When a U.S. helicopter landed beside the Tigris River in metro Baghdad residents immediately thought that a U.S. military operation was under way in spite of the facts that all troops are supposedly gone. One person was injured in the rough landing that was caused by technical problems.
Although all troops are withdrawn some actually are still working for the U.S. embassy a virtual city in itself on the outskirts of Baghdad. There are also thousands of armed private contractors who work for the State Dept. still present in Iraq.
Iraq is still plagued by insecurity with bombings and violence still common. The situation is aggravated by the policies of the Maliki government which is supported both by Iran and the U.S. Maliki seems engaged in a campaign to purge rivals particularly Sunnis. He has had many politicians arrested and charged his Sunni vice-president with supporting terrorism as well. The future looks dim unless Maliki makes deals with his opponents rather than trying to suppress them as he is doing now. For more see this article.
Showing posts with label Maliki. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Maliki. Show all posts
Saturday, January 28, 2012
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
Maliki wants U.S. pullout timetable.
This is from the Nation.
The U.S. media seems to be neglecting this developing story of the crisis in the US-Iraq treaty or Status of Forces agreement. For the Bush administration it is not a treaty. In fact as the article points out it is nowhere near being anything and may end up not being signed. That this should be regarded as a stunner is significant for what it shows about the U.S. frame of mind. There is never a thought that the Iraqis might determine when and at what speed the U.S. withdraws from Iran. Discussion in the U.S. is always between presidential contenders as to how the U.S. should withdraw as if Iraq had nothing to do with the matter except perhaps in terms of the readiness of their forces to take over security! The arrogance is stunning but completely below the radar of commentators.
Of course Maliki probably comes out with this pronouncement to bolster his political capital before the fall elections.
Maliki Stunner: He Wants US Pullout Timetable
posted by Robert Dreyfuss on 07/07/2008 @ 12:21pm
The long-running showdown over the proposed US-Iraq treaty, aimed at legitimizing the American occupation of Iraq, is coming to a head, and it doesn't look good for the United States.
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki tossed a bombshell today. In a news conference about the still-secret US-Iraqi talks, which began in March, Maliki for the first time said that the chances of securing the pact are just about nil, and instead he said Iraq will seek a limited, ad hoc renewal of the US authority to remain in Iraq, rather than a broad-based accord.
More important, Maliki and his top security adviser, Mouwaffak al-Rubaie added that Iraq intends to link even a limited accord to a timetable for the withdrawal of US forces. Reports the Sydney Morning Herald:
Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki raised the prospect of setting a timetable for the withdrawal of US troops as part of negotiations over a new security agreement with Washington.
It was the first time the US-backed Shi'ite-led government has floated the idea of a timetable for the removal of American forces from Iraq. The Bush administration has always opposed such a move, saying it would benefit militant groups.
Here's the quote from Maliki:
"The current trend is to reach an agreement on a memorandum of understanding either for the departure of the forces or a memorandum of understanding to put a timetable on their withdrawal."
Don't think for a minute that Maliki, or his Shiite allies, want the US forces to leave. But they are under a lot of pressure. First of all, they are under pressure from Iran, whose regime remains the chief ally of the ruling alliance of Shiites, including Maliki's Dawa party and the powerful Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI), led by Abdel Aziz al-Hakim. Iran's goal is to neutralize Iraq as a possible threat to Iran, and Iran's leaders are pressuring Maliki and Hakim to loosen their reliance on the United States. Interestingly, Maliki reportedly told President Bush personally, in a video teleconference on Friday, that the United States cannot use Iraqi territory to attack Iran, and he added that "fomenting tension in the region and pushing for military action against Tehran could wreak havoc on the entire region, including Iraq."
Maliki is also under pressure from a broad coalition of Iraqi nationalists, from angry, disenfranchised Sunnis to Muqtada al-Sadr's movement.
But Maliki's statement is a big deal. At a minimum, it presents an enormous problem for Bush and John McCain, who are arguing for an indefinite US stay in Iraq til "victory," and who oppose a timetable. True, Maliki seems to be linking his timetable to Iraqi military success, which is not too different from the Bush-McCain formula. But inside Iraq, the pressure is building day by day for a US withdrawal, and Maliki is by no means in control of the process. The fact that both Iran and Sunni nationalists, who are on a collision course, agree that US forces need to leave Iraq, only means that pro- and anti-Iranian factions will settle their differences (either by peaceful diplomacy or by violence) once the United States is gone.
The U.S. media seems to be neglecting this developing story of the crisis in the US-Iraq treaty or Status of Forces agreement. For the Bush administration it is not a treaty. In fact as the article points out it is nowhere near being anything and may end up not being signed. That this should be regarded as a stunner is significant for what it shows about the U.S. frame of mind. There is never a thought that the Iraqis might determine when and at what speed the U.S. withdraws from Iran. Discussion in the U.S. is always between presidential contenders as to how the U.S. should withdraw as if Iraq had nothing to do with the matter except perhaps in terms of the readiness of their forces to take over security! The arrogance is stunning but completely below the radar of commentators.
Of course Maliki probably comes out with this pronouncement to bolster his political capital before the fall elections.
Maliki Stunner: He Wants US Pullout Timetable
posted by Robert Dreyfuss on 07/07/2008 @ 12:21pm
The long-running showdown over the proposed US-Iraq treaty, aimed at legitimizing the American occupation of Iraq, is coming to a head, and it doesn't look good for the United States.
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki tossed a bombshell today. In a news conference about the still-secret US-Iraqi talks, which began in March, Maliki for the first time said that the chances of securing the pact are just about nil, and instead he said Iraq will seek a limited, ad hoc renewal of the US authority to remain in Iraq, rather than a broad-based accord.
More important, Maliki and his top security adviser, Mouwaffak al-Rubaie added that Iraq intends to link even a limited accord to a timetable for the withdrawal of US forces. Reports the Sydney Morning Herald:
Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki raised the prospect of setting a timetable for the withdrawal of US troops as part of negotiations over a new security agreement with Washington.
It was the first time the US-backed Shi'ite-led government has floated the idea of a timetable for the removal of American forces from Iraq. The Bush administration has always opposed such a move, saying it would benefit militant groups.
Here's the quote from Maliki:
"The current trend is to reach an agreement on a memorandum of understanding either for the departure of the forces or a memorandum of understanding to put a timetable on their withdrawal."
Don't think for a minute that Maliki, or his Shiite allies, want the US forces to leave. But they are under a lot of pressure. First of all, they are under pressure from Iran, whose regime remains the chief ally of the ruling alliance of Shiites, including Maliki's Dawa party and the powerful Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI), led by Abdel Aziz al-Hakim. Iran's goal is to neutralize Iraq as a possible threat to Iran, and Iran's leaders are pressuring Maliki and Hakim to loosen their reliance on the United States. Interestingly, Maliki reportedly told President Bush personally, in a video teleconference on Friday, that the United States cannot use Iraqi territory to attack Iran, and he added that "fomenting tension in the region and pushing for military action against Tehran could wreak havoc on the entire region, including Iraq."
Maliki is also under pressure from a broad coalition of Iraqi nationalists, from angry, disenfranchised Sunnis to Muqtada al-Sadr's movement.
But Maliki's statement is a big deal. At a minimum, it presents an enormous problem for Bush and John McCain, who are arguing for an indefinite US stay in Iraq til "victory," and who oppose a timetable. True, Maliki seems to be linking his timetable to Iraqi military success, which is not too different from the Bush-McCain formula. But inside Iraq, the pressure is building day by day for a US withdrawal, and Maliki is by no means in control of the process. The fact that both Iran and Sunni nationalists, who are on a collision course, agree that US forces need to leave Iraq, only means that pro- and anti-Iranian factions will settle their differences (either by peaceful diplomacy or by violence) once the United States is gone.
Monday, April 28, 2008
Redefining Iran as the Enemy in Iraq.
This is from consortiumnews.comconsortiumnews.com. As this article points out the emphasis upon Al Qaeda in Iraq is now being very much downplayed by the administration. This is possible because the U.S. is financing former insurgent Sunnis through the awakening movement directed against Al Qaeda. This has hurt Al Qaeda in some areas. The enemy now is Al Sadr and Iran which to some degree supports his Mahdi Army. However, other militias such as the Badr brigades that support Maliki are supported even more by Iran. The contradiictory nature of U.S. policy re Iran is simply ignored by mainstream media. Both Iran and the U.S. support the Maliki government. Maliki has good relations with Iran much to the chagrin of the U.S. You would think that a few reporters would take a bit more interest in the fact that Maliki has very good relations with the country that the U.S. now defines as the main enemy of Iraq!
Redefining Iran as the Enemy in Iraq
By Ivan Eland
April 26, 2008
Editor’s Note: In Washington and Tel Aviv, war drums are beating again regarding Iran, as the Bush administration and Israel’s Olmert government see the window closing on the time frame for confronting Teheran with George W. Bush in the White House.
In this guest essay, the Independent Institute’s Ivan Eland looks at how – in support of this political need – the ever-shifting enemy in Iraq has become Iran:
According to General David H. Petraeus’s progress report to Congress on Iraq, the latest worst threat to the shaky U.S. position is Iranian-backed “special groups.”
This label refers to parts of Moktada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army, which Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and his security forces ham-handedly sought to confront and undermine in Basra before the fall local elections.
Al-Qaeda in Iraq is so passé.
This repeated allegation during the congressional hearings and the firing of Admiral William Fallon as commander-in-chief of U.S. forces in the Middle East, who was an opponent of any attack on Iran, should again raise worries to war-weary Americans about a cowboy attack on Iran before the Bush administration leaves office.
On cue, administration surrogates, such as former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson, repeated Petraeus’s charges: “...despite undeniable progress against Sunni radicalism [read: al-Qaeda], events in Iraq are still inseparable from the actions and attitudes of Shiite militias armed and directed by Iran—an influence that America failed to confront for many years.”
Not only has America failed to confront these Shiite militias, the Bush administration has been enabling them.
The congressional hearings failed to bring out, because of administration intention and Democratic ignorance, that Maliki’s security forces are infested with Shiite Badr Brigade militias that Iran prefers over the Iraqi nationalist Mahdi Army.
The confused milieu of Iraq, an administration with no coherent strategy to improve the conditions in that country, has always tried to downplay that the U.S.-backed Shiite government and its associated militias are the same ones backed by its archenemy, Iran.
