With the Iraqi Army defeating Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army in Basra, the L.A. Times has moved on to tell its readers how terrible things might get in Najaf. Buried in the middle of the piece, however, is a bit about the battle for Basra:
This time, the grand ayatollahs have declined to aid the incendiary cleric.
Three days into the Basra campaign, Grand Ayatollah Najafi issued a fatwa, or religious opinion or edict, that declared the Iraqi government as the only force in the country with the right to bear arms.
His son, Sheik Ali Najafi, left little doubt that the clergy had backed the Iraqi army operations.
“We see this as a positive improvement. . . . The people want the government to control the streets and the law to be enforced. No other groups,” he said, sitting in his study, furnished with cushions, a laptop and a clock bearing his father’s portrait.
Their stance is a gamble. An influential cleric who is knowledgeable about talks between the Sadr movement and the grand ayatollahs described the situation in bleak terms: The government is weak, and Sadr aides now acknowledge privately that they have lost control of members who are receiving support from Iran.
The opposition of the clerics to the Mahdi Army will likely be ignored by the Juan Coles and Matthew Yglesisases, who prefer to pass along Sadrist propaganda. The establishment media will likely do the same, particularly with regard to the Iranian meddling in Iraq.
Update: Insta-lanche!
[…] Army is being whooped across Iraq, from Baghdad to Basra and posts in between (see here and here). Karl over at Protein Wisdom has caught the LA Times grasping for some news of US-Iraq defeat in all this victory, but having to […]
Iran + Maliki= friends for life.
Does that thought in riddled with insanity belligerent brains of Krauthammer ilk even exist?
In the past week, a parade of Bush administration officials have offered a new threat and new justification for prolonging America’s errant war in Iraq: containing Iran.
The ironic aspect of this is that Iran not only enjoys intimate relations with the Shiite government in Baghdad, but that its objectives in Iraq largely coincide with those of the United States.–more here
The next question is how much longer will the Iranians support Sadr (assuming they are)? Failure after failure is not something you want to reinforce, especially when each defeat makes it more likely someone is going to defect from the Mahdi forces with a bunch of information – including smoking gun information – that would embarass the living daylights out of Iran.
At some point in the near future I think Iran is going to cut the Mahdi’s loose and tell maliki that he can do whatever he wants to them.
al-Sadr will be surprised to hear that. Maliki can’t possibly have his primary loyalty to his own country, can he?
Pablo, if we put our hate for Iran in a closet for a few seconds, we will realize that this is a good thing for Iraq stability, Iraq-Iran friendship…
Iran will leave them to Maliki the same way all those Lufthansa robbers were ‘left’ to the cops in Goodfellas.
Who’s said anything contrary to that, sashal? Though it doesn’t necessarily bode well for Iranian stability….
I think there is something there Sashal. Iran wants a Shiite government in Iraq (as opposed to a Sunni government). However, Iran did not want a strong Shiite government in Iraq, so it pitted the Mahdi Army against the government to keep things in flux in Iraq, especially the south. Now that it looks as if the Maliki government is going to win out, what does Iran do with the Mahdi Army? Does it keep it or does it abandon it, pulling out as much Iranian personnel, high ranking Mahdists, and sensitive information as it can. I think it will be the movement out, especially of information. Maliki may be friendly now, but no one stays friendly after receiving positive information that someone was working to overthrow him.
Mikey, what you said is plausible of course
but right now the best we have is just guesstimates.
One thing for sure, Sadr is losing , which bodes good for the stability of shia government..
sashal,
No one is denying that Maliki’s bloc is close to Iran. The original name of the bloc referred to the Revolution.
Why is the Left denying what Iraqis in Basra and Najaf are saying about Iran peeling off Mahdi Army splinter groups who operate like a cross between the Mafia and the Crips in the south? Is it just hatred of neocons? Brains so limited that the concept of playing factions against each other cannot register? Fear of having to do something about it?
it is plausible guesstimate Mikey, we do not have proof of Iran helping or betting on Sadr more then on Maliki.
But in any case, the Sadr’s losing his standing and influence may bode well for the stability of the shia government..
Karl, who is denying that? Yglesias?
To deny something one has to be pretty sure in the opposite facts and has proof of that. If there are some guys on the left engaging in denial of what they do not really know or aware of, it is pretty stupid in my book, on the same page as Kristol’s flowery predictions or some blogs claiming non- existence of Shiavo memo.
