Rohan Pearce
"Few people doubt that US military forces have the ability to overwhelm Iraqi rebels. But as was the case in Fallujah earlier this year, the need to balance force with politics has stripped away many of their advantages", observed an August 18 Knight Ridder Newspapers report on the fierce battle that has raged since August 5 in the city of Najaf between the US occupation forces and rebel Iraqi Shiite leader Sayed Moqtada al Sadr's Madhi Army militia.
The KRN report continued: "With every photograph and television shot of a Mahdi fighter daring to fight the US military, al-Sadr's support seemed to grow amongst Iraq's majority Shiite population, once counted on to be the backbone of post-war US policy in Iraq... Despite the overwhelming US firepower on the ground in Najaf, he looks to have gained ground."
The survival of the Iraqi resistance forces despite numerous promises by Washington to wipe them out and the brutal methods — torture of prisoners, house demolitions, artillery shelling and missile attacks on urban neighbourhoods — employed by the US occupiers to try to destroy them is testament to the breadth of Iraqis' opposition to the US-led occupation.
No longer can the White House claim that what US troops are fighting in Iraq are isolated pockets of "terrorists" and groups eager to restore Saddam Hussein's regime to power. As a Christian Science Monitor article, published on April 28 during the Madhi Army's first uprising, noted: "Far from limited to a small group of 'dead-enders' and Saddam 'thugs' as Pentagon officials claim, the armed opposition to the US occupation in Iraq has reached the point where some experts say it threatens to become a full-fledged nationalist insurgency.
"Bolstered by former Iraqi military and security personnel, today's insurgents are at the least conducting increasingly sophisticated coordinated attacks. In addition, they have built networks to recruit fighters, make weapons, and funnel funds from Iraqi businesses and charitable groups, military experts say."
A week before the Monitor's article, Professor Ahmed Hashim, a member the US Naval War College's strategic research department, had told the US Senate's foreign relations committee: "The violence [i.e., resistance] in Iraq is not conducted by a small band of individuals, nor is it yet a full-fledged nationalist insurgency that incorporates the entire country.
"Most insurgencies have never witnessed a majority of the people effectively under arms. Populations either passively support an insurgency in the sense that they do not betray it to the opposing side; or they actively support it by providing intelligence, food, supplies and recruits. But the Iraqi insurgency is not yet a full-fledged self-sustaining insurgency. Our task is to ensure that it does not become one."
However, it is now clear that Washington's attempts to undercut the Iraqi resistance through a combination of repression and a phoney "handover of sovereignty" to a US-appointed Interim Government of Iraq (IGI) have failed. As of August 16, the Washington-based Brookings Institution's Iraq Index estimates that the number of Iraqi resistance fighters has "grown from roughly 5000 to some 20,000 over the last several months".
Furthermore, Washington's attempt to crush Sadr's militia in Najaf has further eroded the political credibility of the Shiite clerical establishment, whose willingness to collaborate with Washington's US stooges had provided the IGI with some initial public credibility.
The fierce resistance that Sadr and his armed supporters have put up in Najaf has put growing public pressure on the "moderate" Shiite clerics to come out against US aggression. An August 14 Aljazeera report cited the case of Mohammed Bahr al Uloom, a Shiite cleric who participated in the now-defunct US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council. "Uloom has been one of the most outspoken critics of violence fuelled by Sadr and his supporters, who have challenged the authority of elder clerics such as [Sistani] and Uloom himself", the Qatar-based satellite television station reported.
"The Americans have turned the holy city [of Najaf] into a ghost town", Uloom told Aljazeera. "They are now seen as full of hatred against Najaf and the Shi'a. Nothing I know of will change this.
" I do not understand why America craves crisis. A peaceful solution to the confrontation with Moqtada could have been reached. We were hoping that Prime Minister Iyad Allawi would lead the way, but he sided with oppression."
