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Iraq
HRW urges Iraqi PM to exclude 'abusive' militias from Mosul operation
2016-10-10
[RUDAW.NET] Human Rights Watch
... During the fiscal year ended June 30, 2011, HRW received a pledge from the Foundation to Promote Open Society, of which George Soros is Chairman, for general support totaling $100,000,000. The grant is being paid in installments of $10,000,000 over ten years.Through June 30, 2013, HRW had received $30,000,000 towards the fulfillment of the pledge....
 (HRW) sent a letter to Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi on Thursday urging him to prevent any gangs responsible for human rights
...which are often intentionally defined so widely as to be meaningless...
 violations to participate in the upcoming battle to retake djinn-infested Mosul
... the home of a particularly ferocious and hairy djinn...
 from Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems....
 (ISIS) myrmidons.

The letter strongly opposed the inclusion of several Popular Mobilization Forces (PMFs or Hashd al-Shaabi) Shiite militias in the Mosul operation. Previous abuses carried out by the Hashd al-Shaabi against Sunni Arab civilians in the recapture of Fallujah from ISIS in June were documented by HRW -- abuses which included torture, summary executions and the disappearance of civilians, including children, and the mutilation of corpses.

These abuses, and the recruitment of child soldiers by groups in Hashd, led HRW to urge Abadi to "prevent armed forces under his command or control who have been implicated in laws of war violations, including the Badr Brigades, the Hezbollah Brigades (Kata'ib Hezbollah), and other groups with the Population Mobilization Forces, from participating in planned operations to retake Mosul."

HRW also pointed out that an estimated 1.2 million civilians are estimated to be in Mosul ahead of this upcoming operation.

"Civilians in Mosul have suffered under ISIS rule for more than two years and will need support if the city is retaken, but risk reprisals instead," said the deputy director of the Middle East and North Africa, Lama Fakih in an HRW statement. "The last thing the authorities should allow is for abusive forces to carry out Dire Revenge attacks in an atmosphere of impunity."
Link


Iraq
A wave of murder and looting erupts in Tikrit
2015-04-05
Arabs being victorious...
On April 1, the city of Tikrit was liberated from the Lion of Islam group Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems....
. The Shi'ite-led central government and allied militias, after a month-long battle, had expelled the barbarous Sunni radicals. Then, some of the liberators took Dire Revenge.
An Arab tradition, demanded to maintain Honor and Dignity™.
Near the charred, bullet-scarred government headquarters, two federal coppers flanked a suspected Islamic State fighter. Urged on by a furious mob, the two officers took out knives and repeatedly stabbed the man in the neck and slit his throat. The killing was witnessed by two Rooters correspondents.
Somehow my sympathy meter remains on zero for Islamic State turbans.
The incident is now under investigation, interior ministry front man Brigadier General Saad Maan told Rooters.
I really fail to get riled up at the thought. If you're fighting somebody who doesn't merely ignore, but consciously flouts rules of war dating back five hundred years or so then they're not due any mercy, are they?
Since its recapture two days ago, the Sunni city of Tikrit has been the scene of violence and looting.
When the IS took the city didn't they kill everybody who disagreed with them and steal their property?
In addition to the killing of the Lion of Islam combatant, Rooters correspondents also saw a convoy of Shi'ite paramilitary fighters -- the government's partners in liberating the city -- drag a corpse through the streets behind their car.
The sort of thing real soldiers expect from undisciplined militias.
Local officials said the mayhem continues. Two security officers, speaking on condition of anonymity
... for fear of being murdered...
, said on Friday that dozens of homes had been torched in the city. They added that they had witnessed the looting of stores by Shi'ite militiamen.
Sounds like a job for the Bloody Provost.
Later Friday, Ahmed al-Kraim, head of the Salahuddin Provincial Council, told Rooters that mobs had burned down "hundreds of houses" and looted shops over the past two days. Government security forces, he said, were afraid to confront the mobs. Kraim said he left the city late Friday afternoon because the situation was spinning out of control. "Our city was burnt in front of our eyes. We can't control what is going on," Kraim said.
In a city that welcomed the enemy with open arms, where partisans killed those who opposed the enemy even in theory, there's really no surprise. Probably things would have gone better had the inhabitants turned on the turbans and strung them up from the lamp posts. A "Welcome Government Troops" banner across Main Street would have helped, but there wasn't one. Now the inhabitants have to cope with the Deep Blue Sea.
Those reports could not be immediately confirmed.
... but they're probably accurate.
It wasn't supposed to be this way.
Was that a voice from Cloud Cuckooland?
Islamic State, an Al Qaeda offshoot that arose from the chaos in Iraq and Syria, slaughtered thousands and seized much of northern and central Iraq last year.
I said that.
The government offensive was meant not only to dislodge the group but also to transcend the fundamental divide in fractured Iraq: the enmity between the now-ruling Shi'ite majority and the country's formerly dominant Sunni minority.
Nice in theory, unlikely in practice. Had the city surrendered, maybe. Instead it had to be taken by storm.
Officials close to Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi, a moderate Shi'ite, had described the Tikrit campaign as a chance to demonstrate his government's independence from one source of its power: Iraqi Shi'ite militias backed by Shi'ite Iran and advised by Iranian military officers. Sunnis deeply mistrust and fear these paramilitaries, accusing them of summary executions and vandalism. But Abadi has had to rely on the Shi'ite militias on the battlefield, as Iraq's regular military deserted en masse last summer in the Islamic State onslaught.
A lot more ferocious on the parade ground than on the battlefield, are they? Had Maliki not stiffed the Sawha maybe things would have gone a little better. But we obviously wasted a lot of time training the Iraqi army.
The militia groups spearheaded the start of the Tikrit assault in early March.
An armored shock brigade would have worked better, but that would have required disciplined troops led by competent officers, which ain't really an Arab thing.
But after two weeks of fighting, Abadi enforced a pause. Asserting his power over the Shi'ite militias, he called in U.S. Arclight airstrikes.
I saw an article yesterday where the militias were dismissing the effectiveness of the airstrikes. One guy said he'd seen U.S. aircraft dropping supplies to the IS positions.
Now, the looting and violence in Tikrit threaten to tarnish Abadi's victory. It risks signaling to Sunni Iraqis that the central government is weak and not trustworthy enough to recapture other territory held by Islamic State, including the much larger city of djinn-infested Mosul
... the home of a particularly ferocious and hairy djinn...
. Tikrit, hometown of the late dictator Saddam Hussein, is in the Sunni heartland of Iraq.
Too bad they had to rely on a militia, which in this case is basically an armed mob. Had the govt left it to the Peshmerga it probably would have gone better, but that's politix, not strategy.
At stake is much more than future votes: Islamic State's rapid conquests in 2014 were made possible by support from Sunni tribal forces and ordinary citizens. They were convinced that the government -- under Abadi's predecessor, Nuri al-Maliki -- viewed their community as terrorists. If Sunnis dislike what they see in Tikrit, they may not back the government's efforts against Islamic State.
Abadi's approach should be reconciliation now. The Sunnis have the example of what being conquered by militias will get them. If they string up the turbans and let the govt in all that happens is a change in city hall.