But the hearings once again confirmed that the administration, always better at politics than at governing, does have a strategy: hold the lid on violence in Iraq until the Bush administration leaves office, and then blame any subsequent deterioration or loss in Iraq on the next administration.
This tack will be similar to the ludicrous argument that Henry Kissinger, who has been advising both the administration and presidential candidate John McCain, still uses about the Vietnam War: we were winning until the Democrats cut off funding for the war.
This explains Bush’s acceptance of Petraeus’s troop-withdrawal pause, which will undoubtedly continue until January of 2009. Of course, retaining a high level of U.S. forces, and the troop surge that preceded it, really has just been an insurance policy and a macho way to mask the real U.S. strategy of paying off the Sunni and Mahdi Army enemies.
This libertarian strategy ordinarily might be smart, except that bolstering these militias will, in the long run, exacerbate any civil war when they again begin to fight each other.
At the congressional hearings, however, there were signs that the latest botched Iraqi government offensive in Basra, the most important city in Iraq because it’s in a region containing 60 percent of the country’s oil and has Iraq’s only access to the Persian Gulf to ship that oil (why the U.S. let less capable British forces try to secure this city has been an unexplored administration blunder), was beginning to flip a few Republicans against the war.
This movement was indicated by some Republicans adopting the Democrats’ argument that Iraqis were failing to do enough to become democratic.
Although it is grossly unfair to invade a country, destroy its social fabric and economy, and then expect people who have had no experience in democracy to quickly become democrats, if it takes those rhetorical gymnastics to justify a more rapid U.S. withdrawal, then I guess it’s an improvement.
But unfortunately, as the hearings showed, progress toward a U.S. exit is very slow indeed.
Ivan Eland is Director of the Center on Peace & Liberty at The Independent Institute. Dr. Eland has spent 15 years working for Congress on national security issues, including stints as an investigator for the House Foreign Affairs Committee and Principal Defense Analyst at the Congressional Budget Office. His books include The Empire Has No Clothes: U.S. Foreign Policy Exposed, and Putting “Defense” Back into U.S. Defense Policy.
To comment at Consortiumblog, click here. (To make a blog comment about this or other stories, you can use your normal e-mail address and password. Ignore the prompt for a Google account.) To comment to us by e-mail, click here. To donate so we can continue reporting and publishing stories like the one you just read, click here.
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Redefining Iran as the Enemy in Iraq
By Ivan Eland
April 26, 2008
Editor’s Note: In Washington and Tel Aviv, war drums are beating again regarding Iran, as the Bush administration and Israel’s Olmert government see the window closing on the time frame for confronting Teheran with George W. Bush in the White House.
In this guest essay, the Independent Institute’s Ivan Eland looks at how – in support of this political need – the ever-shifting enemy in Iraq has become Iran:
According to General David H. Petraeus’s progress report to Congress on Iraq, the latest worst threat to the shaky U.S. position is Iranian-backed “special groups.”
This label refers to parts of Moktada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army, which Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and his security forces ham-handedly sought to confront and undermine in Basra before the fall local elections.
Al-Qaeda in Iraq is so passé.
This repeated allegation during the congressional hearings and the firing of Admiral William Fallon as commander-in-chief of U.S. forces in the Middle East, who was an opponent of any attack on Iran, should again raise worries to war-weary Americans about a cowboy attack on Iran before the Bush administration leaves office.
On cue, administration surrogates, such as former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson, repeated Petraeus’s charges: “...despite undeniable progress against Sunni radicalism [read: al-Qaeda], events in Iraq are still inseparable from the actions and attitudes of Shiite militias armed and directed by Iran—an influence that America failed to confront for many years.”
Not only has America failed to confront these Shiite militias, the Bush administration has been enabling them.
The congressional hearings failed to bring out, because of administration intention and Democratic ignorance, that Maliki’s security forces are infested with Shiite Badr Brigade militias that Iran prefers over the Iraqi nationalist Mahdi Army.
The confused milieu of Iraq, an administration with no coherent strategy to improve the conditions in that country, has always tried to downplay that the U.S.-backed Shiite government and its associated militias are the same ones backed by its archenemy, Iran.
But the hearings once again confirmed that the administration, always better at politics than at governing, does have a strategy: hold the lid on violence in Iraq until the Bush administration leaves office, and then blame any subsequent deterioration or loss in Iraq on the next administration.
This tack will be similar to the ludicrous argument that Henry Kissinger, who has been advising both the administration and presidential candidate John McCain, still uses about the Vietnam War: we were winning until the Democrats cut off funding for the war.
This explains Bush’s acceptance of Petraeus’s troop-withdrawal pause, which will undoubtedly continue until January of 2009. Of course, retaining a high level of U.S. forces, and the troop surge that preceded it, really has just been an insurance policy and a macho way to mask the real U.S. strategy of paying off the Sunni and Mahdi Army enemies.
This libertarian strategy ordinarily might be smart, except that bolstering these militias will, in the long run, exacerbate any civil war when they again begin to fight each other.
At the congressional hearings, however, there were signs that the latest botched Iraqi government offensive in Basra, the most important city in Iraq because it’s in a region containing 60 percent of the country’s oil and has Iraq’s only access to the Persian Gulf to ship that oil (why the U.S. let less capable British forces try to secure this city has been an unexplored administration blunder), was beginning to flip a few Republicans against the war.
This movement was indicated by some Republicans adopting the Democrats’ argument that Iraqis were failing to do enough to become democratic.
Although it is grossly unfair to invade a country, destroy its social fabric and economy, and then expect people who have had no experience in democracy to quickly become democrats, if it takes those rhetorical gymnastics to justify a more rapid U.S. withdrawal, then I guess it’s an improvement.
But unfortunately, as the hearings showed, progress toward a U.S. exit is very slow indeed.
Ivan Eland is Director of the Center on Peace & Liberty at The Independent Institute. Dr. Eland has spent 15 years working for Congress on national security issues, including stints as an investigator for the House Foreign Affairs Committee and Principal Defense Analyst at the Congressional Budget Office. His books include The Empire Has No Clothes: U.S. Foreign Policy Exposed, and Putting “Defense” Back into U.S. Defense Policy.
To comment at Consortiumblog, click here. (To make a blog comment about this or other stories, you can use your normal e-mail address and password. Ignore the prompt for a Google account.) To comment to us by e-mail, click here. To donate so we can continue reporting and publishing stories like the one you just read, click here.
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Monday, April 21, 2008
The Rice Maliki gamble.
Rice supports Maliki,s drive against Sadr,s militia. Maliki obviously believes that together with the U.S. he can defeat Sadr as a political force in Iraq and stop him from making big gains in the next elections. Rice is going along even though this is bound to create more casualties for the U.S. as it will be called upon to should much of the burden for the attacks. In effect if Sadr calls off his truce as he is threatening to do unless Maliki desists there will be civil war in parts of Iraq. Many commetators fail to notice that it is only the Sadr,s militia that is a target. Maliki,s Badr brigades are not touched and many of them are already integrated into the Iraqi forces or police.
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
Iraq: Sadr's Brief Uprising Bloodies Maliki's Nose (and Bush's)
Note that this offensive by the U.S. and Maliki was not against militias but against the Mahdi militia of Sadr. The Badr brigades a militia associated with another party in Maliki's government was not touched! From Maliki's point of view the operation was meant to curb Sadr's growing influence before the next elections and enable rivals to control Basra. It didn't work. Furthermore the U.S. air operations will turn many more against the U.S. Many families will seek vengeance for deaths of family members. The U.S. mode of operation is probably more effective than any insurgent recruiting drive could be.
Fortunately for Maliki Sadr has called off his militia but obviously this can only last as long as the U.S. and Maliki cease their offensive. There was no uprising by Sadr by the way. Sadr was keeping to the ceasefire. It was Maliki and the U.S. that started the operation. Let sleeping militias lie unless you want to be bitten.
Iraq: Sadr's Brief Uprising Bloodied Maliki's Nose (and Bush's)
By Robert Dreyfuss, The Nation. Posted April 1, 2008.
More stories by Robert Dreyfuss
At the start of the military offensive launched last week into Basra by U.S. -trained Iraqi army forces, President Bush called the action by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki "a bold decision." He added: "I would say this is a defining moment in the history of a free Iraq."
That's true -- but not in the way the President meant it. As the smoke clears over new rubble in Iraq's second city, at the heart of Iraq's oil region, it's apparent that the big winner of the Six-Day War in Basra are the forces of rebel cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, whose Mahdi Army faced down the Iraqi armed forces not only in Basra, but in Baghdad, as well as in Kut, Amarah, Nasiriyah, and Diwaniya, capitals of four key southern provinces. That leaves Sadr, an anti-American rabble rouser and nationalist who demands an end to the U.S. occupation of Iraq, and who has grown increasingly close to Iran of late, in a far stronger position that he was a week ago. In Basra, he's the boss. An Iraqi reporter for the New York Times, who managed to get into Basra during the fighting, concluded that the thousands of Mahdi Army militiamen that control most of the city remained in charge. "There was nowhere the Mahdi either did not control or could not strike at will," he wrote.
The other big winner in the latest round of Shiite-vs.-Shiite civil war is Iran. For the past five years, Iran has built up enormous political, economic and military clout in Iraq, right under the noses of 170,000 surge-inflated U.S. occupying forces. (For details, see my March 10 Nation article, "Is Iran Winning the Iraq War?") Iran has strong ties to Iraq's ruling Shiite alliance, which is dominated by the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, whose militia, the Badr Corps, was armed, trained, financed and commanded by Iranians during two decades in exile in Iran. Since then, hedging its bets, Iran built a close relationship to Sadr's Mahdi Army as well, and Sadr himself has spent most of the time since the start of the U.S. surge last January in Iran*. In addition, Iran has armed and trained a loose collection of fighters that U.S. military commanders call "Special Groups," paramilitary fighters who've kept up a steady drumbeat of attacks on American troops. Thus, it was no surprise when Hadi al-Ameri, the commander of the Badr Corps and a leading member of ISCI, traveled over the weekend to Iran's religious capital of Qom to negotiate the truce with Sadr that resulted in a shaky ceasefire in Basra.
