Things are heating up in Baghdad. Wretchard of Belmont Club brings a pair of posts, with good links to Iraqi bloggers and Bill Roggio. The issue of militias and accountability appears to be coming to a head, and hard decisions will be called for by all participants.
- Crunch Time Again. There's a lot hanging in the balance.
- Krauthammer is right about the overall dynamics in terms of Sunni options. Return violence does have the effect of making the Sunnis think hard about the price of continuing to support and shelter those who would wage war upon the rest of Iraq, and how many enemies they are making. That's important. But he's also right that "The principal issue, and measure of our success, is the shaping of disciplined and effective security forces," and that's why reports from Wretchard, Iraqi bloggers et. al. are concerning.
- US, Mahdi forces Clash. The Mahdi Army is Sadr's way of reminding us what a mistake it has been to allow him to remain above ground and breathing for the last couple of years. The US appears to be moving to take on his militias again, after they've been responsible for most of the anti-Sunni violence and executions in the wake of the inside job at the Samarra mosque.
As I noted in this week's Carnival of the Liberated, the U. S. is on the horns of a dilemma: as long as the militias are around no decent Iraqi state is going to just spontaneously spring into being; but as long as the U. S. military was, effectively, on the side of the Shi'a we could expect the support of the Shi'a. The two major parties have already called for a complete turnover of security operations to the Iraqis.
We can't get control of the public mind in Iraq—there are too many forces working against us including the Western media, the Arab language media, the popular grapevine, and prejudice. In time I think the actualities could prevail but I'm not sure we've got time.
There have been alot of little mistakes made in Iraq, but I think history will record that the too big ones both occurred in April 2004 when the insurgancy first heated up. The first was failing to immediately take Fallujah - which I think history will record as a failure of GWB's political nerve and rightly catigate him for. That mistake was corrected in November, notably when it was less politically costly, but by waiting so long it probably cost us a year of occupation and several hundred US troops. The second, slightly more excusible but still risible and as of yet uncorrected mistake, was the decision to accomodate Sadr (a decision in which the Brits probably played no small part). With the Sunni insurgency wanning and largely defeated, its now time to take out Sadr's Iranian backed Thugocracy before it fully metasticizes.
Challenging Sadr and the militias openly is probably a mistake at this point. Let the government organize and lets see how the IA performs. The worst thing in the world we can do is show that we dont take the elected Iraqi government seriously. We've come a long way in proving we are an honest broker in Iraq and not interested in running a puppet regime, but that suspicion runs deep. Taking on militias when they step over the line is one thing, but going around picking a fight is quite another. What we really need in Baghdad is what we have needed all along, more boots in the streets. Americans are out of the question so it has to be Iraqis.
This may be a news flash, but Iraq might end up a very nasty place even after democracy is established. The USA is hardly an example -- we've had death squads, border wars, guerilla violence, civil wars, etc.
Taking an entire people from despotic caveman status to liberal democracy is going to take a generation or so. I'm not saying we were wrong to go into Iraq -- far from it. I'm just cautioning people, yet again, from expecting too much. The principle is that the Iraqis get to decide what they want to do. Now maybe they want three countries in which they run guerilla operations against each other. That's not the choice I'd pick, but it's their choice to make, not ours.
It looks like this "forming a government" is the REAL big step we've all been waiting for. It's where the rubber hits the road, so to speak. It's great that Iraqi forces were involved in some of these attacks on the Shia militias. Since it appears we are acting as executor of the state currently (although why, I have no idea) we should keep these Iraqi SOF very close to the vest. Having the same Iraqi units raid both Sunni and Shia militias and deaths squads will send a signal. Whatever happenes, if the US wants to play a helpful role, the militias are going to have to go. But I'm not convinced the trade-off is worth it for us or the Iraqis. Sometimes tough love is called for. If we're not willing to walk away, that is a weakness that all Iraqi political parties will exploit. What a bunch of maroons.
These militia's are not top driven. Do you really think that simply getting rid of Sadr will cause his militia to vanish ? When/if he is replaced will the next leader be any better ? Would killing Ho Chi Minh have stopped the Vietnam War ? We as USA citizens may not like him but he has popular support we would be better off dealing with him.
Sorry, but this article in todays Washington Post tells me that it is going to get a lot worse before it gets any better.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/28/AR2006032801963.html
In a nutshell, Iraq now has at least 25,000 internal refugees. The Sunni are heading north and the Shia are heading south.
