The return of Muqtada al Sadr from a self-imposed four month exile in Iran dominated the news from Iraq today. Sadr, who leads the Sadrist movement and commands the Mahdi Army, had taken shelter in Iran, under the watchful eye of Iran’s Qods Force. Today, he made a grand entrance in Kufa and gave a sermon to some 6,000 followers in which he denounced the U.S. ‘occupation.’ “No, no for Satan. No, no for America. No, no for the occupation. No, no for Israel,” Sadr chanted at the opening of his sermon. “We demand the withdrawal of the occupation forces, or the creation of a timetable for such a withdrawal… I call upon the Iraqi government not to extend the occupation even for a single day.” Sheik Ahmed Azziz, Sistani’s representative in Diyala, talks to about 60
of Diyala’s tribal sheiks during a meeting with the provincial leadership
in Baqubah, Iraq, May 23. Photo/Sgt. Serena Hayden.
Sadr’s reasons for returning remain a mystery. It remains to be seen if he can reorganize the fractured Mahdi Army, which split apart after the militia’s leadership and paymasters fled to Iran. He may also be attempting to take advantage of the absence of Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, the leader of the powerful Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC), which recently made an official break from Iran and is now working closely with the Iraqi government. Multinational Forces Iraq and Iraqi Special Forces gave Sadr a nice welcome home present in the form of two high-profile raids–one in Sadr City, and another in Basra. In Basra, the British killed Abu Qader, the leader of the Mahdi Army in that region, along with his brother and two aides. Qader “was suspected of involvement in planting roadside bombs, weapons trafficking, assassinations and planning and participating in attacks against British troops,” Reuters noted. Iraqi Special Operations Forces conducted a raid in the heart of Sadr City, Muqtada’s purported stronghold, and captured a Mahdi fighter “suspected of having direct ties to the leader of the EFP network as well as acting as a proxy for an Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps officer.” Coalition forces are keeping up the pressure on al Qaeda’s network, capturing 20 al Qaeda during raids in Baghdad and Mosul. The Baghdad raids netted an al Qaeda “battalion commander… responsible for numerous attacks in Baghdad, including assassinations, attacks on news media and attacks on the city’s infrastructure,” as well as an “explosives expert… known to have knowledge of explosively formed penetrators,” and “a close associate of a Libyan who facilitates the movement of foreign fighters in the area.” Also, Multinational Forces Iraq announced that it had found a ‘how-to’ torture manual during a raid on an al Qaeda safe house in Iraq several weeks ago. The manual contains “drawings [that] show how to drill hands, sever limbs, drag victims behind cars, remove eyes, put a blowtorch or iron to someone’s skin, suspend a person from a ceiling and electrocute them, break limbs and restrict breath and put someone’s head in a vice.” Al Qaeda conducted two notable attacks today, it bombing another bridge over the Euphrates river, and executing yet another commando styled assault in Diyala province. The bridge links Baghdad’s al-Adl district to the al-Khadra district. “The bombing is part of serial attacks targeting bridges and crossings in Baghdad in a bid by militants to destroy Iraq’s infrastructure facilities,” a source told the Kuwaiti News Agency. This the eighth bridge targeted by al Qaeda. At least two have been destroyed, one of which has since been replaced. In Diyala, al Qaeda attacked “a mainly Sunni village near Baqubah, killing five people, in the ongoing battle for control of al-Anbar and Diyala provinces between al-Qaeda and an alliance of local Sunni tribes.” Al Qaeda fired “indiscriminately at civilians before fleeing.” This follows a recent meeting between 45 tribal sheikhs and the Diyala government, Iraqi police and military, and U.S. forces. The Diyala tribes have formed the Awakening Movement, modeled on the Anbar Awakening that had such success in beating back al Qaeda in large swaths of Anbar province.
