Basra And Beyond

By Cernig

There are a couple of worth-a-reads on the situation in Iraq today. I particularly recommend James Joyner:

The parallels between this action and the Israeli’s 2006 invasion of Lebanon to take on Hezbollah are striking. In both cases, the party that initiated the escalation into high level conflict inflicted substantial damage on their adversary and were able to claim military victory. At the same time, neither came anywhere close to achieving their political objectives. In assessing the 2006 action, I concluded that Israel therefore lost. Absent substantial new information, I’d have to conclude that Maliki was the loser here for the same reason.

While Kevin Drum, in two posts, draws attention to the Iranian connection. Following reports that senior Iraqi government negotiators were asking the Iranians to intercede with Sadr on Maliki's behalf even as Maliki was spouting his "never retreat, never surrender" rhetoric and claiming that the Sadrists were worse than Al Qaeda, Kevin writes:

the head of the Badr Organization sure does seem to have, um, remarkably speedy access to the head of Iran's Qods force, doesn't he? It's something to ponder the next time some Bush administration or U.S. Army spokesperson casually maligns Sadr as "Iranian backed" but maintains a discreet silence when it comes to the far deeper and longer-lived Iranian ties of Maliki's own Dawa/Badr alliance. Just sayin'.

and also gives his opinion on the winners and losers.

it was Maliki who went to Sadr, not the other way around, and that he did it several days ago. What's more, it was Sadr who laid down the conditions for an end to the violence, not Maliki. This is pretty plainly at odds with the theory that Sadr's statement was a show of weakness, a sign that he was taking more damage than he could stand and was desperate for a truce.

In urban warfare like this it's frequently hard to figure out who's "won" and who's "lost." Often both sides lose. In this case, though, it certainly looks as if Maliki has lost more than Sadr. Both sides have taken casualties, but Sadr doesn't appear to have lost any ground; he's forced Maliki to come to him to ask for terms; he's successfully projected a statesmanlike image throughout; and politically he seems to be in stronger shape than before. Maliki, conversely, appears by all accounts to have launched an ill-timed mission with inadequate troops and then been unable to close the deal. The Iraqi army and the redoubtable Gen. Mohan al-Furayji, the much lauded leader of the regular forces in Basra, are both looking pretty banged up in the bargain too.

This could all change tomorrow, but right now that's about where we stand. It's increasingly hard to see how the Basra offensive ends up being a plus for Maliki and his allies. Including us, unfortunately.

But looking beyond Basra today, it's Anthony Cordesman that provides the "must read".

Much of the reporting on this fighting in Basra and Baghdad — which was initiated by the Iraqi government — assumes that Mr. Sadr and his militia are the bad guys who are out to spoil the peace, and that the government forces are the legitimate side trying to bring order. This is a dangerous oversimplification, and one that the United States needs to be far more careful about endorsing.

There is no question that many elements of the Mahdi Army have been guilty of sectarian cleansing, that the Sadr movement is hostile to the United States, that some of its extremists have continued acts of violence in spite of the cease-fire Mr. Sadr declared last summer, and that some of these rogue elements have ties to Iran. No one should romanticize the Sadr movement, understate the risks it presents or ignore the violent radicals in the Mahdi Army.

But it is equally important not to romanticize Mr. Maliki, the Dawa Party or the Islamic Supreme Council. The current fighting, which the government portrays as a crackdown on criminality, is better seen as a power grab, an effort by Mr. Maliki and the most powerful Shiite political parties to establish their authority over Basra and the parts of Baghdad that have eluded their grasp.

Moreover, Mr. Maliki’s gamble has already dragged American forces part-way into the fight, including airstrikes in Basra. Striking at violent, rogue elements in the Mahdi Army is one thing, but engaging the entire Sadr movement is quite another. The official cease-fire that has kept the mainstream Mahdi Army from engaging government and United States forces may well be rescinded if the government’s assault continues.

This looming power struggle was all too clear when I was in Iraq last month. The Supreme Council was the power behind the Shiite governorates in the south and was steadily expanding its influence over the Iraqi police. It was clearly positioning itself to counter Mr. Sadr’s popular support and preparing for the provincial elections scheduled for Oct. 1.

American military and civilian officials were candid in telling me that the governors and other local officials installed by the central government in Basra and elsewhere in southern Iraq had no popular base. If open local and provincial elections were held, they said, Dawa and the Islamic Supreme Council were likely to be routed because they were seen as having failed to bring development and government services.

He calls the situation "a civil war Iraq can't win" - and if the Iraqi people, as opposed to the power-players, won't be winners then you can be pretty certain that the US occupation isn't going to come out ahead either.

So far, it appears that the widespread open Shiite civil war that it looked like Maliki had begun is again on the backburner - for now - but Cordesman's analysis of the situation still provides the underlying warp and weft going forward into regional elections. That underlying power struggle will find its expression somehow, somewhere. My guess is that, having tried and failed to harness the power of the State to impose their own rule, the Dawa and SIIC parties will now turn to militias and ballot-rigging to try to salvage their positions before the regional elections. That in itself might well re-ignite violence on a larger scale but what is certain is that there's no defusing this slow-burn civil war.

Cordesman also notes the other two main currents in Iraq which could also flare into violence:

One is that the Sunni tribes and militias that have been cooperating with the Americans could turn against the central government. The second is that the struggle among Arabs, Kurds, Turkmen and other ethnic groups to control territory in the north could lead to fighting in Kirkuk, Mosul or other areas.

and while everyone has had their attention on the South, it's worth noting Walter Pincus in the WaPo who has kept watching the Sunni "Awakening" and writes that the US is increasingly uncertain about the future of the "Sons of Iraq".

At a Pentagon briefing last Wednesday, the commander of the 4th Stryker Brigade Combat Team in Diyala province, Col. Jon Lehr, told reporters via videoconference that the Sons of Iraq "are not a permanent security solution," although, he added, "they have been an integral part of our strategy."

...as Lehr put it last week, "not all Sons of Iraq are created equally." In Diyala, the local Sons of Iraq groups have split in two. "One is a tribally based," he said. "They tend to be associated with rural areas . . . [and] are there to protect their villages. " The other half, which he described as "the politically based ones," are in Baqubah, the province's main city of about 300,000, which less than a year ago was considered an al-Qaeda-driven battleground.

Baqubah's Sons of Iraq came from the 1920s Revolutionary Brigade, which earlier had been responsible not only for killing American soldiers but also for kidnapping a U.S. Marine. Others are from Hamas in Iraq, a Sunni insurgent faction that had broken away from the 1920s Brigade. And there are also some from mujaheddin made up of former Saddam Hussein loyalists.

That divide isn't getting much attention in op-ed columns - just as trhe Shiite divide didn't until it exploded in open conflict. And US officers seem divided on the future of the Awakening going forward too.

The question now is what happens to the Sons of Iraq in the long run. "They were a means to an end," Lehr said. "So what we're attempting to do right now is find employment for the men." He said some could be absorbed into Iraqi security forces -- primarily the police and some in the army.

But Gen. David H. Petraeus, interviewed on National Public Radio on March 19, the fifth anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion, was more cautious. "There are understandable concerns on the part of a government that is majority Shiite that, what they [would be] doing was hiring former Sunni insurgents, giving them a new lease on life, and that when this is all said and done they may turn against the government or the Shiite population," he said.

Col. Michael Fuller, chief of staff of the Multi-National Security Transition Command-Iraq, gave a different view during a Pentagon news conference Thursday. "Many of them are not qualified physically to join the Iraqi security forces because they're old, they're infirmed -- whatever the case may be." Nonetheless, he said he expects the Baghdad government to incorporate about 20 percent of them into the Iraqi security forces over time.

For the rest, said Fuller, whose job is to help the Iraq Defense and Interior ministries develop their forces, the government is "looking at programs much like our vo-tech schools, to get them trained . . . [so] they have a viable employment alternative that will keep them off the streets and out of criminal activities, if that's all they feel like they've got to fall back on."

"Conceptually," he added, the government of Iraq has agreed to begin picking up the costs associated with the Sons of Iraq. "We've just got to make sure that we have the conditions set to make sure they do it successfully and it doesn't become something that causes the Sons of Iraq to quit what they're doing," he said.

Petraeus, however, had the final word. In the end, he said, the Sons of Iraq would stay loyal to the course the United States has set "as long as it is in their interests."

Does anyone actually believe that the leaders of the "political" and "tribal" currents of the Awakening will regard having their forces cut to a fifth of their present strength, while the rest become street-sweepers and mechanics, will be in their own interests - especially given the evidence this last week that Maliki and his allies are quite willing to co-opt State military force to attempt to further theirs? Well, maybe some of the US cheerleading set do - but the rest of us should be looking for yet another explosive fracture at some stage in the future.

In The Midst Of His Army, Maliki Guarded By US Soldiers

By Cernig

This will do for a metaphor of all that's gone wrong with Bush's Iraqi project:

The U.S. military raised its profile in Basra still further, providing protection for installations including the palace where al-Maliki is housed, Iraqi Interior Ministry officials said.

