Shiite rifts emerge as militias battle police

Shiite rifts emerge as militias battle police
By Molly Hennessy-Fiske

2:39 PM PST, December 24, 2006

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Shiite militia fighters clashed with police Sunday in Samawa, a provincial capital in southern Iraq, transforming it into a lawless battleground and exposing rifts that increasingly divide Iraq's Shiite majority.

Nine people, including four police officers, have died in the violence gripping parts of Samawa since Friday, police said. On Sunday, police, backed by some Shiite tribal leaders, called in Iraqi Army soldiers from nearby Diwaniya to help battle the militia. They closed entrances to the city, which is about 120 miles south of Baghdad, imposed a curfew and closed the schools as they traded fire.

The bulk of the death and destruction in Iraq this year has involved fighting between Shiites and the Sunni minority, which dominated the country under Saddam Hussein. But the violence in Samawa underscores the difficulty that Prime Minister Nouri Maliki and other Shiite leaders have had in maintaining order among Shiites in a country where people's loyalties are divided among political parties, sects and tribes.

Conflicts within Shiite communities have troubled Baghdad and other parts of Iraq in recent weeks, but the violence has been particularly notable in Samawa, capital of the first province handed over by U.S.-led forces to Iraqi control.

At a news conference Sunday, Iraq's Interior Minister, Jawad Bolani, said police were restoring order in Samawa. "People who try to create problems can appear in any city in the world," he said. "The important thing is that [security forces] are there to stop them."

Samawa police say they are battling a militia associated with the Mahdi Army of Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr, but Sadr associates said Sunday that the militia involved in the fighting is an offshoot led by a local Shiite cleric feuding with rival tribes.

The conflict here began Dec. 1, when gunmen attempted to rescue detainees from a local prison, killing three people, according to local hospital staff. Militia leaders agreed to a cease fire with police and provincial officials two days later, then apparently broke the agreement Friday after clashing with police at checkpoints near local mosques.

A Sadr associate, who spoke on condition that his name not be used, said the Samawa militia is led by Sheikh Ghazi Zurgani, a renegade cleric. The Sadr associate said Sadr is distancing himself from the Samawa militia and stands by the Dec. 3 cease fire.

But Qusai Abdul Wahab, a member of Sadr's party in parliament, blamed the latest conflict on local police, who he said provoked militias on Friday by opening fire on Shiite worshippers as they celebrated a religious anniversary. Wahab called the police "provocative and intimidating."

"They are dealing with people as if they are still in the Saddam era," he said.

Jaafar Abdul Razzaq, a spokesman from Sadr's Samawa office, said the militia would not stop fighting until the police release some 30 militia members who have been detained since Friday. Police officials said they were negotiating another cease fire with militia leaders.

Saad Aziz, a Shiite member of the Samawa city council, said local Shiites are divided by tribe and political party, with some loyal to Sadr's parliamentary bloc, others to another leading Shiite party, the Supreme Council of Islamic Revolution in Iraq, or SCIRI.

"The Ziad tribe itself is now divided among those who support SCIRI and those who are supporting Sadr," Aziz said, referring to one of the area's major clans. "There is now internal fighting inside the tribe itself."

Abdul Hussein Dhalimi, the acting governor of Muthana province and a SCIRI member, said he met with provincial leaders today and delegates from the nearby holy Shiite cities of Karbala and Najaf, to "settle things down in the province."

"The security forces are controlling the situation. The city is under their control," he said, adding that local leaders will not negotiate with the militia until they disarm. "The arms must be carried by the security forces only," he said.

Muthana, of which Samawa is the capital, is one of the three provinces out of 18 that have been transferred to Iraqi security control since 2003. British forces handed over control of Muthana nearly six months ago. Italian forces transferred neighboring Dhi Qar province in September, and last week, U.S. forces handed over nearby Najaf province.

The British left behind an "overwatch battle group" in Muthana of about 800 Australian soldiers responsible to local and national Iraqi authorities, according to Capt. Tane Dunlop, a British forces spokesman.

Iraqi authorities did not ask for support from Australian forces in Samawa today, Dunlop said, but the Australian troops were, "keeping an eye on the situation."

"There seems to be a standoff up there, and the Iraqi forces have it under control," Dunlop said, adding that the Australians were staying out of the fighting out of respect for the fledgling provincial security forces. Getting involved, even to crush a rogue militia, might undermine Iraqi sovereignty, he said.

"The whole point is to hand over control to all the provinces. If we hand over control, we can't go around saying how people should handle that control. They'll deal with things the way they see fit," he said. "We can't keep sort of charging back in."

Meanwhile in Baghdad, where U.S. forces have stepped up raids in recent weeks, residents of the Kamaliyah neighborhood in the eastern part of the city protested after U.S. soldiers blocked the area to cars and pedestrians with barbed wire at 5 a.m., searching homes and shops for insurgents and weapons, witnesses said.

Resident Mohammed Abu Zahara, 34, was stuck at home with his family, without heat or electricity, thankful that he went to the market Saturday and didn't need to go out. He watched as neighbors, unable to work or run errands, were forced to open their homes to U.S. troops.

"What worsens things is that we have no electricity, no kerosene to protect ourselves from this cold weather," he said. "I expect that they will search our houses tonight."

Also on Sunday, the U.S. military released a statement saying they had conducted a raid in central Baghdad and detained four suspected insurgents.

The military also announced that three soldiers in the 89th military police brigade had been killed Saturday by a roadside bomb while on patrol in east Baghdad and another soldier with the 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division had died in an explosion in Diyala province. Their deaths brought the total of U.S. troops killed since the conflict began to 2,957, according to icasualties.org.

Several mortar attacks were reported in Baghdad Sunday, including an afternoon attack on an athletic club and an attack on a Shiite neighborhood in the northern part of the city. Baghdad police reported recovering 29 bodies in the 24-hour period ending Sunday. Elsewhere in the country, a suicide bomb killed seven Iraqi police and injured 30 in the city of Muqdadiya, about 27 miles east of the capital, officials said. In the northern city of Kirkuk, gunmen killed two brothers on their way home, according to police Lt. Salah Juboori.

Times staff writers Raheem Salman, Suhail Affan and Saif Hameed, special correspondent Hassan Halawa in Samawa, and correspondents in Baghdad, Baquba and Kirkuk contributed to this report.