That Sadr emerged victorious, and that Iran succeeded in brokering the deal that ended the fighting, is a double defeat for the United States. It is also a catastrophe for Maliki, and there is already speculation that his government could collapse. An ill-timed offensive, poorly prepared and poorly executed, resulted in an embarrassing defeat for Maliki.
Why was the offensive launched in the first place? By all accounts, Maliki, his faction of the ruling Islamic Dawa party, and ISCI intended to crush Sadr in Basra for reasons both political and strategic. Political, because Sadr's movement is positioned to register a massive win at the polls in Basra and throughout southern Iraq in provincial elections scheduled for October, an electoral defeat that would portend the end of the Dawa-ISCI regime. Strategic, because Basra is the economic engine of all of Iraq. The city controls Iraq's South Oil Company, which pumps and exports the vast majority of Iraq's oil -- and for years Basra has been under the control of militias loyal to Sadr and to a Sadrist splinter party, the Fadhila (Virtue) party. By controlling the Oil Protection Force, a quasi-military force, and through its own militia, Fadhila is an important player in Basra, too, and Basra's governor is a Fadhilist. Though Fadhila has had its own clashes with Sadr's Mahdi Army, Fadhila kept its powder dry in the recent fighting, and there is no doubt that Fadhila is a bitter opponent of the Dawa-ISCI alliance. Last year, Maliki tried to oust the governor of Basra, Mohammed al-Waeli, who defied Maliki and refused to step down.
Maliki, miscalculating badly, flew to Basra last week from Baghdad to personally oversee the assault on Sadr's forces. In so doing, he staked his prestige on the offensive. If indeed it has failed, Maliki has lost face. That the ceasefire ending the fighting was worked out in Qom, Iran, and mediated by Tehran, is doubly embarrassing for him.
But it's far worse for the United States. President Bush strongly backed Maliki since the Battle of Basra started. According to Steve Hadley, the president's national security adviser, the decision to act in Basra was taken jointly between Washington and Baghdad. And U.S. air power and even some ground units supported the floundering Iraqi forces, whose weakness and incompetence were revealed for all to see. After five years of massive U.S. training and equipment, the Iraqi armed forces weren't even able to take control of Iraq's second-largest city.
Adding to Bush's utter humiliation, the Iranian-negotiated truce was mediated by the commander of the so-called Quds Force of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps, Brigadier General Qassem Suleimani, who brought Sadr's representatives together with Hadi al-Ameri, the Badr Corps commander and the leading aide to Abdel-Aziz al-Hakim, the ISCI leader. The Quds Force, you will recall, was only last year designated as a "terrorist" entity by the U.S. government. So President Bush's "defining moment" is this: the head of an Iranian "terrorist" force has brokered a deal between the two leading Shiite parties in Iraq, Sadr's movement and ISCI.
*Sadr's supporters have repeatedly denied that he's sought shelter in Iran, and charge that the claim is an attempt by his opponents to undermine his credibility as a fierce nationalist.
See more stories tagged with: iraq, basra, nouri al-maliki, mahdi army, shiite, iran
Robert Dreyfuss is the author of "Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam" (Henry Holt/Metropolitan Books).
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Fortunately for Maliki Sadr has called off his militia but obviously this can only last as long as the U.S. and Maliki cease their offensive. There was no uprising by Sadr by the way. Sadr was keeping to the ceasefire. It was Maliki and the U.S. that started the operation. Let sleeping militias lie unless you want to be bitten.
Iraq: Sadr's Brief Uprising Bloodied Maliki's Nose (and Bush's)
By Robert Dreyfuss, The Nation. Posted April 1, 2008.
More stories by Robert Dreyfuss
At the start of the military offensive launched last week into Basra by U.S. -trained Iraqi army forces, President Bush called the action by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki "a bold decision." He added: "I would say this is a defining moment in the history of a free Iraq."
That's true -- but not in the way the President meant it. As the smoke clears over new rubble in Iraq's second city, at the heart of Iraq's oil region, it's apparent that the big winner of the Six-Day War in Basra are the forces of rebel cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, whose Mahdi Army faced down the Iraqi armed forces not only in Basra, but in Baghdad, as well as in Kut, Amarah, Nasiriyah, and Diwaniya, capitals of four key southern provinces. That leaves Sadr, an anti-American rabble rouser and nationalist who demands an end to the U.S. occupation of Iraq, and who has grown increasingly close to Iran of late, in a far stronger position that he was a week ago. In Basra, he's the boss. An Iraqi reporter for the New York Times, who managed to get into Basra during the fighting, concluded that the thousands of Mahdi Army militiamen that control most of the city remained in charge. "There was nowhere the Mahdi either did not control or could not strike at will," he wrote.
The other big winner in the latest round of Shiite-vs.-Shiite civil war is Iran. For the past five years, Iran has built up enormous political, economic and military clout in Iraq, right under the noses of 170,000 surge-inflated U.S. occupying forces. (For details, see my March 10 Nation article, "Is Iran Winning the Iraq War?") Iran has strong ties to Iraq's ruling Shiite alliance, which is dominated by the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, whose militia, the Badr Corps, was armed, trained, financed and commanded by Iranians during two decades in exile in Iran. Since then, hedging its bets, Iran built a close relationship to Sadr's Mahdi Army as well, and Sadr himself has spent most of the time since the start of the U.S. surge last January in Iran*. In addition, Iran has armed and trained a loose collection of fighters that U.S. military commanders call "Special Groups," paramilitary fighters who've kept up a steady drumbeat of attacks on American troops. Thus, it was no surprise when Hadi al-Ameri, the commander of the Badr Corps and a leading member of ISCI, traveled over the weekend to Iran's religious capital of Qom to negotiate the truce with Sadr that resulted in a shaky ceasefire in Basra.
That Sadr emerged victorious, and that Iran succeeded in brokering the deal that ended the fighting, is a double defeat for the United States. It is also a catastrophe for Maliki, and there is already speculation that his government could collapse. An ill-timed offensive, poorly prepared and poorly executed, resulted in an embarrassing defeat for Maliki.
Why was the offensive launched in the first place? By all accounts, Maliki, his faction of the ruling Islamic Dawa party, and ISCI intended to crush Sadr in Basra for reasons both political and strategic. Political, because Sadr's movement is positioned to register a massive win at the polls in Basra and throughout southern Iraq in provincial elections scheduled for October, an electoral defeat that would portend the end of the Dawa-ISCI regime. Strategic, because Basra is the economic engine of all of Iraq. The city controls Iraq's South Oil Company, which pumps and exports the vast majority of Iraq's oil -- and for years Basra has been under the control of militias loyal to Sadr and to a Sadrist splinter party, the Fadhila (Virtue) party. By controlling the Oil Protection Force, a quasi-military force, and through its own militia, Fadhila is an important player in Basra, too, and Basra's governor is a Fadhilist. Though Fadhila has had its own clashes with Sadr's Mahdi Army, Fadhila kept its powder dry in the recent fighting, and there is no doubt that Fadhila is a bitter opponent of the Dawa-ISCI alliance. Last year, Maliki tried to oust the governor of Basra, Mohammed al-Waeli, who defied Maliki and refused to step down.
Maliki, miscalculating badly, flew to Basra last week from Baghdad to personally oversee the assault on Sadr's forces. In so doing, he staked his prestige on the offensive. If indeed it has failed, Maliki has lost face. That the ceasefire ending the fighting was worked out in Qom, Iran, and mediated by Tehran, is doubly embarrassing for him.
But it's far worse for the United States. President Bush strongly backed Maliki since the Battle of Basra started. According to Steve Hadley, the president's national security adviser, the decision to act in Basra was taken jointly between Washington and Baghdad. And U.S. air power and even some ground units supported the floundering Iraqi forces, whose weakness and incompetence were revealed for all to see. After five years of massive U.S. training and equipment, the Iraqi armed forces weren't even able to take control of Iraq's second-largest city.
Adding to Bush's utter humiliation, the Iranian-negotiated truce was mediated by the commander of the so-called Quds Force of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps, Brigadier General Qassem Suleimani, who brought Sadr's representatives together with Hadi al-Ameri, the Badr Corps commander and the leading aide to Abdel-Aziz al-Hakim, the ISCI leader. The Quds Force, you will recall, was only last year designated as a "terrorist" entity by the U.S. government. So President Bush's "defining moment" is this: the head of an Iranian "terrorist" force has brokered a deal between the two leading Shiite parties in Iraq, Sadr's movement and ISCI.
*Sadr's supporters have repeatedly denied that he's sought shelter in Iran, and charge that the claim is an attempt by his opponents to undermine his credibility as a fierce nationalist.
See more stories tagged with: iraq, basra, nouri al-maliki, mahdi army, shiite, iran
Robert Dreyfuss is the author of "Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam" (Henry Holt/Metropolitan Books).
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Monday, April 16, 2007
Sadr supporters to withdraw from Government?
I have not heard any word of Maliki's firings and cabinet changes. Maybe this is a way of avoiding some of the firings or is a deal between Sadr and Maliki. Maliki is hardly likely to ask for a withdrawal without US permission!
Shiite cleric vows to pursue U.S. troop exit
MUSSAB AL-KHAIRALLA AND PAUL TAIT
Reuters
BAGHDAD — The political movement of fiery Iraqi Shiite cleric and militia leader Moqtada al-Sadr said on Sunday it would withdraw from the government on Monday to press its demand for a timetable for a U.S. troop withdrawal.
Officials from the movement, which holds six ministries and a quarter of the parliamentary seats in Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's Shi'ite Alliance, said the formal announcement would be made on Monday at a news conference.
The move is unlikely to bring down the government, but it could create tensions in Mr. al-Maliki's fractious Shiite-led government of national unity at a time when it is trying to heal sectarian divisions that threaten to tip Iraq into civil war.
“We are going to declare our withdrawal from government because the prime minister does not want to make a timetable for the withdrawal of foreign forces from Iraq,” said one official in Mr. al-Sadr's movement who declined to be identified.
There was no immediate comment from the government.
Mr. al-Maliki says he sees no need to set a timetable. He said last week his government was working to build up Iraq's security forces as quickly as possible so U.S.-led forces could leave.
Two other al-Sadr officials confirmed the intention to pull out of the government but stressed the movement would continue to give “cautious” backing to a U.S.-Iraqi security crackdown in the capital. The Sadrists will remain in parliament.
