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Today's
Stories
April 12 /
13, 2008
Patrick Cockburn
Warlord:
the Rise of Muqtada al-Sadr
April 11, 2008
Nikolas Kozloff
The Clintons and Their Sordid
Colombia Advocacy
Wajahat Ali
Revenge of the Ghetto Nerd: an Exclusive Interview with Junot
Diaz
Sharon Smith
Let
Them Eat Ethanol!
Yigal Bronner
/ Neve Gordon
Digging for Trouble: the Politics of Archaeology in East Jerusalem
Alan Farago
Eating South Florida
Dave Lindorff
On Waking Sleeping Giants: Lessons for America from China
George Wuerthner
Money for Nothing? The Problems with the Conservation Reserve
Program
Christopher
Brauchli
Prostitutes Don't Do Funerals
Website of the Day
Animals Explain the Insurance Industry: a Health Care Video
April 10, 2008
Mathieu Vernerey
Tibet
for the Tibetans!
Elizabeth Schulte
Slavery
in the Fields
David Macaray
Labor
Unions Will Never Get a Fair Shake
Ashley Smith
The Rise of Muqtada al-Sadr
Peter Morici
Driving Up Debt and Dragging Down Growth
Jacob Hornberger
The Military's Distintegrating Family Life
Harold Austin
Snitch or Else: Prison Officials Threaten Gang Drop Outs
Website of the Day
Hillary: the Wal-Mart Videos
April 9, 2008
Paul Craig
Roberts
The
Fading American Economy
Winslow T.
Wheeler
Congressional
Theater: the Petraeus / Crocker Hearings
C. Hand
Why Dave Marash Left Al Jazeera
Paul Krassner
Sex and Violins
Paul Wolf
Colombian "Magnicidio" Remains a Mystery After 60 Years
Wajahat Ali
Alien Invasion!
Karyn Strickler
Lost in the Fumes: the Sierra Club Sells Out to Clorox
Dan La Botz
Confronting the Economic Crisis
Eric Walberg
The Shadow of Munich: Another NATO Flop
Robin Millenthal
Enough Already! Growth and the Tar Sands Economy
Website of the Day
Conservative
Nanny State
April 8, 2008
Mike Whitney
Should
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed be Set Free?
Nikolas Kozloff
Bush
Bullies Congress on Colombia Deal
Greg Moses
Migrant Detention in South Texas
Joshua Frank
The Other Military Draft
John Ross
Mexico City's Urban Tribes Go on the Warpath Against EMOS
Michael Donnelly
Hillary's Western Swing
John V. Walsh
Why Obama Lost Massachusetts
Jeff Nygaard
Health, Security and Mandates
Bill Piper
Last Shot for a Bush Legacy?
Sen. Russ Feingold
Legal Representation and the Death Penalty
Website of the Day
Catonsville 9, Forty Years Later
April 7, 2008
Ishmael Reed
The
Irish Black Thing
Harry Browne
Irish
Peace Activist Acquitted; Deported
Uri Avnery
Tibet and Palestine
Lenni Brenner
Obama's Constitution, His Pastor and His Unbelieving Mom in Heaven
Ayesha Ijaz Khan
America Must Respect Pakistan's Democracy
Robert Fisk
Fearful Lives in the Land of the Free
Edwin Krales
Ensuring the Success of Fascism in Spain: the US Corporate Role
Chris Genovali
Vancouver Island's Dwindling Ancient Forests
Website of the Day
LA Artists Against War
April 5 / 6,
2008
Alexander Cockburn
Did
the Elites Want MLK Dead?
Ramzy Baroud
There
are No Checkpoints in Heaven
Ralph Nader
Runaway Bailouts
David Yearsley
How Scott Joplin Had Wall Street Down
Saul Landau
Sex Politics in America
Paul Craig
Roberts
The Petraeus and Crocker Show
Lawrence Korb / Ian Moss
Rev. Jeremiah Wright, a True Patriot
Seth Sandronsky
Meet America's Promise Alliance: Colin Powell's New Gig
John Ross
La Cumbia de la Doctrina Bush: Colombia Kills Four Mexican Students
in Ecuador Bombing
Robert Fantina
McCain, Republicans and Family Values
David Michael Green
Back to Disaster: Hoover at Home, Tet Abroad
Missy Beattie
McCan't
Patrick Bond
Vultures Circle Zimbabwe
Dr. Susan Block
The New American Pot Dealers
Phyllis Pollack
The Stones Meet the Press
Adam Engel
The Boobus in the Lie
Jeffrey St. Clair
Booked Up
Poets' Basement
Diamand
and St. Clair
Website of the Weekend
Richard Pryor Goes to the Gun Shop
April 4, 2008
Dave Lindorff
The
Night I Heard King Had Been Shot
Greg Moses
Missing
King
Ron Jacobs
Two Murders, 40 Years On: Bobby Hutton and Martin Luther King,
Jr.
Alan Farago
Show Me the Size of Your Bail Out and I'll Show You Mine
Alison Weir
Funding
Our Decline: U.S. Aid to Israel
David Rosen
Rape as an Instrument of Total War
Robert Weissman
The Unrealized Dream
Jacob Hornberger
Was Killing Iraqi Children Worth It?
Jackie Corr
Hillary and Obama Head for Butte
Carl Finamore
Taking On United Airlines
Laray Polk
We Are All Dith Pran
Susie Day
Advice for the War-Torn
Website of
the Day
Winter Soldiers: a Video Portrait
April 3, 2008
Peter Morici
The Deepening Recession
Joe Bageant
The Audacity of Depression
Andy Worthington
Cleared But Still Detained:
The Ordeal of Moroccan Prisoner Said al-Boujaadia
Nikolas Kozloff
Condi's Divide and Rule Strategy in South America
Rannie Amiri
The U.S. Disdain for Mideast Democracy
David Macaray
More Labor Strife in Hollywood
Stephen Lendman
Lynne Stewart's Long Struggle for Justice
Website of
the Day
The
True Face of Da Vinci?
April 2, 2008
Diane Farsetta
Indian
Point on the Potomac
Harry Browne
Bertie
Ahern Laid Low by Secretary
Wajahat Ali
The Folly of Attacking Iran: a Conversation with Steven Kinzer
George Wuerthner
Open Season on Wolves
Col. Dan Smith
The
Militarization of America
Philippe Marlière
The Politics of Bling-Bling in France: Sarkozy's Cultivated Anti-Intellectualism
Steve Early
A Purple Uprising in Oakland
Bernard Chazelle
Saving the American Left
Reza Fiyouzat
Bowling in Hell
April 1, 2008
Jeff Leys
Fracturing
the Peace to End the War
Thomas P. Healy
Restoring the Constitution: a Conversation with Daniel Ellsberg
Winslow T. Wheeler
When Pigs Sprout Wings: Mangled Rationales for a Fatter Defense
Budget
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
New Deal Nostalgia
Patrick Irelan
Cocaine, Colombia and the Cartels
Andy Worthington
The Case of Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani
John V. Walsh
The Shunning of Ralph Nader
Michael J.
