Surprise, surprise: Iraq free at
last By Ferry Biedermann
BAGHDAD - Two days ahead of schedule, Iraq is on
its own, receiving its official sovereignty from the
United States on Monday morning. But for those living on
the mean streets of Baghdad's Sadr City, optimism is
hard to muster, although promising signs have emerged
that the ongoing violence may actually be slowing down.
Iraqi interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi
accepted the transfer from L Paul Bremer, head of the
Coalition Provisional Authority, in a surprise Baghdad
ceremony. According to a United Nations Security Council
resolution earlier this month, the interim government
will have "full sovereignty", formally ending a 14-month
US-led occupation.
Originally set for June 30,
the handover was moved up as attacks by insurgents
escalated daily as the deadline approached, notably in
the Kurdish north and in the Sunni towns of Baquba and
Fallujah. Not a single American or Middle East
television station was allowed to broadcast the epic
occasion live from coalition headquarters in the Green
Zone. Only after the fact was it made known in Istanbul,
as 44 world leaders assembled for their annual North
Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) summit. President
George W Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair met
later to decide what would happen next in Iraq.
Some analysts believe that the early handover
was to demonstrate to the assembled NATO leaders that
Washington and London, in asking for alliance assistance
for the Iraqi army, seriously meant what they said about
handing power over to an indigenous regime in Baghdad.
Although the government will have "full
sovereignty", according to a UN Security Council
resolution earlier this month, there are important
constraints on its powers. It is barred from making
long-term policy decisions and will not have control
over more than 160,000 foreign troops who will remain in
Iraq. The government has the right to ask them to leave
- but has made clear it has no intention of doing so.
Meanwhile, on the streets ... In the
seething Shi'ite Muslim Sadr City the daily mortar
attacks on Camp War Eagle of the US First Cavalry at the
edge of the city actually tapered off over the weekend.
Just a few dry pops of exploding mortar grenades could
be heard in the late afternoons. During the week the
attacks had been so intense that two soldiers were
seriously wounded and evacuated to Germany.
Meanwhile, the Mahdi army - a militia that
follows the youngest scion of the venerated al-Sadr
family - Muqtada al-Sadr, has indicated that it will
observe a ceasefire. Their young leader, a cleric who
has acquired a reputation as a firebrand, has been
backing down over the last couple of weeks from a
confrontation with US forces. The fighting started in
early April and engulfed not only Sadr City but also the
holy Shi'ite cities of Karbala and Najaf, as well as
other places in the south of the country.
The US
forces in Sadr City, mainly the 2-5 battalion of the 1st
Cavalry, are breathing a guarded sigh of relief. "We
have been in continued combat for more than 10 weeks,"
their commander, Lieutenant-General Colonel Gary Volesky
said in his operations room at camp War Eagle. "Because
we reach out to the community leaders and because we
have taken a firm stand, it seems that they have now
decided to stop the fighting."
Sadr City is a
huge Shi'ite shantytown in the south of Baghdad.
Estimates of the number of people living here vary from
1.5 million to 2.5 million. It was one of the least
regulated places under the old regime of Saddam Hussein.
It came into being in the 1970s and 1980s as poor
Shi'ites from the south flocked to the capital in search
of work. Sadr City, then known as Saddam City, became a
hotbed of Shi'ite discontent with the regime, especially
after Saddam mercilessly put down the Shi'ite uprising
in the wake of the Gulf War of 1991.
It is not
very surprising that the inhabitants of Sadr City have
turned against the Americans. The intense poverty and an
ingrained hostility toward authorities have conspired to
make the neighborhood a wellspring of gangs and
criminals going back to the days of the former regime.
Add religious fervor and cultural differences, and it is
not hard to see why people here do not take kindly to
anybody, especially outsiders, trying to impose order.
