One of Ours

...On Saturday night in Baghdad, just after U.S. forces arrested two senior Al-Mahdi Army leaders. I spoke to a 24-year-old Al-Mahdi Army official, Saeed Hisham al Mousawi, who said that the Shia Islamic parties brokered a sell-out deal with the coalition. "After the Islamic parties met, the U.S. forces closed all negotiations. I am sure that some parties gave the U.S. the green light to attack." Al Mousawi meant that the U.S. got the green light to destroy the Al-Mahdi Army at their meeting in Baghdad on May 4. The young revolutionary, who is still living with his parents, was bitter about the betrayal. I wanted to know which party had betrayed them and he wouldn't come out and say the name. But it seemed clear that it was the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, which is close to Ayatollah Sistani. The next day the U.S. destroyed the al-Sadr heaquarters in Sadr City, attacking with tanks in another fierce battle...

...Muqtada has forgotten to appease the old men, and the old men were turning against him.

Lately the fighting has evolved from small clashes at the edge of towns to long firefights in the center of cities, and it took no time at all. This is the aftermath of the understanding between the U.S. and the Shia figures, their bid to destroy the Al-Mahdi Army...By early Wednesday morning, the U.S. had destroyed the al Mukhayam, an al-Sadr mosque in Karbala, and was busy fighting Al-Mahdi Army soldiers 200 meters from the shrine of Imam Hussein. In the afternoon when I arrived in the city, it was still going on...

[...]

We drove past the shrine toward the al Mukhayam until we couldn't move because of the shooting along the street the alley opened into...In the medina, we heard the deep sounds of the U.S. weapons and the small arms of the Al-Mahdi fighters reflected off the houses...

I wanted to know why, if there was so much fighting going on in Karbala, there wasn't a flood of refugees. "Nobody is leaving, where can we go?" Alla Mohammed said. "In 1991 we left and Saddam bombed the entire city." Above all, Alla Mohammed believed in peace; he wanted the fighting to stop so his children could go back to their exams. "We want to work with the Americans, we just don't know what they want exactly. We are suffering and want something good for our future, but do you see any development in a year of occupation?" I agreed that there wasn't much to see. "My economic situation is good, but if I had to feed my family and I was unemployed, for a hundred dollars, I would fight," he said. We had to stop talking because Alla Mohammed wanted to evacuate his uncle's family from the medina. So they piled into our car, three women in their abayas and a 4-year-old girl sitting in the middle between them. Alla Mohammed's uncle didn't come with us, he stayed with the house to protect it from looters. As we turned the corner he waved at us in a cheerful way...