A new generation of terror

Young militiamen of the Mahdi Army are making life impossible for both Shias and Sunnis

On the first day of class, two male teenagers entered a girls' high school in the Tobji neighbourhood, clutching AK-47 assault rifles.

The young Shiite fighters handed the principal a handwritten note and ordered her to assemble the students in the courtyard, witnesses said.

“All girls must wear a hijab,'' she read aloud, her voice trembling. “If the girls don't wear hijabs, we will close the school or kill the girls.''

That October day, Sara Mustafa, 14, a secular Sunni Arab, also trembled. The next morning, she covered herself with a headscarf for the first time. The young fighters now controlled her life.

The Mahdi Army of Shiite cleric Moqtada Al Sadr is using a new generation of youths, some as young as 15, to expand and tighten its grip across Baghdad. But the ruthlessness of some of these young fighters is alienating Sunnis and Shiites alike.

The fighters are filling the vacuum of leadership created by a ten-month-old US-led security offensive. Hundreds of senior militia members have been arrested, killed or forced into hiding.

But the militia still rules through fear and intimidation, often under the radar of US troops.

“JAM is alive and well in Tobji, although they have gotten younger,'' said Lieutenant Colonel Steven Miska, using a military acronym derived from the militia's name in Arabic, Jaysh Al Mahdi.

Hungry for power

The rise of this new generation is a reflection of the Mahdi Army's infiltration of society and could presage a turbulent resurgence of the militia as the US military reduces troop levels.

The emergence highlights the struggle Al Sadr faces in his quest to control the capital and lead Iraq.

Recently, the 34-year-old cleric declared a freeze in operations, in part to exert more authority over his unruly, decentralised militia.

But some militia leaders have ignored him and their young, power-hungry foot soldiers may ultimately undermine the cleric's popularity.

“We have to show people we are not weak,'' said Ali, a 19-year-old Mahdi Army fighter in Tobji.

Ali and his cousins once befriended Sunnis, Kurds and Christians. But after the February 2006 bombing of a Shiite shrine in Samarra, sectarian violence shattered Tobji's tribal and social bonds.

Suddenly, sect was all that mattered to Ali and the militia became his new family. He was 17.

Abu Sajjad, a 44-year-old former Mahdi Army fighter, remembered seeing a rise in disaffected, jobless recruits at the time. “They were nothing before they joined the Mahdi Army,'' Abu Sajjad said. “The Mahdi Army will protect them better than their tribes or their families.''

Initially, Ali was assigned to a militia checkpoint. He searched cars and demanded that drivers give their tribal names, so he could determine their sect. “I was a teenager. I was in control. I ruled,'' Ali said.

At the local Al Sadr office, recruits were given lessons in the Shiite religion and Mahdi Army ideology, which centred on Shiite supremacy. The recruits were ordered to inform on anyone suspicious or breaking Islamic codes.

Four months after he joined, Ali fought his first street battle. He fired a rocket-propelled grenade into the house of a member of a Sunni tribe called the Egheidat, killing him.
Ali said he felt remorse, which vanished as smiling, older fighters hugged him. “You are a hero,'' one of them told Ali.
Mahdi Army commanders punished young fighters for disobeying orders.

Offenders were taken to a room inside the Al Sadr office, filled with steel cables, whips and slabs of iron, where they were tortured. It is called “The Happiness Room''.

On the streets of Tobji, young men with mobile phones circled the neighbourhood, which was plastered with images of Al Sadr.

They drove mopeds or gathered on corners. Some wore jeans, others baseball caps. They were the warning system, keeping watch for strangers and US patrols.

“No one will suspect they are [part of the] Mahdi Army,'' Ali said.

Today, more than half the militia is under 20 years of age. The new generation is heavily involved in the militia's income-generating schemes. They sell the cars of kidnap victims and rent out the houses of displaced Sunnis.

Illicit actions

The militia also demands payments from generator men supplying electricity. Each month, youths collect 5,000 Iraqi dinars, or about $4, as protection money from every household.

“They tend to focus on organised crime and lining their pockets with cash,'' said Miska, the US officer.
Many young militiamen appear to have become ruthless murderers.

Ali said he took part in four killings, all of neighbours. After Ali informed the Al Sadr office that his childhood friend, Wissam, had joined the Iraqi army, several young militia members abducted him and his mother.

First they shot Wissam and then shot his mother in the head, Ali and Mahmoud said.

When young fighters are told to kill someone, Ali said, “they will kill that person the next day without hesitation''.

Abu Ali Hassan, 42, a Sunni, has hung a portrait of Imam Ali, one of Shiite Islam's most revered figures, in case militia fighters visit.

Each month he hands them 5,000 dinars, which he calls “extortion money''.

Most Sunnis have fled. Those who remain live under constant fear that they are being monitored.

Playing safe

Desperate, Hassan has befriended a few young militiamen on his street. “Now they are the supreme power in our neighbourhood,'' he said.

But increasingly, the militia's victims are Shiites.

Tobji's Shiite head of the local council, Abu Hussain Kamil, and another official were assassinated. Kamil, Ali said, had not given jobs to relatives of the militiamen.

In June, several young fighters tortured and killed a Shiite generator man because he would not give additional electricity to the house of a militia member.

“They call themselves the Mahdi Army but act like a gang,'' said Majid Al Zubaidi, 28, the man's brother. “They want to show they are in control. They want people to fear them.''
“Now both Sunnis and Shiites are upset with the Mahdi Army,'' Zubaidi said.

Abu Sajjad, the veteran fighter, said many older militiamen are also angry. The youths are tarnishing the militia's image as guardians of the Shiites, he said.

The leaders protect the shebab, as the young men are called in Arabic, Abu Sajjad said. “The shebab are their eyes in the neighbourhood and follow their orders.''

Inside some of Tobji's schools, the militiamen have pressured teachers to disclose examination answers and give high grades to the relatives of the Mahdi Army fighters.

They have ordered them to give Shiite religious lessons to students, including Sunnis, according to teachers and parents.

Now, students with problems are also turning to the Mahdi Army and looking up to militiamen as role models.

“When children get power and pistols, this is their biggest dream come true,'' Abu Sajjad said. By infiltrating the schools, he added, the fighters have found the most effective means of controlling Tobji.

But Ali is trying to quit. He is in love with a Sunni woman. If the militiamen learn of this, he fears he will be killed, he said.
Worried about his future, Mustafa Salih has added his name to a list of Sunnis keen to launch a sahwa, or “awakening'', protection force.

The tipping point came when he saw his daughter, Sara, rush home from school, upset that she had to wear a hijab.

Today, Sara's headscarf has become a metaphor for the militia's grip on her neighbourhood.