NAJAF, Iraq - The main Shiite movement in Iraq is pursuing a political struggle to end the US occupation, and its military wing has already disarmed, the leader of the Supreme Assembly of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SAIRI) said. With two weeks left before US forces impose a ban on weapons, Mohammed Baqr al-Hakim said in an interview that the Badr brigade had given up its heavy weaponry. "The Badr forces are no longer armed; they were armed because they were fighting the regime" of Saddam Hussein.
"But now the regime has fallen, the Badr forces are not armed ... it has no tanks, no artillery guns or other heavy weapons," he said at SAIRI headquarters in his hometown of Najaf, 150 kilometres (90 miles) south of Baghdad. The Badr brigade boasted as many as 15,000 militiamen in Iran.
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However, Hakim hinted the force still carried light arms. "The Iraqi people must have the ability to defend themselves against unidentified forces who continue to kill it," he said in the interview Friday.
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While SAIRI objects to the presence of US and British forces in Iraq and owes much of its survival to Iranian support, it has taken the pragmatic decision to participate in the US-sponsored reconstruction process. "We have to make every political effort possible to hasten the end of the occupation," Hakim said, implicitly rejecting a wave of guerrilla attacks on coalition forces that have left about a dozen US soldiers dead. The efforts included "dialogue with the United States, moulding Iraqi public opinion to apply pressure and also by setting up an Iraqi administration to fill the political vacuum," left by the ouster of Saddam in April. "We believe there is a very great opportunity for political action," he said when asked about the anti-US attacks. |