Aftermath

by Nir Rosen

  Wilhite’s low-intensity campaign against the Mahdi Army operations continued until Muqtada al-Sadr’s “falling out” with the government in late March and early April 2008, when Prime Minister Maliki declared full-scale war on the Mahdi Army. “At this point, things transitioned very rapidly to a kinetic fight, and for a few brief moments all hell broke loose,” Wilhite said. On March 27, the Mahdi Army began attacking symbols of the government of Iraq (like Iraqi army safe houses and checkpoints), and verbally threatened and intimidated workers in several government buildings in the area. Just about every predominantly Shiite community experienced a skirmish of some kind that day. At midday the Third Company safe house was attacked with small-arms fire and three RPGs from inside Washash. Wilhite’s company teamed up with their attached military transition team and the remainder of the Iraqi army to respond. Unlike previous engagements that were short in duration, this one continued even after U.S. forces moved in to support the Iraqi army. “By the end of the day,” Wilhite said, “all four of my platoons, the ‘mitt,’ my sniper assets, and half of the IA battalion had been involved in what turned into a five-hour engagement.” Under orders from his Iraqi army superiors, Wael, the local IA commander, was prevented from entering Washash to root out pockets of resistance. As the Mahdi Army drew short on ammunition and it got dark, the firefight petered out. Similar to the September 2007 operation in which Naji was killed, this one continued with persistent security operations for several days after the fighting subsided, with no new contacts except for when a Mahdi Army sniper killed an IA soldier the first night. It was a turning point—Wael and the Iraqi army wanted the Mahdi Army out of the area for good.

  Naji had operated in a very brutal manner, freely using torture and aggressive intimidation tactics to hold on to power. He had used contacts in Kadhimiya, Shula, and Sadr City to assist and support his operations in the first few months of the U.S. presence in the area. For the most part, under Naji, the Mahdi Army operated fairly independently from a “higher headquarters.” There were occasional clashes within the Sadrist community, but outside Washash, no real divisive internal disputes were monitored. By the time Hakami replaced Naji as leader, his power base was not nearly as extensive and his ability to expand to the south was limited.

  “Salim never saw Naji’s body, nor did I,” Wilhite said. Word on the street was that he had been killed by rival members of the Ugaidat tribe from another mahala. With everyone fixated on Naji, Wilhite found it strange that Salim had recorded conversations with him on his cellphone. Some questioned whether Salim was actually colluding with JAM, though it became clear, as Wilhite got to know him and his family situation, that he was not. “He walked a thin line in the beginning,” Wilhite said. “He dove pretty far into the deep end to find out critical information. He often got in trouble with his brigade, division, or Ministry of Intelligence for his actions. I have to say, he was keenly aware of second- and third-order effects of what we were doing at the time. I am happy to see he came out fairly unscathed.”

  THE CONSTANT HARASSMENT by U.S. forces was putting pressure on the Sadrists, and in early 2008 Baha al-Araji, the Sadrist member of Parliament, privately complained that “we lost our respect on the streets. We can’t stay like this anymore with everybody attacking us.” It was the holy month of Muharram when I spent much of my time with Abul Hassan in the Ur district. During this month Shiites commemorate the singular event in their history, when Hussein, grandson of the Prophet, and his followers were slaughtered by the hated Yazid. Ceremonies culminate on Ashura, the tenth day of Muharram, the anniversary of Hussein’s martyrdom in Karbala. Shiites continue to lament Hussein’s martyrdom and view his battle as a struggle against injustice and tyranny. Ayatollah Khomeini declared the Shah of Iran to be Yazid before the Iranian Revolution and Shiite militiamen declared Israel to be Yazid following its invasion of Lebanon in 1982. Abul Hassan and his followers now agreed that America was even worse than Saddam. He compared Hussein’s battle against Yazid with the Sadrist battle against America. “They rejected what we reject today,” he explained, reminding me of the expression “Every day is Ashura and every land is Karbala.” “In every time there is a Yazid and a Hussein,” he told me, adding that America, Israel, and Great Britain were the new Yazid.

