April 1, 2008
From the Associated Press today on the uneasy truce in Basra and elsewhere in Shiite Iraq:
The peace deal between al-Sadr and Iraqi government forces — said to have been brokered in Iran — calmed the violence but left the cleric's Mahdi Army intact and Iraq's U.S.-backed prime minister politically battered and humbled within his own Shiite power base.
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki had promised to crush the militias that have effectively ruled Basra for nearly three years. The U.S. military launched air strikes in the city to back the Iraqi effort.
But the ferocious response by the Mahdi Army, including rocket fire on the U.S.-controlled Green Zone and attacks throughout the Shiite south, caught the government by surprise and sent officials scrambling for a way out of the crisis.
. . . "The whole situation is a big farce," said one resident, who gave his name only as Abu Mohammed, or father of Mohammed. "I think the situation will return to normal again but the problem will never be solved. Gangs, smugglers and corrupt people will go back to doing what they were doing before."
I haven't seen a compelling explanation yet for why Prime Minister al-Maliki and his scircle thought a frontal assault on the Mahdi Army was a particularly good idea at this time, but it's easy to see why everybody (including al-Sadr) was quick to back away from the precipice -- simply put, the mess they had before was a lot preferable to the one they were getting into.
For the Team (some-)Shiites government, you had the awful spectacle of intentionally inflicting carnage on one of your own major cities. It's worth noting, though, that having pried Maliki away from a previous alliance with Sadr and then prodded him into the Basra conflict, the scheming artists formerly known as SCIRI might not be heartbroken if the debacle ultimately forces the prime minister to resign, since it will give them another chance to promote their own party's Adel Abdel-Mahdi as his replacement.
For the Sadrists, as proud as they may be of their defiant stand, it does them little good to be seen as wanting to draw the government (no matter how clumsy and corrupt it might be) into a civil war. Over the weekend, the Los Angeles Times caught this anecdote:
In [his al-Jazeera] interview, Sadr, whose whereabouts was not revealed, said his fighters' ultimate goal was to drive U.S. troops out of Iraq. "The majority of the Mahdi Army are under control. They are loyal, obedient and conscious believers," he said.
That was little comfort to Iraqis trapped in Mahdi Army strongholds. Many of them see no difference between Sadr's fighters and the so-called rogue elements said to have broken away from the group.
Whatever they want to call themselves, they are using residential neighborhoods to wage war and putting innocent people in danger, said Satar Mehassin, 37, a clothing store owner who lives in Baghdad's Sadr City district.
Mehassin said he had appealed to militiamen after they planted a bomb near his home. "I tried to talk to them to tell them not to do that, because my house may be destroyed and my children may be killed," he said in a telephone interview. "They answered, 'Get inside or we will kill you.'"
And then, of course, the Iranians had to be frustrated that the various factions they've backed in Iraq couldn't keep from coming to blows with one another. Although I was struck by this passage in a story by Hamza Hendawi of the AP today:
Al-Sadr ordered his Mahdi Army to stand down seven months ago — earning him praise from U.S. commanders and officials. That cease-fire, in theory at least, remains in force. Militia commanders, however, say it was aggressively used by al-Sadr and his top aides to restructure and better arm and train militiamen.
The commanders, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information, said they have recently been taking delivery of new weapons from Iran, including rockets, roadside bombs and mortars. They have also received an infusion of cash and sent militiamen to Iran for training.
"It is a clever ploy," a militia commander in Baghdad's Sadr City district, the Mahdi Army's largest stronghold, said last week. "We can take on anyone in Iraq now."
So maybe the reason for the past week's sudden skirmishes -- and their equally swift conclusion -- is that the Iranians simply wanted to perform a field test.
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