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The militia that was once the biggest defender of poor Shiites in Iraq, the Mahdi Army, has been profoundly weakened in a number of neighborhoods across Baghdad, in an important, if tentative, milestone for stability in Iraq. Read the entire article.
On top of the AP article of the other day stating the judgement that we are winning the war in Iraq, todays NYT article must have swine across the globe filing flight plans. After over a year of spinning Sadr and his Mahdi Army as all powerful and all popular Iraqi nationalists, the NYT finally acknowledges that Sadr and his militias are anything but - though there is still the spectre of it arising from the dead.
That said, the NYT still puts its old spin on it all. They refuse to acknowledge that the Mahdi Army were Iranian proxies from inception. The Mahdi Army was a creation of Iranian sponsorship and organized by Hezbollah uber-terrorist Imad Muginayah. The NYT, like the rest of the far left, is quite willing to ignore reality in order to argue against any use of force against the Western world's most existential threat, Iran.
Further, the NYT gives no credit to U.S. forces or the surge for the decline in Sadr's fortunes. Prior to the surge, PM Maliki had been protecting Sadr. Half the reason for the surge was to target Sadr's militia and to break its hold on power. PM Maliki, faced with a rebellion that saw other Shia elements in the government talking with Sunnis and Kurds about forming a ruling coalition and ousting Maliki in Dec. 2007 finally brought Maliki around. He removed his protection from Sadr. At that point, Sadr ran for Iran and his Mahdi Army - having been decimated twice before by U.S. forces - went underground and has been methodically weeded out by U.S. forces. Add to that, beginning in March, Iraqi forces.
This article, moreso than the AP article of yesterday, could qualify as an effort to give support to the Obama narrative that the defeat of Sadr/Iran might well have occurred irrespective of the surge. But perhaps not intentionally, as it is done with more subtelty than is usually seen in the NYT's agenda journalism.
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This from the NYT:
It is a remarkable change from years past, when the militia, led by the anti-American cleric Moktada al-Sadr, controlled a broad swath of Baghdad, including local governments and police forces. But its use of extortion and violence began alienating much of the Shiite population to the point that many quietly supported American military sweeps against the group.
Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki struck another blow this spring, when he led a military operation against it in Baghdad and in several southern cities.
The shift, if it holds, would solidify a transfer of power from Mr. Sadr, who had lorded his once broad political support over the government, to Mr. Maliki, who is increasingly seen as a true national leader.
. . . The Mahdi Army’s decline also means that the Iraqi state, all but impotent in the early years of the war, has begun to act the part, taking over delivery of some services and control of some neighborhoods.
“The Iraqi government broke their branches and took down their tree,” said Abu Amjad, a civil servant who lives in the northern Baghdad district of Sadr City, once seen as an unbreachable stronghold for the group.
The change is showing up in the lives of ordinary people. The price of cooking gas is less than a fifth of what it was when the militia controlled local gas stations, and kerosene for heating has also become much less expensive. In interviews, 17 Iraqis, including municipal officials, gas station workers and residents, described a pattern in which the militia’s control over the local economy and public services had ebbed. Merchants say they no longer have to pay protection money to militiamen. In some cases, employees with allegiances to the militia have been fired or transferred. Despite the militia’s weakened state, none of the Iraqis interviewed agreed to have their full names published for fear of retribution.
In a further sign of weakness, Shiite tribes in several neighborhoods are asking for compensation from militia members’ families for past wrongs.
The changes are not irreversible. The security gains are in the hands of unseasoned Iraqi soldiers at checkpoints spread throughout Baghdad’s neighborhoods. And local government officials have barely begun to take hold of service distribution networks, potentially leaving a window for the militia to reassert itself.
The militia’s roots are still in the ground, Abu Amjad said, and “given any chance, they will grow again.”
At the peak of the militia’s control last summer, it was involved at all levels of the local economy, taking money from gas stations, private minibus services, electric switching stations, food and clothing markets, ice factories, and even collecting rent from squatters in houses whose owners had been displaced. The four main gas stations in Sadr City were handing over a total of about $13,000 a day, according to a member of the local council.
“It’s almost like the old Mafia criminal days in the United States,” said Brig. Gen. Jeffrey W. Talley, an Army engineer rebuilding Sadr City’s main market.
. . . A spokesman for the movement in Sadr City, Sayeed Jaleel al-Sarkhy, defended the Mahdi Army, saying in an interview that it was not a formal militia and denying the charges that it had taken control of local services. He said the militia had been infiltrated by criminals who used the name of the Mahdi Army as a cover.
“The Mahdi Army is an army of believers,” he said. “It was established to serve the people.”
An employee in the Sadr City local government who oversees trash collectors — daily laborers whose salaries he said were controlled by the militia — said that had long stopped being true.
“I am sick all over,” he said. “I am blind. I’ve got a headache. I’ve got a toothache. My back hurts. All of this is from the Mahdi Army.”
. . . A month after Mr. Maliki’s military operation, strange things started to happen in Shuala, a vast expanse of concrete and sand-colored houses in northern Baghdad that was one of the Mahdi Army’s main strongholds. Militia members suddenly stopped showing up to collect money from the main gas station, a worker there said.
A member of the Shuala district council said: “They used to come and order us to give them 100 gas canisters. Now it’s, ‘Can you please give me a gas canister?’ ”
Then, several weeks later, 11 workers, guards and even a director, all state employees with ties to the militia, were transferred to other areas. Employees’ pictures were posted so American and Iraqi soldiers could identify impostors.
The Iraqi Army now occupies the militia’s old headquarters in Shuala. Soldiers set up 18 checkpoints around the neighborhood, including at the gas station. When the militia opened a new office, soldiers put a checkpoint there, too, said an Iraqi major from the unit based there. Iraqi soldiers recently distributed warning notices to families squatting in houses whose rent had been collected by the Mahdi Army until May.
In Sadr City, the authorities closed the militia’s radio station. The leader of the district council was arrested by the American military. Cooking gas delivery documents must now be approved by three officials, not just one, the council member said.
Another sign of weakness is the growing number of financial settlements between powerful Shiites and Mahdi Army members’ families over loved ones who were killed by the militia. In Topchi, a Shiite neighborhood in western Baghdad, a handwritten list of militia members’ names was taped up in the market this month, with the warning for their families to leave town. Several of their houses were attacked.
Some militia members’ families went to the local council to ask for help. They found none. Mahdi militiamen killed four local council members over several weeks last fall.
“I told them this isn’t good, they must not be blamed,” the council member said. Even so, “if your brother has been killed, this is the time for revenge.”
Now neighborhoods are breathing more freely. A hairdresser in Ameen, a militia-controlled neighborhood in southeast Baghdad, said her clients no longer had to cover their faces when they left her house wearing makeup. Minibuses ferrying commuters in Sadr City are no longer required to play religious songs, said Abu Amjad, the civil servant, and now play songs about love, some even sung by women.
“They lost everything,” said the Sadr City government employee. “The Sadr movement has no power now. There is no militia control.”
The Mahdi Army might be weak, but it is not gone.
Majid, a Sadr City resident who works in a government ministry, said several Iraqi Army officers in his area had to move their families to other neighborhoods after Mr. Maliki’s military operation because the militia threatened them. Bombs are still wounding and killing American soldiers in the district. And early this month, one Iraqi officer’s teenage son was kidnapped and killed, his body hung in a public place as a warning, said Majid, who gave only his first name because he feared reprisals.
. . . The militia is painting its response on Sadr City walls: “We will be back, after this break.”
The Iraqi Army is painting over it.
Showing posts with label Iraqi Army. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Iraqi Army. Show all posts
Sunday, July 27, 2008
NYT Acknowledges The Decline Of The Sadrists
Monday, May 12, 2008
A Success Story In Basra
Three hundred miles south of Baghdad, the oil-saturated city of Basra has been transformed by its own surge, now seven weeks old. Read the entire story.
Its taken seven weeks, but the success of the Iraqi Army in securing Basra and taking it back from the Sadrists is finally being told - on page 1 of the New York Times. Of course there are plenty of qualifiers, but this is all the more incredible after the NYT's recent effort to spin 180 degrees the great leap forward of the Iraqi government with Sadr turning over the keys to Sadr City. At any rate, in yet another a related report, a massive blizzard has been reported in hell as temperatures there continue to plummet.
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This today from the NYT:
In a rare success, forces loyal to Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki have largely quieted the city, to the initial surprise and growing delight of many inhabitants who only a month ago shuddered under deadly clashes between Iraqi troops and Shiite militias.
Just as in Baghdad, Iraqi and Western officials emphasize that the gains here are “fragile,” like the newly planted roadside saplings that fail to conceal mounds of garbage and pools of foul-smelling water in the historic port city’s slums.
Among the many uncertainties are whether the government, criticized for incompetence at the start of the operation, can maintain the high level of troops here. But in interviews across Basra, residents overwhelmingly reported a substantial improvement in their everyday lives.
“The circle of fear is broken,” said Shaker, owner of a floating restaurant on Basra’s famed Corniche promenade, who, although optimistic, was still afraid to give his full name, as were many of those interviewed.
. . . The principal factor for improvement that people in Basra cite is the deployment of 33,000 members of the Iraqi security forces after the March 24 start of operations, which allowed the government to blanket the city with checkpoints on every major intersection and highway.
