May 27, 2004

Cleric Offers to Pull Fighters From Najaf

Members of Iraq's Governing Council traveled to Najaf on Thursday to help nail down a peace agreement after radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr offered to withdraw his militia, raising hopes for an end to weeks of fighting in the holy city.

Al-Sadr, whose militiamen have been battling coalition troops for nearly two months, also demanded the Americans pull back and a murder case against him be postponed.
[...]
An agreement to abandon Najaf would be a major step toward ending an uprising al-Sadr's militia has waged in the south only weeks before a new Iraqi government takes power June 30, formally ending the U.S.-led occupation.

The weeks of fighting — which had threatened some of Shia Islam's holiest sites — had posed a major challenge to the U.S. occupation.
[Or so says and thinks the Leftist media pundits at the AP!--Jen]
[...]
It wasn't known how much al-Sadr was swayed by the pre-dawn raid in which U.S. troops arrested al-Sadr's key lieutenant [Riyahd al-Nouri]. Clashes late Tuesday and early Wednesday between U.S. troops and militia fighters killed 24 people and wounded nearly 50 here, hospital and militia officials said.

Al-Nouri's arrest was a major blow to the al-Mahdi Army, which has been fighting coalition forces since early April in Shiite neighborhoods of Baghdad and in the Shiite heartland south of the capital.

Al-Sadr launched his uprising after the U.S.-led occupation authority launched a crackdown on his movement. An Iraqi judge has issued an arrest warrant charging both al-Sadr and al-Nouri in the April 2003 assassination of a moderate cleric, Abdul Majid al-Khoei.
[...]
Al-Sadr said he was making the offer because of "the tragic condition" in Najaf after weeks of fighting between his militiamen and the Americans and the slight damage suffered by the city's holiest shrine, the Imam Ali mosque.

Fighting around some of the holiest cities of Shia Islam has angered many Shiites in Iraq and elsewhere and has led to calls for both the Americans and the militiamen to pull back from the shrines.

On Tuesday, the Imam Ali shrine in Najaf received slight damage. Both U.S. and Shiite forces blamed the other.

And guess which side the Media blamed? Ours, of course.
Nothing like giving the Enemy the benefit of the doubt in wartime, huh?
Our military commanders said that they were shot at from the mosque and that it was being used as an arsenal, too, so they almost had no choice but to fire on the "holy site."
(And no-one mentions that Saddam himself shelled this mosque when he was cracking down on the Shiites.
But the Iraqis themselves remember.)
I'll bet the partisan press was surprised, if not shocked, that our tactics are working against the terrorist scum.
The way they report the war, it's almost as if they're disappointed to see al-Sadr give in!