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HE'LL JUST HAVE TO SETTLE FOR BEING THE MOST POWERFUL MAN IN IRAQ.
I'm trying to figure out why this NY Times article places stories of Iraqi Shiites turning against Mahdi Army elements within the "the surge is working!" narrative, especially given that reporter Sabrina Tavernise seems to understand that changes in the organization are the result of processes that predate the surge:
"The street militia of today bears little resemblance to the Mahdi Army of 2004, when Shiites following a cleric, Moktada al-Sadr, battled American soldiers in a burst of Shiite self-assertion. Then, fighters doubled as neighborhood helpers, bringing cooking gas and other necessities to needy families.Now, three years later, many members have left violence behind, taking jobs in local and national government, while others have plunged into crime, dealing in cars and houses taken from dead or displaced victims of both sects.
Even the demographics have changed. Now, street fighters tend to be young teenagers from errant families, in part the result of American military success. Last fall, the military began an aggressive campaign of arresting senior commanders, leaving behind a power vacuum and directionless junior members."
Though you probably wouldn't know it from reading U.S. media, the Mahdi Army is actually the militia wing of Muqtada al-Sadr's larger movement, Jamaat al-Sadr al-Thani, ("the Association of the Second Sadr," in reference to Muqtada's father, Grand Ayatollah Sadeq al-Sadr) just as the Badr Brigade is the militia wing of the SIIC (formerly SCIRI). As with similar movements such as Hamas and Hezbollah, there is a lot of overlap between the wings, with the militia tending to attract more thuggish elements who latch on to the movement's legitimacy to facilitate their thuggery. It's been clear for a long time that Muqtada recognizes this as a problem, which is why he's continually disavowed renegade Mahdi Army factions, either dealing with them himself or, more often, allowing them to be dealt with by U.S. forces, as he has moved away from violence and toward politics. That these young gangsters are now being turned in by Shiites is not proof of American military success as much as it is of Muqtada having achieved many of his political goals, and his movement having achieved even greater legitimacy.
Bartle Bull has been arguing for a while that Muqtada decided years ago that it was in his own interests to underwrite the American project. From Bull's latest:
"Al-Sadr actually stopped fighting the Americans three years ago. He rose up against them twice in 2004, but since the end of his second uprising, his Mahdi army has focused its violence on Wahhabis and Baathists, with frequent clashes against other Shia factions. Al-Sadr's movement is splintered and immature. Its less legitimate fringes have been active in sectarian cleansing. Many who do have ties to his movement frequently work beyond his control. Some of these tendencies continue to direct violence against the coalition, but this is negligible compared to the force of a true Sadrist resistance, as anyone who was in Najaf or Sadr City in 2004 will attest. Since this spring, US troops have been comfortably based in Sadr City—the giant Baghdad slum that is the power base of the Sadrists.[...]
Muqtada al-Sadr, Iraq's most successful, popular and important politician, has underwritten Iraq's progress towards legitimate politics since late 2004 ... Al-Sadr, as leader of the country's largest popular movement, has more to win from a functioning electoral politics than from fighting the Americans who guaranteed the polls that liberated his people, or from fighting the Iraqi government of which he is himself the joint largest part."
Understand, the "mission accomplished" scenario which Bull outlines is in fact the best possible outcome at this point: A loosely federated Iraq secured by competing Sunni tribal militias in the west, Kurdish militias in the north, and Shiite Islamist militias, one of whom (the one we like, apparently) openly allied with Iran, in Baghdad and the south. This is what President Bush is trying to sell as success.
--Matthew Duss
COMMENTS (2)
No Duss, Sadr's done. Kaput. The party's over. Again.
One thing I found interesting from the article is that none of the Iraqis interviewed actually directed their ire toward Sadr himself.
Posted by: Eric Martin | October 12, 2007 12:48 PM
This piece is very good. Well done.
Posted by: joejoejoe | October 12, 2007 2:34 PM