Intifada
21st August 2004, 13:00
TEN-YEAR-OLD Abbas is saving up his pocket money for a hand grenade. He wants an American one to throw at the huge US tanks that sit on every key crossroads of Sadr City. He doesn’t want an Iraqi one although, at £2, it is half the price.
“The American one is stronger. I’ll attack the Americans everywhere I see them,” he says with a sweet smile.
In any other country, this could be dismissed as children’s bragging. But Abbas is attending Friday prayers at al-Hikmeh mosque — the Baghdad headquarters of the rebel cleric Moqtada al-Sadr — dressed in the white shroud of a martyr, a fighter ready for death.
Behind him kids with their heads wrapped in black scarves play with toy rocket-propelled grenades made out of wooden banister rails. Behind them, men dressed in black loiter with the real thing, watching for the approach of American armour.
Sadr City, the northern Baghdad slum once known as Saddam City, and which is home to about two million dirt-poor Shia, is the ultimate stronghold for the rebel Mahdi Army.
Unlike the middle-class shrine city of Najaf, the rebels here are born and bred on its mean streets. In time of crisis, they swarm on to the streets: when the fighting dies down, they melt away again.
“We are working towards two things, victory or martyrdom, and either way we are winners,” says 34-year-old Sheikh Abbas, one of thousands of men to join the prayer session that spills out of the mosque and down the broad boulevard, the house walls scrawled with the words “Vietnam Street”.
As a sea of men kneel on prayer mats along the street, they beat their chests and chant “We are with you, Sayyid Moqtada, until martyrdom,” a roar carrying through the city like a Zulu warrior chant. For a moment, the poor and disenfranchised men of the slum lose themselves in the greater cause.
The al-Hikmeh mosque is at the heart of Sadr City, and the writing on the wall makes clear local sentiment towards the American intruders.
On almost every building is stencilled the portrait of Hojatoleslam al-Sadr, his scowling, bearded face sandwiched between black turban and black robes, an admonishing finger wagging at any unbelievers. By contrast, all the graffiti about the Government of Iyad Allawi, the interim Prime Minister, is rudely disparaging, calling him a US spy and a traitor. “Country for sale: contact Iyad Allawi,” reads one slogan.
The US military have fought a number of heavy skirmishes with the Mahdi Army here, losing a tank and a helicopters and several men in the past fortnight. Scores of militiamen have been killed, as well as a number of civilians.
In the Chowadra hospital, an injured fighter recalls how he was shot through both shins while he and five comrades launched a grenade and machine-gun attack on a US armoured column. Instead of risking arrest by evacuating their wounded friend, the other fighters simply called his brother, who came and ferried him to hospital.
Khamas Jassim, a 54-year-old father of seven, went out to buy cigarettes 12 days ago. He heard a large boom and woke up in the spartan hospital with both his legs gone. He blames a US fighter-bomber, but there are so many explosions, one can never be sure.
Yesterday, a group of men were digging a hole in the road. At first sight it appeared they were repairing the threadbare surface.
On closer inspection, one of them turned out to be lugging a huge artillery shell to plant in the road against future incursions. Sometimes these go off when Iraqis, rather than US troops, are passing.
The Americans have accused the Mahdi Army of disrupting vital reconstruction projects in Sadr City with their armed insurrection. But there is little sign that anyone has ever tried to improve conditions here in Baghdad’s shadow city: the crowd outside the mosque perch on the edge of a lake of vividly green sewage as they pray.
Just as failed states breed terrorism, a failed city on the edge of Baghdad has produced an Islamic guerrilla force on the capital’s doorstep. Outside the mosque, worshippers say they are all members of the Mahdi Army, and warn of a bloodbath if Iraq and US troops storm the sacred shrine their leaders is holed up in down in Najaf.
“Men and women will become human bombs. They are already preparing,” one young man said.
When a large US armoured column deployed through the slum’s centre two days ago, killing 50 people in hit-and-run clashes, the US troops called on the militia to disband and hand in their weapons. No one here has: instead the fighters cluster around the mosque planning their next strike.
