Pat Dollard | Young Americans

Wash Times:

BAGHDAD — Anti-American Shi’ite militia leader Muqtada al-Sadr ordered his followers yesterday to defy government orders to surrender their weapons, as U.S. jets struck Shi’ite extremists near Basra to bolster a faltering Iraqi offensive against gunmen in the city.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki acknowledged he may have miscalculated by failing to foresee the strong backlash that his offensive, which began Tuesday, provoked in areas of Baghdad and other cities where Shi’ite militias wield power.

Government television said the round-the-clock curfew imposed two days ago on the capital and due to expire today would be extended indefinitely.

The U.S. Embassy tightened its security measures, ordering all staff to use armored vehicles for all travel in the Green Zone and to sleep in reinforced buildings until further notice after six days of rocket and mortar attacks, which left two Americans dead, the Associated Press reported.

Despite the mounting crisis, Mr. al-Maliki, himself a Shi’ite, vowed to remain in Basra until government forces wrest control from militias, including Sheik al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army. He called the fight for control of Basra “a decisive and final battle.”

British ground troops, who controlled the city until handing it over to the Iraqis last December, also joined the battle for Basra, firing artillery yesterday for the first time in support of Iraqi forces.

Iraqi authorities have given Basra extremists until April 8 to surrender heavy and medium weapons after an initial 72-hour ultimatum to hand them over was widely ignored. But a defiant Sheik al-Sadr called on his followers yesterday to ignore the order, saying that his Mahdi Army would turn in its weapons only to a government that can “get the occupier out of Iraq,” referring to the Americans.

The order was made public by Haidar al-Jabiri, a member of the influential political commission of the Sadrist movement.

Sheik al-Sadr, in an interview aired yesterday by Al Jazeera television, said his Mahdi Army was capable of “liberating Iraq” and maintained that the al-Maliki government was as “distant” from the people as Saddam Hussein’s was.

Residents of Basra contacted by telephone said Mahdi Army militiamen were staffing checkpoints in their neighborhood strongholds. The sound of intermittent mortar and machine gun fire rang out across the city, as the military headquarters at a downtown hotel came under repeated attack.

An Iraqi army battalion commander and two of his bodyguards were killed last night by a roadside bomb in central Basra, a military spokesman said.

U.S. jets dropped two precision-guided bombs at midday yesterday on a suspected militia stronghold at Qarmat Ali north of Basra, British military spokesman Maj. Tom Holloway said.

The U.S. military said 16 enemy fighters had been killed in air strikes supporting Iraqi troops during clashes with Shi’ite militiamen in Basra, the Associated Press reported.

Military spokesman Maj. Brad Leighton said an AC-130 gunship strafed heavily armed militants attacking Iraqi forces from three rooftops in the southern city.

Earlier yesterday, Iraqi police said that a U.S. warplane strafed a house and killed eight civilians, including two women and one child.

But Maj. Leighton said U.S. special operations forces helped identify the militants before the air strike.

The fight for Basra is crucial for Mr. al-Maliki, who flew to Basra last week and is staking his credibility on gaining control of Iraq’s second-largest city, which has essentially been held by armed groups for nearly three years.

In a speech yesterday to tribal leaders in Basra, Mr. al-Maliki promised to “stand up to these gangs,” not only in the south but throughout Iraq. He said the gangs were “worse than al Qaeda.”

Without mentioning the Sadrists by name, Mr. al-Maliki said he was “surprised to see that party emerge with all the weapons available to it and strike at everything — institutions, people, departments, police stations and the army.”

Al-Sadr followers have accused rival Shi’ite parties in the national government of trying to crush their movement before provincial elections this fall. The young cleric’s lieutenants had warned repeatedly that any move to dislodge them from Basra would provoke bloodshed.

But al-Maliki’s comments appeared to reinforce suspicions that his government failed to foresee the backlash, including a sharp upsurge in violence throughout the Shi’ite south and shelling of the U.S.-controlled Green Zone, the nerve center of the Iraqi leadership and the U.S. mission.

The death toll has been mounting. Government troops say they have killed at least 120 fighters in Basra. Scores of people have been reported killed in other towns in the south.