`The slum of all slums' - Cleaning up Sadr City is dangerous

[2RHPZ]

`The slum of all slums'
Cleaning up Sadr City is dangerous task

By Alex Rodriguez
Tribune foreign correspondent
Published June 30, 2004

BAGHDAD -- Ringed by dozens of shouting Iraqis in the forsaken slum known as Sadr City, Sgt. Bobby Lisek groped for ways to kindle a flicker of empathy.

Pools of raw sewage in the streets would vanish if the workers that his battalion put in place could lay pipe without being shot at, he yelled through an interpreter. The coalition tried to give the slum's residents more than eight hours of electricity a day, but sabotage made the job harder, Lisek said.

All the while, frenzied Iraqis punched and prodded the back of Lisek's bulletproof vest. The Iraqi soldiers accompanying Lisek ignored his pleas to keep the crowd in check. As he left, boys pelted him with rocks.

"This is like the slum of all slums," said Lisek, a no-nonsense 25-year-old from Springfield, Mo., while on patrol last weekend. "We got rid of Saddam, and they were happy about that, but now they just want to be mean to us."

While Iraqis are now formally in charge of their own country with Monday's hand-over of sovereignty, soldiers of the 2nd Battalion, 5th Cavalry Regiment of the 1st Cavalry Division remain on the job, stewarding one of postwar Iraq's most challenging reconstruction tasks--and one of its most dangerous. The hand-over brought no end to their mission; Tuesday was just another day at work.

There is no neighborhood in Iraq so perilous to U.S. troops as Sadr City, Baghdad's poorest district and home to 2.5 million people, a 10th of the nation's population. And no neighborhood in Iraq needs help more.

Mounds of garbage line every street. Raw sewage bubbling up from crumbling sewer pipes has turned many streets into fetid, impassable canals. Three out of every five Sadr City residents do not work. Drinking water is contaminated; electricity is on for two hours, off for four.

This spring, the 2nd Battalion began a public works campaign to fix and clean Sadr City. After a year of unfulfilled promises from the now-defunct Coalition Provisional Authority, Sadr City residents were eager to see if the 2nd Battalion could succeed where the CPA couldn't.

But every step of the way, insurgents loyal to Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr have tried to derail the campaign. On April 4, the day the 2nd Battalion took over responsibility for the neighborhood, insurgents unleashed gunfire and rocket-propelled grenades on a convoy. Eight 1st Cavalry Division soldiers died that day. Since then, more have been killed in daily ambushes and bombings.

"We came here for a humanitarian mission, but it seems like every time we head out there, someone is shooting at us," said Sgt. Reginald Butler, 30, of McAlester, Okla. "I never say that I'm not going to make it, but a lot of guys do say that."

A predominantly Shiite Muslim neighborhood named for Sadr's slain father, Sadr City was neglected for years by Saddam Hussein's Sunni Muslim regime. Schools, hospitals and other vital services received far less funding than they did in other Baghdad neighborhoods.

Until 1981, the neighborhood relied on street-side trenches for sewage collection. An influx of Shiites after failed Shiite uprisings in the aftermath of the Persian Gulf war further burdened the neighborhood's crumbling infrastructure.

After the U.S.-led coalition toppled Hussein in April 2003, Sadr City residents eagerly awaited wholesale changes--safer streets, reliable electricity, clean drinking water and proper sewage treatment. The neighborhood expected coalition officials to live up to their promises. When they didn't, the coalition's credibility plummeted.

"People have been waiting a full year, hearing, `It's going to happen, it's going to happen,'" said Lt. Col. Gary Volesky, commander of the 2nd Battalion. "My patience probably would have run out too."

Sadr capitalized on the growing resentment and rallied many of Sadr City's Iraqis against the U.S.-led occupation.

Though Sadr's al-Mahdi Army is believed to be behind most attacks, Sadr City tribal sheiks say Shiite insurgents who fought alongside Sunnis in Fallujah in April are also active in the district, along with militants loyal to Al Qaeda-linked militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

Until Friday, when Sadr announced a cease-fire in Sadr City, Volesky's soldiers endured a deadly eight-week stretch in which they spent their days getting work crews out to pick up trash and their nights fending off coordinated ambushes.

On one patrol last week, Butler's convoy found itself caught in a hail of rocket-propelled grenades. "They shot 40 or 50 RPGs at us," he said. On another patrol, an RPG attack was timed to precede an attack on Butler's convoy with a series of bombs.

Thirteen soldiers in Butler's platoon were wounded in attacks, and two were killed in the last two months of violence.

"I don't think it can get any worse than this," Butler said. "They say Sadr City is the hottest spot right now."

The violence threatens to sidetrack the 2nd Battalion's attempts to embark on projects ranging from a $51 million effort to overhaul Sadr City's sewers to an initiative to set up 100 potable water distribution points.

The 2nd Battalion is also paying Iraqis $5 a day to pick up trash in Sadr City and plans to erect concrete containers that will serve as trash receptacles until pickup service can be established. The coalition initially installed metal containers, but they were stolen and fashioned into garage doors.

The persistent violence is precisely why pleas like the one Lisek gave to a throng of Iraqis last week are made by 2nd Battalion soldiers every day.