DEFENDING LIVES AND PROPERTY
On Friday, the government sought to assure all sides that it will enforce order. Abadi issued a statement calling on the security forces to arrest anyone breaking the law.
Good idea. The Bloody Provost?
Asked to comment on the scenes witnessed by Rooters, his front man Rafid Jaboori said he would not address individual incidents but said: "People's lives and property are priorities, whether in this operation or in the overall military effort to liberate the rest of Iraq."
If there's reconciliation it has to be on the basis of nationality, not religion.
Sunni politicians who visited Tikrit complained that events have spun out of control since the security forces and militias retook the city.
We've already discussed that.
Parliamentarian Mutashar al-Samarrai credited the government with orchestrating a smooth entrance into Tikrit. But he said that some Shi'ite paramilitary factions had exploited the situation. "I believe this happened on purpose to disrupt the government's achievement in Tikrit," Samarrai said. "This is a struggle between the (paramilitaries) and the government for control."
They creating a new problem while solving the immediate (bigger) problem. Since the immediate problem's existential and the Mooksters and the Badr Brigades aren't quite, they have to go with what they have. That doesn't mean the militias have to be given free rein.
Neighborhoods entered by the Iraqi forces and Shi'ite paramilitaries have been burnt, including parts of neighboring Dour and Auja, the birthplace of Saddam Hussein.
The heart (urp!) bleeds.
Security forces blame Islamic State for rigging houses with explosives, while Sunnis suspect the Shi'ite militias and the army and police of deliberately torching their homes.
Probably both statements are true. Certainly the IS left enough booby traps behind in Kobane. The places being deliberately burnt might be according to who's inhabiting them and how they conducted themselves while under occupation.
Looting has also been a problem. Shi'ite paramilitary fighters in pickup trucks raced through the city carrying goods that appeared to have been looted from homes and government offices. The vehicles were crammed with refrigerators, air conditioners, computer printers, and furniture. A young militia fighter rode on a red bicycle, gleefully shouting: "I always dreamed of having a bike like this as a kid."
Discipline. Gallows. Pour encourager les autres.
Brigadier General Maan, the main front man for the government forces, said police were stopping vehicles that appeared to have stolen items. "We are doing our best to impose the law."

IRAN'S FINGERPRINTS
Passions were running high among the Shi'ite militia groups before the assault. Islamic State beheaded people and carried out other atrocities in the lands it conquered. In particular, the militias wanted Dire Revenge for Islamic State's killing in June of hundreds of Iraqi soldiers captured from Camp Speicher, a base near Tikrit. It was an event that came to symbolize the Sunni jihadists' barbarism.
That's kinda the situation, isn't it? The enemy's barbarism justifies counter-barbarism. Hundreds of murdered comrades leads to probably only a few dozen slaughtered murderers since the actual butchers are probably congratulating each other on their escape to slice again another day.
Despite Baghdad's efforts to rein in the paramilitaries, the fingerprints of the Shi'ite militias -- and of Iran itself -- were all over the operation's final hours.
They were before the final offensive,
On Wednesday, as Tikrit fell, holy warriors were racing to stencil their names on houses in order to take credit for the victory.
Meanwhile the guys who's done the actual fighting were probably looking for a hot meal, some sleep, and a hooker if they were lucky.
An Iranian fighter, with a Kalashnikov rifle slung over his shoulder and a picture of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei pinned to his chest, bragging about Tehran's role in the campaign: "I am proud to participate in the battle to liberate Tikrit," said the man, who called himself Sheik Dawood. "Iran and Iraq are one state now."
That's the idea in Terrorhan. But that'll be the next fight after this one.
On the edge of Tikrit in the hours after the city's fall, a Shi'ite paramilitary group drove in a convoy past several police cars. The holy warriors had strung the corpse of a suspected Islamic State fighter from the back of a white Toyota pickup truck. The cable dragging the man snapped, and the vehicle stopped. The men got out to retie the bullet-riddled corpse. As they fastened the cable tighter to the body, a song about their victory over Islamic State played on the truck's stereo. Then they sped off, the corpse kicking up a cloud of dust.
Eventually they just kinda wear down on the asphalt and you're left with nothing but a pair of feet.
The coppers standing nearby did nothing.
... assuming there was anything to do.
On Wednesday afternoon, Rooters saw two suspected Islamic State detainees -- identified as an Egyptian and a Sudanese national -- in a room in a government building. The Egyptian and the Sudanese were then taken outside by police intelligence. Word spread that the two suspected Islamic State prisoners were being escorted out. Federal coppers, who had lost an officer named Colonel Imad the previous day in a bombing, flocked around the detainees.
"Question One: Why aren't you guyz in Sudan and Egypt, respectively?"
The interior ministry front man, Brigadier Maan, said the Egyptian had stabbed an Iraqi police officer, which explains the anger against him. Rooters couldn't verify that claim. The two prisoners were put in the back of a pickup truck. As the vehicle tried to leave, the crowd blocked it.
"We're waiting for answers, turban boyz!"
The federal coppers started shouting to the intelligence officers: Hand over the men. The intelligence officers tried to shield the prisoners. One pulled a sidearm as the federal police began swinging their fists. The mob was screaming: "We want to avenge our Lieutenant Colonel."
"Well, y'see... These things happen..."
Shi'ite paramilitary men swarmed the area. The street filled with more than 20 federal police. Gunfire erupted. Bullets ricocheted. At least one of the Shi'ite fighters was maimed, and began bleeding from the leg.
"We come fer yer prisoners, Sharif!"
"Back off, boyz! Nobody takes our prisoners!"
The pickup truck tried to back up. People in the mob grabbed one of the prisoners from the truck, the Egyptian, and pulled him out.
"Nobody takes our remaining prisoner!"
The Egyptian sat silently at the feet of two big coppers in their twenties. His eyes filled with fear. He was surrounded by a few dozen people, a mix of federal police and Shi'ite militiamen.
"That's how it feels, al-Misery!"
"He is Daesh, and we should take Dire Revenge for Colonel Imad," the two federal coppers yelled, using a derogatory Arabic term for Islamic State.
It's not "derogatory." It's an abbreviation. There's a difference between "hated" and "derogatory." Usually.
One of the coppers held a black-handled knife with a four-to-five-inch blade. The other gripped a folding knife, with a three-inch blade and a brown handle. They waved their knives in the air, to cheers from the crowd, and chanted: "We will slaughter him. We will take Dire Revenge for Colonel Imad. We will slaughter him."
"Orf wif 'is 'ead!"
The coppers laid the Egyptian's head over the curb. Then one of the police pushed the other out of the way and he swung his whole body down, landing the knife into the Egyptian's neck. The cop lifted the knife and thrust the blade in the Egyptian's neck a second time. Blood gushed out, staining the boots of the cheering onlookers.
Life's tough. It ain't all ridin' through the streets and grinning with your black flag flying.
The killer started to saw through the neck, but it was slow-going. He lifted the blade again and slammed it into the Egyptian's neck another four times. Then he sawed back and forth.

"BRING ME A CABLE"
Their fellow coppers chanted: "We took Dire Revenge for Colonel Imad."
By chopping the head off one guy?
The killer lifted himself up the street pole next to the dying man so he could address his comrades: "Colonel Imad was a brave man. Colonel Imad didn't deserve to die at the hands of dirty Daesh. This is a message to Colonel Imad's family don't be sad, raise your heads."
"He's still dead as a rock, but now so's a piece of Egyptian scum!"
Then he shouted: "Let's tie the body to the pole so everyone can see. Bring a cable. Bring a cable."
"Fly the body like a flag!"
His friend with the folding knife kept trying to stab the Egyptian, with no success. He cried out: "I need a sharp knife. I want to behead this dirty Daesh." Finally the men found a cable, fastened it to the dead man's feet and dangled him from the pole.
And this is the cops we're discussing. Imagine how well-behaved everybody else is.
One policeman grew upset at the spectacle and shouted: "There are dozens of media here. This is not the suitable time. Why do you want to embarrass us?"
It's only embarrassing if it's done in public. Right.
The mob ignored him and continued trying to hoist the body. White bone stuck out from his slashed neck, his head flopped from side to side, and the blood continued to gush forth.
Link


Iraq
Iraq Hunts Al-Qaeda in Its Last Urban Stronghold
2008-05-20

Operations are now underway in Mosul to rid the city of al-Qaeda. The streets are calm, indicating that the terrorists realize they are too weak to fight.

