Shiite leader may end truce

Aides to Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada Sadr cast doubt Wednesday on his commitment to extending a six-month cease-fire that expires this month, saying U.S. and Iraqi forces had not necessarily earned Sadr’s continued cooperation.

The comments raised the specter of a return to sectarian violence and an upsurge in attacks on U.S. forces at an especially delicate time in the war. The United States is in the process of drawing down the additional 28,500 soldiers it deployed last year and has banked on a continuation of Sadr’s cease-fire to help keep the peace as American troops depart.

But Sadr loyalists have said their foes are taking advantage of the cease-fire to try to crush the movement politically and militarily.

“We have made more than one gesture. . . . However, we haven’t received any help from the government,” said Ghufran Saidi, a lawmaker in the Sadr bloc. “The aim is to eliminate the Sadr movement in all provinces.”

Sadr, a fierce opponent of the U.S. presence whose followers have fought bloody battles with American forces, ordered his Mahdi Army militia to cease activities Aug. 29 after intra-Shiite fighting in the holy city of Karbala.

Analysts and military officials described the cease-fire as an attempt to salvage Sadr’s reputation after the bloodshed, in which 52 people were killed and 300 injured.

Since then, U.S. military officials, who once considered his fighters their worst enemies, have begun referring to the cleric as “the honorable” Muqtada Sadr and have thanked him for using his influence to reduce the violence.

They say the truce has contributed to a drop in attacks on U.S. forces and has reduced sectarian-based killings, which used to leave Baghdad’s streets strewn with as many as 30 bodies a day. Now it is rare for police to report finding more than three bodies a day of suspected victims of sectarian death squads.

At a news conference Wednesday, a U.S. military spokesman, Navy Rear Adm. Gregory Smith, said the United States remained optimistic the truce would last beyond its scheduled expiration date Saturday.

“We’ll deal with the contingencies of the what-if when it occurs, but as of today the cease-fire remains in place and we hope and expect it will continue,” Smith said.

But the message from Sadr’s office was that his patience had worn thin.

Sadr aides cited military raids on the group’s strongholds, such as Baghdad’s Sadr City district, and they accused U.S. and Iraqi security forces of targeting loyalists in southern provinces where the movement is vying for power with the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council. The council’s leader, Abdelaziz Hakim, is a U.S. ally. Scores of Iraqis have died in clashes involving Sadr’s Mahdi Army and the Council’s Badr Organization.

In the August clashes, fighting erupted between the militias during a religious pilgrimage in Karbala. Sadr called on his militia to cease activities and said anyone violating the order would be expelled from the movement.

Salah Ubaidi, Sadr’s spokesman, said the cleric, who rarely has appeared in public in the last year, would make a statement Saturday if he decided to extend the truce. That would mark the end of the six-month deadline according to the Islamic calendar.

If Sadr remains silent, Ubaidi said, it will mean the Mahdi Army is back in action.

Nassar Rubaie, the head of the 30-member Sadr parliamentary bloc, said conditions on the ground would determine the cleric’s decision.

He said that despite “absolute obedience” by the Mahdi Army, it was suffering “the severest kinds of persecution and detentions” by security forces.

Sadr’s loyalists have been particularly angered by recent raids in the provincial capitals of Karbala and Diwaniya, which they say have been carried out by security forces dominated by Badr Organization members. Clerics from Sadr’s movement have used weekly sermons to denounce the raids, which they say have forced hundreds of followers from their homes.

The Sadr movement is also angered over political developments in Baghdad, including passage last month of a law that allows some members of the former ruling Baath Party to return to government jobs. It has also denounced plans to try a former deputy health minister loyal to Sadr on charges that he used his position to murder and kidnap the cleric’s opponents. Hakim Zamili, who was arrested in February 2007, is to go on trial March 2 and could face the death penalty if convicted.

In the southern city of Basra, a prominent Sadr associate said many in the movement wanted the cease-fire to end.

The official, who did not want to be identified because he is not authorized to speak on behalf of the movement, noted that Sadr was largely responsible for putting Prime Minister Nouri Maliki into power in 2006, when his parliamentary bloc backed Maliki.

“We are the ones who brought it to where it is,” he said of Maliki’s government. In return, he said, the government had made outcasts of the Sadr loyalists.

The development follows a recent uptick in rocket attacks blamed on Shiite militias, whose members include former Sadr followers disgruntled with the cease-fire.

Smith, the U.S. military spokesman, said an American civilian was among the people killed Tuesday night in a rocket attack on a U.S. base in southeast Baghdad.

The military announced Wednesday the deaths of two U.S. soldiers. One died in central Iraq when his vehicle hit a roadside bomb. Another was killed in northern Iraq, in Mosul, when his patrol came under fire. Three soldiers were wounded in that incident, officials said.

The two deaths Wednesday brought to at least 3,967 the number of U.S. troops killed in Iraq since the war began in March 2003, according to icasualties.org.

Police said a suicide bomber detonated a belt of explosives Wednesday, killing seven Iraqi civilians and injuring 17 in Muqdadiya, 60 miles northeast of Baghdad in Diyala province.

In Baghdad, the U.S. military said the two female bombers who killed 99 people in separate attacks Feb. 1 had been treated for psychiatric problems.

Officials appeared to back away from initial statements that the women, whose identities have not been disclosed, had Down syndrome and were used by insurgents to carry the explosives that tore through two pet markets.

Smith said both women had been “treated extensively for psychiatric issues” such as depression and schizophrenia.

An administrator at a Baghdad psychiatric hospital has been detained and is being questioned to determine whether he used his position to help insurgents find women to carry the explosives.

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tina.susman@latimes.com

Special correspondent Saad Fakhrildeen in Najaf and a special correspondent in Baqubah contributed to this report.