Maliki to opposition political bloc: Shut up or we will prosecute you too

Prime Minister Maliki gave his reponse on Wednesday to the cross-party group of legislators that conducted a sit-in in Sadr City on Sunday and demanded and end to the fighting and an investigation of human rights abuses. Maliki told them the attacks in Sadr City will continue until the Mahdi Army is disarmed and dissolved (this is the first time Maliki has openly said that is the aim); he associated the Mahdi Army with AlQaeda and others as groups to be terminated; he said nothing about the Badr organization; he told the legislators it is they who are are responsible for the prolongation of the fighting; and in not-so-thinly veiled terms he threatened the legislators, telling them that if they continue to object, they could be charged with inciting to violence and fitna.

The remarks were made during a Baghdad press-conference Wednesday April 30. Here are the key points in the AlJazeera summary of what he said:

"The final objective", Maliki said, "which we will not desist from, is the disarming of the militias and the dissolution of the Mahdi Army, and the Islamic Army, and the Army of Omar, and the termination of AlQaeda". He said this will be the final solution and the gateway to security and stability for the political process.

Maliki accused the Mahdi Army of being a group of outlaws, and of taking human hostages during the Sadr City fighting. [This could be in view of the fact that the latest post-March25 death toll is 925*, not around 400 as previously reported. So there needs to be spin for that].

Maliki said "they use the lies and the morals of the prior Saddam regime, and I know that they strike electrical facilities, prevent [the delivery of] food..." [and so on and so forth].

And he defined [says this very respectful-sounding AlJazeera report] the government's conditions respecting the attempts undertaken by a number of blocs and parties and political personalities to end the security tension connected with these armed operations. He explained that these conditions include: dissolution of the militias and no intervention in the affairs of the state or its patrols or its institutions or ministries; no establishment of tribunals and no intervention in the security apparatus; turning over of wanted persons and coooperation with the state in prosecuting them.

And Maliki threatened the voices of those within the system who criticize the government's military operations against armed groups, and he accused them of being instigators stirring up the state, adding: "These people--whether they are members of parliament or members of political blocs or parties, or [even] members of the government, who are not hesitant about stirring up fitna--these people will bear the responsibility". The Prime Minister said: "I say to them: Be patient because the affair will come to an end, and the judiciary is available, because it is you who are pouring oil on the fires and fanning the flames of fitna."

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* 925 was reported on Wednesday as the death-toll for Sadr City, but Azzaman on Thursday describes the figure as for Sadr City and Basra together, and AlHayat also implies it could be a global figure for the period since the campaign started on March 25.

Sadr City info-ops

Colonel Stover said it was with the greatest regret and the highest level of professionalism that his gallant men yesterday fired a "200-pound guided rocket that [American] officials said killed 28 militiamen." After all, he said, "It was these militants who initiated the engagement by attacking US soldiers." Iraqi officials said those killed weren't all militiamen, and included nine civilians including women and children, but Stover was not at a loss for words there either: He said, "The enemy shows little regard for the lives of innocent civilians, as they fire their weapons from within houses, alleyways and rooftops upon our soldiers." Just so you know: The American forces show the highest level of professionalism, but when they do fire on houses, alleyways or rooftops, it is because people in those houses and alleyways, and on those roofs, were the aggressors, not the American troops.

Residents said there were also two helicopter airstrikes which heavily damaged four houses, and AFP said it has photos showing several bodies buried under the debris of collapsed houses. Stover denied that. He said the sandstorm made it impossible to conduct airstrikes. Possibly the truth is that sandstorms made it impossible to conduct airstrikes with the usual level of precision-guided professionalism.

The best part of Stover's mental orientation is that he thinks the US forces are actually more loyal to Sadr than the militants who are firing on them. As AFP explains: "The US military says those fighting its troops are not loyal to Sadr, who has frozen the activities of his Mahdi Army militia since last August." The implication being that the US forces in Sadr City are not only merely defending their legitimate positions when fired upon by the aggressors, but also are helping Sadr enforce the freeze!

In fact, when you look at the whole information-picture you will see that the US forces in a sense do not know that they are a reviled army of occupation. They think they are a highly professional peace-keeping force. Which is perhaps not that unusual: Probably any army of occupation, no matter how brutal, is made to believe something like that, though maybe not to this level of hypocrisy.

The truly amazing thing, however, is that the American people, and by and large the American left, seem to believe the same thing. US forces are defending legitimate positions in Sadr City; anyone firing on US forces is defying Sadr; the US only fires when attacked; the aims are either "quelling violence" or "stopping rocket attacks" (or both), and have nothing to do with crushing a major anti-occupation movement. And so on. In other words: This is a peace-keeping operation.

Is this a case of info-ops originally designed for local battlefield morale (the enemy are common criminals, etc) being re-imported into the United States and massively misleading the American electorate? Or was misleading the electorate the original purpose? Who cares? But just because this question of original intent is so irrelevant, it has earned a place in the white-collar policy salons, where the issue of the Big Lie is known to the so-called "public diplomacy practitioners" as "strategic communications" (meaning public-media lying for strategic national aims). As you can see via the following link, there has been something of a discussion about this question whether or not it is possible to keep the lying overseas, and not have it come back and corrupt the purity of the American democracy.

That seems to be at least partly what is happening here. But it is election season, and among the Democratic groupies a big part of the internal policy struggle is to out-maneuver others to the right. Consider this from Marc Lynch:

Unlike many public diplomacy scholars and practitioners, I have no principled objection to strategic communications and agree that they have an important place in national strategy.

His specific examples have to do with demoralizing AlQaeda, which is a very fashionable conversation topic these days. But try this: Think about the Sadr City attacks, and the fact that Lynch himself and the rest of the food-chain under him are completely silent about the war-crimes implications and the long-term political implications of these attacks, and while you are thinking about that, read this:

It's one thing to "fabricate stories" [he's talking specifically about AQ, but think about the Sadr City issue here]... It's another when such information operation stories then filter back into our domestic policy debates or into the policy-making process, (or, worse yet, if shaping the domestic arena is actually the point--but that's a slightly different set of issues).

It's what they call a thumb-sucker, and there apparently are going to be whole seminars on this question of large-scale, public lying for purported national-interest reasons.

Meanwhile the damage in Sadr City is already being done, and it will get worse, if we can't find people with the courage to stand up and say this is a policy that is as damaging to America morally as it is brutal to its direct victims, and the Democrats shouldn't be silently lining up behind it.

Sunni parliamentarian: "Sadr City attacks are killing mostly unarmed civilians" (UPDATED)

A member of the Iraqi Accord Front (biggest Sunni bloc in parliament) Ahmed Radhi, who was in Sadr City on Sunday as part of the multi-party sit-in, repeated yesterday the call to implement the group's demands for an end to the crisis, and he said: "The majority of those who are being killed are civilians, and not armed persons."

And another Sunni deputy, Mustafa al-Heeti, from the Iraqi Dialogue Front, said at a press conference with other members of that group: "I urge an end to the military operations, an adoption of the language of dialogue, and an prompt meeting of the council (government executive committee, the so-called three plus one) in order to end the military operations."

Both statements are reported by Aswat al Iraq.

Rather than any easing, there was a dramatic escalation in military operations in Sadr City, where US forces intervened in one case with Abrams tanks, killing 22, and in another case with airstrikes killing 16. (See this summary in AlHayat, among many other accounts). *

And at the same time, the GreenZone and US accusations against Iran have taken on a new stridency. For instance, AlHayat reminds readers that US officials have said the Sadr City campaign is against "special groups" of criminals that are supported by Iran. And here's how Azzaman leads its main story this morning: "Armed groups linked to Iran took advangage of the bad weather for the third time, launching a round of self-propelled Katyusha rockets at various locations in the Green Zone..."

So along with (1) signs of domestic political solidarity against the attacks on Sadr City; and (2) dramatic military escalation in Sadr City; there is also (3) a sharper framing of this as a struggle between Iraq on the one side, and Iranian proxies on the other.

It's worth trying to keep the overall picture in mind, because there is a tendency not only in the corporate media, but in the Washington-based commentary as well, to talk exclusively about the third point, to the almost complete exclusion of the first two. As if America, politically and militarily, was some kind of a passive bystander.

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* Update to Tuesday evening Baghdad time: VOI quotes a medical source who said in the period from 11 am to 6 pm Tuesday April 29, US forces shelled sectors 10 and 11 of Sadr City, causing 24 deaths and 60 injuries. The medical source said most of the victims were women and children. And everyone is silent.

More on how the American forces keep the pot boiling: The view from Baquba

Local civic and tribal leaders in Baquba, capital of Diyala province northeast of Baghdad, accuse the US of trying to promote and revive sectarian and racial divisions in the region, rather than working for stability. They say the main tool the Americans are currently using is the arrest of persons in Shiite areas on charges--often malicious charges--of belonging to the Mahdi Army (one tribal leader complaining that the charge of belonging to the Mahdi Army today is just like the charge of belonging to the Dawa party under Saddam), and then turning the areas over to "popular committees" composed of American-armed fighters formerly loyal to takfiiri organizations. An AlHayat journalist explains:

Civic notables and tribal sheikhs in Baquba accuse the American forces of using a double standard in dealing with the security situation in the city, where a Sunni militia loyal to them [meaning loyal to the American forces] controls most of the areas and neighborhoods, while [in Shiite areas] arrests continue of members of the Mahdi Army loyal to the Shiite leader Moqtada al-Sadr.

Sheikh Abdullah Salam al-Hamidawi, one of the leaders of the Hamidat tribe in Diyala, told AlHayat: "The arrest operations that are being carried out by the occupation forces in [various parts of the province of Diyala], on charges of belonging to the Mahdi Army, have as their aim the summoning-up [he means the promotion] of new armed formations, and consequently the keeping of the security situation in a state of uncertainty in Baquba, and the stirring up of sectarian and racial differences." He added that "The arrests are not based on the well-known legal basis, but rather are based on malicious accusations by agents of the American forces. And most of the people being arrested are people who have fled to Baldruz (one of the Diyala-province districts in question) to escape the terror of AlQaeda.

Sheikh Asaf al-Saadi [another tribal leader] said: "The charges of belonging to the Mahdi Army have become just like the charges of belonging to the Dawa Party under Saddam Hussein". And he urged the Iraqi forces to follow local and district [leadership] rather than following the American Forces, which are trying to instigate them by every possible way and means, not to mention their ignorance of the concepts and traditions of the Arab tribes.

So the first point has to do with arbitrary arrests of persons on often trumped-up charges of belonging to the Mahdi Army, with Iraqi forces following the lead of the Americans in this, rather than having regard to local requirements and circumstances. This AlHayat piece is headed: "Baquba: Tribal sheikhs accuse the Americans of turning over Shiite areas to "popular committees". So the next question is: What are these "popular committees", and why do these tribal leaders say they are an American instrument for promoting instability?

The final paragraph says this:

[A security source] who asked that his name not e disclosed said: "The security situation in Diyala has ecome fragile since the permission for armed-group members who were formerly loyal to AlQaeda to take over and control certain areas in spite of the existence of the Awakening Councils. He warned that once these militias armed by the Americans are able to control these majority-Shiite areas, the result will be a return to sectarian hatred and assassinations and kidnappings. The security source said there have already been official turnovers of control from the Americans to so-called "Popular Committees" of [some of these majority-Shiite areas], a process facilitated by having popular-committee people hired by the provincial security apparatus.

Cross-party group called for a human-rights investigation into the Sadr City attacks

There has been unusually blatant mis-representation of the parliamentary sit-in in Sadr City yesterday in the corporate media and elsewhere, the gist of the media strategy being to leave out three key points.

(1) The group included members of every major parliamentary political party except for the Supreme Council, and the Dawa Party, which are the main Shiite parties supporting the Maliki administration.

(2) The delegation, in its final statement, called not only for an end to the military operations against Sadr City, and a lifting of the blockade. It also called for an investigation into the human-rights violations that Sadr City residents have been subjected to.

(3) The delegation said the government should coordinate with the Sadrist organization in any arrest operations it wants to carry out in Sadr City, rather than attacking them.

AlQabas writes:

An Iraqi parliamentary delegation visited Sadr City yesterday and demanded of Maliki that he "end the military operations and lift the blockade of the City, stressing the need for an investigation into the violations that have been perpetrated on against human rights."

In their final statement, after meeting with Sadr trend officials and deputies in the Sadr office in the City, the members demanded that the government and the American forces work toward "stopping their military operations and raids in Sadr City".

And the delegation, which was missing representation from the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council and the Dawa Party, to which Maliki belongs, demanded "coordination with the Sadr trend in operations for the arrest of wanted persons in the City.

The reasons for leaving out the demand for a human-rights investigation is clear. It is the same reason that led to non-reporting of the cluster-bomb allegation and minimal reporting of the whole program of airstrikes in this densely populated area.

The reason for leaving out the point about the composition of the group is also fairly clear. It indicates a degree of broad-based support for the Sadrist trend, even among the other GreenZone parties, in the face of Sadr's declaration of open war against the occupation. This raises that not only is the Sadr-on-the-ropes theme not right, but that conversely, the Americans' GreenZone political-party support could be starting to erode.

As for leaving out the part about coordinating with the Sadr trend in law-enforcement in Sadr City, the point is basically the same. Sadr has called for solidarity among Iraqis and a halting of bloodshed, and this is would be a logical application of that principle.

I won't waste time showing the various types of misrepresentation in the various media accounts, except to note that wonderful McClatchy also participated in this, leaving out the demand for a human-rights investigation, and reporting point (3) above as an agreement to work together "for the removal of insurgents and weapons from the area". They arbitrarily added the "insurgents" expression in order to make this look a little like a Sadrist surrender. The actual point was to work together where there are bona fide cases where "wanted persons" are to be arrested.

Miscellaneous (Update: US Forces playing chicken with parliamentary group?

(1)

There is an article on this in AlHayat this morning, but the site seems to be unavailable right now, so I'll cite this right from the horse's mouth, so to speak. The Baath-party website al-moharrer.net says Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, head of the main or loyalist wing of the party (described by AlHayat as still the "main" wing of the party, as opposed to the breakaway group headed by Ahmed Yunis al-Ahmed) paid a visit to Wasit province April 10, the fifth anniversary of the American invasion, where he met with tribal and military leaders that are in his camp. His statement to these group-leaders is published in an English-language version by the al-moharrer.net website (just click on "English" at the upper left corner of the main page), but for some reason I don't see it in Arabic, which is why I was hoping to cite the AlHayat report. In any event, the statement is there to read. He calls for "jihad, jihad, and then jihad, in order to oust the enemy and force him to withdraw, covered with humiliation and defeat, and draped in ignominy, shame, infamy and dishonor." Which is Izzat Ibrahim's way of saying he doesn't think much of the ex-Baathists that have been holding talks with the Americans.

(Comparing in a very broad way the appeals of Sadr and of Izzat Ibrahim, it is noteworthy that Izzat Ibrahim is being very strictly institutional, stressing the "reinstatement" of the Iraqi army, and the historic roots of that institution and so on, as the specific guarantor, so to speak, of the unity of Iraq. Sadr, whose expressed aims are the same--expelling the occupier, no compromise with foreign intervention of any kind--when he says "we" he refers of course primarily to "the followers of Al Sadr" (and he refers to the history of suffering and "patience" just as Izzat Ibrahim refers to the history of glorious triumphs), but Sadr is careful to broaden his appeal to include, for instance, the members of the government security services, and what he called in his latest statement "the honorable resistance"--clearly alluding to the Sunni resistance. For now I merely point out that there is a difference in the breadth of the appeal. Harith al-Dhari, speaking to the Islamist resistance groups, has clearly been trying to broaden his appeal in his own way, but I don't think we have heard from him lately (since the announcement of the Awakening/political initiative anyway).

(2)

A group of over 50 parliamentarians staged a sit-in in Sadr City to demand the lifting of the siege on that city, and the attacks on it*. They said if normality isn't restored they will do the same again on Monday. Voices of Iraq takes the trouble to point out that the group included not only Sadrist members of parliament, but also two members representing Sunni groups, the IAF and the Dialogue Front, along with one representing the (remains of the) United Iraqi Alliance.

What is particularly noteworthy here is that no one at the Democratic-party, or center-left, or progressive end of the political spectrum in America has had even one word to say in condemnation of the American policy of blockade and airstrikes against this densely-populated urban area. And as I noted earlier, this includes in particular the two people who are most looked-to for guidance in this, messrs Cole and Lynch, both of whom have conspicuously declined to say anything about this. It's possible they are constrained by relationships of one kind or another with US government people or institutions. If they have conflicts they should disclose what they are. Already too many people assume the Democrats will just continue the universally-reviled policies of the current regime. You'd think these experts would want to show something different.

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* A commenter reminded me to check with the AlMalaf version, which originally estimated the group at around 80, but later in the day settled on 50, same as YOI, with this additional information: "A Sadrist member of the group, Maha Al-Douri, said American planes dropped munitions on Sadr City during the sit-in, in spite of the presence of the members of parliament in Sadr City". AlMalaf, which is a traditionally bedrock Sunni-oriented site, describes the sit-in as an attempt "to put a stop to the bloodbaths that are being carried out in Sadr City..." That kind of language, and the presence of Sunni legislators as participants in the group, suggests (to me at least) that if the Sadrists' anti-occupation credibility with Sunnis is an issue, then certainly a continuation of the current barbaric American policy could be just the thing to help clear away that problem.

The same allegations are described as follows in VOI, (which calls the Sadrist member Maha Adel). She told VOI that armored American aircraft "launched a reckless attack on Sadr City" on the eve of the sit-in, and she added that the delegation got to witness the "viciousness of the campaign against Sadr City." She added that they witnessed one Iraqi being shot dead by an American sniper. She said they are going to report what they have witnessed to parliament, and possibly conduct a second sit-in in Parliament.

Separatist political blocs favor a national draft !

It was reported yesterday that a Supreme Council member of parliament (who is also the head of the Badr Organization) called for re-institution of the Law on Compulsory Military Service--in fact he claimed, according to the report in Azzaman, that "the state" had already decided on this.

