April 11, 2007

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Nearly two months into a Baghdad security plan intended to calm the Iraqi capital by protecting residents from sectarian violence, Shiite Muslim militia members are still driving Sunni Muslims from religiously mixed neighborhoods.

Iraqi soldiers, usually ethnic Kurds, reportedly have intervened in some instances to stop the militia campaign. But interviews with Sunni residents found that most of the efforts go unchallenged in a city where it's increasingly rare for Shiites or Sunnis to remain in neighborhoods that the other sect dominates.

Residents displaced in the past four months describe a new effort that haunts them after they flee. It begins with intimidating phone calls, then escalates into bombings or the dismantling of Sunni homes.

The residents said the perpetrators were members of the Mahdi Army militia, which is loyal to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. Al-Sadr reportedly has told his followers to lie low and not challenge U.S. troops as they fan out across the capital in an effort to restore order.

But that show of cooperation hasn't prevented the militia from trying to cement its grip on some formerly mixed-sect neighborhoods, residents report.

Lt. Col Chris Garver, a U.S. military spokesman, didn't dispute that Mahdi Army members are still working to clear neighborhoods of Sunni residents. He said the security plan was in its early stages and that with three of five additional U.S. brigades now in Baghdad, there still weren't enough troops to halt illegal militia activities in every neighborhood.

"These are exactly the type of activities that we will clear, and free the neighborhoods from the influence of illegal armed groups, insurgents, militias or other criminals," Garver said. "In order for the plan to work, Iraqi residents must report these activities."

Residents described a multifaceted program that begins with efforts to force a family to leave and continues even after the house is abandoned. Then, residents reported, Mahdi Army members work to persuade the homeowner to sell the abandoned house at below-market rates and to prevent the owner from installing a tenant.

Raed Hamid, a Sunni, said he became a target two weeks ago when he found a video CD at his front door that showed Mahdi Army battles and assassinations. He quickly packed up his family in Risala, in southwest Baghdad, and fled to Abu Ghraib, a Sunni area west of Baghdad.

"We left because it became bigger than us," Hamid said.

Days later, he received a phone call from a Sadrist, he said. The man asked to buy his house. Hamid refused. A week later, a homemade bomb blew off the house's front door and shattered all the windows. A neighbor lost his leg in the blast, he said, and Hamid stopped returning to his old neighborhood to collect his food rations.

"Thank God we could move most of our stuff out of the house," he said.

Another former Risala resident, Mohammed Raed, said he fled his neighborhood after the Mahdi Army shot his father in December. He refused calls that began a month ago demanding that he sell, and instead rented his house to a Shiite tenant in an arrangement that's become increasingly common. Then the Mahdi Army visited his tenant and threatened him if he continued to pay rent to Raed.

Waleed Hassan, a Sunni who left his home in the Bayaa area of west Baghdad in February after a letter warned him to "Leave or die," recounted the same sequence of events. He rented the house to a Shiite family.

A month ago he started getting calls from men identifying themselves as Mahdi Army leaders, asking him to sell his house. "You know you can't return," he recalled one caller saying. Hassan refused.

At the beginning of April his tenant called. The Mahdi Army had gone to houses owned by Sunnis and told the tenants they no longer could pay rent to the owners. Instead, the rent had to be paid to the Sadr office.

Last week, his cousin was murdered when he returned to Bayaa to visit a Shiite friend. "I'm not going to take any rent," Hassan said.

The plan to keep Sunnis out of formerly mixed neighborhoods is evident as well in the Hurriyah section of northern Baghdad, which the Mahdi Army now dominates. Photos of dead Mahdi Army members hang throughout the streets, and red X's mark businesses and homes where Sunni families were pushed out.

One Kurdish member of Iraq's army, interviewed Wednesday, said his unit was ordered to intervene 10 days ago when Mahdi Army members began dismantling homes near a Sunni mosque that had been destroyed during what residents said was a three-month militia push late last year to drive Sunnis from the area.

A prominent member of the Mahdi Army, who asked not to be identified because he was admitting illegal activities, acknowledged that the militia was behind a campaign to drive what he termed "bad" Sunnis from Hurriyah. He was unapologetic, saying the militia acts on orders to kill or kick out Sunnis who are connected to insurgent groups that have killed thousands of Shiites. Asking Shiites not to pay rent to Sunnis was an educational campaign, he said.

"This is wrong, and that amount of money may be used by Sunni terrorists for killing Shiites," he said. "We must inform them."

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© 2007, McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
McClatchy Newspapers special correspondent Hussein Kadhim contributed to this report.