The chiefs of Baghdad

10 February 2006

Eighteen months ago, the radical Iraqi Shia movement known as the Sadrists was at war with the country's interim government and its US backers in the streets of the holy city of Najaf while their young upstart leader Moqtada al-Sadr was a fugitive. Now the Sadrists are one of the partners in the United Iraqi Alliance, the Shia coalition that dominates government and is likely to be one of the most powerful forces shaping Iraqi politics in the next four years.This may alarm many people outside Iraq, but the Sadrists are folk heroes in parts of Baghdad, perceived as tough but fair men who do the job that the government can't or won't do. Through an Iraqi colleague, whom I shall call Haydar, I came to learn about some of the things the Sadrists do through their "Mahdi Army", in particular a group that specialises in tracking down people kidnapped by Baghdad's criminal gangs.Haydar is a proud father of 11, personally devout but well acquainted with the rougher and more roguish sides of life. In many ways he is an archetypal inhabitant of the east Baghdad slum of Sadr City. Laid out in the 1960s by populist dictator Abd al-Karim Qassem as a home for impoverished Shia migrants from the southern countryside, Sadr City was at first named "Revolution City" then changed to "Saddam City" after Saddam Hussein took power in 1979. Hussein had given the district his name, but little else. Its potholed roads are lined with open sewers choked with plastic bags. In the summer, smoke from burning trash combines with heat and dust to create an acrid haze that hangs over the city. In the winter, flooded drains overflow to form reeking pools of black muck. After the dictator was toppled by the US, the inhabitants of the slum lost little time in renaming it after Moqtada's father, the Ayatollah Mohammed Sadek al-Sadr, a venerated Shia cleric murdered by the old regime.Sadr City is viewed by other Baghdadis as a den of gangsters. Haydar, however, is proud of his neighbourhood. It is, he admits, home to quite a few of Baghdad's criminal elements and is a good place to buy weapons or a forged passport. However, he points out, it is also one of the few places in Baghdad where I, a foreigner, can walk about without having to worry about being abducted either by ordinary criminals or by insurgents. Rory Carroll, a reporter for The Guardian newspaper might not attest to this too enthusiastically. In October a Sadrist faction abducted and held him for 36 hours in an attempt to exchange him for a prisoner held by the British, then released him. But the view that foreigners were not likely to be nabbed in Sadr City was widely shared among the Baghdad press corps at the time, and the reason was that the neighbourhood was to a large extent under the control of the Mahdi Army.This is not what most of the rest of the world would think, associating as they do the Sadrists with the "militia" that fought the Americans in the summer of 2004. The Sadrists themselves are adamant that the Mahdi Army, despite its name, is not a militia, but a network of pious youth who, armed with their own private weapons, rose up when their leader was threatened. This doesn't explain why they still have commanders and units. Nonetheless, "militia" is a term of abuse these days and politicians say such things have no place in the new Iraq, so the fiction exists. As part of the deal under which the Mahdi Army stopped fighting in October 2004, Sadr said the movement would dissolve itself as a military institution and work as a political party and community movement, possibly "assisting the police" in keeping order in Sadr City.It's not just the police who could do with assistance. Much of Iraq these days seems to be going the way of Sadr City. The state began to fail during the years of UN sanctions and the collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime completed the job. Iraqis usually have little faith in formal governmental institutions, and the institutions generally live down to their expectations. Local political or religious movements, with their armed back-up, are more legitimate and powerful than any minister cloistered in Baghdad.Last year I went with Haydar to the site of an incident he had told me about - a kidnappers' safehouse, just off one of Sadr City's trash-strewn vacant lots. The owner, according to neighbours, was a decent guy, but had been enlisted or possibly coerced by his drinking buddies to watch over their captives. Ever since Hussein had released about 100,000 prison inmates on the eve of his regime's downfall, much of Iraq