Today Aswat al Iraq reports that other politicians are in favor of this idea too, highlighting statements in support of the idea by Kurdish and Supreme Council members. For instance, they quote one Mohsin al-Saadoun, a member of parliament for the Kurdish bloc, who said a compulsory draft would be the answer to those who claim that the army is sectarian. Al-Saadoun added (in answer to an objection raised in the Azzaman report yesterday) that "a compulsory military service law is referred to in paragraph 9 of the last chapter of the Constitution." He said the Kurdistan alliance supports legislation for establishing a draft, but with "different standards" from those of the prior law (which was abolished five years ago by Bremer).

The other strong advocate of a draft law quoted in this article is a Supreme Council person who is a member of the parliamentary committee on security and defence, one Hasan al-Saneed. He said a Compulsory Military Service law will be legislated in the current legislative session, once it has been studied by the Defense Ministry. And he said the Constutition says such a law is, in his words, "necessary".

However (the VOI journalist goes on), the Defense Ministry thinks a law setting up a draft is "needed in Iraq", it would be difficult to "apply" at the present time. In the words of Mohamed al-Askari, a Ministry adviser, "There has been a discussion of the pros and cons of this law, and we find that it is necessary to enact such a law in Iraq, but that it would be difficult to apply at this stage."

Like the Kurdish and SupremeCouncil politicians, this Defence Ministry spokesperson says "the application of such a law will free us from sectarianism in the army", but as for implementation he says only that it "may be possible in the future". He referred specifically to the lack of adequate facilities for training large numbers, adding "especially considering the present times require a particularly well-trained army." Al-Askari said it is possible to have a scaled service-requirements, for instance exemption for people with bachelors or masters degrees, one-year for people with high school diplomas, one and a half years for middle-school, and two years required service for those having graduated only from elementary school. He said a draft law will be sent to the government once the Defense Ministry is finished studying it.

Deputy says there is proof the US is using cluster bombs in Sadr City

A member of the health and environment committee of the Iraqi legislature, Liqaa Al-Yassin (Sadrist) says Iraqi authorities have medical and forensic proof that the Americans have been using cluster bombs in their air-strikes on Sadr City, the proof being in the form of the type of marks these weapons leave on the bodies of the dead and wounded. According to Wikipedia, anti-personnel bombs are one type of cluster bombs, other types being incendiary, anti-tank, and so on. Anti-personnel, or fragmentation bombs, were widely used in Vietnam. Al-Yassin referred to them as internationally-banned weapons, which surely they are in some basic sense, particularly in this kind of a densely-populated urban area. Wikipedia says: "Cluster bombs are not specifically covered by any international legal instrument, although the general rules of international humanitarian law aimed at protecting civilians apply as they do to the use of all other weapons".

Aswat al Iraq, which is so far the only agency to report on these charges, quotes the US Army mouthpiece as having said: "There is no basis in truth for these charges, because what we are doing in Sadr City is targeting armed groups that are firing rockets at the Green Zone." Doesn't really answer the charge, does it?

The American attacks in Sadr City on Friday, April 25, according to various reports, resulted in 11 dead and 74 wounded. Which to the layman doesn't look that much like a precision attack, does it?

(The Aswat al Iraq English language version of this refers to "fissile bombs", which is a little hard to understand, possibly leading to people overlooking this. The type of bomb in Arabic is "inshitariyya" from a root meaning dividing or splitting, and it can only refer to cluster bombs. If it was an actual fissile bomb, they would have needed only one, and there would be no one there to report on it).

AlJazeera's pro-US shift seen reflected in its misrepresentation of the Sadr statement

BadeelIraq (Iraq alternative), a resistance-oriented site, takes AlJazeera to task for misreporting the purport of the Sadr statement yesterday (see two posts back, Friday April 25), when it reported on its Friday telecast that Sadr had "called on his followers for a truce".

The gist of what Sadr actually conveyed, BadeelIraq points out, was not that at all.

The bottom line of the statement was clearly about bolstering nationalism, and the war against the occupation until liberation, rejection of security agreements with the occupier that are enslaving, inviting the Iraqi army and police to fight alongside them against the occupation. This was an attempt to drive a wedge between the government and its armed forces, building on the precedents of what happened in Basra, when the Iraqi forces refused to fight, and the repeated news of [similar] uneasiness among the Baghdad forces, particularly considering most of the those people [in the Baghdad Iraqi forces] are from Revolution/Sadr City and Shaala.

When AlJazeera reported that this the statement constituted a "call for a truce", the BadeellIraq writer says, "What AlJazeera said and what it intimated, rises to the level of a clear falsehood, propaganda and sectarian bias, inappropriate for any news agency of weight and importance..."

And they reproduce yesterday's entire statement by Sadr, and they link to the Sadrist website where it was posted. It is worth noting that BadeelIraq is not a "Shiite" website by any means, rather it is located somewhere on the secularist end of the Islamist/Sunni/secularist spectrum of traditional resistance-supporters. And what it is doing here is defending Sadr's nationalist position against the distortions of an Americanized AlJazeera.

As far as the basic Sadr-enemy-of-Iraqi-forces theme is concerned, there are of course just as striking illustrations in the English-language reporting of yesterday's message. For instance: "Sadr changes his tune, calls Iraqi forces 'brothers'" (McClatchy). "Iraq's Sadr tells fighters to observe truce" (Reuters). And of course the best of all, with that special sauce, this summary by the friendly blogger: "Muqtada is offering an olive branch to his former ally turned deadly foe, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. Al-Maliki seems in no mood to accept it".

The BadeelIraq writer explains that it is in the Americans' interests to foster sectarian fighting, and to suppress any indications of a common anti-occupation stance. This item is headed up with a mocking image superimposing the pastel-and-music American-owned Radio Sawa logo on top of the AlJazeera logo.

Preparations for the Mosul campaign stalled; Supreme Council wants to reinstate the draft

An Iraqi military official said the preparations for the big campaign in Mosul--described by Maliki as the final and decisive campaign in the pacification of Iraq--are stalled, because the number of police and army troops assembled is insufficient, and they are inadequately equipped. They need at least two more brigades, he said, adding he was hopeful that two brigades currently deployed in Basra and elsewhere in the south would join the Mosul operation. Azzaman, which reports these remarks without naming the official, reminds readers that the Ninawa tribal council has asked that the "protection of Mosul" be put in the hands of local people, and that the army accept local volunteers for this. Otherwise, the provincial council warns, the operation will be a failure.

Meanwhile, says Azzaman, a delegation from Mosul led by provincial governor Duraid Mashmula and including tribal leaders and others, is in Baghdad and has told President Talabani that the situation in Mosul is deteriorating as the security operation is delayed. The reporter puts it like this: "Tension prevails in Mosul, the result of raids being carried out by the government forces, and control of neighborhoods by armed groups, amid delays in the start of the security operation, which was supposed to restore order, and [amid] demands by the locals that the security file be handed over to them".

So the picture is of insufficient government troops, demands by local people to be permitted to handle the situation themselves, and a deteriorating situation as the existing government troops conduct raids and the armed groups control neighborhoods. (This Azzaman piece doesn't take up the Peshmerga issue. Earlier reports have said that one of the ominous features of this standoff is that Sunni Arabs, who are in the majority locally, fear the government's use of Peshmerga troops could make this more of a Kurdish-control issue than a bona fide law-enforcement operation. The Red Crescent has warned of another wave of catastrophic internal migration if the situation deteriorates).

The same Azzaman piece reports remarks by the chairman of the parliamentary committee on security and defence, a Supreme Council deputy by the name of Hadi al-Amari, apparently posted on a Supreme Council website, to the effect that "the state" has decided to revive the Compulsory Military Service Law that was in effect under Saddam and before, with some modifications. The reporter doesn't seem to have gotten the opportunity to question al-Amari about this, so the only elaboration is by way of background: In-principle mandatory service by males over age 18 for a period of 18 months. In particular, there isn't any discussion of the little matter of getting something like this past the legislature. (The journalist does note that the current Iraqi constitution calls for a voluntary army, so presumably a compulsory draft would be unconstitutional. He notes that al-Amari failed to mention that).

The reporter doesn't link these two points together in the text of his article, but the headline makes the connection clear: "Return of compulsory military service in Iraq, and the Mosul campaign is stalled for insufficient forces".

(Lest you think it is only the Arabic sources that make your head spin, consider this: A Pentagon report now says Iraq needs 646,000 troops to cope with what it calls "the insurgency", up from an estimate of only 390,000 troops in a Pentagon report only seven months ago. Moreover, they're not sure what portion of the current payroll is for the dead and AWOL).

Moqtada: Open war against the ocupation "and no other"

A statement by Moqtada alSadr was read out at a mosque in Sadr City on Friday April 25, explaining the meaning of the "open war until liberation" that he warned of in a statement last Saturday.

He begins by praising the followers of Al-Sadr for their patience, denouncing the continuing American attacks in Sadr City and elsewhere, and reminding his followers of their steadfastness in the face of Saddam, and in the two uprisings following the American invasion. But he stresses that the "open war" that he spoke of a week ago refers to war "against the occupier and no other". He reminds his followers that Iraqi security forces were given olive branches and copies of the holy book when they refused to fight against the Sadrists in the recent events in Basra and elsewhere, stressing that this is exemplary for the kind of unifying dynamic that should take place in this resistance to the occupation, as opposed to shedding one another's blood.

And he then turns to the other sectors of Iraqi society:

And at the same time I address all of the government forces, security and otherwise--indeed all of the religious and political forces as well: This open war is between us and the occupier only, and it is incumbent on you that you not intervene in the interests of the occupier, because our aim is to liberate you and to liberate your land from the filth of the occupier. And our government will be one of complete sovereignty, not impaired or doubtful in any way, and there will be no long-term security agreement between it and the occupier, and no matter how war is waged against us, or how much of our blood is shed, we will not permit that agreement, even if some of you are [its] supporters. And we will not accept the division of Iraq or the theft of its riches, or anything but service to the people and distribution of the riches in a manner that is just and equal. And we will not accept attacks on the Iraqi people no matter from what direction or for what reason.

This is in fact the aim of the honorable resistance, which should be our pride and that of all Iraqis--indeed of all Muslims and of all free people throughout the world. And we will not permit the resistance which targets the occupation, without [targeting] Iraqis, to become criminal*, in the way that the destroyer turned pilgrims of the Imam Husayn to crime ...--which god forbid--because jihad is until victory.

You, brothers in the Iraqi army and police, and you, brothers in the Army of the Imam Mahdi: Enough of spilling of [each others'] blood. Concentrate on the infiltrators and the defamed [occupier]. And let us become a single hand for the implementation of justice, and security, and the good, and support for the resistance in all its types, so that Iraq can become a secure and confident Iraq, with respect to its land, with respect to its people, and with respect to its neighbors.

(There are a couple of spots that could no doubt be cleaned up a bit by someone whose mother tongue is Arabic, but I don't think I've actually screwed anything up. But see the footnote below).

The expression "honorable resistance" is the expression some Sunni armed-resistance groups have used to refer to themselves, to distinguish themselves from takfiiris and others who target Iraqis. In other words, it has the same meaning in Sunni circles as Sadr's idea of "open war against the occupier and none other" is intended to have for his followers.

The point of the appeal to the Iraqi security forces is one that I predict will be (intentionally) lost on those who speak to Western audiences. Moqtada's idea is to subvert the government from within by a form of non-violence against the Iraqis who are members of the security forces, together with a declaration of open war until liberation against the actual occupiers, which should be something that everyone can agree to. And he makes a special point of urging followers to support the resistance "in all its types". There will be grey zones. And for the corporate media and others, these grey zones will be the focus of renewed and redoubled efforts to show that civil war is endemic to Iraq, with a view to showing that the continued presence of American troops is the only way of calming the situation.

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* That's the way I read that sentence at first, but nahrainnet.net, which knows better, explains the remark a little differently. In fact it leads its article on this as follows: "[AlSadr] rejected the accusations of government authorities and their allies that call the resistance, which stands against the occupation, "outlaws", and he said, addressing the government: 'Our aim is to liberate you and to liberate your land....' In other words, their reading is that Sadr said he would not allow the Sadrist resistance "to be called" criminal. As for the following clause, it would mean "as the destroyer called the followers of the Imam Husayn criminals... which god forbid, because jihad is until victory. In any event, no matter how you read that sentence, Sadr repeats throughout the statement the prohibition against killing brother Iraqis, so the point is: He rejects both the resistance becoming criminal and he rejects it being called criminal.

A real one

Everyone knows Admiral William Fallon has denied calling General David Petraeus an "ass-kissing little chicken-shit", but it still seems a pretty good summary after a year as Bush's yes-man in Baghdad. Now, "progressive" blogger Spencer Ackerman, writing about Petraeus' promotion to Centcom, says the promotion "reaffirm[s] [Petraeus'] status as his generation's most respected general officer..." Now that's an ass-kissing little chicken-shit.

Killing anti-occupation Shiites seems to be good for Baghdad-Saudi relations, and also for Petraeus' career

It was back in December 2006 that Mamoun Fandy (formerly of Georgetown, USIP and the [James] Baker Institute, among other things, and also a person close to the Saudi king) predicted in an op-ed in a Saudi newspaper that John Abizaid would be fired as Centcom chief and be replaced by David Petraeus. Shortly thereafter Abizaid was fired and Petraeus was appointed, not Centcom chief, but head of Iraq operations. Now he is being appointed Centcom chief. So Fandy was a little off on the timing, but he had the concept right. Let's go back and see why he thought this would happen.

(The following two chunks of text are from a missing-links post dated January 5, 2007, after the firing of Abizaid and the announcement of the Fallon/Petraeus appointments, looking back and quoting from Mamoun Fandy's prediction). Fandy had written:

David Petraeus, or whatever other general takes the place of Abizaid, will have to be a part of the new strategy of the US administration, and will have to be more proactive, and perhaps less diplomatic, in explaining conditions in the field to Washington and to the neighboring states [neighboring Iraq]. We read the leaked Hadley memo that was printed in the New York Times, and that implied changing the head of the Iraqi government. The fact is that stability in Iraq and the region requires change not only in Iraq, but on both sides, that of the government of Iraq and the American administration. Change in Centcom leadership in Qatar is part of the overall change that is required by the new strategic balance.

And what exactly is the strategic change that Fandy was predicting?

The first thing this change will mean is a change in the operating strategy, in the way CentCom deals with the terrorist groups in the region, and there will be two parts to this, military and political. Perhaps we will be seeing more visits [to CentCom] from countries that border Iraq, and from other important countries in the region, looking for the application of security measures to limit entry of terrorists into Iraq, along with a request for an increase in US forces in the region in keeping with the size of the danger. (The italics are mine). And perhaps the new general will see the need for confrontation, and not for discussions, with Iran! (The exclamation point is Fandy's)

(Both of the above chunks of text are my Jan 5 07 rendition of Fandy's Dec 06 predictions)

Why go to the trouble of showing that this Saudi-regime person was right?

For one thing, consider the recent interview remarks of Maliki's national-security adviser Muwaffaq al-Rubaie, (in Asharq alAwsat, as it happens, the same place Fandy's op-eds appear). Rubaie indicated all was not failure at the Kuwait Iraq-neighbors meeting. Rubaie criticized Syria because he said 110 suicide fighters were entering Iraq each month via Syria, and "if the Syrian security apparatus was working seriously on this, they would be able to stop these suicide-fighters from getting to Iraq". He repeated more than once that these people are all coming into Iraq from Syria. And he said the reason Syria wasn't stopping this is political: "They think of stability in Iraq as a victory for democracy and freedoms, and they read that as a victory for the Americans and for the American project in the region."

Rubaie also criticized Iran, but not as an ideological and anti-American, anti-democracy enemy like Syria. He described Iran as having a "complex" strategy, supporting both the Mahdi Army and AlQaeda, with the ultimate aim of seeing a sectarian Shiite regime amenable to Iran, "which isn't going to happen".

By contrast, Rubaie described the relationship with the Saudi regime as "ideal".

[Baghdad and Riyadh] have a hotline, and we will have Iraqi officers stationed in Saudi Arabia, and there will be Saudi officers stationed in Iraq.

So here we have the Saudi-favorite Petraeus finally being promoted to overall regional command, and at the same time a strong and "ideal" (according to Rubaie) security-cooperation relationship between the GreenZone and the Saudi regime.

What held up the development of this relationship, no doubt, was the fact that Maliki had yet to show his "impartiality", and earn Saudi respect, via willingness to kill anti-regime, anti-American Shiites. So to that extent you could say that the post-Hadley-memo process has been productive. Not, of course, in any of the ways that the corporate media or the food-chain people would have had you believe.

GreenZone info-ops people trying to adapt (updated, twice)

There appear to have been a number of adjustments yesterday in the American/Maliki info-ops strategy in Baghdad:

(1) For the first time, the US military gave a daily total for the number of Iraqis it had killed in ground and air attacks in 24 hours in Sadr City: 15, plus another four just to the north for a total of 19, which corresponds exactly with the numbers reported on Sunni-resistance websites. So we can take it that the scale of air and ground attacks in Sadr City is pretty much unchanged (see prior post). (This is only a guess, but possibly the US authorities realized it isn't in their interests to have their daily Shiite-killings being reported mainly on Sunni-resistance websites).

(2) Also for the first time, the Americans said why they are attacking Sadr City in this way: According to AFP, "US commanders have said the aim of intensive operations now under way against Shiite militiamen in Sadr city is to stop the rocket and mortar fire [on the Green zone]," and another US general gave what he said were total numbers of rocket and mortar attacks in recent weeks. He said 82% of the projectiles landing in the Green Zone came from Sadr City. (Take it or leave it: there isn't any supporting evidence or discussion).

(3) Still another US general said the US was appealing to Sadr to use his influence to stop the violence in Baghdad, where 21 people were killed yesterday. This was odd, considering 19 of the 21 casualties were the result of US ground and air attacks on Sadrist areas, so it is a little hard to see what Sadr could do to stop the killing, short of ordering a round of rose-petals and sweets for the American troops. So that particular initiative (reported in a somewhat confusing way in Azzaman, and more clearly on the Sadrist website Nahrainnet.net) didn't make it to the big leagues.

