TAKEN ABACK:

Iraq showdown made Sadr stronger, backers say: Militia members melt back into the background after the cleric's order to lay down their weapons (Ned Parker and Raheem Salman, 4/01/08, Los Angeles Times)

The resilience of the Mahdi Army militia appears to have surprised Maliki, who said his offensive was meant to crush lawless elements in Basra. Top Iraqi commanders acknowledged Monday that they had been taken aback.

"The presence of the armed men [in the street] made this operation become bigger than it was," said Maj. Gen. Abdul Aziz Mohammed Jassim, operations commander for Iraq's Defense Ministry.

On the edge of Sadr City, where a vehicle ban was still being enforced, an Iraqi army officer stared at a giant mural of Sadr's father, a grand ayatollah who died under the regime of Saddam Hussein and the man for whom the Baghdad district is named. "We need 100 years to be a strong military," the officer said.

As an explosion sounded in the distance, the Iraqi officer said the Mahdi Army had better weapons than the government soldiers did, including rocket-propelled grenades and newer machine guns. He acknowledged that some policemen from Sadr City were active members of the militia and that others had offered their tacit support. As a result, the Iraqi army had to rely on the U.S. military to push back the militia in the district of 2.5 million people, the officer said as a U.S. Bradley fighting vehicle swiveled its cannon at shoppers passing by the entrance to the neighborhood.

Inside Sadr City, a policeman navigated the roads, which had been booby-trapped with bombs in case the Americans tried to enter. He said the militia planted the explosives at night and detonated them by remote control. But he wasn't worried.

He pointed to an area where he said a U.S. armored vehicle had burned, sending flames into a police station and market. "When they see a police car coming, they don't detonate the explosive because they don't see police as targets," the officer said.

Poor Maliki started to believe the rhetoric, not the reality.

MORE:
Who Is Iraq's "Firebrand Cleric"?: From Baghdad, veteran Middle East correspondent Patrick Cockburn explains why Muqtada al-Sadr is no maverick. (Justin Elliott, March 31 , 2008, Mother Jones)

MJ: Another thing you see is journalists frequently describing him as a "radical cleric." Is there anything radical about al-Sadr?

PC: Well, it's slightly more accurate. He's radical in the sense that he wants the U.S. occupation to end and has always said so from the beginning. Secondly, his support among the Shia really runs along class lines; it's mainly the poor who support him. His organization runs an enormous social network. Despite the fact that there's billions of dollars sitting in the Iraqi government reserves, somehow they are incapable of getting it out to the people. There are a very large number of people here who are on the edge of starvation. For those sort of people—a sizable chunk of people—that service makes them regard Muqtada as a sort of god.

Another thing is that he's always been able to call on a core of young men. Young Shia who have been brought up with nothing, who are pretty anarchic, pretty dangerous. My book begins with a run-in I had with them in 2004 when they came close to killing me, and of course they have killed very large numbers of other Iraqis. That's a major source of strength for Muqtada.

MJ: You write that from the U.S. perspective, Muqtada looks too much like a younger version of Ayatollah Khomeini. Is there anything to that?

PC: There's an element of truth to it. But from the moment George Bush decided to overthrow Saddam, the people who were going to benefit here were the Shia, who are 60 percent of the population. So if you were ever going to have an election, then the Shia would take over. An awful lot of the American problems in Iraq over the last five years come from the U.S. thinking that in some way it can devise a formula here that Saddam would be gone and the Shia religious parties—guys who look a bit like Khomeini, not just Muqtada, but all the other clergy—wouldn't take over. The U.S. never found it. I don't think it's there.

Why al-Maliki attacked Basra: The three reasons the Iraqi prime minister launched his ill-fated assault on the Sadrists of southern Iraq. (Juan Cole, 4/01/08, Salon)

By the time the cease-fire was called, al-Maliki had been bloodied after days of ineffective fighting and welcomed a way back from the precipice. Both Iran, which brokered the agreement, and al-Sadr, whose forces acquitted themselves well against the government, were strengthened. As of press time Tuesday morning in Iraq, the truce was holding in Basra, and a curfew had been lifted in Baghdad, though sporadic fighting continued in the capital. Estimates of casualties for the week were 350.

The campaign was a predictable fiasco, another in a long line of strategic failures for the sickly and divided Iraqi government, which survives largely because it is propped up by the United States. So why did al-Maliki do it? With no obvious immediate crisis in Basra that called for such desperate measures, what could have motivated the decision to attack?

Three main motivations present themselves: control of petroleum smuggling, staying in power (including keeping U.S. troops around to ensure it), and the achievement of a Shiite super-province in the south. A southern super-province would spell a soft partition of the country, benefiting Shiites in the long term while cutting Sunnis out of substantial oil revenues, both licit and illicit. But all of the motivations have to do with something President Bush established as a benchmark in January 2007: upcoming provincial elections.

The Sadr Movement leaders themselves are convinced that the recent setting of a date for provincial elections, on Oct. 1, 2008, and al-Maliki's desire to improve the government's position in advance of the elections, precipitated the prime minister's attack.

Posted by Orrin Judd at April 1, 2008 6:25 AM