Gorilla’s Guides

US and British forces are increasingly playing a supporting role in the Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s stalled offensive against the Mehdi Army militia. American aircraft launched air strikes in Basra yesterday and fought militiamen on the streets in Baghdad while British advisers have also been assisting Iraqi troops in Basra.

Mr Maliki retreated from his demand that militiamen hand over their weapons by yesterday and extended the deadline to 8 April. This is a tacit admission that the Iraqi army and police have failed to oust the Mehdi Army from any of its strongholds in the capital and in southern Iraq. The Iraqi army has either met stubborn resistance from Mehdi Army fighters or soldiers and police have refused to fight or changed sides. “We did not expect the fight to be this intense,” said the officer from a 300-strong commando unit that has been pinned down in the Tamimiyah district in Basra, where the supporters of Muqtada al-Sadr, the leader of the Mehdi Army, have strong support.

The officer said four of his men were killed and 15 wounded in the fighting. “Some of the men told me that they did not want to go back to the fight until they have better support and more protection,” he added. The Interior Ministry threatened that the men would be court-martialled for refusing to fight. Government troops arriving in Basra complain that they are being fired on by local police loyal to Mr Sadr. Members of one police unit had fist fights with their officers after they refused to join the battle.

March 27 (Reuters) - Following are security developments in Iraq at 1530 GMT on Thursday.

* BAGHDAD - Gunmen kidnapped Tahseen al-Sheikhli, a civilian spokesman for the Baghdad security plan, designed to make the capital safer, from his home in Baghdad, police said.

* BAGHDAD - The Green Zone diplomatic and government compound in central Baghdad was hit by repeated rocket and mortar fire in some of the worst barrages in months.

* BAGHDAD - Shi’ite militants clashed with Iraqi security forces in Baghdad’s Washash, Iskan, Shurta, Hurriya, Kamiliya, Fudhailiya, Ur, Shula, Mashtal and Sadr City districts, Baghdad security plan spokesman Major-General Qassim Moussawi said. Civilians and security force members had been killed or wounded, he said, but he gave no figures.

* BAGHDAD - Eight soldiers were wounded in clashes with Mehdi Army fighters in Talabiya in eastern Baghdad, police said.

BASRA - Fighting between Iraqi security forces and the Mehdi Army militia continued in Basra. A police source in Baghdad put the latest death toll at 51 people killed and 225 wounded since a major Iraqi military operation began on Tuesday.

KUT - At least 44 people have been killed, including four policemen, and 75 wounded in two-day clashes in the city of Kut, 170 km (105 miles) southeast of Baghdad, said Abdul Hanin al-Imara, police chief of Wasit province.

BAGHDAD - Three people were killed and 15 wounded by a mortar attack on a bus terminal in central Baghdad, police said.

BAGHDAD - Gunmen attacked an Iraqi army checkpoint in the Sadr City district of northeastern Baghdad, wounding four soldiers, police said.

DAQUQ - Gunmen attacked an Iraqi army patrol in the town of Daquq, 45 km (30 miles) south of Kirkuk, killing four soldiers, police said.

AL-RIFAI - Gunmen attacked Iraqi troops heading to Basra, killing two soldiers in the town of al-Rifai, near Nassiriya, 375 km (235 miles) southwest of Baghdad, police said.

KIRKUK - A car bomb killed two Kurdish Peshmerga security force members and wounded six, including two civilians, in the northern city of Kirkuk, 250 km (155 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.

MAHAWEEL - A roadside bomb exploded near a police patrol, killing four policemen and wounding four in the town of Mahaweel, 75 km (45 miles) south of Baghdad, police said.

NEAR BAQUBA - The bodies of four men were found with gunshot wounds to the head in a village near Baquba, 65 km (40 miles) north of Baghdad, a hospital source said.

BAGHDAD - The bodies of three people were found in Baghdad on Wednesday, police said.

OTHER DEVELOPMENTS

BAGHDAD - Thousands of supporters of Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr marched in Baghdad to protest against a three-day-old crackdown against his followers in the southern city of Basra and to call for the downfall of the U.S.-backed government.

Reuters AlertNet - FACTBOX-Security developments in Iraq, March 27

WASHINGTON, Mar 26 (IPS) - The escalation of fighting between Mahdi Army militiamen and their Shiite rivals, which could mark the end of Moqtada al-Sadr’s self-imposed ceasefire, also exposes Gen. David Petraeus’s strategy for controlling Sadr’s forces as a failure.

Petraeus reacted immediately to Sunday’s rocket attacks on the Green Zone by blaming them on Iran. He told the BBC the rockets were “Iranian provided, Iranian-made rockets”, and that they were launched by groups that were funded and trained by the Quds Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Petraeus said this was “in complete violation of promises made by President [Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad and other most senior Iranian leaders to their Iraqi counterparts”.

Petraeus statement was clearly intended to divert attention from a development that threatens one of the two main pillars of the administration’s claim of progress in Iraq — the willingness of Sadr to restrain the Mahdi Army, even in the face of systematic raids on its leadership by the U.S. military and its Iraqi allies.

The rocket attacks appear to have been one of several actions by the Mahdi Army to warn the United States and the Iraqi government to halt their systematic raids aimed at driving the Sadrists out of key Shiite centres in the south. They were followed almost immediately by Mahdi Army clashes with rival Shiite militiamen in Basra, Sadr City and Kut and a call for a nationwide general strike to demand the release of Sadrist detainees.

Even more pointed was a strong warning from Sadr aide Abdul-Hadi al-Mohammedawi to the United States as well as to the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI), whose Badr Organisation militiamen, in the uniforms of Iraqi security forces, have targeted the Madhi Army throughout the south. “They don’t seem to realise that the Sadrist trend is like a volcano,” he told worshippers Friday in Kufa. “If it explodes, it will crush their rotten heads.”

The signs that the Madhi Army will no longer remain passive mark a major defeat for the U.S. military command’s strategy aimed at weakening the Mahdi Army.

When he took command in Iraq in early 2007, Petraeus recognised that the U.S. occupation forces could not afford to wage a full-fledged campaign against the Mahdi Army as a whole. Instead it adopted a strategy of dividing the Sadrist movement.

Petraeus and the ground commander in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno, hoped that there were leaders in the Sadrist movement who would be willing to give up further military resistance and accept the U.S. occupation and the existing government.