Posted on 02/20/2008 6:19:13 PM PST by BlackVeil
BAGHDAD - With deadly attacks against U.S. targets increasing around Baghdad, anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr raised the possibility Wednesday that he may not renew a six-month cease-fire widely credited for helping slash violence.
The cease-fire is due to expire Saturday, and there were fears, especially among minority Sunni Arabs, that the re-emergence of al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia could return Iraq to where it was just a year ago — with sectarian death squads prowling the streets of a country on the brink of civil war.
A surge of violence would also make it all the more difficult for Iraq's Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds to reach agreements on sharing power and wealth, and greatly complicate the debate in the United States on whether and how quickly to withdraw troops.
Rear Adm. Gregory Smith, a U.S. military spokesman, blamed Iranian-backed Shiite extremists for a flurry of rocket attacks — including one Monday against an Iraqi housing complex near the country's main U.S. military base that killed at least five people and wounded 16, including two U.S. soldiers.
Smith also said one American civilian was killed and a number of U.S. troops and civilian personnel were wounded in a rocket attack in the southeastern area of Rustamiyah Tuesday night. He did not elaborate, but there is a U.S. base in the predominantly Shiite area.
He said those attacks and another on Tuesday were carried out by "Iranian-backed Special Group criminals," a term the military uses to describe groups that broke away from the Mahdi Army militia or refused to respect the cease-fire al-Sadr declared last August.
The U.S. military has angered some Sadrists by carrying out raids against breakaway factions. There have been calls from within the militia and its political wing to call off the cease-fire.
The cease-fire has been a key element in a three-piece puzzle that has come together to help reduce violence since mid-2007. The two other factors are the influx of thousands of U.S. troops last summer, and creation of Sunni-dominated groups funded by the U.S. military to fight al-Qaida in Iraq, the most extremist of the Sunni insurgents.
"Al-Sayyid Muqtada al-Sadr's cease-fire has been helpful in reducing violence and has led to improved security in Iraq. We would welcome the extension of the cease-fire as a positive step," Smith told The Associated Press, using an honorific reserved for descendants of the Prophet Muhammad.
Sheik Salah al-Obeidi, a spokesman for al-Sadr in the Shiite holy city of Najaf, said that if the cleric failed to issue a statement by Saturday saying the cease-fire was extended, "then that means the freeze is over."
On an Internet site representing al-Sadr, al-Obeidi said that al-Sadr "either will announce the extension or will stay silent and not announce anything. If he stays silent, that means that the freeze is over."
Al-Obeidi told the AP that message "has been conveyed to all Mahdi Army members nationwide."
The ambiguity left many Iraqis uneasy.
"The drop in violence and the quiet which Baghdad witnesses is a clear evidence that this militia was behind all the chaos in the past," Sunni parliament member Asmaa al-Dulaimi told the AP.
She said ending the cease-fire "will affect national reconciliation and will further deteriorate the security situation nationwide. Resuming their activities, whether against the government or civilians, will lead to a new confrontation with them."
Smith said that under current conditions, violence was still dropping. He said the number of civilian deaths in Baghdad had fallen from 1,087 men, women and children killed in February 2007 to 178 in the first month of this year.
According to an AP count, at least 238 Iraqi civilians and security forces died in Baghdad last month, compared to 1,148 killed in February 2007.
Smith also said the number of execution-style killings carried out by so-called sectarian death squads had dropped some 95 percent, from 800 in February 2007 to below 40 this month.
The AP accounted for at least 640 bodies found on Iraq streets or in mass graves in February 2007, compared with at least 184 so far in February 2008.
But there has been a recent surge of attacks attributed to al-Qaida in Iraq.
On Wednesday, a U.S. soldier was killed and three were wounded in a rocket-propelled grenade attack in the northwestern city of Mosul, the military said. The military has described Mosul as the last urban stronghold of al-Qaida in Iraq.
Separately, a roadside bomb killed a soldier assigned to Multi-National Division-Center, which is responsible for territory south of Baghdad. The military statement did not give a more exact location.
