Operation Iraqi Freedom: Mission (un)accomplished

And these are our allies . . . The freedom we brought to Iraq

'If they pay we kill them anyway' - the kidnapper's story

In the second of two remarkable dispatches from behind Baghdad's front lines, Ghaith Abdul-Ahad meets the commander of a Shia death squad

Fadhel is a slim, well-muscled 26-year-old Mahdi Army commander with a thin goatee beard and smoothed down hair that looks like a flat cap. One day last month he described how he and his men seized a group of three Sunni men suspected of killing his fellow Shia. "I followed the group for weeks and then one of them crossed the bridge to Karrada [a Shia district]. We first informed a nearby Iraqi army checkpoint that we were arresting terrorists then we attacked them and put them in the boots of the cars. We only have six to seven minutes when we grab someone - we have to act quickly, if he resists we shoot him."

In this case, he said, the men were taken to Sadr City, the Shia slum to the north-east of Baghdad, where they were interrogated by a "committee" which ordered their execution. "We ask the families of the terrorists for ransom money," said Fadhel. "And after they pay the ransom we kill them anyway."

Kidnapping in Baghdad these days is as much about economics as retribution or sectarian hatred. Another Shia man close to the Mahdi Army told me: "They kidnap 10 Sunnis, they get ransom on five, and kill them all, in each big kidnap operation they make at least $50 000, it's the best business in Baghdad."

One day as we chatted in a small squatters' community to the east of Baghdad, Fadhel showed me his badge - a square laminated card that identified him as a "Amer Faseel" or "platoon commander" in charge of a unit of around 35 fighters. He is particularly valuable to the Shia militia because he grew up in a predominantly Sunni area south of Baghdad and still has an ID card registered in the Sunni town of Yossufiya. "I can speak in their accent, so I can come and go to Sunni areas without anyone knowing that I am a Shia."

It was these qualifications plus his military experience - he was a corporal in the Iraqi military police - that earned Fadhel the role of commanding a "strike unit". His main job is kidnapping Sunnis allegedly involved in attacking Shia areas. It is men like Fadhel, responsible for the scores of bodies dumped on Baghdad's streets daily, whom the US troops pouring into Baghdad will have to bring under control if they are to have any hope of quelling the city's civil war.

Fadhel is also called Sayed, a title given to men who descend from the Prophet Muhammad. Over glasses of hot sweet tea, he told me how his family of farmers, originally from the Shia stronghold of Najaf, had resettled in the 70s in the heart of the Sunni area south of Baghdad where he went to school with Sunni and Shia kids.

A year after Baghdad fell, his family had to move again; the area had become a hub for Sunni extremists who started evicting Shia families a year earlier than their comrades in Baghdad. After a neighbouring Shia farmer was killed they packed up and moved to Baghdad: "We had 15 donums of the best land, I was born there and worked there all my life. They told us you Shia are not from here, go away."

Fadhel and his family found themselves in the squatters' compound in east Baghdad. He and his brother joined the Mahdi Army and fought against the Americans in Sadr City and Karbala. Now he lives in a small rented flat in Dora, once a mixed Sunni area but now one of the main battle fronts in this sectarian war. To gather intelligence, he set out to make Sunni friends: "I live with them, pray like them, I even insult the imams and the Mahdi Army."

Fadhel and other Mahdi Army commanders describe an intimate relationship with Iraqi security services, especially the commandos of the Iraqi interior ministry. He says the Mahdi Army often uses these official forces in conducting its own operations against Sunni "terrorists".

"We have specific units that we work with where members of the Mahdi Army are in command. We conduct operations together. We can't ask any army unit to come with us, we just ask the units that are under the control of our men.

"The police are all under our control, we ask them to help or inform them that shooting will take place in a street and it involves the Mahdi Army, and that's it."

In one operation Fadhel took part in last summer, Iraqi interior ministry commandos attacked a Sunni area in Dora called "Arab Jubour". The raid involved 28 pickup trucks, he told me. Of them 16 were ministry of interior, the rest Mahdi Army.

The new Bush plan to secure Baghdad gives a major role to the Iraqi army and police units in securing Baghdad. Few in the city expect that these predominantly Shia forces will seriously challenge their fellow Shia.

As the discussions for the new security plan were continuing, an Iraqi Shia official who belongs to another party told me: "We know that Moqtada [al-Sadr] and his men are responsible for all this mess but what can we do? We can't attack them, we can only talk to them. Its like having a mentally ill relative - you can't just throw him in the street."

Fadhel and other Mahdi army officers also describe a complex relationship with Iraq's Shia neighbour. Iran, which backs a rival Shia faction to the Mahdi Army, secured a PR success when Mr Sadr upon his arrival in Tehran last year announced that the Mahdi Army would defend Iran if attacked by the US. One Mahdi Army commander told me: "The Iranians are helping us not because they like us, but because they hate the US."

The help comes in different forms. "We get weapons from them, mortar shells, RPG rounds, sometimes they give us weapons for free sometimes we have to buy. Depends on who is doing the deal," said the same commander.

