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The beginning of the end?? -- " ... The most likely explanation for the coincident eruptions of violence is that Sunnis and Shiites are sensing that the American forces are overstretched .. ".
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April 8, 2004 / NY Times
Iraq Uprising Spreads; Rumsfeld Sees It as 'Test of Will'
By CHRISTINE HAUSER

BAGHDAD, Iraq, April 7 — The Iraqi uprising against the American-led occupation intensified Wednesday and spread to new parts of the country, with United States forces increasing their efforts to put down Sunni and Shiite combatants.
Pentagon officials in Washington signaled that they would probably delay bringing home as many as 25,000 troops as scheduled and probably move reinforcements to the south.

" We're facing a test of will, and we will meet that test," Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said, adding that the plan to postpone the troop return was part of a plan "to systematically address the situations we are facing."

In Falluja in the Sunni heartland west of Baghdad, where the most pitched battles occurred, hospital officials said several dozen people had been killed after Americans fired rockets at a mosque compound. American officials said firing had come from the mosque, forcing them to retaliate. The mosque itself remained largely intact.

In the south, where the majority Shiites predominate, followers of a rebel cleric, Moktada al-Sadr, took over several towns, including Kut, where Ukrainian troops withdrew under pressure. The Ukrainian Defense Ministry in Kiev reported the pullout, which in effect ceded control of the city to Mr. Sadr's supporters.

The resistance even spread north of Baghdad to Hawija. American troops fired on a crowd protesting the attacks in Falluja. About eight Iraqis were reported killed.

The intensification of the combat is sapping efforts to lay the foundations for a largely ceremonial transfer of political sovereignty to the Iraqis on June 30.

An official in the occupation authority said Wednesday that allied and Iraqi security forces had lost control of the key southern cities of Najaf and Kufa to the Shiite militia, conceding that months of effort to win over the population with civil projects and promises of jobs have failed with segments of the population. " Six months of work is completely gone," the official said. "There is nothing to show for it." He cited reports that government buildings, police stations, civil defense garrisons and other installations built up by the Americans had been overrun and then stripped bare, of files, furnishings and even toilet fixtures.

For the first time since the fall of Saddam Hussein a year ago, the Americans found themselves fighting intensely against two main segments of the population, using warplanes, attack helicopters and armored units against the groups the United States had said it came to liberate when it invaded war in March last year.

In a further indication of widening opposition to the allies' presence, Bulgaria has asked the United States to send troops to reinforce its 450-member battalion in Karbala.

In Falluja, marines said they had waged a six-hour battle around the Abdel-Aziz al-Samarri mosque before calling in a Super Cobra helicopter, which fired a missile. An F-16 dropped a laser-guided bomb, Lt. Col. Brennan Byrne said.
Elsewhere in Falluja, American forces seized a second place of prayer, the Muadidi mosque, according to The Associated Press. A marine climbed the minaret and fired on guerrilla gunmen, witnesses told the agency. Insurgents fired back, hitting the minaret with rocket-propelled grenades and causing it to partly collapse, The A.P. added.
Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the chief military spokesman in Iraq, said the Marines did not attack the mosque until it became clear that enemy fighters were inside and using it to cover their attacks. He told CNN that under the Geneva Convention, the mosque was protected but that once attacks originated from it, its protected status was moot.

Insurgent bands of fighters appear to be united in a way that is more concurrent than coordinated, more opportunistic than driven by an operational decision to merge forces.

The most likely explanation for the coincident eruptions of violence, many Iraqis believe, is that Sunnis and Shiites are each watching the other's assaults, first in Falluja last week and then in the Sadr City neighborhood of Baghdad, Kufa, Najaf and at least three other southern cities over the weekend, sensing that the American forces were overstretched.
This week, American and Iraqi security forces encircled Falluja, 35 miles west of Baghdad, and on Tuesday began to push inward in search of rebels and suspects connected to the killing of four American private security guards last week.
Much of the Iraqi anger among the Shiites has been fanned by what many here see as a heavy-handed crackdown by American occupation forces on Mr. Sadr, with the closing of his mouthpiece newspaper last week and the announcement of an arrest warrant in connection a cleric's murder last year.

