01/31/07

Mixed Baghdad neighborhood now firmly controlled by Shiite radicals

By SALLY BUZBEE
Associated Press Writer

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Teenage gunmen from the Mahdi Army militia patrol the streets. Shops abandoned by Sunni Muslims are reopening under Shiite Muslim operators. Slurs scrawled on Sunni homes are being scrubbed off, and Shiite families moving in.

Formerly Sunni mosques, including some attacked or bombed last fall, are either closed or repaired and redecorated in the Shiite tradition for their new worshippers.

This is Hurriyah today, a Baghdad district with tens of thousands of residents that starkly shows the challenges facing the U.S. military as it sends 21,500 more troops to stop Sunni-Shiite bloodletting here and in turbulent areas to the west.

One key goal, says President Bush, is to rein in armed militias. But if Hurriyah is a guide, the biggest militia -- the Shiite Mahdi Army -- has made deep inroads.

Here and in an arc of formerly mixed neighborhoods across the capital the radical Shiites are firmly entrenched, with only their branch of Islam permitted. Especially in the east, anchored in the Shiite slum Sadr City, the Mahdi Army and its supporters now are so embedded that uprooting them may be impossible.

Vast swaths of the capital have been consumed by violence as the Islamic sects have fought for territory. Some of the bloodiest occurred last summer and fall in Hurriyah, seven miles from Sadr City, when the Shiites made their push.

The fighting included a Nov. 24 attack by Mahdi Army militiamen on a number of Sunni mosques. At one, the AP reported -- based on statements of residents, a local Sunni sheik and a police officer -- six men were doused with fuel and burned alive by Shiite militiamen. A month later, on Dec. 30, the day of Saddam Hussein's execution, three car bombs killed 37 people on a main street in Hurriyah, presumably a revenge attack by Sunni insurgents angered by the hanging.

Until 2005, Hurriyah was a relatively safe, working-class community of shops and single-family homes of Sunnis and Shiites. The sectarian seam was ripped open that year when gunmen from the Sunni extremist Omar's Army began abducting and killing Shiites. Just over a year ago, Mahdi Army militiamen set up an office in the main outdoor market and told Shiites they would protect them.

Last fall, handbills appeared warning that 10 Sunnis would die for every Shiite killed. As promised, the attacks on Sunnis steadily escalated throughout the fall, until by early December almost all Sunnis had fled.

Hurriyah is mostly quiet these days, guarded by young men of the Mahdi Army or its splinter groups, according to an Associated Press reporter who lives in the neighborhood and whose name has been withheld from this story for security reasons. Journalists can be killed for recording the militia's activities.

The main street is blocked by checkpoints run by teenagers, a Mahdi Army auxiliary in blue or black track suits with automatic weapons near at hand and pistols tucked in their belts. They stop and question the driver of each motorbike, and even men pushing carts.

"I'm delivering this to a shop," one man answered on a recent day, gesturing to the boxes on his cart. "What's in them?" a militiaman asked, looking through the boxes before letting the man pass with his cargo of cookies.

Iraqi army units also patrol Hurriyah, in much larger numbers these days than last fall, sometimes positioning themselves not far from the checkpoints.

One recent day, the AP reporter observed a Mahdi militiaman boarding a bus and checking IDs and bags. Two comrades stood outside. Suddenly, a U.S. Army patrol swung by, and the two clambered aboard the bus, hid their weapons, and blended in with the passengers.

In the past month, as U.S. and Iraqi officials have worked to curb the Mahdi Army, militia commanders have ordered their troops to lie low and keep weapons out of sight. They still put up checkpoints, but brandish weapons only when their demands are ignored. If that happens, men with Kalashnikovs quickly materialize to confront the offending motorist.

Some Baghdad Shiites say they're grateful for the Mahdi Army's protection. But one Shiite woman in Hurriyah, a government employee who asked that her name be withheld for her safety, complained about the militia's bus searches.

"It fills me with fear," she said of the young militia members. "They're worsening the situation."

The Shiite-controlled Iraqi government plays down the dramatic changes in the city's population.

One Iraqi army officer in Hurriyah acknowledged that "displacements" of Sunnis have occurred, but claimed that most returned after the Iraqi army increased its patrols. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly.

However, a local Shiite resident, Durgham Abdel-Munim, 36, estimated only 5 percent of the neighborhood remains Sunni after "big waves" of people fled. He estimated a third of the neighborhood was Sunni before the purges.

A Sunni family, the Azzawis, said they sent their young sons away for their safety. The father, mother and a daughter stayed behind. The daughter said she tries to sound Shiite and mentions Shiite saints' names while selling vegetables in a market, where she would be especially vulnerable. She asked that her name not be used.

Her fear is typical.

Having seen how the Mahdi Army has killed people, burned homes and businesses and threatened Sunni families, only one of the original Sunni sources who described seeing Hurriyah's extreme violence of Nov. 24 could be located a month afterward. In that case, the meeting was held in a safe location outside of the district, where he no longer resides because of his fear of the militiamen.

The man, insisting on anonymity, again recounted that day in detail, including the burnings of six people from the mosque.

The Iraqi government and U.S. military have said they have no evidence of any burnings of people at the mosque. But the witness said that might be because the victims' bodies were taken almost immediately to be buried in Abu Ghraib, a Sunni district west of Baghdad.

Speedy burials are the norm in Iraq as in other Islamic countries. But the witness said neighborhood residents never took the bodies to the police or morgue because the people feared them.

His account of the burial could not be corroborated. Other reports that day said some burned bodies were received at a hospital or a morgue before families took them for burial, but it was unclear if they were the same victims or from a different attack.

The extreme violence that rattled Hurriyah on Nov. 24 was not unprovoked. It came after extremists Sunnis, possibly al-Qaida militants, attacked Shiites in Sadr City. The government said 215 Shiites were killed.

Preventing such back-and-forth retribution attacks is central to the mission now facing the Iraqi government and the U.S. military.

One sign of how difficult that may be: many of the Sunnis who fled Hurriyah in late November have settled into another nearby mixed neighborhood called Adil. Now there are reports that the Sunnis there are pushing out Shiites.

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Material and reporting for this story was gathered by the AP staff in Baghdad. It was written by Associated Press Writer Sally Buzbee, the Chief of Middle East News, who is based in Cairo but frequently works in Iraq.