Borrowing tactics from the troop increase in Baghdad, the Iraqi forces raided militia strongholds and arrested hundreds of suspects. They also seized weapons including mortars, rocket-propelled grenades and sophisticated roadside bombs that officials say were used by Iranian-backed groups responsible for much of the violence.
Government forces have now taken over Islamic militants’ headquarters and halted the death squads and “vice ‘enforcers’ ” who attacked women, Christians, musicians, alcohol sellers and anyone suspected of collaborating with Westerners.
Shaker’s floating restaurant stands as one emblem of the change since then.
Just two months ago, he said, masked men in military uniforms walked into the packed dining room and abducted a businessman at gunpoint. The man was never seen again, and the restaurant closed.
Now, however, customers who fled that evening are pressing the 34-year-old owner to stay open later at night, so they can enjoy their unaccustomed freedom from the gangs, which once banned the loud Arabic pop music now blaring from Shaker’s loudspeakers.
“Now it is very different,” he said. “After we heard that the lawless people have been arrested or killed, we have a kind of courage.”
Even alcohol, once banned by the extremists, is discreetly on sale again in some areas.
Nevertheless, few Basra residents trust that the change is permanent or that the death squads have been vanquished.
Asked how long it would take for Basra to slip back into lawlessness if the army departed, Afrah, a 20-year-old theater student at Basra’s College of Fine Arts, replied, “One day.”
. . . An overwhelmingly Shiite city of more than three million people, Basra sits atop huge oil reserves, which, Western officials say, provide 40 percent of Iraq’s annual oil revenue of $38 billion.
Thus, stability in a city that could be Iraq’s economic engine room is a major priority for the Shiite-led government. However, the Basra experience may not translate to other cities like Mosul or Kirkuk in the north, with a much more complicated religious and ethnic mix.
. . . Iraqi commanders acknowledge that the American and British support helped them wrest control of Mahdi Army strongholds like Hayyaniyah — a slum that is Basra’s equivalent of Sadr City — and other poor districts that are fertile recruiting grounds for militias.
But a majority of the military presence on the streets is Iraqi.
From the moment motorists drive through the huge arch at the city’s northern entrance, they are confronted with a ragtag but daunting collection of armored police vehicles, Iraqi Army Humvees, cold war-era tanks, pickup trucks with turret-mounted machine guns and bullet-riddled personnel carriers.
Canal bridges are guarded by head-high steel pyramids, from which soldiers observe bustling markets through a bulletproof window.
Maj. Tom Holloway, a British military spokesman, conceded that the Iraqis would have “struggled” without the warplanes available to coalition forces. But he said: “I don’t think it’s a crutch. I think they would have tackled it in their own way and possibly, probably, achieved the same result.”
And the result, whoever is ultimately responsible, is in many ways remarkable.
At the College of Fine Arts, female students said they felt more, but not entirely, free to wear the clothes they liked.
“I used to be challenged for what I wear,” said Athari, a 19-year-old student wearing heavy makeup and a bright orange headscarf pushed high back on her head in the liberal fashion disapproved of by Islamic radicals. “Makeup was forbidden; short skirts were forbidden. I will not mention their name, but they were extremists. They are still here, but quieter now.”
Qais, a music student, spoke of his relief at no longer having to hide his violin in a sack of rice in his trunk.
. . . It was not an uncommon sentiment. In his city center office, Yahya, a wealthy businessman said he had just begun going onto the streets without his customary 10 bodyguards. Insisting that he was not a political supporter of the prime minister, he said he was nevertheless so grateful for the security improvements that he and colleagues had downloaded Mr. Maliki’s face onto their mobile telephones as screensavers.
. . . Gen. Mohan al-Freiji, the Iraqi commander in Basra, said the city was “75 percent” under control. He said the principal threat stemmed from rogue elements of the Mahdi Army and factions like the Iraqi Hezbollah (Party of God), Thairallah (Revenge of God) and Fadhila (Virtue).
Emphasizing the urgent need to address decades of poverty and neglect, he said the government had to provide jobs and investment to convert short-term military gains into long-term political and economic ones.
“This is a city which sits on top of oil, but its young people are unemployed,” he said.
Sadrists protest that the Basra operation is a cynical exercise to weaken Mr. Maliki’s Shiite rivals ahead of provincial elections in the fall.
At Friday prayers in Kufa last week, the Sadrist preacher, Sheik Abdul Hadi al-Muhamadawi, said, “There is a large-scale conspiracy to remove the Sadr movement from the government’s way by all means, because it refuses the presence of the occupier in Iraq.”
Such words underscore the widespread belief here that the Mahdi army has its own reasons for lying low and is by no means eliminated.
During one Iraqi Army patrol in Hayyaniyah at dusk, the soldiers, elsewhere relaxed, became jittery. Belying the local commander’s insistence that the Sadrist stronghold was “90 percent or more secure,” some pulled up face masks that they had not worn in other districts. They also fired bullets into the air at the slightest delay in traffic, an aggression unlikely to endear them in an area that, although calm, was noticeably less welcoming.
Haider, a policeman at a checkpoint outside the Sadrists’ former headquarters, said his family had been threatened, even at his home in the capital.
“I have spent 60 days in Basra and haven’t been home to Baghdad,” he said. “I will be killed if I go now. My family have received dozens of fliers with threats from the Mahdi Army.”
Nevertheless he, like many others, said the evacuation of the factions from their once-untouchable headquarters had brought about a psychological shift. Outside the Sadr office, Iraqi soldiers now sit atop the roof, their tripod-mounted machine guns overlooking the tin-roofed Sadrist prayer hall, which lies half-demolished.
“The Mahdi Army used to use this office like the Baathists when they were The Party,” Haider said. “They were ruling like the government of a state. They stopped police doing their duty, from implementing the law.”
Noting that the Baath Party of Saddam Hussein, once much stronger than the Mahdi Army, had been routed, he said, “The Mahdi Army will meet the same fate exactly, and worse.” . . .
Saturday, April 19, 2008
Sadr Threatens "Open War" As Iraqi Offensives Continue
Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr on Saturday threatened an "open war" against the Iraqi government unless it halted a crackdown by Iraqi and U.S. security forces on his followers. Read the entire article. Sadr is reacting the latest major offensive in Basra this morning in which Iraqi troops took control of one of the three major strongholds of the Mahdi Army in Basra, the Hayaniyah neighborhood. This from the The Long War Journal: The Iraqi Army, backed by Coalition advisers and airpower, has launched an assault on the Mahdi Army-controlled neighborhood of Hayaniyah in the port city of Basrah, sparking heavy fighting. Multinational Forces Iraq described the action as "a new phase of operations" as part of the overall operation, called Knights' Charge, which was launched on March 25. Read the entire article. And this from the Washington Post: . . . "We confiscated many cars with no license plates that were used in kidnappings and assassinations," said Maj. Gen. Jalil Khalaf, the Basra police chief. "And we found thousands of roadside bombs in Hayaniyah." Read the entire article. As to Oomi, he is a known Qods Force member. I would not take any of his remarks at face value. One wonders how this will all play in Tehran.
The Iraqi government is is in the midst of operations to clear Sadr City and Basra. Sadr and his militia are clearly looking at destruction and, today, Sadr threatened "open war" with the Iraqi government if they did not end their assaults and set a date for withdraw of U.S. forces from Iraq.
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Sadr is looking at the end game as far as his militia is concerned, and may well find himself starting a conflict that he will not walk away from if he continues his current path. The Iraqi government clearly has no intention of allowing the Mahdi Army to continue its criminal reign in Iraq, and things are rapidly moving towards a climax. As Iraqi military and joint U.S. operations continue in Baghdad and Basra, Sadr has issued a threat to the Iraqi government, as reported in the Boston Globe today:
. . . "I'm giving the last warning and the last word to the Iraqi government -- either it comes to its senses and takes the path of peace ... or it will be (seen as) the same as the previous government," Sadr said, referring to Saddam Hussein's fallen regime, without elaborating.
"If they don't come to their senses and curb the infiltrated militias, then we will declare an open war until liberation."
Sadr's movement accuses other Shi'ite parties of getting their militias into the Iraqi security forces, especially in southern Shi'ite Iraq where various factions are competing for influence in a region home to most of Iraq's oil output.
"Do you want a third uprising?" Sadr said, adding that he wanted Iraq's Shi'ite clerical establishment to set a date for the departure of American troops.
In Sadr's Baghdad stronghold of Sadr City, one Mehdi Army commander said he was "thrilled" about the statement.
"We will wait until tomorrow to see the response of the government. Otherwise they will see black days like they have never seen before in their life."
. . . In Baghdad, police described battles between security forces and gunmen that began on Friday in Sadr City as among the heaviest in the capital since Maliki launched a crackdown on the Mehdi Army in the southern city of Basra late last month.
Police said 12 people had been killed in the Shi'ite slum. Hospitals said they received more than 130 wounded overnight.
Late on Saturday, Ali Bustan, head of the health directorate in the eastern section of Baghdad, said three rockets hit the Sadr Hospital in the slum. It was unclear if there were any casualties. The U.S. military said it was not to blame.
Bustan said the bodies of three women had been brought in along with 40 wounded people following fresh clashes.