has been overrun by criminal gangs, and kidnapping for ransom - in addition to arms sales, drug dealing and subcontracting themselves out to insurgents - is one of the easiest ways to earn a living.In this case the locals had informed on the kidnappers to the police, who raided the house and arrested them. Inexplicably the owner was released from policy custody soon thereafter, and the residents surmised that he had paid a bribe. They contacted the Mahdi Army, who raided the house and forced the police to keep the rest of the perpetrators in prison. "They are the real heroes, not the police," one of the residents told us. "They are the real champions of the people." True to its Robin Hood reputation, the Mahdi Army performed the "service" of ridding the area of kidnappers while asking for nothing in return. The Sadrists accept donations, but not quid pro quo.We asked which Mahdi Army "sheikh" had taken charge of this operation and were given the nomme de guerre of Abu Jaafar. Although technically a fugitive from the Americans, who were hunting him because of his role in the 2004 fighting, Haydar found him after making a few inquiries. So, a few hours later, we met him in the group's own safe house, a small but clean apartment with doves warbling on the floor. Jaafar spoke to us surrounded by his jamaa, his personal following of about two dozen young men in the black button-down shirt and black trousers that have become the Mahdi Army's ad hoc uniform. For more than a year, this group had been in charge of tracking down gangs. In that time, four of their members were killed and four others permanently maimed.The Mahdi Army is a young man's movement - Sadr himself is only in his thirties - but Jaafar, at 27, was a young leader even by Sadrist standards. With his well-trimmed beard and self-assurance, he resembles many other earnest and charismatic young men who have risen to positions of authority in Islamist movements across the Arab world. He was a former seminary student before taking command of the anti-gang squad. He eschews much of the lofty religious rhetoric and generalities favoured by other Sadrist clerics, which make conversations with them sometimes difficult. Instead, he seemed to relish relating the details, names and places of Iraq's underground."It's all about geography," Jaafar explains, beginning a narrative of his group's current case. The jamaa had been contacted by a Kurdish lawyer, whose teenaged son had been kidnapped. The boy had been taken in the south Baghdad district of Kerrada. Based on this, Jaafar decided to stake out a coffee house just off the neighbourhood's main shopping street, frequented by a man we shall call Mustafa, a Kurdish gangster with a finger in every dodgy pie in the area.After several days, the Mahdi Army noticed Qais, a gangster from Sadr City known to be involved in kidnapping, enter the coffee shop to speak with Mustafa. This, they decided, was a likely suspect. They placed a tail on Qais and told the father to inform the gang he was ready to pay the ransom. Qais set up one fake drop after another, sending the father into Baghdad's streets night after night to make sure that he had not brought along gunmen. Qais did not notice, however, that he himself was under observation. The Mahdi Army decided that they had their man. When Qais set up the final drop-off the Mahdi Army decided to grab him.One member of the jamaa, Mohammed, however jumped the gun. He and a colleague, Maytham, showed up before the other Sadrists. They leapt out of their car with pistols, but Qais, Mustafa and his men had machineguns. When the shooting stopped, both Sadrists and Qais had been hit. The gang, realising that the Mahdi Army were after them, scattered to the winds. Qais and Mohammed survived; Maytham was killed. "Mohammed was over-eager," said Jaafar with a certain weary resignation.Three weeks later, at least some of the gang had been rounded up. Mustafa appears to have escaped to Kurdistan - the old men playing dominos in front of his favourite Kerrada coffee house, at any rate, told us that he had not been seen for a month. Several others, however, were now in the custody of the police, cooling their heels in Sadr City's al-Rafidain police station.We were taken there by a man called Ali, one of Jaafar's lieutenants. Ali was clearly a hard guy. He has two martyrs in his family. His father was killed by Hussein in the 1991 Shia intifada that followed the first Gulf war. His brother was killed in another uprising that broke out when gunmen thought to be linked to the Hussein regime killed Ayatollah Mohammed Sadek