Smith
Woolly Mamet
Robert Weissman
The New Philip Morris--Even Worse Than the Old?
Dave Lindorff
Bush's Defining Moments
Martha Rosenberg
Brain Mist Disease: Boss Hog's Gift to Humanity
Website of
the Day
Support Briana!
March 31, 2008
Mike Whitney
Dead
on Arrival: Paulson's Fixit Plan for Wall Street
Mats Svensson
Walls,
Tunnels and Daily Humiliations
Paul Rockwell
Hillary's
Lies About Outsourcing
Paul Craig Roberts
A Third American War in the Making?
Patrick Cockburn
Sadr
Calls for Ceasefire
Peter Dale Scott
The Showdown
Alfredo Molano
Cultura Mafiosa in Colombia
Peter Morici
Why Paulson's Reform Plan Falls Short
Uri Avnery
Day of the Land, 32 Years Later
Michael Simmons
The American Bard in New Orleans
Betsy Roberts
/ Karen Orr
The Clorox Coup
Phyllis Pollack
First the Sun and Then the Moon: Scorsese Does the Stones
Website of
the Day
Five Years Too Many
March 29 / 30, 2008
Alexander Cockburn
When
They Pick Up the Phone at 3 AM, What Will They Say?
Patrick Cockburn
Iraqi
Police Refuse to Back Maliki's Attacks on Medhi Army
Mike Whitney
Bernanke's Next Big Bail Out Plan
Christopher Brauchli
The Pastor of Armageddon and the Slave Sale: McCain, Lieberman
and Rev. Hagee
William Blum
China, Tibet and the Propaganda Olympics
Robert Fantina
Iraq
Troika: McCain, Obama and Clinton
John Ross
AMLO, the Comeback Kid? Fighting the Privatization of Mexico's
Oil
Allison Kilkenny
Shady Lending Hits Home
Nelson P. Valdés
Cuba, the Beatles and Historical Context
Suzanne Baroud
The Great Lake of Gaza: a New Crisis in the Making
Richard Rhames
Social Security: Throwing Granny from the Gravy Train
Christopher Fons
Transcending the 60s? Obama and the Baby Boomers
Carl Finamore
Misery at 35,000 Feet: Mergers Stall, Fares Soar, Services Slump
and Consumers Sour
Eamonn McCann
Hillary Misremembers Again!
Missy Beattie
Justice and the Monsters of War
Fred Gardner
Jim Thorpe, All-American
Kim Nicolini
Cock Chuggers and Cheese Curls: Richard Kelly's "Southland
Tales"
David Yearsley
"All the World's a Hospital"
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Booked Up
Poets' Basement
Valentine and Ko Un
Website of
the Weekend
Hidden Iraq
March 28, 2008
Saul Landau
Growing
Dread About Iraq
Alan Farago
Other People's Money: the Chop Shop Economy
Peter Morici
Knocking Down False Economic Gods
Andy Worthington
Plight of the Uyghus: a Chinese Muslim's Desperate Plea from
Guantánamo
Felice Pace
Ashes of Lies: Why No One Trusts the US Forest Service
Peter Montague
Sierra Club Cleans House -- With Clorox!
Dave Lindorff
The Mumia Exception
March 27, 2008
Patrick Cockburn
Basra
Erupts
Binoy Kampmark
Free Market Apostates
Joanne Mariner
"Was George Washington a Terrorist?"
Norman Solomon
NPR News: National Pentagon Radio?
William S. Lind
Mars Only Knocks Once: a Prognosis for Iraq
John V. Walsh
Obama's Speech: a Touch of Bigotry?
Robert Weissman
How Things Work
Ron Jacobs
Meeting Charlie Ehlen
Ralph Nader
Put Impeachment Back on the Table
David Macaray
Court Rules Against Grocery Workers
John Borowski
Clearcutting the History of Forest Destruction
Website of
the Day
Going Out for an English
March 26, 2008
Stan Cox
The
Germs Next Door
Sharon Smith
Greed
Pays: Welfare on Wall Street
Anita Sinha / Jill Tauber
Dreams Turned into Rubble in New Orleans
Matt Vidal
So Much for the Self-Regulating Market
William S. Lind
Operation Cassandra
Joe Mowrey
The Audacity of Hypocrisy: Obama's Pandering to Israel
Dave Lindorff
Duck and Cover (Up): Hillary Under Fire
Ray McGovern
Frontline's War: Too Timid, Too Little, Too Late
Justin Smith
Why Race and Gender are Separate Issues
Sam Husseini
The Winter Soldier Hearings and Indy Media
Martha Rosenberg
Blood on Ice: Gentlemen, Pick Up Your Clubs
Michael Dickinson
Politicians as Dogs
Website of the Day
The Wal-Mart Virus: How the Infection Spread
March 25, 2008
Ishmael Reed
The
Crazy Rev. Wright
Corey D. B.
Walker
The Politics of Jeremiah Wright
Linn Washington Jr.
Racism in America and Other Uncomfortable Facts
Alan Farago
The Money Launderers: a Picnic for Wall St. Insiders
Vijay Prashad
A Glimmer of Hope From the Gulf Coast
Joshua Frank
A Silver Lining to the Bush Years?
Ralph Nader
How Public Servants Can Help End This War
David Rovics
If I Can't Dance: Why is the Left So Boring?
Peter Morici
America's Banks are Broken
Dave Zirin
Olympic Flames: China's Crackdown in Tibet
David Krieger
The Crisis in Tibet
Website of
the Day
Memorializing Iraq
March 24, 2008
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Blonde
Ambition: Hillary's Berserker Campaign for 2012
Peter Morici
Digging Out of the Recession
Uri Avnery
Two Americas
Wajahat Ali
First of the Mohicans: an Interview with Rep. Keith Ellison
Paul Craig Roberts
Inside the Shell Game
George Ciccariello-Maher
The Coming War on Venezuela
Stephen Lendman
Sami Al-Arian's Long Ordeal
Christopher
Brauchli
Possessing Someone Else's Country
Cat Woods
A Letter to Mom on Obama
Stacey Warde
Tax Burden
Dave Lindorff
The American Dead Hits 4,000, But Who's Counting?
Website of
the Day
Live from the Longest Walk
March 22 /
23, 2008
Ralph Nader
Bush
Blisters the Truth on Iraq
Nicole Colson
Can You Afford to Feed Your Family?
