The Guardian 4 June, 2008
Shadowing slaughter in Sadr City
Hala Jaber
On a bare patch of ground outside the entrance to Sadr General Hospital, 15 women clad from head to foot in black squatted in a sandstorm, wailing and waiting for their dead.
Lightning flashed, thunder rolled and the women’s robes were spattered with mud falling from a sky filled with rain and sand, but they did not notice.
"Ya’mma, Ya’ba" ("Oh mother, oh father"), cried Amira Zaydan, a 45-year-old woman, slapping her face and chest as she grieved for her parents. Their house had exploded after apparently being hit by an American rocket. "Where are you, my brothers?" she sobbed. They had also perished along with their wives, one of whom was nine months pregnant.
"What wrong have you done, my children?" she howled to the spirits of four nephews and nieces who completed a toll of 10 family members in the disaster. "Mothers, children, babies; all obliterated for nothing."
The mourning of Zaydan and her distraught circle of friends was drowned out briefly by sirens shrieking as ambulances sped through the hospital gateway with the latest consignment of casualties from a brutal battle that has been raging for more than a month in Sadr City, a slum of more than 2 million souls on the eastern side of Baghdad.
Dilapidated hospital
Doctors and nurses with pinched faces darted out of the dilapidated hospital to greet the wounded and dying, while administrators stared at the weeping women and saw that they were beyond comforting.
Zaydan had hardly moved from the hospital for 24 hours since her family’s home was demolished as she and her sister Samira, 43, prepared lunch. Neighbours were trying to dig bodies out of the debris when another rocket landed, killing at least six rescuers.
Apart from the two sisters, the family’s only survivor was their brother Ahmad, 25, who arrived at the hospital with leg injuries and shock. "I lost everybody," was all he could say.
On Wednesday afternoon, Zaydan was still waiting for seven family members to be disinterred from the rubble and delivered to Sadr General. The other three were in the morgue, among them a nephew, aged three, lying on a trolley in a puddle of blood from a head wound.
The child was another helpless victim of a clash between titanic powers which has killed 935 people and wounded 2,605. Even by the callous standards of Iraq’s cruel war, this is a ruthless struggle. Most of the dead and injured have been civilians.
Sides
On one side is the Iranian-backed Mahdi Army of the radical Shi’ite cleric, Moqtada al-Sadr, which is defending Sadr City, its biggest stronghold, with a resilience it failed to show when it ceded parts of the southern port of Basra in April.
On the other is the American-backed Iraqi army of the prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, which launched an offensive on March 30 with the aim of seizing control of the city but which took only one southern district before its advance was halted.
The fight between Sadr and Maliki, between the dirt-poor who look to the firebrand cleric for inspiration and the relatively secure who support the prime minister, is one that neither side can afford to lose.
Last month the Mahdi fighters took advantage of the sandstorms, which grounded US helicopters, to blast the Iraqi army’s front line positions with roadside bombs, mortar rounds, rocket-propelled grenades and machinegun fire.
Embedded with them for four days and three nights, I witnessed the fighting at close quarters, learnt of preparations being made by Mahdi special forces to spread the violence to other parts of Baghdad and heard their commanders swear to paralyse the government and destroy Maliki if their own leader authorises all-out war.
It is little wonder that US commanders say the Shi’ite militias backed by Iran now pose a greater threat than the Sunni insurgents who were their deadliest enemies when Al-Qaeda in Iraq was at its peak.
"We can bring Baghdad to a standstill," boasted one Mahdi commander. "Be assured that when all-out war is eventually declared, we will be able to take over the city."
Attack to be launched
No sooner had I arrived in Sadr City than my escorts received word that an attack was about to be launched. Sand was swirling through the air as a fresh storm stirred and the men knew this presented them with an opportunity.
"Allah is on our side," said one. "They bombard us with artillery, war planes and helicopters at will. Maliki has the entire US air force behind his army and all we need is a bit of sand to bring it to a standstill."
As we reached the narrow streets nothing appeared to be out of the ordinary at first. But one by one, young men in western jeans and T-shirts appeared from the alleyways with machineguns or rifles slung across their shoulders. They grinned, patted each other’s backs and uttered the greeting "Peace be with you", before getting down to the business of war.
Machinegun fire
Two snipers had already entered shattered buildings overlooking the highway beyond which the Iraqi army was hunkered down. The dozen or so gunmen who had congregated in front of me ran forwards 50 yards to take up their positions. Then one of them briefly broke cover to open fire with his AK47 assault rifle. Another stepped round a corner and unleashed a volley of bullets from a heavy-calibre machinegun, followed by another and another.