(4) Another info-ops initiative, however, did filter its way up to the big time. AlHayat quotes a named Sadrist leader in Sadr City to the effect Sadrist leaders are meeting in Najaf to discuss the future of the movement and make recommendations to Moqtada al-Sadr. Then he quotes "sources close to the Sadrist trend" who said a group of political and religious leaders in the trend are in favor of dissolving the Mahdi Army, while another group, "mostly military leaders" warn against that and warn of a revolt.*

(5) There were also a couple of interesting conceptual initiatives. If I show you a carton of eggs and tell you that some of them are "special" eggs and some are not; or that some of them are "special" eggs at night and then normal eggs during the day, you will look at me strangely, perhaps thinking me a lunatic of some kind. And at that point I will play my trump card, as Colonel Batchelet did yesterday, when asked about this line of argument.

"These two groups are so amorphous. They cross back and forth between one and another. It is difficult to say who is who," he said.

(6) Finally, political scientists will surely have interesting things to say about the latest Maliki pronouncement about his authority. Following a meeting with David Milliband, foreign secretary representing the birthplace of the Mother of Parliaments, Maliki, whose cabinet includes no Sunnis, no Fadhila, no Sadrists and no Iraqi List people, issued a pronouncement that read in part** as follows:

National Reconciliation has been a success, and We have political and national authorization, via the support and backing which all of the political blocs have offered to take the measures that the Iraqi government has taken.

Meanwhile, a parliamentary delegation visited Sadr City to view the damage, and most blocs were represented, except for the conspicuous absence of any representative of the Supreme Council (political counterpart of the Badr Organization). The Kurdish representative said the government should be more careful about the humanitarian situation. The Iraqi List person said the government is resorting to collective punishment, and this is a very dangerous thing to do because of the repercussions. The delegation recommended lifting the siege on Sadr City. The government replied that there is no siege.

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* You can get a better feel for this in the version reported by the "news"-site alrafedain.net (Supreme Council affiliated, to all appearances), which says the Sadrist trend is preparing to hand over the names of "special groups" people wanted by the Americans, in exchange for a halt to the American attacks. The site says: "And these preparations have reached a critical stage, because these leaders have indicated that they are prepared to sell out their brothers and their own flesh and blood, which is something you only see among the Baathists and the criminals, which is undoubtedly what these people are." Another element of the deal, this site says, is that the Sadrists will promise not to attack the Americans for over a year.

** "Sunnis agree to end boycott, rejoin Iraq government", says the NYT, and the news immediately hit the food-chain via Kevin Drum of Washington Monthly, who reports breathlessly: "Aside from everything else, this seems to be yet another step in the campaign to isolate the Sadrists — now the only significant group completely outside the government [except for the other groups also resisting the American occupation, he means]— and put the Mahdi Army out of business. Is that good news on the stability front, or does it mean that full-scale war with Sadr and his troops is becoming ever more imminent? Or both? Stay tuned." Actually, what the IAF spokesman said was that he will soon be submitting to Maliki a list of proposed IAF cabinet ministers, which will then be presented to Parliament. This is something the IAF has said before, and as even the NYT notes: "the deal [sic] could still fall through." The less fluffed-up Reuters report on this is here.

Sadr City death toll: 400 killed in three weeks, "and everyone is silent"

Such is the disinterest on the part of the controlled media respecting the fighting in Sadr City, that for regular reports on deaths and injuries you have to go to the resistance-oriented yaqen.net, which is a news-site affiliated with the Brigades of the 1920 Revolution, for the daily numbers from the hospitals. It is not that the 1920 Brigades are great admirers of Sadr's strategy (the site calls his recent open-war warning a "tempest in a teapot") but it does pay enough respect and attention to at least keep track of the numbers. These are Iraqis, being killed in attacks led by the Americans.

Its latest report, citing Iraqi police sources who in turn checked with the two big hospitals in Sadr City (Imam Ali and Al-Sadr), yaqen.net says in the 24 hours to Monday morning there were 14 dead and 55 wounded brought to those two hospitals, noting there isn't a breakdown by fighters and non-fighters. Given the recent report about 300 deaths since March 25 (and a commenter says AlJazeera even more recently reported 400 deaths in Sadr City since that date), that would make the daily average somewhere between 10 and 15 reported deaths, and a multiple of that in injuries. Try to imagine what would be the outcry if 10 to 15 Americans were killed in a densely populated urban area for a period of a month and more in a foreign-army assault that included airstrikes.

[Today Wednesday April 23, Sadrist deputy Falah Shansal told Voices of Iraq that at least 400 people have been killed and 1720 others, including women and children wounded in armed confrontations and airstrikes in the three weeks since the US imposed its blockade on the area three weeks ago. That would be around 19 casualties a day and over 80 wounded. He said a parliamentary delegation is studying the humanitarian situation there, and will be reporting to parliament with a view to demanding the lifting of the blockade].

And the amazing thing is that the people, experts and otherwise, whom the left looks to for guidance, are saying nothing critical about this. Perhaps amazing is the wrong word. But you do have to ask yourself: If the Democratic Party policy-groupies can't bring themselves to criticize this, or even to raise the obvious war-crimes issue, then what confidence can you have that a Democratic administration will be appreciably less brutal than the present one ?

Commenter to Juan: Enough!

Beloved blogger Juan Cole was in full flight this morning (Tuesday April 22), explaining that Maliki is attempting to "reduce the power" of the downscale Sadrists, "in favor of his new ally", the upscale Supreme Council, as if this was some kind of a gentrification program. He wrote:

The government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki is attempting to reduce the power of the Sadrist political movement, backed by the Mahdi Army, in favor of his new ally, the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI), headed by Abdul Aziz al-Hakim. Al-Hakim's movement is more middle and upper class and more tied to Iran, while the Sadrists are working class or poor slum dwellers and Iraqi nationalists.

Commenter Christiane, who reads this stuff regularly, finally had enough:

Day after day [she writes], I'm reading you in this blog telling about the deeds (or the non/deeds) of Al'Maliki's government and of internal Iraqi politics, as if Iraq was a free country. In the end, these kind of sentences (like the one above) are misleading. They give the illusion that the Iraqis and their government are free to act as they wishes. But let's be clear, they don't operate in a vacuum : your country and your military, following a decision taken by your twice elected president, has illegally invaded Iraq and is now occupying it. As a result, one can be quite sure that Al' Maliki can't blink or cough without the US acknowledgement and agreement. Since Al'Maliki was chosen thanks to the support of the Sadrists, why would he go after them, if he wasn't pressured to do so by the US ?

The worst scenario for the US and the one they fear the most is if the Sadrists are able to unite with the Sunnis resistance. It's quite clear that the US autorities fears a Sadrists landslide in the next elections and are manoevring in order to prevent it.

And these manoevres, we can be sure, include intimidations and war crimes : you can't bomb a slum home of 3.5Millions inhabitants [or 2.5 million] without at the same time massacring civilians, especially when resistant fighters merge in the population, as is the case in all guerrilla war.

Why the Arab states won't get involved

Abdullah Khalifa Al-Shayji, a political science professor at Kuwait University and a former adviser to the speaker of the Kuwaiti parliament, yesterday summed up the nub of Gulf-region thinking on the question of Iraq, where Condi today is urging more "support" for the Maliki government.

(Others have pointed out that there are many reasons to smile and do nothing, including: (1) Lack of security argues against re-opening embassies, considering there isn't such a thing as a tradition of martyrdom in the diplomatic community; (2) the fact Iraq is "the most corrupt nation on the planet" (Abdulbari Atwan) argues against debt-relief as long as this regime is in power; (3) the fact Bush invaded Iraq against the advise of Gulf leaders argues against rushing in to help him out now that he is trying to slough off responsibility onto others.)

But Shayji focuses on one core point:

It does not appear that the Arab neighbors of Iraq, particularly Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, are desirous of getting involved in the affairs of Iraq, or of supporting the Maliki government, as long as it isn't more representative, for instance it supports some political blocs while Sunni and Shia blocs boycott it, and there are accusations of sectarianism from Iraqi groups and Arab countries.

We do not want to be the party that bears the repercussions of a bitter war that began five years ago or to plunge into the dangerous swamp at this late date....And there is no use talking about opening embassies and sending ambassadors in the absence of a clear political movement towards preparation for anchoring the national interest and reconstruction. There's no sense in drawing up ambitious road-maps for prosperity and stability and security, while the fires are still raging in Iraq. The American researcher Suzanne Maloney spells out the repercussions and the result of the American war on Iraq: "The disastrous Bush policies fostered a sectarian Iraq that has helped empower Iranian hardliners. Rather than serving as an anchor for a new era of stability and American pre-eminence in the Persian Gulf, the new Iraq represents a strategic black hole, bleeding Washington of military resources and political influence while extending Iran's primacy among its neighbors." (Her Brookings report here)

Shayji concludes by talking about the other parts of the region where Iran and the anti-American forces have influence, by way of stressing what a great danger it would be to get involved via Iraq.

But while his discussion, like that of many other Arab commentators, includes the question of Iranian regional influence, and even ends up focusing on it, the point with respect to Iraq is that an occupation that began five years ago with sectarianism, has fostered a government that is still sectarian, and as long as it is sectarian, any intervention "in support of the Maliki administration" would itself have sectarian implications, and that is something the Gulf states very naturally do not want to do.

The Arab commentators are probably too polite to put it this way at least in print, but what this comes down to is the following: Would it really be a good idea for the already-unpopular Arab regimes to support a government that invites US warplanes to carry out airstrikes against its own most densely-populated residential areas? Would this be a genuine feather in their caps and a manifestation of true pan-Arab solidarity?

American commentators, by and large, prefer to draw a veil over the American involvement in current fighting in Iraq--there are no major reports recently on the continuing airstrikes on Sadr City, for instance--and this reflects what seems to be now a bipartisan view: America is basically a mere bystander, trying to help bring quarreling parties together. That being the case, why on earth won't our Arab allies in the region pitch in and do their part, unless it is because of the nefarious Iranian influence. That way the war for continued sectarianism and continued occupation is left out of the picture.

Info-ops in real time

There was a reason Bush thought this current period of time was to be a "defining moment" in his Iraq adventure: it was to be the summing-up and fruition of the year-and-a-half process since his meeting with Maliki in Amman in November 2006 (see the famous Hadley memo for the briefing): Sidelining/eradication of the (Shiite, anti-occupation) Mahdi Army; and in so doing, earning of the support of Arab nations and groups for the Maliki administration ("strong leader", "curbs Shia extremists" and so on).

And one of the celebratory moments was to have been the meeting of the countries neighboring Iraq (and some others) in Kuwait, starting tomorrow. (Attendance at that meeting was the primary reason for Condi being in the region; her excursion to Baghdad was unexpected). This was to have been a celebration of the fact that Arab regions, now more respectful of the Maliki administration, would announce the opening of embassies in the Green Zone, and other fraternal support.

The problem is that the crush-Sadr/earn-Sunni-respect program didn't go as planned. Violence escalated. The Green Zone is under daily rocket and/or mortar attack, and Arab regimes are less likely than ever to open embassies there. Moreover, the story that fighting Sadr equals fighting Iran hasn't really taken hold of the Arab-regime hearts and minds either.

The most important thing to bear in mind is the nature of the original plan--crush or neutralize the Mahdi Army and thereby draw Sunni groups and nations into alliance with Maliki. How far would you have to go in order to achieve the first objective? Could it include risking civil war? And the secondary point is: What will be the actual nature of the Sunni Arab support you would obtain even if you could crush the Mahdi Army. Because obviously it will tend to be the worst kind, appealing to sectarian animosity instead of appealing to actual common desires to live together in peace and fraternity.

In terms of the neighboring countries and other Sunni-based regimes in the region, it is the that first point--suppressing the Mahdi Army--that is the problem. The crush-Mahdi program, if it gained an inch in terms of the Maliki-the-leader meme, it lost a mile in terms of having destroyed the semblance of improved security, including in the Green Zone. That is the situation that Condi will be facing tomorrow in Kuwait, where we can expect more comic-rhetoric from her about Arab solidarity, and little else.

In terms of domestic Sunni-group support for Maliki, the story is more complicated, but we should remember that it wasn't supposed to be complicated. Maliki-the-leader--Maliki the fearless combatant of Iranian influence--was supposed to inspire the other groups: that's what leadership is. So that didn't happen either.

But the point about Bush strategies seems to be this: There is a "Plan A" to influence people by military force to do what you want, and behind it there is always a "Plan B" which is to continue and escalate that military force, right up to and including civil war, in the event that Plan A doesn't work out. In this case, Basra and Sadr City, the lack of any outpouring of Sunni Arab support, and finally Moqtada's weekend ultimatum, have shown that Plan A didn't work. So it will be Plan B. A defining moment to be sure.

Meanwhile, back in the USA, something unusual happened yesterday in the "progressive" food-chain, in connection with this defining moment. At the top of the chain, Marc Lynch linked to a wire-service story about the Sadr ultimatum, adding only the sneering comment: "Nothing to see here". And Juan Cole gave the Sadr statement a short sentence, followed by another one about a Sunni-takfiiri attack piece, as if these were two peas in a pod. That left Kevin Drum of WashingtonMonthly without any correct-line source to link to, so he naturally resorted to quoting the New York Times, to the effect it was possible Iran had abandoned Sadr. Finally, at the very bottom of the food-chain, Matt Yglesias, linking to Kevin, opined: "Meanwhile, it seems that the Iranians have decided to cut Muqtada loose and fully line up behind the ISCI government. That counts as good news, I'd say..." confusing at least one of his readers, who noted that a couple of short weeks ago, Matt was in Moqtada-good/Maliki-bad mode. Suddenly, it was: "Moqtada the Iranian puppet whom Iran has abandoned." Elaborating, really, on the theme: "Nothing to see here".

These strange intimations of info-ops happened on the same day that the NYT, after six years of saying nothing about it, finally managed to put together a lengthy piece on the former info-ops: How the Pentagon, corrupt retired generals and the TV networks worked together to whitewash the military/torture operations.

There was one big-circulation progressive site that was paying attention:

Siun at Firedoglake posted last night an informative piece about what Sadr actually said, and about what is actually going on in Sadr City and elsewhere, and there was an active discussion.

Elsewhere, however, it was "Nothing to see here". Which seems strange, given the fact that this was supposed to be the time of fruition of a year-and-a-half US policy for bringing into being a stable, generally-accepted government in the Green Zone. And when the full implications of that policy for civil-war creation and mayhem become apparent, the left is told: "Nothing to see here".

Moqtada al Sadr: Enough !

Here is my version of the last few paragraphs of Moqtada al-Sadr's statement, issued Saturday, April 19, warning of "open war until liberation". See also other excerpts and helpful explanations on the RoadstoIraq site.

The text follows:

And look, what is the sin of the followers of Al Sadr that they should emerge from the oppression of the destroyer [Saddam] to fall, thereafter, under the oppression of the occupation, and of the government and the nawasib, and the great and the pulpits and the rumors and the assassinations and the policies that have come to us from beyond the borders, and the silence of the religious powers, and of the political powers, domestic and foreign and international? The beloved Gaza was blockaded and everyone was silent, and [likewise] now the city [Sadr City] is blockaded and everyone is silent, and where now are human rights, and [the rule of] laws, which they wish to impose for the sake of their spurious "freedom and democracy"?

Is their sin resistance which is the honor and strength of this world and the next, because the people have not and will not compromise their right to resist the occupier of any nationality. And we will announce, if they do not come to their senses, war until liberation and by God the blood of martyrs for liberation is in our veins, and it will be received by God with the best acceptance.

Or is their sin that they are the popular base which has not accepted your politics and your ugly worldly fighting, because they do not accept the partition of Iraq, nor do they accept the theft of its wealth, or any long-term agreement that favors the occupier more than it favors Iraqis, or leaving camps or fixed bases for the occupier... How many times have we extended our hand to our Sunni and Shia compatriots, sometimes praying together in the Abu Hanifa mosque [Sunni], and sometimes in the Buratha mosque [Supreme council]. And look how we were received! And we do not forget in our tribulation--in fact we are a tribe that favors them even in our penury--the Iraqi minorities, because we have defended the Christians, and the Shabak and the Turkman and the Chaldeans and others, and we still do. And what has been our reward for that except attacks on our Messenger, and the Pope going to visit the biggest country occupying our Iraq, forgetting the oppression that the Iraqi people face--both the majority and the minority. And forgetful likewise of the suffering of the people from poverty and want and lack of basic services and security and in other ways.

And therefore I direct this last warning and last word to the government of Iraq: Either it comes to its senses, takes the path of peace and renounces violence against its people, or else it will be like the government of the destroyer [Saddam], and even if everyone has allied with them [the present government], earlier they were allies of ours, and they could be [allies of ours] again...If [the government] does not come to its senses and sweep away its recalcitrance, and that of the militias that are part of it, then we will declare open war until liberation. For there is no charge of wrongdoing in against a person who is forced [to do something] against his will.

Finally I wish to thank those of the authorities who have spoken out through their preachers in rejection of the blockading of cities and particularly Sadr City, and against the government attacking persons for political reasons. And I criticize the silence of those of them who merely listen, and look--desiring from them and from the government of Iraq that they should demand from the occupier a schedule for its withdrawal at the earliest possible time.

The two faces of the Honor Front

AlHayat prints a summary of interview remarks by "Abu Azzam" (real name Thamer) AlTamimi, spokesman for the "Iraqi Honor Front" whose formation was announced recently, now describing Tamimi as head of the Front's political office. There are interesting contrasts compared to the image of the Front presented in the earlier interview in AlArab.