Maliki has threatened to ban Sadr's movement from provincial elections this year if the cleric does not disband his militia.
In response, Sadr has threatened to formally scrap a ceasefire he imposed on the Mehdi Army last August, which has already been hanging by a thread given recent clashes.
In his statement, Sadr did not refer to the truce, but his spokesman in the holy city of Najaf, Salah al-Ubaidi, said the cleric was not bluffing.
"We mean every word," Ubaidi told Reuters.
Sadr issued his warning after Iraqi soldiers swooped on the Mehdi Army's stronghold in Basra. Iraqi officials said they now controlled the bastion, known as the Hayaniya district.
The dawn raid by government troops there was backed by a thunderous bombardment by U.S. warplanes and British artillery.
. . . Major-General Abdul-Karim Khalaf, an interior ministry spokesman, described the Basra operation as a major success.
The fighting in Basrah is said to be intense. The assault began at 6 AM local time when "British artillery and US aircraft released ordnance against known criminal rocket and mortar sites west of Hayaniyah," the Multinational Forces Iraq press release stated.
"There were violent clashes with gunmen there," Captain Chris Ford, a British military spokesman in Basrah, told The Los Angeles Times. An Iraqi witness said Coalition airstrikes blunted a Mahdi Army attack and allowed Iraqi forces to take control of the main streets in Hayaniyah.
Iraqi troops are now said to be in control of the neighborhood. "Our troops deployed in all the parts of the (Hayaniyah) district and controlled it without much resistance," Major General Abdul Karim Khalaf, a spokesman for the Ministry of the Interior told Reuters. "Now we are working on house-to-house checking. We have made many arrests."
Elements from at least two Iraqi Army divisions are involved in the Hayaniyah operation. The newly formed 14th Division is operating in conjunction with the 1st Division, one of the most seasoned divisions in the Iraqi Army. "This remains an Iraqi led, planned and executed mission," said Major Tom Holloway, the British Army’s spokesman in southern Iraq. A brigade from the 1st Division was moved into Basrah to support the operation after the military met tougher than expected opposition at the onset of Knights' Charge. The 1st Division is based out of Anbar province and has seen action in Fallujah, Ramadi, Baghdad, Baqubah, Mosul and elsewhere.
. . . Iraqi troops wrested control of Taymiyyah and Qiblah from the Mahdi Army over the past several weeks.
. . . Today's operation is the latest in a series of actions designed to wrest Basrah from the grip of the Mahdi Army. On April 18, the Iraqi security forces detained 35 "wanted men" in Basrah, Al Faw, and Al Qornah. One of those captured included an "accused suspected of being involved in the attempt on the life of one of top Shiite Cleric Ali al Sistani's representatives in Basrah." The Sistani representative was seriously wounded in the assassination attempt.
Also on April 18, Iraqi troops surrounded an office of the Sadrist movement in the heart of the city. The building complex is owned by the Iraqi Olympic Committee and was occupied by other political parties, all of whom left after receiving notice from the government. The Iraqi military has been ordered to eject political parties from state-owned buildings, but the Sadrist party is refusing to leave. A 48-hour deadline has been issued for the Sadrists to leave. The Sadrists have said they have begun to leave the premises and will be out of the buildings today. . . .
Faiz Mohammed, 41, who lives in Hayaniyah, said, "We feel safer now."
In a news conference, the Iranian ambassador to Iraq said his government supported Maliki's recent Basra offensive, saying the Iraqi government has a right to target "criminal groups." But the ambassador, Hassan Kazemi Qomi, said the U.S. military operations in Sadr City were ill-conceived.
"The American forces bombed the homes of innocent people," he said. "Many people are also being forced to leave their homes." The U.S. military said it targets fighters, not civilians.
Qomi's remarks are sure to renew speculation about the ties between Iran and both the Sadrists and the Maliki-led government. His strong endorsement of the Basra operation suggests that Iran may be choosing sides in the Shiite-on-Shiite fighting. It may also bolster the view of some Iraqis that Iran, which the United States has accused of supplying Sadrists with weapons, no longer supports Sadr as strongly as it once did.
Saturday, April 5, 2008
Let’s Not Confuse The Narrative With Facts
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) warned Army Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker on Thursday not to "put a shine on recent events” in Iraq when they testify before Congress next week. Read the whole story at the Politico. I love this one. This spin actually came from Sadr himself on March 21. The MSM liked it enough to pick it up and run with it, presenting it as their own sage analysis. The MSM has been playing this up for years. They found in Sadr an anti-American that they can throw their arms around and pump up as the true voice of Iraq. The fact that there is a democratically elected government reflecting the will of the people – and that Sadr neither leads it, nor holds more than 10% of the seats in the Parliament – is merely an unimportant and ancillary fact for them. Sadr’s forces got decimated by the U.S. in 2004. When 2007 rolled around and the surge began, the U.S. was explicitly targeting Sadr. He ran for Iran while his remaining militia melted away – but for those who were working directly for Iran. Sadr’s “ceasefire” merely put a spin on what was already reality. Yes, the WaPo actually printed that verdict. And others on the left have embraced and duly celebrated this alledged victory over the U.S. and its allies. I can’t wait to hear Petraeus on this one. This is actually how things are supposed to function as the Iraqi military stands up. They do not have any functioning air combat units yet. So they do the grunt work, we support from the air and provide a strategic reserve with our own grunts. Calling this weakness shows just how utterly clueless are our MSM. They really should be given at least a course on the military before they try to report on it. About 4% of the Iraqi forces in Basra deserted or underperformed. Given the great concern about infiltration of those forces with Mahdi Army members and given that the brigade with the most desertions had literally just come out of basic training, I’d say this overall is pretty good. It certainly suggests that there is much less infiltration than has been feared. Lolllllllllll . . . . this is a good one. After six days of fighting, Sadr unilaterally orders a cease fire and makes demands, Maliki accepts the cease fire, ignores the demands and continues operations in Basra. Whose face was saved again? Could it be that the Iraqis are getting pissed about Iran’s continued deadly meddling in their country and had a heart to heart talk with the Qods Force Commander? I don’t know what was said in the meeting in Tehran – and neither do those speculating in the MSM or the halls of Congress. What we do know is the end result - that Iran and its proxy Sadr seem to have gotten nothing out of this ceasefire but a chance to live to another day. Harry Reid so loves that “civil war” mantra - reality be damned. I am far more inclined to agree with Kimberly Kagan. What we just saw in Basra was not simply the government retaking its territory from criminal thugs, it was the first shots of the Second Iran Iraq War.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi warns David Petraeus and Ryan Crocker not to mess with her narrative on Basra. One wonders if she is certifiable yet?
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Wow. Pelosi has her narrative and does not want to hear any dissent from these two government servants, Gen. Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker, during their testimony before Congress slated for 8 and 9 April. If a Republican issued a similar warning to a witness before a hearing, we'd never hear the end of it. Anyone tired of the double standard yet?
“I hope we don’t hear any glorification of what happened in Basra,” said Pelosi, referring to a recent military offensive against Shiite militants in the city led by the Iraqi government and supported by U.S. forces.
Although powerful Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr agreed to a ceasefire after six days of fighting, Pelosi wondered why the U.S. was caught off guard by the offensive and questioned how the ceasefire was achieved, saying the terms were "probably dictated from Iran.”
“We have to know the real ground truths of what is happening there, not put a shine on events because of a resolution that looks less violent when in fact it has been dictated by al-Sadr, who can grant or withhold that call for violence,” Pelosi said.
So let’s flush out that the likely contours of Speaker Pelosi’s narrative just a tad, since the MSM has been playing this one to the hilt for the past week, and various Democrats have been weighing in:
1. The offensive was a partisan political dispute with PM Maliki allied with the SIIC against a powerful Shia political rival.
2. Sadr is a national political figure with wide appeal.
3. The violence is down in Iraq because of Sadr’s ceasefire. Maliki’s move foolishly threatened that ceasefire. Sadr can turn on or turn off the violence in Iraq at his whim. The U.S. cannot control the violence.
4. The Iraqi military lost in the conflict Maliki started. Sadr won.
5. Calling on U.S. air power shows that the Iraqi military is weak.
6. There were mass desertions from the Iraqi forces during the fighting.
7. Sadr’s offer of a cease fire was a “face saving measure” for Maliki
8. Iran won also, as the most important power broker, able to influence Sadr.
9. And my personal favorite, from Harry Reid, is that the Basra offensive is proof that “our troops mired in an endless civil war."
Now, correct me if I am wrong, but wasn’t one of the benchmarks a requirement to disarm the militias? And do you think that maybe Maliki’s willingness to take on Sadr might not improve his standing as a nationalist leader and earn a great deal of trust among the Sunnis and Kurds? And hasn't reoncilliation been a word ever on the tip of Pelosi's forked tounge?
No matter. Let’s go down the narrative:1. The offensive was a partisan political dispute with PM Maliki allied with the SIIC against a powerful Shia political rival.
The fact that Basra is Iraq’s only port city and its economic lifeline were apparently unimportant. It appears to equally have passed by our Democratic leaders and the MSM that Basra was under the control of Sadrist criminal gangs who were running it like their own personal cash cow while using ever more violence, murder and intimidation to impose an Iranian style mini-theocracy on the city. Obviously, none of these would be reasonable justifications for an offensive to establish government control.2. Sadr is a national political figure with wide appeal.