This, mind you, in the middle of his most trusted and battle-ready division of troops.

The paragraphs of this McClatchy report that go before this remarkable admission about a puppet ruler and his unreliable army are hardly less troublesome.

After failing to break the resistance of Shiite militias in the five-day siege of oil-rich Basra, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki sent a top general to hold talks with his Shiite rival, Muqtada al-Sadr, on Saturday night only to be rebuffed by the anti-American cleric, an Iraqi official close to the negotiations said.

Al-Maliki denounced Shiite militants in Basra as the equivalent of al-Qaida, and al-Sadr told his supporters not to hand over their arms to a puppet state of the United States.

The diplomatic initiative and the harsh rebuff further eroded expectations for a successful outcome to the offensive, which al-Maliki is personally directing from the presidential palace in Basra. It was not the only sign of problems.

Al-Maliki issued orders Friday to enlist volunteers for the battle against the Shiite militias, and his Dawa party sought to enlist fighters.

The Dawa party has never had a major militia of its own, relying instead upon the Badr Brigades of its SCIRI ally, who make up the bulk of recruits to the 14th Army Division Maliki led into Basra. That it has apparently decided it now needs one says as little about Maliki's stability in power as his sending a negotiating emmisary to the Sadrists at the same time as he's publicly claiming there will be no negotiation and no backing down.

The circumstances in which the negotiations with al-Sadr took place suggested the government is no longer able to dictate the terms of an agreement with al-Sadr but now must seek a deal. Gen. Hussein al-Assadi, a Baghdad-based commander, traveled to Najaf to call on the head of al-Sadr's political bureau there, Lewaa Smaisam.

From his office, the two men telephoned al-Sadr, who is believed to be in Iran. But they could not reach agreement, an official close to the negotiations said. He would not give his name due to the sensitivity of the subject.

Shortly after the talks broke down, the Iraqi government extended its curfew in Baghdad indefinitely. Earlier Saturday, al-Sadr directed his followers not to lay down their weapons, a snub of al-Maliki's offer to militias Friday to pay for arms if they would hand them over within 10 days.

So much for the Surge. Baghdad's curfew is extended until further notice. Much of Basra - where US special forces are also now involved directly in the fighting - remains in the hands of Sadr's Mahdi militiamen.

The United States confirmed on Sunday that US special forces units were operating alongside Iraqi government troops in Basra, where the government is battling militants loyal to Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.

A US military statement described a joint raid by Iraqi and US special forces units which killed 22 suspected militants, including "16 criminal fighters" strafed in an air strike on three houses.

The raid showed US forces are being drawn deeper into the Iraqi-led crackdown, launched on Tuesday by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki in Basra, Iraq's second-biggest city.

The Iraqi special forces team killed four suspected militants in a house and two on a roof before calling in the air strike, the statement said.

Local Sadrist and Basra police (also likely Sadrist) sources are saying many of the casualties in this and other air strikes are civilians, of course. The US has played this game before, always claiming every dead body as a confirmed insurgent and every arrested one as a suspected insurgent. But the description for not having sufficient boots on the ground to take on a couple of hundred militiamen in a city of over two million, and thus relying on air power and artillery, is always going to be "collateral damage". Iraqi TV stations are describing dead civilians in this and other strikes as "martyrs".

Meanwhile, the British have confined themselves to a checkpoint outside the city and one artillery strike in supprt of Maliki's forces.

"We've had ground forces outside the wire assisting Iraqi forces. There are no British ground forces inside the city of Basra," spokesman Major Tom Holloway said by telephone. "As yet there is no intent to push British armour into the city."

The British military have worked out faster than the US that Maliki's politically-motivated offensive is designed to drag the occupying powers into providing continuing bodyguarding for his government and his own ass.

Basra Blowback

By Cernig

Well, just recently people on the Right were asking why Iraq was off the front pages "now that there's only good news". I bet they wish they'd not tempted fate. They didn't really listen to Petraeus and others who said that the lull in violence could so very easily be a transient one and that the transience was caused by various currents of non-reconciliation upon which the "window" was almost closed.

Now, with Nour al-Maliki playing Napoleon in Basra, alongside his brother-in-law general, stability in Iraq is unravelling with remarkable speed - a shock and awe attack on assumptive victory pronouncements. No-one could have anticipated this - other than those of us who did, frequently, and months ago.

Maliki's assault on the Sadrists, painted as a general assault on "criminal militias", but somehow managing to leave his SIIC/Badr Brigade allies well alone, is failing badly. Everywhere, the Mahdi Army are holding their own territories and even expanding the fight into new towns and neighbourhoods. Given the unreasonably small force with which Maliki launched his assault, and the estimated 60% penetration of the region's police by the Mahdi Army which has led to widespread desertions, Fester and I are convinced that Maliki had a good idea this would happen. His main purpose in mounting the assault was to ensnare US occupation forces into stepping into the lead, battling Sadr's forces for him and for his SIIC allies.

That leaves the US with no good options in the South, even if commanders had little choice but to get Maliki's back from the front.

"The key question now is what the United States is going to do," said Joost Hiltermann, of the International Crisis Group think tank. "If it allows (the crackdown) to go forward the ceasefire will unravel and the U.S. will face the Sadr movement in its full power."

"This will be bad for both sides. Sadr will lose men and the United States will lose the gains of the surge".

...Analysts say Maliki's decision to launch the Basra crackdown, instead of carrying through with a promised offensive against Sunni Islamist militants in the northern city of Mosul, lends weight to the Sadrist accusations of a political agenda.

Oh yeah, Mosul. While it's been getting almost no press in the States, there's been a major battle going on there too for months which has seen violence rise to a 2-year high with no end in sight and several reports suggest the fighting is against a wider-based insurgency than one composed just of the rump of AQI's presence. Let's not forget, too, that Turkey is still shelling and bombing Kurdish Iraq, and will be back over the border in force as soon as the Spring Thaw sets in. Between these and other prior commitments, the US will be lucky if it can shake loose three brigades to help Maliki's crackdown. They'll be going in essentially blind.

"This is a precarious situation," a senior official familiar with U.S. intelligence in southern Iraq said, with "a lot to be gained and a lot to lose." This official and others said that even as Maliki takes needed military action in Basra, he appears to be positioning himself and his Shiite political allies for dominance in provincial elections this fall.

Competition for power and resources in the oil-rich south has been ongoing for months among the Mahdi Army of Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr; the Badr Corps militia of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, the largest single party in the Iraqi parliament; and the breakaway Sadrist movement known as Fadhila. The Shiite groups are opposed and allied with each other in a tangle of national and local issues, with many divisions reflected in factions of the Shiite-dominated Iraqi security forces.

Although the Bush administration has tried to monitor the growing conflict in Basra, Iraq's second-largest city, "our intelligence in that area is far less than we would like. We don't have any forces there," the senior official said, adding that "we are operating with a good dose of opaqueness."

As outlined by several civilian and military officials, none of whom was authorized to speak on the record, a victory in Basra against what Bush described as "those who believe they are outside the law" could prove Maliki's mettle. "Basra's been a mess for a long time," said a U.S. official in Baghdad, "and everybody's said to Maliki, 'What are you doing about it?' "

But this official and others said that if the fighting in Basra leads to a breakdown in the cease-fire observed since August by the bulk of Sadr's forces elsewhere in the country, it could easily shatter the tenuous U.S. security gains of recent months.

Indeed, the Sadrist insurrection which has followed Maliki's assault now controls many towns athwart the main route of supply for US forces, up from Saudi Arabia - and insurgent troops can take potshots at supply trucks all day every day if needed.

Yet, despite all this, there are good reasons to be sceptical of leaks from the White House suggesting the administration had no idea Maliki was going to bring his offensive forwards three months and thus pre-empt any moves by Sadr (and perhaps Petreaus, who has been getting along well with "Seyyed" Muqtada of late) which might have made it unneccesary.

Nor should the US be looking to the UK to provide anything but base security at the Basra Airport, probable home of US forces sent to bail out Maliki's division of Badr Brigade militiamen in Iraqi Army uniforms. While British politicians are under intense pressure from the US to commit their three available battlegroups – each of about 650 men armed with Challenger 2 tanks and Warrior armoured vehicles – the British military is implaccably opposed to such intervention.

"It's ridiculous for Britain's position in Iraq that we've got this firepower down there and we're not willing to help the Iraqis out," the British official said. "The army won't even listen to suggestions it might be needed."

Maliki, too, is seeing political blowback froom his hasty move - and his governemnt is busy painting itself into a corner even as contrary voices mobilize. His foreign minister has told the Arab Council that there will be no walking back or negotiated settlement. Maliki himself has today gone as far as to call the Sadrists worse than Al Qaeda and promise no surrender or negotiation. But there are reports that Grand Ayatollah Sistani (or the "cat-herder", as Eric likes to call him) is backing calls for negotiations instead of Maliki's intransigence - a new development in Shiite inter-relations and one that seriously weakens Maliki's postion.