The partitioning of Iraq has begun.
"Challenging Sadr and the militias openly is probably a mistake at this point. Let the government organize and lets see how the IA performs. "
except there are hints that the existence of the Mahdi army is constraining the formation of the govt. In particular reports (see Roggio, etc) that Sadr threatened Hakim that hed creat chaos if Jaafari werent named PM. It may be that turning on Sadr is the only way to free SCIRI from Sadr, and to break the political logjam. Whether this is the final showdown with Sadr, or just pushing him back in his box, I dont know.
John's understanding of human nature is a bit shallow here. Sadr militia are mostly an incited rabble. If you remove the successful inciter, yes, they do tend to go away. The supply of thug-wannabe losers is large in the Third World. The ability to mobilize them successfully is a much rarer talent. The ability to use them as political brownshirts is rarer still. Make such incitement a fatal job, and the number of applicants tends to drop.
The foolish believe that "we would be better off dealing with him" in the sense of appeasement and cutting deals while Sadr orchestrates murders, makes a joke of the rule of law, and incites civil war is part of the reason Iraq is in the state it is in.
The Klan had popular support too... and no doubt, our friend john Ryan would have been first in line to make deals with them and look the other way when they inconveniently lynched people. That was certainly the Democratic Party's approach to the entire issue for about 100 years post Civil War. Don't think it served anyone particularly well. Also think it was pretty unconscionable.
Anon... the internal movement doesn't bother me so much, actually. It doesn't fundamanetally change the Sunnis' hand or their choices, and may begin to make some Shi'ite areas safer (the Kurds were ahead of the curve here). If the security forces disintegrate, however, or prove untrustable, then we would truly have a problem.
the internal movement doesn't bother me so much, actually. It doesn't fundamanetally change the Sunnis' hand or their choices, and may begin to make some Shi'ite areas safer
The Sunnis have no hand and they have no choices -- they are politically delusional. It is the Shia who have all the cards and all the choices. (The Kurds as well, of course, but they've already gotten everything they want.)
The smart thing for the Shia to do would be to simply abandon central Iraq and declare southern Iraq to be "Shiastan." They'd have almost all the oil and would leave Sunni Iraq a land-locked sink hole of abject poverty.
There are several things that discourage them from doing this, U.S. pressure being one. Another, however, is the presence of a fair number of their co-religionists in central Iraq. Internal refugees mean that has begun to change.
You may be sanguine about Iraq starting to look like Yugoslavia. I am not.
If the security forces disintegrate, however, or prove untrustable, then we would truly have a problem.
Since the only Iraq security forces that function effectively are sectarian-based, I'd say we truly have a problem. The relatively peaceful Kurdish area is patrolled exclusively by peshmurga while the relatively peaceful South is patrolled exclusively by Shia-based militia, even when those militia are nominally governmental forces. The security forces in the central region are a) largely divided along sectarian lines and b) don't really work worth a damn.
The biggest red flag raised by large numbers of internal refugees is that it indicates a growing number of Iraqis no longer believe a sectarian civil war can be averted. That's a self-fulfilling prophecy if ever there was one.
Al Sadr has to die, preferably violently and publicly, and a good chunk of his followers need to follow him across the river of death into Islamic Valhalla.
This should have been done years ago.
It's real simple, ANYONE who challenges us, or what we are trying to establish in Iraq has to die. Clerics who are preaching anti-Americanism, need to disappear. If our government doesn't have the stomach for the types of measures necessary for the waging of this war, then they need to tell us so, and explain to us the specifics of their moral concerns.
The clarity and moral force of GW's position on September 12th is drifting and backsliding towards the views that prevailed on September 10th.
After 9/11, GW told us the gloves were coming off, but now it seems they are going back on, but somehow GW overlooked informing the American people of that pusillanimous fact.
Is he interested in waging war, or just talking about it.
It's gut check time for him, not just us. Americans are taking their lead from him, every single time that he goes communicatively passive, his numbers drop, and support for the war drops as well. Conversely, every single time he states HE is interested in pursuing victory, his numbers rise.
Americans aren't a gutless pack of worms, eager to crawl under the boot of some stone age muslim.
GW needs to get that through his dense forehead.