James Petras
The Cost of Unilateral Humanitarian Initiatives
Laura Carlsen
From Bombs to Markets: The Andean Crisis and the Geopolitics
of Trade
Greg Moses
Tolerance and the American Pulpit
Andy Worthington
Torture Stories Dog Guantánamo Trials
Michael Dickinson
Art on Trial
John Ross
Bush's Surge Hits Mosul
Missy Comley Beattie
Killer Economics
David Michael
Green
Happy Anniversary, America!
Ramzy Baroud
The Coming Uncertain War on Iran
Martha Rosenberg
Easter Egg Shells from Hell
Paul Watson
Evolution is Going to the Dogs in the Galapagos
Isabella Kenfield
Monsanto's
Raid on Brazil
James Murren
Logging v. Water in Honduras
Jacob Hornberger
Sex and the Immigration Officer
Kathlyn Stone
Ben Heine, Master of the Art of Resistance
Seth Sandronsky
Rethinking New Mexico's History
Kim Nicolini
Class, Gender and Abortion in Communist Romania
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Booked Up: What I'm Reading This Week
Poets' Basement
Wilson, Woods, Gibbons and Orloski
Website of
the Weekend
Merci, McCain!
March 21, 2008
Marleen Martin
Land
Behind Bars: the Hidden Casualties of America's "War on
Crime"
Peter Montague
Run
Your Car on Coal? Maybe Not
Saul Landau
Monroe's
Deadly Doctrine
Anis Hamadeh
Merkel in the Knesset
Jacob Hornberger
McCain's Al Qaeda Scare: Slip or Tactic?
Khalil Nakhleh
Al Nakba of 1948: How Long Will It Persist?
Adam Isacson
Colombia, Paramilitary Threats and Assassinations
Kenneth Couesbouc
Money for Nothing
Madis Senner
Will the Feds Underwrite the Stock Market?
Monica Benderman
The Costs of Freedom: What Are You Willing to Pay?
Website of the Day
Stop Foreclosures and Evictions
March 20, 2008
Damien Millet
/
Eric Toussaint
The
Triple Failing of the Big Private Banks
Mike Whitney
Winding
Up Bear
John Ross
What Do We Owe Iraq?
Dave Lindorff
Paying the Piper: the Bodies and Bills are Piling Up
Wajahat Ali
Pakistan on Fire
Jill Nagle
Memo to Sex Workers: Stop Financing Shock Journalism
Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Obama and the Psychic Auto-Shrink-Wrapping Called Race in America
Dan La Botz
Obama's Race Speech
Robert Weissman
Alternative Power: Shutting Down the API
Stella Dallas
/
Jennifer Matsui
Apostasy Now! Mamet, Enter Stage Right
Website of the Day
The Angry Monk
March 19, 2008
Patrick Cockburn
A
War of Lies
Robert Fisk
The Little Men and the Inferno
Jeff Taylor
Five Years of War in Iraq
Ed Ruggero
From Pinkville to Iraq: the Dark Anniversary of My Lai
Ron Jacobs
Who'll Stop the Rain?
Christopher
Fons
Obama Takes the Race Bait
Sherwood Ross
In Defense of Rev. Wright
Cynthia McKinney
An Urgent Crisis: Confronting America's Racial Disparities
Joshua Frank
The Kool-Aid That Kills
Robert Weissman
Monsanto's Genetic Food Gamble
Walter Brasch
It's a Welfare State--If You're Rich
Yifat Susskind
Iraqi Women Resist the Occupation
Andrew Wimmer
War Demands Its Due
Website of
the Day
Glimpses of Nature
March 18, 2008
David Price
The
Military "Leveraging" of Cultural Knowledge
Paul Craig
Roberts
The
Collapse of American Power
Tim Wise
Of National Lies and Racial America: Jeremiah Wright, Barack
Obama and the Unacceptability of Truth
Patrick Cockburn
One of the Most Disastrous Wars Ever Fought
Conn Hallinan
Afghanistan, a River Running Backward
James T. Phillips
Monsters: Past, Present and Wannabe
Uri Avnery
The Killing in Bethlehem
David Macaray
Could Wal-Mart Revive the Labor Movement?
Marjorie Cohn
Beware an Attack on Iran
Peter Zinn
Obama in New Orleans
Dan La Botz
The Economic Crisis, Labor and the Left
Monica Benderman
Where are We Going?
March 17, 2008
Pam Martens
The
Fed's Wall Street Dilemma
Sasan Fayazmanesh
The US, Iran and the Policy of Dual Containment
Nelson P. Valdés
The Imperial Branding of Simon Bolivar and the Cuban Revolution
Peter Morici
The Corrosive Consequences of the Trade Deficit
Wajahat Ali
Disrobing the Nine: a Conversation with Jeffrey Toobin on the
Supreme Court Since 9/11
Ronnie Cummins
Beyond Progressive Malpractice: Taking Down Big Pharma
Shaun Harkin
Saint Patrick's Day in Fortress America
Ali Khan
No Pardon for Musharraf
Robert Jensen
Beyond Peace
P. Sainath
Oh, What a Lovely Waiver!
Greg Moses
Jeremiah was a Bullhorn
Dr. Susan Block
Advice for Eliot Spitzer
Website of the Day
No Cowboys
March 15 /
16, 2008
Patrick Cockburn
How
to Destroy a Country in Five Years
Mike Whitney
Bearly
Alive: Investment Giant Rushed to ICU by Panicky Fed Chief
Ralph Nader
Of
Laws and Men
Robert Pollin
It's Still the Economy, Stupid
Diane Christian
The Poetics of Perversity: From Boccaccio to Spitzer
Wajahat Ali
Faking the Hood: a Conversation with Ishmael Reed
Tom Wright
/
Therese Saliba
Rachel Corrie's Case for Justice
Alan Farago
Back to Florida: Where Bushtime Began
Greg Moses
Raiding the Family Room in Texas
Michael Hudson
A Grand Global Bargain?
Martha Rosenberg
Why Hillary's Favorite Chicken Company is Eying China
John Goekler
Fourth Generation Warfare in a Fifth Generation Conflict
Uzma Aslam
Khan
A Letter to Barack Obama: Where's the Change, Barack?
