BAGHDAD — Followers of hard-line cleric Muqtada al-Sadr raised the stakes Sunday in their showdown with Iraq’s government, refusing to disband their militia. The U.S. military said 40 Shiite militants were killed in fierce fighting in southern Iraq.
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki assured visiting Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that he will not back down in his confrontation with Shiite militias, even as mortar shells fired from Shiite areas struck the U.S.-protected Green Zone.
In a sign of that resolve, Iraqi soldiers took control Sunday of the last stronghold of al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army militia in the southern city of Basra, where an Iraqi offensive last month triggered the current Shiite fighting.
Al-Maliki, a Shiite, has demanded that al-Sadr disband his Mahdi Army, the country’s biggest Shiite militia, or his followers will not be allowed to run in fall provincial elections.
Al-Sadr’s followers, who control 30 of 275 parliament seats, rejected that demand Sunday and called for an end to U.S.-Iraqi military operations in Sadr City, the Baghdad stronghold of the Mahdi Army, and Shula, another Shiite district of the capital.
“All must know that disbanding the Mahdi Army means the end of al-Maliki’s government,” Sadrist lawmaker Fawzi Akram told reporters.
He called the government campaign against the Mahdi Army a “filthy military and media campaign” planned and supported by the Americans. He urged the United Nations, nongovernmental organizations and human-rights groups to intervene.
“Random airstrikes, killings and bloodletting will not help but rather will increase hatred and enmity,” he said, adding that if the government campaign against the Mahdi Army continues, “all options are open for us.”
That could include the formal scrapping of a unilateral truce al-Sadr called last August, a move U.S. officials credit with helping drastically reduce violence over the past year.