The main point in the AlHayat summary is Tamimi's stress on the fact that the front will include not only "technocrats", tribal leaders, and Awakening leaders, but also previous members of armed factions "that fought against AlQaeda" (not even any mention of armed resistance to the occupation, only to "AlQaeda"). Tamimi mentions in particular that the Front includes former members of the Islamic Army of Iraq, the Brigades of the 1920 Revolution, and the Army of the Mujahideen. These are described as people that used to fight AlQaeda, and that now are going to participate in the political process. In the AlArab interview, Tamimi repeatedly used the expression "give up armed activities at this stage", referring to armed resistance to the occupation, and to the fact that this is being given up only for "this stage".

The second point is that the AlHayat picture has Tamimi and the other Honor Front personality Ahmed abu Risha repeating a couple of stock-phrases: "the political process in a constitutional form" (Tamimi); and "the political process in a legal and constitutional framework" (Abu Risha), with no suggestion that there is anything temporary about it. This contrasts with the AlArab interview, where Tamimi is quoted:

"We are convinced that the current stage is the stage of political activity, and there is no place for weapons at the present time. Otherwise why would we abandon arms and resort to politics. And for that reason I call on armed groups to leave their armed activities in the current stage, and to take up politics, and in this way we will work toward the expulsion of the occupier".

So where the AlHayat picture is of a group firmly commited to the "legal and constitutional", the AlArab picture is of a tactical move.

The third point about the AlHayat picture is that there isn't any mention of planned attitudes to occupier-sponsored legislation. In the AlArab interviews, Tamimi said they would stand firmly opposed to any laws connected with the occupier, including the Oil and Gas Law, while in the AlHayat summary there isn't any mention of that at all.

So we have a choice: Is this an initiative looking for tactical advantage from a temporary abandonment of armed resistance, for its own good and autonomous reasons? Or is it a group of people that have sold out to the occupation-sponsored process entirely, for some so-far unknown price? If the latter is the case, then the AlArab interview was for the purpose of creating a veneer of nationalism for electoral purposes; if the former, then the Al-Hayat piece was part of a continuing effort to bamboozle the occupier into thinking of them as allies.

For me, I will go out on a limb and say I don't think the answer is necessarily obvious. What I do think is that this Honor Front initiative is pretty clearly the fruit of that series of "reconciliation" meetings that included the meetings at a Dead Sea resort in Jordan in November 07, and similar meetings before and after that. Fragmentary reports at the time suggested the American go-betweens had in mind some kind of combination between "reconciling" with the nationalist armed resistance, and these "bottom-up" Awakening schemes. As I noted after the Dead Sea meetings in November, our eyes and ears in Washington went completely silent on this process. Even though it was known who organized the Dead Sea meetings (former State Dept big-shot Richard Murphy), no one ever bothered to report so much as a "no comment" from him, let alone attempt any follow-up). And now that the Honor Front has been announced, it seems we can look forward to more of the same from our eyes and ears in Washington: Silence. That way you don't see Washington's fingerprints on this at all.

Must read

A commenter on the "Relevance..." post two items back pulled together in a nice summary the ways in which Iraq policy is being pushed in the wrong direction, his point being that the whole package has to be taken together in order to grasp how bad the implications are going to be for Iraq and no doubt for America as well. Here are a couple of paragraphs from that:

The tactics that Washington is pursuing in Iraq appear to be exacerbating several long-term trends that risk destabilizing Iraq even further and may well also undermine U.S. influence.

Washington’s militant intervention into intra-Shi’ite factional politics is pouring gasoline on that dispute, fomenting civil war between the two most powerful Shi’ite militias in Iraq by encouraging (or ordering?) Maliki to suppress Moqtada’s Mahdi Army. Washington is simultaneously laying the groundwork for a civil war between Iraqi Shi’a and Sunni by funding the organization of numerous local Sunni military units (e.g., the Awakening groups), which could evolve rapidly into a Sunni militia that would challenge the Shi’a since these units are gaining power without a commensurate move toward satisfaction of Sunni grievances. Washington is also fighting Iran’s war in Iraq by intervening in Shi’ite factional disputes on the side of the pro-Iranian Badr faction that constitutes Maliki’s main support. And finally, since Moqtada represents the poor urban Shi’ite underclass beyond the reach of government services, Washington is making war on the poor, a bad foundation indeed for building democracy.

A policy of marginalizing the poor by emphasizing the use of force to suppress their representatives, not to mention collective punishment against the poor themselves through both neglecting to provide services and turning Sadr City into a blockaded ghetto, sets up society for a long period of conflict. (For parallels, check out the impact of Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon, which provoked the formation of Hezbollah; the half century-long civil war against the rural poor in Colombia; and of course the endless sad saga of the mistreatment of the population of Gaza.)

There's more. It's from a post of his on his own blog, at http://shadowedforest.blogspot.com. I'm not sure if there's a url for that particular post, but it's April 18.

The point is that he lays out the whole set of implications for following the current policy, versus the implications of turning the thing around. I haven't seen the whole issue laid out so clearly before. Moreover, he agrees there are some key people whose help needs to be enlisted, if there is to be any hope of waking up the Democrats. At the start of his comment, he writes: "I too would encourage Iraq experts like Professors Lynch and Cole to help us think about the future implications of current U.S. behavior."

It is better to light a candle than curse the darkness...

Mosul governor brushes off concerns about Peshmerga involvement in the coming campaign

The governor of Ninawa governate (aka Mosul governate, after its capital), Dureid Kashmula, made remarks in an interview with AlHayat on how things look ahead of the expected military campaign in Mosul (the initiative originally announced by Prime Minister Maliki in January for the eradication of "AlQaeda," then postponed pending the famous battle of Basra). The governor said military preparations are under way, and the offensive will begin shortly.

The first point emphasized in the AlHayat summary of his remarks is that the recent decline in security in Mosul city is because of re-assignments of police and army away from their traditional areas of policing, in preparation for the big push, and this has left the areas they used to patrol vulnerable. A resident said some areas are in government control, others in the control of armed groups, while the Americans limit themselves to secure areas. Another said the government controls the streets in the daytime, and the armed groups have control at night. The governor denied this and said the government is in control at all times.

Another resident said most roads in Mosul are closed ahead of the attack, and this along with endemic violence are making it difficult for people to get to work and so on. The journalist says families have been stockpiling food, in expectation of being shut in during the fighting, and this has led to recent rises in food prices, adding to their problems.

On the campaign itself, the governor said it will include all areas of Ninawa province where there are armed groups. It will be undertaken by the "Iraqi forces, supported by the American forces". The governor "emphasized the [positive] position of the Kurdish parties and the their military affiliate the Peshmerga with respect to the "enforcing the law" initiative [original "surge" scheme], and their desire to see the end of terrorism and the preservation of security in the city. And he said anyone who says differently is just trying to spread fitna and cause anxiety in the city, and he described such people as "fishing in troubled waters".

And then there is this:

Armed social and political groups have accused the Peshmerga of being responsible for bombings throughout the governate, which has been subject to attempts to join parts of it to the Kurdistan Region, and [they allege that] the coming military campaign is part and parcel of these Kurdish aims, but the Kurdistan Regional government has denied these charges in a statement that called them an attempt at disinformation.

Indications of Sunni Arab anxiety about Peshmerga or other sectarian involvement in this have been briefly noted here and, even more important, here, (toward the end of the post) where the Ninawa tribal council is quoted warning that the Iraqi military is penetrated and melded with sectarian people right up to its leadership level, and pleading for an opening to local volunteer recruitment to protect the city.

US Embassy to Arab states: Remember: Iraq is Arab! Come join us under the rocket fire

A medical source told Aswat alIraq that figures from the two main hospitals in Sadr City (Imam Ali and Al-Sadr), together with cases from Sadr City received at Al-Kindi hospital show that since March 25, there have been 300 Iraqis killed in the fighting in Sadr City, and another 1621 wounded. That is a lot higher than what has been reported.

Meanwhile, in another area where news reports have become very sketchy lately, shelling of the Green Zone intensified yesterday (Thursday April 17), apparently taking advantage of the sandstorm, which hindered US aerial surveillance. An AP reporter said:

Apparently taking advantage of the reduced aerial activity, militants from eastern Baghdad repeatedly shelled the Green Zone, which houses diplomatic missions and much of the Iraqi government.

Explosions were heard across the city as salvos of rockets or mortar shells were fired into the high-security district. The U.S. Embassy confirmed the attacks but said no casualties were reported.

And the New York Times reports that the US forces have started building what it calls "a massive concrete wall that will partition Sadr City."

Meanwhile, a US embassy spokesman told AlHayat that the Green Zone is under daily attack, but he said this in connection with an interview in which he said Arab states should upgrade their diplomatic representation in the Green Zone. The story starts like this:

The official responsible for public relations at the American Embassy in Baghdad Philip Ricker, admitted that "rockets are raining down daily" on the Green Zone, but he invited the Arab states to strengthen their diplomatic presence in Iraq, because they have the ability to deal with security at their missions, as the security situation in Iraq improves, in his words.

Ricker said the continuing presence and activities of the US embassy is proof that the security problems can be dealt with, and he pointed out that there are European and Asian countries that also have active diplomatic representation in Iraq. Ricker continued:

"Also the Iranian ambassador and his embassy are very active, but those who are lacking are the Arab diplomats. This has nothing to do with granting legitimacy to Iraq. Rather, it has to do with the interests of those [Arab] countries in playing a role in this country." He stressed: "Iraq is a founding member of the Arab League, it has a strong Arab identity, and it has been part of the Arab world for centuries. And he emphasized that Iraqis "feel this lack, and they expect the Arab world, and they are saying 'Where are they?'"

Relevance versus irrelevance (with a reply of sorts)

Reidar Visser says the de facto firing by Maliki of the two top security officials in Basra is probably part of an attempt by Maliki to effect a closing of the ranks within his minority government. (www.historiae.org, free email subscription) The top Defence Ministry official, General Mohan al-Firayji, had been opposed by Supreme Council people locally in Basra long before the recent fighting, and his firing, Visser thinks, reflects a belated concession by Maliki to one of his very few supporting parties in the GreenZone. Visser thinks recent evidence of "more pragmatism" by Maliki vis-a-vis Kurdish claims in the oil-and-gas debates is probably another indication of the same thing. Or as he puts it:

Recent reports of increased pragmatism on the part of Maliki vis-à-vis Kurdish claims in the oil question could be another expression of a ruling clique that sees the necessity of first and foremost staying united in the face of growing parliamentary opposition of the kind seen in the debate over local elections - where Sunni and Shiite Islamists as well as secularists came together to challenge Maliki in a demand for early elections. The tension between a minority government and the parliament which was exhibited on that occasion seems far more profound than the shaky and rather hollow “anti-militia consensus” that was recently touted so enthusiastically in the US Congress hearings as evidence of broadened support for Maliki and his government.

As for persons named to replace Mohan and the the police chief as top officials in Basra, Visser has this to say:

The replacements for the two demoted officers are reported as Muhammad Jawad Huwaydi (chief of operations) and Adil Dahham (police chief). Background information on the two is sketchy so far, but it is noteworthy that Huwaydi seems to have had some kind of special operations background before he assumed control of the 14th division of the Iraqi army. Unlike Mohan, he is thought to be from outside the area. As for the new police chief, who was previously employed in Baghdad, someone in the defence ministry with an identical name (the new appointee is sometimes referred to as Adil Dahham al-Amiri) was cleared by the de-Baathification committee in early 2007. If this turns out to be the same person, it would suggest a background from the old Iraqi army rather than a long-time connection with ISCI’s Badr Brigades.

I don't want to alarm anyone, but there was a report yesterday in AlHayat (referred to in a recent post here) quoting a Baghdad-area Awakening official who said there is an agreement for the Interior Ministry to hire a lot of Baghdad-area Awakening members, essentially to replace Sadr-sympathizers who have been kicked out for not fighting in Basra and elsewhere. (And there was an immediate knee-jerk reaction from Sadrists at nahrainnet.net, who see this as a sign of the dreaded Baathist return to the Green Zone).

Logically, if this Interior Ministry hiring policy is confirmed, it could well be seen in conjunction with the reluctance of many existing Iraqi forces to fight against fellow-Iraqis in Sadr City, and their possible replacement by more motivated forces, implying a ratcheting up of the possibilities for a new round of civil war. And if in fact the new police chief in Basra is in fact a former Baath official, the implication might well be the same.

And meanwhile, it is worth noting that Sunni Arabs in the Mosul area have the same kind of civil-war/fitna concerns about a major Peshmerga role side by side with US forces in the coming battle to regain central-government control of Mosul from a variety of Sunni Arab resistance groups. See this warning from the Red Crescent last month. And there is this report in Azzaman today in which Mosul-area tribes are described as concerned about the sectarian loyalties of military units sent from Baghdad in the coming fight:

In Mosul, the Tribal Council of the governate of Ninawa [mainly Sunni] asked the government to open the door to volunteers from the city of Mosul [to join] the armed forces in order to guarantee the protection of the city from a variety of threats to it. A spokesman for the tribes said: "We are concerned about the effects of operations by military units sent from Baghdad. It is well-known that [the Iraqi army] is penetrated or melded with militias right up to its leadership sectors. That is a screaming outrage to the city, and responsibility for the results will be laid to the Maliki government if it does not take speedy action to get away from the dynamics of militias and parties and certain influential persons in the government".

So that's the picture. Maliki closing ranks with his allies the Supreme Council (Badr Corps) and the Kurdish parties (Peshmerga), while those on the outside (Sadrists in Sadr City, and Sunni tribes in Ninawa/Mosul) see trouble.

Needless to say, the debate raging between the war party and the Democratic policy establishment about what would happen if the US were to declare a withdrawal schedule bears no relation to any of this. That's because it is a debate about something that isn't going to happen, rather than a debate about what is in fact happening.

Here are the results of my request yesterday for comments on the US role in fomenting a Gaza-type civil war via a combination of airstrikes and Awakening councils in Sadr City:

Juan Cole: no response
Marc Lynch: no response *

Is it possible that the Democratic Party is on board with this, and that's why it isn't being raised as an issue? I don't know.

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* Marc Lynch has now graced me with reply of sorts, on his website. Unable to hide a degree of irritation about the lack of a prior e-mail, he promises not to write about this issue, in order to teach me a lesson! But I think he honors me excessively when he calls these posts a grand theory of civil-war promotion. They are about Sadr City (where today VOI says at least 300 have been killed and 1621 injured in the American-led attacks since March 25, without any significant mention of this by big-circulation left), with today some further questions, including about the plans for Mosul.

Tamimi: Let's abandon arms for politics "at this stage"

The Qatari paper AlArab conducted an interview with "Abu Azzam" Al-Tamimi, real name Thamer Al-Tamimi, recently the head of the Abu Ghraib regional Awakening, and the man who a couple of days ago announced he was heading a new "Iraqi Honor Front" to act as the political arm of the Iraqi Awakening councils. (This is the same man who was earlier interviewed, also by AlArab, in connection with his disagreements with the Islamic Army in Iraq, to which he used to belong).

In the new interview, Tamimi explains the thinking behind the Iraqi Honor Front, including an admission that many members will be former armed-resistance fighters who have decided to give up the armed struggle for the time being; opposition to American-sponsored legislation including the Oil and Gas Law; and control of resources by the central government.

He said this new political front will include different types of people, including "technocrats, officers in the former army, and tribal leaders, in addition to Awakening leaders from all over Iraq. He repeated the basic orientation, namely that "there are parallel regional interventions, which perhaps surpass [in importance] the American occupation." And having admitted that a lot of his people are former armed-resistance activists, he said a condition for joining the political front is not to belong to any armed party or faction. And the interviewer explains:

He invited the members of armed Iraqi factions to turn to political activity and to abandon armed activity at this stage, and he said this: "We are convinced that the current stage is the stage of political activity, and there is no place for weapons at the present time. Otherwise why would we abandon arms and resort to politics. And for that reason I call on armed groups to leave their armed activities in the current stage, and to take up politics, and in this way we will work toward the expulsion of the occupier.

With respect to pending legislation (should his group win seats in the next general election), Tamimi said:

"The Honor Front absolutely rejects any law that aims to tie Iraq to the operations of the occupation, and that includes the Oil and Gas Law." And he stressed that the Front demands that the riches of Iraq are to remain in the hands of the central government, and not be at the free disposition of any person or entity."

Tamimi's only reference to the Mahdi Army in this interview is to insist that no Awakening group participated in the recent fighting against them, nor did Maliki ask for such participation; and that his Front supports any moves to impose law and order.

Finally, there appears to be some disagreement about who speaks for the Awakenings in this. The AlArab interviewer, concluding with a thumbnail biography, says Tamimi used to be a field commenter with the IAI, then headed the Abu Ghraib area Awakening, "before being given responsibility for arming of the Awakening forces throughout Iraq". But in an AlHayat article, another Awakening leader, from Taji (north of Baghdad), spoke about the aim of forming a political bloc including most of the Awakening leaders from Baghdad and the province, and he added: "It would be natural that the key person [or decision maker] in this would be Ahmed abu Risha, leader of the Iraqi Awakening, and the person who supervises all of the Awakening Councils in Iraq."

The Taji Awakening leader (who recommends abu Risha in this way) is also the source for AlHayat's report to the effect that the Interior Ministry, with the agreement of the Americans, has asked for renewed applications from Baghdad-area Awakening rank and file for employment with the Interior Ministry, described as a move to fill the gap left by around 1300 Sadr sympathizers who are being kicked out. (Same link as above). The report says the idea is that roughly two-thirds of the Baghdad Awakening people would be eligible for this government employment.

Another lesson in civil-war creation: The Gaza model in Sadr City

The Maliki government confirmed that there will be Awakening-like council(s) set up in Sadr City, moving quickly to replace the sectarian-war implications of yesterday's announcement on a sectarian website (see prior post) with the politically correct version. The objective, according to the government, will not be to "hang Mahdi Army members from lampposts if they resist government forces", but rather to provide the residents with food and security. AlHayat reports:

The government is working on establishment of Awakening Councils in Sadr City, to combat outlaws....The spokesman for the Baghdad Law-enforcement Plan [the surge document], Tahsin al-Sheikhali, announced that the government is determined to establish a Law-support Council, on the model of the Awakenings, in Sadr City, to combat outlaws. He explained that the government's attention will first of all be focused on disarming those members who constitute a security-danger to the residents of the area, and to offer basic services to the citizens such as food and medicine. He indicated that [the idea of] support councils in Sadr City falls within the National Reconciliation initiative, which includes support councils to work simultaneously with government policies to support security and offer basic services, and he suggested that a lot of residents will be interested in volunteering for these councils.