Oren Ben-Dor
The Silencing of Gilad Atzmon
David Underhill
Mammon, Morals and the Mobile Tanker Deal
Fred Gardner
The Education of Eliot Spitzer
David Michael
Green
Why Spitzer Should Have Resigned (and Why He Shouldn't Have)
Rev. William E. Alberts
Jesus, Entombed in Heaven
Gail Dines
It's All About the John: Prostitution and Male Power
David Yearsley
Conducting, Anarchy and the Problem of When to Begin
Chris Clarke
Walking with Zeke: the Luckiest of Dogs
Poets' Basement
Anderson, Lodge & Subiet
Website of
the Day
Deviant Art
March 14, 2008
Paul Craig
Roberts
Watching
the Dollar Die
Don Santina
Vichy
Democrats: Pelosi and the Politics of Collaboration
Patrick Cockburn
Iraqi
Mother Vows Revenge on US: How She Lost Her Husband and Her Sons
Tim Rinne
StratCom
Rules! The Next War Will Start in Nebraska
Robert Fantina
In
Torture We Trust
Saul Landau
Letter
to the Presidents-in-Waitings
David Macaray
Common
Myths About Labor Unions
Franklin Lamb
Is
the Bush Administration Switching Horses in Lebanon
Michael Neumann
The
One State Illusion: Reply to My Critics
March 13, 2008
Paul Craig
Roberts
Republicans
and "Free Market" Zealots Bring Disaster to America
Mike Whitney
Meltdown
Looms Larger As Credit Markets Freeze
Assaf Kfoury
"One-State
or Two State?"- Sterile Debate on False Alternatives
Andy Worthington
Afghan
Hero Who Died in Guantánamo: The Background to the Story
Adam Federman
From
Autopia to Autogeddon: Cars Reach the End of the Road
March 12, 2008
Dave Lindorff
Bringing
Down Spitzer: It's the Big Brother Who Should Bother US
R.F. Blader
The
Spitzer Backlash
Yonatan Mendel
How
to be an Israeli Journalist. Never Write "Murder" or
"Palestine"
Jonathan Cook
One
State or Two? Neither. The Issue is Zionism
Bill and Kathy
Christison
Fallon
and Gates -- At Least One Cheer
James J. Brittain
Was
the U.S. Involved in Killing the FARC-EP Leaders
Ron Jacobs
"All
the Money You Make Will Never Buy Back Your Soul"
March 11, 2008
Paul Craig
Roberts
How
to End the Subprime Crisis
Ed O'Loughlin
How
Israeli Troops Invade Homes in Gaza, Brutalize, Smash and Steal
Ramzy Baroud
'Unwavering
Commitment' to Inequality
Kathy Christison
One
State or Two? The Debate Over Israel and Palestine
China Hand
PRC
Plays it Cool, as U.S. Tries to Amp Up Pressure on Iran
John Joslin
Thank
You, Nafta! Welcome to Weirton, Home of the Discount Cigarette
Mike Averko
Serb
Politics, Kosovo and the Moscow-Washington Divide
Ben Rosenfeld
Gavin
Newsom's Kneejerk Plan
Thierry Paquot
High
Rise, Low Spirits:The Curse of the Tower Block
March 10, 2008
Uri Avnery
"Kill
A Hundred Turks and Rest": The Five-Day War in Gaza
Col. Dan Smith
Scoring
the "Surge" and What Lies Beyond
R.F. Blader
Why
"Lock Them Up and Throw Away the Key" is Losing its
Sheen
Michael Neumann
The
One-State Illusion: More is Less
Bob Fitrakis
and Harvey Wasserman
Did
the Republicans Give Hillary Her Victory in Ohio?
James J. Brittain
Anti-Uribe
Protests in Colombia and the World
Missy Comley
Beattie
The
Passion of John McCain
March 8-9,
2008 Weekend Edition
JoAnn Wypijewski
The
Only Way to Fight the Clintons
Mike Whitney
Sorting
Through the Rubble in Post Bubble America
Peter Morici
Fed
and Treasury Fiddle as Economy Plummets
Ralph Nader
The
Silent Violence of Gaza's Suffering that Candidates Ignore
Jonathan Cook
The
Meaning of Gaza's Shoah
Steve Niva
Behind
the Israeli Escalation in Gaza
Bill and Kathy
Christison
Crisis
over Teheran's Alleged Nuclear Plans Nearing Climax
Hervé
Do Alto and Franck Poupeau
Bolivia:
Morales is Checked
Eric Walberg
To
Leave and Stay at the Same Time: Putin to Medvedev to…?
Scott Johnson
City
of A Thousand Foreclosures
Mark Scaramella
James
Brown's Gate
Bill Clinton
President
Clinton's Remarks on Naming William M. Daley as NAFTA Task Force
Chairman
Poet's Basement
St.
Thomasino, Engel, Davies and Willson
Website of
the Weekend
Hillary
Blackens Barack
March 7, 2008
Patrick Cockburn
Why
Iraq Could Blow-Up in John McCain's Face
Robin Blackburn
Question
for Barrack Obama: Why Afghanistan is the'Right War'?
Saul Landau
The
Stupid Economy
Binoy Kampmark
When
Competition is Good: McCain and the Muddled Democrats
Chris Floyd
Crushing
the Ants: Admiral Fallon and His Empire
Andy Worthington
Spanish
Drop "Inhuman" Extradition Request for Guantánamo
Britons
Will Potter
Before
the Smoke Even Clears in Seattle: Bringing Out the T Word
March 6, 2008
March 6, 2008
Vincent Navarro
The
Next Failure of Health Reform
Forrest Hylton
High Stakes in the Andes: Colombia's Cornered President
Peter Morici
Why the Dollar is So Cheap
George Ciccariello-Maher
Counter-Attack of the Bureaucrats
John Ross
Taxi! Taxi! The Dark Side of the Oscars
Jacob Hornberger
No Standing to Lecture on Justice
Paul Watson
Illegal Japanese Whaling by the Numbers
Dan Bacher
Off the Deep End
Website of the Day
A Katrina Reader Online
March 5, 2008
Cockburn /
St. Clair
A
Great Day for John McCain (and Maybe Nader)
Joanne Mariner
After Guantanamo
Fidel Castro
The Raid on Ecuador: Underestimating Rafael Correa
Christopher
Brauchli
The Turkish Invasions
Steven Sherman
Obama and the Prospects for a Renewal of the Left
Dave Lindorff
Busting Bush & Co. in New England
James Murren
Bombing Somalia
Adam Engel
Necropolis Now
Website of Day
Remember Song
March 4, 2008
Wajahat Ali
Mumbo
Jumbo: Naming Names with Ishmael Reed
William Blum
How Could Hillary Have Known?
