April 16, 2004
Ceerwan Aziz / Reuters
BEIRUT - Iraqi rebel Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr warned the United States on Friday that Iraqis would hit back with unimaginable ferocity if U.S. forces carried out a threat to kill or capture him.
"If I am killed or detained the Iraqi public will know how to respond with a force and severity whose extent no one will have imagined," al-Sadr told Lebanon's as-Safir newspaper in an interview.
"Their threats to kill or detain me are a result of their weakness and collapse in the face of what has happened, and is happening, in Iraq," he said, adding that he did not fear death.
With Washington pledging to kill or capture the cleric after his Mehdi Army militia launched an uprising, U.S. troops are now poised around the Shiite holy city of Najaf, whose center al-Sadr's loyalists control.
The top U.S. general said on Thursday talks were under way to avoid a bloodbath in Najaf. A delegation from Iran has been in Iraq to help mediate between U.S.-led forces and al-Sadr.
An al-Sadr spokesman said on Wednesday the young cleric had dropped conditions for entering negotiations with Washington, but al-Sadr has told some media otherwise. His opponents say his position fluctuates and he lacks credibility.
Al-Sadr made no mention of negotiations with the United States in the comments published on Friday, but condemned the U.S. occupation of Iraq and urged Iraqis to reject it.
"America, which purportedly crossed oceans to liberate Iraq and spread democracy, has instead of liberating it, occupied it, destroyed its infrastructure, and sown fear and panic among its citizens...and curbed every follower of freedom," al-Sadr said.
Recent weeks have been Iraq's bloodiest since Saddam Hussein was ousted a year ago. The U.S. military has lost at least 92 troops in combat since March 31 -- more than the total killed in the three-week war that toppled the former Iraqi leader.
"The latest resurgence of the Iraqi people has confirmed they are united behind the choice of liberating Iraq and protecting its unity," al-Sadr said.
'NAJAF IS A HOLY PLACE'
Earlier, Iraq’s top Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani, persuaded al-Sadr to drop defiant demands he had put forward to Iraqi politicians currently mediating the standoff. Among other things, al-Sadr demanded U.S. troops withdraw from all Iraqi cities, a condition the U.S. military was unlikely to accept.
Al-Sadr militiamen appeared to be preparing for a fight, moving into buildings and onto rooftops on Najaf’s outskirts, said Col. Dana J.H. Pittard, leader of the 2,500 U.S. troops amassed outside the city, ready to move in against al-Sadr.
“Najaf is a holy place,” said Kaysal Hazali, spokesman for al-Sadr. “If they attack it, God knows the results: It is not going to be good for the occupation.”
General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Iraq's U.S. administrator Paul Bremer was using "multiple channels" in talks to pacify Fallujah and avoid fighting in Najaf.
U.S. warplanes attacked targets in Fallujah, and a U.S. armored vehicle was destroyed in the fighting, witnesses said.
U.S. Marines assaulted rebels in the city west of Baghdad on April 5 in retaliation for the killing and mutilation of four U.S. private security guards in the Sunni bastion on March 31. Doctors say over 600 Iraqis have died there in fighting since.
Last Friday the U.S. military said it had suspended offensive operations in Fallujah, but would hit back if attacked. Talks to stabilize a shaky truce have led to relative calm interspersed with intense bouts of fighting and air strikes.
IRAN STEPS IN
An Iranian envoy headed to Najaf on Thursday in a mission to work out a solution to the U.S. standoff with a radical Shiite cleric, an intervention by a nation Washington has tried to keep out of Iraqi affairs and a sign of the eagerness to avert a U.S. attack on the holy city.
The diplomacy came as the Pentagon extended the duty of 20,000 troops in Iraq for the last year by 90 days. The extra troop strength is intended to help stabilize Iraq through June 30, when a transfer to a civilian government is planned.
In Baghdad, an Iranian delegation, headed by senior Iranian Foreign Ministry official Hussein Sedeqi, met Wednesday evening with Massoud Barzani, current president of the Iraqi Governing Council.
The talks were “positive” and the Iranians expressed their willingness to mediate the U.S. dispute with radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, said council member Mahmoud Othman. The Iranians headed to Najaf on Thursday, an al-Sadr aide said.
Hours after the announcement, gunmen killed a high-ranking diplomat from the Iranian Embassy in Baghdad. It was unclear whether the killing was linked to the mediation efforts.
INSIDE IRAQ
Iraq's ethnic and religious populations
Population: 24.7 million (2003 est.).
Largest cities: Baghdad (around 5 million), Mosul (1 million), Basra (600,000) and Kirkuk (420,000).
