Badr Corps avoids crackdown on Militia

As is often the case Juan Cole has an interesting analysis of the recent attack on militias by the U.S. and Maliki. The U.S. often stresses the Iranian connections of the Mahdi army of Sadr but at the same time ignores the closer connections between the Badr Brigades and Iran. The reason is transparent but will never be clear to the U.S. public who read mainstream media. The Badr brigades are connected to the Maliki govt. Iran and Iraq actually have good relations right now. It is the U.S. that is making all the fuss! If anything Sadr is less pro-Iranian than the Badr group. It is just that to hedge its bets Iran tries to foster good relations with Sadr as well.
The U.S. and the Iraqi govt. have in effect violated the terms of Sadr's ceasefire and now it seems they are only selectively acknowledging a second ceasefire brokered by Iran. Operations continue against Sadr City. Even Saddam had trouble controlling Sadr City so how likely is it that Maliki and the U.S. can do so successfully. A likely result is an increase in U.S. casualties perhaps the only possible way that the U.S. can be persuaded to withdraw unless Americans begin to draw a connection between their deteriorating economic situation and war costs.

Likewise, the ISG pointed out that the Badr Corps paramilitary was trained by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and is close to Tehran. (See below). It fought on Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's side in the recent Basra fighting. In other words, the government side was the pro-Iranian side. The Mahdi Army and Sadr neighborhood militia forces they attacked were largely Iraqi nativists who bad-mouth Iran. Fiderer points out that the ISG report had already diagnosed this syndrome. The Bush team did propaganda, pointedly declining to name Badr as an Iranian client and blaming Iran for the Mahdi Army's violence. In fact, the violence came as a response to violations of the cease fire by the US and the Iraqi government, which took advantage of it to arrest Mahdi Army commanders (that's a ceasefire?)

The key role of Iran in backing the Badr Corps (which Ryan Crocker and Gen Petraeus pointedly did not condemn, and Senator Lindsay Graham actually defended!) is demonstrated by the following:




' Al-Sharqiyah, Al-Iraqiyah Roundup: Political Blocs Express Support for Government
Iraq -- OSC Summary
Thursday, April 10, 2008

Dubai Al-Sharqiyah Television in Arabic . . carries between 1400 GMT and 2000 GMT on 10 April the following . . :

-- "The Badr Corps Command took a series of quick measures to protect itself from any possible military campaign against all militias in Iraq. A high-ranking official at the Interior Ministry, who asked to remain anonymous, said that the Badr Corps withdrew its key commanders to Iran in the past few days after it entered a new batch of fighters, around 1500 it total, into the Interior Ministry services. '

Attack on Green Zone kill U.S. soldiers.

This is from AP by Yahoo. Although there is supposed to be an Iranian brokered truce there still seem to be clashes between Shiite militias and the U.S. Iraqi forces and Sadr's militias seem to be keeping apart for now for the most past. Maliki and the U.S. claim to be after criminal gangs and rogue elements of the Mahdi army but certainly earlier operations were designed to disarm the Mahdi army period. There are no reports of clashes with any militias but those of Sadr. The Badr brigades are left untouched. In fact this whole operation for Maliki was an attempt to weaken Sadr before the coming elections in the fall.

By KIM GAMEL, Associated Press Writer
24 minutes ago



BAGHDAD - The U.S. military says rocket or mortar attacks against the U.S.-protected Green Zone and a military base elsewhere in Baghdad have killed three American service members and wounded 31.



A military official says two U.S. troops were killed and 17 wounded when rockets struck the Green Zone in central Baghdad. The official says another American service member died and 14 were wounded in another attack on a military base in the southeastern area of Rustamiyah.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity for lack of authorization to release the information.

The attacks come amid fierce clashes between Shiite militia fighters and U.S.-Iraqi forces.

Iraqi PM orders freeze on raids.

This is from AFP. Maliki has changed his tune within 24 hours, no doubt because otherwise he will be in deep trouble unable to defeat Sadr in Basra and elsewhere. The mantra about giving the militia time to lay down their arms is simply a face-saving device. They will not use them until Sadr says to do so but they are not about to hand them over to the government as Maliki wants. If Maliki wants peace he will have to get used to the fact that Sadr is building up his power base and could do exceedingly well in elections in the fall.


Iraqi PM orders freeze on raids
1 hour ago

BAGHDAD (AFP) — Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki on Friday ordered his forces to stop raids across Iraq to allow time for those wanting to surrender their weapons in the wake of fierce clashes with Shiite fighters.

"To give a chance to those who wish to lay down their arms, all raids and search operations will be stopped in all areas," Maliki said in a statement released by his office.

Reiterating a similar order issued earlier this week, Maliki, however, ordered his forces to "chase those who have returned to arms."

Maliki had on Tuesday ordered his security forces to stop random arrests and raids in Shiite areas after clashes between his forces and Shiite fighters subsided in the southern oil port of Basra, in Baghdad and in other regions.

The clashes erupted after Maliki ordered a crackdown on Shiite militants, mostly from the Mahdi Army of radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.

During the assaults, in which more than 460 people were killed, Maliki gave an April 8 deadline to residents of Basra to hand over heavy and medium weapons in return for cash in a bid to cut the supply of weapons to the militiamen.

The firefights in Basra and other areas died down after Sadr ordered his fighters off the streets but demanded that the government stop random arrests of his followers.

In his latest order, Maliki told the security forces to "guarantee the safety of those who have surrendered their arms from the perpetrators of violence."

He also urged them to help the families displaced during the violence and promised compensation for their losses.

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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