Bill Quigley
The Cleansing of New Orleans
Ralph Nader
The Prince Harry Solution
Patrick Irelan
Oil and Health in Venezuela
James J. Brittain
/
R. James Sacouman
Uribe's Colombia is Destabilizing a New Latin America
Norman Solomon
The War Election
Jacob Hornberger
Hillary in Waco: the Missing Apology
Andy Worthington
Guantánamo and the European Parliament
Mike Averko
Kosovo and the Press
Website of the Day
Tex-Mex Primary
March 3, 2008
Jennifer Loewenstein
Gazan Holocaust
Alan Farago
American Politics and the Faltering Economy
Richard Gott
Colombian Deaths in Ecuador
Wajahat Ali
Who Speaks for a Billion Muslims? Analyzing the World Gallup
Poll with John Esposito
Paul Craig Roberts
The Mukasey Conspiracy: a Bi-Partisan Attack on the Constitution
Robert Weissman
When Multinationals Say Adieu
Uri Avnery
Good Morning, Hamas
Martha Rosenberg
When Your Meat is a Downer
Eva Liddell
Leave the Next Dance for Bill
Michael Donnelly
Will Ferrell Does Flint
Website of the Day
Muddy Waters: Train Fare Home Blues
|
Weekend
Edition
Apri1 12 / 13, 2008
"All Hell
is Breaking Loose with Muqtada"
Warlord:
the Rise of Muqtada al-Sadr
By PATRICK COCKBURN
In early March 2004, I went to visit
the office of al-Hawza, Muqtada al-Sadr's newspaper in Baghdad.
There were only a few staff there, but they were relaxed and
friendly. I talked to a young man called Hussein who was a student
in the French department at Mustansiriyah University on Palestine
Street near Sadr City, which was increasingly under Sadrist control.
He was explaining the Sadrist positions on various questions
when he was interrupted by the roar of an explosion nearer to
the city centre.
I said I would have to cut
short our meeting to go to the nearest hospital to talk to the
injured. It was almost impossible to get to the site of a bomb
blast in central Baghdad, unless one was very close by when it
happened, because the explosion immediately caused immense traffic
jams. I had discovered that the best way to find out what had
happened was to go directly to the hospitals receiving the casualties
and talk to survivors and their friends.
Hussein wanted to see them too, and asked if we could give him
a lift. We drove to al-Kindi hospital, but the uniformed policeman
at the gate said he was under strict orders not to let anyone
in. Hussein, who was sitting in the back seat, leant out the
window and said quietly: "We are from the office of Sayyid
al-Shahid [the Office of the Martyr, named after Sadr's father
but in practice Sadr's office]."
The policeman froze, and then
ran to open the gates, saying in an awed voice to the other police
as we drove through: "They are from the Muqtada Sayyid's
office." Clearly, the popularity and influence of the Sadrists
in Baghdad had increased markedly since I had gone to an ill-attended
protest march in Sadr City four months earlier.
I thought of this incident
when the US viceroy and head of the Coalition Provisional Authority
(CPA), Paul Bremer, closed al-Hawza for 60 days a few weeks later
on March 28. I suspected that the US officials in the Green
Zone were going to get a bigger reaction than they expected.
The reason for the closure
of the newspaper was that it had carried a sermon from Sadr praising
the September 11 attacks in New York as "a miracle and blessing
from God", though the letter handed to the editor said only
that the paper had broken the law on fomenting violence.
"Close the rag down,"
Bremer had said to aides when he read a translation of the issue.
In his account of his disastrous year ruling Iraq, Bremer shows
extreme animus towards Sadr, describing him as "a rabble-rousing
Shiite cleric" and even comparing him to Hitler. As early
as June 2003, he quotes himself as thinking:  "Muqtada al-Sadr has the potential
of ripping this country apart. We can't let this happen."
In the second half of 2003,
Bremer repeatedly portrays himself as decrying the timidity of
the US military, the CIA and the British, all of whom hesitated
before confronting Sadr. Their fears were understandable and,
as events soon demonstrated, wholly justified. Given the escalating
armed resistance by the Sunni community, it did not make sense
to provoke a Shia uprising at the same time.
For months, Bremer hovered
on the edge of ordering the arrest of Sadr and his closest lieutenants
for the murder of Sayyid Majid al-Khoei, son of the Grand Ayatollah
al-Khoei and one of Saddam's ablest and most important opponents,
who was dragged from the Imam Ali shrine in Najaf and hacked
to death within 24 hours of the dictator's fall. An Iraqi judge,
Raad Juhi, had even issued an arrest warrant for Sadr in November,
saying that he had two eyewitnesses who said they had heard Sadr
give the order for al-Khoei to be killed (the pretence that there
was an independent Iraqi judiciary operating at the time was
never going to cut much ice with Iraqis).
Bremer held two beliefs that
were dangerously contradictory. For him, Sadr was a powerful,
menacing figure capable of tearing Iraq apart, and simultaneously
so weak that he would tamely submit to arrest, while his following
would be too small to make effective protests. Iraqi ministers
were struck by the degree to which Bremer hated and belittled
Sadr. They were told not to refer to the "Mehdi Army"
but to call it "Muqtada's militia".
Ali Allawi, the independent
Islamist who was a member of the Iraqi Governing Council, once
tried to explain to Bremer how the Sadrists were the political
representatives of the millions of Shia poor. Bremer furiously
retorted that he "didn't care a damn about the underclass
and what they [the Sadrists] represented".
Though Sadr and the Sadrists
were not strong enough to stand on their own against the US,
their support, which had dipped in the second half of 2004, was
growing once more. This was principally because they were the
only Shia movement against the occupation, the unpopularity of
which was increasing by the day. Not only was there friction
with US soldiers on the street, but the US-led CPA was manifestly
failing to restore services and provide jobs. Teachers and civil
servants were paid more, but the vast "underclass"
that Bremer so despised was seeing few benefits from the overthrow
of Saddam Hussein.
Some 70 per cent of the population
was unemployed, according to the Ministry of Labor. The SCIRI
and Dawa parties were members of the Iraqi Governing Council,
which brought them little real power and did them political damage
as they were seen as pawns of the occupation. The murders of
Muhammad Baqir al-Hakim (in a suicide-bomb attack) and Sayyid
Majid al-Khoei also removed the two most active scions of the
Shia clerical aristocracy who might have competed with Sadr.
Yet the Sadrists were still
a minority movement. The Shia might not much like the US occupation,
but most were still far from wanting to fight it. The most prestigious
and influential Shia leader was Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.
The Sadrist distinction between
the politically active and inactive marji'iya (religious authority)
was always an oversimplification. Sistani might not want the
clergy to take part actively in politics, as in Iran, or seek
to create their own clerical government. But this did not mean
that he believed in a legal division between church and state,
as in the US and France, or wanted a secular Iraq. He was not
so much apolitical as acutely conscious of the corrupting effect
of political power on the Shia clergy, as evidenced by Iran.
He kept his distance from the CPA and would not meet its officials.