On Tuesday, three Iraqi children were killed and seven others wounded when they were hit by an insurgent mortar attack while playing soccer outside a military supply area near Balad, 50 miles north of Baghdad, the military said.
In violent Diyala province north of Baghdad, a suicide bomber on Wednesday killed seven people and wounded 17, said an official in the provincial command operation center. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to release the information.
The U.S. military and the Iraqi government have claimed that Sunni insurgents led by al-Qaida in Iraq are increasingly trying to use Iraq's most vulnerable populations as suicide bombers to avoid raising suspicions or being searched at checkpoints that guard access to many markets, neighborhoods and bridges in the capital.
Smith, the military spokesman, said two women used as suicide bombers in attacks earlier this month had undergone psychiatric treatment but that there was no indication they had Down syndrome as Iraqi and American officials initially had claimed.
He said the women used in the Feb. 1 pet market bombings had been identified as residents from the northeastern outskirts of Baghdad who were in their late 20s or early 30s.
The two attacks killed nearly 100 people, and Iraqi and U.S. officials said at the time the women appeared to be unwitting attackers.
"Both had recently received psychiatric treatment for depression and/or schizophrenia. From what we know now there's no indication that they had Down syndrome," Smith said Wednesday, citing records obtained by the military.
He also said one of the women was married but that neither had criminal backgrounds. He said it was not clear how they were linked to al-Qaida in Iraq, which the military has said was behind the bombing.
___
Associated Press reporters Qassim Abdul-Zahra, Sinan Salaheddin and Bradley Brooks contributed to this story from Baghdad.
He’s playing with fire.
Just is. Always was - for the whole of his life.
Fine. Let him have it then. Be rid of him once and for all.
PRESSURE ON SADR AND IRANIAN-BACKED SPECIAL GROUPS CONTINUES
By Bill Roggio Feb.18, 2008 2:49 AM
As previously reported at The Long War Journal, US and Iraqi forces have stepped up operations against the Iranian-backed and Mahdi Army-linked Special Groups terror cells. The increase in activity comes as Muqtada al Sadr is deliberating the reinstatement or cancellation of the self-imposed cease-fire.
Since the last report, the US military has singled out a former Mahdi Army commander as being behind violence in northern Baghdad while a senior spokesman said Iran is still supporting terror operations in Iraq. “The intent of Iran in supporting the training and financing [the Special Groups] we believe continues,” said Rear Admiral Gregory Smith, the director of Multinational Forces Iraq’s Communication Division. “In just the past week, Iraqi and coalition forces captured 212 weapons caches across Iraq, two of those coming from here inside Baghdad, with growing links to the Iranian-backed special groups.”
http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2008/02/pressure_on_sadr_and.php
You’d think this looser would have driven past an IED in the last 6 months.
Is he trying to influence the elections here - get a “cut n’run” candidate elected by bloodying things up for a spell ?
Is Mookie still hiding out in Iran? If he drives back to Iraq, he should be greeted by an IED.
The writer has wildly inflated Sadr’s influence and is obviously blithely ignorant to facts on the ground. Probably written from a hotel room in Kuwait.
The US missed the opportunity to take this guy down in 2004, when Sistani purposely looked the other way. Back then he was just another hoodlum with a crew. Now he has become a larger political force.
I agree with you, and I would note that since 2004, a series of Sistani’s lieutenants and employees have been assassinated.
IMO, Sadr is now well established, even in Najaf, where he used not to be. He is player - powerful and ruthless. It is a mistake to underestimate a man like Sadr.
Can we just shoot this guy and be done with him? He’s a real pain in the ass.
So go to Tehran and shoot him. He has been in Iran for 10 months now. Studing to become a cleric...
And his forces have been regularly hit by US and ISOF...
DU`ers are hoping the cease-fire ends and all hell breaks loose so it will prove Petraeus failed.
Aint happening.
Just extended for 6 months.
Pity.
Uncle Sam’s Misbegotten Children would have loved to redeploy from boring Anbar to have a re-match...
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