Mr. al-Sadr's Mehdi Army militia, regarded by the Pentagon as the greatest threat to peace in Iraq, has kept a low profile during the two-month-old crackdown, reportedly on the orders of Mr. al-Sadr.
Despite the offensive, violence raged in Baghdad on Sunday.
Up to 34 people were killed and 100 wounded by bombs in mainly Shiite districts. Police also found 30 bodies, a sharp rise from the usually much lower number of victims of sectarian death squads found in the capital's streets each day since the security plan began.
Two British military personnel died when two helicopters crashed north of Baghdad. Four more people were injured when the Puma transport helicopters crashed near a U.S. air base in Taji, 20 kilometres from Baghdad, British officials said.
The helicopters may have collided in mid-air, the U.S. military said.
The Sadrists ended a two-month boycott of parliament in January after pulling out in protest over the timetable issue and a meeting between Mr. al-Maliki and U.S. President George W. Bush. They returned after a deal was brokered.
A senior official in Mr. al-Sadr's movement, Abdul-Mehdi al-Muteyri, said Mr. al-Sadr had also ordered the pullout, saying Mr. al-Maliki was hamstrung by political parties in his government pulling him in different directions.
“We don't believe in partisan quotas. Under the direct orders of Moqtada al-Sadr we have decided we are going to leave the government in order to give the prime minister the best possible options so that he can run his government,” Mr. al-Muteyri said.
Tens of thousands of Iraqis answered a call by Mr. al-Sadr to rally in the holy Shiite city of Najaf last week to protest against the presence of some 140,000 U.S.-led forces in Iraq.
Mr. al-Sadr led two uprisings against American forces in 2004 but later entered mainstream politics. He is a key backer of Mr. al-Maliki.
The U.S. military says Mr. al-Sadr is now in hiding in Iran, but the cleric's aides insist he is still in Iraq.
Mr. Bush said last week that setting timetables for a troop withdrawal would undermine the crackdown in Baghdad, which he said was beginning to show signs of progress in curbing sectarian violence.
Shiite cleric vows to pursue U.S. troop exit
MUSSAB AL-KHAIRALLA AND PAUL TAIT
Reuters
BAGHDAD — The political movement of fiery Iraqi Shiite cleric and militia leader Moqtada al-Sadr said on Sunday it would withdraw from the government on Monday to press its demand for a timetable for a U.S. troop withdrawal.
Officials from the movement, which holds six ministries and a quarter of the parliamentary seats in Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's Shi'ite Alliance, said the formal announcement would be made on Monday at a news conference.
The move is unlikely to bring down the government, but it could create tensions in Mr. al-Maliki's fractious Shiite-led government of national unity at a time when it is trying to heal sectarian divisions that threaten to tip Iraq into civil war.
“We are going to declare our withdrawal from government because the prime minister does not want to make a timetable for the withdrawal of foreign forces from Iraq,” said one official in Mr. al-Sadr's movement who declined to be identified.
There was no immediate comment from the government.
Mr. al-Maliki says he sees no need to set a timetable. He said last week his government was working to build up Iraq's security forces as quickly as possible so U.S.-led forces could leave.
Two other al-Sadr officials confirmed the intention to pull out of the government but stressed the movement would continue to give “cautious” backing to a U.S.-Iraqi security crackdown in the capital. The Sadrists will remain in parliament.
Mr. al-Sadr's Mehdi Army militia, regarded by the Pentagon as the greatest threat to peace in Iraq, has kept a low profile during the two-month-old crackdown, reportedly on the orders of Mr. al-Sadr.
Despite the offensive, violence raged in Baghdad on Sunday.
Up to 34 people were killed and 100 wounded by bombs in mainly Shiite districts. Police also found 30 bodies, a sharp rise from the usually much lower number of victims of sectarian death squads found in the capital's streets each day since the security plan began.
Two British military personnel died when two helicopters crashed north of Baghdad. Four more people were injured when the Puma transport helicopters crashed near a U.S. air base in Taji, 20 kilometres from Baghdad, British officials said.
The helicopters may have collided in mid-air, the U.S. military said.
The Sadrists ended a two-month boycott of parliament in January after pulling out in protest over the timetable issue and a meeting between Mr. al-Maliki and U.S. President George W. Bush. They returned after a deal was brokered.
A senior official in Mr. al-Sadr's movement, Abdul-Mehdi al-Muteyri, said Mr. al-Sadr had also ordered the pullout, saying Mr. al-Maliki was hamstrung by political parties in his government pulling him in different directions.
“We don't believe in partisan quotas. Under the direct orders of Moqtada al-Sadr we have decided we are going to leave the government in order to give the prime minister the best possible options so that he can run his government,” Mr. al-Muteyri said.
Tens of thousands of Iraqis answered a call by Mr. al-Sadr to rally in the holy Shiite city of Najaf last week to protest against the presence of some 140,000 U.S.-led forces in Iraq.
Mr. al-Sadr led two uprisings against American forces in 2004 but later entered mainstream politics. He is a key backer of Mr. al-Maliki.
The U.S. military says Mr. al-Sadr is now in hiding in Iran, but the cleric's aides insist he is still in Iraq.
Mr. Bush said last week that setting timetables for a troop withdrawal would undermine the crackdown in Baghdad, which he said was beginning to show signs of progress in curbing sectarian violence.
Sunday, January 21, 2007
Does Maliki face an internal crisis?
As this article points out al-Sadr's support is crucial to the Maliki government yet Maliki has now said he will not protect al-Sadr's militia. Sadr has 30 members of the legislature supporting him and even six cabinet ministers. Maliki has agreed to take up the issue of a timetable for US withdrawal and Iraqi takeover of security but a timetable for withdrawal is just what the US refuses absolutely to give. It will be interesting to see what happens in the next few days. If the people recently arrested were a renegade group this would explain Sadr's lack of response and peace overtures to Maliki.
January 21st, 2007 2:22 pm
25 U.S. troops killed in Iraq Saturday
By Bushra Juhi / Associated Press
BAGHDAD, Iraq - The U.S. military on Sunday reported six more American troops killed in fighting the day before, raising the toll to 25 in the deadliest day for U.S. forces in Iraq in two years.
Four U.S. soldiers and a Marine were killed Saturday during combat in Anbar, the Sunni insurgent stronghold west of Baghdad, the military said. A roadside bomb also struck a security patrol northeast of Baghdad, killing one soldier.
Saturday's carnage also included 12 soldiers killed in a Blackhawk helicopter crash northeast of Baghdad, five killed in a militant attack in the holy Shiite city of Karbala and two others slain elsewhere in roadside bombings.
The parliamentary bloc loyal to the radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, meanwhile, ended its nearly two-month political boycott after reaching a compromise in which a parliamentary committee would take up the group's demands for a timetable for Iraqi forces to take over security and the withdrawal of U.S. forces.
"We announce our return to parliament, we will attend today's session, and the ministers will resume their work to serve the people," Bahaa al-Araji, one of 30 lawmakers loyal to al-Sadr, said during a news conference attended by Sunni parliament speaker Mahmoud al-Mashhadani. Al-Sadr also has six loyalist ministers in the 38-member Cabinet.
The decision appeared to be a way for both sides to save face while allowing al-Sadr's bloc, whose support is crucial to Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, to regain legislative influence ahead of a planned U.S.-Iraqi security crackdown in Baghdad.
"We are on the verge of a new era. We will be victorious and we will achieve the major change through unity and fraternity and be our army's regain of its strength, taking responsibility and fighting terrorism," al-Maliki said separately during a ceremony for military academy students.
The first reinforcements of U.S. troops have already started to flow into the region. A brigade of the U.S. 82nd Airborne Division, part of the buildup, has arrived in Baghdad and its 3,200 soldiers will be ready to join the fresh drive to quell sectarian violence in the capital by the first of the month, the American military said Sunday.
But the deadly toll among U.S. forces comes at a critical time of rising congressional opposition to President Bush's decision to dispatch 21,500 additional soldiers to the conflict.
The U.S. military statement about the Karbala attack said "an illegally armed militia group" attacked the provincial headquarters building with grenades, small arms and "indirect fire," which usually means mortars or rockets.
"A meeting was taking place at the time of the attack to ensure the security of Shiite pilgrims participating in the Ashoura commemorations," said a statement from Brig. Gen. Vincent K. Brooks, deputy commander of the Multi-National Division-Baghdad.
Thousands of Shiite pilgrims are flocking to the city to mark the 10-day Ashoura festival commemorating the death of one of Shiite Islam's most sacred saints, Imam Hussein, grandson of the Prophet Muhammad.
Provincial Gov. Akeel al-Khazaali, who was not at the security meeting, said the gunmen, dressed in military uniforms, were able to drive their black SUVs — similar to those driven by foreign dignitaries — through a checkpoint on the outskirts of the city, 50 miles south of Baghdad, because police assumed it was a diplomatic convoy and informed headquarters that it was coming.
"The group used percussion bombs and broke into the building, killed five Americans and kidnapped two others, then fled," the governor said, adding that Iraqi troops later found one of the SUVs with three bodies of uniformed men.
The U.S. military, which has said that five U.S. soldiers were killed and three were wounded while repelling the attack, denied that two U.S. troops were kidnapped.
Lt. Col. Christopher Garver, a military spokesman, said all American forces "were accounted for after the action."
A security official in Karbala, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to disclose the information to the media, said the gunmen drove to Babil province after the attack. The Babil police commander confirmed that they entered the region before disappearing.
Although Babil province is predominantly Shiite, some parts of it, just south of Baghdad, are Sunni and insurgents are known to be active there.
Saturday was the deadliest day for U.S. forces in two years. It was also the third-highest of any single day since the war began in March 2003, eclipsed only by 37 U.S. deaths on Jan. 26, 2005, and 28 on the third day of the U.S. invasion. U.S. authorities also announced two American combat deaths from Friday.
In violence reported by police on Sunday:
• A bomb left in a bag struck a small bus carrying people to work in a predominantly Shiite area in Baghdad, killing seven passengers and wounding 15.
• A parked car bomb also exploded outside a restaurant in eastern Baghdad, killing one person and wounding five, according to police.
• A suicide car bomber targeting an Iraqi army patrol killed one woman and wounded five other people in the northern city of Mosul.