May 19, 2008 - by Mohammed Fadhil

Although we haven’t written anything about the operation in Mosul which started a week ago, I’ve been closely following its developments. The reason why I waited is that we had often heard about a new operation, which would then turn out to be just a rumor. Anyway, the operation this time has actually started, and the arrival of Maliki and his defense and interior ministers in the city leaves no room for doubt about the seriousness of the government in seeing to the plan’s success.

The interesting thing about the operation is that it’s been suspiciously quiet, to the extent that one wonders if there’s actually any operation going on. In fact, Mosul has seen the calmest eight days of the last five years.

The operation won broad approval and support even before it started, which -especially among Sunni blocs- is another positive product of the Basra operations. As we can see, the usual sectarian rhetoric about biased targeting of Sunni regions without Shia ones has been absent this time. In addition to the parliamentary approval, the operation won public support represented by the tribes’ willingness to take part in the operation. The chief of the awakening councils in the province, Fawaz Jerba, said that there were ten thousand men ready to take part in the operation.

However, the government preferred not to get them involved right now and is moving forward to form seven battalions of police from the residents of the province. These battalions are likely to have an important role in maintaining security and order after the operation ends. Two of these units will be assigned to Tal Afar: one will guard the bridges in the city, another will operate fixed checkpoints on the main highways leading to the city. The rest will be added to the existing security forces in Mosul. All are to be led by former army officers.

Initial results of the operation included the capture of 1,100 suspects and wanted individuals, according to the spokesman of the defense ministry, Mohammed Askari. Most of those are officers in the former army and members of the military bureau of the Ba’ath Party, along with a bunch of al-Qaeda emirs; yet to be named, three of them are described as being among the most dangerous in Mosul.

What’s special about the name of the operation - “the Mother of Two Springs” - is that it’s the adorable second name of the city which it gained from the relatively nice climate it enjoys. It’s a smart replacement for “Lion’s Roar,” which some found to be needlessly scary, especially since we need a real lion more than we need the roar!

What’s unique about this city is its prestigious military history. The Iraqi army had long relied on Maslawis to build its officer corps, which is a source of pride for the city. In the beginning there were rumors in the Sunni community that stemmed from the fear that the operation might turn into an organized act of cleansing against those officers or a twisted implementation of the de-Ba’athification law. However, the defense and interior ministries strongly rejected that allegation and announced that 80 of those detained were released after they were not found guilty of crimes. The Ministry asserted that arrests were based on accurate intelligence. Actually, some in the government are boasting that this is the first operation in which most arrests have been made according to legitimate warrants.

In my opinion, the suspicions of both sides are understandable due to many years of distrust between Mosul and the government. On the one hand, the targeting of former officers and Ba’ath Party members is based on the fact that they made up the bulk of al-Qaeda hosts and supporters in many places in Iraq. On the other hand, there are former officers who don’t have blood on their hands but are terrified by the countless stories of Shia militias –particularly the Badr Brigades– undertaking acts of revenge against officers who fought against Iran in the 1980s.

As in Basra, the government gave an ultimatum for militants to hand in their weapons and offered amnesty to those not involved in crimes involving murder in order to make the operation as bloodless as possible. And indeed reports indicate that scores of militants have already handed in their weapons - an encouraging sign in a turbulent city that hardly ever trusted the government.

Among the results of the operation was the discovery of many weapons caches, which included several thousands of pounds of explosives and hundreds of rockets and artillery/mortar rounds. The amount may sound small given what’s expected to be found in a city that is the last urban stronghold of al-Qaeda, but it’s still an encouraging start since the operation began only a week ago.

Another important thing that distinguishes this operation from previous ones is the active participation of the infant Iraqi air force through transportation and daily reconnaissance sorties. Iraqi officers say that this is the first time they are able to rely on the Iraqi air force for valuable live imagery of the spread-out city.

Some of the critics of the operation noted that announcing the operation before its launch gave al-Qaeda a chance to leave the city for other places, including neighboring countries, thus enabling them to dodge the strike which might waste the chance to crush them in their last remaining stronghold. I personally disagree with this argument. What matters, after all, is to clean the city of al-Qaeda, preferably without fighting. This illustrates a very important trend that we first saw in the Baghdad operations last year; that al-Qaeda now knows that it cannot afford to confront the security forces anymore. Now, instead of digging in and fighting “glorious battles” in Fallujah or elsewhere, al-Qaeda is more inclined to run away than fight. This is a true sign of al-Qaeda’s weakening and of their ultimate defeat.

Last but not least, I was surprised to see the leading opposition newspaper Azzaman, which had always been skeptical of everything the government does, praise the operation. To see a headline on Azzaman that says “Al-Qaeda Is Limping, Its Leaders Flee Mosul” means a lot to anyone familiar with Iraqi affairs.

Mohammed Fadhil is PJM Baghdad editor. His own blog is Iraq the Model.
Link


Iraq
British accused of appeasing Shia militia in Basra
2008-04-12
In Basra the signs of the feared militia are slowly receding. For the first time in years alcohol vendors are selling beer close to army checkpoints, and ringtones praising the rebel cleric Hojatoleslam Moqtada al-Sadr are vanishing from mobile phones. Music shops are once again selling pop tunes instead of the recorded lectures of Shia ayatollahs.

But, as the city cautiously comes back to life after an offensive by Iraqi troops backed by hundreds of US soldiers, there is a lingering resentment towards the British Army.

Many here blame the British for allowing the al-Mahdi Army and other militias to impose a long reign of terror on the once cosmopolitan city.

The battle for Basra is still not over. An American airstrike yesterday killed another six men who had been attacking Iraqi troops from the militia's hold-out areas, which the Army has so far been unable to penetrate.

Support is, though, slowly building for Nouri al-Maliki, the Iraqi Prime Minister, who led his troops into Basra having given his US allies barely more than a weekend's notice of the impending attack. The British were informed only a day before, prompting Lieutenant-General Peter Wall, the deputy chief of staff, to describe the whole operation as “hastily planned”.

“After the Iraqi Army set up checkpoints and the militia disappeared from the streets, I decided to start selling alcohol,” Luay Hanna, a 46-year-old liquor store owner, said. His shop was burnt down by fundamentalist militiamen three years ago, and many of his colleagues were butchered.

“Many of the alcohol sellers reopened their shops. We always sell near the Iraqi army checkpoints to be safe - not like before when the militia killed and kidnapped people right in front of the police's eyes.”

Qaldoon Nuri, who runs a CD shop, was forced to stop selling pop songs for fear of the zealous gunmen four years ago. One of his friends was murdered for refusing to heed the ban. He was forced to sell religious songs, many of them praising al-Sadr, as well as lectures on tenets of the Shia faith.

“The militia forced us to follow a fanatic Islamic code. They forced us to put up pictures of the imams,” he said. “Now after the militias have been defeated by government forces, we started to put some songs on CD and are looking for what's new in the arts - what people actually like.”

One of his neighbours, Saleh Muhammad, has been badgered in his phone shop by customers demanding new pop ringtones and pictures of female singers to download. “I think it's freedom from the fear,” he said.

The British have been unable to bask in even the partial success of the battle. Having abruptly decided to take on the militias after years of appeasing them, Mr al-Maliki's first venture on to the battlefield was plagued by desertions from his security forces and stronger than expected resistance. Outfought, he called on US forces for support rather than the 4,100 British troops who have barely left their base at Basra airfield.

When the British commanding officer visited the Prime Minister's field headquarters during the fight he was left waiting outside by the Iraqi leader. The humiliating snub was believed to be payback for an alleged deal with the militias by British forces, who released several of their jailed leaders and agreed not to attack them if the British base was not hit.

“I think the British troops were the main reason that militias became very powerful,” complained Inas Abed Ali, a teacher. “They didn't fight them properly and, when they found themselves losing in the city, they moved out to the airport and chose to negotiate with the militias and criminal groups as if they were legal.”

