Muqtada al-Sadr shows his strength, calls cease-fire -- what now?

[BrainGlutton]

Muqtada al-Sadr has ordered his Mahdi Army to cease hostilities. (Pockets of fighting continue regardless.) That’s good news, I suppose, but the events of the past week show al-Sadr is still an important player; and that not only is Iraq divided between Kurds, Sunnis and Shi’ites, but that the Shi’ites are themselves divided enough to have their own internal civil war. Most Iraqi Shi’ites are probably sympathetic to Iran as potential friend and ally, but al-Sadr wants full-blown Iranian-style theocracy, and I doubt most Iraqi Shi’ites want that. And it was Iran that brokered the cease-fire. But we can’t make the Mahdi Army go away – al-Maliki couldn’t, at any rate – so what now?

Robert Dreyfuss writes in The Nation:

. . . As the smoke clears over new rubble in Iraq’s second city, at the heart of Iraq’s oil region, it’s apparent that the big winner of the Six-Day War in Basra are the forces of rebel cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, whose Mahdi Army faced down the Iraqi armed forces not only in Basra, but in Baghdad, as well as in Kut, Amarah, Nasiriyah, and Diwaniya, capitals of four key southern provinces. That leaves Sadr, an anti-American rabble rouser and nationalist who demands an end to the US occupation of Iraq, and who has grown increasingly close to Iran of late, in a far stronger position that he was a week ago. In Basra, he’s the boss. An Iraqi reporter for the New York Times, who managed to get into Basra during the fighting, concluded that the thousands of Mahdi Army militiamen that control most of the city remained in charge. “There was nowhere the Mahdi either did not control or could not strike at will,” he wrote.

The other big winner in the latest round of Shiite-vs.-Shiite civil war is Iran. For the past five years, Iran has built up enormous political, economic and military clout in Iraq, right under the noses of 170,000 surge-inflated US occupying forces. (For details, see my March 10 Nation article, “Is Iran Winning the Iraq War?”) Iran has strong ties to Iraq’s ruling Shiite alliance, which is dominated by the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, whose militia, the Badr Corps, was armed, trained, financed and commanded by Iranians during two decades in exile in Iran. Since then, hedging its bets, Iran built a close relationship to Sadr’s Mahdi Army as well, and Sadr himself has spent most of the time since the start of the US surge last January in Iran. In addition, Iran has armed and trained a loose collection of fighters that US military commanders call “Special Groups,” paramilitary fighters who’ve kept up a steady drumbeat of attacks on American troops. Thus, it was no surprise when Hadi al-Ameri, the commander of the Badr Corps and a leading member of ISCI, traveled over the weekend to Iran’s religious capital of Qom to negotiate the truce with Sadr that resulted in a shaky ceasefire in Basra.

That Sadr emerged victorious, and that Iran succeeded in brokering the deal that ended the fighting, is a double defeat for the United States. It is also a catastrophe for Maliki, and there is already speculation that his government could collapse. An ill-timed offensive, poorly prepared and poorly executed, resulted in an embarrassing defeat for Maliki.

[Mosier]

First, you’ll have to convince me that Iraqi Shi’ites don’t want a theocratic Iranian-type government. How could someone like al-Sadr become so powerful otherwise?

[BrainGlutton]

@Mosier

First, you’ll have to convince me that Iraqi Shi’ites don’t want a theocratic Iranian-type government. How could someone like al-Sadr become so powerful otherwise?

To make this kind of trouble you need a big, strong faction, but you don’t need a majority.

[Squink]

@BrainGlutton

what now?

You mean besides president Bush thanking the head of the Iranian Quds force for mediating between the government’s Badr contingent and the Mahdi army?
Iranian general played key role in brokering Iraq cease-fire
We know for sure that that’s not going to happen.

[Sam_Stone]

Of course the Nation would spin all this that way.

The other way of looking at it:

• A shiite-majority government was willing to go after a Shiite militia - something that many people predicted wouldn’t happen. This has got to strengthen the government’s legitimacy among Kurds and Sunnis.

• The Iraqi Army was willing to fight the Mahdi Army - very important, because in the past when the army was called upon to fight other Iraqis, a lot of the men laid down their arms and went home. Not this time. This may be an indication that the army is truly a national army now, and not just a bunch of regional factions pretending to be unified.

• If al-Sadr was testing the government to see if it would stand up to him and if the Army would accept orders to go after his men, he got his answer. Don’t forget, he was the one who started this, and he was the one who had to ask for a cease-fire. So declaring this a victory for him and his forces seems a little…premature.

On the other hand, since Iran seems to be involved in brokering the peace deal, there could be lots of other things going on, good or bad. But there were potentially some positive indicators to come out of the conflict.

