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04/04/2004 Archived Entry: "Meltdown looming."

Meltdown looming.

Judging by the run-down of events in the past two days that Juan Cole reports, the Coalition of The Willing may be about to find out just how badly outnumbered they are.

The always tense relationship between the Sadrist movement among Iraqi Shiites and the US and its Coalition partners has taken a dramatic turn for the worse. Perhaps a third of Iraqi Shiites are sympathetic to the radical, Khomeini-like ideology of Sadrism, and some analysts with long experience in Iraq put it at 50%. Earlier Muqtada Al-Sadr, the movement leader, had called on his forces to avoid violence against Coalition forces. As of Sunday, he has decided that the Coalition means permanently to exclude his group from power, and has decided to launch an uprising. This uprising involves taking over police stations in Kufa, Najaf, Baghdad and possibly elsehwere. The Sadrist militia now controls Kufa, according to the New York Times, and probably controls much of Sadr City or the slums of East Baghdad, as well, though it has been expelled from the police stations it had occupied there.

In Najaf, Sadrist crowds some 5000 strong protested outside the Spanish garrison. Firing began between the two sides, leading to a 3-hour gun battle that left 1 American and 1 Salvadoran soldier dead [initial reports had said 4 Salvadorans were dead] and fourteen Salvadorans wounded, 24 Iraqi civilians dead, and more than 130 persons wounded, according to AP and the Washington Post. Spanish troops also fought. (Spain's new Socialist government had pledged to withdraw Spanish troops this summer). AP reports that Sadrist militiamen took over the police station in nearby Kufa, and that police had disappeared from Kufa streets.

There were also large protests in central Baghdad, and it is reported that 3 Sadrist protesters threw themselves under American tanks, so as to become "martyrs." AP said, ' In central Baghdad's Firdaus Square, police fired warning shots during a protest by hundreds of al-Sadr supporters against al-Yacoubi's arrest. At least two protesters were injured, witnesses said. ' Meanwhile, US troops assaulted the office of Muqtada al-Sadr in Baghdad.

In Sadr City, gunfire was heard all afternoon and into the evening on Sunday, and early on, two US military jeeps were set on fire. az-Zaman reports that there was an exchange of fire between US troops in a Humvee with Army of the Mahdi militiamen in the Suq Muridi quarter of central Sadr City. The Army of the Mahdi briefly occupied at least three police stations in Sadr City, expelling the local police. The US sent in tanks, retaking the police stations, but suffered 7 US soldiers killed and 24 wounded, according to CNN at 5 pm EST.

Related news: Senators starting to say the June 30 handover date is too soon.

I'm thinking of a word, begins with 'Q'....

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