This lack of personal contact, combined with distortions of Sistani's
views when passed on by self-interested go-betweens, led Bremer
and the CPA to underestimate the determination of the marji'iya
to force elections, which the Shia community was bound to win,
and to insist on a new constitution in which Islam was the primary
source of legislation.
On 26 June 2003, Ayatollah
Sistani issued a crucial fatwa, which said: "First of all
there must be a general election so that every Iraqi citizen
who is eligible to vote can choose someone to represent him in
a foundational Constitution preparation assembly. Then the drafted
Constitution can be put to a referendum." This was a recipe
for revolutionary change. If it happened, Iraq, part of the Sunni
order in the Middle East for hundreds of years, would become
a Shia state. Sistani's position was immensely powerful because
of his own great influence on the Shia.
For a few months after the overthrow of Saddam, Washington and
its emissaries in Baghdad had an arrogant and self-deceiving
sense of being in control of Iraq.
As the Sunni insurrection began
to take off, Washington and its emissaries in Baghdad became
more and more desperate for local Iraqi allies. They could not
afford to fight the Sunni and offend the Shia at the same time.
If Sistani's limited co-operation was rebuffed, then the alternative
to him would be Sadr, who was against the occupation root and
branch.
Sadr had come close to an all-out
fight with the CPA in August and in October, when Bremer was
eager to order his arrest but was always frustrated at the last
moment. Bremer optimistically hoped the arrest itself would be
carried out by the Iraqi police--something that was unlikely
to happen. The coalition military force outside Najaf at this
moment was Spanish and had no intention of entering the holy
city to snatch Sadr.
Sadr himself went on denouncing
the occupation, but was chary of a direct military confrontation
with the US military. This was a pattern we were to see twice
in 2004 during the Mehdi Army's battles with US forces. Sadr
adopted similar tactics in 2007 when he stood down the Mehdi
Army in February at the start of the US "surge", and
in September, when he declared a six-month ceasefire after fighting
with the police and Badr Organisation during the 15 Shaaban pilgrimage
to Karbala. For all his white martyr's shroud and messianic rhetoric,
he was a cautious man.
Bremer's errors are glaring
in retrospect, and in later years his superiors were swift to
hold him responsible for much that went wrong for the US during
the first catastrophic year of occupation. This was unfair or
misleading, as it was evident in Baghdad at the time that US
actions were determined by the Washington political agenda and,
above all, the upcoming presidential election in 2004.
Bremer also received disastrously
poor advice from the returning Iraqi exiles, senior members of
SCIRI and Dawa, and from Shia clergy hostile to Sadr, all of
whom had their reasons for wanting to see the US dispose of a
dangerous rival.
The animosities between the
different Shia leaders and groups were very evident to American
officials in the Green Zone, but, confusingly, the divisions
could suddenly be replaced by solidarity in the face of a common
threat. Failure to see this was a principal reason why they were
outmanoeuvred by Sadr and failed to eliminate him. In their hearts
the Shia Islamists, whether SCIRI, Dawa, Sadrist or just supporters
of Ayatollah Sistani, knew that the US disliked not only Sadr
but all the Shia religious parties that were led by, or were
under the influence of, black-turbaned clerics. At critical moments
the Shia leaders saw that, however much they detested each other,
they would be wise to hang together, if they did not want to
hang separately.
There were signs of this on
the street. In October, the Mehdi Army had fought guards loyal
to Sistani for control of the shrine in Najaf, but by January
2004 supporters of both had united to take part in marches in
Baghdad called by Sistani to demand direct elections for the
next Iraqi parliament. Enormous chanting crowds, waving their
banners, carried portraits of Sadr's father and Sadr himself,
along with those of Sistani.
Bremer was probably right in
thinking that Sadr was at his most vulnerable in the second half
of 2003, though he was not nearly as vulnerable as Bremer supposed.
He still controlled the great Sadrist fortress of Sadr City and
this alone made him an important political player in Iraq. An
area of 20 square kilometres of close-packed housing in east
Baghdad, with a population approaching 2.5 million, it was routinely
described in the media as "a suburb of Baghdad", but
it was a lot more than that. If it had been a separate city it
would have been the second-biggest city in Iraq, larger than
Basra or Mosul.
It was always obscure how big
Sadr City really was, because Saddam Hussein's regime, the CPA
and succeeding Iraqi regimes found the existence of such an area,
covertly or openly hostile to the powers that be, intimidating.
Its population was almost entirely Shia, many of them from Amara,
the province in the south from which they had fled to escape
the tyranny of the feudal landowners by coming to Baghdad in
the 1950s.
But, as Ali Allawi points out
in a description of the area based on unpublished Iraqi government
studies dated 2004: "All the main tribes of the south, that
is, up to 164 different tribes and clans, were represented [in
Sadr City]. The power of the local tribal leaders, numbering
over 300, was generally acknowledged, but with the rise of the
Grand Ayatollah Muhammad al-Sadr [Muqtada's father], who had
specifically reached out to the inhabitants of Sadr City, most
of the tribal elders had deferred to his overarching authority."
Following the fall of Saddam,
the religious, tribal and professional leaders in the area gave
their backing to Sadr. By the summer of 2003, some 90 per cent
of the mosques in Sadr City were under Sadrist control. Islamic
mores were enforced in institutions such as orphanages run by
the Sadrists. Boys and girls were separated and girls were forced
to wear the veil. Even so, the latter said they preferred the
orphanage to the danger of the streets.
"The growing power of
the clerics means the chief of a clan has less influence in Sadr
City," says Fadhil Muhammad, a professor of sociology and
an expert on the area. "The big change since 2003 had been
the growth of religious parties and groups such as the Mehdi
Army, SCIRI and Dawa, but the strongest of these is the Sadrist
movement. Thousands of young men belong to these organizations
so the clans have lost their authority over them. When there
is a dispute the clans themselves ask for a sayyid or a sheikh
to be the judge."
Enforced Islamic puritanism
became the norm. Gypsy villages, to give one example, were seen
by the Sadrists as centres for prostitution and came under attack.
Munawar Mashelah, who now works as a guard in a building in central
Baghdad and disguises his gypsy origins, recalls how a dozen
or so young men in five saloon cars approached his village (known
as a kawliya). They shouted warnings to leave by the following
morning. "As soon as they left, families fled quickly,"
Munawar recalls. They didn't know where to go, though some hid
in Rashid military camp. Others who stayed were attacked and
one woman in each family was killed.
As so often when it comes to
violence attributed to the Sadrists, it is impossible to make
a precise distinction between their actions and those of freelance
and criminal gangs. It is a measure of the failure of the CPA
and Iraqi government to provide personal security that the surviving
gypsy families thought their only chance of survival was "to
pay large bribes to join and take the names of well-known tribes
and clans who would then protect them in central and western
Iraq".
