In Kut, Postwar Optimism Gave Way to Disillusionment With U.S.

Many here aren’t sure who controls this southern city.

Ukrainian troops with the U.S.-led coalition have abandoned their base and fled to a more fortified one. The commander of the Iraqi police says he reports to the occupation authority. Traffic police say they work for the radical anti-American cleric Muqtader Sadr.

Government buildings are locked. Schools are closed. The streets are empty. And from its offices on the Tigris River, Sadr’s volunteer militia proclaims that it runs the town.

“We want liberty for our people, we want peace for our people, we don’t want to hurt anyone,” said Sheik Mohammed Alag, the commander of Sadr’s forces in Kut, as dozens of black-clad men with Kalashnikov rifles and daggers milled around his office.

Gunfire and mortar rounds sounded in the distance as militia members fired at the heavily fortified base outside the city to which the Ukrainian forces had withdrawn. The top U.S. military commander in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, vowed to retake Kut “imminently.” Rumors of an American invasion were everywhere.

The entire situation terrifies many residents of the city southeast of Baghdad. “We are on our way to disaster,” said Haider Hassan, whose food market was empty Thursday.

Like many Shiite Muslim cities once repressed by Saddam Hussein, Kut was once friendly to the occupation forces. But chronic unemployment here has led to widespread disenchantment with the new Iraq and fueled the ranks of Sadr’s Al Mahdi army.

“Most of these youths are unemployed, they are teenagers,” said a local tribal leader, Sheik Nimar Ali Mnahi. “They will join anything.”

Clashes broke out Monday between members of the militia and some of the 1,600 Ukrainian troops stationed here. Street battles continued through Wednesday, and one Ukrainian soldier was killed, along with an American contractor. Police said numerous Iraqis were injured. The authorities could not say how many had died.

Mnahi said that he and other tribal leaders had tried to mediate between Sadr’s militia and the coalition but that Sadr refused to negotiate.

The Ukrainian Defense Ministry released a statement saying its troops had moved to the more fortified base because they were in danger and were not in Iraq for combat. Militia members planted their flag at the abandoned site.

Uniformed members of the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps stood guard outside the empty base Thursday and insisted that they controlled it. Police said the Ukrainians’ military equipment had been secured.

Sadr’s picture was displayed at the ICDC checkpoint at the entrance to Kut, and even some police officers who said they disliked the fiery young cleric were hanging his picture in their car windows to ward off trouble.

Some police were thrilled with the city’s new rulers. “We don’t want the occupation,” said traffic officer Mohsin Ghirbal. “Who is in the Mahdi army? They are all our relatives, they are brothers. They are not strangers.”

The local police commander, Abdulhahim Amir, said he answered to the coalition-appointed Iraqi interior minister -- who was resigning in Baghdad as the commander spoke. Amir said that his officers were on their regular beats and that they had had “no problem” with Sadr’s forces.

There was no trace of Sadr supporters inside the central police station. Outside, nervous officers whispered about the expected coalition counterattack.

Impending battle was on the minds of the few people who ventured onto the streets of the city, a cluster of weary brick and concrete structures interlaced with watermelon and cucumber farms and bisected by the Tigris.

“I’m not with Mahdi or the Americans,” said Hasan Ali, a 24-year-old falafel shop owner. “Most people here are like that.”

Before the fall of Hussein, most young men in Kut brought home money by performing their mandatory service in the Iraqi army. But the Americans abolished the army in May and have only now begun to reconstruct it. Kut has legions of idle young men with frustrated ambitions.

Though the south had seen few attacks on coalition forces before the Sadr-backed uprising this week, Kut and cities such as Amarah, Basra and Nasiriya have experienced sometimes violent protests over unemployment. People in Kut say the occupation has failed to rectify the problem.

“If we are going to stay like this without any jobs, then all of us will attack the Americans,” warned Hamid Hasan, 22, a former Iraqi soldier who is now unemployed. “If there are jobs, everyone will stay busy and no one will go out and cause trouble.”

Most days, Hassan, the food store owner, gets a few customers, many of whom have to buy on credit just to get enough flour or beans to feed their families. This past week, he has had virtually no business.

Hassan said he disapproved of the conflict with Sadr’s militia but supported some of the cleric’s demands. Sadr has called on Americans to reopen a newspaper sympathetic to him that they shut down two weeks ago.

“After the toppling of Saddam we breathed the breath of freedom,” Hassan said. “So why are they closing the newspaper? In the United States there are several newspapers that attack George Bush. Why do they not let us do so?”

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Raheem Salman of The Times’ Baghdad Bureau contributed to this report.

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In stories after April 9, 2004, Shiite cleric Muqtader Sadr is correctly referred to as Muqtada Sadr.

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