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Thread: Iraqi Gov't Shields Shia Death Squad Militias says US Military

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    Iraqi Gov't Shields Shia Death Squad Militias says US Military

    Iraq Impeding Efforts to Go After Shiite Militias, U.S. Military Says
    By Solomon Moore, Times Staff Writer
    September 28, 2006

    BAGHDAD — Senior U.S. military officials have stepped up complaints that Iraq's Shiite-led government is thwarting efforts to go after Shiite death squads blamed in the execution-style killings of Sunni Arabs in neighborhoods across this capital.

    Although deadly Sunni Arab rebel attacks remain frequent in Baghdad, U.S. officials, including Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, say death squads affiliated with Shiite militias have become the main factors ratcheting up the capital's death toll from sectarian killings.

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    Civilian deaths in Baghdad during July and August totaled more than 5,100, according to United Nations figures, and most were caused by the sectarian strife.

    However, the 8,000 U.S. troops sent to Baghdad in recent weeks to restore order have been largely prevented from confronting those militias, many of which have ties to Iraqi government officials.

    The statements by ranking U.S. authorities complaining about the situation highlight rising American dissatisfaction with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki and an increasing willingness to exert pressure on the fledging Iraqi government.

    The U.S. forces would like to stage heightened military operations in Baghdad neighborhoods such as Sadr City, a stronghold for anti-U.S. Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada Sadr's Al Mahdi militia.

    "We have to fix this militia issue," Army Lt. Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli, commander of day-to-day operations in Iraq, said Wednesday.

    "We can't have armed militias competing with Iraq's security forces. But I have to trust the prime minister to decide when it is that we do that."

    U.S. officials are anxious for Iraqis to take a stronger role in their country's security because of mounting pressure to withdraw American troops as soon as possible. Rising public discontent in the United States with the war, tired troops on their third and fourth rotations in the Middle East and huge expenditures by American taxpayers are all driving U.S. officials to press the government of Maliki, a Shiite, to quickly take more responsibility.

    A map provided by the U.S. military on Wednesday identified nine neighborhoods that have been targeted in a Baghdad security plan, a major effort aimed at ridding the capital of Sunni Arab insurgents and Shiite militias.

    However, all but two of these neighborhoods are predominantly Sunni.

    Publicly, U.S. military leaders say they are simply conducting operations in areas where they are tracking the most killings, but privately they acknowledge that the Iraqi government has been reluctant to go after Shiite militias.

    Tensions increased between the U.S. military and the Iraqi government after the Iraqi army's recent failure to deploy 4,000 troops to Baghdad.

    Iraqi officials have attempted to send soldiers from the south to Diyala province to stabilize sectarian strife in the provincial capital, Baqubah, 35 miles north of the capital.

    But a U.S. military official with knowledge of combat operations in Iraq said, "We told them that they can't send anybody to Diyala until they give us the troops we need for Baghdad."

    The military official, who requested anonymity because of restrictions about speaking to news media about combat operations, also complained that Maliki's government had scrapped a plan to move U.S. and Iraqi troops into Sadr City before the start of the current holy month of Ramadan, a sign of how sectarian political considerations were hampering attempts to quell violence in Baghdad.

    U.S. Army Maj. Gen. James Thurman, commander of military forces in the capital, said last week that "one of the sources of death groups are militias."

    "I consider that issue a problem that the [Iraqi] government must deal with immediately."

    Iraqi government spokesman Ali Dabbagh said Maliki well understood the dangers posed by Shiite militias, but he said that political realities in Iraq could present the prime minister with even greater peril.

    "This might create a negative reaction, and it may affect the political situation as well as the security situation in Baghdad," he said, defending Maliki's refusal to allow the U.S. military to raid Sadr City this month.

    Dabbagh also said it was unfair to treat the Shiite militias the same as the Sunni Arab insurgents, because, he said, the paramilitaries were reacting to first blows by the rebels.

    "Extremists and Saddamist parties are making bombs and killing Iraqis," Dabbagh said. "We do agree that there are revenge killings taking place, but not in the way of the Saddamists — this is just a reaction. We have to deal with the main causes: There are suicide bombers and car bombs attacking the Iraqis every day."

    The American frustration in Baghdad is part of a growing chorus in recent weeks from officials both in Iraq and Washington expressing disappointment that Maliki has not taken a stronger stand against the militias, some of whose members serve in Iraq's army and police forces.

    The dissatisfaction comes as scores of corpses — many mutilated by power drills, knives and multiple gunshots — continue to arrive at Baghdad's morgues, victims of death squads that officials fear are affiliated with politically backed militias.

    The Sadr movement has control of some of Iraq's most powerful ministries, including Health, Transportation and Agriculture. The Badr Organization, a militia affiliated with the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq — a leading Shiite political party — and followers of Sadr have a strong influence at the Interior Ministry, which supervises the nation's police forces. Many ministries have their own security forces, which have been implicated in killings.

    U.S. officials said they worried that a hands-off stance toward the militias could alienate those Sunni Arabs who have entered Iraqi civil society, including the army. They say they are concerned that Maliki's unity government could fray and that disaffected Sunni Arabs could drift into militancy.

    U.S. military leaders described various obstacles facing them as they attempt to quell sectarian violence in Baghdad, including "no-touch lists" that prohibit them from arresting politicians and other high-status individuals, and off-limits areas in Baghdad that the U.S. military may not enter without permission from the Iraqi government.

    U.S. military officials said they were also constrained by their desire to see the Iraqi government prove its ability to rule fairly, without regard to narrow sectarian interests and without significant U.S. interference, by resolving the sectarian conflict.

    "There's a political piece to this to see if they deal with these guys," said another high-ranking U.S. military official in Baghdad, who also requested anonymity in order to maintain relationships with the Iraqi government.