Sadr has precious little appeal, he is a tool of Iran – and indeed, his militia is a creation of Iran on the lines of Hezbollah – and his ideology is the establishment of a Shia theocracy in Iraq along the lines of Iran. Every place his militia has held sway, they impose Islamic law to go along with their criminal enterprises and reign of thuggery. If you want to see his appeal, check on the DOD or at the Long War Journal on April 10 to see how much support there was among the 20+ million Iraqi Shia for the million man march Sadr has called to be held in Baghdad on April 9.3. The violence is down in Iraq because of Sadr’s ceasefire. Maliki’s move foolishly threatened that ceasefire. Sadr can turn on or turn off the violence in Iraq at his whim. The U.S. cannot control the violence.
Maliki’s Basra offensive led the Sadrists to rise up in all of the areas that they control. And by March 29, but for Basra, the Sadrists were defeated in each of those areas - Hillah, Kut, Karbala, Najaf, Diwaniyah, Nasiriyah, and Amarah. And the U.S. secured Baghdad’s Sadr City.
I question just how much violence Sadr can create beyond that happening right now as a result of Iran’s use of Sadr and his militia as their own private proxy forces.4. The Iraqi military lost in the conflict Maliki started. Sadr won.
Yet, when the conflict ended six days after it had begun, the Iraqi government was in control of Basra and had replaced militia control of the port with military control. Sadr’s forces were indoors as the Iraq Army marched through all of Basra, conducting raids for Mahdi Army commanders wanted for criminal activities. So explain again, how did Sadr win?5. Calling on U.S. air power was a sign of weakness of the Iraqi Army.
6. There were mass desertions from the Iraqi forces during the fighting.
7. Sadr’s offer of a cease fire was a “face saving measure” for Maliki.
8. Iran won also, as the most important power broker, able to influence Sadr.
The more telling thing is that Iran holds what may be a high degree of influence over Sadr and his militia. That is an indictment of both Iran and Sadr.
9. And my personal favorite, from Harry Reid, is that the Basra offensive is proof that “our troops mired in an endless civil war."
At any rate, so much for Pelosi and her narrative. You know, the thing of it is, after watching Pelosi in action throughout her time in the House of Representatives, I honestly believe that there is no such thing as objective reality for her. She presents as a woman so deeply invested in partisanship that, for her, spin is reality. And given the position she holds, that reality is frightening indeed.
Friday, April 4, 2008
Assumptions & Conclusions About Sadr, Maliki and the Basra Offensive
Two of my fellow Watcher's Council members, Dave Schuler at the Glittering Eye and Rick Moran at Right Wing Nuthouse, have written thorough and thoughtful posts on Basra and the many implications and ramifications surrounding the Iraqi offensive there. Dave is concerned with whether Maliki’s actions are partisan and involving us in a "civil war" type of scenario while Rick Moran, viewing the situation similarly, is finding it more difficult to justify remaining in Iraq.
I am taking the rare tack of crafting a responsive post because I think it is impossible to overstate the benefits of establishing a democratic and stable Iraq while, conversely, I think it equally impossible to overstate the costs of withdraw, leaving the country to be dominated by Iran and ripe for reinfiltration by al Qaeda. Within that rubric, some of the assumptions and conclusions stated in their posts are, I believe, fundamentally flawed and give a skewed view of a situation too critical to ignore.
Updates made based on the Congressional testimony of Gen. Petraeus and Amb. Crocker are included below.
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As a threshold matter, let me state that this post is a very respectful dissent. Both Dave and Rick Moran are exceptional bloggers and both have written excellent posts on Iraq which you can find here and here respectively. I have provided a summary of areas of disagreement below with detailed explanations following.
Summary
1. The meme that Maliki’s actions to retake Basra were based on partisan politics is Sadrist propaganda parroted by our MSM. To the contrary, the situation shows the necessity of Maliki’s actions, that this offensive had been in the planning stages months before a provincial election law was passed, and that the offensive was wholly consistent with Maliki’s long stated intentions to retake Basra.
2. Sadr is not a national figure who enjoys broad support. Nor is he an individual with whom we can or should enter into a devil’s bargain.
3. The other major Shia militia – the Badr Organization - cannot be equated to Sadr’s Mahdi Army.
4. Drawing an inference that the Iraqi Army is weak from six days of fighting in Basra, or that the Mahdi Army is strong, is wholly unwarranted.
5. There are no facts upon which the Basra Offensive can be characterized as a victory for Sadr or a strengthening of his position.
6. The potential problems of the Kurdish north have long been known and are being addressed, but the largest problem is not al Qaeda in those areas.
7. The claim that Maliki Is "divider" who is "pursuing power for his coalition at the expense of other Shia parties and the Sunni minority" is an assertion with no reasonable basis in fact.
8. The long term threats to Iraq justifying continued American presence are not limited to al Qaeda.
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Explanation:
1. The meme that Maliki’s actions to retake Basra were based on partisan politics is Sadrist propaganda parroted by our MSM. To the contrary, the situation shows the necessity of Maliki’s actions, that this offensive had been in the planning stages for months before a provincial election law was passed, and that the offensive was wholly consistent with Maliki’s long stated intentions to retake Basra.
Both Dave and Rick portray Maliki’s action in attempting to assert control over Basra as having its origins in partisan politics. That is, I think, very much buying into the spin being put on the Basra operations started by Sadr and parroted by the MSM. It is palpably wrong.
Basra is a large city with a population estimated at 1.7 million people. It is Iraq’s economic center, home to two-thirds of Iraq's oil resources, Iraq’s only major port, and its sole dependable outlet for exporting oil. Britain was tasked with overseeing Basra following the March, 2003 invasion – and they failed utterly.
By 2005, Basra was already in the hands of the "militias," and in particular Sadr’s Mahdi Army. This 2005 article from CSM documents how Sadr’s militia in particular was imposing a rule in Basra with ever "increasing similarity to the repressive Iranian theocracy." This similarity came complete with torture and beheadings for singing, dancing, walking about without Iranian hijab, etc. A note here that these are in the same vein as charges regularly leveled against Sadr and his militia in other areas where they have held sway, such as Karbala. And on a second note, in all the reports that I have read of "militia" violence since July, 2006, the only militia that has ultimately been identified in any of the reports as specifically having committed any of the violence is Sadr’s Mahdi militia.
At any rate, by the time the British finally retreated in disgrace a few months ago, the militias fully occupied the power vacuum in Basra. The Iraqi government did not control Basra, and it descended into a gangland with the militias involved in incredibly lucrative illegal activities arising from control of the port. And, much like you see in southern Lebanon with Hezbollah and Nasrallah, billboards and posters "glorifying Mr. Sadr's fighters [were] everywhere in the city." A NYT article in February documented the many problems in Basra as it had further degenerated following the British retreat:
. . . Disappearances of doctors, teachers and other professionals are common, . . . Murder victims include judicial investigators, politicians and tribal sheiks. One especially disturbing trend is the slaying of at least 100 women in the last year, according to the police. The Iraqi authorities have blamed Shiite militiamen for many of those killing, saying the militants had probably deemed the women to be impious.
. . . Two dozen Shiite political parties and their respective militias compete, often violently, over control of the oil sector, seaport profits, smuggling operations across the nearby Iranian border and political authority over Iraq’s economic nerve center. So while the sectarian tension that has marred life elsewhere is missing here, the strife itself is not.
. . . Iraq’s security forces are the most conspicuous example of the tension between politics and violence in Basra, and the aptly named Serious Crimes Unit of the Basra Police is perhaps the most egregious example. The British Army determined that the unit was a death squad linked to Shiite militias and dispatched Warrior tanks in December 2006 to pound the rogue force’s headquarters to rubble.
But Iraqi arrest warrants for the unit’s members have never been executed. A warrant issued by Iraq’s Interior Ministry last month singles out . . . Abu Muslim, and accuses him of orchestrating kidnappings, torture and assassinations while leading the police unit. . . .
Mr. Abu Muslim escaped the 2006 British assault and . . . is receiving protection from high-level members of the Mahdi Army, the armed militia of Mr. Sadr. The cleric on Friday extended a cease-fire declaration he had imposed on his militiamen in August, but Mr. Ratel said the militia’s domination of the Basra police is a kind of loophole.
Reported killings peaked in May, when 112 people were murdered. By December killings had declined to 38, finishing 2007 with a total of 848 known homicides. Basra also had 383 reported kidnappings in 2007, according to official provincial tallies.
Because Mr. Sadr’s followers boycotted the 2004 elections that established the local government, they lack official representation in the local council. The Mahdi Army has compensated for its lack of official authority in Basra by pushing for jobs for Sadr followers in major government sectors, including health, oil, the port and education. Militia elements have also established protection rackets, ransom schemes and smuggling operations, according to American and Iraqi officials.
The militia has had the most success stacking Basra’s security forces.
. . . Sheik Ribat, in the interview at his mosque, said he spent an inordinate amount of time negotiating with militia-affiliated policemen who had kidnapped Iraqi Army soldiers for ransom. He has assisted the release of at least 50 soldiers since the British transfer of authority, he said.
"The police can kidnap the soldiers because the soldiers are not militia, and so they are scared," he said. . . .
