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Distrust Breaks the Bonds Of a Baghdad Neighborhood
Day Five
A herder tends his flock in the barricaded streets of Tobji, a neighborhood where Sunnis and Shiites long coexisted. Shiite militiamen have targeted Sunnis at checkpoints.
(The Washington Post)
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Fierce gun battles between the Mahdi Army and the Egheidat erupted again. Once more, U.S. and Iraqi troops entered the neighborhood, and the fighting subsided.
[an error occurred while processing this directive]The tribal reconciliation meeting was held at the neighborhood municipal council office under the protection of the Iraqi army, which cordoned off the office with its tan camouflage Humvees and soldiers.
With U.S. soldiers by his side, Brig. Gen. Abdul Jaleel Kahlaiaf, commander of the Iraqi 6th Division's 1st Brigade, met with the parties. Such neighborhood reconciliation meetings, he said in an interview later, are crucial in helping to defuse Baghdad's sectarian violence. He also denied that his mostly Shiite forces were sympathetic to the Mahdi Army.
The Mahdi Army demanded that the Egheidat hand over the men who wounded their two militiamen, as well as their weapons, and pay a fasil of 4 million dinars, or $2,700, to each of the families of the wounded.
The matter of the four dead Mahdi Army militiamen was not discussed, since the identities of their killers were unknown, said Fadil Khalifa Jassam, a Sunni imam who served as one of the mediators. "There will be another tribal gathering for the four killed," he said. At the end of the meeting, the Egheidat were given time to consider the Mahdi Army's demands, and an atwa , or truce, was declared for three days.
Day Six
On the first day of the truce, Egheidi, the Sunni tribal leader, was worried. "The Mahdi Army is now going around the neighborhood saying they are going to eliminate us," he said. "We are not going to work. We're afraid we'll get captured at the checkpoints. At the market, they are not selling to Egheidat anymore. They say, 'You are terrorists.' How can we be terrorists when we stay inside our homes?"
Then he added, "How can you reconcile when you are sending people into our neighborhood to shoot us?"
The conversation turned to the U.S. troops. A year ago, Egheidi refused to accept the U.S. occupation. Now, after watching the violence in Tobji unfold, he said he has concluded that Shiite extremists are the greater enemy.
"When the Americans are in my neighborhood, I can put my head in my pillow and sleep," said Egheidi. "If they stay, there will be security. If they leave, there will not only be civil war. There will be a house-to-house war."
Day Seven
On the second day of the truce, Abu Mohammed, the Sadr militiaman, was angry. "Our wounds are still fresh," he said as he puffed on a cigarette. Coloring his language was a sense of entitlement and a belief that the U.S. occupation had ruptured the cohesiveness of the sects in his community.
"Before the entrance of the Americans, we lived like brothers," Abu Mohammed said. "They married us. We married them. Saddam's regime was unjust but he didn't create divisions. We didn't have civil war. . . . The American intention is to dismember Islam."
His thoughts soon turned back to Tobji, and his nephew Omar. He wanted the Egheidat to leave. "We will not take their houses by force," he said. "They will sell them and buy in other areas. The important thing is they get out of my neighborhood."