“The British Army had no role in Basra,” Rahman Hadi, a coffee shop owner, said. “We haven't seen any achievements by them in the streets of Basra. I don't know why their troops didn't respond to the acts of these militias for long years, after seeing all the suffering that Basra people went through.”

Even senior Iraqi officers admitted that the hands-off British approach to policing the city had given the militias free rein. Brigadier Alaa al-Ittabi, from the infantry command of the Iraqi Ministry of Defence, said that the British Army “was sometimes negatively lenient, like the way they dealt with the militias”. Mr Hadi was placing his hopes on the new Iraqi forces. “The presence of these foreign troops adds nothing to the situation, and even the Iraqi troops trained by the British Army proved to be infiltrated by the militias and to be corrupt.”

General David Petraeus, the US commander here, said that the Iraqi Army's initial performance in Basra had been disappointing and gave warning that the battle could last months. Brigadier al-Ittabi attributed the mass desertions at the outset to the deployment of local forces who were unwilling to fight their neighbours and whose families were vulnerable to militia threats.

Sources in Basra said that the Iraqi troops started to gain traction only after Mr al-Maliki drafted in two extra brigades, one from the Sunni city of Ramadi and the other from Karbala, where the al-Mahdi Army's rival militia, the Badr Brigades - loyal to the main Shia party in Mr al-Maliki's Government - holds sway.

Some observers have described the battle in Basra, which has also sparked fighting in the al-Mahdi Army's main stronghold of Sadr City in Baghdad, as a power struggle between the anti-US Sadrists, with strong grassroots support among poor Shia, and the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, which runs the Badr militia and has long co-operated with the US military.

That theory was lent weight yesterday when unidentified gunmen shot down Hojatoleslam al-Sadr's brother- in-law, who ran his office in the Shia holy city of Najaf, where the Badr forces are strong.
Link


Iraq
British warplanes fire on Basra
2008-03-29
British bombers strafed Iraq’s second city yesterday as an embryonic Shia civil war raised the prospect of British troops being drawn back on to the front line of the Iraq conflict. RAF Tornado GR4 bombers flew low over the city and fired warning shots at positions around Basra but the Iraqi Army had not yet asked for British troops to join the battle against Shia militia, which has left at least 120 dead since Tuesday.

The heavily armed 1 Scots Guards battle group, equipped with Challenger 2 tanks and Warrior armoured vehicles, was on alert and ready to leave its fortified airbase outside Basra as fighting spread to a string of cities across southern Iraq. The remaining 4,000 troops sat and watched from Basra airport as the Iraqi Army it helped to create struggled to defeat militias the British allowed to flourish in the city.

The intense fighting means that Des Browne, the Defence Secretary, is likely to tell the Commons next week that British troop levels will remain at about 4,100 for the next few months, abandoning plans to reduce numbers to 2,500 from the spring.

The British handed control of Basra to Iraqi forces six months ago and are reluctant to wade in again now, despite their superior firepower. Coalition forces are, though, being drawn into the new fighting that has flared up across the Shia south. US war-planes from bases to the north dropped bombs on Mahdi Army militiamen in Basra yesterday. The Mahdi militiamen are holding government troops at bay, and parading US-supplied armoured vehicles they had captured in front of television cameras.

Coalition officials claim that they were not informed of the impending Iraqi attack on rogue militias until the very last minute, stressing that it was an “Iraqi-planned, Iraqi-led and Iraqi-executed operation”. There were increasing signs this week that the operation may have been premature, with Iraqi security forces shaken by reports of militia-affiliated police firing on government soldiers, and of desertions from the ranks of the military.

Having sworn to fight until the militias are crushed, Nouri al-Maliki, the Iraqi Prime Minister, appeared to be softening his stance, offering cash to fighters who turn in their weapons and extending a three-day deadline to surrender by another ten days.

The Iraqi soldiers, popularly known as “jundis” among their US and British trainers and mentors, are facing well-organised guerrillas from the Mahdi Army, which has existed as a fighting force for longer than the new Iraqi Army. Residents of Basra said that the guerrillas, far from preparing to surrender, were building defensive bunkers and barricades.

“We are still fighting,” said a Mahdi Army spokesman in Sadr City. “Nobody handed in their weapons, we will never do that for cash.” Militiamen fired a steady stream of rockets and mortars from their stronghold across the city into the fortified Green Zone, where the Iraqi parliament and US and British embassies are located.

US forces were in action in Baghdad, firing helicopter rockets at militants who have started fighting across Shia areas of the capital, in particular Sadr City and the shrine district of Qaddumiya. Sadr City militiamen said that they had disabled an armoured vehicle with a roadside bomb, and that a US airstrike later destroyed by rocket fire to prevent its armoury falling into Mahdi hands.

The threat of US and British forces being dragged more deeply into what is increasingly looking like a Shia civil war in the south increased as clashes broke out in Nasariyah – close to the coalition’s main supply route from Kuwait to Baghdad – and also in Diwaniya, Kut and the shrine city of Kerbala.

Mr al-Maliki, a previously cautious leader who has struggled to negotiate a path between the powerful Shia blocs that rule Iraq, was praised by President Bush for boldly taking on outlaw militias that have in the past caused mayhem with their antiSunni death squads, internal power struggles, oil smuggling and links to Iran.

The man widely regarded as the intellectual author of Mr Bush’s surge strategy in Iraq, Fred Kagan, blamed Britain’s “short-term approach” in Basra for the upsurge in violence. He told The Times that the UK Government had ordered the withdrawal of forces to the airport without leaving “behind a stable security situation”.

Supporters of Hojestoleslam Moqtada al-Sadr, the radical cleric who formed the Mahdi Army in 2003, after the US-British invasion, have framed the spreading battle as a power struggle between the Sadr bloc and the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, which has its own militia, the Badr Brigades, which are also a serious presence inside Iraq’s security forces. In the complex swirl of Iraqi power politics, both sides have links to the Iranian regime.

British forces in Iraq

— There are 4,100 British troops in Iraq and a further 500 in Kuwait.

— Ground forces include 1st Battalion Scots Guards, equipped with Challenger 2 tanks and Warrior armoured vehicles, 1st Battalion the Duke of Lancaster's Regiment and 1st Battalion The Mercian Regiment (Cheshire)

— There are also 18 air units, including one Lynx helicopter squadron and one Merlin helicopter squadron. Nimrod aircaft are attached to 120 and 201 Squadrons, and elements of 24 Squadron, 30 Squadron and 70 Squadron all fly Hercules transport aircraft

— Royal Navy forces include two Type 22 frigates, one survey vessel, one support tanker, two mine-hunters, one landing ship, operating in the Gulf

— British casualties in Iraq: 176 dead, of whom 136 died in action. 214 wounded “very seriously” or “seriously".
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Iraq
Time for Maliki to Talk the Talk and Walk the Walk in Basra
2008-03-26
The massive operation by the Iraqi army in Basra could be a defining battle against Shi'ite militias. Reports from the southern city — the hub of Iraq's oil industry and gateway to its main ports — say fierce fighting has broken out between government forces and militias. Eyewitnesses have told TIME of several smoke plumes rising out of the city's northern districts, and the sound of explosions and gunfire. Iraqi TV channels have shown images of helicopters flying over the city, and troops sweeping through some streets. At least 22 people were killed, and 58 wounded, in the fighting.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki arrived in Basra on Monday, accompanied by his ministers for defense and the interior, to personally supervise the operation. For Maliki, this is a crucial show of force. For much of the past three years, the Iraqi government has had little influence over Basra. As British troops have steadily withdrawn from the city, it has fallen into the control of three major Shi'ite militias — Moqtada al'Sadr's Mahdi Army, the Iran-backed Badr Brigades and a local group associated with the Fadila Party. The three have recently fought turf battles over large swaths of the city, claiming hundreds of lives.

