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Throughout that harrowing trip through the lines, the sharp bang-bang of small-arms fire and the colossal booms from U.S. armored vehicles seemed to surround us completely. As we rounded a corner and sheltered in the lee of a building waiting for the exchange to die down, a teenage boy scuttled over to sell us ice cream. "I'm supporting the Mahdi Army," he said and grinned. "They like ice cream, and I have a lot of customers." Nearby, Iraqi civilians were discussing the battle. A man asked, "Are the Americans here just to see how Iraqis are dying?" Another, Muhammed Jasim, said he would prefer if al-Sadr fought the U.S. somewhere other than at the shrine. "If you attack the Americans," he said, "they will attack you."
The Mahdi Army is clearly a potent fighting force. Though dismissed as ragtag irregulars by the Americans, its militiamen have learned to employ a set of rudimentary but effective tactics against the vastly superior strength of the U.S. forces. At one of the main intersections that leads to the holy compound, we spotted a wire snaking from inside a building through loose sand to a pile of debris. Nestled inside was an unexploded shell, ready to be triggered against a U.S. tank or humvee. Across the street, at the mouth of an adjoining alley, was a similar setup. The plan was to blow up enemy vehicles before they got near the shrine and pick off the survivors with snipers.
This was a battle in which perceptions mattered, and both sides maintained they weren't threatening this holiest of Shi'ite sites. That said, the Mahdi fighters were clearly using the compound as their base, racing out to launch hit-and-run raids against the withering firepower of the combined U.S. and Iraqi forces. They established forward operating bases that they held until overpowered and then fell back with their wounded into the alleys of the Old City, where the huge tanks of the Americans could not go. There were no weapons to be seen inside the shrine compound. In their minds, the Mahdi fighters were technically not militarizing the shrine because they stashed their weapons in nearby buildings. We watched as mortar teams fired on U.S. tanks and fighting vehicles from just below the shrine's outer walls and then rushed into the compound, leaving the mortar outside.
The fighters came and went with the rhythm of battle; when one group came in with wounded, another would ready itself to go out. The Mahdi fighters said their power came not from gunpowder and cordite but from Allah. "Our mortars are destroying things that the American mortars are not," boasted Ali Hussein, 41, as he rested in the shrine. "We are shooting down helicopters and destroying tanks. This is a heavenly power." Hussein said he would support al-Sadr to the death. "We found in him a leader we are looking for," said Hussein. "He is defending the rights of the poor people." Over and over, the Mahdi fighters expressed their unyielding adherence to three precepts: American occupiers must leave Najaf and the rest of Iraq, Allawi and his caretaker government are puppets of the U.S. and must go, and above all, the militiamen must protect the shrine--and al-Sadr--with their lives.