The simple criteria , Karl, should be to all those guys, open your mouth and say something when you pretty sure know what the hell are you talking about…
One of the reasons I like this blog,- majority of the top posts/articles are based on the knowledge and/or facts, or some other very logical material( unless somebody starts talking about the stupidest book ever written in the history of the world-by Jonah)
One would think — but this is the internet.
Well, we don’t have any proof that we here know about. There may be actual proof that isn’t public. My speculation is based on the types of things that powers have historically done when a neighboring power enters a period of weakness – stir things up to keep them weak so that they are too busy with internal turmoil to do something to you. To keep the Americans and British too distracted to do anything about Iran.
Such as when France would provide support for Irish rebellions during their wars with England. Keep them distracted in a cheap way.
From Sashal’s link:
This suffers from two problems. First it mistates the Administration’s positions. Second it makea bald assertion as to Iran’s intent.
“Washington” has not asserted that Iran is depending on violecne or the insurgency. Only that they are using violence and supporting the insurgency in furtherance of violence. Washington has stated, correctly, that Iran’s interest in in keeping Iraq weak, the one thing Mr. Takeyh gets right, and continuing to knock the pins out is an effective way of doing that.
Democracy succeeding in Iraq is not in the interest of Iran. It will only serve to agitate Iran’s own pro-democracy youth. Stability in Iraq would, seemingly, be beneficial in the long term, but at this moment that means allowing this form of government to be successful. Iran want’s neither a democratic Iraq nor a US success. What they want is a pliant, quiet neighbor, or better yet a client state of their own.
But Iran has still miscalculated. They are on the horns of a dilemna. If they get a client, they’ll also get opposition from Saudi Arabia who will assert a place as a defender of the Sunni population in the “quiet, pliant” neighbor that they may wish as a client themselves. Proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia is the most likely outcome.
The Sa’ud’s are no fans of democracy either, but they are far to dependent on the goodwill of the US to directly challenge, and the recent decision to train 40,000 anti-Wahabb clerics may be one of the more farsighted decisions they’ve made in that respect; if successfull (and timely) they’ll weather their own pro-democracy agitation much better.
#13 Prime example – Ardie.
Personally I think you can see Iran intentions pertaining to Iraq by looking at what it has done in Lebanon. Setting up the Mahdi militia just as it has Hezbollah in Lebanon to give Iran a strong military proxy making the Iraqi government weak and unable to rule.
I think the Iraqi’s recognize that as well which has brought the Kurd’s and even the Sunni’s to side with Maliki against Sadr. I really don’t think there is much doubt which dog Iran is sponsoring in this situation.
What this specualtions fails to take into consideration is that a strong nationalist streak runs in Iraqs culture. Saddam had to deal with Iranian sponsored and fueled insurgencies, which fueled Shia/Sunni conflicts within Iraq. Sadr was always viewed as an upstart punk by the senior Shia clergy in Iraq.
Sadr was ever funded and encouraged by Iran; we captured Iranian agents in Karbala throughout the summer of 2003 stirring the anti-American pot. Iran underestimated Maliki’s sense of nationalism and overestimated his love for Iran, and may have overplayed their ties by being one of the major sponsors and conductors of terrorist acts within Iraq in an effort to undermine the US operation and goals.
Certainly, most Iraqis eyes have been opened to this and are now actively participating in their countries defense against even Sadr, to include the top Shia cleric, Sistani, who is an Iranian exile who has no love or use for the Revolutionary Council of Iran.
I’m not at all sure where the confusion comes from, unless it’s idiots assuming that “Shi’ia vs. Sunni” is the only relevant force. It’s not, by at least an order of magnitude.
One of the reasons, perhaps the major reason, for starting with Iraq was that there is an “Iraq”. The boundaries are bullshit, and the tribes are mainly “Arab” rather than belonging to any pseudo-Westphalian territorial concept, but the cities and territories along the rivers self-identify as “Iraqi” and have for centuries. There are “Egypt” and “Lebanon” on the same basis, but most of the rest of Arabia is pretty much an inchoate mass of interpenetrating tribes that have, at best, an extremely weak sense of territoriality. Seeing them as the nations on which our concept of the nation-state is based is foolishness. But there is such a place as “Iraq”, a messy rough oval stretching from Basra to approximately Kirkuk. (It hasn’t always used that name.)