Although there are over 4,000 British troops at a base outside Basra, they have done little to curb the violence. "We have a capacity to provide air and other specialist support if needed, but at this time British involvement is minimal," a British Ministry of Defense spokesman said, declining to be identified in accordance with department policy. Many Iraqis blame Basra's descent into chaos on flawed British strategy. They contend that in their haste to draw down forces, the British did little to train and bolster the local police force. Instead, many militia fighters were recruited into the police, making the force a part of Basra's problems rather than a solution.

Maliki's government has repeatedly sworn to bring the militias to heel, but this is the first major offensive it has mounted in Basra. Early reports suggest the military drive is targeting the Mahdi Army, which controls much of northern Basra. But Iraqi officials have said Tuesday the operation will continue until all militias have surrendered.

Maliki's government and the Iraqi Army desperately need a big military success. Most of the credit for the reduction in violence across Iraq over the past year has gone to the U.S. military's "surge" strategy, and to the Sunni tribes that switched sides to fight al-Qaeda. The Iraqi security forces have appeared, at best, mere spectators; at worst, they are seen as sectarian militias in uniform. A spectacular win in Basra would help give the army and police some much-needed credibility among ordinary Iraqis.

Failure to impose Baghdad's writ on Basra would have major economic repercussions — already, the oil pipelines are frequently bombed and large quantities of crude smuggled out. But there's more at stake: While he directs the fighting in Basra, Maliki must also prepare himself for a political backlash in Baghdad. Two of the militias have close ties to the government: Sadr controls a large block of the members of parliament, and the Badr Brigades are the military arm of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, the largest Shi'ite party. If both political blocks withdraw their support for Maliki, that would doom his government.

The Iraqi capital, meanwhile, is bracing for a fallout from the fighting in Basra. Large parts of western Baghdad have been shut down by a strike called by Sadrists. Anticipating violence from the Mahdi Army, the Iraqi Army has increased patrolling in the city and reinforced police checkpoints.

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Iraq
Declare victory and get out
2007-11-29
By MARTIN SCHRAM
Scripps Howard News Service
The Democratic presidential pack is desperate. Five senators, a governor and a representative are seeking one surefire way to capture hearts, minds and votes whenever they are asked what should be done about Iraq now that post-surge statistics show violence there has at least temporarily declined.
First instance of the blinders: Violence has declined, but because it's happened on Bush's watch it must be a temporary thing. It's entirely possible that we're currently in the lull between storms, but it's just as possible we're over the hump, which would call for a different assessment. The Iraqi army at the time of the First Gulf War was good mainly for oppressing the populace, but it was very good at that. The new Iraqi army hasn't been used to oppress the populace, being reserved instead for use against actual military (quasimilitary, at least) enemies. They are getting better at that as time goes on, with the combination of training, practice, and self-confidence that we're been giving them. Of those, the self-confidence is at least as important as the training and the practice. When we withdraw, they will be demonstrably the best military force in the Muddle East, certainly capable of dealing with Baathists revanchists.
Their quandary is based on a false perception that many think and no one speaks: The misguided notion that good news for the U.S. military is bad news for Democratic presidential prospects.
They've been working to make themselves that way since 1972, haven't they? Lemme see, here: George McGovern, Jimmy Carter, Michael Dukakis, Walter Mondale, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and now the current crop of fluffheads. Have I missed anybody?
Wrong. One senator proposed the perfect solution -- and if an Iraq solution is the standard for choosing a standard-bearer, then the 2008 Democratic presidential nominee ought to be Sen. George Aiken of Vermont. There are, of course, two hitches: Aiken's lifelong membership in the Republican Party, and the fact that Aiken's long life ended in 1984, at the age of 92.
I vaguely remember Aiken's existence...
But the Iraq War application of Aiken's famous prescription for ending with honor the Vietnam War remains even more fitting today than it was in the 1960s: Declare victory and get out.
Oh, boy! We're going to play semantic games!
Aiken was not your typical anti-war liberal dove. He had supported the war initially and the bombing of North Vietnam. But he knew quagmire when he saw it. And so he sought a solution that would please hawks that wanted a victory, and doves, which wanted the war ended.
This is what I think of as the "transfusion fallacy." Let's assume you've been hit by a bus. You have massive internal bleeding. Trained medical professionals arrive on the scene. They try to start an IV to replace all those fluids that are seeping into your abdominal cavity or the gutter, depending. But they can't find a good vein. Maybe you're in shock. Obviously all they have to do at this point is declare you transfused, right? Or do you require the actual thing, rather than its description? (I think the answer might vary according to which political party you favor.)
There never was a U.S. victory moment in Vietnam, but we are there now in Iraq. The war President Bush started has been won. Saddam Hussein -- an evil despot who killed many thousands of his fellow Iraqis -- has been toppled, captured, convicted and executed.
Bush announced "mission accomplished" shortly after Sammy was toppled, and about six months before he was captured. The Baath regime at that point had in fact been kicked out and rendered incapable of returning. The war from that point forward was against Zarqawi in alliance with the Association of Muslim Scholars and the Baath revanchists. Neither Zarq nor the Muslim Scholars would have allowed to Baathists to recapture power. They were just too stoopid to realize that.
What happened since then was that Bush committed the same error that Republicans rightly blasted President Bill Clinton for committing in the comparatively minor military mission in Somalia: A never-announced mission creep.
The mission was to fight al-Qaeda. That wasn't "mission creep." It wasn't a static setup. Only an idiot would have assumed that Qaeda and/or Iran wouldn't try to snatch the Iraqi bone from the American jaws. What was a surprise was how effective a commander Zark was. He was an effective commander because of his experience operating al-Tawhid and Ansar al-Islam, not to mention the training camps in Afghanistan. That, and the fact that being nuts he was hard to predict.
U.S. forces were allowed to be sucked into the vortex of a bloody three-way Iraqi civil war pitting Sunni, Shia and Kurdish forces against each other. Indeed, it has been at least a six-sided civil war, as Iraq's factions within factions and outsiders from al Qaeda and Iran have slipped into Iraq.
That's the war we've been fighting since May, 2003. It's the war we're now winning, by the way, thanks to Dave Petraeus, his staff, his commmanders, and the men and women they lead. The Kurds have from the start been reliable allies, who've been supporting the new government. The Shiite split is mostly between Tater and SCIIRI, and we've pretty deftly turned SCIIRI's Badr Brigades from a threat to an asset, while we're beaten Tater to within in an inch and a half of killing him at least twice that I can recall off the top of my head -- and it's my opinion we should kill him, if only for the al-Khoei incident. The kaleidoscope of Sunni insurgent organizations ran the gamut from gangsters to Baath revanchists to beturbanned nutcases, and it's always been my contention that the war against them had to be intelligence driven -- not only to kill the worst of them, but to induce the kinds of splitting and side-changing we see going on right now.
Muslims are killing Muslims -- and the U.S. military has been allowed to become trapped in the middle, being killed and wounded by all factions and fringes.
According to the Association of Muslim Scholars, it's the poor, defenseless Iraqis who're trapped under the brutal occupation. Our main target has always been AQI and its allies and fronts -- Ansar al-Islam and the two branches of Ansar as-Sunna, and now the Islamic State in Iraq. But when they're setting up IEDs and such, you can't really ask which organization they belong to and they refuse to wear uniforms or even the same color turban. The sorting has to be done at the top level, which is why the 1920 Revolution Brigades and a couple or three others are now on our side -- and if they decide to go back on the other side again, we've got some real good intelligence to chase them down, just from having been in close proximity to them for this long.
American men and women on their second and third tours in Iraq have been at war longer than their grandfathers were in World War II.
Whoopty doo. The poor WWII troops were there much longer than were their WWI parents. A better comparison would be with the Indian Wars, that took the better part of the 19th century.
But now, U.S. military figures show that the civil-warfare in Iraq has become, at least statistically, a bit more civil.
So now's the time to throw it all away? Is it just me, or does that statement make no sense whatsoever?
So Iraq's politicians have no excuse to continue refusing to make political peace. But they do need a push.
Iraq's politicians have been working on making political peace for quite some time now. Part of the problem has been that the insurgency has been reflected within the body politic as well. They've only lately become strong enough to shut down the Association of Muslim Scholars, and they're still not strong enough to have al-Dulaimi killed. Tater, transparently controlled from Terrorhan, has been a part of the government. The Sunnis, recall, refused to take part, for the most part, preferring to kill and maim their fellow Muslims, which gave rise to the Shiite death squads in retaliation. It takes time and the appropriate tools -- a can of motor oil, a hot iron, and a pair of large tweezers -- to sort out a can of worms. If you only have the motor oil and half the tweezers when you start, you're really making things worse before you make them better -- and once you get the hot iron things go a lot faster.
That should be the Democrats' new master plan.
Brilliant. Simply brilliant.
Start by celebrating the fact that the U.S. troops won their war.
The current war isn't quite won yet.
This is the perfect time for Democrats to demonstrate the extinction of their three decades of reflexive dovish imagery.
Right. By pulling the troops out before the job's done. It's really about what we expect from them.
Fly with the hawks by celebrating U.S. military victories. Out-hawk the hawks by vowing to accomplish what Bush failed to do -- vanquish al Qaeda.
Bush has been working pretty hard and with quite a bit of success on vanquishing al-Qaeda wherever it raises its pointy little beturbanned head. 50 years from now he'll get the credit he deserves, but I'll be long dead by then so I won't be around to say I told you so.

