I recently spoke to a friend who I was supposed to meet in Najaf a few weeks ago but didn’t because he was stuck in Basra due to the fighting that was going on. He spoke of an interesting encounter with the Mehdi Army at a checkpoint they had set up in ‘Gurna’ (a beautiful and serene town in Basra where the Tigris and Euphrates meet to form the ‘Shatt Al-Arab’). He was with his cousins on their way to see their uncle and the militia manning the checkpoint were all wearing IP uniforms. They were probably actually IP’s loyal to Moqtada, like the hundreds of IP’s who “switched sides” during the fighting. What many westerners fail to realise is that hardly anyone actually “switched” sides, they were loyal to Moqtada from the day they joined the IP which they did simply to feed their families.
When they were asked for their ID’s everyone but my friend showed them an ID. They asked him to produce an ID and he had nothing except his British passport which he produced (a very stupid thing to do). He tried to explain he had the same surname as his cousins but none of the militia could read English and soon they called out “Abu Omar, Abu Othman…come here”. Two armed men dressed in all-black who were obviously not really called “Abu Omar/Othman” (Sunni names) soon came out from the small concrete structure at the checkpoint and explained to him that he needs to be taken to their HQ in Gurna to their commander to see what he has to say about this.
After pleading his cousins were finally allowed to accompany him and the gun-men went along with them to the Mehdi Army HQ which turned out to be the Police HQ in Gurna. A turbaned “cleric” soon walked in the room but the strange thing was he was wearing a shirt and trousers, and not the robes a cleric is supposed to wear. He sat down and shouted “Where is the criminal Safa?”. After he pointed himself out the commander turned his attention to his cousins and said “So what are you doing here? Get out, now!”.
My friend was then taken to a cell and told to wait until a sentence is passed. He was lucky they did not confiscate his phone and when he was alone he immediately called his uncle in Qum who is a friend of Moqtada and within an hour he was given his passport, given a full apology and even asked if he wanted protection for the journey back. After he arrived in one piece his uncle called again and (needless to say) said “They would have killed you, never take your British passport with you again”.
In Iraq a few trigger-happy gun-men who are willing to kill “foreigners” so easily can turn into a few polite men, who are willing to protect the person they most-likely discussed how they would execute, with a single phone call. Only in Iraq.
7 comments:
Wow. Sudog only in Iraq.
It baffles me how it went from them being oppressed five years ago along with the rest of the Iraqis, to them taking the role of the oppressors and being able to do so in such a short space of time.
This will only end with Muqtada's murder Inshallah.
I don't understand Muqwaq. With his pedigree,he should've amounted to more than a thug. When the government gets him out of the food ration business,he'll lose whatever support he has left.
Do you think there is hope for Muqtada? Might he regret his past misdeads and reform himself into a true patriot of Iraq?
For Iraq's sake, I want to believe that Muqtada can redeem himself and do right by Iraq.
Well if that doesn't work, I am sure that Muqtada could help design video games for the Wii. He has a creative mind and an active imagination!!!
:-)
Hayder,
I'm the founder of Iraqi Bloggers Central, and I just want to say thanks again for talking to Mister Ghost. Back in 2004 I was so angry and disgusted that they let Muqtada al-Sadr waltz out of Najaf after all the carnage he had wrought that I shut down the blog for a few months. I really hope that the current government can actually bring those people who killed your father (and who supported them) to justice.
Jeffrey Schuster
Iraqi Bloggers Central
*
My pleasure.
Moqtada was given a 'get out of jail free' card three times. The Americans, Sistani, and former PM Ja'fari all deliberately saved his bacon for very different reasons.
Moqtada cannot hide in Iran forever, likewise the Iraqi government (and governments to come) cannot dance around this case forever. Soon someone has got to stand up and say "what the **** is going on?". Maybe my fathers killers think that a few years will be enough to wash away the blood but Karma has a funny way of getting to you.
"Karma has a funny way of getting to you."
True.
How popular is Muqtada? How will he do in the 9 southern provinces, Baghdad and Diyala this October?
Many speculate he could get as much as 40% of the vote in some provinces.
Why have so many Iraqis forgiven Muqtada for murdering your Khoui?
Some anti-war people close to me keep repeating how Muqtada murdered Khoei and how such an immoral man has received votes and influence in Iraq’s “democracy.” It is a great point without a good answer. No single even has more delegitimized Iraq’s post Saddam order and democracy more than Khoei’s murder and how the murderers for it have not been prosecuted.
This is when post Saddam Iraq began to go badly wrong.
Hayder, thanks for the interview. It was quite informative. If you don’t mind another question, was Chalabi complicit in the death of Khoui? Why has Chalabi continued to remain Muqtada’s closest and most reliable friend and ally more than 5 years after the invasion? Before the invasion, Chalabi was close friends with Muqtada and the Sadrists more generally as part of the Iraqi resistance. {The people cheering the fall of Saddam’s statue on April 9, 2003, were Muqtada’s boys . . . sent at Chalabi’s request.} The friendship between Chalabi and Muqtada has proved one of the most durable and close in the entire post Saddam period.
Anand sorry for the late reply. Yeah I think its possible for Sadr to get 30-40% of the vote come October, he is extremely popular with the lower-class Shia and uneducated Iraqi's who live in slums and regard Sadr as a hero because of the services he provides and the security his militia provice.
As for Chalabi, I met him in London a few years ago and he told me "When I get back to Iraq I will be the first to put a plastic bag over Moqtada's head", less than 72 hours later he was sipping tea with Moqtada in his Najaf office.
He is a snake, largely responsible for duping the Americans into thinking Iraq had WMD's intact he decided it was time to shed his US skin and get close to Sadr, in the hopes of gaining more support, he however did not win a single seat for himself in the Iraqi parliament.
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