[tagos]

Yea - it must be spinning by evil liberals.

Basra returning to normal

Political analysts said the government offensive in the oil port of Basra appeared to have backfired by exposing the weakness of Maliki’s army.

The operation was the biggest test yet for the government’s troops, but yielded little success in driving fighters from the streets.

Gareth Stansfield, a professor of Middle East politics at the University of Exeter in England, said Maliki had staked his political credibility on the show of force in Basra and lost.

“Maliki’s credibility is shot at this point. He really thought his security forces could do this. But he’s failed.”

The crackdown also exposed a deep rift within Iraq’s Shi’ite majority – between the political parties in Maliki’s government and followers of the populist cleric Sadr.

“What has happened has weakened the government and shown the weakness of the state. Now the capability of the state to control Iraq is open to question,” said Izzat al-Shahbander, a Shi’ite politician from the small Iraqi National List party, which quit the government last year.

The Sadrists, who boycotted the last elections in 2005, are vying for control of the south with the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, a backer of Maliki’s administration.

This was a government taking sides in the shia civil war, siding with one militia against another. The upshot was Iran Quds Force negotiating a ceasefire and the UK and USA backing away from troop withdrawals.

Police handing over weapons

Meanwhile, some 40 policemen in Sadr City handed over their weapons to militant radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr’s local office, one of the policemen told The Associated Press today.

“We can’t fight our brothers in the Mahdi Army, so we came here to submit our weapons,” the policeman said on condition of anonymity for security reasons.

The police in Sadr City have long been believed heavily influenced or infiltrated by Mahdi militiamen.

AP Television News footage showed a group of about a dozen uniformed police, their faces covered with masks to shield their identity, being met by Sheik Salman al-Feraiji, al-Sadr’s chief representative in Sadr City.

Al-Feraiji greeted each policeman and gave them a copy of the Quran and an olive branch as they handed over their guns and ammunition.

Shades of grey

Sadr’s forces say Maliki merely wants to wipe out his powerful Shiite rivals ahead of the key provincial elections slated for October – and is using the Americans to help him. Yet there is a real danger that the unpopular Maliki may instead generate a sympathy vote for the anti-American Sadr. Because the British failed spectacularly to bring law and order to Basra and the U.S. has poor intelligence there, Washington may have difficulty sizing up the situation for some time to come. Meanwhile, whether or not the U.S. military was sandbagged into providing extensive backup for this dubious Iraqi military operation, Bush would be unwise to let Maliki believe that U.S. support remains unconditional. And when will U.S. officials, starting with the president, stop labeling as “terrorists” everyone who opposes the Maliki government, which Washington well knows to be corrupt, sectarian and incompetent?

The U.S. military finally made progress in Anbar province when it stopped demonizing its opponents and started identifying those with common political interests. Wouldn’t that be a wiser approach for Basra?

So - the Iraq Government demonstrates its inability to control its second city while at the same time siding with one militia against another. Iran yet again emboldened by another demonstration of its influence. Resurgent violence in other cities. Sadr coming out of it stronger and the Iraq Army unable to work without US and UK firepower.

UK troops called into Basra

However, such distinctions have been blurred in Iraq’s dirty sectarian war and power struggles. Most Sadrists, and some independent observers, see the government assault as an attempt by Mr Maliki to wipe out the Sadr movement as a political force ahead of autumn provincial elections, which they believe they will win.

Any climbdown by Mr al-Maliki would be seen as a serious loss of face. He has already failed to clear out the al-Mahdi Army from Basra despite a week’s fighting with 30,000 soldiers and policemen at his disposal. The Mahdi Army said it held large swaths of Basra yesterday, and the Government admitted that Mr al-Maliki’s field headquarters there had been mortared by the rebels, killing a top top security official.

Mr al-Maliki conceded that he had underestimated the resistance that he would face, while his Defence Minister said the senior command had been forced to rethink strategy. US special forces have started operating alongside Iraqi troops and British soldiers were deployed to positions on the edges of Basra.

With all the security forces’ energies focused on keeping a lid on the violence in the south, Sunni insurgents suddenly resurfaced in the north, a possible sign that extremists linked to al-Qaeda could use the turmoil and Shia infighting to reignite their campaign to destroy the state.

The Battle for Basra

Just why the Basra battle began and how it ended should contain lessons for Iraq. Tellingly, it started six months after most British forces gave up control of the port city and a few weeks after a historic visit to Iraq by Iran’s president. That trip by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad signaled Iran’s interest in a stable, united Iraq – with some influence over its former enemy. And it may have emboldened Prime Minister Maliki to order the attack on Mr. Sadr’s forces, many of whom had resorted to banditry and smuggling.