There's been a continuous stream of Soddies, Yemenis, Syrians, Egyptians, and others tromping into the Iraqi killing fields to be... ummm... killed. You might almost describe them as the flower of their generation, since they're the ones with education and money for the most part, leaving the dullards and the broke back home as a cheering section.

While that's been going on, Jemaah Islamiyah has been rolled up in Indonesia, thanks to U.S. and Australian intel and the rise of people with a bit of sense to Indonesia's executive. The Philippines has seen the virtual demise of Abu Sayyaf and the extinction of the Pentagon Gang -- anybody remember them?

The Islamic Courts showed up in Somalia last July and they were on the run by December. Somalia, for the first time since Siad Barre, has a government in Mogadishu, albeit one that's shakey and often frightening to look at.

In Algeria, where GIA and GSPC were wreaking havoc in 2002, the Algerian army is in control, GIA's extinct, and GSPC's been forced to consolidate with other North African hard boyz into an out-and-out al-Qaeda franchise. In 2002 the Algerian army was still chasing them on foot. Now they've got vehicles, helicopters, and night vision goggles. Wonder where those came from?

In Afghanistan the Taliban, despite daily claims that they're winning, are being slaughtered in droves, upward of 40 at a time. Only in the heart of Qaeda country, the NWFP, where we can't send troops and where the government won't cooperate, is al-Qaeda still strong. And the Bush involvement with the government of Pakistain has been intense, if you've been watching. Benazir's there as a result of U.S. pressure, and I'm guessing Nawaz is back as a result of a U.S. (or Soddy) afterthought.

Bush's shortcoming is that he's not publicizing all this -- the public should be jumping up and down, cheering and throwing rose petals. Instead, most people don't know about it. And people working for some newspaper chains are actively trying to hide it from them.
Also, defeat for a second time the Afghanistan Taliban that, because of a Bush Team attention deficit disorder, was allowed to regain what they had lost.
Sigh. The Taliban "resurgence" is a result of Pakistain thinking they can control them, rather than some shortcoming on Bush's part. The main Taliban effort is in North and South Wazoo, not in Afghanistan -- at least at this moment. The commander to watch isn't Mullah Omar, but Baitullah Mehsud. But I'm sure you, Martin Schram, knew all that, right?
Now is the time for Democrats to demonstrate that theirs is the party of 21st-century smart power, the combination of military and diplomatic power and vision.
The Dems have made themselves the party that espouses more European-style solutions. Europe has been handling Iran for... how long? And France has taken the lead with Lebanon. All we do is supply a bit of military hardware and an occasional unobtrusive word of encouragement. Neither is what you could call a singular success, though the Syrians are at least out of Leb.
Failure to seize the initiative now could cause Democrats to be forever outside the gates at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., looking in on Inauguration Day. Now is the time for Democrats to declare "Mission Accomplished!" And show that they are ready to move vigorously to accomplish the next stage by sending Iraqi politicians the only signal they will understand -- by getting out.
They're not ignorant brutes who know only the language of a kick to the head, y'know? Though I guess the Dems could be the ignorant brutes in this case, capable of communicating with another political process only by snarling and betrayal, kind of like Hamas without the facemasks.
And also by declaring their party's determination to defeat the enemy that attacked us on 9/11 and has been allowed to survive and recoup, recruit anew and threaten us again.
How're you going to defeat them if you refuse to fight them? Batter them into submission with "soft power"? Send them a strongly worded memo? The enemy in Iraq is al-Qaeda in Iraq. If you're too dense to understand that, you're too dense to write on the subject. Try sports writing or theater criticism or write restaurant reviews.
Democrats can rally around any of several commonsense withdrawal plans. One of the first was proposed two years ago by former Reagan assistant defense secretary Lawrence Korb, now a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress: Withdraw most troops through a strategic redeployment, but keep some troops in the region with a mission of preventing al Qaeda from establishing a new sanctuary there.
They've already got sanctuaries there, fer Gawdsake. What do you think Fallujah was? And Ramadi? What do you think we've been doing all this time? The foxtrot?
Democrats can take their guidance from yet another bit of wisdom from Aiken, who said in 1966: "I'm not very keen for doves or hawks. I think we need more owls."
I think we need more bustards. But both statements are well beside the point.
(Martin Schram writes political analysis for Scripps Howard News Service. E-mail him at martin.schram(at)gmail.com.)
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Syria-Lebanon-Iran
Islamists claim responsibility for Lebanon rocket attack on Israel
2007-06-19
A previously unknown militant Islamist group claimed responsibility on Monday for a rocket attack on north Israel as the Lebanese Army and U.N. Peacekeepers went on full alert in search of the assailants. The self-proclaimed group, "the Jihadi Badr Brigades – Lebanon branch," vowed in a statement faxed to The Associated Press in Beirut to continue attacks on Israel. "We had promised our people Jihad (holy war). Here, we again strike the Zionists when a group from the Jihadi Badr Brigades struck the Zionists in the occupied Palestinian territory," the statement said.

Two rockets fired from Lebanon landed Sunday in northern Israel, causing damage but no casualties, in the first such incident since last summer's war between Israel and Hezbollah. Authenticity of the group's claim could not be immediately confirmed.

Meanwhile, the Lebanese army and U.N. peacekeepers went on full alert in search of the unidentified assailants. Armored vehicles of both the Lebanese army and the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) patrolled the road running parallel to the border with Israel. The Lebanese army also set up snap checkpoints in the border zone right after the Sunday 5 pm rocket attack in search of a civilian vehicle which the assailants reportedly used to launch the rockets into the northern Israeli town of Kiryat Shmona, causing no injuries and inflicting minor damage.

UNIFIL said the rocket attack from Lebanese territory on Israel was a "serious breach" to the cease-fire that ended last summer's Israel-Hizbullah war, and urged the parties to exercise maximum restraint to prevent an escalation. Five shells landed in the mountainous areas of Birkat Naqqar and Jabal Saddaneh near the town of Shabaa in the eastern sector of the border with Israel, minutes after the rockets slammed into northern Israel. There were no reports of casualties.