There was a further reason
why the political tide favoured Sadr in the first months of 2004,
ensuring that he was going to be a more dangerous opponent than
Bremer imagined. The sectarian bombing campaign orchestrated
by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi showed that the US was incapable of providing
security to ordinary Shia.
On March 2, millions of Shia
marched and prayed to celebrate Ashura, the most important event
in their religious calendar, commemorating the battle of Karbala
when Imam Hussein and his 72 companions were massacred in the
year 680. It was a peculiarly triumphant moment; the first Ashura
to be celebrated since the fall of Saddam at which ancient rituals
could be performed openly, without fear of arrest. Men slashed
their scalps with swords so blood ran down their faces in memory
of the death and suffering of Hussein and those with him. People
cried "Hussein! Hussein!" and beat their chests in
ritualized grief. The walls of the shrine in Karbala were decorated
with scenes from the battle 1,400 years earlier: Hussein's half-brother
Abbas fighting his way to the bank of the Euphrates to bring
water to the thirsty but refusing to drink himself; Hussein's
infant son pierced in the neck by an arrow when clasped in the
arms of his father; the severed head of Hussein stuck on a pike
by the victorious Umayyad army.
These modern-day Shia mourners felt a sense that, so many centuries
after their historic defeat, they were finally on the winning
side. Outside Karbala, a group of Sadrists chanted warnings against
those who might try to deny the Shia their victory. "The
oppressors tore apart your land, my people," they cried.
"The envious ones sowed discord among you, but do not attack
us to the sound of your drums or we will crush you--Iraq! Iraq!"
At about 10am, a series of
bombs exploded near the shrines in Karbala and Kadhimiyah in
Baghdad. About 270 people were killed and 570 wounded. Limbs
torn off by the blast and mangled, bleeding body parts were placed
in a heap in the inner courtyard of the Kadhimiyah shrine.
Zarqawi's bombing campaign
had been sectarian from the start, but earlier attacks, such
as those on Shia police recruits and the killing of Muhammad
Baqir al-Hakim and 125 worshippers in Najaf in August 2003, had
some military or political motivation. The Ashura bombings were
aimed at killing as many Shia civilians as possible, simply because
they were Shia. They bloodily demonstrated that the US and the
nascent Iraqi government security forces could not protect the
Shia masses, enabling the Mehdi Army to justify its existence
as a Shia self-defense force.
Bremer and the CPA could scarcely
have chosen a worse moment than March 2004 for a confrontation
with Sadr. His newspaper al-Hawza had a circulation of only about
15,000 (Bremer seems to have been one of its few assiduous readers),
but within days there were demonstrations by as many as 20,000
people in Baghdad demanding its reopening.
Sadr decided to make an issue
of its temporary closure. The inflammatory tone of his speeches
and those of his lieutenants give the impression that he believed
this would be a good moment at which to confront the occupation
authorities. "We fought Saddam and now we're fighting the
Americans," said Sayyid Hazim al-Araqi, Sadr's representative
in Baghdad: "Listen, America, Britain and Israel, there's
a man named Muqtada al-Sadr and he gives resistance fighters
their courage."
Araqi's denunciation of the
occupiers was an interesting mixture of Iraqi patriotism, Islamic
fervor, defense of tribal mores, anti-Baathism and anger at the
failure of the US to improve living standards. He accused the
US and its Iraqi proxies of creating "streets full of thieves,
carjackers and rubbish". By cracking down on honor killings
they had encouraged adultery, and by dismissing only top-level
Baathists they were treacherously preparing the ground to reconcile
with the Baath party. What happened in the next few days was
as much a sign of the CPA's weakness and poor judgement as of
Sadr's strength.
On March 31, a convoy carrying
security guards from the US security firm Blackwater was ambushed
in the main street in Fallujah, a stronghold of the Sunni resistance.
After killing four guards, the insurgents ran off, but day-laborers
who normally stood beside the road waiting for work dragged the
bodies of the dead Americans out of the burning vehicles and
savagely hacked at them with their hoes and shovels, before hanging
the charred remains of two of the security guards from the steel
girders of the bridge over the Euphrates.
It was the sort of public humiliation
shown on US television, akin to the notorious pictures of the
body of a dead American helicopter pilot being dragged through
the streets of Mogadishu in 1993, to which Washington was bound
to respond. The Sadrists were sharp enough to see that US resources
and attention would be largely focused on the spreading Sunni
insurrection in Fallujah and the Sunni heartlands. Astonishingly,
even after the killings in Fallujah, Bremer escalated his confrontation
with Sadr by arresting his senior aide, Mustafa al-Yaqubi, a
Sadrist militant from the time of Sadr's father, on 3 April.
The Sadrist response was swift
and exceeded in scope and violence anything that US officials
in the Green Zone imagined. At midday on April 4, Bremer received
an urgent and alarming phone call from the US commander, General
Ricardo Sanchez. "All hell is breaking loose with Muqtada,"
he said. "We're getting reports from a lot of different
sectors, Sadr City, Najaf ... al-Kut. Demonstrators flooding
the streets. A lot of them carrying AKs and RPGs."
To the horror of the CPA, the
Mehdi Army swept into cities and towns across southern Iraq,
meeting little resistance. The fledgling Iraqi police had no
intention of stopping them. The security in cities in southern
Iraq was in the hands of Italian, Polish, Ukrainian, Salvadoran
and Spanish troops sent there at the high tide of US success
in 2003 and whose governments had never expected them to fight.
A few weeks earlier I had been
in Kut, the fly-blown city on the Tigris that was the site of
the great British defeat by the Turks in 1916. Local people did
not have a high opinion of the Ukrainian contingent who were
the only armed representatives of the coalition. "They are
even poorer than we are," said a friend. "You can bribe
them to let your car through a checkpoint by handing them a few
cigarettes."
Sadrist gunmen were briefly
able to occupy Kut. In Nasiriyah, the Sadrists seized part of
the city from the Italians, though the latter swiftly regained
control amid accusations from the Sadrists that they had reneged
on an agreement to withdraw.
Meanwhile, the lethal anarchy
that spread across Iraq had an important political advantage
for the CPA and Washington. Rory Stewart, the adventurous former
British diplomat who was senior adviser in Dhi Qar province,
the capital of which was Nasiriyah, makes a significant point
in his memoir that the situation had become too dangerous for
the media to turn up. "Then and later," he writes,
"the world press were unaware that we were losing control
of a city of 600,000."