  I revisited the Shurufi Mosque after Ashura in February 2008. It was a Friday, and straw mats were placed outside for the overflowing crowds. I saw a pistol partially covered by one man’s prayer carpet. Fans hung down from the ceiling. Hundreds of men strolled in. Many were fit young men in tracksuits, members of the Mahdi Army. As they sat to listen to the sermon, men would periodically stand up and shout a hossa in hoarse voices, to which the audience would respond, “Our God prays for Muhammad and his family!” One man called for freeing the prisoners from American prisons. Another shouted, “Death to spies and the Americans!” Other hossas I heard were: “He sacrificed his life for us, death is an honor for us, arrest is honor for us, resisting the Americans is honor for us!” and “Pray for Sadr, release of all the arrested people, and in a loud voice, death to the Americans and to their agents!” and “Pray in a loud voice, please God, give victory to Sadr’s son and the Mahdi Army!”

  After the prayers I spoke to Sayyid Jalil, the imam of the Shurufi Mosque, and asked him to explain the importance of Imam Hussein and the story of Ashura. “Hussein was the father of freedom and free people, who defended the rights of the working class and poor people,” Sayyid Jalil told me.

  “Today’s Yazid is Bush and those who follow Bush,” he said. “They are all Yazid. There is a Hussein and Yazid for every era. Everyone who oppresses people, steals their freedom, and forcibly shuts their mouths is Yazid. Anyone who attacks people, occupies their land, and claims he came to free them is Yazid. Yazid’s wish was for everyone to kneel before him so he could keep his seat forever.” Muqtada had said no, Sayyid Jalil told me, which was exactly what Imam Hussein had said, “and also what our father and the father of all Muslims, Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr, had previously said—he said no to Saddam. This word came from Hussein when he said no to Yazid. This impressed people and attracted them to the leader.” Unfortunately, some politicians were supporting the occupation, he said, and therefore were supporting Yazid. “The leader,” as he called Muqtada, was popular because he opposed the occupation and supported Hussein’s revolution. I asked him how Muqtada could lead without the proper religious degree. Muqtada was a Hojatullah, he told me, a clerical rank that entitled him to lead “the biggest group in the Iraqi nation,” meaning the Sadrists. Hassan Nasrallah of Lebanese Hizballah was a great leader, but he didn’t have a high religious degree either, Sayyid Jalil told me. “A degree is not necessary to make a leader,” he said. “Many leaders don’t have degrees, and that doesn’t make them unpopular.”

  “We have not seen anything of this alleged democracy,” he continued. “We have seen destruction, we have seen pain. Now our young sons are living under the force of occupation, they are suffering the pain of prisons, not for any guilt they have but because they said, ‘Allah is our God.’ This is something that everyone should have the right to say. The occupation doesn’t want that. They don’t want anyone to say no to the Great Satan. If the occupation came for the sake of Iraq and Iraqis, we wouldn’t see these massacres that are carried out in the name of freedom, humanity, and democracy. In fact, we would have seen the opposite of that. We view Hussein’s revolution as a revolution for all humankind. It includes old people, children, and young people who are filled with passion and believe in their cause. Every honest man should believe in the revolution of Hussein if they oppose occupation, oppression, and slavery.”

  FIVE YEARS AFTER a war launched allegedly to liberate Iraq’s Shiite majority, American planes bombed Shiite neighborhoods in Baghdad and Basra while dispatching their weak Iraqi proxy forces in a failed attempt to crush the Sadrists. Curfews were imposed and American snipers killed Iraqi civilians. The fighting between Muqtada’s supporters and rival Shiite milit
ias backed by Prime Minister Maliki’s Dawa Party, as well as the large Iranian-created Badr Organization of the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council (formerly the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, or SCIRI), signaled the end of the civil war between Sunnis and Shiites.

