Sadr and Hashemi both edging toward the door

Talk about volatility. IraqSlogger this morning headlines "AlQaeda on the run?", while CNN trumpets "Sunni demand could unravel Iraqi government." What a day for news!

Naturally these are exaggerations, but the point is that these "collapse" and "on the run" stories are part and parcel of the media fixation on finding a US "exit"-strategy, and soon. If AlQaeda is on the run, then maybe there would be one less argument for "staying". If the current Shiia government is on the verge of collapse, perhaps the next one will be more inclusive and somehow break the quagmire deadlock. Easy enough to debunk both ideas, but the point is this is what we are being fed.

Along with the fixation on US exit-strategy, we have also been fed a steady diet of self-cleansing blame. According to the NYT editorial yesterday, the whole Iraq problem is the result of the do-nothing attitude of the Maliki administration. And the "progressive" blog-jihadis have been at the forefront of this interpretation, dismissing internal UIA political tensions as "theater", describing Sadr as a thug and Sistani as a Mafia figure, all of them driven by narrow self-interest only, and together engaged in deceiving the Americans about the prospects for reconciliation. As if the sole purpose of the Americans in Iraq was to establish peace and tranquillity, like missionaries in a way, so as to be able to "leave" with a clear conscience. Given this, the Qaeda-on-the-run and the government-collapse stories fit in quite nicely. Perhaps enlightenment and inclusiveness will prevail after all! Or all-out civil war! Either way, it will be a good argument for "withdrawal".

Meanwhile, closer to the real world, Sadrists are telling Al-Hayat that Sadr is making efforts to regain his nationalist and resistance credentials, having emissaries talk with Sunni groups outside of Iraq, and trying to engineer a purge of lawless elements in the Mahdi Army. The Sadrist sources say the current is seriously considering exiting from the UIA, as a result of the ongoing dispute over demands for a US withdrawal timetable, and more immediately as a result of disputes over how to replace the Sadrist cabinet ministers who have been pulled from the government by the movement. Sadrists say it now appears SCIRI will be trying to have those positions filled, not with competent and politically neutral technocrats, which was the original idea, but instead with SCIRI partisans. As reported, there have been Badr-Mahdi Army military clashes in the south, probably not unrelated to these political disputes.

The Tariq al-Hashemi interview with CNN is a reflection of the same trend. Hashemi too is bent on trying to salvage some degree of nationalist credibility, saying his decision to participate in this government will have been the "mistake of my life" (if the constitution is not amended, he added). What both Sadr and Hashemi are trying to do is distance themselves from the existing political arrangements, Sadr from the UIA, Hashemi from the Maliki administration. Naturally, the integrity, self-esteem and continued existence of the groups they lead is uppermost, but also, and as part and parcel of that, the preservation of their own reputations and that of their groups as proponents of national unity. And both of them seem to have decided that this has to lie in some other direction than continuing to hope for a government-led reconciliation. That would be the resistance.

Hashemi's Islamic Party is a Muslim Brotherhood offshoot, and the recent report by the AlJazeera bureau chief in Amman (in his Al-Ghad column) referred to the original MB directive that led to this kind of participation in the American-sponsored government as "catastrophic". Hashemi seems to be getting ready to concede that point.