Ethnic groups: Arabs, 75-80 percent, Kurds, 15-20 percent, Others (Turkoman, Assyrians) 5 percent
Religious groups: Muslim 97 percent (Shiites 60-65 percent, Sunni 32-37 percent), Christian or others 3 percent
Background: Although in the minority, Sunnis dominated Iraq’s political life until the fall of Saddam Hussein. Saddam’s government kept a tight rein on the Shiite population and launched a bloody crackdown after a failed uprising after the 1991 Gulf War.
Where they live
* Shiites live mostly in southern Iraq and in Baghdad’s Sadr City
* Sunnis dominate Baghdad and regions northwest of the capital
* Kurds live in the hilly upland region northeast of Mosul
Languages: Arabic, Kurdish, Assyrian, ArmenianIraq has four major regions: desert in the west and southwest; rolling hills between the upper Euphrates and Tigris rivers; mountains in the north and northeast; and a floodplain in the center and southeast.
During the first Gulf War, Iraq intentionally spilled some 11 million barrels of oil into the gulf, tarring more than 800 miles of Kuwaiti and Saudi coastline. The cost of cleanup has been estimated at more than $700 million. Home to the world’s second largest oil reserves behind Saudi Arabia, Iraq’s economy has been heavily dependent on oil exports. But the industry is in poor shape, battered by more than 25 years of wars, sanctions and poor management.
Since the fall of Saddam Hussein, the U.S.-led coalition government has sought to introduce a modern free market system. Yet despite fresh investments in the oil industry and the education system, efforts have been hampered by the poor security situation in many parts of the country.
Source: Associated Press, Center for Strategic and International Studies, CIA World Factbook 2002, ESRI, GlobalSecurity.org, JP Morgan, MSNBC Research, NIMA, Oil and Gas Journal, UNMOVIC, U.N. Special Commission, WorldSat
U.S.-IRANIAN RELATIONS FRAUGHT WITH COMPLEXITY
Iranian-U.S. relations over Iraq have been complex. Iran has great influence in mostly Shiite southern Iraq and has an interest in the success of the U.S.-led political process, which would likely produce a friendly Shiite-led government. Tehran endorsed the U.S.-picked Governing Council — which has some close Iranian allies among its members — and has not tried to stir up Iraqi Shiites against the U.S.-led occupation.
But at the same time, President Bush has denounced Iran as part of an “axis of evil,” and U.S. officials frequently accuse Iran of allowing infiltrators into Iraq.
Tehran and Washington have been holding behind-the-scenes communication on how to restore order in Iraq, Iran’s Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi said Wednesday, though he said they have been “going nowhere.”
2,000 INSURGENTS IN FALLUJAH?
In Fallujah, the top Marine commander warned that the halt in offensive operations that the Marines have maintained since Friday may not last much longer in the face of persistent guerrilla attacks, despite a truce insurgents called on Sunday.
A senior U.S. official in Baghdad said up to 2,000 insurgents are thought to be holed up in the city, west of the capital.
“I don’t forecast that this stalemate will go on for long,” said Maj. Gen. James N. Mattis, commander of the U.S. Marine Corps’s 1st Marine Division. “It’s hard to have a cease-fire when they maneuver against us, they fire at us.”
Tuesday night, insurgents launched near simultaneous attacks on several positions of a company of U.S. Marines controlling a few blocks in the city’s northeast. In a five-hour battle later that night, one of two armored vehicles sent to resupply a front-line U.S. position got lost during an ambush and ended up inside the southern part of the city.
The vehicle, with 20 U.S. Marines inside, came under an even larger ambush. At least 100 gunmen opened fire with rocket-propelled grenades, hitting it at least 10 times, knocking out its communications and its engine and paralyzing it.
“They’ve been preparing for this the whole time. ... We definitely stumbled into the wasp nest,” said Capt. Jason Smith. At least 20 insurgents were killed in the battle, Marines said.
U.N. ENVOY PROPOSES ALTERNATIVE
In an effort to keep the political process moving despite the violence, a top U.N. envoy proposed that an Iraq caretaker government take power when U.S. officials hand over sovereignty on June 30.
Lakhdar Brahimi's plan would dump the current Governing Council and set up an executive made of highly respected Iraqis, including a prime minister, president and two vice presidents.
The plan, for the first time, would also give the United Nations a role in picking the new government, in contrast to the entirely U.S.-picked Governing Council, which many Iraqis dismiss as lackeys of Washington.
The executive would be chosen by the United Nations, the Governing Council, the coalition and a select group of Iraqi judges, according to the U.N. spokesman’s office in New York. Party or ethnic affiliation would not be a factor in the choice, a distinct difference from the current council, carefully proportioned on ethnic lines.
Washington tried in the past to keep the political process almost solely between it and the Iraqis, but sharp differences over how to move forward forced it to give the United Nations a prominent role.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Thursday that the plan proposed by Brahimi seemed "reasonable" even though it varies from the U.S. plan.
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