    "I won't deny the fact that there is corruption and problems in some of the ministries, but it's got to be dealt with, and it ought to be dealt with by the prime minister and the folks inside his government."

    Instead, Maliki's government has often appeared to respond with ambivalence and occasional hostility to efforts to crack down on Shiite gunmen.

    In August, U.S. forces raided Sadr City and battled with suspected militia members in one of the first thrusts of the Baghdad offensive. The prime minister responded by rebuking the American government for conducting the Sadr City incursion without permission from his administration.

    Maliki's government also criticized two raids last week that captured suspected Al Mahdi militia leaders in the southern holy city of Najaf and in Baghdad.

    In Washington, members of the Iraq Study Group — a high-profile, administration-backed panel examining U.S. policy in Iraq — recently held a news conference to say that they believed Maliki had just three months to act against the militias and restore stability.

    But some observers say that Americans may have unrealistic expectations for an embryonic government so riven with sectarian and partisan fissures. Even if the Iraqi government had the will to act, it might not be able to control the militias, which U.S. and Iraqi officials contend have splintered into more radicalized and deadly elements.

    "For example, Muqtada Sadr was ordered to control the militias, but even he can't control them," said Suha Azzawi, a Sunni Arab politician.

    *
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    solomon.moore@latimes.com

    Staff writers Julian E. Barnes and Peter Spiegel in Washington contributed to this report.
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    http://www.latimes.com/news/nationwo...?track=tottext

    THE CONFLICT IN IRAQ
    Killings by Shiite Militias Detailed

    By Solomon Moore
    Times Staff Writer

    September 28, 2006

    BAGHDAD — Iraq's two most deadly Shiite Muslim militias have killed thousands of Sunni Arabs since February, with the more experienced Badr Brigade often working in tandem with Al Mahdi army, collecting intelligence on targets and forming hit lists that Al Mahdi militia members carry out, a senior U.S. military official said Wednesday.

    In some cases, death squads have been accompanied by a "clerical figure to basically run" an Islamic court to provide "the blessing for the conduct of the execution," the official said.

    The disclosures came during a U.S. intelligence briefing that included details about Shiite militia death squad operations and links to Iranian finance and weapons networks.

    The military official said there were corrupt Iraqi security officers who allowed Shiite militia members to kill Sunni Arabs in Baghdad neighborhoods that had been secured by joint U.S.-Iraqi military sweeps aimed at quelling sectarian violence.

    The official spoke on condition of anonymity, but was one of a series of high-ranking American officials who gave detailed briefings to reporters this week, at a time when the U.S. military is struggling to restore order to Baghdad and to press the Iraqi government to move decisively against Shiite militias.

    The Badr Brigade, the military wing of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq — a member of the leading Shiite political bloc with 30 seats in parliament — was responsible for most of the Shiite death squad killings last year, the official said.

    That changed in February, when Sunni Arab insurgents bombed the Shiite shrine of the Golden Mosque in Samarra, and Al Mahdi army, a militia loyal to radical anti-Western Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr, moved to the front of a rising sectarian bloodbath.

    Sadr's political organization also holds 30 parliamentary seats and controls several government ministries.

    The hallmarks of the Shiite death squads have been mass killings in which the victims are found with their "hands bound, shot in the back or head," and their bodies showing signs of torture, the U.S. official said.

    Mosques and safehouses in Sadr City, a huge poor Shiite neighborhood that is the Al Mahdi stronghold in Baghdad, have been the base for many death squad operations, the official said.

    The official also said that Iraq's Interior Ministry, known to be heavily infiltrated by both Shiite militias, was complicit in many of the killings.

    Militia members have used Iraqi security forces' uniforms and vehicles during assassinations and checkpoint sweeps.

    "Those would get up to 60 individuals detained in a sweep," the official said. "OK, and again, often they would release those who were Shiite. We'd see that over the course of, say, that afternoon. And then there'd be individuals ransomed, and then there would perhaps be a mass killing in Sadr City and burial."

    American military officials have arrested at least 30 death squad members, the official said, all of them associated with extreme Al Mahdi militia elements.

    Death squad cells within the Badr Brigade still carry out killings, the official said, but the number of slayings by Al Mahdi extremist cells has far outstripped them.

    Al Mahdi militia's growth has hindered Sadr's ability to control the paramilitary force, the official said, citing instances when the cleric's commands to fighters to stand down were ignored by militia commanders.

    The official said U.S. investigators in Iraq have evidence that militiamen have acquired shoulder-fired rockets capable of shooting down aircraft, as well as Iranian-made explosives capable of puncturing armor plating.

    Iran has "enhanced violence" in some militia-dominated Iraqi cities with its flow of weapons, the official said, but he downplayed the Shiite-controlled country's long-term influence in Iraq, saying that Iraq's historic independent streak would eventually outweigh its affinities for its neighbor.

    *

    solomon.moore@latimes.com

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    Fuck em! I don't see why we even bothered to rebuild that place, should have just raided Iraq, ransacked Saddam's palaces for nukes, send all of saddam's regime to the hague and let the warring cultures there duke it out.
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    Originally posted by BITEYOASS
    Fuck em! I don't see why we even bothered to rebuild that place, should have just raided Iraq, ransacked Saddam's palaces for nukes, send all of saddam's regime to the hague and let the warring cultures there duke it out.
    Or maybe not ever have gone in the first place?
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    And supported anti-Saddam Iraqi resistance...

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    It's just a confusing fuckin situation. Hell, I was there last year doing the bomb buildup for all of the USMC aircraft over there. Never went to the frontline, but we still had the occasional rocket attack. Fuck we had a big barrage when that damn story about the Koran being flushed down the toilet hit. I've had a distrust of national journalists ever since.

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