Premonitions of fitna on the eve of Rice's visit

Diyala, with a Sunni-majority population, has a provincial council is dominated by the SupremeCouncil/Kurdish alliance that supports the Maliki administration, and the governor is Shiite. So when the council fired the Diyala police chief recently responding to allegations from the Sunni majority that he was engaged in sectarian anti-Sunni operations, this appeared on its face to be a case of cross-sect accomodation in the elimination of sectarian antagonism. Reidar Visser tells us "the interior ministry was reportedly unhappy with this decision of the provincial council".

And when, in the predawn of Monday to Tuesday of this week (the case widely reported yesterday), Iraqi government special forces raided and ransacked the offices of the governor and killed his secretary, this appeared to be a case of confrontation between Maliki and a provincial governor belonging to one of his main support-parties.

The special forces went on to arrest two individuals--head of the provincial council committee on security and the president of Diyala University--both of whom are Sunni, and an Islamic Party spokesperson blamed Maliki personally for ordering the operation. English language press reports have focused on the latter Sunni-versus-Shiia theme, completely ignoring the indications pointing in the direction of division within the governing coalition. (Reidar Visser sums up these points in a brief note on his website).

There are a couple of other peculiar features of this, introduced by AlHayat this morning in the following way:

The Diyala security situation deteriorated as a result of fighting at the provincial council [offices] where a "special" military security force broke in and killed the secretary of the governor, arrested the head of the [provincial] security committee and ransacked a number of other official buildings, also arresting the president of Diyala University. The Sunni Acord Front said the force was getting its orders directly from Prime Minister Maliki.

And at a time when informed sources said Baghdad is awaiting a visit by US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice in order to move forward the negotiations on a security agreement with Washington, the American army denied any connection with the events in Diyala, and stressed the return to Iraq of senior militia leaders who had fled to Iran during the security operations in Basra and Mosul.

Security sources in Diyala told AlHayat that [Iraqi] army special forces broke in...[and there is a summary of the above noted killing and arrests]. And the governor Raad al-Mulla Jawad condemned the operation and announced at a press conference a three-day suspension of administrative operations in mourning, and he criticized the force that carried out the operation.

So the bare bones of this, according to the AlHayat account, is that on the eve of a visit by Rice to promote the bilateral security agreement, there is a high-profile operation of uncertain origin, that could be seen as a trigger for re-igniting Sunni-Shiia fitna, and that the US special forces (which are always involved with Iraqi special forces in this kind of operation, as several people have noted) denied any involvement in this one.

Continuing with the AlHayat account:

The Deputy Governor announced yesterday that Maliki has ordered formation of a ministerial committee to investigate the events. The Accord Front laid the responsibility on Maliki, comparing the "special forces" with the "death squads" that have carried out killings and kidnappings dressed in the uniforms of the police and the army. An Accord spokesperson, Salim al-Jubburi, told AlHayat she despises the operations that have been created in Diyala by forces said to have an exclusive relationship with the Prime Minister. She said these operations remind us of the chaos that used to be prevalent, and that will remain an obstacle to the success of the [current] operation "harbingers of the good" in the province of Diyala.

And the journalist explains:

Forces dressed in the uniforms of the police and the army carried out killings and kidnappings on the streets of Baghdad in 2006 and 2007. And the American forces formed a special group that was linked to them [linked to the aforementioned forces dressed in official uniforms] which they called "Brigade 36" but which was popularly called "the dirty tasks group". And some sources draw a link between these [current] events and those groups. But the American army yesterday denied any connection with the events at the provincial government buildings, and spokesman Abdullatif Ryan said the operation was done without the knowledge or assistance of the coalition forces that were nearby.

Prior to these events, no one had mentioned any special force linked to the Prime Minister, but on Sunday [a day before these events] the Iraqi Islamic Party did call for the dissolution of all units special to the Prime Minister and their incorporation into the Interior and Defense Ministries. These developments come a day after Lt General Lloyd Austin, the number two in the American military lineup, said he expects the return of Shiite militia leaders who fled to Iran for training, and who make a habit of disrupting stability.