The scale of the outcry has forced Grand Ayattollah Sistani to call for a peaceful solution to the conflict, even though his various spokespeople initially supported the assault. By Friday, government officials were falling over themselves to get to TV stations to declare that the fighting was not against the Sadr movement at all. With an eye on the sentiment and reality on the streets, some officials even heaped praise on Sadr, insisting the conflict was with "ordinary criminals".

I saw a report earlier that even Iraqi President Talibani is saying there must be negotiations, but I've lost the link. A senior Iranian cleric, the leader of that country's Guardian Council, has also said that the opposing groups should negotiate an end to their clashes - which seems to put paid to the notion floated by the Saudi-controlled Arabic press that Iran had cut Muqtada loose and green-lighted SIIC and Dawa as their main allies and proxies in Iraq to take the Sadrists out. The Iraqi parliament tried to have a session calling for negotiation, one backed by Sunnis as well as Sadrists - but Dawa and SIIC representatives walked out en masse, leaving them quorumless. Perhaps calls from Sadrist MP's to try Maliki "like Saddam" had something to do with that, perhaps they simply wanted to forestall any notion that they didn't have a national mandate for their parties' self-serving actions.

Maliki is now in a position whereby he might - might - be able to win or stalemate the battle with American assistance, but there's no way he can win the political war he's started. He will either fall or be forced to painfully backtrack to negotiate a settlement which will favor Sadr more than it does himself. He's toast and Sadr, despite the many op-eds written over the last four years claiming the opposite, very much isn't. It remains to be seen how fast the Bush administration. always slow to see the blindingly obvious, catch on to this fact.

Keane - "The security situation is worsening,"

By Cernig

"The security situation is worsening." Well, if retired General Jack Keane, one of the architects and chief propagandists for the Surge, says it's so, then it must be.

Meanwhile, Sadr has responded to Maliki's ultimatum to the Mahdi Army that it must lay down its arms within 72 hours by demnading Maliki go home to Baghdad and send in a parliamentary team to negotiate their way back to the ceasefire.

And the US keeps on supporting the least-popular option - and the one that Iran supports too. Divide and conquer, not support for democracy, is always the colonialist way.

Anyone remember who said this about Iraq back in January 2007?

This political culture is not ready for representative government

That's right - General Jack Keane.

'Nuff said.

McCain - Centrist Or Wingnut?

By Cernig

Think Progress has the text of John McCain's latest key speech - on foreign policy and to be delivered to the Los Angeles World Council.

He appears to be trying to span the divide between his wingnut base and the rest of America - and doing so badly.

The speech begins with an implicit appeal to genetic heritability of leadership quality.

When I was five years old, a car pulled up in front of our house in New London, Connecticut, and a Navy officer rolled down the window, and shouted at my father that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor. My father immediately left for the submarine base where he was stationed. I rarely saw him again for four years. My grandfather, who commanded the fast carrier task force under Admiral Halsey, came home from the war exhausted from the burdens he had borne, and died the next day.

And I suppose if you're one of those Religious Right wingnuts who don't believe in evolution (and thus genetics), you might think that such qualities can be inherited as the gift of the Sky Spook or achieved by osmosis. For the rest of us...nope.

But he then goes on to appeal to those Religious Right wingnuts and neoconservative wingnuts both with a bit about Manifest Destiny and Harry Truman.

President Harry Truman once said of America, “God has created us and brought us to our present position of power and strength for some great purpose.” In his time, that purpose was to contain Communism and build the structures of peace and prosperity that could provide safe passage through the Cold War. Now it is our turn.

Of course, now the reason "God has blah, blah" is to fight Islamofascism and Islam in general - the "transcendent challenge of our time". It's all pablum for the scared-of-brown-people base.

Then he gets into his policy prescriptions, and here he really wanders of the reservation. One wonders how those on the far Right who are holding their noses while marching in lockstep are going to (privately) react.

- A new League of Democracies which presumably will mean the U.S. can ignore the UN. But if the new League doesn't like a U.S. proposal then the U.S. "must be willing to be persuaded by them". So much for the go-it-alone neocon dream of superpowerdom.

- A new Kyoto deal that America will back first and try to get China and India onboard for later (but still sign even if they don’t).

- Encourage support for the EU and…wait for it…a transatlantic Common Market (the CM was the predecessor of the EU)!

- Removal of border barriers to trade between South, Latin and North America.

- Unilateral nuclear stockpile reductions.

- Kicking Russia - who is on course to be the world's largest energy exporter - out of the G8 (and generally giving the Cold Shoulder to Russia on all fronts - back to the Cold War) but letting India and Brazil in.

But unlike Russia, oddly, "China and the United States are not destined to be adversaries". Must be all those U.S. notes China is holding. Or maybe the Boeing factory.

- A total ban on enhanced interrogation techniques. (For "suspected" terrorists, is the quibble word.)

- But…no withdrawal from Iraq ever until Iraqis forget their sectarian and factional divides and become a "peaceful, stable, prosperous, democratic" state" that poses "no threat to neighbors" and contributes "to the defeat of terrorists". That's the McCain definition of victory. At the same time he wants to throw the Saudis and Egypt under the bus and take on Iran face first (based yet again on faulty translations of the words of an Iranian President who will be gone by 2013 at the latest and spurious claims that Iran has said it wants a nuke).

- So the U.S. under McCain will stay in Iraq while simultaneously pissing of both the main Islamic powerbases in the region. Can anybody say "Proxy Wars"? McCain obviously can't. Not even while the Surge goes into meltdown.

- The same criteria for victory to be applied to Afghanistan, although no mention of how that's to be achieved while about half of promised U.S. aid to that forgotten front goes unspent and what does get spent gets spent on U.S. based contractors who bring most of the money back home again.

The two parts of the speech - the Manifest-Destiny, Cold-War-Redux hard-Right BS and the almost-progressive definitely-centrist policy prescriptions, simply don't go together. It's as if two different speeches were written, one by McCain's neocon advisors and one by his paleocon "realist" team - and then some poor slob had the job of spot-welding the two together.

Oh, and as Fifth Estate points out in TP's comments, Straight Talk McCain is flirting with plagiarism and recycling old speeches as new ones. Right where the spot-weld is.

McCain today:

I detest war. It might not be the worst thing to befall human beings, but it is wretched beyond all description. When nations seek to resolve their differences by force of arms, a million tragedies ensue. The lives of a nation’s finest patriots are sacrificed. Innocent people suffer and die. Commerce is disrupted; economies are damaged; strategic interests shielded by years of patient statecraft are endangered as the exigencies of war and diplomacy conflict. Not the valor with which it is fought nor the nobility of the cause it serves, can glorify war. Whatever gains are secured, it is loss the veteran remembers most keenly. Only a fool or a fraud sentimentalizes the merciless reality of war. However heady the appeal of a call to arms, however just the cause, we should still shed a tear for all that is lost when war claims its wages from us.”

a) Rear Admiral Timothy Ziemer, July 4 1996–Seawolf Assoc. speech :

“…to the Navy for sending us to war. At the same time, none of us feel that in Vietnam there is a romantic remembrance. War is awful and when nations seek to resolve their differences by fighting, a million tragedies ensue. Look at Bosnia today. The story line should be hatred and ignorance. War is wretched beyond description. Nothing, not the valor with which it is fought, nor the cause with which it serves can glorify war. Neither do we share the exhilaration of combat ”

b) McCain, speech at the RNC in NY, 2004
War is an awful business. The lives of a nation’s finest patriots are sacrificed. Innocent people suffer. Commerce is disrupted, economies are damaged. Strategic interests shielded by years of statecraft are endangered as the demands of war and diplomacy conflict. However just the cause, we should shed a tear for all that is lost when war claims its wages from us. But there is no avoiding this war. We tried that, and our reluctance cost us dearly. And while this war has many components, we can’t make victory on the battlefield harder to achieve so that our diplomacy is easier to conduct. That is not just an expression of our strength. It’s a measure of our wisdom.”

All in all, a speech that tried to appeal to two very different constituencies at total odds with one another - the hard Right and the rest of America - and will end up satisfying neither.

Update It's a recycling of a recycling! The HuffPo points to almost the exact same wording again, in a 2001 WSJ op-ed McCain wrote to drum up support for the war-of-choice in Iraq he'd been wanting for a decade. It appears originality isn't "maverick" McCain's strongpoint. Just war and more war. The HuffPo's Stein writes:

What these two, nearly identical, remarks suggest is that McCain's view of combat -- and, perhaps more importantly, its human costs -- has not really changed throughout the course of war. That is, despite five years of military operations in Iraq and more than 4,000 troop deaths, he still sees the "lives lost" and the "merciless realities" as necessary sacrifices to make.

It is a position that undoubtedly remains popular with a great number of primarily conservative voters. But it is also a sign of an unbending, almost stubborn, nature on the war that McCain's critics will certainly hold over his head during the presidential campaign.

