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http://www.boston.com/news/nation/ar..._turn_of_fate/

For US, uprising a startling turn of fate
By Thanassis Cambanis, Globe Staff, 4/11/2004

BAGHDAD -- The armed struggle that erupted across much of Iraq last
week has dramatically shifted fundamental assumptions about the
country's future, as insurgents acquired a sense of their power and US
authorities confronted their vulnerabilities.

Events have unfolded that would have seemed far-fetched a week ago.
Yesterday, American forces came under attack in a downtown Baghdad
neighborhood of diplomats and wealthy Iraqis that has long been
considered safe. Across the Iraqi capital yesterday, shops were closed
and streets were empty on what is usually the busiest day of the week,
while gunfire rang out and shells pounded the occupation authority's
Green Zone headquarters.

In a return to the visual props of last spring's invasion, the US
military briefer pulled out a national map to tally all the of the
country's trouble spots, and matter-of-factly listed major cities that
were under resistance fighters' control.

"The situation is very dangerous. We place responsibility on the
coalition," Sheik Ghazi Ajil Al-Yawar, an outspoken Sunni Muslim
member of the Iraqi Governing Council who traveled to the besieged
city of Fallujah yesterday, told AlJazeera television.

The shattering series of events that began a week ago with an uprising
by followers of cleric Moqtada al-Sadr have raised questions about
whether the United States will have to rethink the plan for a handover
of authority by June 30 and free elections by January 2005. President
Bush yesterday brushed aside suggestions by some Republicans and
Democrats in Congress that it now may be necessary to push back the
handover.

The guerrillas "want to dictate the course of events in Iraq and to
prevent the Iraqi people from having a true voice in their future,"
Bush said in his weekly radio address. "The enemies of freedom will
fail."

But even Secretary of State Colin L. Powell admitted Friday that it
has been a "tough week," leaving 47 US soldiers dead, the highest
weekly combat toll since the United States declared the end of major
fighting last May. The Iraqi death toll has also surged, with about
500 killed, more than half of them in Fallujah.

Anger runs deep It only takes an hour in Sadr City, among a throng of
angry Shi'ites, to feel the current of bitterness ripping through the
poor and disenfranchised slum.

Viewing the week's developments through the lens provided by their
fiery imam at Friday prayers, people there perceive a widening war
between Iraqis and occupation forces; an apparent crackdown on free
speech and Shi'ite rights; a blistering offensive in Fallujah that has
claimed hundreds of civilian lives; and a deteriorating security
environment that has made this year's annual pilgrimage to Karbala,
the holiest trip for Shi'ites, into a nightmare of anxiety about
terrorist attacks.

From an American perspective, the challenges appear daunting. For a
year, coalition officials have blamed a minority of Ba'athists,
international terrorists, and Sunni extremists for attacks against
soldiers. Last week, it became apparent that coalition forces had
little or no authority in at least three Iraqi cities -- Kut, Najaf,
and Fallujah -- and that sympathy for anti-American attacks runs deep
and wide through many sectors of society. US officials have
acknowledged they need more troops to handle the insurgency.

The atmosphere inside Iraq also changed dramatically on other fronts
last week.

The 70,000-member police force the US-led coalition has sought hard to
promote collapsed in disarray in many parts of the country. Hundreds
of police officers and members of the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps quit
during the fighting, as barracks and police stations were taken over
by militias. Many switched sides and fought US troops.

In Shuala, a Shi'ite suburb of Baghdad that saw fierce fighting
between Sadr's militia, the Mahdi Army, and US troops last week,
police officers pulled up to the Sadr office in pickup trucks
throughout the day to get instructions from the clerics.

"We are policemen, yes, but also Mahdi. And the Mahdi is stronger,"
said Natik Hussein, a 21-year-old policeman busy taping a poster of
Sadr to his police truck as his colleagues played with the siren,
turning it on and off. "Sadr is the ultimate authority. The Americans
are Jews."

In Sadr City, the Shi'ites have added Iraqi flags -- a new nationalist
symbol -- and slogans of cross-sectarian unity to their repertoire.

Sa'ad abu Teba, a foot soldier in the Mahdi Army who said he used to
peddle soft drinks before signing up to fight for Sadr for $300 a
month, said many former officers in the disbanded national army had
joined Sadr's forces.

Last year, he said, "we were so happy that the Americans had come. We
thought everything would change."

But the two-time deserter from Saddam Hussein's army said he lost
patience when after a year he didn't feel safer on the streets of
Baghdad and still couldn't earn a decent living outside the militia.

"They kill our people. They arrest the wounded from hospitals," he
said of coalition forces. "Nowhere is safe. Now this will be another
sad year."

A return to war

The occupation authority has scrambled to return to combat footing,
although officials point out that the war in Iraq didn't end when
major combat operations were stopped. "It's a gross
mischaracterization to suggest that the entire country is at war, that
the entire country is now under the grips of combat," the US military
spokesman, Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt said Friday.

Still, it was a dramatic shift, after a year of military briefings in
Baghdad, to see officials talk of cities like Najaf and Kufa being in
rebel hands, Fallujah up for grabs in bloody fighting, and Kut retaken
by US soldiers after three days in Mahdi Army hands.

After a year of assurances that there were enough troops in Iraq, US
military commanders are talking about extending the tours of soldiers
who have already been here a year. They have also raised the
possibility of boosting total deployments from the current number,
145,000 troops, all but 20,000 of them American -- at a time when some
US allies are considering pulling out.

Meanwhile, the fighting has roiled relations between the US-appointed
Governing Council and occupation authorities, just 80 days before a
sovereign Iraqi government is scheduled to take control.

Two government ministers quit in the past week, several Governing
Council members lashed out at the US assault on Fallujah, and a key
American ally on the council suspended his membership on the security
committee.

Another threat to the reconstruction effort emerged with a spate of
kidnappings of foreigners. Aid workers, security contractors,
journalists, diplomats, and ministers were believed among the dozens
kidnapped by insurgents; many were quickly released.

The battle for the US-led authority here is to regain military control
of the country without derailing the political process leading to a
June 30 handover and elections in January 2005.

"We will continue to see this violence for some time until Moqtada
al-Sadr turns himself in or his militia is destroyed. Coalition
military forces will conduct powerful, deliberate, very robust
military operations until the job is done," Lieutenant General Ricardo
Sanchez, commander of coalition ground forces in Iraq, said last week.
"We will not let a small group of criminals and thugs control the
destiny of this country."

But US-led forces will have to contend with the highest level of
popular vitriol since the occupation began.

"Bremer, you are the outlaw!" the crowd of 300,000 Shi'ites chanted in
Sadr City on Friday, a reference to the US adminstrator, L. Paul
Bremer III.

Saying collaborators would be judged and "amputated" by the Iraqi
people, Imam Sheik Nassir al-Saidi issued a final plea for the people
to aid the resistance.

"If you are scared, don't get in our way," he thundered. "We have a
fight with the American people."

Thanassis Cambanis can be reached at tcambanis@globe.com.

© Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company.