January 21st, 2007 2:22 pm
25 U.S. troops killed in Iraq Saturday
By Bushra Juhi / Associated Press
BAGHDAD, Iraq - The U.S. military on Sunday reported six more American troops killed in fighting the day before, raising the toll to 25 in the deadliest day for U.S. forces in Iraq in two years.
Four U.S. soldiers and a Marine were killed Saturday during combat in Anbar, the Sunni insurgent stronghold west of Baghdad, the military said. A roadside bomb also struck a security patrol northeast of Baghdad, killing one soldier.
Saturday's carnage also included 12 soldiers killed in a Blackhawk helicopter crash northeast of Baghdad, five killed in a militant attack in the holy Shiite city of Karbala and two others slain elsewhere in roadside bombings.
The parliamentary bloc loyal to the radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, meanwhile, ended its nearly two-month political boycott after reaching a compromise in which a parliamentary committee would take up the group's demands for a timetable for Iraqi forces to take over security and the withdrawal of U.S. forces.
"We announce our return to parliament, we will attend today's session, and the ministers will resume their work to serve the people," Bahaa al-Araji, one of 30 lawmakers loyal to al-Sadr, said during a news conference attended by Sunni parliament speaker Mahmoud al-Mashhadani. Al-Sadr also has six loyalist ministers in the 38-member Cabinet.
The decision appeared to be a way for both sides to save face while allowing al-Sadr's bloc, whose support is crucial to Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, to regain legislative influence ahead of a planned U.S.-Iraqi security crackdown in Baghdad.
"We are on the verge of a new era. We will be victorious and we will achieve the major change through unity and fraternity and be our army's regain of its strength, taking responsibility and fighting terrorism," al-Maliki said separately during a ceremony for military academy students.
The first reinforcements of U.S. troops have already started to flow into the region. A brigade of the U.S. 82nd Airborne Division, part of the buildup, has arrived in Baghdad and its 3,200 soldiers will be ready to join the fresh drive to quell sectarian violence in the capital by the first of the month, the American military said Sunday.
But the deadly toll among U.S. forces comes at a critical time of rising congressional opposition to President Bush's decision to dispatch 21,500 additional soldiers to the conflict.
The U.S. military statement about the Karbala attack said "an illegally armed militia group" attacked the provincial headquarters building with grenades, small arms and "indirect fire," which usually means mortars or rockets.
"A meeting was taking place at the time of the attack to ensure the security of Shiite pilgrims participating in the Ashoura commemorations," said a statement from Brig. Gen. Vincent K. Brooks, deputy commander of the Multi-National Division-Baghdad.
Thousands of Shiite pilgrims are flocking to the city to mark the 10-day Ashoura festival commemorating the death of one of Shiite Islam's most sacred saints, Imam Hussein, grandson of the Prophet Muhammad.
Provincial Gov. Akeel al-Khazaali, who was not at the security meeting, said the gunmen, dressed in military uniforms, were able to drive their black SUVs — similar to those driven by foreign dignitaries — through a checkpoint on the outskirts of the city, 50 miles south of Baghdad, because police assumed it was a diplomatic convoy and informed headquarters that it was coming.
"The group used percussion bombs and broke into the building, killed five Americans and kidnapped two others, then fled," the governor said, adding that Iraqi troops later found one of the SUVs with three bodies of uniformed men.
The U.S. military, which has said that five U.S. soldiers were killed and three were wounded while repelling the attack, denied that two U.S. troops were kidnapped.
Lt. Col. Christopher Garver, a military spokesman, said all American forces "were accounted for after the action."
A security official in Karbala, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to disclose the information to the media, said the gunmen drove to Babil province after the attack. The Babil police commander confirmed that they entered the region before disappearing.
Although Babil province is predominantly Shiite, some parts of it, just south of Baghdad, are Sunni and insurgents are known to be active there.
Saturday was the deadliest day for U.S. forces in two years. It was also the third-highest of any single day since the war began in March 2003, eclipsed only by 37 U.S. deaths on Jan. 26, 2005, and 28 on the third day of the U.S. invasion. U.S. authorities also announced two American combat deaths from Friday.
In violence reported by police on Sunday:
• A bomb left in a bag struck a small bus carrying people to work in a predominantly Shiite area in Baghdad, killing seven passengers and wounding 15.
• A parked car bomb also exploded outside a restaurant in eastern Baghdad, killing one person and wounding five, according to police.
• A suicide car bomber targeting an Iraqi army patrol killed one woman and wounded five other people in the northern city of Mosul.
Maliki drops protection of Mahdi militia
The change in Maliki's position is not all that puzzling. The US is clearly intent on attacking the Mahdi army with or without Maliki's approval. They are not about to allow Maliki to shield al-Sadr's group any more. By agreeing to US demands it looks as if he is not relinquishing sovereignty. It appears he has just changed him mind because of US evidence. Highly unlikely. Reports about what US intelligence have found are often suspect and often leaked as part of the psychological warfare that is going on and the media seems to blithely ignore or perhaps it co-operates in many cases.
It will be interesting to see what the returned Sadrists will do within the government. I have seen one report that says that the aide of al Sadr who was arrested was a rebel against al-Sadr so that Sadr will not rush to protect him or even complain.
Iraqi leader drops protection of militia By STEVEN R. HURST, Associated Press Writer
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraq's prime minister has dropped his protection of an anti-American cleric's Shiite militia after U.S. intelligence convinced him the group was infiltrated by death squads, two officials said Sunday.
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In a desperate bid to fend off an all-out American offensive, the radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr last Friday ordered the 30 lawmakers and six Cabinet ministers under his control to end their nearly two-month boycott of the government. They were back at their jobs Sunday.
Al-Sadr had already ordered his militia fighters not to display their weapons. They have not, however, ceded control of the formerly mixed neighborhoods they have captured, killing Sunnis or forcing them to abandon their homes and businesses.
Saturday's U.S. death toll climbed significantly to 25 after the military reported Sunday that six more troops had died in the deadliest day in two years for American forces.
The latest military reports said four soldiers and a Marine had died during combat Saturday in Anbar province and one soldier was killed in a roadside bombing northeast of Baghdad.
Nineteen of the deaths were reported Saturday, 12 in a Black Hawk helicopter crash, five in an attack on a security meeting in the Shiite holy city of Karbala and two others in roadside bomb attacks elsewhere. It was the third-highest daily toll for U.S. forces since the war began in March 2003.
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's turnaround on the Mahdi Army was puzzling because as late as Oct. 31, he had intervened to end a U.S. blockade of Sadr City, the northeast Shiite enclave in Baghdad that is headquarters to the militia. It is held responsible for much of the sectarian bloodshed that has turned the capital into a battle zone over the past year.
Shiite militias began taking revenge after more than two years of incessant bomb and shooting attacks by Sunni insurgents.
Sometime between then and Nov. 30, when the prime minister met President Bush, al-Maliki was convinced of the truth of American intelligence reports which contended, among other things, that his protection of al-Sadr's militia was isolating him in the Arab world and among moderates at home, the two government officials said.
"Al-Maliki realized he couldn't keep defending the Mahdi Army because of the information and evidence that the armed group was taking part in the killings, displacing people and violating the state's sovereignty," said one official. Both he and a second government official who confirmed the account refused to be identified by name because the information was confidential. Both officials are intimately aware of the prime minister's thinking.
"The Americans don't act on rumors but on accurate intelligence. There are many intelligence agencies acting on the ground, and they know what's going on," said the second official, confirming the Americans had given al-Maliki overwhelming evidence about the Mahdi Army's deep involvement in the sectarian slaughter.
Earlier this month, Bush and al-Maliki separately announced a new security drive to clamp off the sectarian violence that has riven the capital and surrounding regions.
Bush announced an additional 21,500 American soldiers would be sent to accomplish the task and al-Maliki has promised a similar number of forces, who will take the lead in the overall operation.
Iraq's Special Forces Command division has already teamed with the Americans since late last year for a series of pinpoint attacks in which at least five top Mahdi Army figures have been killed or captured.
The neighborhood-by-neighborhood sweep, expected to begin in earnest by the first of the month, will target Sunni insurgents, al-Qaida in Iraq and its allied militant bands equally with Shiite militias, both the Mahdi Army and the Badr Brigade.
The latter is the Iranian-trained military wing of Iraq's most power Shiite political group, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq.
The first government official said al-Maliki's message was blunt.
"He told the sheik that the activities of both the Sadrist politicians and the militia have inflamed hatred among neighboring Sunni Arab states that have been complaining bitterly to the Americans," the official said.
Sunni Muslims are the majority sect in key Arab countries like Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt, all of which have shunned al-Maliki. Shiites, long oppressed by Iraqi's Sunni minority, and vaulted to power with the ouster of Saddam Hussein.
Many of the leading Shiite figures in Iraq have deep historical ties to Iran, also a majority Shiite state, whose growing muscle in the Middle East is deeply threatening to the autocratic Sunni regimes in the region.
As the Saturday death toll among American troops was mounting, the military reported five soldiers had been killed in an attack on a security meeting in provincial government building in Karbala, south of the capital.
Thousands of pilgrims have arrived in the holy city to mark Ashoura, the festival at the start of the Islamic new year that marks the death of Imam Hussein, grandson of the Prophet Muhammad and one of the most-revered Shiite saints.
Iraqi officials said on Sunday that the gunmen who attacked the meeting wore military uniforms and arrived in black sport utility vehicles commonly used by foreign dignitaries — an apparent attempt to impersonate American forces.
The local governor, Akeel al-Khazaali, was not at the security meeting but said security officials told him the SUVs were able to get through a checkpoint on the outskirts of the city, 50 miles south of Baghdad, because local police assumed the vehicles were a diplomatic or official convoy and informed headquarters that it was coming.
"The group used percussion bombs and broke into the building, killed five Americans and kidnapped two others," the governor said. Iraqi troops later found one of the SUVs with the three dead bodies dressed in military uniforms, he said.
Lt. Col. Christopher Garver, a U.S. military spokesman, denied any Americans were kidnapped and said all "were accounted for after the action."
A security official in Karbala, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to disclose the information, also said the gunmen who carried out the attack on the Provincial Joint Coordination Center were using SUVs similar to ones used by the U.S. authorities.
The official said the convoy of gunmen fled into neighboring Babil province. The Babil police commander confirmed that the suspects entered the region before disappearing.