And little Abbas in his martyrs’ shroud says, with a child’s enthusiasm, that he will soon have enough money to go to market and buy his shiny American grenade.
Times Online (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,175-1225765_1,00.html)
“The American one is stronger. I’ll attack the Americans everywhere I see them,” he says with a sweet smile.
In any other country, this could be dismissed as children’s bragging. But Abbas is attending Friday prayers at al-Hikmeh mosque — the Baghdad headquarters of the rebel cleric Moqtada al-Sadr — dressed in the white shroud of a martyr, a fighter ready for death.
Behind him kids with their heads wrapped in black scarves play with toy rocket-propelled grenades made out of wooden banister rails. Behind them, men dressed in black loiter with the real thing, watching for the approach of American armour.
Sadr City, the northern Baghdad slum once known as Saddam City, and which is home to about two million dirt-poor Shia, is the ultimate stronghold for the rebel Mahdi Army.
Unlike the middle-class shrine city of Najaf, the rebels here are born and bred on its mean streets. In time of crisis, they swarm on to the streets: when the fighting dies down, they melt away again.
“We are working towards two things, victory or martyrdom, and either way we are winners,” says 34-year-old Sheikh Abbas, one of thousands of men to join the prayer session that spills out of the mosque and down the broad boulevard, the house walls scrawled with the words “Vietnam Street”.
As a sea of men kneel on prayer mats along the street, they beat their chests and chant “We are with you, Sayyid Moqtada, until martyrdom,” a roar carrying through the city like a Zulu warrior chant. For a moment, the poor and disenfranchised men of the slum lose themselves in the greater cause.
The al-Hikmeh mosque is at the heart of Sadr City, and the writing on the wall makes clear local sentiment towards the American intruders.
On almost every building is stencilled the portrait of Hojatoleslam al-Sadr, his scowling, bearded face sandwiched between black turban and black robes, an admonishing finger wagging at any unbelievers. By contrast, all the graffiti about the Government of Iyad Allawi, the interim Prime Minister, is rudely disparaging, calling him a US spy and a traitor. “Country for sale: contact Iyad Allawi,” reads one slogan.
The US military have fought a number of heavy skirmishes with the Mahdi Army here, losing a tank and a helicopters and several men in the past fortnight. Scores of militiamen have been killed, as well as a number of civilians.
In the Chowadra hospital, an injured fighter recalls how he was shot through both shins while he and five comrades launched a grenade and machine-gun attack on a US armoured column. Instead of risking arrest by evacuating their wounded friend, the other fighters simply called his brother, who came and ferried him to hospital.
Khamas Jassim, a 54-year-old father of seven, went out to buy cigarettes 12 days ago. He heard a large boom and woke up in the spartan hospital with both his legs gone. He blames a US fighter-bomber, but there are so many explosions, one can never be sure.
Yesterday, a group of men were digging a hole in the road. At first sight it appeared they were repairing the threadbare surface.
On closer inspection, one of them turned out to be lugging a huge artillery shell to plant in the road against future incursions. Sometimes these go off when Iraqis, rather than US troops, are passing.
The Americans have accused the Mahdi Army of disrupting vital reconstruction projects in Sadr City with their armed insurrection. But there is little sign that anyone has ever tried to improve conditions here in Baghdad’s shadow city: the crowd outside the mosque perch on the edge of a lake of vividly green sewage as they pray.
Just as failed states breed terrorism, a failed city on the edge of Baghdad has produced an Islamic guerrilla force on the capital’s doorstep. Outside the mosque, worshippers say they are all members of the Mahdi Army, and warn of a bloodbath if Iraq and US troops storm the sacred shrine their leaders is holed up in down in Najaf.
“Men and women will become human bombs. They are already preparing,” one young man said.
When a large US armoured column deployed through the slum’s centre two days ago, killing 50 people in hit-and-run clashes, the US troops called on the militia to disband and hand in their weapons. No one here has: instead the fighters cluster around the mosque planning their next strike.
And little Abbas in his martyrs’ shroud says, with a child’s enthusiasm, that he will soon have enough money to go to market and buy his shiny American grenade.
Times Online (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,175-1225765_1,00.html)