You betcha. Because "Shed a tear, and then get on with the business of killing our enemies as quickly as we can, and as ruthlessly as we must" just doesn't cut it when the enemies are ones of choice. It's illegal warmongering, plain and simple, and more than just a solitary tear should be shed to compensate for the blood on the hands of McCain and the other warmongers. A Nuremberg Trial is what is called for.

Update 2 It's a recycling of a recycling of a recycling! Think Progress now notes that the good Rear Admiral appears to have copied his words from an even earlier speech by McCain - back in the 90's, no less. Rinse and repeat.

Sadrists Stirring

My colleague Eric has been raising an area of concern in that the Sadrist ceasefire is a tentative one that is conditional on the Sadrists not being targetting by the SIIC/Badr Brigades... whoops I meant the legitimate armed forces of Iraq, and the US military. As long as it is a live, and let live situation, the Sadrists were happy to reconsolidate their power and ride their popularity for being anti-American Shi'ite nationalists who support the poor with social services.  However the situation looks like it could be changing.  

 

 Unfortunately, the attacks and targeting of members of the Sadrist current have continued - actually, they've heated up in recent weeks with informed speculation pointing to a coordinated attempt to weaken the Sadrist current ahead of regional elections (more on this below).

 

McClatchey is reporting on wide spread preperations for armed conflict between the JAM/Mahdi Army and the Badr Brigades/SIIC/Iraqi military in multiple locations.  The JAM appears to be on the defensive as they have won control of East Baghdad, and significant elements of riverside West Baghdad, as well as control of Basra, in conjunction with the Fadillah Party, an off-shoot Sadrist faction which is not loyal to Moqtada Sadr but follows another follower of Sadr's father.  

 

A cease-fire critical to the improved security situation in Iraq appeared to unravel Monday when a militia loyal to radical Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada al Sadr began shutting down neighborhoods in west Baghdad and issuing demands of the central government.

 

Simultaneously, in the strategic southern port city of Basra, where Sadr's Mahdi militia is in control, the Iraqi government launched a crackdown in the face of warnings by Sadr's followers that they'll fight government forces if any Sadrists are detained. By 1 a.m. Arab satellite news channels reported clashes between the Mahdi Army and police in Basra.

 

Last week, I noted that in Kut and other southern cities Sadrist groups were fighting against official government formations that are fighting for the interests of the SIIC.  This could be the start of interesting times again after an intermediate pause as the dual pressures of internal urge to fight and external operations agaisnt Sadrist supporters may lead to increased combat intensity from Sadrists aligned fighters. 

Update By Cernig The BBC reports that the fighting is spreading to other Iraqi cities and that the Sadrist ceasefire is very definitely over.

Heavy fighting has been raging in Basra as thousands of Iraqi troops battle Shia militias in the southern city.
At least 30 people have died in the operation, which is being overseen in Basra by Iraqi PM Nouri Maliki, a day after he vowed to "re-impose law".

Oil-rich Basra is in the grip of a bitter turf war between armed groups, including the Mehdi Army, analysts say.

Clashes have spread to other parts of Iraq, including Baghdad's Sadr City, where the Mehdi Army fought rival Shia.

The Mehdi Army - which supports radical Shia cleric Moqtada Sadr - has threatened a nationwide campaign of civil disobedience.

The powerful militia declared a truce last August which had been credited with helping restore stability to parts of Iraq.

...The BBC's Adam Brookes says three Iraqi army brigades were deployed from Baghdad to Basra as back-up for the offensive, and that up to 15,000 troops could be involved.

...Routes into Basra have been sealed off, according to reports.

One resident of the city told the BBC: "The streets are very dangerous, there's continuous exchange of fire in areas very close to my house, even though my neighbourhood is relatively safer than others."

The BBC's Paul Wood says the fighting in Basra can be seen as the government trying to impose law and order but also as part of the power struggle within the Shia community.

He says such intra-Shia violence could be just as dangerous to hopes of peace as sectarian hatreds or the insurgency.

The offensive comes a day after the authorities in Basra imposed an indefinite night-time curfew.

Police have now also imposed curfews in the cities of Kut, Samawa, Nasiriyah, Hilla and Diwaniyah.

Moqtada Sadr called for "general civil disobedience in Baghdad and the Iraqi provinces" if the attacks did not end.

In Sadr City, Mehdi Army fighters reportedly ordered Iraqi police and soldiers out of the district and there have been clashes between rival militias.

Hundreds of protesters marched in the Iraqi capital, calling on shops to shut.

The Mehdi Army also took control of several areas in Kut, 175km (110 miles) south-east of Baghdad.

Some, blinded by their own opinion of their intellect rather than applying themselves to serious thinking, have said that the Iran-backed nature of the SIIC and their Badr Brigade is irrelevant to all this, since the Iranians have proven themselves adept at bi-partisan backing of militia and terror groups elsewhere. That ignores entirely that the SIIC is also the largest part of the US-backed Iraqi central government and that the Badr Brigade has utterly penetrated the Iraqi security forces with central government comnnivance. What we have here is a faction-fight where one side has cloaked itself in the mantle of central authority and where both Iran and the US are backing that faction. That, surely, is noteworthy.

Be that as it may, the Sadrist ceasefire is surely over - something that may have accounted for a third or more of the drop in violence in Iraq. With Sunni Awakening members also calling for civil disobedience and national strikes in protest at their sidelining by the very same Shiite faction operating under the mask of central government authority, it looks very like that Shiite faction will respond against any such actions in the same way. They've already said they won't countenance the Awakening becoming a serious threat to their power, after all. The chances of any political reconciliation and continued drops in violence look very slim indeed. The wiondow has closed.

The Uncommitted Republican

By Cernig

Chuck Hagel is almost the model of a sane and moderate Republican, the kind we Lefties wish more of those across the political divide were like. He's also a decorated Vietnam veteran and a widely-respected moderately-conservative voice on American foreign policy. Which makes it interesting indeed that he won't endorse John McCain, citing fundamental foreign policy disagreements. ABC yesterday:

Sen. Chuck Hagel, R - Neb., said this morning he is not ready to endorse Sen. John McCain, R - Ariz., for president.

"I think endorsements, at least when I endorse someone, or when I work for someone, or commit to someone, I want to be behind that person in every way I can," Hagel said in an exclusive "This Week" interview.

Hagel pointed to their differing views over foreign policy in explaining his hesitation. "I've obviously got some differences with John on the Iraq war. That's no secret. I want to understand a little more about foreign policy, where he'd want to go. Certainly doesn't put me in Obama or Clinton's camp. But John and I have some pretty fundamental disagreements on the future of foreign policy," he said.

Like Hagel counts the Iraq occupation as one of the five biggest blunders in American history while McCain would be happy if it continued for another 100 years. Hagel thinks Bush's policy in Iraq is "ping pong game with American lives" while McCain wants more of the same. And despite the crowing of the pro-Surge crowd, who have ignored all Petraeus' warnings in their rush to cry "mission accomplished" once again, it looks like the window of opportunity is nearly closed and Hagel will be proven right.

Tensions are simmering again in once bloody Anbar province, Washington's prize good news story for security in Iraq.

Along the main road through Anbar's second city of Falluja, a former insurgent stronghold and scene of fierce battles with U.S. forces in 2004, markets and car workshops are re-opening for business.

But many say that growing anger at a lack of jobs, basic services and political progress threatens to shatter peace in the western province, which makes up about a third of Iraq.

"The situation till now is still not certain in Anbar, and the peace is only relative to before. Calm always comes before a storm," Sunni tribal leader Sheikh Yaseen al-Badrani said.

The U.S. military said in January it could transfer security responsibility for Anbar to Iraqi forces as early as this month, but now it is more cautious.

In an interview with Reuters, Major-General John Kelly, commander of U.S. forces in Anbar, would give no time-frame, saying only that the handover would take place soon.

Sunni tribal leaders, credited with cutting violence in Anbar by ordering their men to turn on Sunni Islamist al Qaeda, are growing increasingly impatient with politicians.

"We thought that when security was established in Anbar, then the situation would turn to development and reconstruction, but we're surprised to see neglect from the government," said Kamal Nouri, a member of Anbar's tribal council.

Sawhar councilmen are already calling for a national strike of Awakening members - something the central government will either ignore or see as a threat to its authority. The first will see a slow return to insurgency of non-cooperative Sunni militias, the second will see that happen swiftly and explosively. At just the same time, Muqtada al-Sadr's feud with the central coalition of Dawa and SIIC parties has become impossible for Ayatollah Sistani to continually manage and defuse. There's a storm coming in.

I'm going to be called a doom-monger and defeatist by the pro-occupation Right for this, I know. They said the same when their belief that US troops would be greeted as liberators was questioned, when they were told that the insurgency was more complex than just Al Qaeda foreign fighters, when people wrote that the glaring gaps in the Iraqi constitution would lead to sectarian violence, when we said Mookie wasn't dead yet (repeatedly), when we said that the Sunni Awakening was an aliance of convenience...