Gen. Mohan Fahad al-Fraji . . . worries about the . . . existential threat of the militia-packed police force. He acknowledged that they routinely kidnapped his soldiers. He also complained of militias within his own force.
"Seventy percent of the army is pure," he said. "The other 30 percent, I don’t know. The militias are like a smoldering fire. They can explode at any time."
Jaleel Khalaf, a police general, believes that his own men are trying to kill him. The general . . . recounted the 10 assassination attempts he had survived since he started his job in July. He blames militia-affiliated policemen for some of those attempts, most of which were bomb attacks.
General Khalaf said his main challenge was to professionalize the police force and root out corruption. But he acknowledged that serious problems remained beyond his control. When he took over last year he said he discovered that 250 police cars and 5,000 pistols had been stolen by Basra’s various Shiite political parties and that they were being used by militia death squads.
And General Khalaf criticized his police colleagues who "came to their jobs poor, and are now very rich." . . .
Read the entire article.
The basic duties of government are to exercise control of its territory and to provide security for its inhabitants. The government was doing neither in Basra – which was particularly critical given its singular importance to Iraq’s economy. Indeed, as part of the aforementioned duties, a government needs to have a monopoly on the use of force within its borders. The alternative is Lebanon, where external countries, Syria and Iran, dominate the country through their proxy, Hezbollah. Clearly, Maliki had a right and duty to attempt to wrest control of Basra, and the dominant gang and criminal enterprise in Basra was Sadr’s Mahdi militia.
Maliki’s first action in this regard was to appoint Jaleel Khalaf to head the police in Basra in February, 2007 with a mandate was to get the militias out of the police and retake the city from the militias. By October, having survived numerous assassination attempts, Khalaf told al Jazeera that Basra was completely under control of the militias and that he could not complete his mission.
Malki’s second action was to begin to build forces near Basra to take part in the assault. The bulk of the forces involved were military units. That build-up of Iraqi forces began in July, 2007. As of December the Iraqi Army deployed four brigades (of 3 to 5 battalions each) and an Iraqi Special Operations Forces battalion in Basrah province. The Iraqi National Police deployed two additional battalions to the province. Maliki’s government clearly intended to assault Basra and establish government control long before the March offensive. This from the CS Monitor in December:
"The British legacy in Basra is criminal gangs, a corrupt and infiltrated police force, and borders open to all," says a senior Iraqi Army official in the province, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of his remarks. "We are planning an operation to pursue these death squads."
The official says such an offensive would require at least two more Iraqi Army brigades in addition to the three brigades now in Basra under the command of Lt. Gen. Mohan Hafidh, who was appointed by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. The current police chief, Maj. Gen. Jalil Khalaf, was also appointed by Mr. Maliki in a bid to wrest control of a province that is home to the bulk of Iraq's vital oil reserves and its only seaports.
Sadr, on March 21, was the first to cast the Basra offensive as a partisan political move involving Maliki teaming with SIIC to obtain some sort of political capital prior to provincial elections. Since picking up and running with enemy propaganda is one of the things our MSM does best, that is how this move has been cast since. It is pure bull. Maliki needed to assert control over his country's economic center and sole port. The offensive had been in the works for months, long before any date for provincial elections had been set. Sadr's propaganda and the speculation of the MSM that Maliki's Basra offensive was driven by partisan politics does not survive even a cursory examination.
2. Sadr is not a national figure who enjoys broad support. Nor is he an individual with whom we can or should enter into a devil’s bargain.
Sadr presents a clear and present threat to the vision of a functioning democracy in Iraq. His goals and vision for Iraq together with his association with Iran can hardly be called a nationalist platform with appeal to many Iraqis, and viewing him as an integral part of the political process in Iraq misapprehends the current situation.
At the start of the U.S. invasion in 2003, Sadr was a low level cleric who had inherited a strong following among poor Shia because of his grandfather and father, both of whom were assassinated by Saddam Hussein. Their popularity was predicated on being the voice of the Shia’s poor and, ironically, on their separation from Iran. It is important to note that in March, 2003, the "Mahdi Militia" did not exist. It was formed in the months following the U.S. invasion by a combination of Sadr, Iran and the now deceased uber-terrorist, Imad Mugineyah. Iran financed it, armed it while Mugineyah oversaw the training and established an organizational structure set along the lines of Lebanon’s Hezbollah.
In 2004, Sadr and his movement tried to oust the U.S. from Iraq, and Sadr headquartered his militia inside of the Mosque of the Golden Dome, one of Shia Islam’s holiest sites, and as important to Shia’s as Mecca and Medina is to Sunnis. The U.S. destroyed Sadr’s militia in a month of fighting, capturing a significant number of Iranians along the way, and literally was at the gates of the Mosque. The U.S. did not enter the mosque, and did not fire upon it, and indeed, made a clear decision to allow Sadr to walk out of the Mosque with his heart still beating. Sadr, for his part, promised that he would enter the political realm as an alternative to his attempt at uprising. In other words, there was a deliberate decision not to make Sadr a martyr. In that regards, I am unsure why Rick assumed that we need to kill Sadr. We do need to defang his movement, and but for Iran, that has largely happened already.
Sadr’s continuing popularity among Shia after the 2004 uprising was far more grounded in practical reality than in religious beliefs. It was predicated in large measure on providing services to the Shia community, compliments of Iranian funding, - a technique Iran has used with exceptional effect in Lebanon with Hezbollah and in Gaza with Hamas. But the most important thing that Sadr provided was protection against Sunni terrorists that neither the government, nor our forces with their "small footprint" strategy at the time, could provide. In return, in those areas that Sadr controlled, he imposed an Iranian style regime, with all its heavy handedness and emphasis on adherence to Islamic precepts.
It is worth noting here, both as to Sadr and the other five major Shia religious parties, that in the national elections that were held in 2005, at the height of their popularity and with Sunni’s abstaining from the vote, the six Shia Islamic parties garnered only 40% of the vote. As it stands now, Sadr holds slightly over 10% of the seats in Parliament and SIIC holds about 15%. What course Iraq eventually takes will be decided by the 75% of the other parliamentary members, particularly as to the issue of federalism. Both SIIC and Sadr combined can in no way impose their will on the country – except by the gun. The few stories that have looked at their popularity today has found that many who originally supported the religious parties are now against them and plan to register their discontent at the next election.
In 2006, Iraq’s Shias were finally goaded into deadly action with the bombing of the Mosque of the Golden Dome. Both Sadr’s militia and the Badr Brigade viciously responded. But by the middle of 2006, that battle was over and the Shia had clearly won. While the Badr organization reigned in, Sadr’s militias did not. They were heavily involved in seeking to cleanse large regions of Sunni’s with "death squads." A portion of Sadr’s militia was co-opted directly by Iran and began working directly for the Qods Force outside of Sadr’s control.
Sadr’s popularity waned as the need for protection from al Qaeda terrorists lessened and his militia become identified as the leading perpetrators of sectarian violence. The Sadrist ministers in the government became infamous for their sectarian activity, and two are now under indictment for murder. Moreover, the people living in Sadrist controlled areas suffered under the dual heavy hand of both an Iranian style theocracy and militias that were becoming ever more to resemble Chicago era gangsters of the 1920’s.
When the U.S. announced the surge, it was with two enemies in the cross-hairs. The first was, of course, al Qaeda. The second was explicitly Sadr’s militias. Once it became clear that Sadr would not enjoy further protection from the Maliki government, he left for Iran.
It should also be noted that the Sadrist's, until defending at Basra, have not engaged in open warfare against U.S. troops or the newly formed Iraqi military since being decimated in 2004. Indeed, much is made today of Sadr's calls for a cease fire as being a large part of declining violence. But that itself is spin. Sadr's militias went underground in January, 2007, in response to the announcement of the surge, long before Sadr called for a "cease fire." Sadr’s “ceasefire” issued during the summer of 2007 merely put a spin on what was already reality.
Update: The testimony of Amb. Crocker indicates that the cease fire may not be mere spin as regards those Sadr forces outside of direct Iranian control. He states that the cease fire order has made a meaningful difference to the reduction in violence.
Little noted, but I think highly indicative of just how far Sadr's fortunes had waned among Iraqis was his call in March, 2007 for a massive million man march on Najaf to show support for his cause. The march on Najaf only drew between 5,000 and 7,000 people according to U.S. military observers. As one officer opined at the time, support for Sadr was "a mile wide and an inch deep."
Update: According to Amb. Crocker, Sadr's popularity has suffered significantly because of his association with Iran and the connection of his militia to gangsterism and violence.
Sadr’s vision has always been the establishment of an Iranian style theocracy in Iraq, presumably with himself as the Supreme Guide. He has been very open about this, as in this video of his most recent interview with al Jazeera a few days ago, and he is in Iran studying to be an Ayatollah under the uniquely Iranian polical-religious ideology that requires Shia clerical rule – i.e., a theocracy.
Some background here is appropriate. Almost since the Shia tradition began with the Mohammed’s cousin, Ali, well over a millenium ago, the Shia clerics have practiced what has become known as the quietest school. This means that the clerics have stayed out of politics. It is the tradition followed by the highest ranking cleric in Iraq, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani. He has staunchly refused to become embroiled in Iraq’s burgeoning political questions. For but one example, Sistani explicitly refused to involve himself in passing on political proposals for de-baathification that would open the way for Sunnis to retake positions in government.
