Saddam is in court and the interim government is in place, but Iraq is still gripped by sectarian savagery, writes Lara Marlowe in Baghdad
Ali Abdel Amir keeps photographs of the mutilated bodies in an envelope on the livingroom shelf. They show five men in an advanced state of decomposition, shot dead after torture last month in Falluja. The sixth body has not been found.
"We want the world to know that they are not resistance; they are terrorists," Amir says of the Sunni Muslims who committed the atrocity. "They are attacking the Shia because of their religion." The six truck drivers, all from the al-Rubaie tribe, drove supplies from Baghdad to an Iraqi army base in Falluja on June 5th. But there were US troops guarding the base, and when the Shia drivers left they were attacked by gunmen. Four other drivers retreated into the base and survived.
Images of Saddam Hussein's first court hearing were about to be shown on television, and Amir linked the murder of his cousins to the fallen dictator. "Saddam is one of these criminals. These are the sons of Saddam," he said. "Bush freed us from Saddam, but he didn't finish the job."
Saddam once wrote that there were three things God should never have created: Jews, Shia Muslims and flies. For the 35 years he was in power, Iraq's Shia majority were impoverished and oppressed. Hundreds of Shia clergy were murdered and countless Shia were imprisoned and executed. The mass graves will be evidence in Saddam's trial next year.
In the meantime, Iraq has not seen the last of savagery. One of the truck drivers, Hamed Mattar, was shot in the mouth and scalped. All the corpses were blindfolded, had their hands and feet bound and fingernails torn out. Burns from a toaster-like heating device left black stripes down one driver's back. Several appear to have been dragged behind cars.
Everyone I met in Sadr City knew of the killings. It has not sparked the civil war that the Americans keep predicting, but fear and distrust between the two currents of Islam have rarely run deeper. Residents of Sadr City believe "terrorists" from Falluja come to their neighbourhoods to kill at night. Paranoia? In post-invasion Iraq, anything is possible.
In April, when the siege of Falluja coincided with battles in the southern Shia cities of Najaf, Kut and Kerbala, Shia and Sunni were united. Sunnis in Falluja put up photographs of the Shia Sheikh Moqtada al-Sadr, the young leader of the Mehdi army militia whom the Americans vowed to capture. The Shia mosques of Sadr City collected supplies for their Sunni "brothers" in Falluja.
That has changed now. "I hate the people who did this," says Amar Miri, the hospital employee who transferred the truck drivers' bodies to the morgue at Sadr General Hospital. He knew Hamed Mattar. "His brains were spilling out," Miri recalls with revulsion. "There was nothing between his eyes and the top of his head. Another driver had a tattoo about Imam Ali (the founder of Shia Islam) on his forearm. They cut it out with a knife . . . During the Falluja crisis, they came and asked us for help. After what I saw, I would never help them again. I would fight them."
Ali Abdel Amir's story is one of deception, greed and sectarian hatred. It also confirms that the Sunni "resistance" is run from the mosques, and the presence of foreign fighters in Falluja.
On the night of June 5th, a driver came to tell Amir his cousins were missing. The following morning, and every day for more than a week, two dozen men from the al-Rubaie tribe - several from each of the six drivers' families - travelled the dangerous road to Falluja.
The police chief told them: "Your sons are not with us. They are with the mujaheddin (holy warriors)." Amir is convinced the Falluja police are collaborating with the Sunni gunmen. "He didn't call them a gang or terrorists," Amir says. "He said 'mujaheddin'." At the Al-Hadra Mohamediya mosque, Sheikh Daafar al-Dulaimi told them: "Your sons are with me. We have to finish our investigation and we will release them."
Amir and his relatives had a rare look at Falluja, which the Sunni "resistance" calls Iraq's only "liberated" city. "The city is controlled by gunmen," he says. "They are foreign. We heard people talking about Yemeni and Syrian troops."
Amir's search led him to Sheikh Abdallah Jenabi, the head of the "Majlis al-Shura al-Mujaheddin" which negotiated a ceasefire with US forces. A few days earlier, a Sunni sheikh in Baghdad had warned me not to go to Falluja. "The mujaheddin issued a decree," he said. "They do not want any foreign journalists in Falluja." At Friday prayers, Jenabi mocked the US occupation and the new interim government, saying: "We will not be ruled by monkeys". Making a pun on the name of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian extremist whom the Americans say is hiding in Falluja, Jenabi said, "We have no relations with Zarqawi [whose name means the colour blue] or yellow or green . . . There is no Zarqawi in Falluja, because Falluja people don't need to be taught how to fight."
It was not easy to obtain an appointment with Jenabi. "He is the leader of the city, and he has 50 gunmen around him," Amir recounted. When the al-Rubaie men met the extremist sheikh, he made the chilling statement: "Your sons are spies." Jenabi nonetheless promised to release the six drivers the following day. The promise was not kept.
A middleman demanded $500 for news of the truck drivers. Two were in a morgue in Ramadi he said; the other four were still alive. They could have them back for $2,000.
Tears pour down Amir's face as he recounts the next step in his quest for his dead cousins. There were some 30 bodies in the Ramadi morgue, stored in a trailer that was no longer refrigerated.
"What we saw inside you cannot imagine; it was so strange and horrible." The family were leaving with the two bodies they recognised when a morgue attendant said, "No, you have to take all five. Five were brought here, all tied with the same rope." The bodies in the morgue had been delivered by the Falluja police, who had said nothing to the Shia families. Now the gunmen of Falluja have demanded money for the six trucks they are holding. "We will not deal with them, only with the government," says Amir. "They have issued arrest warrants for Abdallah Jenabi and two other sheikhs."
