An Iraqi Commander Under Fire

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The bodies being pulled from earthen graves in Mahmudiya are now badly decomposed. Iraqi security personnel and families of victims have been searching for the remains over a wide area in the town 50 miles south of Baghdad, beneath the hardened floor of a suspected torture chamber formerly used by Shi'ite militias, and in the dump nearby. The more than 60 corpses discovered a little over a week ago are mostly Sunni, says Lt. Col. William Zemp, who commands the American task force working with Iraqi troops in the area. Zemp, who served with NATO in Bosnia in 1997 and 1998, said the spectacle was reminiscent of the remnants of the inter-ethnic brutality he saw in the Balkans. "It's very sad," he said.

But the discovery of a mass grave is not a new phenomenon for Iraqis. Dozens have been found since sectarian Sunni-Shi'ite violence raged from 2005 through early 2007. Mahmudiya, a poor, dusty town filled with chunks of broken concrete and ubiquitous tangles of barbed wire, was once a point on the U.S. troop-labeled "triangle of death" — a terrifying region of Shi'ite militia and al-Qaeda networks, where hundreds of Iraqis fell victim to each group's efforts to target the other. "It went from Sunnis killing Sunnis and Shi'ites, to Shi'ite death squads killing a whole lot of Sunnis," Captain David Howald said of the year before he arrived in Mahmudiya in the middle of 2007.

The recent discovery has stirred up a complex emotions and renewed political tension in the area, but not necessarily following the familiar sectarian pattern. Three weeks ago, a new wave of intra-Shi'ite violence swept through Baghdad and southern Iraq, including Mahmudiya, as Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki took on the Mahdi Army of radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.

But the tension that has flared since the discovery of the new graves is neither sectarian nor intra-Shi'ite; this time, it's Sunni vs. Sunni. Six days after the mass graves' discovery, Iraqi news networks aired reports that over 4,000 bodies had been uncovered and that local Iraqi army commander General Ali had played a role in their deaths. The reports appeared on an Iraqi network tied to the Iraqi Islamic Party — a Sunni party in parliament that has been suspected of having links with insurgents — and on another news network based in neighboring Saudi Arabia.

Although General Ali is Shi'ite, his wife is Sunni, and he carries significant clout with local Sunni tribal sheikhs. He also has a well-known history of cracking down on both Sunni and Shi'ite militias in the area, making him a controversial figure among many in this divided town. Earlier this year, his forces raided the local Islamic Party headquarters, and found a substantial cache of IEDs, which have been used widely in the area against U.S. forces until a few months ago.

"He's as non-sectarian as they come," says Zemp. "If it's not this [scandal] this week, it's [the Mahdi Army] making a statement that he's a plant by the Islamic party. . . These graves were uncovered and now these groups are exploiting that."

"I try to help them, and now they accuse me," said General Ali, who blamed the government in part for the accusation. He added that one of his own soldiers, who had been kidnapped in 2004, was among the bodies uncovered.

The general's allies — among them U.S. forces and a large grouping of Sunni sheikhs involved in the region's anti-al Qaeda "Sons of Iraq" movement — rallied in support of the general on Wednesday. But while many suggest that the general's current scandal will eventually subside, some foresee a new battle ahead.

"It's good that the local government is digging up the graves because it shows they are dealing with it, rather than pretending nothing happened. If it was the same sectarian situation still, [the Mahdi Army] would never have allowed the police and families to exhume the bodies," said one soldier in Zemp's task force.

But a lingering and complex web of multiple divisions clouds General Ali's reputation. "He's not going to be successful or fail so much based on his future job performance. It will depend on the political situation. He's such a honest guy that others in government are scared of him," said the soldier.

Indeed, General Ali is taking heat from both Shi'a and Sunni extremist groups, and the general's efforts to keep the peace will require a lot more than military action. Extremist Sunni parties have been linked to weapons caches; the ruling Shi'ite bloc openly holds ties to the Mahdi Army's rival Badr Brigade militia; and Sadr's movement is likely to win local elections if they go ahead in October. Having succeeded in calming the killing fields, General Ali may yet find his work undone in the realm of politics.