On the question who will take the lead role in setting these up, AlHayat offers this hint:

The leader of the American forces in Baghdad, Major General Jeffrey Hammond, stressed that there is a plan for the formation of "Sons of Iraq" councils in Sadr City, for the protection of residential neighborhoods, on the model of what was done in Anbar.

This is the Gaza model: The occupier besieges and harasses militarily the stronghold of the resistance faction (Gaza/Sadr City), then offers relief to residents on condition they renounce the resistance faction (Sadrist/Hamas) and join hands with the collaborators (Awakenings/Fatah), who are more intent on hanging their sectarian rivals from lampposts, on behalf of the occupier, than in acting as a relief agency.

What about it, Juan Cole and Marc Lynch? The liberal blogosphere won't mention any of this unless they have one of the two of you to rely on as an authority. The Americans are starting another phase of the "civil war". How long will you be silent?

Fitna coming to Sadr City along with the American airstrikes?

A website called alrafedain.net has recently posted alarming and inflammatory Sadr-threat items including the supposed return of boogeyman "Abu Deraa" to Basra, Sadrist stockpiling of weapons and materials around Najaf, possible Arab-regime intelligence-agency involvement in the Basra events on the side of the Sadrists, and so on, none of it with any evidence or even plausibility. This is mixed in with some bona fide news. The site is often linked-to by the Supreme Council news-site Buratha.net. So the latest item has to be read in that context. The site says:

Abdullah Salah Jasim al-Ali, head of an association of tribes in Sadr City, formed in recent days to confront the Mahdi Army, disclosed that citizens of Sadr City, particularly members of the zealous (?) tribes, have risen up against the criminal gangs of the Mahdi Army, and there is a volunteer campaign going on in all areas of Sadr City to form councils to support the government in security matters--on the model of the Awakenings...

And Abdullah al-Salah said he has given a very strict directive to all members that they are to take members of the Mahdi Army who attack government forces or innocent people and hang them from electric poles as they used to do with innocent Shias and Sunnis.

He explained that the experience of the tribes in Anbar province in confronting the Islamic Party of Iraq was successful, and they intend to follow the same path in confronting the Mahdi Army.

This was the first public position issued by this noted tribal leader, who has a broad popular base. The association of Sadr City tribes includes important tribes in this besieged city.

Naturally it isn't possible to say whether this will amount to anything, but the point is that something like this is on the agenda of elements in the Supreme Council, as you would naturally expect. Because any time the American forces team up with the Iraqi Supreme-Council-led "government" forces to attack another group with tanks and airstrikes, it is a natural invitation to that other group's opponents to revive their grudges and try and move in for the kill, rather than talking.

Naturally, the US policy establishment and their enablers will be devastated by this, because their whole objective in Iraq is stability and peace. We can be sure that the firefights and airstrikes in Sadr City and elsewhere are being carried out with the deepest regret by the American authorities, who want nothing more than the integration of all political trends, including those for and against the occupation, without discrimination, into a democratic government of peace and stability. If you don't believe me, just read today's AP story, the latest version of the outstretched-hand story-line, purporting to dissociate the Americans from Maliki's anti-Sadr hard line.

News of the day (with a footnote suggesting otherwise)

AlHayat says remarks by US military people indicate that they currently don't intend to try pushing further into Sadr City. The journalist writes:

A senior American officer said the coalition forces don't currently plan to overrun Sadr City, but will satisfy themselves with controlling those areas from which it is possible to attack the Green Zone with rockets. The words of [this] American commander in Baghdad, Major-General Jeffrey Hammond, were interpreted to mean that he was postponing the [further] attack on Sadr City until further notice. And another officer said there is no plan for further incursions into this Shiite stronghold.

And the journalist said there are signs that life in Basra is starting to return to normal.

(Of course, you might query the suddenly soothing nature of this. For one thing, there is a whole lot of "reaching out" going on, with the CSM today describing Hammond as "reaching out to moderate Sadr supporters"--somewhat echoing the peculiar "hand that was offered" language of the Cole remark yesterday. So while there may be some truth to the postponement of further incursions in Sadr City*, there is no doubt also an important PR objective in some of this).

In any event, the next question is: If the military attack on didn't succeed in disarming the Mahdi Army or altering the Sadrist political stance, except to further radicalize it, then what about the other branch of US strategy, which is to use this as the occasion for broadening the GreenZone government with non-Sadrist forces?

In this connection there are two reports, one of them hard to believe but relayed by what is normally a good source. Aswat AlIraq, (in a report that was picked up verbatim by Azzaman this as its top story morning), says there was a high-level meeting between a Kurdish delegation led by Region President Barzani, and a GreenZone delegation led by Maliki, and the report quotes Kurdish sources who said the government agreed to major concessions, in three areas: (1) The central government agreed to consider the Peshmerga as part of the national-government security apparatus, and pay the salaries of the 190,000 members. (2) The central government agreed to support the "original language" of the Oil and Gas Law, the explanation being that this is the version before the State Shura Council altered it by declaring that exclusive contract-writing authority belongs to the central government. Whether or not that means okaying Kurd-government-only contracts for oil-fields in Kurdistan isn't spelled out; what the Kurdish sources said is merely that the agreement confers benefits on the Kurdish side in this dispute. (3) The two delegations agreed to impose a schedule for implementation of the steps laid out in Section 140 on the constitution, with respect to Kirkuk, namely normalization, census, and referendum on status.

The funny thing about this report is that the central government delegation is described as led by Maliki, along with other "government officials", so the question is: Where were the Sunni Arab parties, who have naturally been opponents of all of these moves? Not only is nothing said about them, the person writing the report doesn't even mention the issue. Given the fact that the whole point of the current political maneuvering is to produce a broader-based GreenZone government, what was behind this idea of starting with dramatic concessions to the Kurdish parties. Something is escaping us here.

The other report on GreenZone politics, in AlHayat, quotes Sami Al-Askari, who is close to Maliki, to the effect that an agreement for the return of Iraqi Accord Front (IAF) people to the Maliki cabinet is just around the corner. He said in a recent meeting of the presidency council, vice-president Hashemi promised Maliki that he would work up a list of IAF "candidates" for various cabinet positions. The journalist treats this as news, probably because there has been complete silence on the issue recently, so at least we know they are still working on it. Also, it is dressed up in the form of an "announcement" by Maliki of a "six track national program", but the journalist says he hasn't been able to find out anything about the content. He says there are complaints that some of the IAF people are "delaying" the process by making demands that are mostly "personal" rather than political. So in any event it appears that the discussions are still on the level of personalities and sharing-out of the spoils, exactly the kind of "allocations-based" policy that Maliki has long promised to overcome.

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* The Qatari newspaper AlArab, the opposite of soothing, cites its own journalist and news-agencies, to report that the events on Monday represented an end to a short period of relative calm, and a resumption of American attempts to take new territory.

Violent confrontations were renewed between fighters of the Mahdi Army and the American forces [on Monday] in Sadr City, eastern Baghdad, following a period of relative calm that didn't last long.

American forces tried to enter into a number of sectors of Sadr City, but they faced fire from armed fighters, until American aircraft intervened.

Xinhua also reported an American airstrike in Sadr City, adding there was no information on casualties. In other words, the actual "reaching out" is still being done with hellfire missiles and so on, and attempts to overrun new areas, whatever the truth or otherwise in the above-mentioned AlHayat report.

"Honor Front" for Sunni collaborators

Abu Azzam Al-Tamimi, in a January 18 2008 interview with AlArabiya transcribed here, said he was a former Islamic Army in Iraq commander, but had come around to the view that the danger of Iranian occupation of Iraq was greater than the danger of the American occupation, because the latter was only temporary, but the Iranian occupation would be permanent. At one point in the interview he said:

My own personal view is that I do not think that at the present time the American presence in Iraq is negative. I think an American withdrawal right now would be catastrophic, a catastrophe that would befall Iraq, because Iraq could come completely under the umbrella of Iranian influence, and not just Iraq, but perhaps the whole region.

The IAI naturally denied they ever had anything to do with Tamimi, and the question who he was wasn't resolved, except that he was involved with Baghdad-area Awakenings.

Despite his personal obscurity, other points in his interview, particularly his assertions about the breadth of Iranian influence in Iraq--including the claim that Iran was working with AlQaeda in addition to every other group in Iraq--made his remarks a topic of amplification and promotion on MEMRI and on various pro-Cheney websites in America.

So you'd think that a man with this kind of a position--support for the American occupation and claims of Iranian support for AlQaeda, along with connections to the Sunni Awakenings--would be a hot property if in fact the Americans are laying the groundwork for a new round of pro-occupation, anti-Iranian fitna. And you'd be right.

Today AlJazeera reports:

Abu Azzam Al-Tamimi one of the leaders of the Baghdad area Awakenings announced the formation of a political movement called the Iraqi Honor Front, saying the aim is to fill what he calls a political vacuum that has occurred in Iraq.

Tamimi said the Honor Front includes major leaders of the Awakening councils in the regions of Amariya, Ghazaliya, Khadara, Taji, Abu Ghraib and others, along with some officers in the former army, and some tribal personalities.

He said the Front will plan out for itself a peaceful path, avoiding any manifestations of violence, and he said the group will avoid any religions coloration that would take away from its political content. ...

This announcement of a new political formation comes [the journalist notes] a day after the announcement by the government of decision on a draft law on provincial council [elections].

The War on Sadr takes shape

Some may think Robert Gates' remarks on Friday about who is and is not an "enemy of the United States" (see prior post) was one of those cosmetic in-one-ear-and-out-the-other things, but that is not how Moqtada alSadr took it, as you can see from this excerpt from his reply, in a statement his office released on Saturday:

There will not come a day when you (plural) are not my enemy, to the last drop of blood in my body, and anyone who takes you as a friend, or as a sponsor, or as a reconciliator or as a negotiating partner, him I will cut off until the day of judgment.

Needless to say, the references to those who take Gates "as a sponsor, or as a reconciliator" and so on, refer to the Maliki administration and anyone else who deals with the Americans. So Moqtada not only took the threat for what it was, but attributed it to the whole America-GreenZone group. And so it was that on Sunday, Maliki's spokesman Ali Dabbagh responded in turn, and in contrast to Moqtada's religious tone, Dabbagh used some oddly familiar-sounding secular rhetoric. He said to reporters

The security forces will continue, without any leniency, in battle with the militias in Sadr City, until such time as it is completely purged of gunmen...we will not leave the place until we can guarantee the security of Sadr City...I cannot tell you how many days or how many months that will take, but what I can tell you is that our forces will not leave until the job is done.

Very Bush-like, as you can see, and the battle is joined.

What is important to realize is that (1) the Maliki administration, instead of leaving the Basra campaign as something to be eventually forgotten about, has instead explicitly locked itself into a military confrontation with the Sadrists, and (2) the decision to take this course was made in Washington, and the real declaration of war was the Gates comment. Since this is something that risks reigniting fitna in the country, it is important to realize where the decision was made to ignite this.

Because once again, the pundits and the corporate media together will be working to create the impression, as so often in the past, that this is another case of Iraqis chronically and perpetually at each others throats, with the American forces only trying to help sort things out. *

There was also an escalation in the anti-Iranian rhetoric in connection with all of this on the weekend, the lead mouthpiece for that part of the campaign being Stephen Hadley, on Fox News on Sunday. In remarks picked up by AlQuds alArabi among others, Hadley is quoted to the effect he thinks Iraq is in a position to bring "diplomatic pressure" to bear on Iran with regard to arming and training fighters in Iraq, now that they "better understand" Iran's role. He didn't explain what he meant, but it was clear that the blame-Iran theme is being developed hand in hand with the theme of fighting the "militias in Sadr City", "until the job is done."

Meanwhile, a reporter for the Bahrain paper AlAkhbar alKhleej says he learned from Iraqi Interior Ministry sources (Sadr sympathizers, as you will see) that the Supreme Council (Hakim's group) is getting ready for "surprise" American inspections on the political-parties/armed-militias issue. He wrote on Sunday:

Sources in the Iraqi Interior Ministry said directives have been issued by the leadership of the Supreme Council to all of the Badr Organization offices throughout Iraq, to hide their heavy weapons, and to leave light weapons in the hands of those groups tasked with protection of Badr Organization offices and senior people in the Supreme Council. The sources said the directives ordered the hiding of mortar shells and RBG explosives in secret places, in expectation that the American occupation forces will be conducting surprise raids to disarm militias, according to a plan the Iraqi government is going to try to execute, with the aim essentially of getting rid of the weapons held by the Mahdi Army, under cover of disarming [all] militias as a condition of their participating in the provincial-council elections.

The sources said the hiding of weapons has been done in coordination with senior people in the Interior Ministry, where representatives of the Supreme Council work in top positions in the security divisions. And the sources said 1500 representatives of the aforementioned organization have been added to the Interior Ministry and its security agencies recently.

The sources also told the reporter that many in the Badr Corp leadership have left for Iran recently, on the pretext of visiting their families there, but in fact so as not to be around at the time of the coming surprise American raids.

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* Cole offers us a fine example of this, reporting this morning (Monday April 14) that Moqtada "slapped away the hand that was offered to him by US Secretary of State Robert Gates..." as if the US role was something like that of a teacher trying to calm an unruly student in a special ed class.

Some recent history

Following the December 2005 parliamentary elections, there was a battle over who would be the new Prime Minister, and the Shiite bloc, the United Iraqi Alliance (UIA) caucused and selected Ibrahim Jaafari, who was the incumbent. The Sadrist bloc was the swing vote in Jaafari's favor.

US Ambassador Khalilzad wanted to see the business-oriented Shiite Adel AbdulMehdi selected as the next Prime Minister, and according to a published report at the time, he indirectly threatened Iraqi politicians that he would see that any government that wasn't headed by Mehdi would not last. (Others said the issue for Khalilzad was more ramified, and it was, but the crucial parting of the ways for Khalilzad was no to Jaafari, yes to Mehdi. This was the strike issue).

Khalilzad was more circumspect in his use of threatening language in an interview on the PBS NewsHour on February 21 2006, when he talked about this as a question of a "national unity government" versus a "sectarian" government. He said the US was urging creation of a "moderate" government, with ministers "that are not tied to militias, and will govern Iraq from the center, and if they don't make the right choices then we in turn will look at what we do, and people cannot assume that we will continue to provide the support that we have financially and otherwise if they don't make the right choice." "That sounds like a threat," observed interviewer Gwen Ifill.

As it happened, the next day, February 22, 2006, the golden dome was blown off the Askariya shrine in Samara, and the country was in turmoil.

The "compromise" Prime Minister was Nuri alMaliki. Originally his cabinet included Sunni and Sadrist ministers, but as time went on, all but the Kurdish and the Supreme Council ministers quit. So although he was apparently amenable in most ways, and Bush reportedly feels "comfortable" with him, his base of support shrank instead of broadening. And he was reluctant to take any action against the Mahdi Army.

By fall 2006, President Bush decided it was time for another push for a "government of national unity", and in his Amman meeting with Maliki he presumably followed the points in the famous Hadley memo, which essentially called for pressure to dissolve the "militias" (understood to mean the Mahdi Army) and for providing an "alternate base of support"--including Sunni support--for Maliki to compensate for the expected loss of support from the Sadrists. Pressure in that direction continued, including "surge"-related attacks on the Sadrists, as a way of trying to marginalize them, and creation of the Sunni "Awakenings" as a way of trying to give Sunni groups clout with the government.

But Maliki's cabinet continued to shrink, and the Sadrists were not deterred or weakened. Finally, by way of trying (in Hadley's words) to "bring closure to" the process with the Sadrists, there was the military adventure in Basra, which soon spread to other cities in the south, accomplishing nothing by way of weaking the Sadrist movement. On the contrary. So neither the military aims (weakening the Mahdi Army) nor the political aims (progress on re-constituting a broad-based cabinet) were making any progress. Again US policy was at a dead end, and this time there was the added problem that in the fall local elections the Supreme Council could end up losing control of many areas to none other than the anti-occupation Sadrists.

And sure enough, the language of veiled and indirect threats from the US starts to sound familiar. US Defense Secretary Gates said on Friday: "I think those who are prepared to work within the political process in Iraq, and peacefully, are not enemies of the United States," and on that very afternoon, Riyadh Nuri, Sadr's brother-in-law and the top Sadrist official in Najaf, is assassinated.

Moreover, by evening the US tanks were reportedly trying to push into Sadr City, and once again, in an atmosphere eerily similarly to late February 2006, people were bracing for the possibility that once again the country could explode in violence.

When the history of this era is written, if someone is around to write it, people will have to try and figure out whether fitna and the threat of fitna regularly accompany US policy-failure in Iraq just by coincidence, or whether there is more to it.

A new screenplay for Cheney ?

President Talabani and vice-president Hashemi issued a statement on Thursday promising a political "Baghdad spring" and urging all of the GreenZone parties to take advantage of it, overcoming all differences in the interests of national unity.

But it soon became apparent that the political rose-petals and sweets that were supposed to greet Maliki on his triumphal return from Basra (not to mention his independence and heroism in the attack on Sadr City) have not been forthcoming. The three main political participants he and the Americans are looking to for the expansion of his government are Fadhila (Shiite), IraqiList (Allawi, secular) and IAF, the main Sunni bloc.

Here's how it went (except where otherwise linked, the next three paragraphs refer to items reported in VOI for Friday and Saturday:

A Fadhila spokesman said the Maliki ally who happens to be Minister of Oil should "revise" a charge he made to the effect the brother of the Basra governor (governor and brother both Fadhila) has made money in oil-smuggling, and said the charge was unsupported and merely political; and another Fadhila spokesperson counter-accused the Oil Minister of taking millions of dollars in bribes. Kind of a frosty relationship there, you might say.

