The battle for Najaf - A first-hand account (riveting)

[Barrett808]

The battle for Najaf - A first-hand account by the only Western reporter in Najaf as major fighting broke out this week.
By Scott Baldauf | Staff writer of csmonitor.com

NAJAF, IRAQ — Last week, staff writer Scott Baldauf, an Iraqi interpreter, and freelance photographer Kael Alford traveled from Baghdad to the central Iraqi city of Najaf intending to write about growing tension between the Iraqi government and the Shiite militia (Mahdi Army) of Moqtada al-Sadr, an anti-American cleric. When they arrived fighting was already underway, and has continued for three days now. One American military spokesman called it the heaviest fighting since the fall of Saddam Hussein. To their surprise, they were the only Western journalists in the holy Shiite city.

What follows is Scott Baldauf's journal of events in Najaf from Thursday morning until Friday afternoon.

Thursday, 10 a.m.

The city is largely abandoned when we arrive. Ad hoc barriers - a street light post, lines of rocks, trashcans - have been left in the road, directing us away from the center of the old city and from the police station, the two places we intend to visit first. On the horizon, we can see plumes of smoke. In our chests we can feel the thud and percussion of heavy weaponry. Our minds race in two opposite directions: safety on one hand, and journalistic curiosity on the other. Curiosity wins.

In a residential neighborhood in the center of Najaf, a man waves our car down and tells us we can't drive any further. There is fighting just 200 meters ahead of us. He points at a group of shacks where fighters for the Mahdi Army are shooting at everything that moves. He invites us inside his house until it's safe to move.

The man's name is Amad Kamal. He, and four friends in the room with us, are Shiite Muslims, and say they have no interest in the fighting. The fighting began around 12:30 a.m. Thursday, they say, starting with small weapons fire, and then turned heavy at around 4 a.m. The rest of the information we will have to gather on our own.

(much more)

http://www.csmonitor.com/earlyed/early_world0807.htm

[Mika]

1. Not good at all

We learn that since Thursday, fighting has also broken out in Baghdad's Shiite neighborhood of Sadr City, as well as in Basra, Nasiriyah, and Amara and other Shiite cities and towns. The Mahdi Army fighters say the uprising is just beginning.

3 2 1 :nuke:

[4dsc]

2. The Mahdi Army fighters say the uprising is just beginning.

And some people say there's no QUAGMIRE in Iraq....

[shadu]

3. Many of the Mahdi Army are heroes

My best thoughts are with them.

[leftchick]

4. This is so sad....

<At Al Hakeem hospital, a wounded Iraqi woman is being delicately removed from the back seat of a private car-turned ambulance by relatives. Doctors examine her injuries and say they can do nothing for her. The only place left to go is the city's best hospital, which has been taken over as a coalition military base, off limits to civilians. The relatives start beating their chest and wailing. There is not enough time to make it there.

Inside the emergency room, there are dozens of civilians, all victims of gunshot and shrapnel wounds. One man is in the final throes of shock. His relatives rush off to the laboratory to donate blood. The blood bank is running short. One relative sees us, and shouts at us. We leave.

There are conflicting numbers of casualties: Official hospital records say 11 have died as of Friday. A doctor, Ehsan Al Kuzaze, says the number is closer to 50 dead, and 20 injured. The numbers are certain to rise, he says, as the fighting eases, and as civilians are able to take their wounded to hospital.

As Dr. Kuzaze escorts a photographer back into the hospital to see more wounded, leaving an armed policeman to protect us in the lobby, another family walks out to the parking lot sobbing and slapping their foreheads in grief.>

Excellent article. Thank you for posting it Barrett.

[catmandu57]

5. If the rest of the press corp there

we would be getting stories like this daily, instread thjey sit in the "green zone" waiting to be spoonfed whatever propaganda suits the military.

[JNelson6563]

6. Very good article

Thank you for posting it. All the people who love the ones we kill/maim are potential future terrorists or terror supporters. I know if an invading enemy slaughtered my loved one(s) I'd be their sworn enemy for life.

What a tragic situation this is.

Julie

[tlcandie]

7. This reminds me of another situation in our world where the fighting

never stops except for maybe a day. This story has so many things within it that rip at the heart!

Remember the Alamo what an analogy. :cry:

[lottie244]

8. Following Ann Coulter's orders, the US is trying to kill them all.

Nice to know who is in control.

[Barrett808]

9. A couple of telling observations

By satellite phone, we get details from the US military. A US Marine spokeswoman says the fighting began at 1 a.m., when Mahdi Army fighters attacked the main police station. The police called for Iraqi Army support, and by 3 a.m., the US Marines were called in as well. The Marines' press release later says that the Marines did not fire a shot until later in the day, and the Iraqi forces were able to repel the Mahdi Army on their own. But residents say they could hear the difference in the kind of weapons used, much heavier and more powerful than the sort of Kalashnikovs that most Iraqi police or Iraqi Army soldiers carry.

...

"I myself welcomed the Americans when they threw out Saddam," says Mr. Kamal, an auto mechanic who is now unemployed. "I took pictures of myself with US soldiers and brought my own horse to them if it could be of service. But now I realize what is happening here in Iraq is because of the Americans."

While Kamal, a Shiite, like most people in Najaf, blames the Americans for the fighting in Najaf and for the lack of jobs, he also reserves blame for the Mahdi Army and for Moqtada al-Sadr. "There are not really that many people who support al-Sadr," he says. "People are tired. We might support the uprising mentally, but we are tired." He points to his four friends. One is a college graduate of Arabic literature, another of physics. He and his buddy are trained mechanics. All are jobless. "People are bombing the electrical power stations," says Kamal, "but the government won't even hire us as guards to protect it."

...

But we are stopped before we can see the full extent of the civilian casualties. Abu Zayed, head of hospital security, says that he has been ordered to expel all journalists from hospital grounds. Relatives of the wounded are so upset, they are likely to attack journalists, who they believe are either Americans or are supportive of the Americans. "I cannot protect you from the people inside," says Mr. Zayed, the security chief.


...


Mahdi Army fighters - who now control the shrine and have a few gunmen posted inside the shrine complex - point to the gold-leaf dome and one golden minaret, where tiles have been damaged by flying shrapnel. Damage to the shrine is the one thing that could unify Shiites against the Americans, we have been warned by people who don't like the Mahdi Army. The courtyard of the shrine itself is littered with chunks of shrapnel, and Mahdi Army fighters show a piece of the bomb that they say dropped into the shrine complex.

...

In Baghdad, US military spokesmen claim to have killed 300 fighters over the past two days of fighting. We've seen hundreds more, and there are possibly thousands left in the shrine area and the cemetery. Getting rid of them all, finishing them off, and restoring full government control, as the Governor of Najaf is now calling for this week, could result in bloody street fighting, with hundreds of civilian casualties.

...

From Najaf, the road directly back to Baghdad is blocked. We take an alternate route through the central Iraqi city of Kufa, another Sadr bastion. There, an Iraqi police checkpoint that had been manned just the day before is abandoned. At the Kufa mosque - where Moqtada al-Sadr's speech that day will call on Muslims to fight against the Americans, "our enemies" - there are only Mahdi Army fighters, within full sight of the main road. It will be another 40 kilometers before we see another checkpoint manned by Iraqi police or US military.

(This corroborates Robert Fisk's recent report -- 70 miles of abandoned police checkpoints. --Barrett)

[minkyboodle]

10. what a concept a reporter actually on the scene

Great article thanks for the pointer.