Mayor arrested in Iraq
BAGHDAD — Iraqi troops arrested the mayor of the southern city of Amarah on Thursday, raising tensions with followers of Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr as a third Iraqi military operation against Shiite militias got under way.
U. S.-backed Iraqi soldiers and police fanned out across the city of about 450,000, a Sadrist stronghold and hub of smuggler networks bringing in weapons from Iran to Shiite extremists. There was no resistance, and some gunmen avoided arrest by tossing weapons into the streets or irrigation canals.
The operation is part of a campaign by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite, to assert government control in areas of the Shiite south where militias have held sway for years.
Mayor Rafia Abdul-Jabbar, who also serves as acting deputy governor of Maysan province, was taken into custody at his office along with a member of the provincial council, Iraqi officials said.
Abdul-Jabbar, a Sadrist, was among 17 wanted people detained on the first day of the operation for alleged involvement in militia activities, Iraqi Defense Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Mohammed al-Askari said.
Al-Sadr’s aides complained that the mayor’s arrest violated the spirit of agreements made in talks with the government in the run-up to the operation in Amarah, about 200 miles southeast of Baghdad. Sadrists had promised to cooperate with the operation as long as Iraqi troops did not make arrests without warrants or violate human rights.
“We were surprised by the violations and the random raids in Amarah,” said Hazim al-Araji, a senior al-Sadr aide in the Shiite holy city of Najaf.
“We condemn the latest events that show a deliberate targeting of al-Sadr’s movement.”
Al-Araji said he suspected some military officers running the Amarah operation were linked to rival Shiite parties and were “trying to create a crisis and a tension through these operations.”
Sadrist officials have long complained that rival Shiite parties with close ties to the Americans have been using security operations in other Shiite cities as a pretext to weaken al- Sadr’s political movement.
The radical cleric’s Mahdi Army militia rose up and fought government troops to a standstill when they launched an operation in March in Basra. A deal mediated by Iran ended the Basra fighting and allowed the Iraqi army into militia neighborhoods.
A similar agreement hammered out last month between the Sadrists and Shiite religious parties ended seven weeks of fighting in Baghdad’s Shiite district of Sadr City.
In recent weeks, the Sadrists have opted against armed confrontations with Iraqi soldiers and police, apparently to avoid a punishing battle with U. S. and Iraqi forces that would threaten their political base in southern Iraq. Al-Maliki has vowed to destroy the power of Shiite militias. But he has promised that members of al-Sadr’s political movement who are not involved in illegal activity will not be arrested.
