Referring to recent attacks on the occupying forces by the Mahdi Army, a Najaf-based militia led by Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, and other insurgents, Bush said at a prime-time news conference three days earlier that those groups will not “run us out of Iraq.”

In the first three weeks of April, U.S. troops killed at least 1,100 Iraqis, according to the Associated Press, in an offensive aimed at defeating al-Sadr’s group and insurgents in Fallujah, which was a base of the Baath party under the Saddam Hussein regime. Pentagon officials say that during the same period, U.S. forces took 100 deaths, the highest figure in any month since the U.S.-led invasion of the country a year ago.

About 2,500 U.S. troops have surrounded Najaf, which has been held for more than a week by the Mahdi militia. Representatives of the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council and Iranian diplomats have been trying to negotiate some form of surrender by al-Sadr, who has been declared an “outlaw” by the occupation regime.

Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, said April 16, “At some point somebody has to make a decision on what we’re going to do, and we certainly can’t rule out the use of force.”

By shutting down a newspaper associated with al-Sadr, arresting one of his prominent followers, and announcing their plans to capture or kill the cleric himself, U.S. commanders provoked the clashes with al-Sadr and his followers.

The Marine assault on Fallujah was prepared by a propaganda campaign aimed at drumming up public support for the operation, which has the stated goal of capturing those who killed and mutilated the bodies of four security guards in the city. The four had been employed by the U.S. firm Blackwater, which provides paramilitary goons around the world.

In response to these aggressive forays, U.S. officials admit, fighting broke out on a larger scale and in more locations than they had predicted. U.S. defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld said April 15, “I certainly would not have estimated that we would have had the number of individuals lost that we have lost in the last week.”

Rumsfeld announced that the tour of duty of 20,000 U.S. troops would be extended for three months. Earlier, Bush had given the go-ahead for military commanders to assign around 10,000 more troops to the occupation.

Bush used his summit with Blair and the earlier news conference to emphasize once again that Washington puts no timetable on the occupation. He rejected assertions by liberal critics of the administration’s course that there is a popular uprising in Iraq. “The violence we have seen is a power grab by the extreme and ruthless elements,” he said April 13. “It’s not a civil war. It’s not a popular uprising. Most of Iraq is stable.”

In a moment of unveiled imperialist arrogance Bush said, “Now is the time, and Iraq is the place, in which the enemies of the civilized world are testing the will of the civilized world.” Should Washington “waver,” he said, “every enemy of America in the world would celebrate, proclaiming our weakness and decadence, and using that victory to recruit a new generation of killers.”  
 
Diplomacy fails in Najaf
Meanwhile, an Iranian diplomatic delegation visited Najaf where Muqtada al-Sadr is said to be staying, but did not meet with him. The Boston Globe reported that Iranian and U.S. officials have been holding behind-the-scenes communications to resolve the standoff in Najaf, a center of Shiite Muslims, who are the majority in Iraq. Iran’s foreign minister Kamal Kharrazi said, however, that the talks with U.S. officials in Iraq have been “going nowhere.”

According to the Financial Times, Dan Senor, a spokesman for Paul Bremer, the head of the occupation regime, said, “There is no role for the Iranians to play middleman between us and Sadr.”

Al-Sadr gave the go-ahead to his followers, organized in the Mahdi Army, to stage the uprising after the provocative closure of the newspaper and arrest of his aide. Spanish troops shot and killed at least 20 people who protested the arrest in Najaf. Within a few days, the Mahdi Army was forced to withdraw from the city of Kut, which it had captured from Ukrainian troops, and from police stations and government offices in a couple of other southern cities.

Al-Sadr has won a following in Iraq as an outspoken opponent of the U.S. occupation. He has refused to recognize the Iraqi Governing Council and compares Bremer to Saddam Hussein. Speaking in Kufa, on the outskirts of Najaf, al-Sadr continued to denounce the occupation, saying, “I say that they are here to stay and will occupy us for many years and as such compromise will not work,” according to an April 16 report by the Al-Jazeera news service.

That same day Al-Jazeera also reported that a spokesman for Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the leading Shia cleric, had warned U.S. troops not to enter the Shiite centers of Karbala and Najaf.

Abductions by insurgents of foreigners from countries with troops joining in the occupation have not forced a retreat by any of the participating governments. The Italian government has said its troops will remain despite the release of a video showing the execution of an Italian citizen working as a security guard.

Following the release of three Japanese hostages, Japan’s prime minister Junichiro Koizumi reiterated that Japanese troops would remain. Hundreds demonstrated outside Koizumi’s Tokyo office demanding their withdrawal following the hostage-taking.

