By Borzou Daragahi, Los Angeles Times
June 28, 2010
Reporting from Baghdad
Mohammad and his gang are back. There may not be a Glock
semiautomatic strapped to his waist anymore, but the terrifying
mystique of the Mahdi Army still shrouds the Shiite Muslim militiaman
like the menacing black uniform he once wore.
Civil servant Haidar Naji remembers how Mohammad used to strut around
his east Baghdad neighborhood like a mob boss, ordering him not
to wear Bermuda shorts, too immodest and Western for his Islamic tastes.
Naji changed into longer pants.
He felt satisfaction in 2008 when he heard Mohammad, whose last name he
never knew, and his friends had been rounded up and imprisoned, a
well-deserved comeuppance after the militia's years of kidnapping,
torturing and killing Iraqis, and dread this year when he saw them back
on the streets, a little more polite, but with the same righteous
attitude.
"We're seeing their mobility, their presence, in the mosques, in their
gatherings, in the alleyways," said Naji, a resident of Habibiya, a
poor Shiite district next to vast, impoverished Sadr City, a Mahdi Army
stronghold.
"Maybe they are not wearing the same black uniforms as before," he
said. "But we can identify them. We are worried that they will come
back and sabotage our neighborhoods."
The return of the Mahdi Army poses a dilemma for the Obama
administration. For now, at least, Washington's goals coincide with
those of the militia: Both want to hasten the departure of U.S. troops,
and the group's leader, cleric Muqtada Sadr, has publicly urged
supporters to avoid taking up arms.
But with its ideological fervor intact and bolstered by a powerful
40-member parliamentary bloc, the shadowy organization could take
advantage of the country's instability as a political crisis festers
and U.S. troops withdraw.
"The Mahdi Army has a wish to come back to the arena again," said Emad
Hossein, a representative of an older, moderate Shiite cleric,
Ayatollah Hossein Sadr, who is related to Muqtada Sadr but politically
his opposite.
"They had this golden time when they controlled the streets,
neighborhoods and gas stations," Hossein said. "Now they are just
waiting for something to happen, or to receive an order. They are
waiting to use the moment to climb on the shoulders of others to get
what they want: power, at the expense of the people."
Muqtada Sadr, scion of a famous and powerful clerical family, launched
the Mahdi Army in 2003, drawing in thousands of poor, young Shiite men
into what eventually became a loosely defined sectarian militia that
repeatedly confronted U.S. and Iraqi forces. Sadr demobilized the
militia in 2008, after Prime Minister Nouri Maliki launched a series of
offensives against it in Baghdad and Basra.
Now the militia members have regrouped, say supporters and critics of
the organization, and sought — not for the first time — to recast
themselves as a social movement aiming to educate the young.
In interviews with Sadr supporters, they speak of computer and Koran
classes, providing money for the sick and repairing broken sewage lines.
"They're trying to create [a nongovernmental organization] to deal with
cultural issues, to deal with education, to increase IT skills," said
lawmaker Mohammad Deraji, a British-educated rising star in the Sadr
movement. "That's why we created these new entities. Hundreds of
thousands of people are involved."
But in an ominous echo of the Mahdi Army's early rhetoric, they also
vow to protect their communities as a wave of terrorist bombings and
shootings has coincided with the deadlock over forming a new government.
"The security situation has deteriorated," said Hassan Kashef, a
25-year-old ex-militiaman now serving as a member of the Monasseroon,
one of the three new branches of Sadr's organization. "The security
forces are loyal only to the parties, and not to the people."
Though they insist they are unarmed, Kashef and others in the Sadr
movement say they reserve the right to fight any continued U.S.
presence.
"There are occupation forces," Deraji said. "Any country that is
occupied by other countries, they have the right to resist the
occupation."
Adding to the confusion and the potential for violence, observers say
there are at least two major outgrowths of the Mahdi Army's militia:
the Promised Day Brigades sanctioned by Sadr and a splinter group
called the League of the Righteous. Some describe the latter as an
Iranian-controlled militia linked to Shiite militant organizations,
which the U.S. called Special Groups, that were once accused of using
sophisticated roadside bombs against troops.
Iraqi and U.S. forces have already had some run-ins with Promised Day.
On May 28, Iraqi security forces arrested a member of the group
"allegedly involved in sniper, indirect fire and improvised explosive
device attacks" against American and Iraqi forces, according to a U.S.
military news release.
U.S. Ambassador Christopher Hill said in a briefing with reporters last
month that American forces were closely monitoring reports of the
resurrection of the Mahdi Army but were not convinced that it was an
imminent threat to Iraqis or U.S. forces.
"Iraqi security forces are the legitimate force authorized by the Iraq
Constitution to secure and protect the population," Maj. Gen. Stephen
Lanza, a spokesman for U.S. forces in Iraq, said in response to an
inquiry. "We agree with Prime Minister Maliki that militias operating
outside the constitution would be problematic and counterproductive."
During December religious ceremonies commemorating the martyrdom of the
Shiite saint Imam Hussein, Promised Day and League of the Righteous
organized competing processions, alarming bystanders who watched them
taunt each other.
"It's hard to distinguish which is which," Hossein said. "There is some
mixture, but there is also a lot of bad blood between them."
In Baghdad neighborhoods such as Habibiya and Sadr City, as well as
southern Iraqi cities that were once Mahdi Army strongholds, former
militants such as Mohammad stand watch over streets.
They appear unarmed, dress in civilian clothes and trim their beards
neatly, part of an image makeover Sadr movement supporters are
attempting.
Occasionally, along crowded sidewalks and during Friday prayers, they
distribute discs loaded with video of Promised Day and old Mahdi Army
military operations against U.S. and Iraqi forces, accompanied by
soundtracks of martial anthems.
Mohammad, a burly and muscular man in his 30s, recently nodded hello to
Naji. There was nothing menacing in the gesture. It was just an
acknowledgement that they know each other.
"Now I see him again on a regular basis, with his gang," Naji said.
"They run the alleyway. Nobody from the neighborhood talks to them.
There is a real fear."