Saturday's deaths of the 25 U.S. troops was eclipsed only by the one-day toll 37 U.S. fatalities on Jan. 26, 2005, and 28 on the third day of the U.S. invasion.
Across Iraq on Sunday, police and morgue officials reported 46 people were killed or found dead, 29 of them bodies, most showing signs of torture, were found in Baghdad.
It will be interesting to see what the returned Sadrists will do within the government. I have seen one report that says that the aide of al Sadr who was arrested was a rebel against al-Sadr so that Sadr will not rush to protect him or even complain.
Iraqi leader drops protection of militia By STEVEN R. HURST, Associated Press Writer
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraq's prime minister has dropped his protection of an anti-American cleric's Shiite militia after U.S. intelligence convinced him the group was infiltrated by death squads, two officials said Sunday.
ADVERTISEMENT
In a desperate bid to fend off an all-out American offensive, the radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr last Friday ordered the 30 lawmakers and six Cabinet ministers under his control to end their nearly two-month boycott of the government. They were back at their jobs Sunday.
Al-Sadr had already ordered his militia fighters not to display their weapons. They have not, however, ceded control of the formerly mixed neighborhoods they have captured, killing Sunnis or forcing them to abandon their homes and businesses.
Saturday's U.S. death toll climbed significantly to 25 after the military reported Sunday that six more troops had died in the deadliest day in two years for American forces.
The latest military reports said four soldiers and a Marine had died during combat Saturday in Anbar province and one soldier was killed in a roadside bombing northeast of Baghdad.
Nineteen of the deaths were reported Saturday, 12 in a Black Hawk helicopter crash, five in an attack on a security meeting in the Shiite holy city of Karbala and two others in roadside bomb attacks elsewhere. It was the third-highest daily toll for U.S. forces since the war began in March 2003.
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's turnaround on the Mahdi Army was puzzling because as late as Oct. 31, he had intervened to end a U.S. blockade of Sadr City, the northeast Shiite enclave in Baghdad that is headquarters to the militia. It is held responsible for much of the sectarian bloodshed that has turned the capital into a battle zone over the past year.
Shiite militias began taking revenge after more than two years of incessant bomb and shooting attacks by Sunni insurgents.
Sometime between then and Nov. 30, when the prime minister met President Bush, al-Maliki was convinced of the truth of American intelligence reports which contended, among other things, that his protection of al-Sadr's militia was isolating him in the Arab world and among moderates at home, the two government officials said.
"Al-Maliki realized he couldn't keep defending the Mahdi Army because of the information and evidence that the armed group was taking part in the killings, displacing people and violating the state's sovereignty," said one official. Both he and a second government official who confirmed the account refused to be identified by name because the information was confidential. Both officials are intimately aware of the prime minister's thinking.
"The Americans don't act on rumors but on accurate intelligence. There are many intelligence agencies acting on the ground, and they know what's going on," said the second official, confirming the Americans had given al-Maliki overwhelming evidence about the Mahdi Army's deep involvement in the sectarian slaughter.
Earlier this month, Bush and al-Maliki separately announced a new security drive to clamp off the sectarian violence that has riven the capital and surrounding regions.
Bush announced an additional 21,500 American soldiers would be sent to accomplish the task and al-Maliki has promised a similar number of forces, who will take the lead in the overall operation.
Iraq's Special Forces Command division has already teamed with the Americans since late last year for a series of pinpoint attacks in which at least five top Mahdi Army figures have been killed or captured.
The neighborhood-by-neighborhood sweep, expected to begin in earnest by the first of the month, will target Sunni insurgents, al-Qaida in Iraq and its allied militant bands equally with Shiite militias, both the Mahdi Army and the Badr Brigade.
The latter is the Iranian-trained military wing of Iraq's most power Shiite political group, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq.
The first government official said al-Maliki's message was blunt.
"He told the sheik that the activities of both the Sadrist politicians and the militia have inflamed hatred among neighboring Sunni Arab states that have been complaining bitterly to the Americans," the official said.
Sunni Muslims are the majority sect in key Arab countries like Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt, all of which have shunned al-Maliki. Shiites, long oppressed by Iraqi's Sunni minority, and vaulted to power with the ouster of Saddam Hussein.
Many of the leading Shiite figures in Iraq have deep historical ties to Iran, also a majority Shiite state, whose growing muscle in the Middle East is deeply threatening to the autocratic Sunni regimes in the region.
As the Saturday death toll among American troops was mounting, the military reported five soldiers had been killed in an attack on a security meeting in provincial government building in Karbala, south of the capital.
Thousands of pilgrims have arrived in the holy city to mark Ashoura, the festival at the start of the Islamic new year that marks the death of Imam Hussein, grandson of the Prophet Muhammad and one of the most-revered Shiite saints.
Iraqi officials said on Sunday that the gunmen who attacked the meeting wore military uniforms and arrived in black sport utility vehicles commonly used by foreign dignitaries — an apparent attempt to impersonate American forces.
The local governor, Akeel al-Khazaali, was not at the security meeting but said security officials told him the SUVs were able to get through a checkpoint on the outskirts of the city, 50 miles south of Baghdad, because local police assumed the vehicles were a diplomatic or official convoy and informed headquarters that it was coming.
"The group used percussion bombs and broke into the building, killed five Americans and kidnapped two others," the governor said. Iraqi troops later found one of the SUVs with the three dead bodies dressed in military uniforms, he said.
Lt. Col. Christopher Garver, a U.S. military spokesman, denied any Americans were kidnapped and said all "were accounted for after the action."
A security official in Karbala, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to disclose the information, also said the gunmen who carried out the attack on the Provincial Joint Coordination Center were using SUVs similar to ones used by the U.S. authorities.
The official said the convoy of gunmen fled into neighboring Babil province. The Babil police commander confirmed that the suspects entered the region before disappearing.
Saturday's deaths of the 25 U.S. troops was eclipsed only by the one-day toll 37 U.S. fatalities on Jan. 26, 2005, and 28 on the third day of the U.S. invasion.
Across Iraq on Sunday, police and morgue officials reported 46 people were killed or found dead, 29 of them bodies, most showing signs of torture, were found in Baghdad.
Sunday, January 14, 2007
Maliki on his way out.
It is clear who is still the boss in Iraq. Maliki and Washington disagree as to the terms of the coming offensive. The US is determined to go where and when it wants in Baghdad and will be using Kurdish troops as proxies.Maliki insists that the US must get his authorisation for attacks. They will not. Maliki does not want to alienate his own Shia allies. The US seems incapable of taking account of the political realities faced by their allies (or puppets?).
Rice says will hold Iraq PM to his promises
13 Jan 2007 23:14:50 GMT13 Jan 2007 23:14:50 GMT ## for search indexer, do not remove-->
Source: Reuters
(Adds Bush comments to CBS, paragraphs 13-16)
By Ibon Villelabeitia
BAGHDAD, Jan 13 (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Washington would hold Iraq's Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki to his promises to reduce sectarian violence and that it was now time to see results.
A day after Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Maliki could lose his job if he failed to stop communal bloodshed, Rice stepped up pressure on the premier as she began a Middle East tour to drum up support for President George W. Bush's plan to send 21,500 extra troops to Iraq.
Echoing previous remarks that Maliki's government was living on "borrowed time" and that America's patience was running out, Rice said the Iraqi government understood that success in a plan to secure Baghdad was "a very high priority."
"To say that your patience isn't limited is simply to say that the Iraqi government needs to start to show results," Rice told reporters before arriving in Israel Saturday, according to a State Department transcript of her remarks.
"We're going to get an opportunity to see whether or not this is working, whether or not the Iraqis are living up to their obligations."
With Bush's critics saying his new strategy depends too heavily on Maliki keeping promises he failed to keep before, administration officials are piling pressure on Iraqi politicians to solve their differences and avert civil war.
Maliki has vowed to lead a Baghdad operation he says will hit not only insurgents from the once-dominant Sunni minority but also militias loyal to fellow Shi'ites -- a key demand of Washington and Sunnis, who say Iran is backing Shi'ite gunmen.
Maliki, who leads a fractious coalition of Shi'ites, Sunni Arabs and ethnic Kurds, said Saturday his government agreed with Bush's plan for Iraqis to lead the security push although some of his hard-line Shi'ite allies have opposed it.
WITHDRAWING SUPPORT
At a U.S. Senate committee hearing on Friday, Gates said Maliki might have to quit if Iraqi political blocs withdrew their support over his failure to deliver. Following recent meetings between Bush and top Iraqi politicians, there have been reports that Washington is willing to back a new coalition.
"I think the first consequence that he has to face is the possibility that he'll lose his job," Gates said.
"There's some sense that ... there are beginning to be some people around that may say ... 'I can do better than he's doing,' in terms of ... making progress," he said.
Police found 31 bodies in Baghdad in the 24 hours to Saturday night, many tortured and shot dead, in a typical case of the sectarian violence that is forcing thousands to flee.
Bush acknowledged on Saturday that some of his administration's decisions in Iraq had contributed to instability.
The president, pressed on the question during an interview, said: "Well, no question, decisions have made things unstable."
"I think history is going to look back and see a lot of ways we could have done things better. No question about it," he said in the interview, taped for airing on CBS on Sunday night.
But Bush said he still believed he was right to topple Saddam Hussein.
TEHRAN'S ALLEGED INVOLVEMENT
Two days after U.S. forces raided an Iranian government office in the Iraqi city of Arbil in the second such operation in a month, Rice repeated a warning by Bush that Washington will not tolerate Tehran's alleged support for armed groups in Iraq.
"I think there is plenty of evidence that there is Iranian involvement with these networks that are making high-explosive IEDs (bombs) and that are endangering our troops, and that's going to be dealt with."
But she said Bush's order to target Iranians operating in Iraq did not mark a widening of the conflict.
Facing hostility from some fellow Republicans as well as Democrats, Bush used his weekly radio address Saturday to make clear he would not back off his plan to send more troops to Iraq and accused critics of failing to offer an alternative.
"Those who refuse to give this plan a chance to work have an obligation to offer an alternative that has a better chance for success. To oppose everything while proposing nothing is irresponsible," he said.
-->
© 1998-2006 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.
