One year ago, Moqtada al Sadr’s radical Mahdi Army militia strongholds in Basra and Sadr City were two of the biggest threats remaining to the Iraqi republic. Al Qaeda in Iraq had been reduced to a remnant, but the country still was a violent mirror of Lebanon. Hezbollah threatens the Lebanese capital and can start unilateral wars on a whim, and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki had to ask himself if that was the kind of country he hoped to be left with as Americans talked of a combat force draw down. Lebanon has neither a capable national army nor tens of thousands of foreign troops on her soil as backup. The Iraqis did, though. Their army, with help from the American military, was ordered into the southern city of Basra to purge the streets of the Shia militiamen. After nail-biting fits and starts, the Iraqis prevailed. Then they stormed Sadr City and took back the last bastion of resistance in the capital.
I visited Sadr City on my recent trip to Iraq, and I expected to be horrified when I got there. It was safer than it had been, of course, but it was still known as the great slum of Baghdad – like Hezbollah’s dahiyeh south of Beirut, only bigger and meaner. Almost as many people live in Sadr City as in all of Lebanon. Much of Iraq looks like a slum as it is, so an actual slum in Iraq must look like…what?
Most Iraqi cities look more or less like every other Iraqi city, but there are exceptions. The worst I had seen so far was Kirkuk in the north.
Kirkuk, Iraq
Kirkuk, Iraq
Nowhere I'd seen in Baghdad, Fallujah, Ramadi, or anywhere else was as run-down or gruesome as Kirkuk. Yet I had never heard Kirkuk described as the worst place in Iraq. The vast slum of Baghdad must be even worse. I was sure of it. Going to Sadr City seemed slightly crazy.
“Adhamiyah and Sadr City are the most important sectors in all of Iraq,” Major Mike Humphreys said to me at Forward Operating Base (FOB) War Eagle in Northern Baghdad. It was the first stop for embedded reporters on their way to Sadr City with the American military. “Sadr City is, of course, the most volatile place in the country, and it's named after Moqtada al Sadr's father. It was the big question about the future of Iraq.”
That, of course, was why I wished to see it. If Sadr City was okay, the rest of Iraq might be okay. But if Sadr City was still like a vast Hezbollah dahiyeh in Baghdad, it could easily bring down the rest of the country.
The way into Sadr City itself was from Combat Outpost (COP) Ford, a one-company base wedged between Sadr City and the adjacent Beida neighborhood. Captains Todd Looney and A.J. Boyes ran the company, and they were two of the friendliest and most hospitable American military officers I had yet met. I stayed up for hours talking to these two in their quarters and never once felt like I was imposing. Their outpost developed an excellent reputation among journalists as a place to be based, and I wished I could have stayed longer.
Looney and Boyes' company did most of the fighting in Sadr City last year when the Jamilla Market area was purged of militiamen and a three-mile long wall of concrete barriers was erected to keep them from coming back in.
Tanks at Combat Outpost Ford used during heavy fighting last year in Sadr City
“On our worst day,” Captain Looney said, “we only got eight barriers up. But once we figured out how to do it, we didn't lose any more people.” Three of his men were killed before they taught themselves how to build a wall under fire without getting blown up or shot. Framed photographs of the dead hung on the wall.
Captain Todd Looney (left)
“The Iraqi Army did pretty good, too,” I said. “They did better in both Sadr City and Basra than most people expected,” I said.
“Absolutely,” Captain Boyes said.
Most analysts at the time thought the Mahdi Army would hand the Iraqi Army its ass on a plate. I wasn't terribly optimistic myself. Purging urban neighborhoods of guerrillas is tough work. First World professional armies often fail. The Iraqis, though, stunned the world.
“People didn't think the resolve of the national government would be there,” Captain Boyes said. “They didn't think the prime minster was going to carry out what he promised.”
Captain A.J. Boyes
“You guys had their backs, though,” I said, “which certainly helped.”
“I don't think it was as much as people think,” he said.
“No?” I said. “Really? Well, you guys were here. You would know.”
“We have friends who were down south in training teams,” he said, “but most of the Americans in Basra weren't doing the fighting themselves. It was very much an advisor role.”
“Wasn't there air support, too?” I said.
“Yes,” he said, “there was an air asset. But I don't think it was all that significant. And the Iraqis operate completely independently now in 75 percent of Sadr City. Only in the southern sectors of Jamilla and Tharwa is there an American presence. Once you get north of the wall, the Iraqi Army operates without any support.”
Map of U.S. and Iraqi forces in and near Sadr City in May, 2008
“The purpose of the Gold Wall,” Major Mike Humphreys told me earlier, “is to prevent Mahdi Army Special Groups criminals from having access to south Sadr City. On March 25, 2008, 107mm rockets started being launched against the Green Zone in response to the violence that was going on in Basra. There were twelve to fifteen attacks per day on the Green Zone, and these rockets packed a powerful punch. They had big warheads on these things, and were nothing to smirk about. They were being launched from south Sadr City because it's the limit of the 107mm reach. The rockets were purchased from Iran. We found some stamped with 'born on' dates after the fighting began. So we know that these guys were supported by Iran. We know for a fact they were dealing with Iran. The same thing with their EFPs, their explosively-formed penetrators. They're getting those directly from Iran.”
EFPs are the most terrifying IEDs ever designed. They fire molten copper plates faster than bullets at passing vehicles which cut through Humvees and tanks as though they were Jell-O.
“Do you know who they're buying them from in Iran?” I said. “Are they buying them from the government?”