But also, with provincial elections tentatively scheduled for October, the battle may reflect a contest among Iraq’s Shiite parties. If so, Iraq is still in that democratic half-way house where bullets are used to influence ballots.

The prime minister and Iraqi Army failed in their goal to force Sadr’s militias to surrender. But under the new cease-fire, Sadr told his forces “to cooperate with the government to achieve security.” This muddled end, and especially the failure of Iraq’s military, does not bode well for the long-term struggle for Iraqi nationalism against Shiite sectarianism. At best, the battle was a stalemate, but one that should also force Iran, the US, and Iraq’s political parties to seek the necessary compromises that can better unify Iraqis.

President Bush said last week that the battle was a “defining moment in the history of a free Iraq.” It probably was. Now he and others must define the future for a less-than-free Iraq, and how much longer US forces must stay.

Some triumph. :rolleyes:

On the plus side it’s good to know Kool-Aid retains its great taste even after a number of years.

[gonzomax]

It was a defeat for Maliki. He took them on and made no headway.
The Iraqi government we put in provides no services and has no power. It is a mess.

[Frank]

@Sam Stone

But there were potentially some positive indicators to come out of the conflict.

Piffle. Garbage. Indeed, nonsense. This has demonstrated to the Kurds that they must have an independent country to survive; demonstrated to the Shi’ites that they do control the oil-rich south; demonstrated to the Sunnis that they are shi’it out of luck. The central government lost the engagement, clearly shown by the fact that they accepted the cease-fire.

[Sam_Stone]

@tagos

Some triumph.

On the plus side it’s good to know Kool-Aid retains its great taste even after a number of years.

Of course, you can point to where I said it was a ‘triumph’, right? In fact, I said there seemed to be good and BAD news in this, with some POTENTIALLY good indicators. And from that, you seemd to think that I was calling it a triumph. How do you walk with your knee jerking so much?

[elucidator]

“Oh, of course, Mrs. Lincoln, one can always dwell on the negative of any given situation, but didn’t you think the play was rather good?”

[tagos]

@Sam Stone

Of course, you can point to where I said it was a ‘triumph’, right? In fact, I said there seemed to be good and BAD news in this, with some POTENTIALLY good indicators. And from that, you seemd to think that I was calling it a triumph. How do you walk with your knee jerking so much?

There were no potential good indicators. Just another promise, wish, hope, of ‘jam tomorrow.’ You cannot as a matter of logic have ‘potentially good indicators’.

[tagos]

It appears amongst the many and various positive signs of hope dazzling us with their gleam from the Basra shithole was a large scale mutiny among the 15k Iraqi Army forces. The fact that not every one of them mutinied is of course ‘A Positive Sign’.

Mission Accomplished T Shirts for everyone!

Iraq troops mutiny

Badr Inducted into Army as Thousands fired for Mutiny;

Al-Zaman reports in Arabic that Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki on Tuesday honored the militias of the parties in the United Iraqi Alliance, i.e. the Da’wa (Islamic Call) Party and the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq. They were singled out for having fought alongside government security forces, and some 10,000 of them were inducted into the latter.

Al-Zaman points to a double standard, insofar as the government has not similarly honored, or accepted into the state apparatus, most members of the Sunni Awakening Council militias that have been fighting the Qutbist Jihadis.

The induction of Badr Corps fighters (the paramilitary of ISCI) and those of the Da’wa Party into security positions came in the wake of the firing of thousands of officers and troops who had refused to obey orders to fire on the Mahdi Army militiamen in Baghdad and the southern provinces. They were accused of mutiny.

If al-Zaman’s reporting is correct, the scale of the mutiny is breathtaking, and helps explain why government troops did so poorly against the Sadrists-- the hearts of the thousands of them were simply not with the fight.

But enough carping.

Iraq debacle summarised in one cartoon.

[Squink]

Maliki tries to take advantage of truce, then is forced to back down:
Yesterday:

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki on Thursday said he planned to launch more crackdowns on militiamen as hard-line Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr called for a massive anti-US protest next week. Maliki said future assaults by government forces could not be ruled out after last week’s crackdown in Baghdad and the southern city of Basra, which mostly targeted fighters of Sadr’s Mehdi Army militia.

“I expect more crackdowns like this. We do not negotiate with outlaws,” Maliki told a news conference in the capital’s heavily fortified Green Zone.

“The coming days will witness more assaults as people are still in the control of gangs,” he said, naming areas such as Shuala, Sadr City and Ameriyya in Baghdad as possible targets of military operations.

Today:

Iraq’s prime minister on Friday ordered a nationwide freeze on raids against suspected Shiite militants after the leader of the biggest militia complained that arrests were continuing even after he ordered fighters off the streets.