Playing Patience With Iraq

By Cernig

As Eric points out, Mookie al-Sadr isn't politically dead yet despite the many obituaries for his career written with Friedmanlike consistency by rightwing cheerleaders of the Iraqi misadventure. That isn't to say that his main Shiite rivals, who are even more closely allied to Iran than the Sadrists, aren't trying to retroactively make all those cheerleaders' pronouncements come true.

Iraqi security forces battled Shiite gunmen south of Baghdad on Friday, raising tensions among rival factions of the country's majority religious community and straining a seven-month cease-fire proclaimed by the biggest Shiite militia.

The fighting in Kut, 100 miles southeast of Baghdad, broke out Thursday night when factions of the Mahdi Army, led by anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, attacked checkpoints throughout the city, officials and witnesses said.

...Al-Sadr's supporters have complained that the Shiite-led government has used the cease-fire to accelerate a crackdown against their movement in Baghdad and the Shiite heartland south of the capital.

Iraqi security forces are heavily influenced by a rival Shiite group, the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, which wields considerable power in the central government and in provincial administrations throughout the south.

Rival Shiite groups have been battling for control of the oil-rich south with an eye toward the eventual withdrawal of U.S.-led forces. Shiites form an estimated 60 percent of Iraq's 27 million people.

A Sadrist member of parliament alleged that the crackdown in Kut and elsewhere in the south was part of a move by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's Dawa party and the supreme council to prevent al-Sadr's followers from winning control of key southern provinces in provincial elections expected this fall.

"They have no supporters in the central and southern provinces, but we do," Ahmed al-Massoudi told The Associated Press. "If the crackdown against the Sadrists continues, we will begin consultations with other parliamentary blocs to bring down the government and replace it with a genuinely national one."

On this, the Sadrists are actually in the right. Whatever else they may have done, their SIIC (formerly SCIRI) rivals are definitely using their own Badr Brigade militia's utter penetration and co-opting of the Iraqi police in the South to go after the Sadrists. So much for democratic means, eh?

Which brings me neatly to the new regional elections bill just passed by the Iraqi government. The cheerleaders want it to be an important step in the reconcilliation process but it just isn't. It's been held up for ages by - you guessed it - the Shiite vice president and SIIC member, Adel Abdul-Mahdi, who refused to sign the bill until Cheney leaned on him. Now it has been ratified and the mainstream media's poodles are obligingly looking the other way on those devilish details.

Last month, Iraq's parliament passed the bill calling for provincial elections by Oct. 1. But the presidential council blocked implementation after the Shiite vice president, Adel Abdul-Mahdi, raised objections to some of the provisions.

That outraged followers of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who are eager for elections to take power away from Abdul-Mahdi's party in the vast, oil-rich Shiite heartland of southern Iraq. Al-Sadr's supporters believed their Shiite rivals were trying to delay the vote to hold on to power.

Although many details must still be worked out before a vote can be scheduled, the council's decision Wednesday makes it likely that a vote can take place later this year.

That last sentence is a gem, the only mention of problems in implementing the bill. Yet among the tiny "details" still to be decided that are too inconsequential to mention are things like: when the regional elections will actually be held as that may still change in negotiations no matter what the bill says, whether there will be a rolling set of elections pushing the completion date of the process out into the never-never, and whether it will be possible for ruling parties like the SIIC to actually block the holding of regional elections in areas where they don't want them happening at all.

That's quite a set of details going unmentioned by the cheerleaders, but the bill is signed and that's going to be enough for the pro-occupation faction in American politics to dangle it as a carrot for at least another couple of Friedman's worth of occupational "patience".

What If They Held A Reconciliation Party And Nobody Came?

By Cernig

Fareed Zakaria has a must-read essay today at Newsweek entitled "Stuck In The Iraqi Loop" in which he references one of General Petraeus' favorite scholar-warriors to explain the war supporters' dilemma over Iraq - the paradox that the Surge was supposed to give space for reconciliation and that would enable troop withdrawals, but we're now being told the Surge's gains are too fragile to risk withdrawing troops.

Making sense of this paradox is critical. Because in certain crucial ways things are not improving in Iraq, and unless they start improving soon, the United States faces the awful prospect of an unending peacekeeping operation—with continuing if limited casualties—for years to come.

In a brilliant and much-circulated essay written in August 2007, "Anatomy of a Tribal Revolt," David Kilcullen, a veteran Australian officer who advised Gen. David Petraeus during the early days of the surge, wrote, "Our dilemma in Iraq is, and always has been, finding a way to create a sustainable security architecture that does not require 'Coalition-in-the-loop,' thereby allowing Iraq to stabilize and the Coalition to disengage in favorable circumstances." We have achieved some security in Iraq, though even this should not be overstated. (Violence is still at 2005 levels, which were pretty gruesome.) But we have not built a sustainable security architecture.

How does one create a self-sustaining process that leads to stability? Do we need more troops? Longer rotations? Kilcullen points in a different direction: "Taking the Coalition out of the loop and into 'overwatch' requires balancing competing armed interest groups at the national and local level." In other words, we need to help forge a political bargain by which Iraq's various groups agree to live together and not dominate one another.

But signs that anythink like such a political bargain is in the offing always turn out to be more hype than reality, all the while the "window of opportunity" is closing by even General Pteraeus' admission.

There was another major attempt at forging such a political compact due to begin today - but it's a failure before it has even begun, with key groups either not attending or saying it's all just government window-dressing with no real intent behind it.

A conference to reconcile Iraq's warring political groups began to unravel even before it got under way on Tuesday, with the main Sunni Muslim Arab bloc pulling out and protesting it had not been properly invited.

...The gathering, billed as the biggest of its kind in Iraq, aimed to bring leaders of rival factions together around much-delayed so-called laws meant to promote common cause between majority Shi'ites and minority Sunni Arabs.

The Accordance Front, the main Sunni Arab bloc, had said it would attend but pulled out as dozens of political leaders gathered at a hotel in Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone.

"The Front will not attend the conference, not because it does not believe in reconciliation ... but because the invitations were sent to members of the Front and not formally to the Accordance Front," spokesman Salim al-Jubouri said.

Jubouri said decisions from previous meetings had never been implemented. "How can we now arrange new proposals?," he said.

...The head of the Sadrist political bloc, Nassar al-Rubaie, arrived at the conference but refused to say whether he would take an active role.

"Such conferences are just government propaganda," Rubaie told Reuters.

...The Iraqi National List, a secular bloc headed by former interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, had already said they would not attend.

The conference was open to members of Saddam Hussein's now outlawed Baath party. It was unclear whether Sunni Arab tribal leaders responsible for the neighborhood security units would attend.

The Sadrists, the National List, the Accordance Front - these are not bit players and none believe this conference is anything more than PR spin. It remains to be seen whether the central government's ruling Shiites can convince the Ba'athists and any Sawhar attendees that they mean more than platitudes and hypocrisy while continuing to use the security forces as their personal instruments of power rather than for all Iraqis. I don't think either predominantly-Sunni group is that gullible. But without those three notable groups whole-hearted belief in central government good faith and their whole-hearted co-operation, the conference is already a washout anyway.

As Zakaria notes, it isn't the only reconciliation failure.

There has been some positive news reported in the past few weeks. On closer examination, it is more hype than reality. Two of the laws passed, one reversing de-Baathification and the other offering a limited amnesty to former insurgents, have been worded in such a way that much will depend on how they are implemented—by the Shiite government. The reason these assurances were written into law in binding terms was, of course, that Sunnis place so little trust in the good will and fairness of that government. When Baghdad promises to administer oil revenue wisely and fairly, though there is no law telling it precisely what to do, its claims are met with mistrust and unease by the Sunnis and the Kurds.

A Pentagon report to Congress last week admitted that "all four components of the hydrocarbon law are stalled." The law on provincial elections passed but was then vetoed by the presidency council, specifically by Shiite Vice President Adel Abdel Mehdi, whose party now runs most of southern Iraq and does not wish to take its chances in new elections. And it's worth noting that the laws that passed did so only after months of intense wrangling, which produced an 82–82 tie that was broken by the Sunni speaker of Parliament, Mahmoud al-Mashhadani. Finally, all these measures I've mentioned add up to only three or four of the 18 benchmarks set out by the Maliki government and the Bush administration to judge their own progress.

The end result of all this is to leave American troops stuck in a loop while a time-bomb of renewed violence ticks away factional patience with Maliki's government. And Bush is engaged in ensuring, via his promised Security Agreement, that should that time-bomb go off there still won't be an Iraqi future that does not require 'Coalition-in-the-loop.

And then there's the Republican heir-apparent, who has said he'd be just fine with another 100 years of US troops in Iraq. Alan Arkin wonders if he's any more able to face mistakes or unpleasant truths than Bush:

McCain? What does he recognize? It will be interesting to see if he comes back with anything new from Iraq or whether, like U.S. forces, he is stuck in a loop. After all, to admit that the political progress isn't keeping pace with the military progress is to admit that "we" have done as much as we can, that his ultimate position is flawed, and that we must withdraw just to give "the Iraqis" a chance.