Iraq, however named, and Persia/Iran have always been, at the very best, rivals. This comes partly from geography — they are distinct territories, with recognizable boundaries — but more from ethnic differences. Arabs are Semites, with their semi-historical origins in the Levant (Lebanon, Israel, Palestine); Iranians are Persians, ethnically part of the group labeled (usually wrongly) as “Aryan”. Despite superficial similarities the two groups have very distinctly different folkways and customs, and they aren’t particularly compatible. Among other things, it’s been centuries, perhaps millenia, since most Persians were nomads or had nomadic neighbors; Persia is, in fact, a nation-state in the European/Westphalian sense.
It’s been clear from the beginning that the Iranian response is and has always been based on “Oh, F*, what if the Americans succeed?” Persian attitudes towards the Arabs next door have always been based on the Arabs being ineffective because of their continual clan and tribal conflicts — the Persians are probably the first people in the world to have discovered that imperialism isn’t worth it, at least sometimes. Certainly conquering Arabs has historically been a waste of time. They don’t have it together well enough to have anything worth stealing, and managing them as subjects is expensive and well-nigh futile. The right way to handle Baghdad, from the point of view of Teheran, is to go raze the place occasionally to keep the Arabs weak, and put up with the occasional raids between times. George Bush has said repeatedly that the purpose of the Iraq adventure is not imperialist; that the original thrust was punitive and/or precautionary, but that the goal is to create a nation-state whose socioeconomic principles are organized around Western concepts. From the mullahs’ point of view, if Bush isn’t lying the danger to them is immediate and disaster-threatening — and the initial signs are not good.
Saddam had much the same goal, although he got confused by his own prejudices and preconceptions, and did build a Western-style structure, although based on the worst-possible model of that with the potential mostly dissipated. Even so, Saddam’s invasion of Iran pointed up both the strengths of that organizing model and the relative weaknesses of the Iranian system — an Arab army should not be able to defeat Persians or even push them to a standstill, and in fact did not; to the extent the Iraqis succeeded it was because they had adopted Western-style training and organization rather than Arab warriorism and columns-of-droves tactics. The mullahs could accept a conquest of Iraq with tranquility, in the confident knowledge that the Arabs would be weakened and the conquerer confused and discomfited. A serious attempt to raise the Iraqi Arabs up to the status of partners in the great Western experiment in governance is a serious threat. An Iraqi army operating at 25% of the efficiency of the damned Americans, backed by an economy operating at the same proportion, could own everything from the Mediterranean to the Hindu Kush if it chose to do so — and the Americans are training one and apparently doing a bit better than that.
On top of that, and looming large in the mullahs’ conceptions, is the conflict within Islam. One of the major goals of early Islam was to defuse the Arab/Persian rivalry; the caliphs made a major point of converting the Persians, with the idea that a common religion would calm things down. It didn’t work, to put it mildly. Unfortunately the Sunni/Shi’ia split was already established. The analogy is inexact and can’t be carried far, but a good starting place is to think of the Sunni as libertarians and the Shi’ia as quasi-feudal. Authority among Shi’ia descends along family lines, analogous (but not identical) to European concepts of nobility. Within then-Persia, which was and is organized similarly, the system fit like a glove and was adopted and extended, borrowing priestly ranks from the Zoroastrians (though they’ll deny it forcefully). Shi’ia outside Iran do not fully accept the authority-structure of imam/mulla/ayatollah the way Iranians do, although they respect it. Iranian Shi’ism is not Arab Shi’ism, and from the Arabs’ point of view looks like a quasi-imperial attempt to assert the dominance of Persians over Arabs — which it is — and Shi’ia end up getting beat up by Sunni as a way to keep the mullahs of Iran from gaining too much power. Still, though, there is rivalry (at best) between Arab and Persian Shi’ia.
Worse, the Sunni are gaining ascendance. The big money in oil comes to largely Sunni areas, and the Sunni, especially the Saudis, are running with that. You may not have heard, but the Saudis have demolished almost all of the Shi’ia shrines in Makkah and Medina — one of the most important ones is now a sewer plant! The attack on the Golden Mosque, the Shrine of the Imam Ali, founder of Shi’ism, has to be seen from the Iranian point of view as part of that effort. And the Sunni money and power comes largely from the West. Now, suddenly, we have a Western power trying to elevate Arab Shi’ia to positions of power. Talk about scary. No wonder they want nukes.