" What is going on now is a huge popular uprising," Qais al-Khazali, a spokesman for Mr. Sadr, said in Najaf on Tuesday.
" This is a reaction from the Iraqi people, not just from the Shiites," he said. "It is for the Sunni people, too. This intifada unites us." Intifada, Arabic for shaking off, is the word used by Palestinians for their struggle against Israel.
American officials say they are either in firm positions or in control of Falluja and nearby Ramadi, where a dozen marines were killed Tuesday.

And while there is determination to fight the Shiite militias, allied officials are struggling over what to do in the south and in Shiite cities like Kufa and Najaf, where they or the Iraqi security forces they back have in effect lost control. " We will attack to destroy the Mahdi Army," General Kimmitt said in a news briefing on Tuesday. "Those offensive operations will be deliberate, they will be precise, and they will be powerful, and they will succeed," he said. But he added that Najaf, where Mr. Sadr is based and protected by his Mahdi Army militia, "is one of those cities that we do have some concern about."

American officials have to balance their security aims without appearing to interfere with a Shiite pilgrimage holiday called Arbaeen, which starts Friday, when millions of Shiites pray at shrines in Najaf and Karbala.
" We are weighing our options, thinking very carefully about the way to restore order to Najaf," General Kimmitt said. "But at the same time, doing it in such a manner that does not alienate the pilgrims who are celebrating one of the most important observances of the Muslim calendar."

The Ukrainian Defense Ministry said fighting between its troops and militia fighters that led to its retreat had lasted for about 24 hours and killed several dozen Iraqis and one Ukrainian soldier, the first combat death for Ukrainian troops. Ukraine has about 1,650 troops in Iraq, which are part of a 9,000-member Polish-led force deployed south of Baghdad.
Along a 60-mile stretch on one of Iraq's most strategic highways between the capital and Hilla, the day was punctuated by roadside bombs, ambushes with rocket-propelled grenades, mortars and small-arms fire aimed at passing convoys of occupation authority vehicles and at allied military bases.

The highway linking Baghdad with the southern city of Basra and further south to Kuwait was closed for hours as Americans in Humvees and tanks, with helicopter cover, sought to regain control. But the units appeared to arrive after the attackers had melted away in the winding alleys of dusty towns or into palm groves back from the highway.
Two journalists working for The New York Times and two of their Iraqi staff were detained by insurgents in a small town outside Baghdad for three hours on Wednesday. They were released unharmed and allowed to leave the town, which was completely controlled by the insurgents.

The American occupation authorities say the percentage of Iraqis who oppose allied efforts to reconstruct and democratize the country is minuscule. The following of Mr. Sadr is limited mostly to poor Baghdad neighborhoods and southern cities, where his image is projected as a liberator against foreign occupiers. A large majority of Shiites are believed to ascribe to more moderate clerical views. One of Iraq's most influential religious figures, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, called in a statement for a peaceful solution to the violence, saying force would only lead to an escalation in instability and bloodshed.

Iraqi hospital officials said Wednesday that 46 Iraqi civilians had been killed during fierce firefights since Sunday in the Baghdad neighborhood of Sadr City, where fighting has raged mostly at night between American forces and Mr. Sadr's Mahdi Army after it tried to take control of police stations. Other casualties on Wednesday included an American soldier from the First Armored Division who was killed when his convoy was struck by a rocket-propelled grenade near a police station in Baghdad, a spokesman for the American military said.

General Kimmitt urged Mr. Sadr to surrender "to calm the situation." But judging by the inflamed passions at the office of his representative in Sadr City, his followers were deaf to that vocabulary. " We are ready to fight to defend this place," a spokesman, Salam Saleh, said as he stood in the courtyard of the rundown office surrounded by black-clad militiamen with grenades strapped to their bodies or carrying automatic weapons.

John F. Burns contributed reporting from Baghdad for this article.