COMBAT: U.S. Troops Fight Iraq Militiamen on Two Fronts

August 11th, 2004
by JOHN F. BURNS and ALEX BERENSON, NY Times

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Aug. 10 - American troops fought simultaneous battles on Tuesday with rebel Shiite militiamen in Najaf and the Baghdad slum of Sadr City. But American commanders, preparing new battle orders, appeared to have deferred for the time being any decision to mount full-scale assaults on the rebels, weighing the consequences for their wider aim of bringing stability to Iraq.

On the sixth day since fighters loyal to the rebel Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr renewed their challenge to the American presence here, American units showed signs of rising impatience. In Najaf, loudspeakers atop patrolling Humvees urged residents to evacuate the city and warned Mr. Sadr's fighters to "leave the city, or you will die." As night fell in Sadr City, tanks and attack helicopters moved into militia-controlled neighborhoods, and American attack jets and pilotless Predator drones patrolled overhead.

Faced with the uprisings in Najaf and Sadr City, and rebel attacks in Basra and other southern cities, the new Iraqi-American hierarchy in Baghdad - Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, Ambassador John D. Negroponte and Gen. George W. Casey, the military commander -appeared to have reached a watershed as critical as any since American troops toppled Saddam Hussein's government in April 2003.

With elections planned by the end of January, many Americans and Iraqis here say that Mr. Sadr's challenge offers a difficult choice. Either it will have to be answered with force now, at the risk of igniting an explosion of anger among Iraq's majority Shiite population, or with negotiation as it was at the time of Mr. Sadr's last lengthy uprising in the spring, with consequences that could cause the election plans and much that lies beyond them to unravel.

When he emerged from hiding on Monday to speak to reporters at Najaf's Imam Ali shrine, the holiest in Shiite Islam, Mr. Sadr rejected Dr. Allawi's urging over the weekend that he take part in the elections. Mr. Sadr said efforts to build a democracy in Iraq could begin only after American troops leave.

Perhaps the biggest threat posed by the rebels, to shut down oil exports flowing from the country's richest southern oil fields, appeared to have receded for the moment with the announcement by the Oil Ministry in Baghdad that full production resumed on Tuesday after quick repairs to a pipeline that was blown up by saboteurs on Monday. An official said the two main export pipelines flowing to shipping terminals from oil fields near Basra were pumping again, though the risk of renewed rebel attacks remained high.

For days, American troops had avoided plunging into Sadr City, remaining mostly on the western rim of the sprawling district, pushing back militia bands threatening to break for the center of Baghdad, five miles away. It was not clear on Tuesday night how deep the new offensive had gone. But reporters returning from another day of skirmishes said practically all of Sadr City appeared to be under the effective control of militiamen who hide down side streets and alleys, promising a potential bloodbath in the event of any full-scale challenge from the Americans and Iraq's new security forces.

In Najaf, American armor and helicopter gunships continued to attack around the vast cemetery that adjoins the Imam Ali shrine, now a base and armory for Mr. Sadr.

Thunderous explosions were audible miles away, and black smoke curled into the sky after an American jet bombed an inner-city hotel 400 yards from the shrine that American officers said had been used as a firing point by the rebels. At a base 20 miles away, senior Army and Marine officers, awaiting orders from Baghdad, met to plan a wider assault on the old town, a warren of alleyways and bazaars surrounding the ancient shrine where hundreds of militiamen have been reported to be holed up.

American officers said the command in Baghdad was preparing to move another 1,000 American troops into the city, on top of the 2,000 already available to commanders there, with a view to pressuring the rebels and adding punch to a new offensive. American forces planned attacks on the old city before, during Mr. Sadr's uprising in April. But they pulled back and signed a series of fragile truces with the cleric because of concern about the repercussions, among Iraq's 15 million Shiites, of damaging the Imam Ali shrine or of wounding or killing Mr. Sadr, a populist leader in his early 30's who is the scion of one of Iraq's most revered clerical dynasties.