Meanwhile, a spokesman from Allawi's IraqiList said the Maliki administration should first apologize for unjustified charges it made a year and a half ago about Allawi's involvement on the battle between local security forces and the "Army of Heaven" in Zarka, near Najaf, before expecting any progress in the question of a political alliance. So there doesn't seem to be the expected outpouring of solidarity there either.

Finally, while one IAF spokesperson said the IAF would probably join the government "soon" without saying when, another expressed surprise that Maliki hadn't invited the Sadrists to the Friday all-blocs meeting, and said the whole strategy of trying to isolate the Sadrist trend is wrong. So I can't recommend putting your money on the IAF either.

Meanwhile Petraeus, in Washington, realizing or having been told that the political de-Sadrization cum disarmament wasn't working, called on Maliki (via Washington press-conference remarks) to not only recognize the legitimacy of the Sadrist trend, but to "work with" it, and not only that but to "hold out his hand" to it.

So the Plan--for disarming Sadr and reconstituting a Maliki support-group with broad non-Sadr support--looks to be pretty much officially a shambles.

Not only that: AlHayat this morning quotes two senior people in the GreenZone Interior and Defence Ministries who say if the Mahdi Army was ever put down in the South, probably what would happen would be a resurgence of the messianic groups that go by Army of Heaven, Followers of AlYamani, and so on, particularly in their strongholds in Basra, Najaf, and Karbala. And they seem to have learned some pretty up-to-date War on Terror terminology, if you catch my drift.

For example, General Mahdi AlSabih, head of the security and order division of the Interior Ministry, said the AlYamani group has evolved into a type of "sleeper-cell", emerging only when it thinks the circumstances right, and relying on secrecy in relationships between members, in contrast to other armed organizations. And he admitted that it was the Mahdi Army (and not his own forces) that was key to putting them down in the uprisings in Basra and elsewhere in January 08.

General Abdulaziz Muhamed Jasim, director of military affairs (!) in the Defense Ministry told the reporter that the millenarian groups "resemble AlQaeda, in that they go into hiding when they are attacked, and emerge with they think the time is right to move..." And he "admitted" how difficult it is to eliminate these groups, which have found in the South a fertile area for their development, which rely on secrecy, and so on and so forth.

And yes, says the AlHayat reporter, this is all written down in a GreenZone "intelligence report", warning of this next danger in the event the Mahdi Army was ever elimimated in the South.

Also yes, to answer your next question, there have already been published reports, or speculation rather, to the effect that some of these "millenarian" groups could in fact be Iranian agents. See the earlier February 08 post here called "Mahdism: Heaven on Earth for Cops".

Cheney, as it happens, has just in the last few days started talking to his right-wing media enablers about Iran as a particular danger because of Shiite millenarian beliefs, according to Dan Froomkin, who complains the press isn't paying attention.

Remarks by the IAI spokesman (Updated)

Haqq news agency summarizes remarks by Ibrahim Al-Shammari the spokesman for the Islamic Army in Iraq, an important group at the Islamist end of the Sunni-resistance spectrum in a recent interview with AlJazeera. I haven't found a transcript yet, but I think even the outline, particularly the remarks on the Shiites and the Mahdi Army, although fragmentary, are interesting by way of comparison with the treatment of this by Dhari, Moqtada himself, and the southern tribal confederation. Shammari's stance, while carefully distinguishing "Shiite" from "Iranian", is unabashedly Sunni-centered, without the stress on positive reconciliation and the unity of all Iraqis, and so on.

The summary begins by quoting this theme: "The basic choice that the Sunni people have committed themselves to is resistance, and they have taken on their shoulders the defense of the entire country, and its liberation".

He said Iraq is being subjected to two occupations, the American and the Iranian, the worse of the two is the Iranian occupation, and the resistance is determined to liberate the country from all types of occupation. And he said Maliki represents the Iranian occupation in its essence, and the Americans represent the external appearance.

He said there is no difference between America and Iran in the root of the mission in Iraq, and America welcomes what Iran is doing. The difference between them has to do with respective shares and hegemony in the Gulf region. Iran, with its well-known craftiness, has been succeeded in attaching its imperialist project to that American one.

There follow a couple of remarks about the proposed bilateral security agreement, US aiming for "creative chaos" in Iraq, and the coming elections, but in the summary is very short and even more cryptic than the foregoing. Then there is this summary by the Haqq agency of his remarks on the Shiites and the Mahdi Army, which is what I wanted to highlight, for what it is worth.

As for the Shiites and their role in the resistance, Shammari said the American occupation, when it came, brought with them Shiite parties. And the Shiite religious authorities helped [the occupation] and issued a fatwa banning resistance to the Americans. On the other hand the Arab Shiites were exposed to intellectual terrorism, and some of them began to feel the danger of the Iranian occupation.

And as for the Mahdi Army, he said the Sunni resistance welcomed what they did in the beginning when they struck the Americans, but after that they began to liquidate those who stood against the occupation, and they exposed the Sunni people to killings and expulsions. As or what is going on now in Basra and elsewhere in the South, this is a dispute between them and the Badr organization.

He said the role of the militias in Iraq is destructive.

By contrast, Shammari said the relationship with AlQaeda has improved.

He said the resistance today is in its best condition, with a clear vision, and they have gone beyond the stage of improvisation, with the resistance factions in agreement as to the vision, and there aren't any differences between them. As for the dispute between them and AlQaeda, he said that is methodological and not political. He said the fighting between them is better than before, and he said: We are in favor of every call for rallying together and for getting closer together.

The remarks on all of these points, at least in this summary, obviously aren't as clear as they could be, but for now it is worth noticing that:

(1) With Shammari we seem to be in a different mental world from that of Dhari, but at the same time there is no jumping to conclusions. Recall that it was Dhari himself who urged a halt to the Qaeda/resistance fighting with his remark about the young Iraqis in AQ: "We are of them and they are of us". So a lot depends on what you mean by these terms. Another point is that Shammari's is a military function, and Dhari's a political one. So hopefully they will be able to work out a politically-guided process, as opposed to the pair-of-loose-cannons", Bush-Petraeus kind of thing.

(2) The Christian Science Monitor story today based on an interview with someone who said he was an IAI gunrunner, was headed "Sunni insurgents still aim to oust US, Shiites." That's nonsensical, misleading, and pretty clearly intended to fan the "inevitable civil war" psychosis that is at the core of the continued-occupation argument. You might think it was just a slip, but in the article itself there is this: "One IAI goal is to turn Iraq into a state similar to Saudi Arabia, which adheres to a puritanical form of Sunni Islam", another stunning piece of wartime propaganda. The political views of the resistance factions are worth studying if anyone could do so, and they range on a spectrum from secular to various shades of Islamist. But to say that IAI = Saudi Arabia, without any justification, and without any mention of the range of political views in the Sunni resistance, is like saying, as in fact they did in the headline, that the IAI wants to "oust Shiites from Iraq": it is pure scare-propaganda. It sounds to me as if they have gotten themselves a government-controlled editorial function over there at that progressive institution, something that will be worth paying attention to.

(I still recall the shock of seeing the Feb 22 CSM piece on De-Baathiication, which the editors tarted up with a flattering photo of none other than Ahmed Chalabi, calling him "the de-Baathification visionary"! Again, it wasn't anything in Sam Dagher's text, it was just something the editor(s?) wanted to stick in...)

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Update on Sunday April 13: AlJazeera hasn't posted a transcript, but Leila Anwar has taken the trouble to transcribe all or almost all of it, an English translation, re-arranged by topic. The whole thing is very informative and a good read. Her transcript makes it clear what he said about IAI/AlQaeda relations. He said their takfiiri approach was unacceptable, that the latest Bin Laden speech made things worse instead of better, but that the IAI doesn't attack them, only defending itself when they attack (which makes a lot more sense than the above). Shammari did specifically denounce the Mahdi Army for being involved in sectarian cleansing, adding they would have to desist from that if they want to be part of the resistance. And he said the Basra fighting was essentially Sadr vs Badr and was a fight over control over resources.

He did single out for praise a group of Arab Shiite tribes in the South:

...a number of Shia tribes in the South have spoken out against the Iranian influence and we have contact with them and encourage them...

So his overall point is that the Sunni resistance has never had a sectarian approach, and stands ready to join with Shiite groups that resist the double-occupation. But according to this transcript he said the Mahdi Army hadn't demonstrated its bona fides in this regard. (Maybe the Americans will help out here with their attack on Sadr City).

Dhari's version of the call for Iraqi unity

Here is the conclusion of the April 9 message of Harith al-Dhari, head of the Association of Muslim Scholars, and probably the top spokesperson for the Sunni resistance, to the Iraqi people on the occasion of the fifth anniversary of the occupation:

Finally, you free Iraqis, wherever you are, on the plains or in the mountains, whether in the north, the south or the center, in cities or villages, in the marshes or the desert, in Iraq or outside, we invite you to patience and to steadfastness, and we invite you to tolerance and reconciliation amongst yourselves, and renunciation of differences and feuds, and not to follow the instigations of evil and of fitna of those who do not wish you well, from whatever direction this may come and on whoever's tongue. We invite you to preserve the houses of your brothers who have been forced to vacate them, and left them to you in trust, and to return them to them if they ask, or if they return: it is what your religion requires you to do, and what your values and your traditions dictate.

It is very similar to the discourse of Moqtada and of the Council of Arab Tribes of the South: Let your brotherhood as Iraqis overcome the bad habits of discord which have grown up as a result of the sectarian strategies of the occupation. Each applies the message in his way: Moqtada as an appeal to the honest members of the Iraqi police and army; Dhari as an appeal to citizens having de facto control of houses whose occupants have been forced to flee; the tribes of the south as an appeal to their counterparts in the north and west, and to the politicians, to re-start an occupation-free political process that will overcome the pitfalls of the current process. A year ago Dhari and others were focused on the question of military coordination among the resistance factions, and the problem of AlQaeda. The change in discourse to the social and political level seems to reflect freedom from the takfiiri overhang, and a new level of confidence generally.

The Plan

Having looked at a couple of nationalist appeals, just for contrast I feel duty-bound to consider what seems (to me anyway) to be the plan of the pro-occupation GreenZone people for mobilizing the collaborators and marching on.

So far, discussions of the War on Sadr have centered on motives, including such things as pre-election power-distribution, federalism, Maliki's own position, and role of Washington. I think it might be more useful to start by looking at the chronology.

So here, for everyone's consideration, is a theory that would hopefully explain the timing for this extraordinary and unexpected attack on the Sadrist movement, that takes into account (1) the recent apparent demise of the Iraqi AQ/ISI organization; (2) the sudden expressions of hope that Maliki is going to find the Sunni parties and others closing ranks with him in the GreenZone; and (3) the fact that what is driving the events is naturally the USA, and in particular the US need for a GreenZone "government" that includes a broader representation than the current Maliki cabinet, and in particular that includes at least some Sunni representation. In other words, it is a theory that hopefully gets us back down to understanding basic American policy. And it is not a pretty sight.

Here it is:

First of all, one of the recurring allegations in the history of the Awakenings has been that Sunni-resistance groups, or parts of them, had struck a deal with the Americans: They would attack AlQaeda/ISI and observe a truce with the Americans, in exchange for American help in countering the Iranian influence.

On Monday (April 7) the Jordanian writer Muhammed AbuRumman (or Roman) wrote in the newspaper AlGhad a lengthy piece about the new configuration of groups in Iraq, and in the course of that, he writes:

The collapse of AlQaeda and the setting of their sun in Iraq is also confirmed by a number of actors on the Sunni scene, and it seems the decline of Iraq came with the arrest of their leaders and representative people, one after the other, starting with the killing of Zarqawi and including the arrest of Khalid Al-Mashhadani, who played the role of "Abu Omar al-Baghdadi emir of the Islamic State of Iraq", and before him the killing of Muharib Al-Jabburi, and more recently their Agriculture Minister and judge of the Sahiah court of the Islamic State of Iraq. In fact people close to AlQaeda talk about a reverse migration in recent months of Arab [non-Iraqi] members in Iraq to other countries.

Naturally, in what concerns something as dear to the hearts of Bush administration as "AlQaeda", you have to be careful, but in this case the decline-of-the-ISI thesis seems to have some corroboration in the decline in suicide bombings (and in the case of my modest attempt to monitor jihadi sites, what I believe is a noticeable drop in claims and other statements by the ISI).

Anyway, it doesn't seem a bad assumption that ISI is in decline or retreat in Iraq. (Naturally the Bush administration would not actually announce such a thing as the decline of AlQaeda, given that "Iraq is the central front in the War on Terror", so the lack of fanfare for this is not a good counter-argument). Would this not represent the Sunni groups having made good on their part of the above-mentioned bargain (we curb AlQaeda, you Americans curb the Iranian influence). Could the Maliki/US attack on the Mahdi Army be the counterpart to that? Because for Maliki and the US, it is the chance to take out a rival/anti-occupation force, and at the same time placate some of the Sunni groups as promised.

The obvious objection is that the Mahdi Army is not as "Iranian" as Badr and the other Shiite militias that are allied with Maliki himself. But in this context that probably doesn't matter. Because from the standpoint of the Sunni actors the US is targeting, "Iran" means the parties to the sectarian wars in Baghdad post-February 2006, and wherever the truth may lie, to many that means the Mahdi Army. "We cleared out AQ, now you clear out Mahdi", would be the idea.

This would help explain this recent miraculous expectation (expressions of that anyway) of a "closing of the ranks" of the Sunni parties and others behind Maliki, supposedly on the bizarre grounds that his military campaign, although catastrophic, has in any event shown him to be a strong and independent leader. Rather than admiration for Maliki, on this reading, the driving force would be the expectation for sectarian quid pro quo, harking back to the bad old days of sectarian cleansing: "You break the back of the Sadrist forces, and we will be sufficiently comfortable to join the government, even if it is pro-occupation."

The bottom line is that, for the Americans, the existence of some kind of a "government" with at least some Sunni representation is a requirement to prop up the credibility of the proposed long-term bilateral security agreeement. The way to get there, they seem to have decided, (after many months of pussyfooting with "national reconciliation" meetings here and there), is by the good old sectarian way, in this case playing on anti-Sadr sentiment going back to the cleansing days, or earlier.

There is naturally a very important qualification. What is implied here is the US relying on those parts of the Sunni resistance and the Sunni parties that can be inveigled by this kind of approach. And it goes without saying that is not all of them, only the sectarian and corruptible part.

Moreover, the plan won't work for another reason. The Basra campaign was apparently based on the theory of a quick collapse of the Mahdi Army in Basra, not on seeing Maliki's people having to fight shoulder to shoulder with the Americans, for days and weeks, against Iraqis in heavily populated urban areas. Only a diminishing number of politicians is going to be able to join up with a government that is using occupation-forces backup including "air-support" and so on, to attack its own citizens in urban areas. But they're still working on it. Already vice-president Tareq al-Hashemi, while the fighting in Sadr City and elsewhere is still going on, is calling, not for an end to the fighting, but for "start of a dialogue to agree on a national political dialogue which will pave the way for the return of the withdrawn political blocs to the government."

The Hadley Memo of November 2006 called for shutting down the "militias" and providing Maliki with a de-Sadrized political base. Who knows how this was understood at the time, but the upshot is that the only way the Americans could even pretend get anywhere with this, turned out to be by pushing the old sectarian buttons. Their problem is going to be that as Iraqis see and reflect on the results of that approach so far, fewer and fewer of them are going to respond to that. That's my reading.

Southern tribes call for political unity with the Iraqi resistance

The Council of Arab Tribes of the South issued a statement Wednesday, reported by Aswat alIraq. Their English-language summary got shrunk in the wash, leaving out important parts; here's what their Arabic-language summary said:

The Council of Arab Tribes of the South issued a statement Wednesday calling for the start of the sixth year of the occupation to be the year of Iraqi national unity and liberation and the putting of Iraqi interests above the sectarian, racial, and partisan interests, because everyone's interests will be served by a strong, secure and unified Iraq.

The statement, issued on the fifth anniversary of the entry of the foreign troops, said: "On the eve of this landmark day, we say, on behalf of all Iraqis: 'Enough with the occupation, you occupiers. Depart far away, because you bring with you nothing but evil and terror, and enough of the foreign interventions and the messages of killing and destruction exchanged between the parties to foreign struggles'.

And the statement said: "We are on the threshold of the sixth year of the occupation, and we want this to be the year of national unity and liberation, the year of the love of Iraq and its people, the year of throwing out sectarianism and partition [and there follows the statement quoted in the first paragraph above about prioritizing the national interest].

And the statement of the Council of Arab Tribes of the South directed this message to the Iraqi resistance: 'We issue a call to all resisters to unite their ranks, and to invite all Iraqis to unity, because there is other way of expelling the occupation except by unity in the ranks. And we urge [all resisters] to cut off all those who target Iraqis or threaten their national unity.'

The statement continues: 'Likewise, we call on all groups in the current political process, whether in the government or in parliament, whether governing or in opposition, to reconsider their attitude.' Explaining: 'It is part of nationalism and honor and straightforward courage to admit that the current political process has failed in realizing the interests of Iraqis. Rather it has brought upon us all of this calamity that the Iraqi people are going through.'

It called on the political groups to conduct an honest reappraisal of all that has happened up to now, and:

to try to become effective participants in the founding of a new national political process, based on a genuine Iraqi national initiative, leaving aside the ambitious persons and the litigants, overcoming all of the negativity and tragedy of the prior period.

Aswat alIraq says the statement concluded by urging all Iraqis to be firm in nationalism,

which it defined via certain points, including: "expelling the occupiers with their evil allies, and combatting foreign interventions, starting with the Iranian intervention in Iraq, and caling for national unity, and a single, undivided Iraq."

Aswat alIraq says this council was formed a year ago, has its headquarters in Basra, and includes a number of tribes mainly centered in the South of Iraq, adding that the council has been calling for an end to the sect-based political process since its formation.

