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03/18/2006:

"US-Iraqi assault seeks out rural rebels, but finds few"

...Pentagon officials said the air assault, part of Operation Swarmer, was the largest since April 2003 when the 101st Airborne Division launched an air assault from Iskandiriya to Mosul, shortly after the US-led invasion of Iraq.

On Friday, US and Iraqi troops could be seen purposefully moving through fields sown with winter wheat, searching isolated farm buildings US officials say may harbor scores of insurgents, including foreign fighters linked to Al-Qaeda.

While 48 people were detained and six weapons caches found, no insurgents have yet been encountered, US forces said.

But the deputy governor of Salaheddin province, Abdullah Hussein, suggested at least one key insurgent leader, whom he named as Jaish Mohammed, had been apprehended.

"The rebels in the area are a mix of local nationals and foreign fighters," Hussein added. "We have their voices recorded along with their names and pictures."

"There has been no contact with the insurgents," admitted Major John Calahan of the 101st Airborne Division, a unit specializing in helicopter-borne air assaults that spearheaded the sweep.

"The aim of the operation is to dissuade anti-Iraqi forces from taking sanctuary here," he said, adding that 60 helicopters were involved in the operation.
bakutoday.net

Crazy crazy crazy


AL-SADR FORMS SHADOW GOVERNMENT IN BAGHDAD STRONGHOLD
Erbil, 16 March (AKI) - A Kurdish source in Baghdad has told a Kurdish national daily that the Mahdi Army, the militia of radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, " has set up a shadow government in Sadr City in the centre of Baghdad". The source told the Aso daily: "this group was tasked with carrying out the affairs of the city in the place of the Iraqi government and institutions." The source explained that the Mahdi Army, accused of kidnappings and sectarian killings, has transformed the rundown Sadr city into an independent district with its security forces and its own courts which do not only judge local residents but also Shiites from other areas of the capital.

The source alleged that "the health and transport ministers, which both are headed by minsiters from the Sadr faction, have been completely monopolised by followers of this movement" adding that "in Sadr City the police forces, for example the local police, take their orders from Moqtada al-Sadr and not from the interior ministry."

The Cultural Network of Iraq, an internet site which publishes news on the Shiite community, has said that "the peoples courts in Sadr City have condemned to death terrorists who carried out massacres in the city."

The former government of Iyad Allawi and the movement of al-Sadr,. who has headed two lengthly revolts against the US-led coalition forces, clashed over these courts, which have special police forces and prisons. When the authorities in Baghdad tried to close them down and disband the militias they failed.

The power of Sadr's militia and his huge constituency of loyal Shiite voters have made him a growing force in Iraq.


America Switches Sides in Iraq War
While President Bush was threatening Iran on Monday, he blamed the Iraqi Shiites and Iran for the insurgency. According to the AFP, Bush said that:

"Tehran has been responsible for at least some of the increasing lethality of anti-coalition attacks by providing Shia militia with the capability to build improvised explosive devices in Iraq."
I know what you're thinking: President Bush is so stupid that giant mistakes like this should just be taken with a grain of salt. Even if he's lashing out at Iran for intervening in the affairs of the Iraqi Shia, surely he's not blaming the "improvised explosive devices" that are killing American soldiers and Marines in Iraq on the Shia. ... Wrong. That's exactly what he was doing.
"Asked about the linkage to Shiite forces, two US officials who declined to be named pointed to previously reported ties between the government of Iran and radical Iraqi Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr."
The first problem is that the next day General Pace said he had no evidence whatsoever to back up the president's false assertions and Secretary Rumsfeld just dissembled. The second is that the last time al-Sadr's Mahdi Army was in violent conflict with the US was back in August of 2004 and the roadside bomb was not their tactic, those have been the tool of the home-grown Sunni insurgency which is led by the ex-Ba'athists and the recently under fire foreign fighter jihadist types.

Though al-Sadr has openly threatened war if America were to bomb Iran, he had been known as the leader of the least Iran-loyal faction among the Iraqi Shia, denouncing the federalism in the new constitution, and insisting on Iraqi nationalism regardless of religion and ethnicity. Recently, his political fortunes have been said to be on the rise, and though that may be in conflict with some genius's plan to spread the war, a leader of the Iraqi insurgency he is not.

The U.S.'s natural allies would be Saddam's Baathists, of course. Did the glorious liberators of 3 years ago ever seriously believe that the Shia would just curl up and hand the country over to Americans, of all people? Of course not. Maybe this Iran scenario was on the drawing board then.


Seven days in Iraq
An American hostage is murdered. Car bombs kill 58 at a street market. Police discover 29 bodies in a mass grave. And the US launches its biggest assault since the invasion. On the eve of its third anniversary, Audrey Gillan pieces together just another week in a war zone.


Sectarian violence leads to displacement in capital
BAGHDAD, 16 March (IRIN) - Dozens of families in the capital, Baghdad, have been displaced from their neighbourhoods due to the sectarian violence that has come in the wake of the Samarra shrine bombing in February and subsequent attacks.

"The explosions at the Samarra mosque and the attack on a market in the Sadr district [of Baghdad] have frightened minority communities in some neighbourhoods," said Iraqi Red Crescent Society (IRCS) spokeswoman Ferdous al-Abadi. "They're afraid they could become victims of sectarian violence."

On 22 February, the bombing of a revered Shi'ite shrine in Samarra, about 100 km northwest of the capital, left more than 75 people dead and sparked sectarian reprisal attacks countrywide.

On Thursday, the Ministry of Interior announced that at least 630 people had been killed as a result of sectarian violence since the Samarra bombing.

Many families in Baghdad, lacking essential supplies, have preferred to camp outside their neighbourhoods rather than risk being killed in their homes by armed sectarian groups.

According to the IRCS, more than 300 families from different areas of the capital have been displaced, many of them Sunni residents of majority Shi'ite neighbourhoods.