Who is the enemy in Sadr City?

Washington Post:

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The delicacy of the U.S. terminology underscores both the fragility of the security gains in Iraq and the U.S. government's efforts to tie Iran to the ongoing violence. American officials worry that if they provoke Sadr, he could call off the nine-month-old cease-fire that is credited as one of the main reasons for the drop in violence. At the same time, tying the fighters to Iran bolsters the American case that the Iranian government is subverting U.S. interests throughout the Middle East.

For U.S. soldiers involved in the clashes, the battle has been more straightforward.

"Of course we're fighting JAM," said Col. John Hort, the commander of the brigade in Sadr City, referring to Jaish al-Mahdi, which is Arabic for Mahdi Army. "There are hundreds of them throughout Sadr City, and we'll keep up the fight against them until they stop attacking us."

In the view of U.S. officials, every bona fide member of the Mahdi Army is obeying Sadr's cease-fire, and any member fighting U.S. or Iraqi troops is by definition violating his leader's order and therefore a rogue element. Senior U.S. military commanders said they were targeting only those rogue elements, whom they refer to either as special groups or simply criminals.

Yet that distinction does not account for a man who has been one of the U.S. military's top targets in Sadr City: Tahseen al-Freiji, the senior Mahdi Army commander in the enclave. Hort said the goal was to remove Freiji and other top targets as threats, either by detaining or killing them.

Hort and other officials describe Freiji, believed to be in his late 30s, as "mainstream JAM." They said that the U.S. military initially targeted him in 2006 and 2007 for his role in sectarian attacks on Sunnis but that he was taken off the list of targets after he heeded Sadr's cease-fire last August. In March, though, he resumed his attacks after Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki launched an offensive against Shiite militias in the southern city of Basra and later in Sadr City.

U.S. officials said that Freiji commands a full brigade in Sadr City, directing 6,000 to 8,000 men. They said he has given orders to launch rockets and mortar shells; fire rocket-propelled grenades and AK-47 assault rifles; and set roadside bombs, including powerful ones known as explosively formed penetrators that the U.S. military has said are supplied by Iran.

Mahdi Army leaders in Sadr City and the southern holy city of Najaf confirmed that Freiji is the top commander in the Baghdad enclave and receives his orders directly from senior Sadrist leaders in Najaf. They denied, however, that he and other fighters received support from Iran.

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Freiji operated command centers next to both of the major hospitals in Sadr City, including a structure in the median of the road next to Sadr Hospital that U.S. military officials nicknamed "Tahseen's trailer," said Maj. Bryan Gibby, the intelligence officer for the brigade, the 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division.

The U.S. military struck the site with missiles about 10 a.m. on the morning of May 3. The statement disclosing the attack identified the targets as "criminal elements."

The strike killed or wounded several Mahdi Army commanders, including a top lieutenant to Freiji named Arkan Muhammad Ali al-Hasnawi, Gibby said. Hasnawi, whose death was confirmed by Mahdi Army leaders, was responsible for the kidnapping of eight tribal leaders last October, in addition to multiple rocket and mortar attacks on U.S. and Iraqi troops, U.S. officials said.

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When the bullets are being fired, the policy by other means tends to make the semantic arguments irrelevant at least for the duration of the fire fight. It is easy to become impatient with some of the nuances of counterinsurgency warfare. The mental gymnastics over just naming the enemy is frustrating. Whatever name the religious bigots are going by, their operation has to be destroyed by one means or another for this war to end.