al-Sadr, father of Moqtada and the founder of the movement in 1999. Ali and several of his friends, Kalashnikovs in hand, had personally arrested one of the three imprisoned gang members and had a certain proprietorial interest in the case.We arrived in Sadr City amid reports that a car bomb had just been discovered on the city's outskirts. Mahdi Army militants were stopping anyone who looked like they were from out of town (including one of our cars) and checking vehicles for explosives. When we arrived at the station, Ali was shocked to find out that the gang suspects had been transferred to the Major Crimes Unit in another part of town. He immediately got on the phone to Jaafar - the police at Major Crimes were notorious for freeing suspects. Without the Mahdi Army keeping tabs on the case, Ali said, the police would be sure to let Qais' gang go.We then walked into the station with Ali and asked the senior officer, a grizzled lieutenant, for the police version of the case. Somewhat reluctantly, the officer described, using the stilted language of an interior ministry press release, a "shared operation" in which the police and Mahdi Army "co-operated" to round up a gang "implicated in criminal activities". Ali was incensed  "Cooperated? All you did was transfer them to the Major Crimes Unit," he said to the lieutenant. The Mahdi Army were the ones who suffered a martyrdom, he pointed out to another policeman. "The police do nothing," he said, walking out of the station in disgust. "We are the authority here."On the way home, I asked Haydar in what sorts of situations he himself might turn to the Mahdi Army. Certainly a kidnapping case, he said, also if there is stealing or gang activity going on in the neighbourhood. What about murder? I asked. Well, you might ask the Mahdi Army to mediate in a murder case, but if a relative is killed first you turn to your tribe. Even in Hussein's day, while the police might arrest and jail a murderer, the matter isn't over until either blood vengeance or blood money is obtained. There are two parallel systems of law enforcement in modern Iraq: the authorities keep order; your family gets you justice.The Mahdi Army seems to fall somewhere between the two. Haydar described an incident he had seen at a wedding. One of the guests started firing his weapon into the air a traditional way of celebrating, but one that is now considered a bit anti-social. The Mahdi Army showed up, and asked him to stop. The guest responded: "Who are you?" The Mahdi Army, having been insulted, switched from an ostensibly neutral order-keeper to an aggrieved party. Some 150 "brothers" pulled up, wanting to beat up the guest. Haydar and a tribal sheikh had to mediate to sort it out.At various times, the Mahdi Army seems to have taken on the trappings of a state. It has run its own courts, for example - although these are more tribal-style arbiters of a dispute, rather than traditional criminal court magistrates. Perhaps more revealing is its attitude towards dealing out punishment. After the Mahdi Army withdrew from Najaf, the Iraqi military claimed to have discovered Sadrist-run prisons and torture chambers. However, if such places exist in Sadr City, they are a very well-kept secret. Haydar, for his part, does not believe they exist.Nonetheless, the Mahdi Army has a reputation for vigilantism. Any messianic movement will attract both thugs and saints, and various combinations of the two. The Sadrists were known for attacks on gypsy encampments, which in Iraq often double as primitive semi-mobile brothels. Although they enjoyed some protection under Hussein, who had a weakness for gypsy dancing, they are now among the country's most vulnerable groups. The Sadrists also have a reputation in universities for intimidating their more secular minded counterparts. I asked Haydar about a recent incident in Basra. The press had depicted it as a more or less unprovoked assault against a co-ed picnic, in which militiamen beat students focusing particularly on the women for daring to mingle the sexes in public. According to Haydar's version of events, culled from other Sadr City residents as well as relatives in Basra, the Mahdi Army had responded to locals' complaints about students behaving "inappropriately" in their neighbourhood. The Mahdi Army tried to get the students to disperse, were defied, and used force. According to Haydar, the Mahdi Army was upholding the social norm in a public place. "If you took a woman to a private place [and] someone intervenes, you're in the right you could kill them right there," he explained. "If you do it in public