NAJAF, Iraq, 4 June 2004 — As US Army snipers mounted machine guns on rooftops overlooking Najaf this week, the city’s new police chief Ghaleb Jazaeri boasted he could easily handle cleric Moqtada Sadr’s fighters. Jazaeri said more than 4,000 men were awaiting the political nod to reassert control over Najaf’s central shrine area, home to some of Shiite mosques and currently under the sway of Sadr’s fighters.
“We don’t want to get into a battle but if we are forced to do it we have a fully equipped force that can take over the city very quickly,” the 56-year-old general said as he stood in his fortified station ringed by US tanks and armored vehicles.
Sadr announced a truce last week to end weeks of clashes with US occupation forces in Iraq, allowing mainstream Shiite parties to mediate a peace plan between the rebel cleric and US commanders whose troops ringed the city.
The plan envisions re-establishing Iraqi police presence in Najaf with hundreds of new recruits. Hundreds of Iraqi police left their posts in Najaf to avoid confrontation with members of Sadr’s Mehdi Army when fighting began two months ago.
“The policeman’s dignity was trampled on. I am going to be tough and stop this intimidation,” said Jazaeri. Jazaeri replaces a man US commanders have accused of complicity with Sadr and the new chief also pointed a finger at former Najaf officers he says gave Sadr’s police cars and weapons as gifts. “Those who were either collaborating with Sadr’s militia or not abiding by the rules were expelled and replaced,” he said.
But outside Jazaeri’s office, angry policemen said they had merely refused to take up arms against fellow Muslims. “I will not fight the Mehdi Army,” said policeman Haider Janabi. “I am a Muslim and Sadr is a Muslim. He is not my enemy. He only kills the Americans, who kill my brother and neighbor.”
Jazaeri’s police station bore the brunt of weeks of clashes. “We were attacked over 80 times,” the three-star general said against the backdrop of the bullet pock-marked walls of his office. New recruits stood in line in a nearby hallway. For several weeks, US tanks, firing from the police station, pounded Sadr’s men as they hid in a nearby ancient cemetery, launching hundreds of mortar rounds at US forces.
US Army commander Maj. Todd Walsh, on a tour of the station earlier this week and surrounded by hundreds of job seekers behind razor wire, said violence had subsided. “Security is a lot better than it was several weeks ago, where we were fighting here in the past few days it’s been very quiet and we are able to make progress,” Walsh told Reuters.