To the American soldiers this often translates
into an unbridgeable divide. While most Iraqis seem to
think that the Americans came for their own reasons and
are there to stay, the soldiers in the 2-5 battalion in
Sadr City sound genuinely convinced that they were sent
to Iraq to help the people, and they are stunned when
the assistance is not welcome.
"It is very hard
to empathize with those people," said staff sergeant
Jason Boaz as he set out on a patrol with Bradley
fighting vehicles into Sadr City. "We are trying to help
them with specific projects, such as electricity, water,
sewage. Okay, if they don't want our help that's up to
them but why should they also try to kill us?"
Boaz is one of the few US soldiers who seems to
come into direct contact with the people of Sadr City.
Most soldiers see the sewage-filled and dirt-poor
streets through the window of a speeding Humvee or in
the green glow of the screen in the belly of a Bradley.
When the Bradley stops, it is Boaz who goes on so-called
"dismounts", when the heavily armored vehicle topped
with a small caliber rapid-fire canon opens its back
hatch and the soldiers carry out a mission on foot.
Accompanied by a translator, who will only give
his name as George, Boaz is supposed to talk to a wide
variety of people; managers of power stations and water
pump stations, Iraqi police officers, and owners of gas
pumps about the problems they face and to see if they
need any assistance. That is, if the patrol can actually
find what it is looking for and if the person in charge
of the facility is present, which is not often judging
by one patrol.
On this occasion the patrol of
five Bradleys also carried out a number of "snap
checkpoints" when they cut off a civilian car and
searched it for weapons and contraband. After each
dismount, Boaz hands out plastic bags filled with food,
coloring books and American "propaganda" - in his own
words - to the people who happen to be around, or to
those who have been searched or visited in an apparent
attempt to win "hearts and minds".
In a sign the
handover of sovereignty to the new Iraqi government was
indeed approaching, soldiers of the newly formed Iraqi
National Guard (ING) were taken along in one of the
Bradleys. They were the ones carrying out the searches,
showing the flag in their brand new, somehow always
baggy looking uniforms.
Lieutenant Derek
Johnson, speaking before Monday's handover, explained
that the strategy is to put the ING out in the field.
"With the approaching handover we think it is a good
idea that the people here see that it is their soldiers
who are providing security and that it is not only us."
George the translator is quite skeptical. He
pointed at some of the ING soldiers who wear masks as
they exit the Bradley. George does the same, even though
he does not live in Sadr City. Every Iraqi cooperating
with the US forces, as translators or in the ING, runs
the risk of being killed as a collaborator.
"In
one month time they have killed four translators," said
George, who took off his mask, which made him sweat
profusely, every time he stepped back into the Bradley.
He doubted that the new Iraqi government would
be able to change the situation. "At least for five, six
months, things will only get worse," he said.
Some US soldiers at War Eagle estimate that
thousands of Iraqis have been killed in Sadr City since
the start of hostilities on April 4. On one type of
mission, the so-called "movements to contact", the
soldiers take their vehicles into a violent part of Sadr
City. Then they just sit there and wait for the attacks
to start. Last week on one mission alone, a lieutenant
said his platoon killed 18 armed men.
The
insurgents in Sadr City sometimes manage to retaliate,
apart from the mortars. Last week they managed to
detonate an anti-tank mine under a Bradley and blow it
apart. Since then the "movements to contact" have at
least temporarily, and unofficially, been suspended. On
the patrol with sergeant Boaz and lieutenant Johnson
only one explosion took place; a 25mm round exploded
inside the Bradley because of the almost unbearable heat
inside the vehicle.
But despite the current calm
and Monday's handover of sovereignty, unless the new
Iraqi government can eradicate the extreme poverty and
hostility coursing through Sadr City, the future of this
violent Baghdad shantytown will likely remain bleak,
especially as most Iraqis are aware of the important
constraints on the interim government. It is barred from
making long-term policy decisions and will not have
control over the more than 160,000 foreign troops who
will remain in Iraq. The government does have the right
to ask them to leave - but has expressed it has no
intention of doing so.