Fadhel told me that back in November he escorted a small truck filled with weapons from Kut, on the Iranian border, to Baghdad. "We get the weapons in trucks, we take a letter to the Iraqi army checkpoints and it's all fine."

Like many of their Sunni counterparts, the Mahdi commanders boast that they could wipe out the other sect and gain total control over Baghdad if the US left. "We control most of Baghdad, our main enemy is the Americans," said Fadhel. Then he paused for a second and continued: "Also we can't trust the other Shia factions. Imam Ali says 'God please protect me against my friends and I will take care of my enemies.'"

Original article posted here.

American Holocaust

Residents say snipers are firing at random as siege continues

Nancy A. Youssef and Zaineb Obeid

BAGHDAD, Iraq - The two top U.S. officials in Iraq voiced confidence Monday that Iraq's Shiite Muslim-led government would show no favoritism in its efforts to secure the city, even as residents of a Sunni Muslim neighborhood complained that Shiite Iraqi security forces and government-backed militias were preventing them from evacuating wounded and going for food.

Eight days after a joint U.S.-Iraqi offensive began to take control of the Haifa Street area in central Baghdad, residents said they had no water and no electricity and that people seeking food had been shot at random. They said they could see American soldiers nearby, but that the Americans were making no effort to intervene.

''The Americans are doing nothing, as if they are backing the militias,'' said one resident, who asked to be identified only as Abu Sady, 36, for security reasons. ''This military siege is killing us. ... If this plan continues for one more week, I don't think you will find one family left on Haifa Street.''

U.S. officials downplayed the reports. U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad and Army Gen. George Casey told a news conference Monday that Iraqi officials had assured them that they'd target both Shiite and Sunni extremists in their efforts to pacify the city.

''I am encouraged by what I have seen. We need to give them the benefit of the doubt and let's see what happens,'' Khalilzad said. If sectarian problems arise, ''that will be a conversation down the road. I hope it will be unnecessary. At this point, what we are focused on is to help implement the plan based on the premises we agreed on.''

A U.S. military spokesman said he had no reason to believe Haifa Street residents' accounts. The residents were interviewed by phone because of the danger in reaching the area.

''The reporting we have is that it was quiet on Haifa Street,'' said Lt. Col. Scott Bleichwehl, a spokesman for the 1st Cavalry Division, which patrols Haifa Street. ''We have nothing in our reporting to substantiate those claims.''

Sunni residents have worried that the Bush administration's decision to send 17,500 more soldiers to Baghdad to combat Sunni insurgents under a new security plan will enable the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to force Sunnis out of their neighborhoods with American assistance. Many refer to the Haifa Street fighting as the first effort of that plan.

The newest plan is at least the sixth designed to bring peace to the capital. All have failed.

''We have been here before,'' Casey said.

But he added that he was optimistic that the new effort would be more successful because there was more Iraqi ''buy-in,'' due to the Iraqi government being in charge of the plan.

With ''sustained political support, and the concentrated efforts on all sides, I believe that this plan can work, '' Casey said.

The plan, which President Bush spelled out last Wednesday in a nationally televised address, calls for U.S. troops to work side by side with their Iraqi counterparts in a neighborhood-by-neighborhood sweep of the capital. At the same time, the Iraqi government, with the help of the U.S., has pledged to pump $10 billion in aid into the city's economy, creating jobs and rebuilding infrastructure.

Bush said Iraqi officials also had committed to resolving key disputes that fueled sectarian tensions, such as how the nation should split oil revenues, how to integrate some members of deposed dictator Saddam Hussein's Baath Party into the government and how to fix problems with the constitution.

Casey said Monday that it would take months to measure whether the plan was working.

On Haifa Street, residents said they were already concerned about its results.

Iraqi troops, backed by American helicopters and jet fighters, moved into Haifa Street last week in what Iraqi officials said was a campaign to rid the area of al-Qaida and Sunni insurgents, who'd been welcomed by residents who were former Baath party members.

Residents said then that the Iraqi army moved in only after they'd repulsed efforts to take over the neighborhood by members of the Mahdi Army militia, which is loyal to anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. Sadr controls the largest bloc in the Iraqi parliament and is a major backer of Maliki.

A 44-year-old Haifa Street resident who asked to be identified only as Abu Mohammed for security reasons said that only three or four families of an estimated 60 families remained on his block. He said no vehicles were allowed to drive through the area and that there was no electricity, kerosene or running water. Snipers have taken positions on the rooftops.

''They are shooting randomly,'' he said. ''Today, they shot Raghad Marwan, a 28-year-old young woman who was trying to get food. She got a bullet in her shoulder, and now we don't know how to get her to the hospital.''

He said several families were evacuating the neighborhood: ''I can see the families with their children walking in the narrow streets of the neighborhood taking nothing but small bags.''

''The new security plan has given militias permission to go into our houses and apartments and kill people,'' Abu Mohammed said. ''This plan targets Sunnis and forces them to leave their homes. And they are.''

Original article posted here.