I'd keep in mind Daniel's point re: the bloody mechainsm of creating a, calling it for the sake of argument, stably pluralist democracy. This bloody mechanism churns through the inevitably sectarian precursor society and attempts to churn out something where political identity is manifest in shirts, not bombing pizzarias and weddings. If anyone read Louis Menand's Metaphysical Club they'd be reminded of just how bloody this mechanism is. I think this can be understood as an, albeit tragic, natural process. The Gangs of New York illustrates this graphically and suddenly, reminding us that the state, i.e. the democratic republic, must use its monopoly of violence in a causal way that subjugates and sways the society into conformity.
Liberty leading the People is a nice painting, but those people aren't marching to the voting booth. They are marching with guns in support of an abstract idea, hoping to carve it out of the veritable superorganic flesh of selfish groups of humans.
It has been suggested several times on the Belmont Club comment thread that understanding pivotal moments in history are very useful to understanding our own contemporary political moment; if you grasp onto a minor dynamic, a local one per se, and construe it as major or global, and are incorrect, you will be lead astray by your own presumably idiosyncratic prerogatives.
This no doubt sounds painfully elitist in a way, but as Menand explains, and as Iraqis must learn, their intellectual relation to their social organizations will seal the fate of their well-being and prosperity, just as America's arguably did.
The Iraqis need to discover the saving grace of their constitution, for in it is the precious wisdom that millions of American's died for in the American civil war: better to grumble and whine about your grievances and await the coming of a new election cycle, manifesting your grief at the poll, than take up arms against your national neighbor. Godspeed to thme all.
"It's real simple, ANYONE who challenges us, or what we are trying to establish in Iraq has to die. "
Dan, I agree with your theory, but making people who question the US 'dissapear' is not going to help foster democracy.
If an individual fosters terrorists, or raises money for terrorists, or anything of that nature, fine. But let's do it publicly and openly, and let neighbors know that he/they were put away for their actions, and not because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. That only fosters fear and resentment.
Al Sadr is an entirely different story, and easily satisfies the above conditions.
Besides, US troops don't appear to be the major problem anymore. As previous posts have noted, attacks on US troops are down, and in general US resentment appear to be down as well. The new struggle is keeping Sunni & Shia militia's from cutting loose on eachother.
You have complete autonomy. Unless we decide you just have to die.
Using terms like clarity or "moral force" in this rancid post pretty much denotes the writers abject ignorance of the challenges we face.
I've got a news flash for you bucko. "We" have absolutely zero chance of salvaging this mess if it's "our way or the highway".
US resentment is down?
I guess Ralph Peters is safely back home now.
There is the huge problem with perspective when it comes to Iraq (ie many opponents, and supporters as well, having idealized versions of war and failed states like Iraq - focus the media spotlight on a dozen other countries in Africa/South Asia and all of a sudden Iraq doesn't look that bad comparitively) but this is the one issue that I think may cause us to lose.
Al-Sadr should have been arrested or killed 2 years ago, and until we muster the will to neutralize him Iraq will never be free from sectarian violence. I realize it will stir up a hornets nest of low-rent paid for thugs, raising casualties in the short-term and I'm not convinced that al-Sadr is truely the end of the chain (I'm inclined to believe that extends farther east) but he is certainly the most prominent face behind the Shia militias, and must be dealt with if we want to win.
In order to prevent fracturing into civil war, the government must be feared when it comes down to it. Al-Sadr has an arrest warrant out for him, and the government won't bring him in because he has an "Army". That message is clear enough for all Iraqis to see.
Joe,
I agree Sadr personally is important, but we should bear in mind that theres a party (fadila) that follows the khomeinist line, and is led by old associates fo Sadrs martyred father, which is NOT loyal to Muqty. Eliminating Muqty from the scene might improve the situation, but it would not solve the "Sadrist" problem. Not by itself, at any rate.
I also suspect that martyring him is not the best course, given the Shiite love of martyrs. Best to weaken him, box him in, I think.
and most importanly show SCIRI and other non-sadr Shiites, that we can keep them safe if Sadr declares all out war.
Davebo - at this point Iraq is an odd situation. The Jaafari govt is legitimate under the January 2005 election. However there has been a new election, and a new govt must be formed. Jaafari has no legitimacy under that unless and untill he is chosen by the newly elected parliament, which prospect is very unlikely. Now theres a constitutional deadline for forming a new govt. In the past we have chosen to look the other way when deadlines were not met. If, OTOH, the deadline is not met this time, and the Jaafari govt becomes an unconstitutional holdover regime, its not clear that we have to defer to it on all things.
And certainly we have the right to express our preferences, given that the govt relies on our military support against its enemies.
Crunch time in Iraq, you say?
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