Regards,
Ric
You’ll have to provide the evidence of Iran backing Maliki. As for Sadr, there’s Sgt Ted’s point, and there’s this proof of royf’s notion.
Positive Improvement in Iraq
While we’re on the topic of the Times, the paper’s also published other very important stories that aren’t getting the play they deserve in the debate over Iraq’s progress. In a story Thursday, “Iraq Restaurant’s Fortunes Rise and Fall with Viole…
– How about those Kurds anyway.
– Does the aggregate of Western deplomatic braintrust really believe that chains of Starbucks, WalMarts, and McDonalds Golden Arches, and electricity at lrast 12 hours a day is going to make the hasty pudding of ME fuedualism/tribalism fixed, Viola.
– Amazing. Simply amazing.
[…] Karl at Protein Wisdom: With the Iraqi Army defeating Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army in Basra, the L.A. Times has moved on to tell its readers how terrible things might get in Najaf. Buried in the middle of the piece, however, is a bit about the battle for Basra: This time, the grand ayatollahs have declined to aid the incendiary cleric. […]
[…] —-Karl at Protein Wisdom: With the Iraqi Army defeating Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army in Basra, the L.A. Times has moved on to tell its readers how terrible things might get in Najaf. Buried in the middle of the piece, however, is a bit about the battle for Basra: This time, the grand ayatollahs have declined to aid the incendiary cleric. […]
– Actually it would be more correct to say that buried beneath the doom and gloom projections that prop up the proffered faux objectiveness is the spectre of hamhanded partisanship coupled with an almost palpable angst of “Shit, what the hell do we do if Iraq doesn’t fall apart in time for the elections?”. I f4eel their pain. I think they are deserving of same.
I am pretty certain that the plural of Yglesias involves a lot more “s”es. And probably more “a”s and “e”s. After all, a bunch of Yglesias would be a bunch of asses….
David
There seems little enthusiasm for connecting the fact that Condi Rice feels confident enough to step forward and label the Al Sadr as a “Coward”!!!!!!
If she feels confident doing that, then the Muktada is probably toast and he knows it. He cannot answer a “mere woman”….and he cannot return to Iraq as he’d be arrested and tried in a heartbeat. His power is diminishing.
ROW LAND
Allawi and Chalabi are both still in Irak. Still active in politics. And, both have MONEY AND POWER, which is kept in place by investments in their own police. When Iraq went into Sadr’s home court, Sadr was already holed up in Tehran. Where I read he is being kept as a prisoner, now. Not free “to go.” Iran also has Nasrallah in one of its hidey holes.
And, while the journalists keep swimming around, it seems they don’t have a clue! (This is also Olmert’s strength.) NOT having charisma, can get a leader headlines that would make most people sick. But they just shrug it off. And, make the political moves to stay in power.
Maliki is now aware that Chalabi has spent the capital, in Bagdhad, to build up his domestic political credentials. At IRAQ THE MODEL, recently, (April 16th), one of the brother’s posted about how FINALLY the political arm in Irak came together, and began passing legislation.
Iran didn’t win anything. But then, neither did the Saud’s! And, both the Saud’s, and Iran, were playing “proxy” … killing off Iraqis in large numbers.
While you might have noticed that syria did not let in about 500,000 palestinians, that have been trying, since 2006, to leave Irak. So now? Chile came along and began absorbing some of those “encamped” among their arab brothers. Talk about ironies.
Talk about what the media missed! No wonder the NY Times is folding its tent. And, suffering from lost revenues.
Gee, the news we don’t get. Unless you’re prone to looking around blogs. Because if you look at today’s headlines over at Ha-Aretz, in Israel; English edition. You’d see that Frasier got “bumped up” to a 4 star, in charge of transportation. He’s out of the mideast. And, the article said Bush has lost interest in his “two-state” gambit. Well? You heard it here, first.
Maliki loves Iran so much he sends these Iraqis against Iran-backed Shi’ite militiamen in Sadr City and Basra.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tMDhVu-f2Q
Thanks Ric. you,ve saved me from reading at least a couple of books.(((;-)>
Ditto, Rusty! Over the past few years, Ric Locke and a few others (Buddy Larsen comes to mind) have boosted my IQ by at least 20 points;) Seriously, Ric’s post is a great example of the internet’s power to inform.
BTW, thanks Ric!