According to Aljazeera, "The established clerical class has come under mounting criticism from ordinary Shi'a for remaining silent over the US offensive, especially Sistani, who expressed sorrow at the events in Najaf but did not condemn the US offensive."
It noted that Iraq's top Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani had left Najaf to travel to London, ostensibly for treatment for a heart condition, just before the US military launched its offensive in the city.
The renewed US attempt to crush Sadr's forces came after he denounced a national conference of 1000 unelected delegates that was intended to rubber-stamp the IGI. Unable to successfully co-opt Sadr, instead Washington intended to remove the Madhi thorn from its side once and for all. Unfortunately for Washington, this gambit has backfired, with increased public hostility to the puppet Allawi regime and the discrediting of the quasi-parliamentary National Council "elected" (without vote!) by the conference.
After a seven-day offensive, in which US warplanes, attack helicopters and artillery pummelled the Madhi fighters in the neighbourhoods surrounding Sadr's headquarters in the shrine of Imam Ali, Washington sought to defuse growing Iraqi criticism by pretending to look for a negotiated settlement of the conflict.
On August 13, Associated Press reported from Najaf that by that "afternoon, there was no sign of US or [puppet] Iraqi forces inside the old city and there were no sounds of clashes. The US military said it was still maintaining a loose cordon around the old city, but had repositioned troops after the offensive was suspended."
Adnan al Zurufi, appointed governor of Najaf by the US occupation authority in May, claimed that negotiations between Sadr and the IGI were being conducted without US officials. However, AP reported: "Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said all activities in Najaf were being 'closely coordinated' between coalition forces and the Iraqi leadership."
AP reported that on the evening of August 18, Safiya al Suhail, an unaffiliated Shiite delegate, told the national conference in Baghdad that she had received a letter from Sadr's office "saying he was agreeing to the conference's peace plan", which proposed that the Madhi fighters would leave Imam Ali shrine and disarm. "We call on the Iraqi government and the national conference to participate in implementing what is proposed by Moqtada al Sadr, otherwise everybody will bear the responsibility", she read.
In the past, Sadr has indicated his willingness to convert the Mahdi Army into a purely political movement with the condition, however, that other Iraqi political forces call for an end to the US-led occupation. Sadr's movement, initially a political-social welfare network organised through the Shiite mosques in the poor neighbourhoods of Baghdad and other Iraqi cities, only took up armed struggle in response to the repressive actions of the US occupiers — their banning of its weekly paper on March 28.
Washington, however, is not interested in any compromise deal that would allow Sadr to continue to campaign, even peacefully, against its occupation of Iraq. This was made clear by Bush's national security adviser, Condoleeza Rice, on August 18 when she told the US Fox News channel that Sadr "has to be dealt with and I'm quite certain he will be".
The next day, the IGI Minister of State Qassim Dawoud demanded that Sadr's militia disarm immediately and pull out of Najaf without conditions. Dawoud, without waiting for a response from Sadr, told reporters in Najaf that "military action is imminent".
Associated Press reported later on August 19, Haidar al Tourfi, an official at Sadr's office in Najaf, said he had received a text message from Sadr rejecting this ultimatum. "Either martyrdom or victory", the message said, according to Tourfi.
Within hours of Qassim's ultimatum, US warplanes resumed their attacks on the neighbourhoods around the Imam Ali shrine. Reporting the resumption of US attacks, the August 19 Chicago Tribune noted that " it has become increasingly apparent that any attempt to storm the shrine and eject al Sadr by force would risk a backlash that could engulf Iraq in more violence and win more support for al Sadr's resistance movement".
However, the August 20 London Daily Telegraph reported that a "Western official closely involved in talks in Najaf said yesterday that if Sadr did not capitulate or was not defeated, similar uprisings could see emboldened insurgents take control in cities across Iraq".
Thus, whatever course Washington opts for to "deal with" Sadr, the result will be a broadening and strengthening of the Iraqi resistance to its brutal occupation.
From Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly, August 25, 2004.
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