Rice says will hold Iraq PM to his promises
13 Jan 2007 23:14:50 GMT13 Jan 2007 23:14:50 GMT ## for search indexer, do not remove-->
Source: Reuters
(Adds Bush comments to CBS, paragraphs 13-16)
By Ibon Villelabeitia
BAGHDAD, Jan 13 (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Washington would hold Iraq's Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki to his promises to reduce sectarian violence and that it was now time to see results.
A day after Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Maliki could lose his job if he failed to stop communal bloodshed, Rice stepped up pressure on the premier as she began a Middle East tour to drum up support for President George W. Bush's plan to send 21,500 extra troops to Iraq.
Echoing previous remarks that Maliki's government was living on "borrowed time" and that America's patience was running out, Rice said the Iraqi government understood that success in a plan to secure Baghdad was "a very high priority."
"To say that your patience isn't limited is simply to say that the Iraqi government needs to start to show results," Rice told reporters before arriving in Israel Saturday, according to a State Department transcript of her remarks.
"We're going to get an opportunity to see whether or not this is working, whether or not the Iraqis are living up to their obligations."
With Bush's critics saying his new strategy depends too heavily on Maliki keeping promises he failed to keep before, administration officials are piling pressure on Iraqi politicians to solve their differences and avert civil war.
Maliki has vowed to lead a Baghdad operation he says will hit not only insurgents from the once-dominant Sunni minority but also militias loyal to fellow Shi'ites -- a key demand of Washington and Sunnis, who say Iran is backing Shi'ite gunmen.
Maliki, who leads a fractious coalition of Shi'ites, Sunni Arabs and ethnic Kurds, said Saturday his government agreed with Bush's plan for Iraqis to lead the security push although some of his hard-line Shi'ite allies have opposed it.
WITHDRAWING SUPPORT
At a U.S. Senate committee hearing on Friday, Gates said Maliki might have to quit if Iraqi political blocs withdrew their support over his failure to deliver. Following recent meetings between Bush and top Iraqi politicians, there have been reports that Washington is willing to back a new coalition.
"I think the first consequence that he has to face is the possibility that he'll lose his job," Gates said.
"There's some sense that ... there are beginning to be some people around that may say ... 'I can do better than he's doing,' in terms of ... making progress," he said.
Police found 31 bodies in Baghdad in the 24 hours to Saturday night, many tortured and shot dead, in a typical case of the sectarian violence that is forcing thousands to flee.
Bush acknowledged on Saturday that some of his administration's decisions in Iraq had contributed to instability.
The president, pressed on the question during an interview, said: "Well, no question, decisions have made things unstable."
"I think history is going to look back and see a lot of ways we could have done things better. No question about it," he said in the interview, taped for airing on CBS on Sunday night.
But Bush said he still believed he was right to topple Saddam Hussein.
TEHRAN'S ALLEGED INVOLVEMENT
Two days after U.S. forces raided an Iranian government office in the Iraqi city of Arbil in the second such operation in a month, Rice repeated a warning by Bush that Washington will not tolerate Tehran's alleged support for armed groups in Iraq.
"I think there is plenty of evidence that there is Iranian involvement with these networks that are making high-explosive IEDs (bombs) and that are endangering our troops, and that's going to be dealt with."
But she said Bush's order to target Iranians operating in Iraq did not mark a widening of the conflict.
Facing hostility from some fellow Republicans as well as Democrats, Bush used his weekly radio address Saturday to make clear he would not back off his plan to send more troops to Iraq and accused critics of failing to offer an alternative.
"Those who refuse to give this plan a chance to work have an obligation to offer an alternative that has a better chance for success. To oppose everything while proposing nothing is irresponsible," he said.
-->
© 1998-2006 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.
Friday, January 12, 2007
Is Maliki on his way out in Iraq?
This article from the New York Times makes it clear that the US is still in charge militarily in Baghdad. It neglects to mentiion that new battalions coming into the city are Kurdish peshmerga since there is a fear that Shiites would not fight in Sadr's slums. This may very well incite Shiites against Kurds.
The article indicates that Maliki and the US disagree about whether permission will be need to attack Sadr City. The US says the attack can go anywhere anytime. There will obviously be fireworks if there is an attempt to secure Sadr City. It is hard to think of a better recipe for disaster. The attack may end up uniting Sunni opposition and Sadrists again both of whom hate the US occupiers.
Maliki will probably not survive the surge. He can serve as another fall guy for Bush to blame for a failed policy.
January 12, 2007In Baghdad, Bush Policy Is Met With ResentmentBy JOHN F. BURNS and SABRINA TAVERNISE
BAGHDAD, Jan. 11 — Iraq’s Shiite-led government offered only a grudging endorsement on Thursday of President Bush’s proposal to deploy more than 20,000 additional troops in an effort to curb sectarian violence and regain control of Baghdad. The tepid response immediately raised questions about whether the government would make a good-faith effort to prosecute the new war plan.
The Iraqi leader, Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, failed to appear at a news conference and avoided any public comment. He left the government’s response to an official spokesman, Ali al-Dabbagh, who gave what amounted to a backhanded approval of the troop increase and emphasized that Iraqis, not Americans, would set the future course in the war.
Mr. Dabbagh said that the government’s objective was to secure the eventual withdrawal of American troops, and that for that to be possible there had to be security for Iraqis. “If this can be achieved by increasing either Iraqi or multinational forces,” he added, “the government, for sure, will not stand against it.”
Mr. Dabbagh suggested that much about the Bush plan depended on how circumstances in Iraq would evolve over the coming months — an echo, in its way, of senior Bush administration officials. They have implied that they might halt the month-by-month inflow of additional troops if they think Mr. Maliki is failing to meet the political and military benchmarks Mr. Bush identified as the Iraqi government’s part in making the new war plan work.
“The plan can be developed according to the needs,” Mr. Dabbagh said. Then he added tartly, “What is suitable for our conditions in Iraq is what we decide, not what others decide for us.”
The spokesman’s remarks, and a similarly dyspeptic tone that was adopted by Shiite politicians with close ties to Mr. Maliki, pointed to the double-bind Mr. Bush finds himself in. Faced with low levels of public support for his new military push and a Democratic leadership in Congress that has said it will fight him over it, he also confronts the uncomfortable prospect of foot-dragging in Baghdad over the troop increases and the benchmarks he has set for the Iraqis.
While senior officials in Washington have presented the new war plan as an American adaptation of proposals that were first put to Mr. Bush by Mr. Maliki when the two men met in the Jordanian capital of Amman in November, the picture that is emerging in Baghdad is quite different. What Mr. Maliki wanted, his officials say, was in at least one crucial respect the opposite of what Mr. Bush decided: a lowering of the American profile in the war, not the increase Mr. Bush has ordered.
These Iraqi officials say Mr. Maliki, in the wake of Mr. Bush’s setback in the Democratic sweep in November’s midterm elections, demanded that American troops be pulled back to the periphery of Baghdad and that the war in the capital, at least, be handed to Iraqi troops. The demand was part of a broader impatience among the ruling Shiites to be relieved from American oversight so as to be able to fight and govern according to the dictates of Shiite politics, not according to strictures from Washington.
What transpired, in Mr. Bush’s speech on Wednesday night, appears to have been a hybrid: a plan that aims at marrying the Maliki government’s urgency for a broader license to act with Mr. Bush’s determination to make what American officials here see as a last-chance push for success in Iraq on American terms. And that, as Mr. Bush made clear on Wednesday, implies objectives that will be difficult — many Iraqis say impossible — to square with Mr. Maliki’s goals.
The differences seemed clear on Thursday as Iraqis responded to Mr. Bush’s speech. In the streets of Baghdad, reactions followed, broadly, the familiar pattern in a city that is more and more divided on sectarian lines. Many Shiites said Iraq’s own security forces, which are predominantly Shiite, should be left to do the job of stabilizing the city, while many Sunnis, shocked by the violence of Shiite death squads in recent months, said they would welcome the Americans if they could rein the sectarian killing in.
Mr. Dabbagh, the government spokesman, emphasized the parts of the Bush plan that best suited the Maliki government’s political ambitions. He said the “good thing in this plan is that it determines that responsibility should be transferred from the Americans to the Iraqis.” This was a prime point with Mr. Bush, too, when he said that the role of American troops under the new plan would be to “help the Iraqis” secure neighborhoods in Baghdad, protect the local population and maintain security in areas that American and Iraqi forces have cleared.
Within hours of Mr. Bush’s speech, American commanders were meeting with their Iraqi counterparts in Baghdad to work out the details of a new command arrangement that would give Mr. Maliki a direct role in overseeing the new crackdown. The Iraqis named a commander for the operation, Lt. Gen. Aboud Gambar, a Shiite from southern Iraq who was a top general in Saddam Hussein’s army until the American-led invasion in 2003.
General Gambar will report directly to Mr. Maliki, outside the chain of command that runs through the Defense Ministry, which the Maliki government has long viewed as a bastion of American influence, and, because the defense minister is a Sunni, of resistance to Shiite control. General Gambar will have two deputies, one for the heavily Shiite east part of Baghdad, another for the mostly Sunni west part, and they will oversee nine new military districts, each assigned an Iraqi brigade.
As details of the Bush plan became known on Wednesday, Iraqi officials said that the new arrangements would give Iraqis operational control of the new push in Baghdad. But Mr. Dabbagh and others were quick to pull back on Thursday, acknowledging that Baghdad would remain under American operational control at least until later this year. American officials noted that American officers would be assigned to General Gambar’s headquarters, that an American battalion would be twinned with each Iraqi brigade and that every Iraqi unit, down to the company level, would have American military advisers.
If this fell a long way short of the plan for full Iraqi control in Baghdad that Mr. Maliki set out in November, his officials were at pains to say that the prime minister would decide the issue of most concern to the Iraqi leader: whether, and when, Iraqi and American forces would be allowed to move in force into Sadr City. That Shiite working-class district in northeast Baghdad is the stronghold of the Mahdi Army, the most powerful of the Shiite militias, and the main power base of Moktada al-Sadr, the Mahdi Army leader, whose parliamentary bloc sustains Mr. Maliki in office.
“It’s been agreed that in order to succeed they have to consult,” Mr. Dabbagh said — a bland requirement as he stated it — but some distance from the formula put forward at Washington briefings on the new plan. Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates, at a news conference on Wednesday, said that American and Iraqi troops would be free to go into “all parts of Baghdad, including Sadr City” and that one benchmark in the plan was that there would be no “political interference” with military operations or attempts to protect death squad leaders.