I googled the Council of Arab Tribes of the South for more information, but the only thing I found was a missing links post from December 2007 that started like this:

The Central Council of Iraqi Arab Sheikhs (representing tribes--mostly Sunni--in the West and North of Iraq) issued a statement in support of the nationalist, anti-federalism stance adopted by Arab tribes--mostly Shiite--in the South of Iraq, and Al-Hayat says it was this emerging sign of Sunni-Shiite solidarity on the tribal level that frightened Hakim and the Maliki government into their new-found opposition to continued organizational existence/expansion of the awakening-council movement.

Moqtada to the security forces: Join us

The statement by Moqtada alSadr read out in a Baghdad square and published today (Tuesday April 8) makes what is essentially a two-part argument: First, our aim is a society in which Iraqis--including in the security forces--do not treat other Iraqis as their enemies. But given the scope and severity of the Maliki government's preparations, it appears likely that kind of fitna-inducing violence could well result from a mass march tomorrow. For that reason, it will be postponed.

After the opening general denunciation of the occupier and what he has done by way of killing and destruction, Moqtada alSadr continues:

...and they have spread fitna among us, and brought with them this project that they call "democracy", which they have made an arm to strike against the Iraqi people and to oppress and evict them, and to arrest them either themselves or by bands of their paid servants...But I am convinced that our genuine Iraqi army and police, [people] who have God and love of their country in their hearts, and treat the Iraqi people as their brothers, have not, and will not, raise their hand to kill or to arrest their sons and brothers--indeed, their fathers and mothers--and have not, and will not, stain their hands with the blood of their people, or torture them in the pits of the American prisons or elsewhere, as the occupiers have done to us, and before them the haddam (?)

Because look, you brave army and you patient police of Iraq,we have opened our hearts to you with love and we have held out to you our hand, now with olive branches and now with the holy book. Are you among those who love alIslaam wa assalaam, because if you are so, then I invite you to come to the aid of your brothers who are besieged, and to the aid of your sons who have been arrested, and to the aid of the wounded whom the hospitals and the doctors and nurses of Iraq are unable to cope with. Be like a single hand together with your brothers the mujahideen for the liberation of Iraq and for its independence and its unity in land and people, and there will be no separation between us on account of elections, or democracy, or America or the occupation, or the discredited [people] or Baathists, or the loathsome sectarian parties. May God reward you, and I ask him to make you an arm of Iraq and of its people and its land, and not of the occupation and its sins. Obedience to God is above all things.

The foregoing is one part [of what I have to say], the other part is this: We have seen the scope of the security dispositions that the "Maliki" government has put in place, and the scale of his escalation against the people in every part of Iraq, as if the people of Iraq and every single individual were a wanted person...

And his point is that given the lengths the Maliki government is going to, there is a significant risk of Iraqi-on-Iraqi violence--the thing to be avoided at all cost, for the reasons that he explained in the first part. Hence the postponement. And he invites "the government of Iraq, if it exists" to change course and protect the people from the bombings and the American militias and the "companies" behind which they hide, and to demand the withdrawal of the occupation forces or at least a schedule for their withdrawal, and turn their attention to providing services for the people.

In other words, this is a statement that says: First, Iraqis including those in police and the army are brothers, and last thing in the world that should be tolerated is for them to be at each others' throats. But the "government, if it exists" is currently at most a mere shadow of the occupation, one of whose aims is the "spreading of fitna among us", so that a mass march at this point would risk letting them foment just that kind of violence. The postponement is thus for the sake of unity. And in this connection there is also the continuing invitation to the Iraqi forces to do what many of them did in the Basra and Baghdad situations of the last two weeks: Refuse to fight other Iraqis.

What the western media has reported is the second part of this argument, leaving out the first part entirely, for reasons that surely don't need to be spelled out.

The Story of the Day

The Story of the Day this morning originates with AP which reported:

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

If they have indeed "closed ranks", this would represent fruition of the long-held American dream of a de-Sadrized "new political base" for Maliki in the Green zone. Recall the famous November 2006 "Hadley memo", which talked about this question of weaning Maliki away from the Sadrists and the closing of ranks, at the same time, of the other GreenZone parties. Among the things Hadley said Maliki should do:

¶Bring his political strategy with Moktada al-Sadr to closure and bring to justice any JAM actors that do not eschew violence;

And under "How we can help Maliki", in addition to providing him with the additional military support he might need in connection with any such break with his traditional supporters there was this:

¶Actively support Maliki in helping him develop an alternative political base. We would likely need to use our own political capital to press moderates to align themselves with Maliki’s new political bloc;

¶Consider monetary support to moderate groups that have been seeking to break with larger, more sectarian parties, as well as to support Maliki himself as he declares himself the leader of his bloc and risks his position within Dawa and the Sadrists;

The recent military effort against the Mahdi Army in Basra and elsewhere, and now the incursions into Sadr City, can obviously be seen as part of this effort to "help" Maliki "bring his political strategy with Moqtada to closure..." and as part of that same process, bring about the "closing of ranks" by the other parties that AP talks about in such stirring terms this morning. Beating up on the Mahdi Army on the one side (call it Side A), and "closing of ranks" among the other GreenZone parties (call it Side B) on the other: This has been part of the American strategy since at least the time of that Hadley recommendation in November 2006. That is the first point that needs to be remembered in the deconstruction of today's Story of the Day.

Moreover, the ongoing Elvis-like sightings of "reconciliation meetings" in various places all over the region reflect Side B of the strategy, which Hadley put this way:

¶Continue our diplomatic efforts to keep the Sunnis in the political process by pushing for the negotiation of a national compact and by talking up provincial council elections next spring/summer as a mechanism for Sunni empowerment;

Regrettably, the "Awakening Councils" movement had not become a real fad at the time of the Hadley memo, but I think probably it is in the context of this overall scheme that the Awakening strategy needs to be understood. It was no doubt approved as another tool for enticing "the Sunnis" into the "political process", along with "negotiations for a national compact", standing by with bribe money if necessary, and in parallel with all of this, "bringing to closure" the question of the Mahdi Army (which is obviously what Hadley in his memo was mostly thinking of when he referred to "the militias").

So: Finally, big results in the form of a "closing of the ranks" of the major pro-occupation GreenZone parties behind Maliki. But wait...

Here is what a spokesman for the Iraqi Accord Front (biggest Sunni parliamentary bloc) had to say about this closing of the ranks, as reported by AlHayat:

A member of the IAF, Ammar Abdulsattar called for giving this idea of political-party disarmament a condition for participating in elections, legislative form in parliament. He told AlHayat: "We need to issue a law on political parties as soon as possible, and have it include what was in the announcement [by the Council on National Security about no armed parties participating in elections]... And Abdulsattar said he sees March 25 [when Chief Commander Maliki went to Basra] as an important watershed in Iraqi history, and as the inauguration of a nation of laws.

Which is very stirring, but he makes it clear they're not closing ranks behind Maliki on other issues:

Apart from the [the IAF's] differences with Prime Minister Maliki, it strongly supports him in the war against the militias, because what he is doing here is a national obligation.

Quite apart from whatever the IAF and its ilk may have been offered by way of "empowerment" or bribe-money or what have you, it's also good to remember that presumed Mahdi Army rockets killed two American soldiers in the Green Zone yesterday, so it isn't surprising on that visceral level that parties centered in the Green Zone would back efforts against "the militias". But what about the "Awakenings"...

Perhaps what has been happening with the Awakenings is similar to the "negotiating" process with the Sunni parties and others: The Americans are probing and sifting them to see which will agree to participate in the Green Zone occupation, and which need to be eventually taken on militarily.

But to appreciate the Story of the Day, you need to forget all that, and just focus on this idea of a "closing of the ranks" behind Maliki by the "major parties" in the Green Zone. At the price of being seen to support direct US military action against the Green Zone.

US air-strikes in Sadr City, and the political context of the War on Sadr (updated) (another update)

Since Thursday, April 3, US troops have been reported deploying in Sadr City, and an AP report on Friday associated this with an attempt to deter rocket-launching operations against the Green Zone.

Then on Saturday, at a meeting of a parliamentary committee (Political Council on National Security), the Green Zone parties (except for the Sadrists) backed Maliki's "crime-fighting" initiatives and approved the continuation of "operations under special laws", in effect giving him the green light to carry on against the Sadrists. (See the prior post here). Maliki stressed, implicitly or explicitly, the idea that the Basra "outlaw" groups represent a clear and present Iranian threat in Iraq. The Sadrist representative said this was a political attack on the Sadrists, and he said the US presence in the Green Zone, with night-time raids and mass arrests, constitutes collective punishment for having defended themselves (and naturally for opposing the US occupation).

Next: During the night from Saturday to Sunday, April 5 to 6, the US forces went from raids and arrests to large-scale attacks, based on the following reports: AP reported five killed and 17 wounded, including women and children, in "clashes" in Sadr City, then reported that at least 20 people died and 50 were wounded. Continuing into Sunday, AFP said a US airstrike killed nine people at 8:00 in the morning, a strike the US army confirmed, and that another airstrike involving two missiles at 11:00 in the morning, which wasn't "immediately confirmed". [Correction: "20 dead and 53 wounded" is reportedly total for the period Saturday night through noon Sunday, based on hospital sources, so it seems to include the airstrikes]. *

The chronology is important. The US forces didn't get involved in airstrikes and other major "clashes" until after the Political Council on National Security, including Sunni parties, had expressed its support for Maliki's extraordinary "law-enforcement" strategy. The key here is the Sunni parties, the largest bloc of which, the Iraqi Accord Front (IAF) reiterated its support for the Maliki military/law-enforcement campaigns, adding to warm feelings between them and the Maliki administration. Government spokesman Ali Dabbagh said he hopes this will lead to a return of the IAF to the Maliki cabinet soon. The idea is embellished in the government paper AlSabah this morning, along with other wonderfully forward-looking ideas, including that of "restructuring a national-unity government".

So the political logic seems to be going like this: Sadr = Iran, therefore IAF links arms with Maliki. This isn't just another random move in the GreenZone musical-chairs routine. Rather, it represents a hoped-for accomplishment in the months-long US efforts to try and create in the GreenZone a government that would have a broader base than just Maliki and the Kurds, because the "Iraqi government" is going to have to sign a long-term security agreement with the US, and if the "Iraqi government" doesn't even have any Sunni Arab representation (not to mention the other missing parts), then the credibility and legitimacy of anything they sign with the US would be all the more questionable.

(This US effort to broaden the GreenZone government, under the rubric of "reconciliation", has been going on since the reported Dead Sea meetings and even before, but US secrecy and a general misunderstanding of what was going on, have made the process particularly hard to follow. Supposedly this has been a process of secret talks with the resistance, but probably it has been more of a series of probes to see who can be lured into the American-sponsored political process. In any event, the painting of Sadr as a clear and present Iranian danger in Iraq has perhaps done more than all of those talks put together, in getting Sunni groups to link arms with GreenZone administration).

_____________
* For more details and updates, with the links, see the first item under "Baghdad" at the Iraq Today blog, here.

ANOTHER UPDATE: The Gorillas Guides website has a report from an Iraqi in Baghdad with details on the situation in Sadr City, talking about a crisis of medical supplies at the Imam Ali Hospital in Sadr City, and on a spreading fire caused by US bombing of the central Jameela Market. (His heading is a typo for "April" 6 2008, not March)

Sadrists allege collective punishment by the American forces against the residents of Sadr City

At a meeting Saturday of the Political Council on National Security (a parliamentary comittee), Prime Minister Maliki reported on what happened in Basra, stressing (according to his allies who were there) what he called the scope of foreign intervention, the sophistication of the weaponry the "outlaws" had available to them, and the "sources" of that weaponry. So although the second-hand reports don't mention Iran by name, it appears Iran was probably his main theme, together with the spectre of foreign-supported "outlaws" acting as a parallel government.

The Sadrist trend was represented at the meeting, although it has suspended its attendance at regular parliamentary sessions. Falah Shanshal said the Sadrists' theme was that the whole Basra campaign really targeted the Sadrists as a political group (and was not directed at criminal gangs generally, as the government asserted). Moreover, Shanshal said, what is happening now is, "the setting up of collective punishment against their members and those who supported them, as followup to those events."

In another article, AlHayat explains what form they say this collective punishment is taking:

The official spokesman for the Sadrist bloc (in parliament), Saleh alAkili told AlHayat, "The announcement issued by Maliki about stopping the [arbitrary] searches and arrests was an attempt to throw sand in our eyes", explaining: "The arrests have not stopped, in spite of Maliki's announcement to that effect. And the American forces continue to spread terror among the people of Sadr City, stationing themselves in force at the entrances of local streets, carrying out nighttime raids, arresting hundreds of Sadr City youths, without warrants.

The meeting of the Political Council for National Security ended, AlHayat says, with a recommendation to "continue operations under emergency laws", which is of course irrelevant in Sadr City, since the American forces are not subject to Iraqi law anyway.

US troops in Sadr City (Updated)

Xinhuanet, citing an Iraqi Interior Ministry source, said American tanks and other vehicles were massing in Sadr City on Thursday evening and Friday morning (April 3-4), in preparation for a campaign of searches and arrests looking for wanted people. And AlArabiya, citing its own correspondent, reported on Friday morning basically the same thing, adding that some Sadr City residents were taking refuge in mosques and schools, and some leaving the area altogether, expecting a repetition of the recent violence.

Then, in one of those hallucinatory scene-shifts that so often embellish these news-aggregating adventures, suddenly on Friday we are whisked away to a particular spot in southern Sadr City, where the Associated Press reporter Bradley Brooks (sounds like a bad novel, right?) is sitting with Col John Hort in "an abandoned four-storey cold-storage warehouse, overlook[ing] a dusty, trash-littered soccer field that days before was the insurgents' main launching field [for rocket attacks on the Green Zone] commanders said..." How they got there: "US troops reinforced positions on the edges of Sadr City, and battled their way into suspected launch sites."

Hort tells Brooks that they have driven the rocket-launchers farther north in Sadr City, where hopefully some of the 107 mm rockets will be out of range of the Green Zone. "Militants used a few 122 mm rockets, which can be fired from far deeper inside Sadr City, where there is no American presence, but they seem to have few of those weapons," says the reporter, apparently relaying to us what Hort told him.

However:

Hort said U.S. forces faced relentless militia attacks in Sadr City, but were able to establish patrol bases overlooking the launch sites.

The militiamen, he said, were "entrenched and determined to fight."

And they haven't yet surrendered the territory.

Meanwhile, nearby the Green Zone, McClatchy reported on Friday in its daily violence summary:

Baghdad

3 mortar rounds fell on the Green Zone, 2 at 9.45 am and 1 at 12.30 pm, Friday. No further details were available at the time of publication.

But if there is any reference to those three mortar rounds falling on the Green Zone on Friday, in any new report that day or this morning (Saturday), I have not been able to find it. It as if the same jinn from Alladin's lamp who showed us US forces driving the rocket-launchers out of range of the Green Zone had a hand in this too. But I don't know.

Politically, as it has been reported in a lot of places, Moqtada alSadr decided in time for announcement at Friday prayers that the venue for the Wednesday, April 9, mass-march has been changed from Najaf to Baghdad. This followed an uncharacteristically undiplomatic remark attributed to Ambassador Crocker by AlArabiya, to the effect that if they are planning on going to Najaf to make trouble they won't have much support, or words to that effect. A Sadrist spokesman explained that the shift to Baghdad was to make it easier for non-Sadrists to participate, because the anti-occupation theme is common to all Iraqis, not just the folks who frequent Najaf.

Meanwhile, the lead editorial in AlQuds alArabi, among other things a flagship publication for the Sunni resistance, says Maliki is toast. He turned on one of his last allies, the Sadrists, only to find himself deserted by perhaps one-third of his fighting force, and forced to turn to the Americans to avoid a catastrophic defeat in Basra and elsewhere in the South. He will no doubt be thrown out of office, says the editorialist, "either by the Americans, or by the people, or by both".

The editorialist doesn't have anything to say about what comes next. Disappointingly for a paper that prides itself on its nationalist spirit, the editorialist calls the Maliki-Sadr conflict a US-Iranian proxy war, with the US supporting Maliki and Iran providing weapons and supplies to the Sadrists. But there is also a recognition of the nationalist logic of the situation, for instance, when the editorialist expresses regret that the Iraqi Accord Front (the main Sunni bloc in parliament) "opportunistically" sided with Maliki, in hopes of cabinet seats and so on, suggesting it would have been better for them to have allied with the Sadrists. But these are issues that take time to mature.

UPDATE: As of the end of the day Saturday: (1) Quds Press said eyewitnesses reported fighting between the American forces and Mahdi Army fighters in "various parts" of Sadr City, within numbered sections 7, 8 and 9, the only additional detail being that some of the Americans had taken up sniper positions at Allawa Jamila (a big market, according to Ladybird at RoadstoIraq, who flagged this article), and at the nearby tax office.

(2) As for Voices of Iraq, their only Sadr City item on Saturday was a report that said Maliki issued an order permitting ambulances and other essential vehicles into and out of Sadr City and another Shiite area, both still subject to last week's overall ban on vehicular traffic.

Your tax dollars still at work

Here is a variety of reports on the same incident, which took place in Hilla around 3:00 am the morning of Thursday April 3.

(1) The Chinese news agency Xinhuanet, on its Arabic-language site: "Sixteen people killed or wounded, most of them members of the Iraqi Police, by American fire south of Baghdad".

Five members of the Iraqi security forces met their death, and 11 other people including two women were wounded, in a firefight and American bombing of a location by mistake, in the city of Hilla, capital of Babil province in southern Iraq.

A source in the Hilla police force told Xinhuanet by phone that "an American patrol arrived in the district of alJamiya in central Hilla around 3:00 on the morning Thursday, where the Provincial Building is located, and one of the building's guards noticed them and pointed his rifle at them, believing them to be armed persons attempting an attack on the Provincial Building, and one of the American soldiers fired at him, killing him immediately. "

The source continued: "Members of the Iraqi police stationed nearby came out when they heard the sound of firearms, and they pointed their guns at the American soldiers, who fired at them, and there followed a firefight between the two sides, during which air-support intervened, and there was an air-strike against the station from which the Iraqi police had come, resulting in the killing of four policemen, and the wounding of nine others. He added two women were wounded in their home by shrapnel from the air-strike on the police station, and a number of police vehicles were destroyed."