As the Mahdi positions came under equally heavy machinegun fire in turn, the noise reached a crescendo with an exchange of mortar rounds that smashed shops and showered the whole area with shards of debris. The cacophony faded, only to be replaced by the whizz of snipers’ bullets shooting up the street. It was time to take cover.
My escort hammered on the gates of the nearest house and a woman ushered me into her courtyard, introducing herself as Salma Jamila, a teacher aged 40 who lived with her elderly parents. When she heard that I had come to report on the fighting, she fetched a small plastic chair and propped it against the yard wall so that I could peep over it to see what was happening.
Evidently a cool hostess in a crisis, she disappeared into her kitchen and returned beaming with bottles of orange juice on a tray as mortar rounds crashed on to the road less than 100 metres away. Stranger still, another guest arrived, a cousin and Mahdi Army commander named Abu Ali who was enjoying a day off. He hugged Jamila, explained that he had come to visit her father and chatted away about how he had been arrested a few days earlier.
"One of the officers with the Iraqi army is a Mahdi sympathiser and he arranged for me to be released within two hours," he said with a smile. "We have quite a number of Mahdi people in the army and they tip us off about certain movements."
Violence
The violence died down as suddenly as it had flared up and some of the fighters shouted that it was all over. A man with a relaxed manner and a Russian rifle on his back sauntered past. I asked him how old he was. "Twenty-three," he answered. "Young for a sniper," I said. He shrugged. "I killed two Iraqi soldiers," he replied, and strolled away.
Another passing fighter, a well-built man with fair skin, said he had set fire to an Iraqi tank with a rocket. There was no way to verify either account.
The men exchanged information for a few moments before walking off in different directions. Some were collected by cars as they approached neighbouring streets incongruously thronged with shoppers inured to shooting and buying food for the evening meal.
It was around 6pm, as we were driving towards the centre of Sadr City, that another call came through and we headed back to the front line. This time Mahdi fighters were trying to push back Iraqi army and American forces.
Several people were said to be buried under collapsed buildings and the Mahdi Army — which, like Hezbollah in Lebanon, has made itself popular by providing welfare services to local people — had decided to take responsibility for rescuing them, even if that meant fighting their way to the scene.
Driving along roads lined with open sewers, past children playing football in winding alleys and old women peering out from their doorways, we reached a point where men on street corners were handing cold water to fighters taking a break from the front line.
We parked and moved forwards through ranks of Mahdi Army fighters who had lined an alleyway with rocket-launchers, rifles and machineguns. The sound of sniper fire intensified but the hardened militiamen who were accompanying me paid no attention.
School demolished
As we rounded a corner, I noticed a school 100 metres ahead on the right-hand side. I was wondering how long it would be before the pupils could return when an explosion almost knocked us off our feet. An artillery shell had landed in the playground and the classrooms were shattered by shrapnel.
I froze with fear. For the second time that day, a fighter rapped on the nearest house gate and I was beckoned into a secluded courtyard. So shaken was I that my legs barely carried me into the house. I squatted on the floor to catch my breath.
As before, the fighting subsided after about half an hour and we returned to our vehicle.
The inconclusive nature of both confrontations witnessed suggested that neither side could be confident of gaining the upper hand.
The Iraqi army may have the superior firepower but Mahdi commanders were eager to show off their own arsenal. Seven of them gathered in a single-storey concrete house to display weapons ranging from mainly American-made guns, including M16 and M18 rifles, to homemade roadside bombs known as raaed, or thunder.
"Our bombs are not Iranian-made — they are produced locally," said one commander. "Any Mahdi fighter can put one together."
Another commander, who gave his name as Abu Ahmad, was limping from an injury sustained one week into the battle when his unit set an American tank on fire, only to be wiped out by a helicopter gunship.
The Mahdi Army also claims to have a secret weapon at its disposal. Its elite special forces, called "The Nerves of the Righteous — the Islamic Resistance in Iraq", are said to be lying in wait in sleeper cells across the country, ready to carry out unspecified "spectacular" attacks against coalition forces.
Shadows
Many of the members, known as "shadows", have been trained in Iran. According to a senior aide to Moqtada al-Sadr, they are capable of raining down missiles on the heavily protected Green Zone where the Iraqi government and US military are based, causing disarray among Iraq’s security forces and halting the work of ministries.
They have also created a potential "ring of fire" around Sadr City that could be ignited in the event of a full-scale offensive by Maliki.
Whether Sadr or Maliki will order an escalation of the conflict in the days ahead depends on efforts to secure a resolution.
Editor’s note: Since this story was written it is reported that a ceasefire in Sadr City has been declared.