Iraqi Shiite Cleric Calls America The ‘Archenemy’

Remember, his followers were the ones who were supposed to ‘welcome us with flowers’.Iraqi Shiite Cleric Calls America The ‘Archenemy’By Cliff Montgomery – Apr. 11th, 2007The powerful Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr told his militiamen on Sunday to redouble their attacks on U.S. forces and proclaimed that Iraq’s army and police should join him in defeating “your archenemy.” The U.S. military announced the deaths of 10 American soldiers over the weekend, including six killed on Sunday alone.Security remained so tight in Baghdad on the eve of the fourth anniversary of the U.S. capture of Iraq’s capital that the country’s military declared a 24-hour ban on all vehicles in the city from 5 a.m. Monday. The government rushed to reinstate Monday as a holiday–days after it had decreed that April 9th no longer would be a day off.Among the 10 American deaths announced Sunday were three U.S. soldiers killed by a roadside bomb while on patrol south of Baghdad; one killed in an attack south of the city; and two who died of combat wounds they received north of the capital, in Salahuddin and Diyala provinces. On Saturday, the military said, four American soldiers were killed by an explosion near their vehicle in Diyala.At least 3,280 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of George W. Bush’s “fruitless nation-building” in Iraq, according to an Associated Press (AP) count. The numbers include seven military civilians.Iraq violence remained vicious as the debate in America deepens over this war, four years after Marines and the Army’s 3rd Infantry Division flew into Baghdad 20 days into the American invasion. We’ve gone from false claims over weapons stores, to a denial of an escalating civil war, to this moment: Muslim cleric Al-Sadr urging his followers not to attack fellow Iraqis, but to turn all their efforts on American forces.”You, the Iraqi army and police forces, don’t walk alongside the occupiers, because they are your archenemy,” said the al-Sadr statement.”God has ordered you to be patient in front of your enemy, and unify your efforts against them–not against the sons of Iraq,” al-Sadr added.The cleric apparently issued the statement in response to three days of clashes between his Mahdi Army militiamen and U.S.-backed Iraqi troops in Diwaniyah, south of Baghdad. U.S. officials have said al-Sadr left Iraq for neighboring Iran after the commencement of a U.S. and Iraqi security crackdown nearly two months ago. His followers though say he is still in Iraq.Al-Sadr’s statement did not explicitly call for armed struggle against the Americans; but it came pretty close, representing his most direct condemnation of the American-led occupation since he went underground.As is often the case in this region of the world, al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army had been lying rather low during the Baghdad security crackdown, just waiting for either the current U.S.-led drive to wind down or to discover the weaknesses in the new American battle plan. In this part of the world, time means nothing.But intense fighting broke out in Diwaniya on Friday between al-Sadr’s militiamen and American-led forces. In fact, the cleric’s statement on Sunday indicated he might be ready to resume steering his militia, the Mahdi Army, toward a more open confrontation with American forces.The statement also came as his followers poured out of Baghdad and other cities to join a mass protest in southern Iraq organized by al-Sadr’s aides to denounce the American occupation on Monday, the fourth anniversary of the fall of Iraq’s capitol. The roads leading to Najaf–the holy city which also serves as al-Sadr’s headquarters–were clogged with vehicles carrying protesters.Tens of thousands of Shiites–a virtual sea of women in black abayas and men sporting Iraqi flags–took part in the march to demand that U.S. forces leave their country. Some ripped apart American flags and trampled on a Stars and Stripes rug.The crowds marched about three miles between the holy cities of Kufa and Najaf in recognition of the fourth anniversary of the fall of Baghdad. In the capital, the anniversary was met with silent, empty streets under a hastily imposed 24-hour driving ban.”Radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr ordered up the march as a show of strength not only to Washington but to Iraq’s establishment Shiite ayatollahs as well,” according to the AP.Al-Sadr, who disappointed followers who’d hoped he might re-appear after months of seclusion, has put forth his anti-American theme in a series of written statements, with Sunday’s release and Monday’s huge anti-American rally as perhaps the most directly confrontational acts so far.The Muslim cleric owes much of his great influence to the high esteem in which Shiites hold his father, Ayatollah Mohammed Sadiq al-Sadr, who was assassinated in 1999 by possible agents of Saddam Hussein.