Update Various worthies, including Matt and Kevin, are noting a massive McCain gaffe that we can only hope someone has on videotape:

He said several times that Iran, a predominately Shiite country, was supplying the mostly Sunni militant group, al-Qaeda. In fact, officials have said they believe Iran is helping Shiite extremists in Iraq.

Speaking to reporters in Amman, the Jordanian capital, McCain said he and two Senate colleagues traveling with him continue to be concerned about Iranian operatives "taking al-Qaeda into Iran, training them and sending them back."

....A few moments later, Sen. Joseph Lieberman, standing just behind McCain, stepped forward and whispered in the presidential candidate's ear. McCain then said: "I'm sorry, the Iranians are training extremists, not al-Qaeda."

As Kevin points out, even Lieberman's whispered version is simplistic - "What he should have said is that the Iranians are training many of the same extremists that we're allied with too. But that might have provoked a whole different set of questions that McCain would just as soon not answer." Such an elementary mistake, and one that shows that McCain is just as unimaginative and uninformed as the current Decider.

But doesn't Lieberman suit the role of Wormtongue?

McCain Souks

By Cernig

Remember the marketplace in Baghdad that John McCain and others famously visited last year, which led McCain to proclaim that Americans were "not getting the full picture" and lead one of his companions to compare it favorably to an Indiana flea-market? The one where McCain and entourage "walked freely", albeit clad in flak-jackets, surrounded by 100 US troops and with helicopter gunships overhead?

Not so much.

Think Progress writes that CNN reporters tried to visit the Shorja market today, but it was too unsafe and they were unable to go:

We got close to that marketplace today, Jim, but our own security advisers here in Iraq did not want us to go there. They didn’t believe it was safe for an American to be in that area. We were in a thriving marketplace nearby.

But when you show up, the local Iraqis, while it is clear security is better on the street — it is clear there are more markets open, just the traffic jams alone tell you that things are better on the streets of Baghdad — it’s also a very sensitive potential neighborhoods.

That one marketplace, as a matter of fact, you do see Iraqi police, you do see the Iraqi army, but in truth, that area is controlled by the radical cleric Moqtada al Sadr’s Mahdi army.

Cracks in the facade, I tell you. And here are some more of them.

(Hat tip to Kat. Post Title shamelessly stolen from one of TP's commenters.)

Cracks In The Facade

By Cernig

I see John McCain is indulging in another PR trip to Iraq, unannounced and under heavy security, just a few days before the five-year anniversary of the invasion. He says it isn't a campaign trip and isn't holding media events - but you can't accomplish dick in a 24 hour fly-by. Yet the very fact that he isn't holding photo-ops ensures it's being treated as if it were a serious fact-finding mission by the heir-presumptive to the Bush White House. You'd laugh at the obviousness if it wasn't so depressingly and predictably familiar.

Certainly, conservative pundits have no doubt at all about the news McCain will bring home to endlessly regurgitate in stump speeches - violence is down and the surge is working, but we must still fear Al Qaeda. They want to stop him from saving the Earth (or at least the American Republican bit, which is the only bit that counts) by winning the election, you see.

Yet behind this narrative facade is a far more nuanced story. Were conservatives to acknowledge it, however, not just their own five-year tale of last throes and last corners would be jeopardised. Republican re-election hopes rest on the great American public not looking to closely at what's really going on behind those figures. It's not just that they want to concentrate on the difference between now and last August rather than admit that violence is now down to levels which were sufficient to cause the breakdown of Iraqi society back in 2004 and 2005. It's not just that they want to paint every insurgent as a member of Al Qaeda when military spokesmen say quite the opposite. They also want to ignore dynamics behind those figures which military leaders keep saying cause the current drop in violence to be a fragile one.

The New York Times today runs a story on corruption and graft at the Sunni region's biggest oil refinery, which reports that the local insurgency is both non-Jihadist and largely funded by the black market. In it, U.S. officers talk about the nature of the Sunni insurgency and warn of the dangers of central government Shiite recalcitrance in offering legal livelihoods to for-now peaceful Awakening members who yesterday were insurgents themselves.

“It has a great deal more to do with the economy than with ideology,” said one senior American military official, who said that studies of detainees in American custody found that about three-quarters were not committed to the jihadist ideology. “The vast majority have nothing to do with the caliphate and the central ideology of Al Qaeda.”

...Some American officials and politicians maintain that Sunni insurgents have deep ties with Qaeda networks loyal to Osama bin Laden in other countries. Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, whose members are mainly Iraqi but whose leadership has been described by American commanders as largely foreign, remains a well-financed and virulent force that carries out large-scale attacks.

But there are officers in the American military who openly question how much a role jihadism plays in the minds of most people who carry out attacks. As the American occupation has worn on and unemployment has remained high, these officers say the overwhelming motivation of insurgents is the need to earn a paycheck.

Nor do American officers say they believe that insurgent attacks are centrally coordinated. “As far as networked coordination of attacks, we are not seeing that,” said a military official familiar with studies on the insurgency.

Opposition to the occupation and fear of the Shiite- and Kurdish-dominated government and security forces “clearly are important factors in the insurgency,” the official said. “But they are being rivaled by the economic factor, the deprivation that exists.”

Maj. Kelly Kendrick, operations officer for the First Brigade Combat Team of the 101st Airborne Division in Salahuddin, estimates that there are no more than 50 hard-core “Al Qaeda” fighters in Salahuddin, a province of 1.3 million people that includes Baiji and the Sunni cities of Samarra and Tikrit.

He said most fighters were seduced not by dreams of a life following Mr. bin Laden, but by a simpler pitch: “Here’s $100; go plant this I.E.D.”


“Ninety percent of the guys out here who do attacks are just people who want to feed their families,” Major Kendrick said.

The First Brigade’s commander, Col. Scott McBride, concurs. “I don’t know that I’ve ever heard one person say, ‘I believe in a caliphate,’ ” he said.

...Paying former insurgents to stop attacking American forces and join neighborhood militia forces has played a crucial role in turning around security in many Sunni parts of Iraq. But American officers worry that the failure to incorporate these Sunni militiamen into the government of Iraq or find them other jobs could portend trouble.

“There’s got to be an outlet,” the senior military official said, referring to a job and salary not related to the insurgency. “Without that outlet, a lot of guys will gravitate back. They are not going to starve their families. You have got to do what you have got to do to survive.”

Worse, the Iraqi central government's deliberate obstructionism and refusal to share the cake with anyone but their own appointees and favored ones is also in danger of destroying the other important Iraqi element of the current drop in violence - the Mahdi Militia's ceasefire.

Iraqi police arrested dozens of members of Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi Army militia on Saturday, hours after two policemen were killed in gunbattles in the southern city of Kut, police said.

Clashes this week between Iraqi security forces and the militia in Kut, 170 km (105 miles) southeast of Baghdad, have raised fears a ceasefire called by Sadr may unravel, although the violence has so far been confined to Kut.

It is the first major violation of the seven-month-old truce, which has been credited by the U.S. military with helping to reduce violence between majority Shi'ite and Sunni Muslims that has killed tens of thousands of Iraqis.

Sadr clarified the conditions of the truce last week, telling followers they could defend themselves if attacked, an apparent response to complaints among his fighters that U.S. and Iraqi forces were exploiting the ceasefire to target them.

...The latest outbreak of violence in Kut took place on Friday night when police tried to enter two neighbourhoods in Kut where there is a strong Mehdi Army presence. Clashes erupted and residents reported the sound of gunfire and explosions.

The Iraqi police force is the playground of the Badr Brigade, which is an armed wholly-owned subsiduary of the Shiite SCIRI faction - allies of both Iran and the US and enemies of the Mahdi Army and Sadrist bloc in internicene Shiite faction fighting over control of oil money in the South.

Between the Awakening and the Sadrist ceasefire, they may account for two thirds or even more of the drop in violence. No-one has ever asked the US military for an estimate and they've been careful not to volunteer one unasked. Yet for both these nationalist groups their patience is cracking under depredations of a central government controlled by those who least wish there to be a strong and fair central government - Kurds and Shiite factions who favor a loose-federal balkanisation of Iraq. Bush allowed and even enabled this situation, and plans to continue that enabling by signing an agreement (not a treaty) that would ensure the US will protect in power those who most want to see Iraq break up. John McCain has no different plan than the one Bush has and therefore has absolutely no leverage over the Green Zone's politicos to change their divisive ways. Under McCain, the cracks in the facade would continue to grow until eventually they split violently open. That's if the facade lasts that long.

Enlisting Opinions

By Cernig

Back in August 2007, seven enlisted men wrote an op-ed for the New York Times entitled "The War as We Saw It" which was highly critical of conduct of the Iraqi occupation up until that point and of the prospects for the "Surge" to initiate real reconciliation and reconstruction in Iraq. At the time, Michael Goldfarb of the Weekly Standard wrote that, as simple enlisted men and not generals, their "perspective is too limited for their opinions to have any value regarding the progress of the war." It was a view widely agreed to by the pro-occupation and pro-Surge right.