The announcement was a major shift from comments Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki made a day earlier. It came after Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr, whose Mahdi Army militia fought government troops last week, hinted at retaliation if arrests of his followers did not stop.

On the positive side, at least the PM was smart enough to reverse course before losing Baghdad.

[BrainGlutton]

Update: al-Sadr now says he will disband the Madhi Army if senior Iraqi Shi’a clerics, most notably Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, so advise.

Good news, I guess, but . . . why?

[tagos]

@BrainGlutton

Update: al-Sadr now says he will disband the Madhi Army if senior Iraqi Shi’a clerics, most notably Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, so advise.

Good news, I guess, but . . . why?

Two answers - he’s a nationalist and is doing it in the long-term best interest of Iraq as he sees it.

Or - he’s closing shop for the duration and when the elections are passed it resurfaces with a new name.

Combination of both I guess. The workings of the intra-Shia aspect of the Iraq Civil War are murky.

[BrainGlutton]

@tagos

Or - he’s closing shop for the duration and when the elections are passed it resurfaces with a new name.

Or not, perhaps, depending on whether the election results are to al-Sadr’s liking.

[elucidator]

The statement of loyalty to al-Sistani is a ploy. The Grand Ayatollah appears to be, by my dim lights, a genuinely religious figure who is loathe to insert himself into secular politics. Sadr risks very little by his obeisance, and enhances his own stature by the gesture. He portrays himself as a servant of Allah and partakes of a portion of al Sistani’s stature, and at the same instant offers a comparison between his piety and Maliki’s “secularism”. Little risk, considerable gain.

Disclaimer: this is what I think, with the caveat that rational analysis of an irrational situation is hardly better than scrying with entrails.

As for “what now?”, well, victory! Duh.

[Mosier]

@elucidator

The statement of loyalty to al-Sistani is a ploy. The Grand Ayatollah appears to be, by my dim lights, a genuinely religious figure who is loathe to insert himself into secular politics. Sadr risks very little by his obeisance, and enhances his own stature by the gesture. He portrays himself as a servant of Allah and partakes of a portion of al Sistani’s stature, and at the same instant offers a comparison between his piety and Maliki’s “secularism”. Little risk, considerable gain.

Disclaimer: this is what I think, with the caveat that rational analysis of an irrational situation is hardly better than scrying with entrails.

As for “what now?”, well, victory! Duh.

It’s only a “little” risk if he happens to be right about Sistani’s unwillingness to shut him down. What’s he gonna do if the big guy actually does tell him to disband?

I seriously doubt al-Sadr has any intention of disbanding his militia.

[Sam_Stone]

It might have something to do with this:

Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish Parties Close Ranks Against Al-Sadr’s Movement in Iraq

Iraq’s major Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish parties have closed ranks to force anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr to disband his Mahdi Army militia or leave politics, lawmakers and officials involved in the effort said Sunday.

Such a bold move risks a violent backlash by al-Sadr’s Shiite militia. But if it succeeds it could cause a major realignment of Iraq’s political landscape.

The first step will be adding language to a draft election bill banning parties that operate militias from fielding candidates in provincial balloting this fall, the officials and lawmakers said. The government intends to send the draft to parliament within days and hopes to win approval within weeks.

“We, the Sadrists, are in a predicament,” lawmaker Hassan al-Rubaie said Sunday. “Even the blocs that had in the past supported us are now against us and we cannot stop them from taking action against us in parliament.”

Al-Sadr controls 30 of the 275 parliament seats, a substantial figure but not enough to block legislation.

Al-Rubaie said the threat was so serious that a delegation might have to discuss the issue with al-Sadr in person. The young cleric, who has disappeared from the public eye for nearly a year, is believed to be in the Iranian holy city of Qom.

In a rare public signal of dissent in Sadrist ranks, al-Rubaie complained that “those close” to al-Sadr “are radicals and that poses problems,” suggesting that some of the cleric’s confidants may be urging him toward a showdown.

“We must go and explain to him in person that there’s a problem,” he said.

U.S. officials have been pressing Iraq’s government for years to disband the militias, including the Mahdi Army.

Sounds like al-Sadr is getting squeezed pretty good.

[Mosier]

@Sam Stone

Sounds like al-Sadr is getting squeezed pretty good.

I have a feeling that the Shi’ite support for that legislation is overstated or embellished in that article. The Iraqi government has threatened anti-Sadr legislation more times than I can count now, but Sadr seems as strong and influential as ever. The LAST thing the Iraq government can do is block Sadr’s representatives, because their grip on the image of legitimacy is already unstable at best.

Even so, I think your conclusion is probably right. Al-Sadr is being squeezed particularly hard now, and the timing is perfect for him to reinforce the idea that he has a religious mandate, even if it’s not true.