Shiite Clashes
in with Coalition in Najaf Baghdad: Phase II of the Anti-Occupation
Struggle Begins
Nine Coalition Troops Killed, Dozens wounded in Confronting Uprising
Juan Cole
04/04/04 "ICH" The always tense relationship between the
Sadrist movement among Iraqi Shiites and the US and its Coalition
partners has taken a dramatic turn for the worse. Perhaps a third of
Iraqi Shiites are sympathetic to the radical, Khomeini-like ideology of
Sadrism, and some analysts with long experience in Iraq put it at 50%.
Earlier Muqtada Al-Sadr, the movement leader, had called on his forces
to avoid violence against Coalition forces. As of Sunday, he has decided
that the Coalition means permanently to exclude his group from power,
and has decided to launch an uprising. This uprising involves taking
over police stations in Kufa, Najaf, Baghdad and possibly elsehwere. The
Sadrist militia now controls Kufa, according
to the New York Times, and probably controls much of Sadr City or
the slums of East Baghdad, as well, though it has been expelled from the
police stations it had occupied there.
In Najaf, Sadrist crowds some 5000 strong protested outside the Spanish
garrison. Firing began between the two sides, leading to a 3-hour gun
battle that left 1 American and 1 Salvadoran soldier dead [initial
reports had said 4 Salvadorans were dead] and fourteen Salvadorans
wounded, 24 Iraqi civilians dead, and more than 130 persons wounded, according
to AP and the
Washington Post. Spanish troops also fought. (Spain's new Socialist
government had pledged to withdraw Spanish troops this summer). AP
reports that Sadrist militiamen took over the police station in nearby
Kufa, and that police had disappeared from Kufa streets.
There were also large protests in central Baghdad, and it is reported
that 3 Sadrist protesters threw themselves under American tanks, so as
to become "martyrs." AP said, ' In central Baghdad's
Firdaus Square, police fired warning shots during a protest by hundreds
of al-Sadr supporters against al-Yacoubi's arrest. At least two
protesters were injured, witnesses said. ' Meanwhile, US troops
assaulted the office of Muqtada al-Sadr in Baghdad.
In Sadr City, gunfire was heard all afternoon and into the evening on
Sunday, and early on, two US military jeeps were set on fire. az-Zaman
reports that there was an exchange of fire between US troops in a Humvee
with Army of the Mahdi militiamen in the Suq Muridi quarter of central
Sadr City. The Army of the Mahdi briefly occupied at least three police
stations in Sadr City, expelling the local police. The US sent in tanks,
retaking the police stations, but suffered 7 US soldiers killed and 24
wounded, according to CNN at 5 pm EST. The AP report is now on line at The
Washington Post.
In Amara, The
Scotsman reports of Sadrist demonstrations in Amara, ' The
Ministry of Defence said that the soldiers returned fire after coming
under attack from a “criminal element” in the crowd armed with guns
and rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs). No British troops were injured in
the incident although a MoD spokeswoman said that there were a number of
Iraqi casualties. It was not immediately known if any of the Iraqis were
killed. '
In Nasiriyah, according to US cable television news, demonstrators set
an Italian tank afire. AP
says that' In the southern city of Nasiriyah, Italian troops
traded fire with militiamen demonstrating against the arrest of al-Yacoubi,
said Lt. Col. Pierluigi Monteduro, chief of staff of Italian troops in
the region. One Italian officer was wounded in the leg. '
az-Zaman also reports Sadrist demonstrations in Kirkuk (where
Muqtada has Turkmen and Arab followers) and Basra, where 600 protesters
assembled near the British HQ.
So far, about 60% of clashes with Coalition troops had occurred in the
Sunni heartland of Iraq. But the violent clashes in Najaf, Baghdad,
Amara and Nasiriyah may signal the beginning of a second phase, in which
the US faces a two-front war, against both Sunni radicals in the
center-north and Shiite militias in the South. The clashes come at a
pivotal moment, since on Friday April 9, the Shiite festival of Araba'in
will take place, coinciding this year with the anniversary of the fall
of Saddam Hussein.
