BAGHDAD, 9 April 2004 — The ranks of wanted Shiite Muslim cleric Moqtada Sadr’s Mehdi Army militia are filled with young volunteers eager to fight the US-led occupation forces.
Laying a hand on a copy of Qur’an in his wrecked office, Abu Fatima, a 29-year-old cleric vowed to take the fight to the Americans after US tanks and gunships earlier yesterday punched holes in the militia’s Baghdad headquarters.
“Every time they bomb us, we become stronger. People are rallying to join the Mehdi Army. Yesterday we even received women,” said Abu Fatima, a robust 29-year-old standing amid scattered and torn pictures of Sadr.
Outside, hundreds of young men chanting “Allahu Akbar,” or God is the Greatest, listened to another cleric shouting vows to fight the occupation from the rooftop.
A Mehdi Army spokesman, Amer Al-Husseini, said the militia had orders to stay calm, but warned that “after they bombarded our headquarters and prayer room with Apache helicopters and tanks, we are ready to resume combat until the last drop of our blood.”
“We will never let anyone arrest our leader Moqtada Sadr,” he added, alluding a coalition arrest warrant for the firebrand in connection with the murder of a rival cleric after Saddam Hussein’s regime was ousted last April.
Following several days of clashes with the US-led occupation forces across the country during which the Mehdi Army seized police stations and government offices, the coalition has vowed to destroy the militia.
“We will attack to destroy the Mehdi Army. Our offensive operations will be deliberate, they will be precise, and they will be powerful and they will succeed,” said Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt.
Sadr, who is only in his early 30s and whose father and great-uncle were killed by Saddam’s regime, formed the Mehdi Army last summer after the US-led military coalition invaded Iraq.
The militia is believed to have a few thousand regular members, but has proved able to rally large crowds and stir riots which have turned into open firefights. A steady flow of new volunteers has been presenting themselves to mosques and Sadr offices in defiance of the coalition’s ban on militias.
Its ranks are largely composed of desperate and unemployed young men from poor Shiite areas - notably Baghdad’s teeming Sadr City which switched its name from Saddam City after the fall of the deposed regime to honor the firebrand’s slain father.
Many are also from southern Shiite cities which suffered brutal repression at the hands of Saddam’s Sunni Muslim-dominated regime. The militiamen often wear black pants and shirts, as well as green headbands. They are fiercely attached to Sadr’s guidance and his family’s lineage of revered clerics.
Their recent fierce battles with the coalition revealed they mostly have access to light weapons, including assault rifles, rocket-propelled grenades and machineguns.
“We have light weapons, but our most lethal weapon is our faith in God. Nothing can defeat God’s will,” said one militiaman, Ali Hussein.
“We started new training last week. But we don’t really need to train the new recruits. Saddam had built a militarized society over decades. So we were trained by the best killer,” he said.
US Marines met ferocious resistance in the western town of Fallujah yesterday as they pressed a four-day offensive against Sunni Muslim insurgents, prompting their commander to make comparisons with the Vietnam war.
As the Marines inched forward block-by-block taking sniper fire and hit-and-run attacks with mortars and rocket-propelled grenades, a US medic said the resistance was more intense than in last spring’s invasion. Mortar and small-arms fire were launched by small groups of insurgents who materialized from alleyways or on rooftops, only to melt away again.