Hezbollah denied involvement, and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said the attack was mostly likely the work of "a small Palestinian movement." The rockets were of the crude type according to Israeli sources The Syrian-backed Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, led by Ahmed Gibril, also denied it had carried out the rocket attack.

Israel's initial reaction was muted, but security officials were meeting to debate a response. An official with Olmert indicated Israel would not hit back.

Prime Minister Fouad Siniora said the attack aimed to destabilize Lebanon by casting doubts about the ability of the army and UNIFIL to protect the border zone. "The state ... will spare no effort in uncovering those who stand behind this incident, which is aimed at attempting to undermine the stability" of Lebanon, Siniora said in a statement. Bouziane said that the Lebanese army "located the launching area and found four rocket launchers with time devices. There were three fired and the fourth failed to fire."

The Lebanese army said in a statement three 107 millimeter Katyusha rockets were fired at Israel by "unknown elements" and that a search was underway to find the attackers. Troops sent to search the suspected launching area found a fourth rocket equipped with a timer. A Lebanese security said that the rockets were launched using timers from an area between the villages of Adaisseh and Kfar Kila, a few kilometers from Israel's border.

Israeli Channel 2 TV's Arab affairs analyst, Ehud Yaari, said a splinter Palestinian group in Lebanon was probably behind the attack. There was no claim of responsibility. In the past, small Palestinian groups, like the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, have fired a few rockets at Israel. Late Sunday, a drone aircraft could be heard circling over the southern port city of Tyre, witnesses said. UNIFIL and the Lebanese army have no drones, and Israel has frequently flown such small aircraft to monitor movements on the ground in southern Lebanon.
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Iraq
Plan B For Iraq: Winning Dirty
2007-05-11
By Mort Kondracke

Without prejudging whether President Bush's "surge" policy will work, the administration and its critics ought to be seriously thinking about a Plan B, the "80 percent solution" - also known as "winning dirty." Right now, the administration is committed to building a unified, reconciled, multisectarian Iraq - "winning clean." Most Democrats say that's what they want, too. But it may not be possible.

The 80 percent alternative involves accepting rule by Shiites and Kurds, allowing them to violently suppress Sunni resistance and making sure that Shiites friendly to the United States emerge victorious.

No one has publicly advocated this Plan B, and I know of only one Member of Congress who backs it - and he wants to stay anonymous. But he argues persuasively that it's the best alternative available if Bush's surge fails. Winning will be dirty because it will allow the Shiite-dominated Iraqi military and some Shiite militias to decimate the Sunni insurgency. There likely will be ethnic cleansing, atrocities against civilians and massive refugee flows.
On the other hand, as Bush's critics point out, bloody civil war is the reality in Iraq right now. U.S. troops are standing in the middle of it and so far cannot stop either Shiites from killing Sunnis or Sunnis from killing Shiites.

Winning dirty would involve taking sides in the civil war - backing the Shiite-dominated elected government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and ensuring that he and his allies prevail over both the Sunni insurgency and his Shiite adversary Muqtada al-Sadr, who's now Iran's candidate to rule Iraq.

Shiites make up 60 percent of the Iraqi population, so Shiite domination of the government is inevitable and a democratic outcome. The United States also has good relations with Iraq's Kurdish minority, 20 percent of the population, and would want to cement it by semipermanently stationing U.S. troops in Northern Iraq to ward off the possibility of a Turkish invasion.

Ever since the toppling of Saddam Hussein, Sunnis - representing 20 percent of the population - have been the core of armed resistance to the U.S. and the Iraqi government. The insurgency consists mainly of ex-Saddam supporters and Sunni nationalists, both eager to return to power, and of jihadists anxious to sow chaos, humiliate the United States and create a safe zone for al-Qaida operations throughout the Middle East.

Bush wants to establish Iraq as a model representative democracy for the Middle East, but that's proved impossible so far - partly because of the Sunni insurgencies, partly because of Shiites' reluctance to compromise with their former oppressors and partly because al-Qaida succeeded in triggering a civil war.

Bush's troop surge - along with Gen. David Petraeus' shift of military strategy - is designed to suppress the civil war long enough for Iraqi military forces to be able to maintain even handed order on their own and for Sunni, Kurdish and Shiite politicians to agree to share power and resources. The new strategy deserves a chance, but so far civilian casualties are not down, progress on political reconciliation is glacial, and U.S. casualties have increased significantly.

As a result, political patience in the United States is running down. If Petraeus cannot show dramatic progress by September, Republicans worried about re-election are likely to demand a U.S. withdrawal, joining Democrats who have demanded it for years.

Prudence calls for preparation of a Plan B. The withdrawal policy advocated by most Democrats virtually guarantees catastrophic ethnic cleansing - but without any guarantee that a government friendly to the United States would emerge. Almost certainly, Shiites will dominate Iraq because they outnumber Sunnis three to one. But the United States would get no credit for helping the Shiites win. In fact, America's credibility would suffer because it abandoned its mission. And, there is no guarantee that al-Sadr - currently residing in Iran and resting his militias - would not emerge as the victor in a power struggle with al-Maliki's Dawa Party and the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, led by Abdul Aziz al-Hakim.

Iran formerly backed the SCIRI and its Badr Brigades but recently switched allegiances - foolishly, my Congressional source contends - to al-Sadr, who's regarded by other Shiites as young, volatile and unreliable. Under a win dirty strategy, the United States would have to back al-Maliki and the Badr Brigades in their eventual showdown with al-Sadr. It also would have to help Jordan and Saudi Arabia care for a surge in Sunni refugees, possibly 1 million to 2 million joining an equal number who already have fled.

Sunnis will suffer under a winning dirty strategy, no question, but so far they've refused to accept that they're a minority. They will have to do so eventually, one way or another. And, eventually, Iraq will achieve political equilibrium. Civil wars do end. The losers lose and have to knuckle under. As my Congressional source says, "every civil war is a political struggle. The center of this struggle is for control of the Shiite community. Wherever the Shiites go, is where Iraq will go. So, the quicker we back the winning side, the quicker the war ends. ... Winning dirty isn't attractive, but it sure beats losing."
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Iraq
Clashes erupt between Shi'ite groups
2007-05-05
Clashes erupted between rival Shi'ite militia groups in Baghdad's Sadr City neighborhood on Friday, when one militia launched an attack on the other's headquarters, police said. The violence between the Mahdi Army loyal to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and the Badr Brigades of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq began earlier Friday when Iraqi police loyal to the Badr Brigades prevented a Sadr aide from entering the southern Shiite holy city of Najaf.
Link


Terror Networks
To Win in Baghdad, Strike at Tehran
2007-01-04
By Robert Tracinski

As early as next week, President Bush is expected to give a major speech announcing a new strategy in Iraq. This is an excellent opportunity for the administration to announce a big strategic change that could dramatically improve America's prospects in Iraq. Unfortunately, however, no one has been discussing the one option that would actually have this effect.

The president's current opportunity should not be underestimated. As weak as he seems, politically, President Bush has no real competition in setting policy for Iraq. Between the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays, the Iraq Study Group had its 15 minutes of fame and faded away without having any significant effect on the debate over the war. The Democrats who take control of Congress this month have no unified message on Iraq other than a vague, general defeatism, and they offer no definite plan for what America should do--except, of course, their usual plan to carp about whatever the administration does. So the president has the ability to retake the initiative, both politically and militarily.

What will he do?

An internal Pentagon review of the war, requested by Bush as part of his attempt to sidestep the Iraq Study Group, has considered three options: "go big," "go long," or "go home." Going big means dramatically increasing the number of US combat troops in Iraq, giving us the ability to further subdue Sunni areas like the Anbar Province and enabling us to crack down on the Shiite militias who are stoking Iraq's sectarian conflict. Going long means committing more resources to the long-term process of training Iraqi forces and building the stability of the Iraqi government. Going home means withdrawing US troops.

