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Iraq Tells U.S. to Quit Checkpoints
U.S. troops coil barbed wire used as a cordon around Baghdad's Karrada neighborhood, where an American soldier was abducted Oct. 23.
(By Hadi Mizban -- Associated Press)
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Kadhumi said he evaded them by pretending he was on an errand, only to find his building already shut down by the Mahdi Army once he reached work.
"Who is the Mahdi Army to decide the future of my daughter and stop the movement of life in the country? Does the government have no power?" demanded Duniya Hilmi, 34, a city government worker whose daughter had been sent home from school by the Mahdi Army on Tuesday.
Before the strike, the U.S. blockade of Sadr City already had become a "hot issue" in daily meetings between U.S. and Iraqi officials, said Hadi al-Amiri, a member of Iraq's governing Shiite alliance. Amiri said he believed it was decided at Monday's meeting between U.S. and Iraqi officials that the operation must end.
"We became convinced that going further with this blockade would increase tensions," he said.
However, Maliki's order appeared to take at least some American officials by surprise.
Shortly after it was issued, a U.S. military spokesman, Lt. Col. Christopher C. Garver, said that U.S. commanders "are now determining how coalition forces can best address the prime minister's concerns about checkpoint operations in regards to the search for our missing soldier." He would not elaborate.
In Sadr City, U.S. military police and Iraqi soldiers gave way to Iraqi police on the bridges across the canal that separates the neighborhood from central Baghdad. In minutes, militiamen in civilian clothes, with hidden guns lumping up their shirts at their waistbands, appeared and began screening traffic within the district.
Sadr City residents celebrated both the flexing of the Shiite government's clout and what they saw as a concession by the United States.
Children cheered. Drivers honked horns as they bounced into Sadr City on newly cleared streets. Pickup trucks full of young men sped down the district's main roads. The men waved red and green banners of Sadr's movement.
"We are very happy they lifted the barriers by the orders of Maliki the prime minister," said Ali Saedi, selling falafel at a storefront as crowds celebrated into the night.
"It's a good stand, to give orders to the Americans and the Iraqi army," Saedi said.
Withington said the lifting of the blockade "does not stop our search for the soldier. We're dead serious about getting him back, and that won't stop because of these checkpoints." He said at least seven U.S. troops had been injured in the search for the missing American.