On a recent patrol through Sadr City's most dangerous area, the northern section, Sgt. Craig Allen went from storefront to storefront talking to tribal elders and repeating the same plea: The violence has to stop in order for the 2nd Battalion's work to continue.

Raad Fakhir listened intently as Allen, a 34-year-old soldier from Springfield, Ohio, stressed to Fakhir that "there's a setback for us every time we get attacked."

Fakhir answered with the refrain given by most in Sadr City: "We only get promises. So far, nothing has happened."

[2Sheds_Jackson]

A related article from NRO-


Sovereignty Equals Responsibility
“The security of the country lies in our hands.”

By John F. Cullinan

Imagine a senior Iraqi official facing his own public and press and actually taking responsibility for some pressing shortfall — whether it be lack of security, jobs, or electricity — because it's no longer a credible option simply to blame the Americans.

That long-overdue day is fast approaching, hastened by Monday's accelerated transfer of sovereignty — and responsibility — in advance of the scheduled July 1 deadline.

"The security of the country lies in our hands." These were practically the first words spoken by Awad Allawi on assuming office Monday as Iraq's interim prime minister.

Monday's well-kept surprise, undertaken at the initiative of Iraq's new interim government, was designed in part to seize the initiative from Baathist/jihadist terrorists, who were almost certainly planning large-scale attacks to coincide with the scheduled handover of sovereignty. Now such attacks will be seen more clearly — especially by Iraqis — as directed against Iraqi interests, just as Jordanian terrorist kingpin Abu Musab al-Zarkawi foresaw last February. "How can we kill their [Iraqi] cousins and sons and under what pretext," he asked, when "the sons of this land will be the authority"? Zarkawi's unwelcome answer: "This is democracy, we will have no pretext."

What is more, Monday's transfer of sovereignty underpins Allawi's shrewd strategy of delegitimizing and isolating the Baathist/jihadist terrorists. Taking advantage of a backlash against recent atrocities, Allawi has rightly emphasized that most homicide bombings — by far the deadliest and most indiscriminate terrorist tactic — are the work of foreign "mercenaries" — "enemies of God and the people." "We do not believe that those behind these attacks can be Iraqis," Allawi maintains, adding that the perpetrators are "supported financially and logistically by foreign resources." The jihadists in turn have played into Allawi's hands with their counterproductive claims that "the flesh of those working with the Americans is more delicious than American flesh itself." Little wonder that recent U.S. airstrikes against foreign jihadists holed up in Fallujah drew no criticism worth mentioning, and indeed Allawi's explicit support.

As for Iraq's Baathists, Allawi is rightly pursuing a more nuanced strategy. Unrepentant Baathists with blood on their hands — "mercenaries of Saddam and his gang" — can expect to be hunted down. But Allawi — himself a Baathist in his youth — is offering an olive branch to former Baathists now sitting on the fence:

I caution those Baathists who have not committed crimes in the past, I ask them to stay away from the mercenaries of Saddam. Those who pledge to continue in their crimes, I ask all of those [other] Baathists to fight the enemies of the people and to inform the government of any suspicious activities they see. The Iraqi people are asked to tackle these challenges by scrutinizing any suspicious activity and informing the government and the police.
Allawi's appeal to the Iraqi people is the gamble on which he and his colleagues have staked the future of their government and the future of Iraq itself. Ordinary Iraqis are practiced fence-sitters, thanks to the legacy of brutally efficient dictatorship that taught them to keep their heads down and their mouths shut. Unlearning those hard lessons is the basic challenge Allawi has set for his fellow citizens. As Interior Minister Falah al-Naqib put it: "It is the responsibility of every Iraqi to cooperate with us to remove this cancer from our midst. You cannot expect the police to do it on their own."

Allawi and his colleagues have made an impressive start in decidedly inauspicious circumstances, starting by seeing off the U.N.'s hare-brained scheme to create a political vacuum by imposing a caretaker government made up of political nonentities. Their initial success accounts in no small part for the interim government's remarkable 68-percent approval rating (73 percent for Allawi personally), as against the dismal 28-percent rating registered by the former Iraqi Governing Council. And it is due in no small part to Allawi's straight talking to the Iraqi people, day after day.

Allawi himself is an impressive figure, hardheaded, pragmatic, and principled. He is very much his own man, especially in comparison with colleagues in the pay of Iran. And the grievous wounds he suffered at the hands of an axe-wielding Saddamist while in exile lend him unique credibility and insight into a deeply damaged society. Above all, he understands what's possible and what isn't, based on the imperative to take men as God made them — and as Saddam unmade them. "We need to regroup, reorganize and pool our resources in a fashion which is understood by the Iraqi culture," he says. "We are Iraqis — not Americans or Swedes."

What must not be overlooked is that Allawi and his colleagues are staking their lives on the gamble that they can mobilize their fellow citizens to assume the responsibilities of free men. In Allawi's words, "we are prepared to fight and, if necessary, to die for these objectives." Bear in mind that three of their former Governing Council colleagues were murdered, along with hundreds of other officials and civic leaders. And the odious Zarkawi boasts of having prepared "a useful poison and a sure sword" specifically for the prime minister. The grave risks Iraq's new leaders have freely accepted should remind Americans in particular of the approaching anniversary of our own Declaration of Independence, especially its forthright conclusion:

And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.