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US forces 'tiptoe' into Sadr City
Stationed on the edge of the Shiite district in Baghdad, they and their Iraqi counterparts are trying to signal that they want to help its residents.
By Sam Dagher | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitorfrom the April 5, 2007 edition
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Baghdad - One month after US forces established a joint American-Iraqi security station on the outskirts the sprawling Shiite slum known as Sadr City, a truck loaded with explosives rammed its outer perimeter Wednesday. The blast reduced massive concrete slabs around the building to rubble and sent a strong message to both US and Iraqi forces stationed there that a fight may be waiting within the vast corridors of this ghetto, a haven for the anti-American Mahdi Army.
The explosion just outside the bright blue, three-story building that houses both elements of the Iraqi National Police and the US Army struck like a thunderbolt – wounding two Iraqis and rattling the police and employees inside – just one day after an unprecedented visit by Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno, commander of Multinational Corps-Iraq.
He visited under the tightest of security conditions – helicopters hovered above as he met with Iraqi National Police commanders – to tell them there has been a "misunderstanding" between US troops and people of the Shiite district.
"We don't mean them harm; we want to help them," the general told Iraqi National Police Col. Abdul-Zahra Hamid, the chief of the Sadr City station.
Convincing the largely poor and traditionally hostile residents of this bastion of support for the Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr – who recently renewed calls for the "occupiers" to leave Iraq – will be a difficult challenge for US forces, but one they realize is vital to the success of the Baghdad security plan.
General Odierno says that it's crucial that the Americans and Iraqis proceed cautiously to build a level of support within this community.
But he admitted that the military would have to confront the elements within Sadr City that will challenge the Americans at every turn, regardless of their stated intentions there.
"As we continue to move forward, there are irreconcilables and reconcilables, and there are nonlethal and lethal ways of going about this, and we've got to take both paths," he says. "There are millions of people that live in Sadr City, and most of those people are reconcilable – they want to be part of the government, and they want to be taken care of."
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