What if Prime Minister Iyad Allawi's new government does nothing? "The tribe will take action to punish these people," Amir says.
A Shia cleric, Sheikh Abu Zahra Ibrahim, first told me about the six truck drivers. I met him by chance at the "University of the Two Sadrs" in al-Serail, the old Ottoman and British colonial neighbourhood on the east bank of the Tigris River in central Baghdad. Sheikh Abu Zahra is close to Sheikh Moqtada al-Sadr, the 30-year-old renegade cleric who is the second most popular man in Iraq, after Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani. After two months of open confrontation with US occupation troops, during which more than 1,000 Iraqi Shia and dozens of Americans died, al-Sadr recently concluded a shaky ceasefire with US forces.
"I support Moqtada Sadr because I am with the poor people of Iraq," Sheikh Abu Zahra explains. "Sayyid Moqtada says what Iraqi people want to hear. They understand his language. He is very brave. People trust someone who is ready to die for what he believes in."
Sheikh Moqtada's popularity is largely based on the family name. His great-grandfather Mohamed al-Sadr led the 1920 revolt against the British. His great uncle Mohamed Bakr al-Sadr was hanged by Saddam in 1980. Moqtada's father and two brothers were gunned down by Saddam's henchmen in 1999.
In Sadr City, and Shia neighbourhoods such as al-Serail, images of the Sadrs, past and present, are omnipresent. No one has posted a single picture of the new president, Ghazi Yawar, or Prime Minister Allawi.
Ahmad Hashem, who runs a poster shop in the old souk, says he sells hundreds of Moqtada posters every day, especially since al-Sadr challenged the US in April. "People love Moqtada because he'sa man of revolution and he defends weak people against the Americans," Hashem says. "We don't hate them, but they have not kept their promises, like freedom. Two weeks ago, the Americans came and took all the pictures of Sayyid Moqtada and burned them. Luckily my shop was closed." A US military source confirmed there are standing orders to destroy photographs of Moqtada al-Sadr. "Ten or 20 soldiers come with guns just to take one poster off a wall!" Sheikh Abu Zahra says, laughing. "How strong they are! And they talk about democracy!"
Ra'id Juhi, the same young judge who on Thursday charged Saddam Hussein, issued an arrest warrant for Moqtada al-Sadr last August, in connection with the fatal stabbing of Majid al-Khoie, a Shia sheikh who was close to the US and Britain. But after vowing to take al-Sadr "dead or alive", the US seems to have thought better of it.
"They cannot arrest him," says Sheikh Abu Zahra. "He is a real red line for the Americans and the new government. They don't like his movement because it is very strong and they are jealous. They want to control it or destroy it, but they cannot."
Sadr City is al-Sadr's real power base. Most of the militiamen who fought US troops in Najaf this spring were bused down from the Baghdad slum. In April and May, Sadr City was a battlefield. Today, it has reverted to the hot, dusty pit of misery it was before the revolt. Though there is still shooting most nights, two weeks have passed since a US Apache helicopter fired rockets into Sadr City.
The reason for the transformation is simple: the US has pulled out of Sadr City. The tanks and armoured vehicles are gone, even if the odd patrol is still shot at. Gunmen from Mehdi's army mount their own patrols at night, wearing black balaclavas.
Sadr's movement arrests thieves, cleans streets and provides other basic services neglected by US forces and the government. Sadr's followers compare themselves to the Lebanese Hizballah, who after earning a reputation for kidnapping and suicide bombings, transmogrified into a political movement with deputies in the Lebanese parliament.
Saleh Mansour's family live in the Hay Amana district of Sadr City. They are a peaceful family, loyal to Ayatollah Sistani and frightened by Sheikh Moqtada's radical discourse. Lakes of open sewage stagnate at the end of their street. The rusted shells of their two cars, rocketed by an Apache in April, still sit outside the front gate. Three weeks ago, their son Jaafar (28) went out to shut the gate at night and was killed by a stray bullet.
Like most residents of Sadr City, the Mansours come from the south, from Nassiriya. Their life has always been hard. Their eldest son Sa'ad, a border guard, was killed in a shoot-out with smugglers 10 years ago. Now they have lost Jaafar.
Fifteen people live in their four-room house, with electricity for only eight out of every 24 hours. Saddam Hussein was appearing in court as we talked, but the Mansours didn't seem interested. "Saddam is finished, over," said Hassan Saleh Mansour. "We're not interested in him; we're interested in security. We want jobs. Saddam will die anyway."
The poor people of Sadr City know that the rule of the Sunnis, as personified by Saddam, is gone forever. But the Sunnis refuse to accept this, and they're determined to fight the US. The Shia distrust the Americans, but insist they won't fight unless they're forced to.
Without the goodwill of the Shia, Iraq's Made in USA political process is doomed.
"Two thirds of Baghdad's population live in Sadr City," says Dr Qasim al-Nuwesri, the director of Sadr General Hospital. "If Sadr City is peaceful, then all Iraq will be peaceful." Falluja, with its 200,000 people, is a sideshow compared to Sadr City with its population of almost 3 million.
"Iraq cannot have a revolution without the Shia," says Sheikh Abu Zahra. The Shia are estimated to comprise 60 to 70 per cent of the population. "Those were Saddam's figures; do you believe him?" the Sheikh continues, claiming they are closer to 90 per cent. "The population and culture of Iraq are Shia. If the Sunnis want a rebellion, they must persuade the Shia. Otherwise they can fight away in their Sunni Triangle for the next 100 years."