NEWSWEEK: GREEN ZONE HAS BECOME LATEST BATTLEGROUND IN IRAQ

Unsafe Haven
Baghdad's Green Zone has become the latest battleground in the struggle for Iraq.

Lennox Samuels
Newsweek Web Exclusive
Updated: 4:05 PM ET Apr 28, 2008

http://www.newsweek.com/id/134596

For several days there was a lull. But then rockets and mortars started slamming into the Green Zone on Sunday afternoon and kept coming well into the night, as if the Shiite fighters in Sadr City were making up for the respite. A heavy dust storm choked Baghdad, adding a sense of claustrophobia while providing the insurgents cover.

"They're getting closer and closer," noted veteran security expert Mike Arrighi. Arrighi, who works and lives in the tightly defended Zone, says that this week's barrage shows the same "consistency, intensity and ferocity" of the initial attacks that began almost a month ago. That bombardment tapered off after the first week, as the U.S. military quickly neutralized many Shiite launch sites. But this week's barrage suggested that the militants haven't yet had the fight knocked out of them.

This could turn into a drawn-out siege. Infuriated by recent Iraqi government crackdowns on Shiite militias and criminals in Basra and southern Baghdad, the insurgents in the impoverished neighborhood of Sadr City appear have set their sights on the psychologically important Green Zone.

The shelling has killed two American soldiers and two civilians who worked for the U.S. government or military and injured at least two dozen others.

In Sadr City, U.S. and Iraqi retaliation has left dozens dead. U.S and Iraqi Army brass say they have crippled the insurgents' ability to fire rockets into the area, but this week's renewed shelling has some worried that the Green Zone may become a new battleground in the struggle for Iraq.

Cornered in their sprawling inburb of about 2.5 million people and stoked by incendiary rhetoric from radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, who threatened all-out war against the government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, the Shiite groups have lashed out at the Zone with heavy mortars and Katyusha rockets. They had few options other than the airborne offensive.

Heavy fortifications and massive concrete barriers make small-arms attacks virtually impossible. The ground campaign ordered by Maliki has thinned their numbers. Rigorous security at checkpoints and ever vigilant Zone police patrols have made car bombs, IEDS and suicide bombings much harder to organize. "They have to go over our heads," says a U.S. embassy staffer who requested anonymity.

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