The protests on Saturday and Sunday were sparked by the Coalition arrest
on Saturday of Sadrist cleric Mustafa Yaqubi, the head of the Najaf
office of Muqtada al-Sadr. Initially the Spanish denied the arrest,
which provoked large demonstrations in Baghdad on Saturday led by
Muhammad al-Tabatabai, a key aide of Muqtada al-Sadr there. But AP now
says that the Coalition Provisional Authority admits that it has indeed
arrested Yaqubi. Sadrist spokesmen in Baghdad complained that no reason
was given for the arrest, and promised to reply "with every means
necessary," according to ash-Sharq al-Awsat..
It seems to me possible that the Americans swooped into Najaf and
arrested Mustafa Yaqubi, and that the Spanish did not even know about it
to begin with. That would explain their initial denial. If so, in a
sense, the US set the Spanish up for a confrontation with the Sadrists.
Why would the US arrest Yaqubi? Well, on
Friday April 2 gunmen shot down the police chief of Kufa and his deputy.
It is possible that the Americans suspect the Sadrists were behind that
shooting, and that they arrested Yaqubi in retaliation.
The Spanish maintain that they were fired on from the crowd. I was
initially suspicious as to whether this was really true, since the
inexperienced Central American forces under their control could well
have fired first. Az-Zaman quotes sources maintaining that the
Spanish fired first, in response to stone-throwing. But one way or
another, it is looking increasingly as though the Sadrists have launched
an uprising.
The problem began in some ways on Sunday March 28, when Paul Bremer
decided to close the main Sadrist newspaper, al-Hawza,
purportedly for publishing material that incited violence against
Coalition troops. Many observers in Iraq said that move was a mistake,
since no specific violence could be traced to the newspaper, and closing
it was itself a provocation. As it turns out, it seems clear that the
newspaper closing played into Muqtada al-Sadr's apocalyptic mindset. He
became convinced that it meant the US planned to silence him and destroy
his movement, leaving him no choice but to launch an uprising. The
Coalition, which just closed a newspaper for 2 months, probably thought
of it as a relatively mild response to Sadr's own provocations. But
Muqtada saw his father and brothers cut down by Saddam and he is clearly
a paranoid personality deeply traumatized by Baath terror against
Shiites, and he views the Americans as little different from the
Baathists. Saddam also sent warnings to Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr, in
January of 1999, which were a prelude to Sadiq's assassination in
February of that year. In Muqtada's own mind, the Coalition 'warnings'
may also have been perceived as a prelude to removing him. The US army
appears to have seriously threatened him with arrest or worse last
October.
Why did the CPA take this risk? The US is aware that since it is turning
over sovereignty to an Iraqi government on June 30, indigenous Iraqi
political forces have begun jockeying for position in the
post-occupation phase. Closing Muqtada's newspaper and arresting a key
aide in Najaf are probably actions aimed in part at attempting to curb
the influence of the Sadrists, who otherwise might well sweep to power
in an elected Iraqi parliament next January.
The outbreak of Shiite/Coalition violence is a dramatic challenge to US
military control of Iraq. The US is cycling out its forces in the
country, bringing in a lot of reserve and national guards units, but
will go from 130,000 to only 110,000 troops. It is too small a number to
really provide security in Iraq, but the country has not fallen into
chaos in part because the main attacks have come in the Sunni heartland
and because the Coalition has depended on Shiite militias to police many
southern cities. If the Shiites actively turn against the US, the whole
military and security situation could become untenable. The US is
already losing its Spanish coalition partner. The Japanese and Korean
contingents are explicitly not there to fight. The Thais may decamp. The
coalition partners probably provide a division altogether, and if they
pulled out, the US would have to find a division to replace them. It
only has 10 itself, and nobody else is going to come in under these
circumstances--certainly not the UN and probably not NATO.
(Mustafa Yaqubi, by the way, should not be confused with Muhammad
Yaqubi, also a Sadrist, but who leads a splinter Sadrist group called
the Fudala' or the Virtuous, which is something of a rival to Muqtada).
