Ruling the streets
SADR CITY, BAGHDAD--The call comes as the four exhausted men doze on thin mattresses on the floor. They sit up quickly as Abu Said, the cell leader, answers the phone. "OK, we're leaving now," he says. Abu Assad jumps up, rewraps the scarf around his head, slips on his plastic sandals, and grabs his AK-47. Abu Nasser and Abu Asil pick up the two rocket-propelled grenades propped against the wall and an old Russian sniper gun, and they all pile into the BMW--for the fourth time that day.
These men are members of the Mahdi Army, the militia loyal to renegade cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. They rule the streets of Sadr City, the sprawling Shiite slum on the eastern edge of Baghdad. Even police cars slow down as they approach Mahdi checkpoints throughout the district, and wait for the fighters to wave them through.
Abu Said and his crew are one of the many Mahdi counterstrike units that cruise the garbage-strewn streets in flashy foreign cars with their weapons pointed out the windows. When an American Bradley armored vehicle comes rolling by, small boys acting as lookouts warn the commanders. The commanders, in turn, tell the cell in charge of that area, and the cell members get down to business. AK-47s rain down bullets to distract the Americans while fighters shoot RPG s from the opposite side of the street. This tactic has been so successful that unarmored U.S. Army vehicles no longer enter Sadr City, and even the thick-skinned Bradleys rarely venture deep into this deadly labyrinth.
Sleepless. The men have been busy over the past few weeks, often having to catch naps on traffic islands during breaks in battle. "Too much stress and not enough sleep," says Abu Assad, 41, a former major in Iraq's Republican Guard. Like all the cell members he is unemployed, but his humble three-room home serves as the rest house for cell members who gingerly cross the fetid green puddle in front of the house to have tea and a nap. "Look at how we live," he says, pointing to the sewage and the still fan. "The Americans destroyed our electricity and our water and left us without work."
While they lack power for their fans, all are electrified by the speeches of their burly leader, whose words describe their every frustration. Sadr gives them a framework with which to pursue their goal: an American-free Iraq. "As long as the American tanks are in our city, we will keep fighting . . . even if there is a truce," says Abu Said. "This is our city and we must defend it." -Orly Halpern
This story appears in the August 30, 2004 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.
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