  Until 2007 the Sadrists had tacitly cooperated with the Badr Organization to purge Sunnis from Baghdad and the Iraqi state. There had been exceptions, as the two groups were rivals and represented different classes among the Shiites. But during the civil war, the tacit alliance between the two Shiite factions was very effective, and that success was one of the main reasons violence was down in Iraq. There were fewer people dying because there were fewer people to kill; the cleansing had nearly been completed, with Sunnis and Shiites inhabiting separate walled enclaves run by warlords and their militias. The security gains American officials bragged about were largely the result of the expulsion of millions of Iraqis from their homes and the construction of walls to divide or imprison them. But the inter-Shiite fighting opened up the possibilities of cross-sectarian alliances between Shiite nationalists opposed to the occupation and federalism and Sunnis who had virtually the same goals. The one factor militating against such an alliance was the deep hatred many Sunnis felt for the Sadrists after two or three years in which the Mahdi Army slaughtered Sunni civilians without discrimination. At a minimum, Sunni militiamen could sit back and enjoy watching their Shiite opponents getting weaker. The peak of cross-sectarian unity was in the spring of 2004, when Sunni and Shiite militias collaborated in fighting the occupation in Falluja and the south. Tragically for them, sectarianism divided them and weakened resistance to the occupation, ending in a costly civil war that tore Iraq apart. In February 2008 leading Sadrists warned that the freeze would not be extended later that month, but Muqtada did extend the Mahdi Army freeze.

  Between the winter of 2007 and the winter of 2008, Maliki’s premiership transformed. Maliki won the trust of many Sunnis by making a surprise move and targeting Shiite militias. The Mahdi Army had overextended itself; Muqtada was not in control, and many Shiite militias had become mere criminal gangs. Nowhere was this more true than in the southern port city of Basra. Not only is Basra Iraq’s second-largest city; it is also where most of the country’s oil is concentrated, and it is from there that most of the oil is exported as well. A variety of Shiite militias and gangs controlled it, imposing an extremist reign of terror and letting the city and its port fall into the hands of mafias as the British, who nominally occupied the city, did little. In late March 2008 Maliki launched Operation Sawlat al-Fursan, or Charge of the Knights, dispatching fifteen thousand soldiers to Basra. There they attacked Mahdi Army fighters in the Sadr City-like slums of Hayaniya, Gzeiza, Jubeila, and Jumhuria, hoping to arrest those they described as criminals. Similar operations occurred throughout the south. Maliki described the targets as outlaws, not mentioning the Mahdi Army by name. Muqtada did not lift his cease-fire, but he did not tell his men to disarm either, and fighting spread throughout Shiite parts of Iraq. Iraqi Security Forces were unable to defeat the various Shiite militias in Basra, and it seemed as if they might even be repelled by the well-armed fighters. American armored vehicles and airstrikes were necessary to rescue the beleaguered ISF. Maliki’s seventy-two-hour deadline for the Mahdi Army to disarm was extended by several days, and his government even announced a weapons buy-back program. Maliki himself flew down to oversee the operation. Curfews were imposed in Shiite towns throughout the country, and the security forces acted with brutality. Up to 1,500 members of the ISF refused to fight, while about one hundred surrendered their weapons to the Mahdi Army. Rockets and mortars fell on the Green Zone in Baghdad. Many Iraqi civilians were also killed in the American airstrikes in Basra and Baghdad. The fighting spread to Washash, where the Mahdi Army fought the ISF for five days before deciding to abandon the neighborhood. The next month a few Sunni families returned to the area.

  Before the operation was initiated, Hassan Hashem, secretary to Interior Minister Jawad al-Bolani, carried a personal message to Muqtada in Iran, telling him to evacuate his people because they were about to get hit. But Maliki’s decision to target unruly Shiite militias, regardless of his motivations, was one of the most important factors ensuring the civil war would end. Sunnis like my Awakening friend Osama in Dora suddenly changed their mind about the prime minister and started supporting him.