Yet today we have another op-ed, in the Washington Post by a sergeant - and this time conservatives want to listen because they say it is proof that the Surge is working, that "we have turned the corner and will succeed in this mission if we don’t quit on it first."

Double standard? I think so.

On the other hand, I linked to the op-ed by Sergeants Omar Mora, Yancy Gray and others by way of agreeing that their comments should be taken as a valuable part of the debate about Iraq and argued that their information had meaning. I can do no less for Sergeant Anthony Diaz today. He arrived in Iraq at about the time the first op-ed was being written, and so unlike those authors cannot compare current levels of violence to those of 2004-05, when similar levels were enough to cause the breakdown of Iraqi civil society. He writes that he is struck by "financial commitment we have made to reconstruction" without noting that the actual reconstruction return on those invested billions has been comparatively paltry. And he cites his own eyewitness account to show what he feels are "the inklings of representative government; and the small yet significant progress in communal relations between the mostly Shiite Iraqi army and the predominantly Sunni residents of this area.

Late last year, I witnessed something inspirational in a rather unlikely setting: an ordinary neighborhood advisory council meeting. Attendance was the highest I had yet seen, with about 40 prominent locals present. The coalition was represented by our squadron commander, a few colonels from the embedded provincial reconstruction team and a political officer from the U.S. Embassy. Discussions ranged from the persistent lack of electricity to sewage problems to economic development. What struck me were the comments of some Sunni workers from the district's power station, who came to complain that the (mostly Shiite) Iraqi army had mistreated them and accused them of distorting the distribution of electric power, something over which these workers have little control. The men said they would strike until they received better treatment and pleaded with the council chairman, a Sunni, for help. That was an unlikely outcome, given the entrenched animosity between Shiites and Sunnis and the lack of substantive political reconciliation even at the highest levels of government here. But these men did something many Americans would take for granted: They voiced grievances and sought assistance. These are the seeds of representative government, citizens coming forth and demanding change from their representatives. Much work remains to be done, but we have clearly made a start. [Emphasis mine - C]

I would argue that this anecdote shows precisely the opposite of Diaz' interpretation. The local Sunni council is undoubtedly controlled by local Sunni tribal leaders - this is no seed of representative government, just the workings as usual of tribal politics and the Sunni/Shiite divide which has become the governing factor of all Iraqi affairs.

Back in August last year, those seven other enlisted men wrote:

Sunnis, who have been underrepresented in the new Iraqi armed forces, now find themselves forming militias, sometimes with our tacit support. Sunnis recognize that the best guarantee they may have against Shiite militias and the Shiite-dominated government is to form their own armed bands. We arm them to aid in our fight against Al Qaeda.

However, while creating proxies is essential in winning a counterinsurgency, it requires that the proxies are loyal to the center that we claim to support. Armed Sunni tribes have indeed become effective surrogates, but the enduring question is where their loyalties would lie in our absence. The Iraqi government finds itself working at cross purposes with us on this issue because it is justifiably fearful that Sunni militias will turn on it should the Americans leave.

They also wrote that "the most important front in the counterinsurgency, improving basic social and economic conditions, is the one on which we have failed most miserably" and specifically mentioned electricity services. I see nothing in Sgt Diaz' account to contradict them.

But let us turn to a general, as Goldfarb suggested back in August. General Petraeus told the Washington Post just the other day that:

"no one" in the U.S. and Iraqi governments "feels that there has been sufficient progress by any means in the area of national reconciliation," or in the provision of basic public services.

And, while admitting that ceasefires by Sunnis of the Awakening and Shiites of Sadr's Mahdi Army are greatly responsible for reduced violence (more than the US troop surge, I wonder?) he also admitted that:

some elements of both the Awakening movement and the Mahdi Army may be standing down in order to prepare for the day when the U.S. presence is diminished. "Some of them may be keeping their powder dry," Petraeus said of Mahdi Army members. "Obviously you would expect some of that to happen.

Which again accord with the opinions of those seven enlisted men from August last year. So no, not a "last corner" after all.

But as Petraeus says it, despite saying those enlisted men last August knew nothing beyond their own noses, conservative pundits who have heavily invested in both the Surge and its guiding general must offer up a startling about face. My colleague Eric Martin explains:

Now that Petraeus is saying it, those that were previously bashing war critics for making this exact point...will now act as if this was the case all along, that it was obvious, and only those naive war critics - who just don't "understand war" - have ignored this reality. Better still, this dynamic will be cited as the reason that we must continue the occupation for 100-Years-to-Infinity as John McCain promises repeatedly.

The tar baby conundrum goes something like this: If things in Iraq are chaotic and violent, well, we just can't leave can we - I mean, what about the oil (which was so totally not a reason for this invasion at all, in any way, whatsoever, I mean, who even knew Iraq had the second largest reserve oil supply in the world)? On the other hand, if things in Iraq are quieting down, we can't leave lest we disturb the peace. Especially because once we leave, the various factions will have at it. Even Petraeus said so.

Which is how they play their heads we win, tails you lose game to justify perpetual occupation.

I stick by my assessment that the US Surge is preordained to fail - that internal Iraqi dynamics dictate that as soon as the various factions have cause to fight instead of hold fire, they will do so and that none are invested in finding cause not to fight while the U.S. acts as buffer and protector to all. Which means that, eventually, there will be a fight in which the US can either take sides, be shot at by all sides or withdraw. Better to withdraw first.

I would like a sense of rhythm

And George W. Bush would like a stronger dollar according to the Wall Street Journal.

And neither are likely to happen short of intervention by Alien Space Bats. The fundamental reality of my non-coordination, near tone deafness, and amazing ability to find a double beat in everything means that I should not dance in public as a I am danger to myself and others.

The fundamental reality of a massive devaluation of the primary comparative advantage of the United States (fiscal engineering or fiscal Bull Sh*tting depending on your mood), structural deficits, off the books accounting, crashing asset values and irresponsible elite political leadership (on both sides of the aisle, but especially on the Republican side) means there is no good reason for foreigners to cheaply sell us their assets which is what a strong dollar policy means.

George W. Bush might as well wish for a strong dollar and a pony at this point

Iraqi Govt Folds On Awakening Strike

By Cernig

Those who follow events in Iraq will probably recall that recently a large number of Sawha, or Awakening, members went on strike in Diyala province. The local Sahwa leaders had declared "suspension of all co-operation with U.S. military, Iraqi security forces and the local government" and had left their security posts. They were calling for the dismissal of the local police chief, who they had accused of bias against Sunnis and allowing Shia militiamen and death squads to operate with impunity in the area.

Well it seems the central government has capitulated to this union-like action, which will greatly strengthen the Sawha's position as a Sunni version of Sadr's Mahdi - nationalist and not necessarily committed to violence against the state but with a strong element of social organisation as well as being an armed militia.

A Sahwa member said they have been promised the resignation of Qureyshi, the nomination of four Sunni assistants to be available to the new police chief, employment of 5,000 members of the Sahwa as government security personnel, and for the government police to stay out of predominantly Sunni districts.

That last is potentially worrysome, as such thinking will create a self-fulfilling prophecy bolstering Shiite fears of a state-within-a-state.

Recent comments by Iraqi security officials underscore the wide gap between them and the Sahwa.

General Mahdi Subeih from the interior ministry told the Saudi-owned al-Hayat newspaper in London Mar. 3: "The growth of the security role of members of the Awakening Councils has made them a third security force in the country alongside the army and the police."

Subeih said "the rebellion by some of the members of the Awakening Councils and the confrontations that erupted between them and the security forces reveal the depth of the chasm between the two sides."

"Rebellion" is a strong word to use and indicates the depth of the divide reconciliation must cross.

It looks very like, instead of reconciling, Iraqis are going to end up with a semi-balkanised situation where each faction has it's own version of Lebanon's Hezboullah - and we know where such a situation involving competing socially-invested militias ends up. Throw in an exterior military threat all the factions dislike intensely (Turkey, anyone?) and we've a recipe for decades-long conflict and instability for which the U.S. gets to play referee unless someone has the courage to pull out U.S. troops entirely.

Sadrists coughing out SIIC

One of the key drivers of the lower levels of violence that has been occuring in Iraq has been the reined in operations of significant elements of the Mahdi Army (JAM) which is the militia/armed wing of the Sadrist movement. In the past six months the active death squads in Baghdad have decreased their operations as most neighborhoods are now sectarian ghettos, and the inter-Shi'ite factional fighting which came close to a tipping point last August in Karbala led to a ceasefire between JAM and the Badr Brigades. The Badr Brigades are the armed wing of SIIC (nee SCIRI). Right now the six month JAM ceasefire against US forces is still holding although there is signifcant support among field commanders to resume active operations against US forces.

