NOT!
Steven R. Hurst And Qassim Abdul-Zahra, Canadian Press
Published: Wednesday, January 10, 2007
BAGHDAD (AP) - Iraq's prime minister has told Mahdi Army militiamen they must surrender their arms or face an all-out assault by U.S.-backed Iraqi forces, senior Iraqi officials said Wednesday, revealing a pledge Washington wanted to hear as American and Iraqi troops prepared a fresh operation to end the bloody sectarian war gripping Baghdad.
The blunt message was particularly significant given that Nouri al-Maliki, the Iraqi leader, previously had blocked several U.S. attempts to crack down on the military wing of radical anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, now one of the most powerful players in Iraq.
"Prime Minister al-Maliki has told everyone that there will be no escape from attack. The government has told the Sadrists (the political movement that supports the Mahdi Army), if we want to build a state we have no other choice but to attack armed groups," a senior Shiite legislator and close al-Maliki adviser said.
While the militia has been noticeably less active since the Dec. 30 hanging of Saddam Hussein, there was no assurance the threatened offensive would intimidate the fighters who have only grown stronger in numbers, arms and sophistication since they battled U.S. forces to a standstill in the Shiite holy city of Najaf and in Baghdad's Sadr City in 2004.
The Iraqi military is bringing two brigades from northern Iraq and one from the south to increase troop strength for the new Baghdad security push that al-Maliki announced on Saturday. He immediately set it in motion with an attack on Sunni insurgents in Haifa Street in central Baghdad. Thirty suspected insurgents were killed then and 50 more were reported killed Tuesday in a nearly day-long assault there backed by U.S. troops, fighter jets and attack helicopters.
Tens of thousands of Iraqis have died in the 3½ years since the U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam. The war has cost Americans hundreds of billions of dollars and more than 3,000 lives.
While putting the Mahdi Army on notice, al-Maliki has avoided any public comment on a set of political and economic benchmarks by the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush for the Iraqi government to set out a plan for sharing the country's oil wealth, modifying de-Baathification rules, conducting provincial elections and moving quickly on constitutional amendments. All those issues are critically important to drawing Sunnis into the political process.
An Iraqi general, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the details had not been released, said a mainly Kurdish force from one of the northern Iraqi brigades would be sent into Sadr City, the Shiite slum in northeast Baghdad that is headquarters of the Mahdi Army.
The general said Kurds, who are Sunni but not Arab, were being used against the Shiite Mahdi Army to overcome the predicted refusal by soldiers from other Iraqi units to fight fellow Shiites. An estimated 80 per cent of the Iraqi army is Shiite.
The primary target of the campaign to emasculate militant groups would focus on the Shiite Mahdi Army and the Sunni extremists in the group "al-Qaida in Iraq" and two of its allied groups, the Ansar al-Sunnah Army and the Omar Brigade, the general said.
Iraqi and U.S. officials said the new Baghdad security plan would be under the control of Iraqi commanders, one each for nine districts in the city. Each commander would operate independently of Iraqi military headquarters. The Americans planned to put 400 to 600 U.S. soldiers in each district as a backup force, a senior Bush administration official said Wednesday. Others would be held in reserve throughout the capital to quickly deploy on the request of Iraqi commanders.
Al-Maliki has named an Iraqi general who was taken as prisoner of war by U.S. troops during the 1991 Gulf war as the overall commander of the new security operation.
Lt.-Gen. Aboud Gambar, a Shiite, will have two assistants, one from the police and one from the army, the military officers said on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to reveal the information.
Gambar will report directly to al-Maliki, the commander general of the armed forces.