Nir Rosen - Aftermath

Adil was summoned to meet Lieutenant Colonel Fadhil, the former brigade intelligence section commander. Wujud and another Shiite militiaman were there. “They stole our vehicles and weapons,” he said, “and Wujud told INPs to be careful because you give Americans information. In front of Lieutenant Colonel Fadhil, Wujud told me, ‘Adil, be careful, we will kill you.’ My boss was sitting there and didn’t do anything.” I asked him why he had not arrested Wujud. “They know us,” he said. “They know where we live. I’m not scared for myself, but I’m scared for my family.”

Wujud worked with Ziyad al-Shamari, a leader of what the Americans called a “special group” because of a poor translation of what may be better termed a “private group,” as Iraqis called Shiite militias and gangs not loyal to Muqtada. Adil added that a man called Abu Yusuf, a contractor who was working with the Americans in Combat Outpost Blackfoot, also worked with Wujud and owned the car used in a recent attack. Adil warned that Wujud and Abu Yusuf stole cars and might blow them up to make it look like Al Qaeda was responsible. Wujud once lived in Dora but now lived in eastern Baghdad’s Ur neighborhood, and he was in charge of dispatching men to Iran for training. General Karim was also from Ur. “He is Mahdi Army,” Adil said, claiming Karim had cleansed Sunnis from other parts of Baghdad and its surrounding towns when he was with the Fourth Brigade. “No one can talk about the Mahdi Army in our battalion or police or in the Ministry of Interior.”

Lieutenant Colonel Fadhil was replaced by Lieutenant Colonel Majid. Majid asked Adil to collect the ransom for a Sunni man whose release had been ordered by the Iraqi courts. “He was not Al Qaeda,” Adil said. Majid wanted four thousand dollars, but the prisoner was related to Lieutenant Amar, and his family told him. Like most officers accused of pro-Shiite sectarianism, Majid was promoted out of the position where he caused trouble and moved from division to brigade. “No orders come to us to arrest Shiites, but many gangs from the Mahdi Army are kidnapping people for money,” Adil said, “If he is Sunni, they take money and kill him.”

“Our command,” he said, referring to General Karim, “wants to work with the Mahdi Army.” Karim praised the Mahdi Army when the Americans were not around, he said, and complained when others criticized them. Adil knew Karim’s friend Abu Jaafar as well. “Abu Jaafar is a bad guy,” he said. “He has groups fighting in Mahala 828. He knows Ziyad al-Shamari. He always puts his nose in our operations and tells our commanders where to open checkpoints. Abu Jaafar was a mechanic before the war, so how is he a sheikh? He worked with special groups and made deals with them to fight. Abu Jaafar calls every Sunni Al Qaeda.” Adil believed Abu Jaafar worked for the Badr militia. “Badr came here [from Iran] and took the government and assassinated former Baathists, officers, and pilots,” Adil said.

One day I met Adil in his neighborhood. Though it was not far from where he used to live and still dominated by the Mahdi Army, he was less known there. He grew nervous as we approached an INP checkpoint. He didn’t want them to know who he was, in case his men had informed the Mahdi Army about his attitude, which could make him or his family a target. At home his two boys watched television in his small living room. “I have decided to leave my job,” he told me. “No one supports us.” Lieutenant Amar, a former Republican Guard officer, also wanted to quit; together they would try to join the army. He was feeling pressure from his chain of command, and had been accused of being Sunni. A few months earlier he was accused by the Interior Ministry’s internal affairs department of selling cars to terrorists, and five days before I met him he heard rumors that the ministry had issued an order to fire him. When I mentioned Adil’s concerns to Gottlieb, he said that Adil was always threatening to quit.

I visited Shaab, Adil’s old neighborhood in eastern Baghdad, to attend Friday prayers at the Shurufi Mosque, a center for Muqtada’s followers. My friend Firas picked me up, the same friend who a year earlier had been too scared to let anybody at the Mustafa Husseiniya know that he knew me. To avoid certain checkpoints we drove through a former Iraqi air base that had been looted after the war and was full of indigent Shiite squatters. It was called the Hawasim neighborhood by locals, a reference to looting. Small children with matted hair played barefoot in mounds of garbage. Sewage flooded the roads. Donkeys and sheep dug through trash searching for something edible. “Long live Asa’ib al-Haq,” said graffiti on a wall, referring to a Sadrist resistance group that split from the Mahdi Army. My friend put a cassette of Mahdi Army songs in his stereo. As the chanting and wailing began, he joked, “Now we are Mahdi Army.” The song was a refutation of rumors that Muqtada fled to Iran when the surge started. “He prefers death over leaving his home,” the men sang.

We drove past local Shiite ISVs the Americans had hired to pressure the Mahdi Army. The men wore masks to conceal their faces and avoid retaliation, and they were protected by Iraqi police manning the checkpoints with them, defeating the purpose of having them there. Graffiti on the walls called for death to the Awakening men.

We arrived before the noon prayers so we could talk to the imam and listen to the sermon. I met Sayyid Jalil Sarkhi al-Hassani in a green guest room. He was seated on the floor reading a religious book. He had a beard with no mustache and wore wire-framed glasses and a brown cloak. As we spoke his men prepared him for his sermon, placing a white funeral shroud around his shoulders, a symbol that he was ready for martyrdom. On one side of the room was a large painting of Muqtada’s father, Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr, who was Sayyid Jalil’s teacher. Sayyid Jalil lived in Sadr City and normally ran a mosque there, but for the past year he had led Friday prayers at the Shurufi Mosque.

When I spoke to him, he denied that the reduction in violence was the result of the Mahdi Army freeze. “That might mean that the Mahdi Army was the cause for the violence, and that’s not true,” he said. “The political situation is not in the hands of the government, it’s in the hands of the Americans. The American forces needed some security. They can increase the violence or decrease it. The Mahdi Army froze because of rumors that it is the source of violence and the Mahdi Army is the reason for the sectarian fighting and the fighting between Shiites, especially after the Karbala incident. That’s why Muqtada saw that it is necessary to re-educate the army and keep them away from the field, and despite this the violence is still occurring and the fighting between Shiites is still occurring. After the Mahdi Army freeze it appeared that they were not responsible for the war among people, so now we see that the Mahdi Army is working on education and leadership. Muqtada ordered his people to pray, to worship, to read, and to preach to general education so that they will show the real picture of the Mahdi Army.” He stressed that the Sadrists opposed injustice and were nationalists. In truth, however, the significant decrease in violence immediately following the Mahdi Army cease-fire belied his assertion and proved just how responsible the Sadrists were for the fighting.

Inside the mosque was painted light green. About five hundred men sat on straw mats. Fluorescent lights and fans hung down from the ceiling. There was a curtained-off section for women. The dome of the mosque was still damaged from a 2006 car bomb attack. The first hossa (slogan) that was shouted asked the men in the crowd to pray for Muqtada, for the release of prisoners, and for death to the Americans and their agents. Another one asked God to grant victory to Muqtada and the Mahdi Army. “Death is an honor to us, arrest is honor to us, resisting the Americans is an honor to us!” went another. Most of the sermon dealt with religious matters and the upcoming month of pilgrimage to Mecca. Sayyid Jalil asked his followers to “pray for other Muslim people in Palestine, Afghanistan, and in all the world, and curse the occupier and the Israelis, and grant victory to all Muslims, to get rid of the Americans, of dictatorships and secularism.” He asked the people to raise their hands in prayer “for victory for all mujahideen in the world” and for freedom.