Doug Lorimer
On August 4, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi Shiites marched through the streets of Baghdad chanting "Death to Israel" and "Death to America" in the largest foreign show of support for Lebanon's Shiite-based Hezbollah resistance fighters since Israel, with Washington's backing, unleashed its war machine on Lebanon.
Agence France-Presse reported: "The Israeli bombardment of Lebanon has angered both Sunni and Shiite Iraqis, and preachers across the country brought up the issue in Friday sermons, condemning Arab governments for their meagre response to the campaign."
The pro-Hezbollah rally in Baghdad was organised by anti-US cleric Moqtada al Sadr's Mahdi Army militia. "Sadr's show of force", AFP reported, "feeding on the anger of many Iraqis at the actions of US ally Israel, came as [US-led] coalition commanders in Iraq have been urging the Iraqi government to move against militias".
Between April and November 2004, the US occupation forces tried to "capture or kill" Sadr, but were fought to a stalemate by the Mahdi Army in Baghdad and the southern Shiite holy city of Najaf. In 2005 an uneasy truce prevailed between the Mahdi Army and the US-led occupation forces.
Over the last six months, however, top US commanders in Iraq have claimed that the Shiite militias, particularly Sadr's Mahdi Army, have "infiltrated" the Iraqi interior ministry's "special police" counterinsurgency units and turned them into "death squads" against "Sunni insurgents" and their supporters, pushing Iraq toward a "sectarian civil war".
However, the upsurge of "sectarian violence", which has claimed at least 6000 lives over the last few months, has come after US military officers have been "embedded" within the 11,000-strong US-trained Iraqi "special police" paramilitary units. The March 7 New York Times reported: "For the last year, the police paramilitary units have had 11-member American military adviser teams assigned to them at the division, brigade and battalion command levels."
At a February 3 Pentagon news briefing, US Army Colonel Jeffrey Buchanan, commander of these US military "adviser" teams within the Iraqi Special Police Commando Division, said that the "division's mission is to conduct counterinsurgency operations, to gather intelligence, and capture or kill enemy forces in order to establish a secure environment for other security forces to operate in".
Buchanan also said that most of the police commandos "served in the security forces of the previous regime" — in the Directorate of General Security, the special operations forces of Saddam Hussein's interior ministry, notorious for torturing dissidents and carrying out extrajudicial executions.
The NYT quoted a "senior American military officer, who works with the Iraqi police and army units", but "who was not authorized to speak publicly on this matter", as saying: "It should be obvious that the presence of our embedded advisory teams in the army and police forces were an important stabilising influence."
Now, US commanders are seeking to use the acknowledged existence of Iraqi police death squads as an excuse to attack Sadr's Mahdi Army, while not openly saying so.
"We have to careful that we don't demonise Jaish al Mahdi [the Mahdi Army]", AFP reported it was told by a senior US official, "because look at the polls — Moqtada Sadr himself is an enormously popular figure. Why? Because he is thumbing his nose at the coalition." Hence the official line that the US occupation forces are targeting unnamed "Shiite militia death squads" rather than the Mahdi Army.
Behind this move is the growing alarm among US commanders at the prospect that Iraq's majority Shiite population might join the armed insurgency against the US-led occupation forces, which up to now has been based primarily among Iraq's Sunni Muslims.
On August 1, the US-based McClatchy Newspapers reported that "many of the Shiite Muslim religious leaders who strongly backed the formation of the [pro-US] Iraqi government [of Prime Minister Nuri al Maliki] now are condemning it, warning that the country could descend into full revolt".
"Their statements, observers said, reflect their effort to distance themselves from an increasingly unpopular government, one they once encouraged voters to risk their lives to support. In the process, they hope to win back support from the populace, the majority of which is Shiite."
McClatchy reported that "most Shiites have refrained from engaging in all-out war because of repeated pleas from the Shiite leaders' council, the Marjaiyyah, to show restraint", but that anger at Maliki's US-backed government — which is dominated by parties supported by the Shiite religious establishment — was reaching explosive levels due to worsening living conditions.
Unemployment remains at well over 50% and there is no reliable supply of electricity. Food and fuel prices skyrocketed after the Hussein regime's subsidies were removed.
Declining living conditions, "coupled with the announcement that US forces must re-enter Baghdad to seize control of it from rogue armed groups, has reinforced feelings among Iraqis that their government and its American-trained military and police forces have failed".
"In Shiite strongholds ... residents said they felt misled by the government and the Shiite religious leaders who backed it during the election. Some said they wished they could take back their votes. 'The failure of the Islamist political parties broke the trust between the Marjaiyyah and the people', said Amman al Janafi, a 39-year-old dentist from Najaf."
Grand Ayatollah Sheikh Bashir al Najafi, one of Iraq's top four Shiite clerics, told McClatchy Newspapers the government has hasn't "been able to do anything, just make many promises" and "people are fed up with the promises. One day we will not be able to stop a popular revolution."
The news service reported from Najaf, a Mahdi Army stronghold, that the Shiite religious leaders "who spoke of revolt didn't specify what form it would take. But residents here said they thought it could be rogue militias and armed factions fighting Iraqi [government] troops, and possibly US forces, for control of the country."