This traditional school is completely at odds with Iran's theocracy. Khomeini shredded the traditional principles of apolitical Shia'ism when he established a clerical regime in Iran following the 1979 revolution. Indeed, according to the Middle East Institute, Sistani's belief in apolitical Shia'sm presents "a serious threat to Iran’s Islamic Republic."
Khomeini’s philosophy justifying this break with a millenium of tradition is called the velyat-al-faqi, It requires clerical rule over government – i.e., a theocracy. Sadr is now studying to become an ayatollah. The philosophy he is studying is not under Sistani, but rather he is in Iran studying to get his religious bona fides in the ideology of the velyat-al-faqi.
And thus it is no surprise that Iran duly supports Sadr and his militia with arms and money. Indeed, according to Amir Taheri, a native Iranian who rights often about Iraq and Iran, the Qods force was deeply involved in the preparation and leadership of the Sadr forces in the recent offensive. Kimberly Kagan, writing at the WSJ and surveying the degree of Iran’s involvement with Sadr's forces in Basra, termed the offensive as the Second Iran Iraq War.
And if you get your news from the MSM, it is no wonder that you would think Sadr enjoys broad support. The NYT has fawned over Sadr since 2004, when he came out strongly opposed to the U.S. presence in Iraq. The Washington Post has been no better. Sadr’s strength at this point is from criminal gangs using his banner to enrich themselves and from largesse supplied by Iran. So long as we do not make him a martyr, given the lack of support, he can be dealt with over time.
3. The other major Shia militia – the Badr Organization - cannot be equated to Sadr’s Mahdi Army.
One of the bench marks voiced by President Bush over a year ago was that PM Maliki needed to move to disarm the militias in Iraq. There are two primary militias, the Mahdi Militia of Sadr (likely 20,000 under arms) and the "Badr" organization of the Supreme Counsel of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), now renamed the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC) (likely about 10,000 under arms.) Of these two, there is simply no comparison in their activities, and Maliki would have to be insane to start disarming SIIC rather than Sadr.
SCIRI was originally a resistance organization formed in the 1990's by Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir al Hakim. Al Hakim had fled to Iran to escape a death sentence from Saddam Hussein. With Iran’s support, Hakim built the political organization, SCIRI, and the "Badr Brigade." Anyone viewing the situation in 2003 would likely conclude that SCIRI was an Iranian proxy along the lines of Hezbollah. Events since 2003 have proven otherwise.
SCIRI joined Iraq's political process following the 2003 invasion. While the Badr Brigade pledged to disarm, they did not do so, claiming they needed their weapons for self defense. Nonetheless, SCIRI has not engaged in the extreme anti-American rhetoric of Sadr, nor have they engaged in any sort of major hostilities with coalition forces. Actually, to the contrary, they have assisted coalition forces in several notable instances, though the slate is not clean. The Badr Brigades played a significant role in reprisal attacks against Sunnis in the months following the bombing of the Golden Mosque.
Unlike with Sadr’s militia, there is no evidence of any ongoing role by the Badr organization in sectarian violence after the start of the surge. Nor is there evidence of attacks against the coalition forces. Nor have I heard any evidence that the Badr Brigade is implicated in the mayhem and gangsterism associated with the Mahdi militia and "special groups." Politically, the SCIRI has proven far more pragmatic then its religious origins and relationship to Iran's brand of Khomeinist political Shia'ism would lead one to project. Indeed, in December, 2006, in order to stop the havoc caused by the ever increasing sectarian attacks being carried out by the Sadr militia, SCIRI reached across the aisle to Sunni and Kurdish legislators to discuss the possibility of forming a coalition government that would isolate Sadr and his 30 member bloc in Parliament. This may well have been a critical event in moving Prime Minister Maliki to break with Sadr and support the counterinsurgency effort that today sees Sadr hiding in Iran while the U.S. military and Iraqi forces operate daily within Sadr City.
Since then, the SCIRI has made a much cleaner break with the Iranian theocracy. In May, 207, the SCIRI changed its name to the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC), refuted its pledge of loyalty to Iran’s Supreme Guide, Ayatollah Khamenei, and instead pledged loyalty to Iraq’s Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani. If you read my vignette on the quietist school above, it will be clear just how significant that it. The Badr organization and SIIC may be political rivals of Sadr, but they do not pose the existential threat to Iraqi democracy that Sadr and his Iranian proxy force pose.
4. Drawing an inference that the Iraqi Army is weak from six days of fighting in Basra, or that the Mahdi Army is strong, is wholly unwarranted.
The six day offensive in Basra resulted in significant casualties for Sadr’s militia, though little in the way of actual gains in Basra before Sadr offered to call off the fight. The various lessons drawn from this have been that the Iraqi Army is weak and that it cannot stand up on its own because they called for U.S. air support. Both conclusions are wholly unwarranted.
There are basically two types of ground warfare – maneuver and attrition. Wide open terrain means the lightening fast "maneuver" warfare of Gulf War I, where our forces were around and behind Iraqi forces before they knew we were there. It’s the warfare of Rommel’s blitzkrieg and Patton’s march to the Rhine, with large armored columns running at top speed. Constricted terrain means warfare of attrition where a handful can hold off the many. The 300 Sparatans at Thermopolye defended a front of only 200 meters, and thus could hold off well over 100,000 Persians for a period of days. There is a reason Switzerland has never been successfully invaded in the last millenium. In mountain passes, a platoon can easily hold off a brigade. In attrition warfare, the pace is very slow.
The worst terrain from an attacker’s point of view is a large city. In the military, its referred to as MOUT – military operations on urban terrain. It is a multidimensional battlefield ranging from sewers to skyscrapers with virtually unlimited cover and concealment for defenders. In large cities, such as in Russia during WWII, the Germany military lost entire divisions in MOUT operations, and that was even with a willingness to destroy the infrastructure and total unconcern with civilian casualties.
Basra is a highly developed city of 1.7 million people. That is a large city. The Sadrists were defending, they had knowledge of the impending offensive months in advance and fortified defenses, and they were supported with Iranian heavy weaponry, if not field leadership. The Iraqi government was not out to level the infrastructure nor to break the will of the people through causing civilian casualties. Expecting the Iraqi government forces to cake walk over the Sadrists in a period of six days in that scenario is just incredibly unrealistic – just as it is unrealistic to walk away with any sort of inflated belief in the strength of Sadr’s militia. In that type of environment, six weeks after initial contact would likely be a point where one could make assessments about the strength of the Iraqi Army or the strength and sustainability of Sadr’s militia – certainly not six days.
It is equally incorrect to draw the conclusion that the Iraqi Army is weak because they called upon support from U.S. air assets. Air assets are combat multipliers critical to modern warfare. The Iraqi army is standing up, but their air assets are far from being viable. With that in mind, the whole concept at this point is that Americans would support operations while Iraqis took the lead. That is precisely what happened in Basra. They did the grunt work, we supported from the air as needed. Portraying Iraqi’s calling on our air assets as somehow indicative of the army’s weakness is wholly unwarranted.
There are several conclusions that can be gleaned from the offensive. Clearly it was started with insufficient intelligence and, as a result, poor tactical planning or the Iraqi military would not be admitting to surprise at the degree of resistance that they met in their initial assaults. Two, it seems clear that the Army needed more forces at the start of the assault. Three, and possibly most importantly, was Maliki personally playing general. A political leader directing the nuances of a battle is almost inevitably an invitation to disaster. When this offensive is ultimately dissected, I expect Maliki will come in for a great deal of well deserved criticism for that.
5. There are no facts upon which the Basra Offensive can be characterized as a victory for Sadr or a strengthening of his position.
Update: According to the testimony of General Petraeus before Congress on April 8, the Basra offensive was not a defeat for Maliki. The Iraqi government now control the ports in Basra and is conducting on-going operations in that city aimed at the "special groups." The Iraqi military performance in Basra was uneven, partly becasue of poor planning. The Iraqi military successfully quelled Sadrist uprisings in all other cities.
Claiming the outcome of the Basra offensive as anything other than a tactical defeat for Sadr ignores the reality both of the offensive and the aftermath. The government went into Basra in order to establish government control over the city. The militias do not control Basra today, the government does. And most importantly, the government controls Basra's port. True the government has not destroyed Sadr’s militia, but it did not need to do so. And the media's speculation about the offensive spiraling into mass hostilities have proven groundless. Indeed, outside of Basra, in each location where the Mahdi militia rose up to challenge the Iraqi government, the Iraqi government won - Hillah, Kut, Karbala, Najaf, Diwaniyah, Nasiriyah, and Amarah. And the U.S. secured Baghdad’s Sadr City.
The Iraqi Army are, at this moment, continuing operations, going into every section of the Basra hunting for wanted criminals – the majority of whom are Mahdi Army members. This in fact was what the offensive was originally intended to do. Army soldiers now control Iraq's port, having replaced all of the port's "security forces" that were, in reality, highly corrupt militia forces. The Army is conducting house to house searches for weapons. The Mahdi Army suffered significant casualties over the six days of fighting – "571 Mahdi Army fighters have been killed, 881 have been wounded, 490 have been captured, and 30 have surrendered . . . "
Sadr did not order his fighters to stand down because they were winning. Both Time Magazine and Bill Roggio reported that the high casualties, inability to resupply - the Army sealed the border with Iran - and low morale gave rise to Sadr’s call for a cease fire. To claim that Sadr won something out of this exchange is simply not justified on these facts.