“Who knows?” he said. “Maybe if we did know we could do something about it.”
My Spanish colleague Ramon Lobo from El País in Madrid co-interviewed Major Humphreys with me.
“I think they get them from the Revolutionary Guards,” he said.
“Right,” I said. “Which is, of course, part of the government.”
“According to Iraqi media,” Major Humphreys said, “they're getting support from the al Quds Force.”
The Quds Force is basically the special forces branch of Iran's Revolutionary Guards. Its commanders report to “Supreme Leader” Ayatollah Khamenei. Their mission is the arming and training of guerrilla and terrorist organizations around the Middle East – especially in Lebanon, Iraq, and the Palestinian territories.
“One thing you'll notice on the map,” Major Humphreys said, “is that all roads point toward the Green Zone.”
“The roads were perfect launching positions,” he said. “These guys built their launching pads, they had engineers who knew what they were doing, they knew the right angles, and they knew where they were going to launch from. They were very well-trained. Al Qaeda is mostly a bunch of thugs who are paid by people outside Iraq just to wreck havoc by dropping poorly made IEDs. They're not very well organized. But the Shia militias are used to working in a military manner with senior commanders, and with training sponsored by international forces in Iran. They have a sense of leadership. These guys knew what they were doing. They were launching these rockets from roads that are perfectly lined up to the Green Zone every day.”
Not only did the Shia militias buy their rockets from Iran, they paid with cash extorted from businesses in the Jamilla market. So the Iraqi government had yet another reason to want them out of Jamilla.
“It's hard to block this whole area off,” Major Humphreys said, “because there are so many nooks and crannies that people can get in and out of. So we started building the wall. And it took us about two months. It's a three-mile wall on what we call Route Gold. And it worked. As soon as the last barrier went in, the violence in south Sadr City almost completely stopped.”
Mahdi Army senior leaders fled as soon as they lost their funding, resources, and territory in and around the market. Some went to Iran. Others went into hiding somewhere else in Iraq. They wanted to get back in, but they couldn't. So they made a face-saving deal with the government. They “agreed” to stay out of Sadr City entirely as long as American soldiers stayed on the south side of the Gold Wall.
“So Prime Minister Maliki sent his Iraqi Army north of the wall,” Major Humphreys said. “We breached the wall in several different places and the Iraqi Army moved forward in this massive passage of lines.”
The Iraqi Army breaches the Gold Wall and heads into north Sadr City (photo from Getty Images)
“The Iraqi Army literally moved right through our lines,” he said, “and set up their operations in north Sadr City. And now the Iraqi Army rules north Sadr City independently.”
Iraqi Army soldiers found massive caches of rockets and EFPs. They even found an EFP factory up there.
An EFP factory discovered by the Iraqi Army in Sadr City
The only reason they were able to find all this stuff was because the residents of Sadr City were fed up with the Mahdi Army's violence, corruption, and shakedowns.
They also found IRAMs, Improvised Rocket-Assisted Munitions, or “flying IEDs.”
An IRAM, basically, is a lob bomb. It's a 107mm rocket with a gigantic bomb strapped to the side. They're too heavy to fly far, but they fly far enough.
“I was right there at JSS Sadr City when they launched an IRAM,” Major Humphreys said, “and I thought I was a goner. Seven IRAMs were launched off a truck that was parked right behind the station. They launched the rockets about a hundred meters, and they knew exactly what angle and depth to put them at. A 107mm rocket can hit the Green Zone from there. But these don’t. They go a hundred meters. They have these big chunks of explosives tied to them, and they just lobbed ‘em over the wall. The guys that saw them said they looked like giant flying car mufflers.” He laughed. “Seriously, they just flip-flopped until they came down on the building. Incredible explosions. Just incredible. Seven of 'em. One right after the next.”
*
Millions of people live in Sadr City, and it's just one part of Baghdad. It's often described as the poorest, most over-crowded, and most politically deranged place in the capital, if not the whole country.
I'm not sure I believe all that anymore. And my assumptions began to buckle before I even saw it.
“The Jamilla Market is flourishing now,” Major Humphreys said. ”It was a sewage swamp.”
“Like the Bakara Market in Somalia,” said Ramon Lobo, my colleague from Spain.
“Do they even have a sewer system in Sadr City?” I said.
“Oh yeah,” Major Humphreys said. “Let me tell you about Sadr City. Sadr City has the most up-to-date infrastructure in all of Baghdad. It was built in the 1960s as a place to house miscreants, for the most part. It was built to modern building codes with modern infrastructure. It had a very modern sewer system, electrical power grid, modern buildings, everything.”
That didn't sound right at all.
“Now, that surprises me,” I said. “A lot. It's a slum. It's the worst place in the city economically.”
“Well, that's what they say,” he said. “But you've got to realize, too, that it was built to hold a million people, and some estimates say there are as many as 3.2 million there. So it's overpopulated, for sure. But if you fly over Sadr City at night, you don't see blackness. You see light. You see electricity. It's not what it's made out to be. It has modern infrastructure, it's just not maintained.
“The problem with the sewer system in Sadr City was that it was clogged, it was backed up, nobody was maintaining it. We went in there and thought the sewer was completely destroyed in Jamilla Market. It was a swamp. It was a swamp of sewage. But once this fighting was over, we sent the sucker trucks in there. The workers got down into the system. They sucked everything out. They blew pressure through the lines. They cleared out all the empty water bottles and trash. They cleaned it up, and it works. There is great potential in Sadr City. It just needs maintenance and workers.
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