After three weeks of bloody conflict in Najaf, fresh fighting in Baghdad’s Sadr City suburb and a death toll creeping into the high hundreds have tarnished the reputation of radical Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr among many Iraqis, even though anti-United States feelings still run high.
Anger is mounting at al-Sadr among Iraqis such as the relatives of 15-year-old Hussam Chani, who lies bloodied on a bed in Iraq’s overcrowded al-Kindi hospital, both legs shot to pieces. Hussam knows he is one of the lucky ones.
”I’m just happy that I’m not dead,” the youth says, shot by US soldiers outside the family house in Sadr City during a firefight with the so-called Mehdi Army — al-Sadr’s militia.
A number of violent incidents have flared in the impoverished suburb since the militia left Najaf in a peace deal brokered by Shi’ite authority Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. The fighters, having left the Imam Ali Shrine in the city mostly intact, now appear to have regrouped in Sadr City.
Emerging from the many dead and wounded brought to the hospital following the fighting, Hussam describes how he screamed for help before doctors could get to him. Now he needs seven operations and will more than likely be disabled for life.
Family members gathered around his bed have little good to say about the US occupation of their country. Surprisingly, though, there is also a great deal of bitterness directed towards the al-Sadr militia.
”There are a lot of bad people in the Mehdi Army, people with their own agenda — you don’t kill other people just like that,” says Hussam’s mother, Hana. ”We are peaceful people and we just want peace.”
Pushing for peace are the Iraqi interim government under Prime Minister Iyad Allawi and US-led coalition forces.
It appears to be the interim government, however, which is taking the initiative, on the one hand squaring up to the Mehdi Army in renewed Sadr City clashes and on the other smoothing diplomatic ties with former enemy and Shi’ite neighbour Iran, hoping perhaps that Tehran can help find a peaceful solution to the militia issue.
Any such peaceful solution would be modelled on the Najaf deal brokered by al-Sistani. The Mehdi Army has, however, according to media reports refused to consider disarmament, saying only that it will honour a ceasefire if US troops leave Sadr City.
”If Iraqi police and Iraqi police only patrolled the streets then, yes, that would be acceptable,” says Sadr City resident Abdul Sachra Mahmud (35).
Mahmud describes himself as loyal to al-Sistani and indeed was one of thousands of Shi’ites who flocked to Najaf in response to the cleric’s call for a peaceful demonstration at the sacred Imam Ali mosque.
”I went there for peace,” he says. ”And for God.”
In al-Kindi hospital, Dr Renia Mohammed tends to the wounded. She has her hands full. The violence in Iraq will only end, she says, when Iraqis are ready for it.
Mohammed holds out little hope of a speedy end to the violence.
There are too many disparate interests at stake in the shifting political landscape of post-Saddam Iraq.
”Everybody wants their slice of the cake,” she says. — Sapa-DPA