Nir Rosen - Aftermath

Eventually, I told them I would go with them, but not if they handcuffed me. They put me in the back of their truck, and we drove to their headquarters. The officer stared at my IDs for several minutes, not saying anything. He was probably worried about having to deal with all the officials I was naming in case I was telling the truth, and in the end he let me go. His men told me to shave my beard so I wouldn’t look Saudi. In retrospect, despite my fear, they were not abusive. It was a change, a sign that they took their role as “the state” more seriously. I would see more and more of this in the next two years.

I waited for my friend at an Interior Ministry safe house. Inside, a barber agreed to give me a “Mahdi Army”-style shave. Televisions were all tuned to Shiite religious channels showing Muharram processions. In the lobby of the ministry itself, and in the minister’s reception area, the Shiite TV channel Al Furat was showing live images of religious processions in Karbala. My friend, who was the minister’s secretary, showed up late and explained that as he was driving to the office he saw men in a pickup truck belonging to the Facility Protection Service (FPS) stop on the street, grab a young man, blindfold and handcuff him, and throw him in the back of their truck. The FPS was a government militia that protected ministries and other Iraqi government offices but was notoriously lawless and loyal to sectarian Shiite militias. My friend complained that it was impossible to control these FPS guys. As I left I saw that Shiite religious flags were placed on the roof of the Interior Ministry across the street.

The televisions in the lobby and waiting room at the Interior Ministry were tuned in to the Shiite religious channels. Shiite religious music blared from radios of police vehicles. Shiite religious banners hung on the walls of the Interior Ministry and other ministries, while Shiite religious flags waved in the wind above the nearby Oil Ministry and other government buildings. It may have seemed harmless, but it made Sunnis feel like they did not belong and were not wanted. It was a way of letting them know that the state now belonged to sectarian Shiites. But while Shiites seemed to be firmly in control of the establishment, one group that had been marginalized by Saddam was beginning to feel similarly marginalized by the new order. The angry, poor revolutionary Shiites who found a political voice in Muqtada al-Sadr and whose influence peaked during the civil war had found that their power had started to wane after the Mahdi Army cease-fire.

Like many mass movements, the Sadrists were misunderstood and reviled. Muqtada was often mischaracterized as unintelligent or boorish, despite surviving a Baathist regime that killed his father and brothers and an American occupation that swore to kill or capture him. The Mahdi Army was often described as a militia, but it was also a people’s army. All Iraqi men have at least a rifle and some ammunition in their homes, and Muqtada’s force was composed of such volunteers, who could never be fully demobilized or disarmed because they armed, and in many cases mobilized, themselves. At one time the Sadrists were probably also the largest humanitarian organization in Iraq, providing sustainable assistance to more Iraqis (albeit Shiites) than anybody else. No other movement or leader in Iraq had such devoted and inspired followers. In a volatile and fissiparous Iraq, the Sadrists were there to stay. Muqtada represented the anger of many people. He was oppressed and angry like them; he had suffered like them. He did not lead them; they led him. He was only as popular as he was angry, and when he stopped being angry, stopped being “anti,” his popularity went down. After he ordered his militia to freeze, it was common to hear Mahdi Army men say, “ Assayid jundi wasarahna ” (the sayyid [Muqtada] is a soldier, and we have relieved him of his duty).

In February 2008 I revisited Abul Hassan’s office in the Mustafa Husseiniya. When I had last seen him he had been brooding over the efficacy of the Mahdi Army’s cease-fire. But now he seemed absorbed by more mundane pressures of sustaining the social welfare network that the Sadrists had built for their base of supporters in the slums. During one of my visits I found him distributing, in his rarely empty office, bags of clothes and rations to poor women in black abayas , many of whom were from displaced families, expelled by Sunni militias. Most Iraqis had depended on the Public Distribution Service, an extremely efficient ration system that provided essential staples for all Iraqi families under the former regime. But the system had stopped functioning because of security problems, corruption, and sectarianism. Most families did not receive even half of what they used to, and displaced Iraqis, especially Sunnis, received nothing at all. The Sadrist movement was supplementing the rations for Shiites as well as it could, although some of that assistance may have come from extortion and other militia activities.

When I visited Abul Hassan another time, his office was still crowded. Two young men from the Iraqi Security Forces were among those visiting him. One was a member of the FPS; the other belonged to the Iraqi National Guard. Both proudly told me they were also members of the Mahdi Army. “We want you to know that most of the Sadrists are working for the government,” said the FPS member. They listed their many friends who had been killed by Sunni militias. “Many of my friends got killed in Adhamiya, Sleikh, and Bab al-Muadham when they were heading to their work,” he told me. “One of my friends got killed, and they burned his body. His body stayed in the street for two days. It was only when the security forces intervened that his family was able to get his body.” “I’m a soldier in Iraqi army, the Iraqi National Guard, for three years,” said his friend. “We saw that none of the political parties or movements are working for the benefit of the people except this movement. The Sadrists are devoting their time and effort to help Iraqi people. I thought the best way to help the people is by joining them.”

One man had absconded to Abul Hassan’s office because the Americans were looking for him. “They came to our house,” he told me. “They arrested my brother after destroying our furniture. They said that I’m wanted by them. They took him because he is my brother. If they do not find the one they are after, they will take the brothers. Sometimes they take the father.” Several men were seated on the floor awaiting Abul Hassan’s arbitration services. He was to adjudicate a legal dispute over real estate. “We can’t reach the registration directorate,” they told me, because it was in Adhamiya, a Sunni stronghold. “We might get killed if we go there because of the sectarian problems.”

Abul Hassan’s faithful assistant, Haidar, was always present. He had the dark skin of southern Iraqis. He was thin and muscular, and always wore a cap. He sedulously did Abul Hassan’s bidding, and was in charge of feeding the guests and making tea for them. Haidar and his family had lived in Abu Ghraib. He insisted that there had been no sectarian tensions in the area before the war, and said he had played soccer with Sunnis. Things got worse after the battles in Falluja in 2004, he said, when foreign radical Sunnis killed people they accused of being spies and threatened to slaughter Shiites. In 2006, because of these threats, he and his family were forced to leave Abu Ghraib and come to Shaab.

I persuaded Haidar to show me his new home in Shaab and introduce me to his family. His mother told me about the fraught circumstances that led to her family’s flight. “Abu Ghraib was a Sunni area,” she said, reflecting on her old neighborhood, “the Sunnis are good people. After one of my sons joined the police, we were told to leave the area, but there was nowhere to go. I accepted my son joining the police because we needed money. His father was a police sergeant, and after the war there were not enough jobs. Seven months after he took the job, we were one of about seventeen houses that received letters threatening us to leave the area. My two sons came to Shaab and found us a house to rent, and we stayed for a year there. My other son, the policeman, was killed during the course of duty. That house was not good enough for us.”