  Maliki’s move was also a surprise for the Americans. A British general in Basra complained to me that the Iraqis had appropriated a British military plan for attacking the Shiite militias in the city, but he may have been looking to restore a wounded ego. “Charge of the Knights was a British-inspired plan,” he told me eight months later. “It caught everybody by surprise. We were going to do it later. Charge of the Knights was written by the Royal Marines, but it was predicated on the Iraqi military being where they are now.” Ambassador Ryan Crocker and General Petraeus had only twelve to twenty-four hours’ notice of the offensive. “It is an open secret that it did not go well in the first few days and only turned around when the U.S. started to provide support, mostly intelligence, airpower, and planners,” a senior American military official working on Iraq told me. “But I think Maliki started to realize that if his security forces didn’t control the country, then he wasn’t really the leader. I think it was a purely institutional move to assert the primacy of the prime minister. How Maliki became a nationalist is a long story that I don’t totally understand myself. I think part of it was just growing into the job. I also think that there was a seminal moment in Basra when his personal bodyguard—and I understand the two were close—was killed by a Sadrist round.”

  An American intelligence official dealing with Iraq told me that the Mahdi Army’s attempt to take over Karbala had affected Maliki, especially when Mahdi Army rockets landed too close to Maliki’s house. “The Basra offensive caught us by surprise,” the official told me. “He had no logistics, no plan, only General Mohan [Mohan al-Freiji, Maliki’s chief of security in Basra]. No food, no place for them to sleep. Petraeus and Crocker took advantage of it and saved his ass. Maliki also wanted to go to Sadr City and Maysan, but the U.S. felt he wasn’t ready. Maliki realized he could be a nationalist leader.” Importantly, it was Iran that brokered the cease-fire between Maliki and the various Mahdi Army groups.

  The Iraqi decision to go into Basra was made independently; the Americans heard of the operation only after it started, when Maliki flew down with the key leadership of the Iraqi Security Forces to oversee it. Petraeus and Crocker were extremely worried when Maliki did this, but Bush, apparently, was supportive and said, “He’s finally doing it.” “Maliki goes to Basra and takes on Iranian-backed stooges,” an American intelligence official told me. “He is the one Arab leader who has taken on with force an Iranian-backed group.” But there was a tense seventy-two-hour window during which Maliki’s forces were surrounded. When Americans came to Basra, with Navy SEALs and air support, they came in lightly, but they turned the tide. But once the Americans helped swing things in favor of the ISF, “they gave us the finger,” Lieut. Col. P.J. Dermer complained to me. Dermer worked closely with the Iraqi army; even when the Americans were rescuing them, he said, the Iraqis just did whatever they wanted. “Maliki committed his men to battle knowing there was an American corps on the ground,” Dermer told me. “What Maliki did [seizing the initiative against the Shiite militias] was brilliant, but his guys sucked. We bailed them out, so when [Gen.] Abud [Qanbar] entered Sadr City, he entered without a shot being fired at them.”

  Having the Americans come to the rescue may have seemed like a failure at first, but it won Maliki the support of more Iraqis, who saw it as a move against sectarian militias and demonstrated that he could take the initiative. He capitalized on his success by establishing tribal support councils throughout the south whose members benefited from his largesse and often acted as Maliki’s own Awakening councils, even arresting Mahdi Army men. It was a naked attempt to steal support
from Shiite groups that had a deeper grassroots base than the prime minister, and it worked. Maliki was beginning to expand and assert his control. He was at once targeting Sunni areas and Shiite areas. Following his successful challenges of the Mahdi Army in Baghdad and Basra, albeit with substantial U.S. support, he turned to Mosul. At the same time, he was consolidating control over the Shiite Maysan province and planning to target Al Qaeda in Diyala. The American victories in Najaf and Falluja in 2004 taught Iraqi groups that they could not remain for long under American bombardment, and it was better to disperse. Following Maliki’s American-assisted victories, he wisely adopted a key element of counterinsurgency theory and tried to establish the credibility of his government as the nonsectarian group that could protect the population.

  Dermer lived in the Baghdad Operations Center (BOC), working with General Abud Qanbar every day. In the beginning, the Americans led the briefings, but by the spring of 2008 the Iraqis had taken them over and would ask the Americans if they had anything to add only at the end. “Abud was a good man,” Dermer told me, “great for Iraq—a nationalist above religion. He ran his shop single-handedly; everything had to go through him. He didn’t rely on his staff enough. But he learned the importance of the media. Abud’s primary staff guy who handled the media was Maj. Gen. Qassim Atta. Abud called him first thing in the morning and last thing at night—what other military commander in the Middle East focuses on media so much?”