Iraqi Shiite Militias Again Pose a Threat as U.S. Forces Leave
On a United States outpost in southern Iraq, rocket attacks by Shiite militants have grown so fierce that Americans there had to hunker down in a concrete bunker for several hours one recent night. Soldiers have curtailed missions to train Iraqi security forces, and American officials have even debated whether to close the outpost ahead of schedule. The attacks on the Americans in Maysan Province, near the Iranian border, and elsewhere in southern Iraq provide one of the starkest examples of what officials call a reinvigorated threat posed by Shiite militants and followers of the anti-American Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr during the American military’s waning days here. These Shiite militias have emerged as perhaps the greatest threat to the 46,000 United States troops still in Iraq, supra shoes military officials say. And a barrage of recent attacks — some of them deadly — has raised questions about the safety of Americans as the military withdraws troops and equipment in the months ahead. “There are plenty of groups who will be paid to kill the last Americans on their way out,” said Col. Douglas Crissman, the military commander who oversees Maysan and three other southern provinces. Officials say the attacks, coupled with an increase in anti-American leafleting and speeches by hard-line groups, seem to be aimed at tilting the highly charged public debate over whether American forces should be asked to remain in Iraq despite a deadline to leave by the end of the year. Mr. Sadr himself makes no secret of his strategy. “Yes, we are still resisting and striking bases, troops and vehicles, as long as they are in Iraq,” he told the BBC Arabic service on Thursday. “And there is no doubt with that. It’s an honor for us.” Southern Iraq is strategically important to the United States, even in the final days of the American deployment here. It is the point of entry for many of the weapons coming from Iran, particularly rockets and the shaped explosives used in improvised explosive devices, or I.E.D.’s, military commanders say, and thousands of departing troops and convoys will pass through the region as they head into Kuwait. Last week, militants hit a United States military base in Basra from seven miles away, and in a single day about 10 rockets were fired at the Green Zone in Baghdad, home to the American Embassy and a sprawling American military base. American officials say many of the militants have close ties to Iran or to Mr. Sadr, whose once-fearsome Shiite militia, the Mahdi Army, was largely demobilized after suffering humiliating defeats three years ago. Mr. Sadr, a onetime insurgent leader who controls a large bloc of seats in Parliament, recently threatened to reactivate his Mahdi militia if the Americans stayed beyond December — a threat that some American military officials dismissed as posturing. Still, Mr. Sadr’s followers staged a large rally in Baghdad on Thursday to demand that the Americans leave, an event that featured more than 50,000 unarmed Mahdi Army members marching in matching outfits and chanting anti-American slogans. American officials said Mr. Sadr’s growing influence in Maysan — an underdeveloped swath of tomato farms, marshes and untapped oil fields — set the stage for the recent spike in attacks. Late last year, the Sadrists won control of the governor’s seat there, a political reward for supporting Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki for a second term. Maysan’s former governor, who had a friendly relationship with the State Department’s local reconstruction team, decamped for a ministerial post in Baghdad. “I believe Maliki considered it to be the lesser of evils, a concession he was prepared to make,” said Colonel Crissman. But he added, “Because of that we have additional challenges in that province, much more than in the three other provinces around it where we have relationships.” The new governor has refused to meet with the Americans and discouraged other government agencies and local nonprofits from doing so. Although no Americans on the base have been killed, two Iraqi soldiers died in a recent rocket strike. And an increase in I.E.D. attacks on convoys has made it harder for development workers to leave the base to visit field projects. American officials say the governor, Ali Dwai Lazem, has brushed off the attacks, saying he was not responsible for stopping them. The governor even attended the funeral of a militant who accidently burned himself to death after misfiring a rocket, and made a payment to the militant’s family. Mohammed Qasim, a spokesman for the governor, denied there had been any assaults against American troops. Some officials worry that pulling out of the area now would give militants free rein to smuggle explosives and arms across the porous Iranian border, weaponry that might be used against Americans. But with diplomats at times wearing flak jackets to their offices and the military hemmed in by attacks, others argue that it may be time to leave the Maysan base, accelerating a closure that was set to occur in the next few months. In fact, a State Department Provincial Reconstruction Team on the base expects to shut down, as planned, in June, as part of a larger consolidation of diplomatic missions across Iraq. American officials say they have been anticipating an escalation in violence against American troops and bases as the withdrawal deadline approached. “They want to take credit for us leaving,” said Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Buchanan, an American military spokesman in Baghdad. “It’s a question of power and influence.” There is also the contentious question of the extent of the American withdrawal. Iraqi leaders, worried that security could crumble if American forces leave altogether, have begun to debate whether to ask the United States for an extended troop presence. With an eye to that discussion, some have suggested that the attacks were a pre-emptive strike of sorts, a warning that the Sadrists will not tolerate anything short of total American withdrawal at the end of the year. In Baghdad’s poor, largely Shiite Sadr City neighborhood, tens of thousands of militia members thronged the streets on Thursday to add their voices to that debate. They condemned United States forces as occupiers, burned American flags and paraded in martial formations. Even groups of children participated, wearing baseball caps and identical T-shirts distributed by the Sadrists and shouting, “1, 2, 3, Mahdi!” as they marched. “We have to resist them,” said one spectator, Mohammed Badar al-Mohammadawai. “We will sacrifice our hearts and our lives to drive the Americans out.”