The source said he thinks the incident was unintentional, and that this resulted from each side thinking the other was an armed group, and not an official force.

(2) Here is the American version of the very same incident, from the multinational forces Iraq website, headed "Coalition Forces detain suspected Special Forces criminal":

BAGHDAD – Coalition forces detained a suspected Iranian-backed Special Groups criminal and two other suspects early this morning in the al-Hillah area, south of Baghdad.

Reports indicate the targeted suspect planned to assassinate Hillah police leaders and attempted to gather intelligence for Special Groups attacks to disrupt security in the area. He is also suspected of distributing $100,000 to Special Groups cells south of Baghdad.

During the operation, while the ground force was moving to the target area, unknown individuals fired upon Coalition forces, who returned fire in self-defense. A Coalition force helicopter also engaged the unknown individuals. One vehicle was destroyed, several structures were damaged, and three civilians were reportedly wounded. The incident is under investigation at this time.

When the ground force arrived at the target area, they captured the targeted individual and two other suspects without further incident.

"Iraqi and Coalition forces will continue to seek out and bring to justice criminals who target law enforcement personnel and threaten the security of Iraqi citizens," said Cmdr. Scott Rye, MNF-I spokesman.

(3) And here is this report by the Association of Muslim Scholars of Iraq, aggregating reports on resistance-oriented sites, headed: "Six killed in helicopter attack by the occupation in Hilla":

American occupation forces called in a helicopter attack during a firefight with the Mahdi Army militia Thursday in Hilla, which was the scene last week of fighting between government forces and that militia. A source in the government police said five people died in the pre-dawn incident, four of them members of the police. The source said the fighting started after American soldiers dressed in civilian clothing entered the alJamiya district in central Hilla. A spokesman for the main hospital in Hilla said they received six bodies after the fight, among them four who were members of the government police. And he said there 15 injured, about half of them civilians.

The American occupation army said armed persons opened fire on their forces while they were on an operation to arrest a member of what they call the "Special Groups", which is the expression the American occupation army uses to designate members of the Mahdi Army. Hilla is one of the many southern cities where last week government forces fought with the Mahdi Army militia. American occupation forces operated along side government units, and called in air strikes [also during those operations] last week.

All of which appears to offer three choices: (1) Complete case of mistaken identity (which wouldn't explain what the Americans were trying doing there in the first place); (2) successful American arrest operation against a single Iranian agent in the so-called "Special Groups", after a slight interruption to take care of "unknown individuals"; (3) An American continuation of the war against the Madhi Army, continued from last week, only now in plain-clothes (which would leave open the question whether the police station they bombed was suspected of Mahdi-Army leanings, or whether that part was a mistake).

Here's what English-language readers got to see on the subject: "US Forces clash with Gunmen in Iraq's Hilla", a Reuters-based report in the WaPo which doesn't really take a position on what was going on. It quotes a US spokesman who said this was triggered by fire from "unknown individuals" against the Americans, without saying what the plainclothes Americans were doing there in the first place. And the people the helicopter-fire "engaged with" were also "unknown individuals" (except that the hospital official identified four of them as members of the government police force).

I don't know about you, but it seems to me what this indicates is that the American forces are continuing the war on Sadrists, aka the pursuit of Iranian agents, only now in what is supposed to be a covert way, while still relying on air-strikes. So that the militias now supporting Maliki in a covert way would now include the Badr Organization and other party-based groups, and also the covert militias of the armed forces of the United States. And the way you can have air-strikes in support of covert operations, is with the help of completely misleading and dishonest "multinational forces--Iraq" announcements.

Or none at all, as in the case of the still-unexplained in airstrikes in Sadr City on Tuesday.

Media silent on US air strikes in sealed-off Sadr City

Xinhuanet filed this on its Arabic-language website Wednesday evening (April 2), along with reports of other Baghdad violence:

Sources said a fire broke out in a residential apartment building in Sadr City, eastern Baghdad, the result of an American bombing. The extent of damage is unknown, given the fact that Iraqi police barred entry to the aforementioned region, which has been under curfew for a number of days.

The Xinhua person apparently tried to get to the site, and reports that everyone was barred by Iraqi police. Compare McClatchy's one sentence (in its dispatch to its Washington office): "At dawn, the American planes bombed some targets in Sadr City, police said." And the "Multinational Force Iraq" website: Zero Other corporate media: Zero [But see also the comment by Robert Knight who notes he reported this on an investigative news show you can find out about at flashpoints.net].

Putting the reports and non-reports together: Sadr City targets, in the plural, were bombed by the Americans; Xinhua heard about one of these because of the fire; tried to get to the site and reports that everyone was barred. Naturally, US bombings of a residential area that is in effect quarantined are a major story, right? Not at all, not a word, not a whisper, in the US media.

It has been widely reported that the US authorities think at least some of the rocket/mortar attacks on the Green Zone have been coming from the vicinity of the Green Zone. Could yesterday's bombings in Sadr City have anything to do with that other big story about increasing accuracy in rocket and mortar attacks on the Green Zone, thought to be coming from Sadr City?

(People unavoidably think in terms of images and already-experienced patters. Would it not be a good idea for those thinking of the Green Zone attacks as leading to a helicopters-on-the-roof experience, to think instead about the Israel-Fatah-Hamas pattern in this GreenZone-Maliki-Sadr situation, resistance leading to quarantines, media blackouts, and the other accoutrements of collective punishment?)

IslamOnline reporter interviews people in the "Reddish-Green Zone"

A correspondent for the news-site Islamonline.net interviewed people in the Green Zone and others about the situation in the Green Zone, and he writes in English:

Observers say the attacks are becoming more well-planed by the passing of each day, coming closer to military centers, government complexes and diplomat offices.

The atmosphere is tense that many diplomats have cabled their countries about the risk in staying inside the Green Zone, now nicknamed the "Green-Reddish Zone" in a reference to the blood painting its streets.

The US Embassy's press office declined to speak about actual incidents and just said the Green Zone is and will continue to be the safest place in Iraq.

And:

US commanders say the rocket fire originates from Sadr City, a bastion of the Mehdi Army militia of Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr in eastern Baghdad.

A senior militant for Sadr militia seemed to claim credit.

"We are just making tests. Much more damage can be caused by our weapons," he said.

"We will use them in right time to show that the US military is unable to secure not only the Green Zone but all Iraq and maybe they decide that the best thing to do is leave our country for Muslims to govern."

But military expert and Ministry of Defense senior officer Lt. Col. Mohammad Saeed believes Sunni and Shiite fighters, both intent on weakening the government and US military power, might have carried out the attacks.

It is the only English-language report I've seen so far to explain the Green Zone crisis, and needless to say the whole article is worth reading.

More remarks on the depopulation of the Green Zone

The lead editorial in AlQuds alArabi this morning lists a number of reasons why Bush's "good-news honeymoon" in Iraq is ending, including the sudden increase in deaths in the statistics for the month of March, the failure of Maliki to weaken the Sadrists, and what the editorialist calls the danger of a split in the Sadrist ranks, with one group devoting itself to combating the occupation forces. Then the editorialist says this:

But the most important phenomenon, which overshadows most of the other developments in Iraq, is the exposure of the Green Zone, the most secure location in Iraq, to daily rocket bombardments, something that has motivated many diplomats and journalists and parliamentarians who went there seeking safety, to flee from the Green Zone to outside of Iraq, following the fall of a large number of injured persons in this attack.

Note that this is a little different from the news reports in AlArab and AlQuds AlArabi itself, which talked about moving to safer locations within Iraq (the AlQuds news report referred to moves by American Embassy people to the big American base at the Baghdad Airport), not moving out of the country altogether.

In any event, the editorialist doesn't get into the question who is responsible for the rocket and mortar attacks on the Green Zone, but he does note the following:

The Maliki government is now fighting against two fronts: A Shiite resistance front represented by the Sadrist trend, and the Sunni resistance front, grouped around a number of banners, including Islamist and nationalist organizations. And there is AlQaeda among them. What this means is that it [the Maliki government] has suddenly lost its reason for being.

The latter remark meaning: The government not only doesn't have Sunni support, but now it has forfeited the supposed majority Shiite support that was its reason for being, and instead it now faces a double-barreled resistance, from both sides.

Arab reports on the Green Zone exodus so far:

AlArab on Monday and Tuesday March 31 and April 1, noted here, and here.
AlQuds alArabi front page today Wednesday April 2, noted here.
And this AlQuds AlArabi editorial, also today, noted above.

English language mentions of this, including by those who, in good times, aren't shy about using their excellent Washington contacts:

Zero

AlQuds alArabi confirms the GreenZone exodus story

AlQuds alArabi says in its top story today (Wednesday April 2):

Reliable sources in the Green Zone said a large number of authorities have departed from the area, since it has been exposed to a large number of attacks, including deaths and injuries to a number of Americans and Iraqis, and the sources say the attacks are being carried out in a very accurate way, and this means that those carrying out the attacks, mostly armed Shiite groups, are in possession of precise details and maps of the Green Zone area.

The Green Zone has been exposed during the recent period of six days of fighting in Iraq, to a heavy downpour of rocket and mortar attacks during this whole period of days, with frequent warning sirens and American soldiers and employees take refuge in shelters during the attacks, which last a considerable period of time. The sources said some of the attacks include up to 10 shells consecutively in a single attack, causing terror among the Americans and the Iraqi employees, without the government or the American forces being able to do anything to stop it. And this has led many of the American and Iraqi authorities to leave the Green Zone, the Americans going to the Baghdad Airport, where there is a huge American base, and the Iraqis going to other locations, or to the north of Iraq, where there is a secure and stable atmosphere.

(The lead-in to this story is a call by an Iraqi parliamentarian for president Talibani to return to the Green Zone to deal with the current national crisis, instead of staying in the Kurdish north).

The AlQuds AlArabi reporter adds that a senior Iraqi security person said they have the name and picture of the ringleader of the group shelling and rocketing the GreenZone, they know he was trained in Iraq, how many people are working with him, that he uses a lot of cars for mobility, and so on (suggesting they have not been asleep at the switch).

"The game is up"

Nahid Hattar, one of the prominent Jordanian opposition journalists, lays out the argument for what perhaps a lot of people instinctively grasp, namely that the events of the past week, even though they laid bare an intra-Shiite split, that split is actually a very positive thing. In fact these events, including what he calls the uprising of the Shiite masses of the South and Center of Iraq, mark the beginning of the end of the American occupation and potentially the start of a non-sectarian approach to Iraqi reconstruction. His main points:

(1) What happened in the South and Center of Iraq in the recent period of time represented the alienation of the main part of the Iraqi Shiite masses from the political/occupation process, changing instead to a violent clash with it, politically and in military terms. This in itself is an important turning point in the development of the Iraqi resistance, because the whole American defense of their project in Iraq rests on some inscrutable but assumed support of the Shiite majority, which, it is now clear, has gone over to the side of resistance and opposition.

(2) The growth of a mass movement in Central and South Iraq opposed to the American occupation, and to the government of sectarian allocations, and to its parties, not least the Dawa Party and the Supreme Council/Badr Forces, splitting the so-called Shiite alliance, and sifting or sorting the forces within each of the factions, on a nationalist criterion. [Meaning: Instead of being defined by existing political party, the new scheme involves choosing sides, between nationalist and sectarian, within each of the parties].

(3) Reining in the Iranian influence, and limiting it to the political parties and agencies that are aligned with the occupation. The broad Shiite mass-movement ranges between an attitude of complete antagonism to any Iranian intervention, including throwing out the Iranian intelligence agents--between that attitude and that of Moqtada AlSadr who speaks of "our brothers in belief" although he clearly rejects any "extension of their influence in Iraq either politically or militarily". [The quotation marks are his, but it isn't clear what he is quoting]. ...

His first sentence under "fourthly" presented a lot of problems, and a commenter pointed out my first rendition of it didn't make sense. (See the comments). I think Nahid Hattar's main point here is just that in some way the Iranians could have intervened in the interests of the Maliki administration to pressure the Sadrists, the Americans would have liked them to do so, but they didn't. So from this point on, he says, it's no good for any nationalist Arab to interpret the Iranian attitude as "murky" or "ambiguous" or to resort to explanations of that type, which don't stand up to the facts of the recent events. What he means, I think, is that if Iran had wanted to prop up a sectarian pro-Iranian government, this was its occasion to do so, and it clearly declined.

The writer concludes with a list of things Arab movements and Arab regimes should do to take advantage of this turn of events: (1) Opening up to the forces and the people representing this Shiite nationalism and supporting them; (2) new reconciliation initiatives, not between participants in the existing political process, but rather in the interests of unifying the national-unity and Arabist forces across Sunni and Shiite lines; (3) refusal to consent to Iranian influence in Iraq; (4) refraining from any kind of taassub (gang- or party-formation) or sectarianism; (5) reflecting on the experience of the regime of Saddam Hussein, and the forces connected with it, as something past, and studying together with Iraqis in an Arab framework, a modern Iraqi form for the new nation, for the period after the occupation, which is collapsing; (6) rejecting Kurdish separatism or any other kind of separatism.

Finally, he writes:

The uprising (intifada) of the Iraqi Shiites against the occupation and its cooperators is a sure sign that the hour of the defeat of the American project in Iraq is approaching. So perhaps it is already time for those who have wagered on the success of this project or on an Iranian success as its inheritor, to be warned that the game is up, because a free, unified, Arab and strong Iraq will be back. It is both in our interests and our duty to hasten the day of that return.

(Yet another hattip to RoadstoIraq.com for calling everyone's attention to this article).

Sadr's greeting to his followers: ...the greater enemy

Here is the text of Moqtada alSadr's handwritten greetings to his followers, published today (Tuesday April 1) :

In the name of the highest:

Peace to my brothers in the Army of the Imam Mahdi, and the mercy and the blessings of God.

God preserve you, and the thanks to you are from God and not from me, for your suffering in these difficulties, and for your patience and your obedience and for your standing shoulder to shoulder in the defense of your people and your land and your honor, and peace to the mujahideen who have not allowed to the enemy any secure place. They have made of the occupier their enemy and [the enemy] of those who trust in them. I praise your aid, and I value your efforts in confrontation with the greater enemy [or the very great enemy].

At the same time I urge you to bear with equanimity the deaths of your martyrs--martyrs of Iraq--and I ask God to grant our wounded a speedy recovery. And may God preserve the families of the martyrs, and we ask of them patience and consolation in what God has chosen for them. And may they know that for all of the martyrs there are bright stars and that they are the white badges of victory and of peace. And may God reward them with the best rewards of the blessed.

Your brother,
Moqtada alSadr

No letup in GreenZone attacks. No analysis. (But an update with an obvious guess where they are moving)

Azzaman, working partly from an AFP report, says this morning that at least five people were injured in mortar attacks on the Green Zone Monday, some of them seriously. The report quotes an Iraqi eyewitness who said six shells fell near one of the checkpoints in the Green Zone, injuring at least five people including an Iraqi officer, adding that some of the injuries appeared to be serious.

The Azzaman reporter reviews the fact that attacks on the Green Zone increased when the goernment, with US support, launched its campaign against the Mahdi Army a week ago, and he reviews the American claims attributing the GZ attacks to Mahdi Army spinoffs with Iranian support. He notes that the Green Zone attacks haven't let up in spite of the government/Mahdi-Army cease-fire. He doesn't mention yesterday's claim by the Sunni resistance group Jaish al Muslimin of responsibility for six Karad rocket attacks on the Green Zone yesterday.

US media didn't have anything new to say about the GreenZone attacks this morning. McClatchy merely said "Mortar and rocket fire continued to rain down on the heavily fortified Green Zone, where American officials remained under orders not to travel except in armored vehicles or sleep anywhere but hardened buildings." And the NYT said even less: " Rockets and mortar shells again fell on the fortified Green Zone in central Baghdad, as they have for the past week."

In this connection, it is worth noting what Moqtada alSadr said in his most recent statement, congratulating and thanking his followers for their patience and their courage and so on, and urging them to "gather up your efforts for confrontation with the greater enemy." [See the following post for the whole text of this short statement]. A Sadrist official was quoted by the NYT as thinking along these same lines:

One Sadr official, Shiek Amar Asad, 31, said he understood that Mr. Sadr’s order to prohibit fighting applied only to Iraqi security forces. When Americans came into Sadr City, he said, the militia fighters could begin shooting.

“Maybe our case with the government is over,” he said. “But not with the occupiers.”

He was perhaps thinking of paragraph 4 of the Sadr cease-fire document, which says:

(4) We announce that we will renounce those who carry weapons and target the government and service agencies and institutions, or [political] party offices

but doesn't say anything about "the greater enemy." In fact the document's prologue explained that the cease-fire is, among other things, "in preparation for [Iraq's] independence and its liberation from the armies of oppression..."

(The report in the Qatari paper AlArab yesterday about moving the American embassy isn't mentioned anywhere that I can see*. One possibility is that the story was triggered by an observation of Americans moving some documents out of the GreenZone embassy as a precaution, along with general reluctance of others (Iraqi parliamentarians and so on) to keep on occupying their GreenZone quarters. The indication of stuff being moved "toward the western part of Baghdad" could indicate the airport. It's perhaps worth remembering that at the time of the last Mideast turnover of territory (Gaza from Fatah to Hamas), one of the big problems was that Dahlan and his group failed to clean out their intelligence files, leading to a lot of criticism and some embarrassment. That may be what is going on here, but I don't know).

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* [Update] I should point out that the AlArab paper itself spells out a little better what it is saying about the American embassy response to the attacks. Today (Tuesday April 1) it says continued attacks on the Green Zone " have led to the moving of a large number of employees to a "secure" location [quotation marks are the journalist's] outside the heavily fortified Green Zone. So it isn't just documents but "a large number of employees" that are being transferred somewhere else, supposedly more secure than the fortified Green Zone. I would say that might be the Airport.