Outlaw Militia Plays Role Of Ad Hoc Police Force

SECURITY
Outlaw Militia Plays Role Of Ad Hoc Police Force
By SOMINI SENGUPTAPublished: August 8, 2004
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Aug. 2 - The Mahdi Army, a militia loyal to the radical Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, is one of the biggest thorns for Americans in Iraq, periodically erupting in violent challenges to the American-backed interim government. But even when truces are declared, the militia is at hard at work on the streets of Sadr City, a slum neighborhood here in the capital.
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At midnight recently, as the stench of rotting chicken parts rose from market stalls, members of the Mahdi Army reported to work.
Dressed in black shirts, their faces hidden behind ski masks, they stood as sentries at the gates of their neighborhood. They held guns and flashlights. The glowing orange tips of their cigarettes were like fireflies in a neighborhood plunged into darkness by a power cut.
No car passed without inspection at their checkpoint. They opened trunks. They ordered drivers to step out.
In one car, they found cans of beer, which they poured into the gutter before letting the driver go. Out of the blackness came the sound of each can being opened and emptied, and then being crushed underfoot. An Iraqi police truck stopped; there was a consultation with the militiamen, and the truck moved on. The black-shirted men drove off into the night to take their posts across Sadr City.
The Mahdi Army has emerged in recent months as a powerful paramilitary force that has not only taken charge of policing Shiite enclaves like this one but has also been aiding Iraqi security forces in crackdowns against looters and kidnappers, according to Mahdi Army members and civilians in other parts of Baghdad.
Officially, the militia is an outlaw group. An arrest warrant was issued for Mr. Sadr in April by an Iraqi court in connection with the killing of a rival Shiite cleric.
A spokesman for the Interior Ministry, which controls police and security forces, said there was no official cooperation with the Mahdi Army but acknowledged that its members sometimes worked with local law enforcement groups on security.
"In various parts of the country, they have been helpful," Sabah Khadim, the ministry spokesman, said in an interview. "When we have sufficient security forces, this government will have Iraq under control. There will be no other militias."
The apparent cooperation between the Mahdi Army and the state security forces signals the inability of the Iraqi government to control Mr. Sadr's militia, leaving it trying to make deals with the group.
Prime Minister Ayad Allawi has allowed Mr. Sadr to resume the publication of his newspaper, which Americans closed this spring, prompting clashes in the south. The government has not pressed the arrest warrant for Mr. Sadr.
It has also dangled an offer of an amnesty for some of his fighters and repeatedly invited Mr. Sadr to take part in a national conference to plan Iraq's political future. Mr. Sadr has rejected both.
[The government's approach has not brought peace. On Thursday, American forces and the militia began fierce fighting, which has continued through Saturday across several cities in the south, and there have been skirmishes in Sadr City. The American military estimated the death toll among the fighters at more than 300. Mr. Sadr's forces said it was about 40. Iraqi government officials sharply criticized the militia and what they said were foreign supporters of the group.
[Mr. Sadr's group called for a fresh uprising against the American-led coalition. "I say 'America is our enemy,' " said Sheik Jaber al-Khafaji, reading a statement from Mr. Sadr during Friday Prayer in Kufa, the city adjacent to Najaf, Mr. Sadr's base. "I warn Iraqi police not to attack any peaceful demonstration."]
In Sadr City recently, a Mahdi Army commander who called himself Haji Abu Mustafa - a name that means he is the father of Mustafa and has been to Mecca - both bragged and lamented about the militia's work with the Iraqi authorities. His group, he said, had retrieved 140 stolen cars and handed over 180 gang members to the police in recent months. He would not reveal much about his group's tactics except to say that Mahdi Army members, posted on each block in this neighborhood, were well placed to collect tips on wrongdoers and miscreants. The neighborhood police, he said, relied on the militia's capabilities but failed to give it credit.
He said the new government had initiated joint operations since coming into power June 28, but he said the Mahdi Army had set up patrols in Sadr City under its own command soon after the ouster of Saddam Hussein and the breakdown of law and order. At the time, the militia was under orders not to provoke the American military but to slip into Sadr City's warren of trash-filled alleys if tanks approached.
The militia has since mobilized in other parts of town, including the pro-Hussein enclave called Haifa Street, Mr. Mustafa said. At the request of the government authorities, he said, Mahdi Army members conducted raids on suspected criminal safe houses and turned over suspects to the police.
Mr. Khadim, the Interior Ministry spokesman, denied such cooperation. Residents of Haifa Street recalled that members of the militia had come into the neighborhood in late July and had used a police raid to do a bit of looting themselves.
Anwar Kareem, a policeman who lives in the area, said the militia members took his watch and money, and a Syrian lawyer, Marwan Tawfiq, recalled them bursting into his home and accusing him of being a terrorist.