Sporadic fighting in Sadr City prevents repair work

Sporadic fighting in Sadr City, a suburb of the capital Baghdad, has dashed residents' hopes that the interim Iraqi government and aid agencies would come in to repair sewers, collect rubbish and turn on electricity for at least a few more hours every day. Mehdi army fighters loyal to anti-US cleric Moqtada Sadr turned in hundreds of machine guns, rocket propelled grenade (RPG)launchers and mortars on Monday and Tuesday as part of a buy-back programme sponsored by the Iraqi government. Local police logged the weapons, paid out money and handed out receipts to those who came. Police and the US military would not confirm the exact prices paid but the going rate for a machine gun was said to be $50, an RPG was worth $75 and larger artillery pieces fetched up to US $1,000. Ali Abdul Wahad, 24, told IRIN he thought a truce would hold if fighters turned in all of their weapons. He said many people were lured by the promise of money for weapons, even those who were not fighters. The Mehdi army has clashed on and off with US troops in Sadr City for more than two months. "If the fighting ends, we can get the drainage fixed by the government," Wahad said. "The Mehdi army won't do any of the repair jobs for us." But at around 1.30 pm on Tuesday afternoon a fire fight erupted across the street near the city's main municipal office as Iraqi forces in front of the building ran for cover. Just one block away, life seemed normal - a little girl leaned out of a car window to wave at US troops in a tank. A police car screamed around the corner, sirens blaring, to see where the shooting was coming from. A couple of streets from the centre of the suburb, residents seemed unaware of the fighting. They told IRIN that they were tired of the fighters using their poor city as a place to battle US troops. "We had a truce before, so we know that the Mehdi army or the US army could violate it," Ali Kadhum, 34, told IRIN. "Citizens want them to stop fighting. It causes many bad things - our rubbish is piled high in the streets and rats run everywhere." Kadhum complained that no matter how many residents fall ill from the rubbish or sewage flowing in many of the streets, no one does anything for them. Ministry of Health officials recently reported an outbreak of hepatitis in several Baghdad neighbourhoods, including Kamaliya next to Sadr City. World Health Organisation (WHO) officials sent testing kits for the disease and started an information campaign telling residents to boil their water before drinking it. "Our drinking water is now mixed with the sewage. We suffer from bad drinking water and poor drainage," Kadhum said. The weapons buy-back programme is a "step forward", First Sgt Eric Valley of the US army told IRIN. Iraqi officials are more likely to make such a plan stick, Valley said, emphasising that the US military was not involved. Sadr City's poor infrastructure should be a rallying cry for candidates in the coming parliamentary election, a US official said recently. Candidates must realise that they have to provide basic services for residents or be considered bad politicians, the official told IRIN on condition of anonymity. But in reality, in a $79 million plan to rebuild schools around Iraq in coming months, not one of them is in Sadr City. "Our children can't even go outside to play, and they're not going to school either," Edia Faiyadh, 56, told IRIN. Many people in her family went to stay with relatives in nearby Kamaliya to get away from the fighting, Faiyadh said. Her sister started acting mentally disturbed after nights of mortar attacks, she said. "Everyone is calling their relatives to get their families to return home," Faiyadh said. "But we don't know what will happen in the future." Mehdi Army fighters clashed with US troops in May and again for three weeks in August in Najaf, 100 km south of Baghdad. Hundreds of armed Iraqis are believed to have been killed in the most recent fighting in August, when they based themselves at the holy Imam Ali Shrine in Najaf. Following a peace agreement there, many disappeared back to their homes in Sadr City and elsewhere, their weapons still with them. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) made daily clean water deliveries during August's fighting but sometimes was not allowed into the city for security reasons, Ahmed al-Rawi, an ICRC spokesman told IRIN. In addition, the ICRC sent medical supplies to the city's main hospital through the Ministry of Health.