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Sent: Saturday, October 11, 2003 3:35 AM
Subject: Now Americans Have to Face Shiite Radicalization
Now Americans Have to Face Shiite Radicalization
By Rémy Ourdan
Le Monde
Friday 10 October 2003
After the suicide attack in Al-Sadr City, incidents have set GIs against Moqtada Al-Sadr's militia.
The man drove up to the police station gateway at the wheel of an old Oldsmobile. The two guards must have been vaguely surprised: the building, the police general headquarters for the Shiite working class neighborhood of Al-Sadr City, was not open to the public. That morning, Thursday, October 9, was pay day: hundreds of plain clothes police came from all the police stations to pick up their salaries.
The man, who would have been alone or accompanied, according to conflicting eye-witness testimony, calmly got out of his car and killed the two guards with a side arm. Then he got back inside the vehicle, which he drove into the courtyard. Alerted by the shots fired on the guards, policemen took aim with their Kalashnikovs and opened fire. Then the kamikaze set off his bomb.
The toll was 9 dead, including the assailant, 28 wounded according to the American army, 38, according to the hospital. "Three policemen, five civilians, and the kamikaze were killed", specified the American Captain Sean Kirley. It appears that some of the "civilians" were policemen not in uniform who had come to get their pay.
It's the most lethal attack in Baghdad since the one committed against Hotel Canal, the UN General Headquarters, on August 19, which left 22 dead. In this case, as in that of the attack against the General Baghdad Police Headquarters in September, also conducted on pay day, the author of the attack benefited from excellent intelligence. American and Iraqi security services suspect inside complicity. At the General HQ in Al-Sadr City, payment of salaries had been delayed by a week for technical reasons, yet the man came on precisely the right day.
Shortly after the attack, thousands of Al-Sadr City residents gathered at the scene, kept at a distance by circles of barbed wire placed by the American army. They spontaneously transformed the event into a political demonstration, chanting "No, No to America!" or "America, get out!"
Then they demanded the head of the correspondent for the hated Arab satellite TV station, Al-Arabiya- which, like its twin sister, Al-Jazira - is despised by the Shiite community, which accuses them of having supported Baathist power during the war and of having assiduously relayed guerilla messages.
Armed Men
Then, for unknown reasons a plain clothes policeman was stabbed. Afterwards, the demonstrators turned on the thirty or so foreign journalists who were there. American soldiers, fearing that they'd have to confront a riot, evicted the reporters, handing them over to the crowd. There were stones and blows thrown and equipment was damaged.
The American army had still not finished with the Al-Sadr City crowd. At the end of the day, the militia of the young radical imam Moqtada Al-Sadr started a new demonstration, this time including armed men. An American patrol opened fire, killing one militia man and wounding two others. One hour later, another American patrol fell into an ambush not far from there. Two American soldiers were killed and four others wounded.
That's the first time the American army and a Shiite militia have been in such a violent encounter, even though Moqtada Al-Sadr's men have always been resolutely opposed to the American presence in Iraq. While the Iraqi "resistance' is considered to be of Baathist and Sunni inspiration, the American occupation is experiencing a clear Shiite radicalization in recent days, with demonstrations that are more and more frequent and more and more violent.
Furthermore, the American army announced it had suffered two attacks against military convoys near Falluja, west of Baghdad, and another near Baqouba, to the north east of the Iraqi capital. In the course of the last incident, one GI was killed- which brings to 92 the number of American soldiers killed since May 1, when the American president announced the "end of major operations" in Iraq.
Translation: Truthout French language correspondent Leslie Thatcher
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