Did we expect anything else?
US troops sealed off roads around the house of an Iraqi Shia Muslim cleric, while another religious leader warned the crackdown would only backfire. Soldiers surrounded buildings used by local cleric Sayyid Mahmud al-Hassani on Saturday with armoured vehicles while helicopters circled overhead. Three US military police and two Iraqi police were killed on Thursday night in fighting in the city which US forces blamed on supporters of al-Hassani. He is a sympathiser of firebrand Shia leader Moqtada al-Sadr, who opposes the US-led occupation of Iraq. US officers would not comment on whether they were hoping to arrest al-Hassani. His supporters said he had left his home after Thursday's shootout in which local people said eight of his followers had been killed.
| "Dead, y'say? I'm gettin' out out here until the heat's off!" |
After arresting one of his followers, American soldiers surrounded al-Hassani's office building, witnesses said. The moves suggest American troops are taking a harder line against outspoken clerics backed by militiamen armed with AK-47 assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades who are fiercely opposed to the occupation. Sheikh Kathim al-Nasiri, al-Sadr's representative in Karbala, said US troops made a serious mistake spilling Muslim blood and pressuring Shia clerics. "The result will be very bad for the Americans. If they increase the pressure, there will be a crisis between the people of Karbala and the Americans," he said. He warned occupation forces that if they do any harm to Shia shrines in the holy cities of Karbala or Najaf, "they will face not only Shias in Iraq but Shias all over the world".
| That's the eventual plan, isn't it? |
"He is a mixture of a criminal and a lunatic who believes he has a hotline to God ... He had set up checkpoints in Karbala to fleece money out of people. At one point, his guys went to the governorate building with machetes and two were shot," a occupation authority official said.
| Zayed has a good discussion of Moqtada, and wonders why we haven't disposed of him. The answer, of course, is the thousands of nutbags who would spill into the streets to chant, make faces, and throw things. "Things" in Iraq still includes explosives, so we walk on eggs when dealing with him because we've already got lots to do in the Sunni triangle. I think our tack for now should be to make fun of him — he lies about his age, speaks Arabic with an Iranian accent, and he's had to back down consistently when he's made his grandiose claims. Keep pushing the fact that he's an Iranian agent and eventually the real ayatollahs will dispose of him. |
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