Nearly three months after Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr suspended the activities of his Mahdi Army militia, fighters loyal to him are lying low in his Baghdad bastion of Sadr City. Gone are the Kalashnikov-toting militants dressed in black who used to man their own checkpoints in the impoverished north-eastern neighbourhood of nearly two million people.
In their place are Iraqi policemen who are deployed at key roads into the neighbourhood and unarmed young men, dressed in yellow shirts and brown trousers, frisking people -- especially on Fridays.
Sadr City had been a regular target of insurgents and around a year ago -- on November 23, 2006 -- four car bombs killed more than 200 people and wounded hundreds. But violence levels across the country have fallen in the face of a US-Iraqi security crackdown and the formation of anti-Qaeda fronts among what the US military terms concerned local citizens, and Sadr City these days is a much safer place.
"We are volunteers from the Sadr movement and our job is to maintain security on Fridays during weekly prayers," said Abu Sajjad, a well-built 35-year-old resident of Sadr City.
Sajjad was part of a team supervising Friday prayers outside the main office of the Sadr movement in the neighbourhood's central Al-Hai area. "We close all the lanes that connect to this area from midday (0900 GMT) on Fridays. You can see there is no vehicle coming through," he said, as Sheikh Hussain al-Hussaini from the Sadr movement led the prayers.
"Yes! Yes! Moqtada. We promise, we promise, Moqtada, that we are with you," shouted the crowd, repeatedly raising their hands in the air. "We will protect you until the end of our lives, Moqtada," they shouted, as dozens of men like Sajjad stood guard.
Sadr suspended Mahdi Army operations amid allegations his fighters were involved in fierce clashes with police in the shrine city of Karbala. On Saturday, thousands of Sadr loyalists again marched through Sadr City expressing their support for the cleric, who lives in the shrine city of Najaf, 160 kilometres (100 miles) south of Baghdad, but is rarely seen in public.
Men, women and children, carrying green, red and black religious banners, some waving Iraqi flags and others carrying pictures of the cleric, walked through the streets chanting, "Moqtada! Moqtada!"
Some young zealots wrote the cleric's name in their own blood on a white silk cloth and vowed to serve him all their lives. The weekend demonstrations were a show of strength for the cleric, whose movement has 32 MPs in the 275-seat Iraqi parliament, following a crackdown on the movement in the central city of Diwaniyah.
Dozens of Sadr activists have been arrested in the US-backed crackdown codenamed Operation Lion's Pounce over the past week. The demonstrations also came as the US military accused "rogue elements" of the Sadr militia of bombing a pet market in Baghdad on Friday and killing 13 people.
During the weekend's two demonstrations in Sadr City, there was no sign of the cleric's black-clad Mahdi Army militiamen. Sajjad insisted he and his yellow-shirted colleagues are not party to any militia actions. "We are not involved in any kind of military activities."
Local resident and Sadr movement MP Falah Hasan Shanshal insisted the Mahdi Army was keeping to its pledge to stop fighting US-led forces. "The Mahdi Army is strictly following Sadr's orders and is currently involved only in social work," he said.
"They are managing hospitals, social groups and working to help improve services in Sadr City." The streets of Sadr City are bustling with people, with children playing on the pavements while women do the shopping.
A number of open areas which used to be dumping grounds have been cleaned up and transformed into playgrounds or gardens. That Sadr is hugely popular here is evident not just from the demonstrations by his followers but from the large posters of the cleric and his father Mohammed Sadiq al-Sadr displayed on street corners and on buildings.
Shanshal said the only worry in the neighbourhood these days is the nightly raids by US troops. On October 21, US forces killed 49 "criminals" in a night-time raid in Sadr City, one of the biggest such operations in the cleric's bastion. The US military says it carries out such raids to nab "rogue" elements who have broken away from the Sadr movement and are conducting attacks on coalition troops, an argument that Shanshal does not buy.
"The raids bother us. We definitely want the Americans out next year. This is our sincere request to the United Nations. They must get the Americans out," said Shanshal.
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