Politics By Other Means
Update: The NPR hourly news summary is reporting that things are going so well that al Malaki had to be evacuated from his headquarters in Basra. No word yet on how long he will extend the deadline for the Mahdi Army to disarm. 😈
Given that all they know about politics was learned from Saddam Hussein and the Hedgemony is it any surprise that the voter registration “drive” before the Iraqi provincial elections features military assaults, aerial bombardment, and general mayhem?
Dr. Cole covers the expanding theater of operations, as well as the number of groups that have “decided not to canvas” for ISCI.
The BBC still reports on the situation in Iraq, unlike the US MSM, and tells us that Iraqi militia defy call to disarm
The radical Shia Iraqi cleric Moqtada Sadr has defied a call by the Iraqi government for his powerful Mehdi Army militia to lay down its weapons.
Arms would only be handed over to an Iraqi government willing to end the US occupation, his senior official in Basra, Hareth al-Ethari, told the BBC.
Security forces have been trying to wrest control of the southern city and other Shia areas from the Mehdi Army.
Fighting has claimed at least 200 lives across Iraq since Tuesday.
US jets have carried out a number of air strikes in Basra, which they say are targeting militant positions.
At least seven people were killed in one reported air strike in Basra overnight, according to relatives. Iraqi sources said the dead were all civilians but there was no confirmation from the US.
US aircraft on Friday bombed Baghdad’s Sadr City area, scene of some of the heaviest violence.
Reports say there has also been fresh fighting in the cities of Karbala, Hilla and Nasiriya, all with large Shia communities.
The political wing of the Sadrists is still making peaceful noises, but the Mahdi Army isn’t going down without a fight, and the ISCI forces might be making better progress if the commander wasn’t al Malaki’s brother-in-law, but these are the standards set by the US CPA. No political party in Iraq can expect to have any support if it can’t provide security for its people, and that means a militia thanks to the refusal of Rumsfeld to supply enough people for the invasion to achieve peace after the collapse of Iraqi forces.
Iran and the ISCI want the Sadrists neutralized because they don’t have the popular support to win elections. They will lose the seats they currently have in Sunni areas, because the Sunnis boycotted the last election, and they are facing major losses in the Shi’ia areas to the Sadrists. Lacking the technology and specialists to re-district themselves into power like the Florida Republicans, the ISCI is resorting to force to redraw district lines.
Of course the US has been pulled into this, but the UK seems to be avoiding getting suckered back into the mess.
8 comments
No unjust peace will hold, regardless of the force employed.
No peace will ever hold when everyone has a gun and feels aggrieved. The CPA/US solution for the security problem was to let every house have an AK-47 and pistol. The ammo dumps weren’t guarded and the looting wasn’t stopped.
It takes years for people to accept a police department, and decades to trust one.
A canonical double dactyl for the occasion…
Higgledy piggledy,
Nuri al-Maliki,
Acting as if he’s dictating the terms;
Mahdi militiamen,
Uncomprehendingly,
Render his troops into food for the worms.
– SB the YDD
Bryan, is there a way this situation could be worse? and would it improve with a change in U.S. administration?
These people have to find their own solution.
Moqtada al Sadr is back in grad school working towards the credentials that will help him truly lead his family’s movement. At the moment I don’t think he can do much more than state the opinion of the majority. He wants, and has said this on many occasions, a unified Iraq, but I’m not sure that the movement is really behind him on that. He wants all foreigners out of Iraq.
The Da’wa and ISCI don’t seem to have goals beyond extracting retribution and maintaining power. They want the US to remain, while most Iraqis want the US out, and they have close ties with Iran, while most Iraqis are not fond of Iran.
The Sunnis want to be left alone and a share of oil profits.
The Kurds want an independent Kurdish state.
I don’t see how the US can play any constructive role in this problem. This is going to require an impartial third party to mediate, and I don’t know who that would be – possibly the Arab League, but the Kurds will probably object. The UN has been compromised by association with the US, and all of the neighbors have their own agendas.
It would be nice if the Dalai Lama spoke Arabic.
If the US stays, that is the ISCI position. If it leaves, that’s the Sadrist position. No matter who sits in Washington or what they do, it will be entered into the win-loss columns in Iraq.
As it stands now, the Iraqi Army would seem to be on track for an embarrassing defeat. That will strengthen the hand of the more aggressive faction of the Mahdi Army, and they will ignore the cease fire. The current fighting can be labeled “defensive”, but if they win on defense they are likely to try offense.
How hard would it be to find a translator for the Dalai Lama?
You can’t effectively interrogate or mediate through an interpreter, you have to be able to interact directly with the participants.
Half of the “radical statements” reported by the press are misinterpretations of idioms.
There might be a Palestinian who would be suited to the job as mediator.
Can we finally start calling him “al-Malarkey” now?
It is beginning to look like his own party, Da’wa, has done that by going behind his back with ISCI to Iran to arrange a cease fire with the Sadr Movement.
The US is out of the loop on this, and ties to the US are about all al-Malaki had going for him.
It also looks like al Sadr is doing at least some of his graduate work in Qom, and not just in Najaf, which makes sense as many of the best manuscripts were probably moved to Qom for safety when all hell broke loose in Iraq.