A foretaste of US President George Bush's plan to use 41,500 US troops to "stabilise" war-torn Baghdad came on January 24 when the US occupation forces conducted their second assault in a month on the city's Haifa Street neighbourhood.
Dubbed Operation Tomahawk Strike 11, the US assault on the largely Sunni-inhabited neighbourhood located some 2.5 kilometres north of the Green Zone — the heavily fortified area that houses the US military command and Washington's puppet Iraqi government — began shortly before dawn. About 400 US troops, backed by Apache attack helicopters, invaded the neighbourhood, described by US officers as "little Fallujah".
Within a few hours, the US troops became involved in pitched battles with the neighbourhood's armed residents, who used hand-grenades, rocket-propelled grenades and small arms against the US troops.
Two weeks earlier, on January 6-9, 400 US and 500 puppet Iraqi troops had attempted to take control of the neighbourhood. CNN reported on January 10: "The US military sent in [F-16] fixed-wing aircraft and Apache attack helicopters to support the ground forces against what it described as a 'sophisticated enemy'."
The January 25 New York Times described the month's second assault on Haifa Street as "a miniature version of the troop increase that the United States hopes will secure the city. American soldiers and armored vehicles raced onto Haifa Street before dawn … But as the sun rose, many of the Iraqi Army soldiers who were supposed to do the actual searches of the buildings did not arrive on time, forcing the Americans to start the job on their own.
"When the Iraqi units finally did show up, it was with the air of a class outing, cheering and laughing as the Americans blew locks off doors with shotguns. As the morning wore on and the troops came under fire from all directions, another apparent flaw in this strategy became clear as empty apartments became lairs for gunmen who flitted from window to window and killed at least one US soldier.
"Whether the gunfire was coming from Sunni or Shiite insurgents or militia fighters or some of the Iraqi soldiers who had disappeared into the Gotham-like cityscape, no-one could say …
"At one point the Americans were forced to jog alongside the Strykers on Haifa Street, sheltering themselves as best they could from the gunfire. The Americans finally found the Iraqis and ended up accompanying them into an extremely dangerous and exposed warren of low-slung hovels behind the high rises as gunfire rained down."
The January 25 Los Angeles Times reported that Adnan Dulaimi, a leading Sunni MP, called the operation "barbaric". He told journalists: "Haifa Street is filled with poor people and lower-class families, so I demand the end of these operations."
"What kind of security plan is this?", one resident asked the LA Times. "They are destroying us, pounding an area less than one square kilometre with mortars, and shells from helicopters and their tanks."
The British Independent's Baghdad correspondent, Patrick Cockburn, reported in the paper's January 28 edition that during the assault on Haifa Street the US military had "used a long-range missile to demolish a house from which snipers were allegedly firing. The readiness of the Americans to use such heavy weapons in densely populated urban areas ensures that many civilians have been, and will be, killed and wounded."
Cockburn went on to note that the "insurgents and militias are strong because they provide the security the government does not … The American troops may be seen as temporary allies by either side, but are also blamed for the lethal anarchy. Some 61 per cent of Iraqis, a majority of both Sunni and Shia, approve of armed attacks on US forces."
A statement issued by the US military on January 22 said that during the previous 45 days there had been 52 operations that primarily targeted the Shiite-based Mahdi Army militia of highly popular cleric Moqtada al Sadr, an outspoken opponent of the US occupation. According to the US military, there are more than 600 members of Sadr's movement in detention, including 16 high-level figures.
AP reported on January 25 that "the mayor of Baghdad's Sadr City said he had reached agreement with political and religious groups to keep weapons off the streets of the heavily populated Shiite militia stronghold, and has presented the deal to US and Iraqi government officials in an apparent attempt to avoid a crackdown on the area.
"Rahim al Darraji said Iraqi troops will be in charge of security in the sprawling district in eastern Baghdad. His comments come amid fears that Sadr City, the main headquarters of the Mahdi Army militia, could be a major target in the planned US-led crackdown."
Sadr City is home to 2 million, mostly poor, Shiites, and the Mahdi Army is estimated to have 60,000 members.