Under siege in Baghdad’s Mahdi army stronghold
This is to the Green Zone,’ said Kabi. ‘These are gifts to Maliki’s government.’ He and Abu Moussa al-Sadr both work for Iraq’s Ministry of Interior, which runs the police and is viewed as infiltrated by the Mahdi army. They said many police officers had defected and were now fighting with the Mahdi army.
The fighters also said they received neither support nor training from Iran, as American military commanders allege. Their Iranian weapons, they said, were bought from smugglers. They said they had been fighting only Americans and had not engaged with any Iraqi forces and insisted they were still obeying Sadr’s cease-fire and would stop fighting if he gave the order. ‘We are allowed to defend ourselves,’ said fighter Abu Nargis.
Around 3pm, it was time to leave. ‘We’re going to the hospital to see Akeel’s body,’ Abu Moussa al-Sadr said. ‘Then we are going back to fight.’ An hour later, another group were fighting US troops. Militiamen jumped into the street, then quickly vanished. The quick movements were a tactic. Outside his parents’ house, Thahabi explained that fighters would direct a barrage of bullets at the Stryker to distract the soldiers while another group tried to slip a bomb under the vehicle.
A father of four who studied psychology in college, Thahabi looked more like a professor than a militia adviser. He clutched three mobile phones, each using a different network. When the Americans drive by, they jam the signals of the main network provider to neutralise the use of phones as detonators.
The fighters’ larger strategy, Thahabi said, was to draw pressure away from the Mahdi army in Basra. Many Iraqi soldiers fighting in Basra had families in Sadr City. ‘They will be worried for their families. They will fear what will happen to them. It’s about reducing morale.’
Read in full: Under siege in Baghdad’s Mahdi army stronghold | World news | The Observer
Indexed under: Baghdad, green zone, Mahdi Army, Sadr City