and they intervene, then they're in the right."Haydar is a devotee of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the most popular and influential Shia cleric in Iraq. He is the epitome of orthodox Shi'ism, which venerates scholarly knowledge. When the elder Ayatollah Sadr first emerged, many in Sistani's circle of clerics looked at him as having too little of the seminary about him, and too much of the street. And when the younger Sadr assumed control of the movement, he was years from becoming an ayatollah (in Shi'ism, the rough equivalent of a tenured full professor), and was more like a graduate student. The Grand Ayatollah never disrespected the younger Sadr in public, but many of his deputies showed no such compunction. One Sistani scholar suggested that the younger Sadr might be better off "finishing his studies" than meddling in politics. Others referred to his movement as a "phenomenon linked to unemployment".Haydar has no doubt that the Mahdi Army contains a rough element, including, he believes, criminal gangs who appropriate the name as a cover for their activities. In his neighbourhood, however, he witnessed the other side of the Sadrist movement. Sadrist cadres took control of the area, fending off the chaos that engulfed much of Baghdad. They defended the suburb against Hussein's security thugs or the estimated 100,000 former inmates released from prison, thought to make up the bulk of the gangs that ravaged the rest of Baghdad. Sadrists brought in drinking water, paid the salaries to keep staff at work running the hospitals. "When no one was there to protect us, they protected us," Haydar says.Several weeks later, Ali became his family's third martyr. He had been coming back to the safe house at midnight when he encountered a US checkpoint in the street. Having a pistol in his car, he panicked and ran. He was shot in the head, with the bullet reportedly taking much of his face away. He had been engaged to be married a week before. The funeral tent was packed with mourners, some in tribal dress, some in the black uniform of the Mahdi Army. Abu Jaafar kept order, restraining them at one point as a US patrol drove by. As the coffee was served, a religious chanter recited a poem over the sound system, addressed to the Hidden Imam, the Mahdi for whom the army is named, the one who will return to bring just rule to the world:"Why do you wait, oh Imam?These youths are killed for your religion and for your victoryA week after his engagement,He sees how his companions gather in his honour.The candle of youth is extinguished by the Americans."As the day wore on, a stream of politicians arrived to pay their respects. Fatah al-Sheikh, a Sadrist who had run for and won a seat in parliament, gave an angry address calling for a full US withdrawal from Sadr City. The commander of the Mahdi Army also made an appearance, vowing to fight if the Americans returned in force. One particularly incongruous guest, sitting in the first rank of dignitaries among the black shirts, beards, robes and turbans, was a figure with a carefully trimmed moustache and a grey business suit. He was Mudhar Shawkat, a longtime associate of Ahmed Chalabi, onetime darling of the neo-conservatives in Washington and now Iraq's deputy prime minister. Chalabi, a staunch secularist but a stauncher opportunist, had currently thrown in his lot with the Sadrists and was said to be coaching Sadr on the finer points of statesmanship. Shawkat's address betrayed little of Chalabi's secular vision, nor his government's position that militias have no place in the new Iraq."All of those who know me," said Shawkat, "know that I am a Sadrist by thought, and Sadrist in my actions. The Sadrist trend is not an alliance or party, it is an Iraqi movement - the trend of those who have been dealt injustice, the trend of the black soil... If the Mahdi Army was allowed to defend Sadr City [by itself], it could be the safest city in Iraq."As we drove away from the funeral, a police car loaded with armed officers came ploughing through traffic. In most of the rest of the city, the police force cars over by sticking their guns out the window, firing shots and shouting over a loudspeaker, "Out of the way!" However, these particular police were shouting, "Out of the way, brothers!" You could view this as a tribute to the neighbourhood's sense of shared struggle, but Haydar thought of it as an acknowledgment that this is one part of town where the state has to watch where it treads.Steve Negus is the FT's Iraq correspondent.

By Steve Negus

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