Psyche, Science, and Society

Analysis of Iraqi ceasefire

Daily Kos has an interesting analysis of today’s report that al Sadr has ordered his men to resume a ceasefire. I don’t know if the analysis — that Maliki was defeated and humiliated — is correct, but it makes more sense than the MSM version. Only time will tell.

*************************
Maliki blinks

By smintheus

On Sunday Nouri al-Maliki admitted defeat in his attempt to crack down on Moqtada al Sadr’s Mahdi Army in Basra. Maliki had begun the week demanding that Mahdi forces surrender within 72 hours, calling this “a decisive and final battle.” Yet as the disastrous campaign backfired in Basra, Baghdad and elsewhere Maliki pathetically extended the rejected deadline until April 8th. As Patrick Cockburn noted, “Maliki’s confident prediction that he would crush the Mehdi Army is turning out to be a dangerous gamble that is fast eroding his authority.”

Today Maliki appears to have accepted a humiliating ‘compromise’ offered by Sadr (h/t Cernig). The Iraqi government will leave the Mahdi militia alone, which in turn will cease patrolling the streets under arms. It’s a return to the status quo ante, except that Sadr has demonstrated his power conclusively – and Maliki his weakness.

The hapless Prime Minister is trying to portray this as a climb-down by Sadr, naturally.

A spokesman for Mr Maliki, Ali al-Dabbagh, told Iraq television the statement was positive.

“As the government of Iraq we welcome this statement. We believe this will support the government of Iraq’s efforts to impose security.”

His government also is talking tough:

Ali al-Dabbagh…warned in a telephone interview broadcast on Iraqi state TV that security forces would continue to target those who don’t follow the order.

“We expect a wide response to this call,” he said. “After this announcement, anybody who targets the government and its institutions will be regarded … as outlaws.”

So far western news media have refrained from pointing out how thoroughly Maliki has been humiliated. But the idea that Sadr has given way under pressure is scarcely credible after the Mahdi Army’s string of successes this week. The near disintegration of the Iraqi army sent to Basra has been the best possible endorsement of Sadr’s political stature, whereas each day brings further disasters for the Iraqi government.

Dozens of Shiite gunmen stormed a state TV facility in central Basra before al-Sadr’s declaration Sunday, forcing Iraqi troops guarding the building to flee and setting armored vehicles on fire.

One of al-Maliki’s top security officials was killed in a mortar attack against the palace that houses the military operations center, officials said.

The terms offered by Sadr indicate that he is playing the stronger hand. He is offering Maliki a face-saving retreat while staking out the moral high ground.

Moqtada Sadr’s statement said: “Because of the religious responsibility, and to stop Iraqi blood being shed, and to maintain the unity of Iraq and to put an end to this sedition that the occupiers and their followers want to spread among the Iraqi people, we call for an end to armed appearances in Basra and all other provinces.

“Anyone carrying a weapon and targeting government institutions will not be one of us.”

The cleric also demanded that the government apply the general amnesty law, release detainees and stop what he called illegal raids.

The latter are the same demands Sadr was making before Tuesday’s attack in Basra, so in effect he’s standing his ground while offering an armistice and a cooling off of tensions. The Mahdi Army will not give up their weapons, as Maliki had demanded.

Furthermore, Sadr’s offer included other terms as well, which the western media have not reported. Arab sources indicate that Sadr’s nine-point proposal demands the withdrawal of Iraqi and US forces from Basra and, even more embarrassingly, the retreat of Maliki and his Defense and Interior ministers from Basra back to Baghdad within 48 hours. With the acceptance of his ‘compromise’, Sadr solidifies his power base in Basra.

This Iraqi press release shows the extent to which Maliki has lost face:

Spokesman for the Iraqi government Ali Al-Dabbag, in a press release, said the government welcomed this call which would serve to avoid bloodshed, adding that this reflected Al-Sadr’s keenness for maintaining the safety of civilians.

