| Another successful operation by what may be now the best Arab army on the planet. |
The city had been taken over by the Shia al-Mahdi Army two years ago after British troops handed it to an ill-prepared Iraqi Army. We can't say al-Amarah was entirely bad, there are good people here, poor people. But the city was controlled by the al-Mahdi Army, and these people are all backed by Iran, said Captain Hussein Ali of the Scorpion police brigade, one of the Iraqi units drafted in to take part in Operation Omen of Peace.
Yesterday the city's streets - unpaved, dirt tracks between grubby, low brick houses - were crawling with Iraqi security forces. Soldiers searched houses as police manned checkpoints and Soviet-era tanks guarded bridges over the Tigris River.
The flood of troops, who had moved into position outside the city a week ago, had encountered no resistance as they moved in yesterday. The leaders of the Shia militias that once ruled as crime bosses and warlords were either gone or in hiding. Even the police chief fled a week ago, fearing arrest for his affiliation to al-Mahdi Army, while the mayor, a member of the Sadrist movement, was arrested.
Outside one of the long-neglected police bases built by the British Army, scores crowded to sign up as police officers, the only regular job in a city whose main industry is weapons smuggling from nearby Iran, but a profession that until now was closed to most.
In the past, you needed contacts with the tribal sheikhs or to pay three million dinars in bribes to get a job as a policeman, said Raed Mijbil, 30. All the Iraqi security forces were corrupt.
Nouri al-Maliki, the Shia Prime Minister, has insisted that his large-scale operations in the south are not targeting the Sadrist movement, which has been increasingly weakened by internal divisions, its brutal reputation for murder and extortion, and a more confident Iraqi military. Hojatoleslam Moqtada al-Sadr, the fundamentalist Shia cleric who heads the al-Mahdi Army and the Sadrist political movement, ordered his men not to resist the government forces, and a senior member of his parliamentary block expressed grudging support.
We stand with the Government on imposing the law and we are showing goodwill, said Bahaa al-Araji, a member of the Sadrist parliamentary bloc. But law must be imposed on everybody. We hope the target of the plan is not our movement.
| "Please don't kill us!" |
| Private enterprise in action ... |
This way is better, said Captain Ali, noting that an army battalion would stay in al-Amarah once the operation is finished clearing out the militias. We don't want to lose people, and in urban warfare women and children can get killed.
While the Prime Minister had personally to lead his shaky forces on the offensive in Basra, he and his army have gained in confidence since establishing control of the southern port city, even flooding the Sadr City stronghold in Baghdad with thousands of soldiers. For the first time in years the young cleric looks unsure of himself. Last week he announced that the main wing of al-Mahdi Army would devote itself to civilian projects, while a streamlined, smaller group would carry on attacking the US military, whom the demagogue deems a legitimate target for resistance.
Nabil Ibrahim, 20, an al-Amarah resident, was pleased to see the influx of government troops but upset that the men who had turned his city into a lawless no man's land had escaped. The leaders who escaped aren't all al-Mahdi Army, they are Iranian intelligence agents. We are sad because they got away and they'll be back.
Captain Ali denied that the criminal leaders had been allowed to get away. We didn't just let them escape, this was a kind of amnesty. This was a last chance for those who were misled by the militias and regretted it, he said. He said that the local population was co-operating with the security sweep, and that the army had found more than 900 roadside bombs in weapons stashes.
| A fair number of the 'criminal leaders' will re-integrate into society. You don't need to kill them, you just need to show them that the old days are over. |
Young women are daring to wear jeans, soldiers listen to pop music on their mobile phones and bands are performing at wedding parties again. 
Iraqs largest and most dangerous militia will voluntarily disband if Shia scholars advise its leader to do so, officials said yesterday a dramatic move that could quell much of the fighting in the war-torn country. 
U.S. forces in armored vehicles battled Mahdi Army fighters Thursday in Sadr City, the vast Shiite stronghold in eastern Baghdad, as an offensive to quell party-backed militias entered its third day. Iraqi army and police units appeared to be largely holding to the outskirts of the area as American troops took the lead in the fighting.
Operation Phantom Thunder, the name of the overarching operation to secure the Baghdad Belts, is now in its fifth day. As noted yesterday, Phantom Thunder is a corps level operation, with multiple U.S. and Iraqi divisions engaged on multiple fronts. Iraqi Security Forces and Multinational Forces Iraq are engaged in intense fights in four main theaters: Baghdad proper, and the belts regions consisting of Diyala and southern Salahadin province to the north, northern Bail province to the south, and eastern Anbar province to the west of Baghdad. The fighting has been the most intense in the city of Baqubah, the provincial capital of Diyala.
"To date, Marne Torch and Iraqi army units have detained more than five dozen suspected extremists and destroyed more than 17 boats on the Tigris River that are responsible for transporting accelerants into Baghdad," Multinational Forces Iraq reported in a press release. "U.S. forces killed five insurgents, discovered and destroyed 12 improvised explosive devices, and detained 13 wanted individuals."
As the major offensive is ongoing in the belts, the pressure is being kept up on Muqtada al Sadr's Mahdi Army as well as al Qaeda's network throughout Iraq.