In January Japan began the deployment of up to 1,000 troops to southern Iraq to join the U.S.-led occupation. Aimed at strengthening the capacity of Japanese imperialism to defend its interests around the world, this was Tokyo’s first step since World War II to deploy troops abroad into potential combat situations.

Commenting on the deployment, Japanese defense minister Shigeru Ishiba noted that Tokyo gets 90 percent of its oil from the Middle East, the largest percentage of any single country. “The reason we can lead such an affluent life, such as using electricity to this extent, driving cars as much as we like, avoiding the cold, and having fruit in winter, is because we have a stable oil supply from the Middle East, isn’t it?” he said.  
 
‘Silent war’ near Syrian border
Meanwhile, Washington “has been fighting what officials term a silent war with Syria which killed at least five [U.S.] soldiers over the weekend,” reported the April 19 online edition of the World Tribune.com.

The article said that U.S. Marines have deployed along the Syrian border to stop the flow of insurgents and equipment into Iraq. The Marines there have reportedly fought against both Sunni Muslim insurgents and Syrian security personnel in clashes that have intensified in recent weeks.

The U.S. military deployments—increased by more than a third over the last two months—were focused on the western Iraqi towns of Al Qaim and Qusaybah, “regarded as key points in the smuggling of insurgents and weapons from Syria to Iraq,” the Tribune.com report said.

U.S. officials acknowledged that at least five U.S. soldiers of the First Marine Expeditionary Force, who replaced the 82nd Airborne Division, were killed in battle with 150 insurgents in Husaybah during the April 17-18 weekend, according to Middle East Newsline.

Maj. Gen. John Sattler, director of operations for the U.S. Central Command, said in an April 16 news briefing that the Marines have deployed a quick reaction force that includes helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft for attacks along the Syrian border, according to the Tribune.com. Sattler claimed that insurgents infiltrate into that area from Syria and then move on to Ramadi and Fallujah, where U.S. troops have recently waged major offensives, and some of them eventually make their way to Baghdad.

“U.S. officials said that despite numerous warnings Syria continues to allow Al Qaida-aligned insurgents to enter Iraq,” the article claimed, in a sign of what Washington is preparing to do vis-à-vis Syria. “The officials said Syrian border guards have been bribed to ignore the infiltration of insurgents into Iraq. So far, they said, the Syrian military has not engaged the U.S. Marines along the Iraqi-Syrian border. But they said in some cases Syrian border guards were involved in clashes between insurgents and U.S. troops.”  
 
Democrats, Republicans close ranks
In an Op-Ed in the April 13 Washington Post Democratic Party presidential candidate John Kerry said, “While we may have differed on how we went to war, Americans of all political persuasions are united in our determination to succeed. The extremists attacking our forces should know they will not succeed in dividing America.”

Kerry reiterated his opposition to a “premature withdrawal” of troops and support for sending more if U.S. commanders requested them. He called for making the United Nations a “full partner” in the occupation and transition to an interim Iraqi government, and for the involvement of NATO troops.

“It was striking how little the two men differ on the steps they say should be taken to secure the peace in Iraq,” wrote Terence Neal in the Washington Post.

William Kristol, editor of the conservative Weekly Standard, praised Kerry, saying, “He is not willing to cut and run from Iraq… He wants the UN to be more involved, but he doesn’t say if we can’t get the UN more involved, we should get out. President Bush is trying to get the UN involved too.”

At the April 16 press conference with Blair, Bush said he welcomed “the proposals presented by the UN special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi who has come up with a plan for a caretaker government to assume sovereignty from the U.S. occupation authority.” He said the UN diplomat had “identified a way forward to establishing an interim government that is broadly acceptable to the Iraqi people.”

Brahimi, a former Algerian foreign minister, has proposed an interim government with leading officials selected by the UN in consultation with the U.S.-led occupation authority.

Meanwhile, Spain’s newly elected prime minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, said April 18 that he would rapidly withdraw the 1,300 Spanish troops from Iraq, without specifying a date.

Zapatero had said his government would leave the troops there if the UN takes over responsibility for Iraq after the June 30 deadline set by Washington for recasting its occupation under the cover of “Iraqi sovereignty.” The Agence France-Presse news service reported that hours before he was sworn in as the official government leader, Zapatero said that “Madrid's conditions for maintaining the contingent in the US-led occupation force appeared unlikely to be fulfilled.”  
 
 
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