The spectacular Sadrist gains
in the first week of April far exceeded what they could hold
and, in most areas, they were soon on the retreat. There were,
in fact, just three cities that the Sadrists needed to occupy
permanently--Sadr City; Kufa, where Sadr delivered his Friday
sermons; and Najaf, the spiritual capital of the Shia in Iraq
and around the world, which the Sadrists knew the US would be
reluctant to attack because of the danger that they would damage
the shrines. The Sadrists were not particularly popular in Najaf--the
500,000 population was loyal to Ayatollah Sistani and feared
that their city would be turned into a battle zone--but with
the Mehdi Army in control there was nothing, for the moment,
that they could do about it.
Sadr chose this moment to start
a religious retreat in the mosque in Kufa but, before doing so,
he issued a direct call to arms. "Make your enemy afraid,
for it is impossible to remain quiet about their moral offences,"
he said. "I beg you not to resort to demonstrations, for
they have become nothing but burned paper. It is necessary to
resort to other measures, which you take in your own provinces.
As for me, I am with you, and I hope I will be able to join you
and then we shall ascend into exalted heavens. I will go into
inviolable retreat in Kufa. Help me by whatever you are pleased
to do in your provinces."
For a man on religious retreat,
Sadr was surprisingly voluble. He issued a statement: "The
US-led forces have the money, weapons and huge numbers, but these
things are not going to weaken our will because God is with us."
On April 5, Dan Senor, the CPA spokesman, announced that a warrant
had been issued for Sadr's arrest several months earlier and
implied that it might now be implemented. When Bremer subsequently
called Sadr an "outlaw", he responded: "If Bremer
means that I am an outlaw according to the American legal code,
then I take pride in it."
Mehdi Army reinforcements from
Sadr City poured into Kufa and Najaf. They were untrained, violent
but committed young men who came near to shooting me, Haider
al-Safi and Bassim Abdul-Rahman at their checkpoint outside Kufa
on April 19.
One militiaman who came to
Najaf from Sadr City was a 23-year-old labourer, Ali Ahmed. "Frankly,
the Mehdi Army wasn't prepared for such an uprising," he
says. "It wasn't divided into companies and battalions,
but was in the form of groups who heeded the call for the coming
battle against the Americans, the defense of the holy sites and
to ensure that the Sadrist current survived. The biggest concentration
of our forces was in Najaf. People either had their own weapons
or ones taken from the old regime. Some people were selling what
they owned in order to buy weapons so they could fight with the
Mehdi Army."
Ali Ahmed noticed that one
advantage early in the fighting was that "there were US
troops in Diwaniyah and Hilla provinces but we mostly faced Spanish
soldiers". These were in the process of being withdrawn
by the new Spanish socialist government. Overall, he says: "We
didn't fight because of the closure of the newspaper or the arrest
of al-Yaqubi, but because we thought our religion was in danger."
It was Sadr's strength that
he could mobilise the Shia masses, millions of angry and poor
young men; his weakness was that he could not control them, and
he knew the risk of being designated a dangerous troublemaker.
As the uprising began to run out of steam, he called on his followers
to follow the instructions of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani,
who'd called for a political solution and negotiations. The Americans
were sending emissaries to Sistani to persuade him to give them
permission to enter Najaf in pursuit of Sadr.
On April 7, Muqtada issued
a statement to his followers, justifying the uprising but admitting
that "a rebellious faction has infiltrated your [Mehdi Army]
ranks and deliberately attempted to fan the flames of turmoil
by plundering and looting government offices and money-changers.
They shut the doors of the universities and seminaries in such
a way as to distort the image of Islam and of Muslims and of
the Mehdi Army." He said that he was heeding the call of
religious, tribal and political leaders for a ceasefire.
His intention was to portray
Bremer and the US as the aggressors in the eyes of the Shia community.
The last thing the CPA wanted to do was negotiate with Sadr,
because its aim was to eliminate him. Bremer, again overplaying
his hand, said that there were just three choices facing Sadr:
surrender, arrest or death.
Militarily, the Mehdi Army
was increasingly restricted to central Najaf. US troops had replaced
the Spanish forces in the middle of April. Ali Ahmed and the
militiamen he was with moved into the vast cemetery of Wadi al-Salaam
"because it is large, difficult for the enemy to enter and
we knew its layout". The cemetery was a good place to hide
and fight; it is a labyrinth of narrow lanes between earth walls,
partitioning off compounds where the dead are interred. "We
moved cautiously at night by the light of torches because we
were afraid to reveal our positions. We used snipers, mortars
and Katyusha rockets; we were not able to sleep at night and
our food, when we could get it, was very simple."
There was little the militiamen
could do against US power. "They destroyed shops and buildings
so Najaf became like a city of ghosts. The street fighting was
intense, with the American troops staying in their tanks while
we tried to hit them from all directions." There were heavy
losses among the militiamen and few US casualties.
Sadr, dressed in his usual
dark robes and turban, moved secretly through Najaf to inspect
his militia. Ali Ahmed recalls how careful he was. "No one
knew where he was going in the alleyways," he says. "He
used to give misleading hints about his movements to confuse
the enemy, who unfortunately were not only Americans."
As the weeks passed, the Mehdi
Army's military situation grew weaker, but Sadr's political position
became stronger. Shia politicians in Baghdad and the marji'iya
wanted to end the siege of Najaf by negotiations and were desperate
to avoid an American assault on the shrine. The CPA abandoned
its earlier demand for the arrest of Sadr and, crucially, the
disarmament and dissolution of the Mehdi Army. Sadr, for his
part, agreed to withdraw his men from the shrine and from Najaf.
Another development deeply
alarmed the CPA and the US military commanders: co-operation
was growing between Shia fighters in Najaf and Sunni fighters
in Fallujah. Military supplies came to the beleaguered Mehdi
Army men from Fallujah through Karbala. "Fighters came from
Fallujah though there were not many and it was towards the end
of battle," says Ali Ahmed. "They were useful because
they had also fought the Americans and were experienced in street
fighting tactics."
The co-operation was brief,
but was an important motive for the US to bring the crisis in
Najaf to an end. Losses among his men were heavy, but Muqtada
al-Sadr had emerged the winner because he had challenged the
US-led occupation, held off their greatly superior army for weeks,
and survived without making concessions that would weaken him
permanently.
Extracted from Muqtada!
Muqtada al-Sadr, the Shia revival and the struggle for Iraq
by Patrick Cockburn
Patrick Cockburn is the author of 'The
Occupation: War, resistance and daily life in Iraq', a finalist
for the National Book Critics' Circle Award for best non-fiction
book of 2006. His new book 'Muqtada!
Muqtada al-Sadr, the Shia revival and the struggle for Iraq'
is published by Scribner.
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