We all know Bush isn't going to accept the third option. America is not going to go home. Going long might be a nice aspiration, but Bush has only two years left in office. He has no idea who his successor will be and what he (or she) will do. If he wants to succeed in Iraq, he has to do something now. So we can expect President Bush to go big, ordering a "surge" in US combat troops in Iraq.

But there is another, far more effective option: go wide.

Going wide means recognizing that Iraq is just one front in a regional war against an Islamist Axis centered in Iran--and we cannot win that war without confronting the enemy directly, outside of Iraq.

Going wide means recognizing that the conflict in Iraq is fueled and magnified by the intervention of Iran and Syria. One of the reasons the Iraq Study Group report flopped was that its key recommendation--its one unique idea--was for America to negotiate with Iran and Syria in order to convince these countries to aid in the "stabilization" of Iraq. This proposal wasn't so much argued to death as it was laughed to death, because it is clear that Iran and Syria have done everything they can to de-stabilize Iraq, supporting both sides of the sectarian conflict there.

It is obvious that both regimes have a profound interest in an American failure and retreat in Iraq. After all, if America can successfully use force to replace a hostile dictatorship with a free society, then the Iranian and Syrian regimes are doomed. So as a matter of elementary self-preservation, they have done everything they can to plunge Iraq into chaos, supporting guerrillas and militias on all sides of the sectarian conflict. Just today, a US official confirmed new evidence "that Iran is working closely with both the Shiite militias and Sunni Jihadist groups." Most ominously, Iran has brazenly provided training and weapons to the Shiite militias--who carry rifles straight off the assembly lines of Iranian weapons factories--and these militias have emerged in the last year as the greatest threat to US troops and to the Iraqi government.

How can we quell the conflict in Iraq, further suppress the Sunni insurgents, and begin to dismantle the Shiite militias--if we don't to anything to stop those who are funding, training, and supporting these enemies? Just as we can't eliminate terrorism without confronting the states who sponsor terrorism, so we can't suppress the Sunni and Shiite insurgencies in Iraq without confronting the outside powers who support these insurgents.

Every day, we see the disastrous results of fighting this war narrowly inside Iraq while ignoring the external forces that are helping to drive it. To fight one Shiite militia tied to Iran--Sadr's Mahdi Army--we have recently signaled our support for an Iraqi political coalition that includes another Shiite militia tied to Iran, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim's Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq and its Badr Brigades. And so it should be no surprise that a US military raid on Hakim's headquarters last week netted two Iranian diplomats and members of Iran's Revolutionary Guards--the outfit responsible for supporting global terrorism. That's what happens when we fight the symptoms in Iraq rather than fighting the disease.

Going wide also means recognizing that more is at stake in this war than just the fate of Iraq. This is a war to determine who and what will dominate the Middle East. Will this vital region be dominated by a nuclear-armed Iran, working to spread Islamic fascism? Or will America be able to exert its military influence and political ideals in the region?

This is a momentous question. But observe that the only major foreign-policy debate today is about what to do in Iraq. The anti-war left has not succeeded in inducing America to withdraw in defeat from the Middle East--not yet. But they have succeeded in narrowing our mental focus, inducing us to talk endlessly about what is happening inside Iraq, about whether or not we need more troops there, or whether we need to throw our support to a new political coalition within the Iraqi parliament, or whether we should put more emphasis on Anbar or Baghdad, and on and on--while we ignore the big picture of the Middle East.

The big picture is Iran's attempt to establish itself as a regional superpower, spreading its system of religious totalitarianism and rule by terror across the Middle East. Iraq is one piece in this malignant mosaic--but it is only one piece. The Iranians seek to extend their control over the region by supporting Shiite Islamist militias in Iraq. But they are also trying to achieve their goal by propping up the Assad regime in Syria, by arming Hezbollah in Lebanon, by arming and funding Hamas in the Palestinian territories, by hosting Holocaust denial conferences in an attempt to justify a war to destroy Israel, by harboring fugitive al-Qaeda leaders, and by supporting terrorists and anti-American strongmen (such as Venezuela's Hugo Chavez) around the world.

In this context, to try to win the war just by sending more troops to Baghdad is like trying to save a patient by removing a tumor in his lung--when the cancer has already metastasized through his entire body.

A few of our leaders have put together the big picture. In a recent Washington Post op-ed, for example, Senator Lieberman warned that "while we are naturally focused on Iraq, a larger war is emerging. On one side are extremists and terrorists led and sponsored by Iran, on the other moderates and democrats supported by the United States." Similarly, President Bush warned us last year that "the Iranian regime has clear aims: they want to drive America out of the region, to destroy Israel, and to dominate the broader Middle East."

But these leaders have so far avoided advocating the use of military force against Iran. No one is willing to follow the implications of the big picture to the only rational conclusion: we are already in a regional war with Iran, and we need to start fighting it as a regional war. And the most effective place to fight that war is at its center, by targeting the Islamist regime in Tehran.

Instead, our current policy is a bizarre, irrational holdover from the Cold War. In a New York Daily News op-ed, for example, Michael Rubin assures us that confronting Iran "need not mean military action." Instead, he advocates a policy of stronger words, from beefed up Radio Free Europe-style broadcasts to rhetoric such as the "Axis of Evil." His most telling recommendation is this one: "Just as Ronald Reagan championed striking shipyard workers in Poland in 1981, so too should Bush support independent Iranian trade unions."

Rubin is advocating a strategy I have called Cold War II: fighting Iran the way we fought the Soviet Union, through indirect battles against insurgent proxies (the real parallel between Iraq and Vietnam) and through moral support for Iranian dissidents. But this is brinksmanship without a brink. The reason we had to fight the Soviets indirectly was because they had thousands of nuclear weapons aimed at us. There is no reason to fear such an escalation in a battle against Iran. In fact, the gruesome irony of today is that Iran may soon be able to threaten us with nuclear weapons--but only if we continue to act as if they already possessed a nuclear deterrent.

The fact is that we are fighting the wrong war in the wrong place--though not in the way critics of that war complain. We are trying to fight a regional war by limiting ourselves to a local conflict--and we are fighting that war in Baghdad, when it has its source in Damascus and Tehran.

There is only one way to correct this massive strategic blunder--and that is to go wide.

Robert Tracinski writes daily commentary at TIADaily.com. He is the editor of The Intellectual Activist and TIADaily.com.
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Syria-Lebanon-Iran
Iranian IEDs: MVP of Global Jihad?
2006-12-04
Bubbling to the surface is increased open discussion of Iranian arming, training and funding of Shi’a militias in Iraq, namely al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army band of thugs and the Badr Brigades that are more dominant in and around the Basra area of southern Iraq. The latest evidence being cited are weapons with Iranian manufacturer labels with 2006 date-stamps. Included are anti-tank rockets and precision-milled and shaped IED’s. But the IED moniker is a misnomer in this instance, because the armor-piercing molten copper explosives are designed specifically to defeat the armor on M1 Abrams tanks and retrofitted HMMV’s. There’s nothing ‘improvised’ about these explosive devices. And they are Iranian-made, Iranian-delivered and designed to kill American and British troops in their armored vehicles.

The existence of evidence is not new, though the specific evidence of Iranian manufacturing labels on anti-tank rockets may well be. Iran has been suspected of shipping the milled molten-copper explosives since at least October 2005. In fact, entire shipments of the Iranian bombs have been captured near the Iran-Iraq border earlier this year and reported on as early as March.

“I think the evidence is strong that the Iranian government is making these IEDs, and the Iranian government is sending them across the border and they are killing U.S. troops once they get there,” says Richard Clarke, former White House counterterrorism chief and an ABC News consultant. “I think it’s very hard to escape the conclusion that, in all probability, the Iranian government is knowingly killing U.S. troops.”
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