Nibras Kazini, an Iraqi native and now visiting scholar at the Hudson Institute, puts the Basra offensive and its ramifications in perspective:
The ‘Intifada’ That Wasn’t
I won that wager. I had written that "the Iraqi Army’s military operation in Basra will be a spectacular win against disorder and Iranian influence". And I was right.Of course, most western media outlets are declaring Muqtada al-Sadr and Iran as the victors of Operation Cavalry Charge. Nothing could be furthest from the truth.The United Alliance List delegation comprising Ali al-Adib of the Da’awa Party, Hadi al-Ameri of the Badr Organization and (I think…) Qasim al-Sahlani representing a group that had splintered from the Da’awa Party, evidently made al-Sadr an offer he couldn’t refuse when they sat down for a friendly chat in Tehran two days ago: the Iraqi state was willing to go all the way in smashing the Sadrist movement—arresting all the leaders and shutting down all the offices—if he didn’t play along with Operation Cavalry Charge and hand over those operatives whose names appear on the wanted lists.
. . . Maliki went to Basra with a long-ish list of names comprising all those involved in oil smuggling, drug dealing and the various other crimes that have wracked Basra. It just so happens that many of them claim to be Mahdi Army commanders.This is what I wrote a couple of days ago:The Mahdi Army in Basra is only an army in the sense that ‘soldiers’ and ‘cappos’ are rankings in the Cosa Nostra. These organized crime cartels serve many purposes, chief among which is getting rich quick. There’s ample opportunity for mischief in Basra and plenty to pilfer and smuggle: oil, arms, drugs, and whatever happens to fall off a truck leaving the port, after the truck itself had been "re-routed". So there’s plenty of money and very little law enforcement—kind of like that Scorsese movie, Gangs of New York. Maliki made the calculation that he can take on these cartels and withstand the wrath of the other affiliated Mafiosi ‘familias’ that got unleashed in other parts of Iraq. The criminal syndicate knows that once Operation Cavalry Charge squashes their sweet set-up in Basra, then other pockets of criminality are going to be next, so that’s why they are going to the mattresses.
Well, so far several dozen of these Most Wanted folks have been killed, while tens of others are wounded or in hiding. At least 50 of them are under arrest. The outbreak of violence in places other than Basra was an occasion for the Iraqi Army and police to act on arrest warrants that have been outstanding since 2004, for example, several such dangerous outlaws were taken into custody in Karbala and Hillah.The only complaints that I heard today came from people who were disappointed that Maliki did not go for the kill: he did not snuff out the Sadrist movement from Iraqi politics. . . . What is incredibly interesting about this extremist sentiment is that such voices actually now think that Maliki and the Iraqi state have the wherewithal to do such as thing as outlaw the Sadrist movement and smash it. . . .
Maliki was a political nobody before he ‘accidentally’ became Prime Minister almost two years ago, but today he is perceived as a statesman commanding a strong and motivated army that can impose law and order on once-powerful forces that have run amuck. If that’s not a benchmark of success, then what is?The western media operating in Iraq regurgitated the Mahdi Army’s bravado as fact thereby serving as useful propaganda tools for the criminal cartels. I’d single out the New York Times, the Associated Press, McClatchy and CNN as the worst transgressors. Many journalists were positively orgasmic in anticipation of another ‘intifada’ or uprising to crease Bush’s message of hope and regeneration. But as the dust began to clear and the real scope of the battle was revealed, . . .
What then did these journalists do when they didn’t get their ‘intifada’? They couldn’t further imperil their careers by admitting that they were wrong—hell no!—so they’ve decided to brand Maliki and the Iraqi Army as the losers.
. . . Maliki won, pure and simple. The western media invented the narrative that Maliki was at war with the Sadrist movement, even though no such declaration was ever made. No one was interested in turning the Sadrists into martyrs when their stocks are sinking faster than Bear Stearns' anyway. Why turn the Sadrists into desperadoes with nothing to loose? Maliki’s approach is piece-meal: he’s taken out the intimidation factor that kept much of the Sadrist sway in place and he’s done that by showing them that they are no armed match for a better-disciplined, better-supplied Iraqi Army with plenty of stamina. The Sadrists are left with some political gains that they’ve accrued from joining the political process, such as government posts and lucrative contracts that they’d be loathe to part with and that’s their collateral for good behavior from now on.
. . . Now the Sadrist will have to sway voters their way with words and entreaties, rather than threats and drills. Most of the crime cartels are also on notice that the days of the ‘Wild, Wild South’ are over and there’s a new sheriff in town.Some problems will persist, but their severity had been significantly staunched. Maliki has promised to keep arresting the names on his list, and he has demonstrated that he’s a man who means what he says. The NYTimes does not have much of circulation in Iraq and almost nobody watches CNN, so maybe that’s why the regular folks I’ve been speaking to are so admiring of Maliki. The political elite in Baghdad is freaked out by Maliki’s newfound stature and they must all go back to the drawing boards to recalculate this new dynamic in the political equation. . . .
Read the entire post. As an aside, you will note that I had a native Iraqi translator as my guest last week. He is a secular Shia. His take on Maliki, and the views of his family and Baghdad that he reported, were similar to Mr. Kazini’s.
Update: And now Maliki has called on Sadr to disband his militia or be kept out of the political process. According to Amb. Crocker, this is actually a statutory provision of existing Iraqi law and applies to all political parties that have militias. Maliki is promising to enforce this provision and is receiving very broad based political support for that decision.
6. The potential problems of the Kurdish north have long been known and are being addressed, but the largest problem is not al Qaeda in those areas.
Kurds are mostly Sunni, but they are not Arab and few Kurds have been caught up in cooperation with al Qaeda. The al Qaeda penetration of Mosul and Kirkuk has been among former Baathists who were moved into those traditionally Kurdish cities by Saddam Hussein as part of a deliberate design to extend his hold over them.
Al Qaeda is being driven out of those areas by continuing operations of the surge. By all accounts, al Qaeda has been driven to these last redoubts and is strategically defeated in Iraq. Al Qaeda in those cities cannot be ignored, but their presence there does not indicate some new threat.
There is a problem with the Kurdish north, but it is the separatism being pushed by one faction of Kurds led by their regional governor, Massoud Barzani. He has dreams of a de facto Kurdish state has pushed hard to that end. The U.S. has been bringing political pressure to bear, and has also been cooperating with Turkey to allow cross border raids against the Kurdish PKK – a terrorist that seeks Kurdish independence for the Kurdish population that extends from Turkey, through Iraq and into Iran. Turkey has threatened to invade if the Kurds secede from Iraq. And the U.S. has been playing the Turkey card for the past four months in what is clearly a political signal to Barzani.
But the Kurds are hardly united on this. Iraq’s President, Jalal Talibani, is the other major Kurdish factional leader. He has cast his lot with the Iraqi government and does not support Barzani’s separatist agenda.
Update: According to Amb. Crocker, playing the "Turkey card" has been very effective in convincing the seperatist Barzani faction to embrace their Iraqi identity over dreams of a Kurdish state.
7. The Claim That Maliki Is "divider" who is "pursuing power for his coalition at the expense of other Shia parties and the Sunni minority" is an assertion with no reasonable basis in fact.
Rick Moran seems to rely on Maliki’s Basra offensive as the proof for this assertion, but I have already addressed that in Par. 1 above. None-the-less, Rick states that the "assumption" that Maliki could unite the country "has been slipping away for months." I do not think that reflects reality.
In September’s briefing to Congress, Ryan Crocker and General Petraeus spoke approvingly and at length of the efforts Maliki was making, within the limits of the power of his office, to unite the country and bring the Sunnis into the governmental fold. Since then, Maliki has overseen the passage of the de-Baathification law and the provincial election law. As Bill Rogio recently observed in one of a series of articles analyzing Iraqi politics:
While Americans and Iraqis still note significant flaws in Maliki’s leadership, many believe it has improved over the past year, citing his willingness to prosecute rogue elements (Shia as well as Sunni) outside of and within the government, and decisions on reconciliation and security issues that have caused political discord, including the various defections from his government coalition. At least one Iraqi politician offers more unqualified praise."Give Maliki a lot of credit for not looking at the polls, as they say in the US," said Entifadh K. Qanbar, former Deputy Military Attaché for Iraq and former member of the Iraqi National Congress, a political party. "He makes decisions that might not be popular at first, but [later] people start to realize he’s a strong man who does not get dragged left and right by people threatening him. Maliki is probably not an intellectual, but he’s a street guy, he knows [politics] well."
. . . While divisive politics and naked sectarian interest receive most of the blame for Iraq’s political inertia, government inefficiency, corruption, and administrative inexperience arguably pose larger problems.
Read the article.
Maliki has in many ways guided Iraq through one potential crisis after another since he took office. Indeed, his progress with his young government - it will not be two years old until May 20 - I find amazing. And there is much more on Maliki here from Amir Taheri.