The officers who spoke of plans for a new offensive acknowledged privately that they hoped that the disclosure of the plans, and of the American troop reinforcements, would persuade Mr. Sadr to back down and disband his militia, known as the Mahdi Army. Another option discussed by some American officers - using the fledgling Iraqi security forces to carry out an assault on the mosque, and keeping American troops back to blunt Shiite objections - appeared to have been ruled out after American commanders concluded that the Iraqis fighting in Najaf have had trouble achieving minor combat objectives.

Still, American commanders insisted that they were ready to press ahead if Mr. Sadr fails to surrender. "All indications are that we are committed this time," said Lt. Col. Myles Miyamasu, who commands the First Battalion of the Fifth Cavalry Regiment, the Army unit that took over the fighting in the cemetery on Sunday, relieving units of the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit. "There's a will to win this fight. There are a lot of people we don't want to let down, including ourselves."

Mr. Sadr, who vowed Monday that he would fight "to the last drop of my blood," showed his canny, mocking brand of politics when an aide in Baghdad announced that the Mahdi Army had declared a curfew across the capital, starting at 1 p.m. and ending at 8 p.m. the next day, beginning immediately and continuing until hostilities against Mr. Sadr's fighters end. A day earlier, American forces imposed an indefinite curfew on Sadr City, one of the cleric's strongholds, ordering the slum's two million people off the streets from 4 p.m. to 8 a.m., the most stringent curfew in the 16 months since American troops captured Baghdad.

A representative of Mr. Sadr in Baghdad, Qais al-Khazali, called on "all citizens, and especially employees" to obey the curfew and remain at home during the curfew hours, and to support the militiamen in their fight against the Americans. In a statement broadcast on the Arabic-language television channel Al Arabiya, he renewed the militiamen's warnings to Iraqi police, soldiers and national guardsmen, saying they should refuse to "assist the occupiers," or face reprisals.

The Sadr curfew, and a video-taped warning from another Sadr-linked group of attacks on Iraqi government workers who report for duty, appeared aimed at crippling the capital's economy. American commanders have said that 15,000 jobs provided to Sadr City residents to work on $70 million in new sewer, water and electricity projects have been scuttled, at least for now, by the uprising in the slum.

The rebels' call for a citywide curfew appeared to have an almost immediate effect. By late afternoon on Tuesday, a tour of half a dozen of the city's inner neighborhoods showed that traffic that has choked many streets since the American-led invasion last year was sharply down. Gas stations that have had long lines in recent weeks after rebel attacks on refineries, pipelines and road tankers were mostly empty, or closed. Many other businesses were shuttered, and those that were open said they were ready to shut at a moment's notice.

For American commanders, one reason for mounting a full-scale offensive on Sadr City would be to curb attacks on Baghdad. Since the uprising in the spring, the United States command has concentrated mainly on containing the Sadr militiamen in the slum, not challenging their control there. But leaving Mr. Sadr's fighters free rein has meant that Sadr City has become a Shiite counterpart to Falluja, the Sunni Muslim city 35 miles west of Baghdad. Falluja has been under rebel control since a Marine offensive there was halted in the spring. As long as the two cities are under rebel control, they will pose a threat to any effort to achieve lasting stability in Baghdad.

The threat from Sadr City has been underscored in recent days by repeated nighttime mortar and rocket volleys fired from somewhere in the vicinity of the slum and aimed at the International Zone, the newly renamed American command center in what used to be Mr. Hussein's Republican Palace compound.

Americans officers have often mocked the errant marksmanship of the Iraqi rebels. But the volleys recently have become much heavier, sometimes as many as 30 heavy mortars and battlefield rockets in a night, and an increasing number of them have struck inside the secured zone, where the Americans and Dr. Allawi work. On Monday night, one shell hit and severely wounded the Iraqi interpreter for General Casey, the American military commander. American officials said the man was expected to survive.

The American offensive that began Tuesday night appeared to have curbed the shelling.

In Najaf, the American appeal to residents to evacuate appeared to have prompted at least a partial exodus. An Iraqi reporter working for The New York Times said that the Humvees making the appeal passed through neighborhoods that account for about 75 percent of the city's population, and that traffic leaving the city picked up quickly in neighborhoods where people had previously stayed off the streets.

John F. Burns reported from Baghdad for this article and Alex Berenson from Najaf.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company