City of vengeance

On a white-hot day in early June, I went to the Shia neighborhood of al Shu'ala to speak to the Mahdi Army men who ran the neighborhood. The building was crowned with a new sign in English that read, "The Sadreen Institute for Strategic Studies," suggesting a university of militiadom. As I arrived, 20 young men wearing the Mahdi uniform -- black shirts and close-cropped hair -- piled quickly out of late-model cars. As the entire Mahdi cell walked to the office in close formation, the men adjusted the pistols in their belts and pulled their shirts down to keep the guns out of sight. I waited at the door as the fighters were checked by the guard and were allowed into the office. One by one, as the office guard recognized the men, he gave them each a quick tap on the shoulder. A few minutes later, after the cell disappeared into the office, Hamdullah Rikabi, a Mahdi Army representative for Al Shu'ala, invited me in.

The Sadr office was packed with Iraqis asking for assistance with everything from ID cards to death payments to information about BKC machine guns. The Mahdi Army is doing a booming trade in community relations these days, and a citizen does not have to be a Shiite or even a Muslim to ask for their help. As uncounted numbers of Shiite families flee the extreme violence to "safe" neighborhoods, the Mahdi Army is welcoming a ready-made constituency of desperate and frightened people from all over Iraq.

"We respect all journalists and their opinions," Rikabi told me warmly, before launching into a typical conspiracy-laden rant about how American soldiers were in league with Sunni extremists. "The American soldiers were behind the al-Askari shrine bombing, directly or indirectly. If they had allowed our guards to carry weapons, we could have stopped the attack. The American soldiers must leave Iraq immediately; this is what Sayyid Muqtada says."

The thin and intense Rikabi was friendly even if his speech was pre-programmed. He went on to say that Mahdi Army soldiers were helping poor people, as I could see, and did not even carry weapons. This was an absurd and obvious falsehood, since nearly two dozen armed men had just entered the building. It is true that the militiamen were only carrying sidearms, and discreetly concealing them, but if the past is any guide, the larger-caliber material was cached close at hand. In Najaf, during the siege in 2004, the Mahdi Army leadership used a nearby religious school as an armory, and on the day the fighting ended, when Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani's pilgrims flooded the city, the militia quietly disappeared with its entire stock of weapons.

The Najaf battle was a demonstration of faith that ended as a shattering military defeat for the young militia, but those awkward adolescent days are gone. Muqtada al-Sadr's followers are more disciplined and have more public support than they did in the violent summer of 2004. But a trace of the old fervor remains, and I could hear an almost plaintive note in Rikabi's accusation of U.S. complicity in the catastrophic bombing of the holy al-Askari shrine. The Mahdi militia has good reason to want the immediate departure of U.S. forces: They are the only power in Iraq they fear and cannot influence.

I wanted to understand how the Mahdi Army was responding to the attacks on Shiite civilians, a side of their movement they do not readily discuss with outsiders. A Shia contact in Baghdad made a telephone call and organized a meeting with a midlevel commander in charge of a number of smaller Mahdi cells. On June 6, I was instructed to wait at the Habaibna restaurant in Talbiyah, a mixed neighborhood known for bomb attacks.

Within five minutes of the scheduled appointment, two serious men in a BMW rolled up in the parking lot and told us to follow them. Instead of taking us back to Sadr City, the Mahdi Army stronghold, we headed all the way back into town, to the Sunni neighborhood of Zayouna.

We arrived at the house of the Mahdi commander, Salman al-Darragi. The house was set back from the highway, on a street barricaded by palm logs and debris. A dozen Mahdi Army men, ranging in age from early 20s to 40s, gathered in the living room. A few were veterans of the street fighting in 2004. Everyone was ready to participate in the discussion, but they politely let Darragi speak first and listened quietly to our discussion.

The genial Darragi is well respected in the militia. His group makes money by running a propane gas franchise behind the house, part of the vibrant sectarian militia/business environment found in Baghdad these days. Darragi, who resembles an Iraqi Buddha, relaxed against the wall as one of his children brought in soft drinks. The young men, all fighters without weapons, came and sat on cushions against the wall and brought their difficulties to him. One young fighter complained that Iraqi police kept cutting in line for fuel at their gas station and it was causing problems. We did not talk about where Darragi got his fuel stock, but behind the house was a government gasoline tanker unhitched from its cab.

The Mahdi commander began our conversation by laying out a long and ridiculous conspiracy theory that involved American soldiers burying improvised explosive devices in Sadr City. But then he began to talk openly about the Mahdi Army's military operations. This is highly unusual. It may have only happened because the political leadership in Sadr City had no idea Darragi was meeting with a reporter.

We were talking about Sunni groups that were targeting Shiite civilians when Darragi volunteered that the Mahdi Army in Sadr City was holding a man it believed had taken part in the bombing of the al-Sharoufi mosque a few months earlier. Darragi said, "We talked with him and he said that he worked with men to set off explosions. He is inside the jail now." I asked what would happen to him. "If he is guilty of killing, then he must be killed. That is the sharia law. This man already confessed that he was killing people." Darragi shrugged as if to say, "This is how it works, what can I do?"

Darragi went on to describe a secret court in Sadr City where the Mahdi Army held people it captured, tried them and passed sentence. When I asked to visit the sharia court and talk to the mosque bombing suspect, Darragi said, "I would have to blindfold you and that would be embarrassing for both of us. The court is in a secret place, but I will ask if it is possible." When I called Darragi the next day, his phone was switched off. I tried to visit him a few days later but he was gone. One of his men said he was in Turkey.

Next page: An Iraqi policeman says the police are powerless to stop Sadr's death squads