Iraq to halt raids on Shiite Muslim gangs

Prime Minister Nouri Maliki today declared a halt to raids on armed Shiite Muslim gangs in Baghdad and southern Iraq, just a day after he announced his intentions to carry out operations in districts of the capital that are under de facto control of Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr’s Mahdi Army militia.

The new statement, released by Maliki’s office, left unanswered whether the prime minister was retreating or taking a break from his pledge to take on lawless elements often associated by U.S. and Iraqi officials with Sadr’s militia.

The announcement called for security forces to arrest anyone carrying a weapon on the streets.

Maliki’s security forces battled last week with the Mahdi Army in the southern port of Basra, in an operation the prime minister said was meant to impose law and order on Iraq’s second-largest city. The Sadr movement described the campaign as an effort by its political enemies to crush his grassroots movement ahead of provincial elections in October.

The fighting spread quickly to Baghdad before Sadr called on his followers to put down their arms Sunday. At least 1,000 Iraqi soldiers deserted during the clashes, a senior U.S. military official said today, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the topic. More than half the police force in Baghdad’s Sadr City and parts of Basra also abandoned their posts, a Western security official told The Times earlier in the week.

As both sides claimed victory, Maliki told reporters Thursday that he intended to take the fight to Baghdad’s Mahdi Army strongholds of Sadr City and Shula.

The senior U.S. military officer expressed relief that Maliki had taken a pause today after making his previous bellicose comments.

“Iraqis need to figure out a way to deal with it [the militia problem], which means going in more slowly,” he said.

Both American and Iraqi officials have conceded the government was taken aback by the response of the Mahdi Army when they launched the offensive in Basra.

Echoing comments by other Western officials, the U.S. military official expressed frustration over Maliki’s apparently contradictory statements. “You can believe what he’s saying now. You just don’t know how long it’ll last,” he said, faulting the prime minister’s advisors.

Before this recent operation, Maliki had expressed anger at U.S. commanders over military raids in Sadr City and other Shiite areas in the capital, a Western advisor to the Iraqi government told The Times in January.

Clerics with Sadr’s movement lashed out at Maliki during prayer sermons today. In Sadr City, demonstrators held up posters depicting the prime minister as a parrot repeating the words of Sheik Abdelaziz Hakim, the leader of the largest Shiite party in the Iraqi government. In Basra, protesters chanted that Hakim had “fooled Nouri.”

The anger alluded to what Sadr’s followers say is a double standard on the part of the Iraqi government and the Americans regarding the Badr Organization, the armed wing of Hakim’s Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council party. The Badr Organization, which has members in the upper echelons of the Iraqi security forces, has been accused of links to endemic corruption and smuggling in Basra.

In the shrine city of Kufa, cleric and Sadr ally Sheik Abdul-Hadi Mohamedawi cursed Maliki and President Bush.

“Bush told Maliki that this is a test. We on our part tell Maliki that he has two tests, either you please God or you please Bush,” Mohamedawi told worshipers. “They say that we are outlaws. Are the Sadrists the only ones who are outlaws?

“You are the outlaws,” he said of his movement’s opponents. “God shall strike you for the Sadrists.”

Despite Maliki’s statement, fighting erupted just outside of Basra between the Mahdi Army and Iraqi security forces. An airstrike was called in, killing three people, an eyewitness said. A British military spokesman confirmed the airstrike, which he said came in response to gunfire against Iraqi soldiers.

In other developments, a suicide bomber blew himself up at the funeral of an Iraqi policeman in the town of Saadiya in Diyala province, killing 20 people and wounding 30 others, police said.

ned.parker@latimes.com

Times staff writers Saif Hameed, Said Rifai and Tina Susman contributed to this report.