Maliki may have difficulty in holding onto power now. He’s shown the incompetence not only of the best military forces under his direct control, but also of the Prime Minister personally. For at least five millenia it’s been a truism in Mesopotamia that leaders, if they want to endure, must always avoid implicating themselves in military defeat. By taking charge of operations in Basra, Maliki showed how woefully out of touch he is with Iraqi political wisdom. Of course, at this stage it should surprise nobody that Maliki is incapable of governing. That was almost fated from the moment his name was floated as a compromise candidate in 2006. For Maliki, a former exile under Saddam Hussein, had no political base in Iraq. The Bush administration’s misjudgment in backing yet another returned exile as leader in that badly fractured country has had the predictable consequence that the Iraqi government cannot function. It’s fair to say at this date that there is no government in Iraq, just the mirage of one.

Update: Fighting continues in Baghdad and Basra, and the truce may not be taking hold in fact. The NYT reports that “the substance of the nine-point statement, released by Mr. Sadr on Sunday afternoon, was hammered out in elaborate negotiations over the past few days with senior Iraqi officials, some of whom traveled to Iran to meet with Mr. Sadr”. Sadr’s spokesman earlier today told reporters that the Maliki government had accepted the deal in full.

“We confirm that there were guarantees taken from the Iraqi government to fulfill all the points in this statement. Thus, no more random arrests,”

But after Sadr announced the truce, a Maliki spokesman told Reuters that “the operation in Basra will continue and will not stop until it achieves its goals.” Now Reuters is reporting also that Mahdi fighters doubt the Iraqi government will honor the terms of the truce. The LA Times, NYT, and Time all report that fighting is continuing, including further US air strikes in Basra. The truce may break down completely, then, before it could even take hold

March 30th, 2008

More background on the Iraq fighting

The LA Times gets the story of the fighting in Iraq right. It points out that the attacks are a power grab by some corrupt Shiite factions to destroy their more popular rivals in the Mehdi Army. Meanwhile, Reuters reports that US Special Forces have joined the fighting in Basra on the side of the corrupt “government” forces, better known as the Iranian-backed Badr Organization.

With the Iraq government cracking down on Sadr fighters in Basra, the U.S. military’s own gains with the militia are at risk

By Ned Parker, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
March 30, 2008

BAGHDAD — The biggest surprise about the raging battles that erupted last week in southern Iraq was not that the combatants were fellow Shiites, but that it took this long.

Enmity has long festered between the two sides: one a ruling party that has struggled against the widespread perception that it gained power on the back of the U.S. occupation, the other a populist movement that has positioned itself as a critic of the U.S.-backed new order.As they vie for power before October provincial elections that will determine who controls the oil-rich south, the stakes are high not only for the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, the largest Shiite faction in the Iraqi coalition government, and the Mahdi Army, the militia loyal to cleric Muqtada Sadr.

The conflict also poses great difficulties for the Americans, who are widely seen as siding with the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council and Prime Minister Nouri Maliki’s Islamic Dawa Party against Sadr.

The Iraqi government’s offensive in Basra has spelled the end to a seven-month cease-fire by Sadr’s militia in all but name.

In an ominous sign Saturday, Sadr in a rare TV interview praised armed resistance. Separately, he urged his followers to defy Maliki’s ultimatum to surrender their weapons.

Iraqi forces battling the Mahdi Army called in U.S. airstrikes Saturday in Basra, and two American soldiers were killed in a mostly Shiite area of east Baghdad.

Sadr’s cease-fire, which he imposed in August after his loyalists clashed with the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council’s militia in the southern city of Karbala, was widely credited with helping calm Baghdad.

The U.S. military now risks forfeiting gains with the Sadr group, arguably the most popular Shiite political movement across Iraq. Already, U.S. officers have reported an increase in the number of attacks against them in Baghdad, where soldiers had benefited from the Mahdi Army’s tacit cooperation.

“It would be disastrous if the United States ended up as supporters on a crackdown on the Sadrists for reasons mainly to do with internal Shiite politics,” said Reidar Visser, editor of the southern Iraq-related website historiae.org.

“The fight in Basra shows the folly of trying to control all the Shiites of Iraq through a small minority, which appears to be the current U.S. policy.”

Many Iraqis have viewed the members of the post-Saddam Hussein administrations as isolated returning exiles, backed by Iran or the U.S. The officials’ credibility has been diminished by government failings since the U.S.-led invasion — notably endemic corruption, the lack of security and abysmal public services.