That appeared to be an allusion to the past American experience with Mr. Maliki, who has consistently refused to sanction major offensives in Sadr City. On at least one occasion, he intervened to secure the release of a man captured by American troops and identified by American commanders as a death squad leader with links to Mr. Sadr. Mr. Maliki’s argument has been that the solution to the problem of militias, including Mr. Sadr’s, must be political, not military, but he has simultaneously postponed any action on a new law to disarm and demobilize the militias.
One of Mr. Maliki’s political allies, Sheik Khalid al-Attiya, who is deputy speaker of the Iraqi Parliament, said Thursday that he expected the benchmarks set by Mr. Bush to take 6 to 12 months to be met. With American commanders in Baghdad saying they hope to have the main parts of the city stabilized by late summer — allowing American troops to be pulled back to bases outside the city as Mr. Maliki has demanded — the Americans seem likely to run out of patience with Mr. Maliki long before Mr. Attiya’s timetable plays out.
A Shiite political leader who has worked closely with the Americans in the past said the Bush benchmarks appeared to have been drawn up in the expectation that Mr. Maliki would not meet them. “He cannot deliver the disarming of the militias,” the politician said, asking that he not be named because he did not want to be seen as publicly criticizing the prime minister. “He cannot deliver a good program for the economy and reconstruction. He cannot deliver on services. This is a matter of fact. There is a common understanding on the American side and the Iraqi side.”
Views such as these — increasingly common among the political class in Baghdad — are often accompanied by predictions that Mr. Maliki will be forced out as the crisis over the militias builds. The Shiite politician who described him as incapable of disarming militias suggested he might resign; others have pointed to an American effort in recent weeks to line up a “moderate front” of Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish political leaders outside the government, and said that the front might be a vehicle for mounting a parliamentary coup against Mr. Maliki, with behind-the-scenes American support.
The article indicates that Maliki and the US disagree about whether permission will be need to attack Sadr City. The US says the attack can go anywhere anytime. There will obviously be fireworks if there is an attempt to secure Sadr City. It is hard to think of a better recipe for disaster. The attack may end up uniting Sunni opposition and Sadrists again both of whom hate the US occupiers.
Maliki will probably not survive the surge. He can serve as another fall guy for Bush to blame for a failed policy.
January 12, 2007In Baghdad, Bush Policy Is Met With ResentmentBy JOHN F. BURNS and SABRINA TAVERNISE
BAGHDAD, Jan. 11 — Iraq’s Shiite-led government offered only a grudging endorsement on Thursday of President Bush’s proposal to deploy more than 20,000 additional troops in an effort to curb sectarian violence and regain control of Baghdad. The tepid response immediately raised questions about whether the government would make a good-faith effort to prosecute the new war plan.
The Iraqi leader, Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, failed to appear at a news conference and avoided any public comment. He left the government’s response to an official spokesman, Ali al-Dabbagh, who gave what amounted to a backhanded approval of the troop increase and emphasized that Iraqis, not Americans, would set the future course in the war.
Mr. Dabbagh said that the government’s objective was to secure the eventual withdrawal of American troops, and that for that to be possible there had to be security for Iraqis. “If this can be achieved by increasing either Iraqi or multinational forces,” he added, “the government, for sure, will not stand against it.”
Mr. Dabbagh suggested that much about the Bush plan depended on how circumstances in Iraq would evolve over the coming months — an echo, in its way, of senior Bush administration officials. They have implied that they might halt the month-by-month inflow of additional troops if they think Mr. Maliki is failing to meet the political and military benchmarks Mr. Bush identified as the Iraqi government’s part in making the new war plan work.
“The plan can be developed according to the needs,” Mr. Dabbagh said. Then he added tartly, “What is suitable for our conditions in Iraq is what we decide, not what others decide for us.”
The spokesman’s remarks, and a similarly dyspeptic tone that was adopted by Shiite politicians with close ties to Mr. Maliki, pointed to the double-bind Mr. Bush finds himself in. Faced with low levels of public support for his new military push and a Democratic leadership in Congress that has said it will fight him over it, he also confronts the uncomfortable prospect of foot-dragging in Baghdad over the troop increases and the benchmarks he has set for the Iraqis.
While senior officials in Washington have presented the new war plan as an American adaptation of proposals that were first put to Mr. Bush by Mr. Maliki when the two men met in the Jordanian capital of Amman in November, the picture that is emerging in Baghdad is quite different. What Mr. Maliki wanted, his officials say, was in at least one crucial respect the opposite of what Mr. Bush decided: a lowering of the American profile in the war, not the increase Mr. Bush has ordered.
These Iraqi officials say Mr. Maliki, in the wake of Mr. Bush’s setback in the Democratic sweep in November’s midterm elections, demanded that American troops be pulled back to the periphery of Baghdad and that the war in the capital, at least, be handed to Iraqi troops. The demand was part of a broader impatience among the ruling Shiites to be relieved from American oversight so as to be able to fight and govern according to the dictates of Shiite politics, not according to strictures from Washington.
What transpired, in Mr. Bush’s speech on Wednesday night, appears to have been a hybrid: a plan that aims at marrying the Maliki government’s urgency for a broader license to act with Mr. Bush’s determination to make what American officials here see as a last-chance push for success in Iraq on American terms. And that, as Mr. Bush made clear on Wednesday, implies objectives that will be difficult — many Iraqis say impossible — to square with Mr. Maliki’s goals.
The differences seemed clear on Thursday as Iraqis responded to Mr. Bush’s speech. In the streets of Baghdad, reactions followed, broadly, the familiar pattern in a city that is more and more divided on sectarian lines. Many Shiites said Iraq’s own security forces, which are predominantly Shiite, should be left to do the job of stabilizing the city, while many Sunnis, shocked by the violence of Shiite death squads in recent months, said they would welcome the Americans if they could rein the sectarian killing in.
Mr. Dabbagh, the government spokesman, emphasized the parts of the Bush plan that best suited the Maliki government’s political ambitions. He said the “good thing in this plan is that it determines that responsibility should be transferred from the Americans to the Iraqis.” This was a prime point with Mr. Bush, too, when he said that the role of American troops under the new plan would be to “help the Iraqis” secure neighborhoods in Baghdad, protect the local population and maintain security in areas that American and Iraqi forces have cleared.
Within hours of Mr. Bush’s speech, American commanders were meeting with their Iraqi counterparts in Baghdad to work out the details of a new command arrangement that would give Mr. Maliki a direct role in overseeing the new crackdown. The Iraqis named a commander for the operation, Lt. Gen. Aboud Gambar, a Shiite from southern Iraq who was a top general in Saddam Hussein’s army until the American-led invasion in 2003.
General Gambar will report directly to Mr. Maliki, outside the chain of command that runs through the Defense Ministry, which the Maliki government has long viewed as a bastion of American influence, and, because the defense minister is a Sunni, of resistance to Shiite control. General Gambar will have two deputies, one for the heavily Shiite east part of Baghdad, another for the mostly Sunni west part, and they will oversee nine new military districts, each assigned an Iraqi brigade.
As details of the Bush plan became known on Wednesday, Iraqi officials said that the new arrangements would give Iraqis operational control of the new push in Baghdad. But Mr. Dabbagh and others were quick to pull back on Thursday, acknowledging that Baghdad would remain under American operational control at least until later this year. American officials noted that American officers would be assigned to General Gambar’s headquarters, that an American battalion would be twinned with each Iraqi brigade and that every Iraqi unit, down to the company level, would have American military advisers.
If this fell a long way short of the plan for full Iraqi control in Baghdad that Mr. Maliki set out in November, his officials were at pains to say that the prime minister would decide the issue of most concern to the Iraqi leader: whether, and when, Iraqi and American forces would be allowed to move in force into Sadr City. That Shiite working-class district in northeast Baghdad is the stronghold of the Mahdi Army, the most powerful of the Shiite militias, and the main power base of Moktada al-Sadr, the Mahdi Army leader, whose parliamentary bloc sustains Mr. Maliki in office.
“It’s been agreed that in order to succeed they have to consult,” Mr. Dabbagh said — a bland requirement as he stated it — but some distance from the formula put forward at Washington briefings on the new plan. Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates, at a news conference on Wednesday, said that American and Iraqi troops would be free to go into “all parts of Baghdad, including Sadr City” and that one benchmark in the plan was that there would be no “political interference” with military operations or attempts to protect death squad leaders.
That appeared to be an allusion to the past American experience with Mr. Maliki, who has consistently refused to sanction major offensives in Sadr City. On at least one occasion, he intervened to secure the release of a man captured by American troops and identified by American commanders as a death squad leader with links to Mr. Sadr. Mr. Maliki’s argument has been that the solution to the problem of militias, including Mr. Sadr’s, must be political, not military, but he has simultaneously postponed any action on a new law to disarm and demobilize the militias.
One of Mr. Maliki’s political allies, Sheik Khalid al-Attiya, who is deputy speaker of the Iraqi Parliament, said Thursday that he expected the benchmarks set by Mr. Bush to take 6 to 12 months to be met. With American commanders in Baghdad saying they hope to have the main parts of the city stabilized by late summer — allowing American troops to be pulled back to bases outside the city as Mr. Maliki has demanded — the Americans seem likely to run out of patience with Mr. Maliki long before Mr. Attiya’s timetable plays out.
A Shiite political leader who has worked closely with the Americans in the past said the Bush benchmarks appeared to have been drawn up in the expectation that Mr. Maliki would not meet them. “He cannot deliver the disarming of the militias,” the politician said, asking that he not be named because he did not want to be seen as publicly criticizing the prime minister. “He cannot deliver a good program for the economy and reconstruction. He cannot deliver on services. This is a matter of fact. There is a common understanding on the American side and the Iraqi side.”
Views such as these — increasingly common among the political class in Baghdad — are often accompanied by predictions that Mr. Maliki will be forced out as the crisis over the militias builds. The Shiite politician who described him as incapable of disarming militias suggested he might resign; others have pointed to an American effort in recent weeks to line up a “moderate front” of Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish political leaders outside the government, and said that the front might be a vehicle for mounting a parliamentary coup against Mr. Maliki, with behind-the-scenes American support.
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