is dedicated to protecting him and his cause
and not the cause of the Iraqi people - and to that
extent, it is working across purposes with what the
Iraqi people are trying to achieve."
Ahmad
al-Baghdadi, a representative of Muqtada, disagrees. In
comments to reporters in Najaf, he said: "All the Iraqi
people are in the Mahdi Army - women, children and men.
We do not fear America. We fought the most dangerous
dictator in history, Saddam Hussein. Americans will
remain very small in our eyes."
Julian
Lindley-French, an analyst at the Geneva Center for
Security Policy, says Muqtada's militia is drawing
fighters from impoverished Shi'ite areas where
resentment against the US occupation is growing. Other
fighters, he says, are Muslim fundamentalists or Iraqi
nationalists. Lindley-French says the fighters not only have a
desire to fight but the means to do so effectively.
"They are armed with a range of the usual
Kalashnikovs - the AK-47s, significant small arms. Some
evidence of very light antitank weapons and bazookas -
that kind of thing. Fairly basic, but nevertheless
deadly weapons when used against thin-skinned vehicles,
such as jeeps and other light military vehicles."
Mahmud Uthman, an independent Kurdish member of
the Iraqi Governing Council, says it was relatively easy
for Muqtada to arm his militia. Uthman says the US-led
coalition did not manage to disarm the population and
that weapons are widely available. "There are too many
arms in Iraq, and anybody could get whatever arms he
likes because the old Iraqi army was just disbanded and
was just let [to] go around and be free with their arms.
There have been millions of arms distributed by Saddam
to the population, and you could buy arms wherever you
like, easily, and not only in Iraq but even from
neighboring countries."
Uthman says many of
Muqtada's militiamen appear to be experienced fighters.
He says some of them may have served in the Iraqi army
under Saddam. Others, he says, could have been trained
abroad.
Muqtada announced his intention to
create the Mahdi Army last summer. The militia provided
needed security in Baghdad's Shi'ite slums and
distributed food and other aid. Uthman says many members
of the Iraqi Governing Council understood this move
posed a danger to the fragile stability in the country,
but says Iraq's top US civilian administrator, L Paul
Bremer, never consulted the members of the council about
the dangers the new militia might pose. "He usually
doesn't ask [questions], you see. He listens, but he
doesn't listen well, also."
Lindley-French says
the coalition knew Muqtada was creating his militia, but
chose to focus on the immediate problems posed by the
Sunni resistance. "It was hoped that because [US troops]
liberated the Shi'ites from the oppression of the Saddam
regime, that by working closely with [Grand] Ayatollah
[Ali] al-Sistani and by not provoking too many of the
militias that were around certain clerical figures, that
they could actually have, as it were, a kind of de-facto
alliance, particularly with such groups."
Lindley-French
says the current violence also reflects disagreements
within the Shi'ite community over the future of Iraq as
different factions jockey for position as the country
prepares for the transfer of sovereignty on June 30.
On Thursday, influential Shi'ite leader Sistani
tried to strike a tone of balance, criticizing the
methods used by US forces to quell the insurgency, but
calling on all sides to end the violence.
(RFE/RL freelancer Sami Alkhoja contributed to
this report.)
Copyright 2004, RFE/RL Inc.
Reprinted with the permission of Radio
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