More importantly, it looks like Sadr has taken the past couple of months to reconsolidate his power base, and play rope a dope with the elected government to further increase his influence and credibility. Quiet may not benefit him any more. Agence France Press is reporting that the Sadrists are ending their cooperative agreeement with SIIC and the Badr Brigades:

Radical Iraqi cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's movement Sunday announced it was cancelling a pact it signed four months ago with its main Shiite rival aimed at reducing tension between the two groups.

The agreement between the Sadrists and the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council (SIIC) of Abdel Aziz al-Hakim "has failed and is cancelled," Nassar al-Rubaie, spokesman for the Sadr bloc in parliament, told AFP.

The two groups, which have clashed repeatedly in the past as each sought control of Iraq's majority Shiite community, signed a pact last October 6 aimed at ending the violence between their two militias.....

At stake is control of local government in Iraq's mainly Shiite southern provinces which are rich in oil, and in particular in the large town of Basra, the main port for exporting hydrocarbons.

Rivalry between the two movements is likely to increase ahead of provincial elections scheduled for October 1.

The SIIC has close links with Iran, and its chief Abdel Aziz al-Hakim often visits Tehran.

He is also welcomed in Washington, where he is regarded as a key player on the Iraqi political scene.

Sadr and his followers seem like they are making a play to create a stranglehold on the lifeblood of the Iraqi political-graft system by knocking SIIC out of control and contention in the South. I'll let Cernig and Eric provide a bit more analysis as they have been tracking Sadr more aggressively than I have been in the past six months.

Cernig: Sadr has become pretty adroit of late at pulling everyone in Iraq's strings through a will-he-won't-he-extend manipulation of the JAM ceasefire. And I do mean everyone, including and especially the US military. It's significant that Nassar al-Rubaie is making this announcement, as he's been a primary negotiator with coalition forces. The message seems to be "we'll extend the ceasefire in respect to coalition forces, but leave us alone to go after Badr." If, as al-Rubaie says, SIIC have dragged their feet over setting up agreed upon joint committees to mediate confrontations between the rival militiamen, then that's in line with SCIRI's tactics in government as a whole too - and may well leave the US military disposed towards looking if Sadr goes back on the offensive in the South. British officials have suggested that his militia has almost achieved supremacy in Basra in any case.

At the same time those other US allies, the MeK, are now saying that it's the SIIC's Badr militias, not the Sadrists, who are getting funding and direction from Iran - and for once they're probably right in general if not in detail. (The Badr Brigades were originally created to fight the MeK when the MeK were Saddam's bully-boys, so the latter aren't the most reliable witnesses on what their old and current rivals may be up to.) As Fester noted, SIIC have cozied up to the White House as well as to Iran. As usual in Iraq, nothing fits the straightforward narratives the US pro-war lobby likes to impose.

Depending on whether the WH or commanders on the ground get to decide Coalition strategy should Sadr resume hostilities against the Badr, this situation may well end up with Coalition commanders making a triangulation that helps them short term (divide and conquer) but greatly aids Sadr's nationalist anti-occupation power base in the longer term. Or the White House could order the military to protect Iran's greatest allies. What a great set of choices.

Awakening Discontent In Iraq

By Cernig

It seems to be escaping most people's notice - especially rightwing pro-war cheerleaders who are frantically looking the other way - but there are now two Awakening groups in two separate provinces who are refusing to co-operate with US and Iraqi forces.

U.S.-allied fighters in a province south of Baghdad have quit working with American troops after two incidents in which U.S. soldiers killed militia members _ the second province where citizen militias have stopped cooperation with the United States.

Citizen brigades in the province of Babil quit work after three members were killed by U.S. forces Friday, a local police spokesman said Saturday.

Another high-profile fatal incident occurred in the same province a little over two weeks ago. Nationwide in that time span, 19 citizen militia members have been killed and 12 wounded by U.S. forces, said the police spokesman, Capt. Muthanna Ahmed.

The action in Babil province follows a strike by citizen brigades members in Diyala province, northeast of Baghdad, that has gone on for more than a week. The citizen militias allege the local police chief leads a death squad and seek his removal, among other demands.

Also this past week, a leader in another powerful citizens militia warned that U.S. and Shiite-dominated Iraq forces should no longer interfere in its work, suggesting coordinated efforts against insurgents might be coming to an end.

The US military are playing down these actions, saying they are unrelated, with no underlying trend.

Yes, three separate Awakening groups decide they can't trust US occupation forces any more but that doesn't show an underlying trend...

Meanwhile, the Iraqi government have announced there's been an 80% drop in violence in Baghdad - which is 20% more than the US military says there has been - and this news is getting all the rightwing attention today. But the drop in violence, whether 60% or 80% or some other figure, is two-thirds due to Awakening co-operation and the Sadrist cease-fire. Both of those are showing signs of being time-limited.

The Precarious Surge

By Cernig

Via Kevin Drum comes a McClatchy piece on the precarious Surge:

After months of declining violence, February is certain to be the third straight month to see increases in the numbers of Baghdad residents killed in car bombings and suicide attacks.

According to statistics kept by McClatchy, the low point in such killings came in November, when 76 people died. Thanks to a pair of pet market bombings that killed 99 people Feb. 1, February's tally already is 131.

Petraeus' counsel on troop withdrawals after some surge troops have departed will play a big role in determining what Gates recommends to the president, Pentagon officials said.

Monday marked the second day in a row of suicide attacks. Blasts in Salah ad Din, Anbar and Ninevah provinces killed at least 30 people Sunday.

Monday, a suicide car bomber drove his car into the Baghdad residence of a prominent leader of the Anbar Salvation Council, a U.S.-allied militia that's credited with helping to drive al Qaida in Iraq from that province. Five minutes later, another car bomb exploded at a busy intersection a short distance away.

The blasts killed at least 11 people and injured 30.

Later, Sheik Ali Hathem al Suleiman al Duleimy, who was injured in the attack, went on Iraqi TV and declared war against his enemies. He said that his militia, many of whose members are paid by the United States, no longer would allow the U.S. or Iraqi government to interfere with its work.

His comments came as similar U.S.-allied groups in nearby Diyala province continued to refuse to work with American or Iraqi government forces until the provincial police chief is removed. On Monday, hundreds protested in Diyala to demand the chief's removal.

On the bright side, however, Iraq's parliament passed three crucial bills after a stormy session which say a walk-out by MPs and a frustrated Speaker threaten to disband parliament entirely.

Iraqi lawmakers overcame weeks of deadlock today to pass three key measures: a $48-billion national budget, an amnesty law and legislation paving the way for provincial elections by Oct. 1.

U.S. officials have been pressing Iraq's main ethnic and religious factions to approve these and other power-sharing measures, without which they fear recent security gains could be lost.

"These are difficult issues. They required a lot of effort, a lot of compromise, but they are important steps forward," U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker said at a news briefing after the measures were passed with a single vote. "A lot of challenges face Iraq and will continue to face us all in support of Iraq. But the work of the council of representatives today deserves congratulations from all of us."

The bills must be approved by Iraq's three-member presidential council, which includes the country's president and two vice presidents, before they become law.

Even so, the bills were only passed after some procedural legerdemain from the Speaker which some MPs complained was illegal.

Rumbles of revolt from the Awakening, rising violence again, a government still deeply divided and often too deadlocked to accomplish anything - no wonder Gates paused troop withdrawals. But what this all means is that the Surge is turning into the Permanent Increase while it's effects seem to be tranistory. What to do? Maybe another Surge to save the Surge? And rinse then repeat.

Meanwhile, Mookie al Sadr is carving himself a nice little position as the next BFF of the US occupation. His negotiators secured the release today of a CBS interpreter probably kidnapped by one of his breakaway militia factions in the first place - showing he can control even these rebels in his organisation. No wonder Time's Brian Bennett and Michael O'Hanlon both say the Bush administration are underestimating Sadr. For once, I agree with O'Hanlon - and I also think Sadr is going to eventually be the long-awaited Shiite strongman in charge of most of Iraq. Which means eventually Iraq and the US are on a collision course.

Stuck at 15

The BBC is reporting that the US is not seeing any sustained and significant changes in trend lines that would allow a further drawdown from the surge force of twenty combat brigades to the barely sustainable steady state force of fifteen brigades this summer:

US Defence Secretary Robert Gates has said he favours a "pause" in troop reductions in Iraq after up to 30,000 US soldiers are sent home this summer.

The Pentagon aims to decrease troop numbers in Iraq from 20 to 15 brigades. One brigade has already left, the last of the five is due to leave by July.

After meeting the US commander in Iraq, Gen David Petraeus, Mr Gates said he wanted a "period of evaluation"....

The defence secretary has previously expressed hope that the drawdown could continue until 10 brigades remained by the end of 2008.

But there have been fears that recent security gains could be reversed if too many troops are withdrawn too soon.

Another six months of fifteen brigades in Iraq will accomplish the only plausible mission left --- kicking the problem off onto another Administration. Those security gains have come from sucking the blood out of the concept of a post-Westphalian Iraqi state and devolving power to 'competing armed interesting groups' that do not have significant alignment or areas of agreement with either the United States or the Maliki government.