In contrast, the Sadr movement’s foundations are built upon the legacy of Sadr’s father, who challenged Hussein’s rule in sermons and was killed in 1999. Its voice, fiercely anti-U.S. and staunchly nationalist, has emerged as one of the few alternatives for Iraqis. The movement has even survived a two-year stint in the government and, like other Shiite militias, its involvement in sectarian killings.

Sadr loyalists allege that as the elections approach, their group has been deliberately targeted by the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council through the army and police’s top commanders, where the party wields influence. The Sadr camp mostly boycotted the last local elections in January 2005, and predicts that it will rout its opponents this time.

But a senior Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council leader, Sheik Jalaluddin Saghir, said the Sadr loyalists were trying to cover up their criminal activities with the allegations of politically motivated attacks.

“They have an overt plan to control the provinces; this is what is happening. They want to take over certain provinces. There is no hiding this,” he said. “They will deal with the devil, they will deal with criminal elements if it helps them reach their goals.”

The dislike runs deep. Sadr loyalists curse members of the rival group’s armed wing, the Badr Organization, with a play on words, calling them “Ghadr” — Arabic for treachery. Mahdi Army fighters accuse the Badr Organization of killing Sunnis in Baghdad and then blaming it on them.

In turn, asked about Sadr, one senior official from the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council answered coldly: “You know what they say, once a problem, always a problem.”

The animosity is also rooted in a historic rivalry between the Sadr family, long seen as a champion of the underclass, and the Supreme Council’s senior leader, Sheik Abdelaziz Hakim, son of a conservative grand ayatollah, whose family traditionally enjoyed the support of the country’s Shiite merchant class.

Observers warned a year ago that the situation in the Shiite-majority south was deteriorating as anger mounted within the Mahdi Army over delays in holding provincial elections. Then, the senior coalition commander in the southern city of Diwaniya, Polish Maj. Gen. Pawel Lamla, said that an increase in Shiite militia violence could be traced to the power struggle.

“The Badr Organization and the government are a little afraid of the future elections,” Lamla said. “Now they have the power, but who knows about the future?”

Many in the Mahdi Army had chafed under the cease-fire, believing that the Americans and Iraqi security officials, backed by the Badr Organization, continued to go after Sadr supporters who weren’t involved in violence.

“The law has been taken advantage of by certain actors for political gain,” said Liwa Sumaysim, head of Sadr’s political bureau. “There is fear and anxiety that this is what is happening in Basra.”

Fueling the Sadrists’ concerns about Basra is the fact that some of Maliki’s trusted security advisors are from the Badr camp. The head of the Basra security command, Gen. Mohan Freiji, is also considered loosely affiliated with the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, or SIIC, said a Western advisor at the Defense Ministry.

The offensive in Basra so far has targeted only Sadrist neighborhoods and has avoided going after the Al Fadila al Islamiya party of Basra Gov. Mohammed Waeli or the Badr Organization, both of which have elements that have contributed to the problems in the port city.

“How could the Sadrists interpret U.S. air support of the Basra operation other than as the manifestation of a U.S.- SIIC alliance?” asked Joost Hiltermann, a Middle East expert with the International Crisis Group think tank.

British officers have noted that the Fadila party is suspected of involvement in oil smuggling, one of the major security concerns in Basra. The Badr Organization has also been implicated in racketeering at ports and controlling the city’s police intelligence service, according to the International Crisis Group. Without tackling Fadila and Badr’s lawless elements, Basra’s problems are likely to continue.

The current violence also jeopardizes the Americans’ detente with Sadr loyalists around the country. After the cleric’s cease-fire in August, U.S. officers in Baghdad cut deals with moderate elements of the Mahdi Army to stabilize the capital’s western neighborhoods. Officers were even given lists of Mahdi Army fighters they could not arrest.

Now, the same Shiite militiamen are battling U.S. forces again.

Abu Ali, a member of the Sadr movement in the capital’s New Baghdad area, had been helping enforce Sadr’s cease-fire, but said his local office had returned to planting homemade bombs in case U.S. soldiers dared to enter their area.

“We have called for jihad,” Abu Ali said. “The government came with the occupier and supports the occupiers and they know the Americans will protect them. We are fighting to get our rights.”

ned.parker@latimes.com

Times staff writers Saif Rasheed, Mohammed Rasheed and Said Rifai contributed to this report.

March 30th, 2008