Update: According to Ambassador Crocker's April 8 testimony, in large measure because of the Basra operation, Maliki has gained significant stature among all Iraqis for his willingness to take on all criminal elements, irrespective of their sect.
8. The long term threats to Iraq justifying continued American presence are not limited to al Qaeda.
Certainly, keeping al Qaeda out of Iraq is, as Rick Moran notes, a significant justification for maintaining a presence in Iraq. But it is far from the only one.
Update: According to the Congressional testimony of General Petraeus, the biggest problem now is Iran's attempts to "Lebanonize" Iraq, creating an Iraqi "Hezbollah" militia beholden to Iran that dominates the Shia portion of Iraq. Iran's training, funding and arming of "special groups" culled from Sadr's Mahdi Militia is the primary vehicle for that strategy. Within the past month, this has become both completely clear and a point of great concern for the Iraqi government. Also, taking control of Iraq remains al Qaeda's ultimate goal, and that if we leave Iraq precipitously, we can expect al Qaeda to make a resurgance and we can expect Iran to make a determined effort to dominate the Shia portion of Iraq. Allowing this to happen would drastically effect our national security.
Iran’s theocracy has always been the most significant long term threat to Iraq. The theocracy desires to spread its influence and control into Iraq, it does not want a functioning democracy in Iraq, and it does not want the legitimacy of its theocracy challenged by a democratic government next door that honors the millenium old Shia practice of quietism. And, of course, Iran does not want the U.S. on its borders. As Kimberly Kagan observed in the WSJ the other day:
Iran now causes the majority of the violence and instability in Iraq, a trend that began in July 2007, according to U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, when U.S. and Iraqi military offensives swept al Qaeda from its safe havens around Baghdad.
Read the article. Iran’s theocracy, on the verge of becoming nuclear armed and capable of supplying terrorists with materials to conduct nuclear terrorism against U.S. and Western targets, is potentially an existential threat. In the long term, focusing on al Qaeda to the exclusion of Iran misperceives the real contours of our national security threats.
Moreover, the draconian regimes of the Middle East are petri dishes for Islamic radicalism. Bush, in discussing the reasons to invade Iraq in 2003, stated several goals, the most important of which, as I believed then and now, was to establish an Arab democracy in the Middle East that would act as an examplar to stimulate change throughout the region. That reasoning was valid in 2003, and its validity has not diminished, though the price we are paying for it has become ever more dear in five years.
Sunday, March 30, 2008
Analyzing & Spinning The Offensive in Basra
The most intense fighting in Iraq in months had the ring of the familiar. Another battle against followers of a rebel Shiite cleric. Fighting in the south that spread to other cities. Read the entire article. The MSM will continue to try and spin this in the upcoming month, but there is no question the Iraqi army and the U.S. will prevail in the effort both in Basra and to any other areas in which the Sadrists rise up. A second decimation of the Sadrists will hurt Iranian interestes - and that is indeed very good for the long term peace and security of Iraq. It will mean that when this offensive is concluded in 30 or 60 or 90 days, Iraq will be a safer place indeed - and the Iraqi central government will have established its bona fides in a way only taking on the Sadrists could establish.
The Basra Offensive will not reignite major hostilities in Iraq and to call the Iraqi Army "bogged down" in Basra just a few days into the Iraqi government's offensive to retake the city is ridiculous.
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Much of the MSM is trying to shoehorn the Iraqi offensive against Sadr - and its spillover outside Basra - into its anti-war meme that Iraq is a quagmire, etc. To the contrary, it is absolutely necessary both to take control of Iraq's major port city and to exert control over their country. The offensive in Basra is necessary to bring peace to the country, and it is doubtful that Sadr will long risk open warfare again with the U.S.
Sadr, if you will recall, made a powerplay in 2004, seeking to defeat the U.S. in an uprising against U.S. forces that ended with the decimation of his Mahdi Army in Najaf in 2004. Sadr reconstituted a militia with support from Iran. In 2006, following al Qaeda in Iraq's bombing of the Mosque of the Golden Dome, Sadr’s forces, heavilly supported by Iran, engaged in a brutal campaign against Sunnis that led Iraq to the brink of civil war and gave a large part of the impetus for the surge. Indeed, it is clear that Iran is attempting to set up Sadr's Mahdi militia along the lines of Hezbollah and duplicate Iran's control of Iraq much as they control Lebanon.
Fifteen months ago, our MSM was speculating that Maliki would not authorize any action against Shia militias - and in particular Sadr's miitias - that were almost as problematic as al Qaeda. PM Maliki was portrayed as beholden to Sadr and, indeed, he had protected Sadr's militia from U.S. offensives. The NYT continued to harp on that meme long after it became apparent that Maliki had broken with Sadr and had come to view Sadr as a major obstacle towards governing Iraq.
Sadr, for his part, pulled back from any direct confrontation with U.S. forces during the surge. He has, however, made a bid for control of several cities in the south, with the most important being Basra. The British never exerted real control over the city, and their withdraw led to a complete vaccum that the various Shia militias attempted to fill. This was much more along the lines of gangland warfare to control the crime in 1920's Chicago than anything else - it was a campaign of assassinations and intimidation with the prize being control of Iraq's major port and the truckloads of cash that could be skimmed from the theft and blackmarket sales of oil. A recent NYT article provides an excellent and thorough review of the situation in Basra as of February of this year.
Now you have much of the MSM attempting to claim that the battle in Basra has returned Iraq back to open warfare and that, because Iraqi forces have not yet cleared the city of Basra five days after the offensive began, the offensive in Basra has stalled and the Iraqi military is losing. Both are ridiculous claims.
As to the latter, war is not a video game where the fighing ends in an hour. Offensives to force an enemy from a city - MOUT operations - are arguably the most difficult and time consuming of all military operations. In World War II, MOUT operations ate up entire divisions over a period of months. In Vietnam, during the TET offensive, it took nearly thirty days to drive the NVA out of Hue. Proclaiming anything about the Basra offensive after five days shows more than anything that our current crop of journalists lack any military experience and any understanding of military history.
As to the former claim, that the offensive in Basra will ignite much further unrest in Iraq, that ignores the necessity of establishing central government control over Basra and it mispercieves the potential ramifications. This is not 2004 and Sadr is no longer viewed as a bulwark against Sunnis nor a necessity for delivery of services. He does not enjoy large scale support throughout the Shia population. A NYT "news analysis" today, though rife with speculation, nonetheless explains the situation adequately:
But as the week came to a close, it was clear that the current fighting in the southern city of Basra and the clashes in Baghdad had some fundamental differences from the battles in Najaf and Baghdad that plagued the American military in 2004.
For starters, the Shiite rebels are fighting mainly Iraqi soldiers, rather than Americans. Their leader, Moktada al-Sadr, is not defending against attacks from a redoubt inside the country’s most sacred shrine, but is issuing edicts with a tarnished reputation from an undisclosed location, possibly outside the country. And Iraq’s prime minister, a Shiite whom Americans had all but despaired would ever act against militias of his own sect, is taking them on fiercely.
The differences represent a shift in the war, whose early years were punctuated by uprisings against Americans by a vast, devoted group of Mr. Sadr’s followers, who were largely respected by Shiites. As their tactics veered into protection rackets, oil smuggling and other scams, Mr. Sadr’s followers too began to resemble mafia toughs more than religious warriors, splintering and forming their own gangs and networks, many beyond Mr. Sadr’s direct control.
Even some Sadrists seemed to understand the toll their methods were taking on their popular appeal, which has become increasingly important as provincial elections draw near.
. . . Basra residents were groaning under daily assassinations and kidnappings and a wholesale policy of intimidation. By the time the fighting started in Basra on Tuesday, that discontent had spread to a large swath of Iraqi society — including some of its largely Shiite army and police. The shift opened up a space for Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki to move against the Mahdi Army. And while it is far from clear that his effort will succeed — reports of soldier and police surrenders abound — the mere fact that he is trying is new.
. . . [A] strong note of support for Mr. Maliki’s actions could be heard in the words of some Iraqis interviewed this week, who cast his success as crucial to the future of their country.
“If Mahdi Army wins this war, that means Iraqi will be destroyed,” said a Shiite businessman from Baghdad. “That means Moktada will be president and it will be a stick in the eye of the Americans. It will be a religious country, an extreme country.”
The Mahdi Army’s image is considerably changed from 2004, when its members were seen as Shiite Robin Hoods, protecting undefended neighborhoods, helping distribute cooking gas, and standing up to what many Shiites saw as an act of American aggression, when tanks rolled into Sadr City, a Shiite neighborhood in Baghdad. But during the sectarian violence and terror of the ensuing years, the militia began breaking down into a patchwork of groups, some involved in death squads, others in theft and corruption.
A Western official with knowledge of Iraq’s security forces said the current situation differed from earlier stand-offs because the Iraqi Army finally has the resources to take on the militiamen.
The official said Mr. Sadr’s followers “overplayed their hand” and may have fatally damaged his credibility. Mr. Sadr’s lack of control, the official said, has forced Mr. Maliki to act, and to act decisively.
“The militia was indifferent to the cease-fire. They didn’t do what Sadr told them to do, to hold peaceful demonstrations only and no attacks,” he said. “They just didn’t do that, and they’re making him look like he’s out of control.” . . .
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