Sadr City, Iraq: The Mahdi Army is blamed for the murders of more than 10,000 Iraqis in recent months alone. The armed force led by Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, one of the most powerful figures in Iraq, maintains a firm and fatal chokehold on Sadr City.
In April of 2004, Muqtada al-Sadr wages war against US and Iraqi military forces. Al-Sadr’s movement, the Mahdi Army, is modeled after the chillingly brutal Hezbollah in Lebanon. But such the feared reputation Hezbollah earned will not come to the Mahdi Army. Not yet, anyway.
Al-Sadr’s recruits suffer chronic defeats at the hands of the Americans and, finally, al-Sadr calls off the massive uprising. Not to risk another humiliating defeat at the hands of the Coalition, al-Sadr reformulates his scheme to rule the region. Within four months, al-Sadr makes a shocking move by joining the US-led political process he’d so vehemently denounced. But behind the seemingly submissive action lies a callous agenda.
Under the guise of supporting and protecting the regions under his control, al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army begins a mass infiltration into regions of southern Iraq where US troops are not present, creating a local police, military, and government stronghold that’s enforced with brutal violence. In strikingly poor regions like Sadr City, the citizens are tolerant, due in part to al-Sadr’s social-services network that provides protection, money and jobs to submissive residents.
But by February of 2006, the skeletons locked in the closets of Sadr City begin to spill out.
The Golden Mosque, a solemn Shiite shrine in Samarra, is ripped apart in a bomb blast. For the Mahdi Army, it is a call to arms. As news of the destruction surges across Iraq, Shiite boys and men flock to Muqtada al-Sadr’s headquarters in the heart of Sadr City.
A groundswell of random killings and retribution bombings follow in the weeks to come, sectarian violence that thrusts the Mahdi Army in the lead role of renegade judge and brutal executioner of suspected Sunni insurgents. The voracity of the Mahdi Army’s killing sprees leaves a profound impression on US troops in Sadr City. In less than 12 months, a single unit of Coalition soldiers witness more than 200 dead bodies strewn along Sadr City’s roadside.
Gruesome discoveries are often the only mark of the Mahdi Army’s presence in the city. The group is more widespread since the incorporation of “death squads,” the spawn of al-Sadr’s teachings and elite terror cells that specialize in murder and mayhem. The death squads carry out a skewed vigilante justice to combat what the Mahdi Army deems any violation of the Koran—consuming or selling alcohol, acts of extramarital misdeeds, or indiscriminate sexual contact. Retribution includes punishing beatings, pistol whippings, public executions, or admission to a torture cell.
There are at least four known militia leaders in Sadr City, broken links from the Mahdi Army chain of command—some if not all of which are strongly suspected of taking orders not from al-Sadr, but from Iran. Iran is reportedly pressuring Mahdi Army affiliates to rise en masse against American forces in Iraq, and the terror groups are abiding by its request. In what may be the Mahdi Army’s most puzzling manifesto for murder to date, they’re carrying out a bloody retaliation for Israel’s assault on Lebanon inside the borders of Iraq.
Sadr City: the heart of the Shiites, the soul of the Mahdi Army, and the very embodiment of rage.
