BBC: Baghdad security plan staggers on

Baghdad security plan staggers on

By Jim Muir | BBC News, Baghdad | Monday, 3 July 2006

The Iraqi government is to review its much-trumpeted security plan for Baghdad, in the light of Saturday's massive explosion in the mainly Shia suburb of Sadr City.

Iraqi army checkpoint in Baghdad
Queues at army checkpoints may have created targets for insurgents
About 66 people were killed and more than 100 others injured in the attack.

Deputy Prime Minister for Security Affairs Salam al-Zobai told the government daily al-Sabah that a comprehensive review would make changes and additions to the plan, "to avoid mistakes and to restrict terrorist operations".

The announcement followed an emergency meeting of the cabinet's security committee in the wake of the Sadr City blast, the most serious challenge so far to the three-week-old security plan.

The plan involves tens of thousands of Iraqi troops and police backed by US forces.

Checkpoints have been set up to search vehicles in many parts of the city, curfews imposed, and raids conducted on suspected insurgent hideouts.

'Ideal targets'

Eyewitnesses said on Monday that all the checkpoints in some areas had been removed overnight.

Many citizens had complained that the bottlenecks they created were providing ideal targets for bombers while failing to curb their activities.



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US military officials have admitted that the plan has produced so far only a slight dip in the violence, and nothing like the results that had been hoped for.

The hitherto-unheard of militant Sunni group which claimed responsibility for the Sadr City bombing, Supporters of the Sunni People, made a scathing reference to the security scheme in its communique about the attack.

"As for the so-called security plan, it is just an illusion with which you are deceiving yourselves and those around you - and this is the proof," it said.

Those on the receiving end of the bomb, the Shia Mahdi Army militia which makes Sadr City its stronghold, was equally scathing about the plan as it announced that its followers had captured four people who had confessed to carrying out the bombing.

"This is considered a big victory for the Mahdi Army, and a practical demonstration of its ability to arrest criminals and provide security, after the occupation and the government it installed had failed to do so - so much so that the people of Sadr City have begun to ask the government to hand over security tasks to the Mahdi Army," it said.

Militias under pressure

The Mahdi Army is one of several Shia militias whose future is under pressure.

Prime Minister Nouri Maliki has often said the militias should be dissolved - although in his recent national reconciliation initiative he said only that "the problem of the militias must be solved".

Mahdi army soldier in Sadr City
The Mahdi Army is trumpeting its security successes
The Sadr City bombing is far from being the only challenge to the Baghdad security plan.

Lesser attacks have been carried out every day in different parts of the city, reaping a daily toll of victims.

In addition to the bombings, abductions and killings have also continued.

On Saturday, a Sunni female MP, Taiseer al-Mashhadani and seven of her bodyguards were kidnapped by gunmen in broad daylight on a busy main road on the northern edge of Baghdad.

The big Sunni coalition to which she belongs, the Accord Front, is boycotting parliament until she is released. Her party blamed Shia militias for the abduction.

Late last month, despite the security plan and a curfew, Mahdi Army militiamen were involved in a lengthy gunfight with Sunni gunmen in the heart of Baghdad just before Friday prayers.

On Monday a salvo of mortars crashed around the important Sunni shrine in Adhamiya, north Baghdad, triggering sporadic clashes between local Sunni gunmen and the security forces.

The security plan has failed to tame some of the Sunni hotbeds, such as Adhamiya in north Baghdad and Dora in the south, and has also failed to impose state control over Shia-dominated areas such as Sadr City.