Muslim Rivals Unite In Baghdad Uprising

"We lost faith in the Americans," said Asaam Al Jarah, principal of a Kadhimiya high school. "Everybody was waiting for the transition, waiting and waiting. Then we saw the law was rubbish.

"Now everything is different."

The neighborhood, though Shiite, is not normally regarded as Sadr turf. Most Kadhimiya residents, like most of Iraq's majority Shiite population, look to Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani for instruction. But Abu Ali Hashem, a Sistani follower and an official of a hallowed Shiite shrine, estimated that half of the neighborhood's Sistani followers were joining in Sadr's protest in the absence of any instruction otherwise from their own leader.

That drift toward the young cleric appeared to challenge another critical calculation of U.S. commanders and officials. Occupation overseers have counted on the well-known tension between the revered Sistani and the upstart Sadr as a check on Sadr's influence. But the rivalry apparently is being overtaken by a more immediate conflict -- the scores of clashes since Sunday pitting occupation forces in Baghdad and several southern cities against militiamen who claim to be fighting in the name of a common faith.

"We send you this letter from your brothers in al Anbar governate and the city of Fallujah, to say that we are with you under the banner of 'God is Greatest' and the mantle of Islam." So began a letter read over loudspeakers Monday outside Sadr's headquarters in the Shiite slum named for his late father and uncle, clerics who held the same rank as Sistani when they were killed, reputedly by Saddam Hussein's forces.

The letter was read on the morning that U.S. Marines began an offensive in Fallujah, a volatile seat of Sunni resistance just west of Baghdad. The 1st Marine Expeditionary Force reported steady military progress, but also that insurgents who used to hit and run were, for the first time, standing and fighting.

"We are all behind Sayyid Moqtada Sadr, may God give him victory . . . on the subject of liberation," the letter read. Several hundred members of Sadr's irregular militia, the Mahdi Army, cheered and waved pistols and swords at the words.

"We are cooperating with our brothers the Shia," said Abu Ahmed, 52, standing on the main street of Adhamiya, where every storefront was closed behind steel shutters at 5 p.m. Tuesday. Forty-five minutes earlier, a red BMW had scooted through the neighborhood warning people to clear the streets. U.S. tanks had been spotted, and the community was spreading the word that a fight was coming.

"Move away! Move away!" a boy called out from near the remains of a taxi crushed by a tank in the previous day's fighting, which left four Iraqis dead. "The mujaheddin are behind me. They're attacking!"

The street emptied in moments, but the column of tanks did not arrive.

"You have not seen anything yet," said Akram, the shopkeeper. "You will see a new style of resistance in the city. Well-organized. Advanced. They will be surprised. They won't know what to do."

He smiled, but refused to say more, except that the plan would involve children as young as 8 and men as old as 80, drawn from across the district.

"When we all sit together, the groups of this city, it's something new. You'll be surprised. Something really very new. We have not started it yet.

"If I talk about it, it won't be a surprise," the shopkeeper added. "And you won't see the beauty of it."

The men on the shuttered main street had the same message.

"There's a new style of resistance," said an elderly man who, like the baker, gave his name as Abu Hassan.

The lines in Hassan's face deepened as he spoke bitterly of a year under occupation in a neighborhood long regarded by U.S. forces as hostile. The raids on private homes were the worst, Hassan said. He repeated familiar stories of American soldiers taking money and leaving only a receipt that proved impossible to redeem. He told of an old woman left behind when everyone else in her home was first arrested, then declared innocent after four months in detention.

"So we will keep killing them!" he snapped, his eyes flashing. "We found our way, just now. We gather together now."