Thursday, April 24, 2008
A note on Sadr City
"Dr. Irack" of abu muqawama has a thoughtful post about the seige of Sadr City and its potential to be destabilizing.
Fast forward to August 2007. The surge is in full bloom and Sadr declares a "freeze" on JAM's armed activities. His goals were many: avoid another 2004-style clash with the Americans; rehabilitate JAM's increasingly criminal reputation; and allow coalition forces to purge his ranks of the worst Iranian-backed factions, thereby enhancing his command-and-control. The effects of the freeze were profound. Go back and look at all those MNF-I slides from the September and March Petraeus testimonies. The steepest decline in violence occurred once the JAM ceasefire took hold.
Recent events in Iraq have now put this in jeopardy...
Moreover, unlike in Basra, where the Iranians appear to have bailed on JAM, Tehran seemingly continues to support JAM attacks against American forces in Baghdad. Most importantly, the convenient fiction that we have only been fighting a narrow subset of Iranian backed "special groups" is increasingly unsustainable in Sadr City. Rank-and-file JAM appear to be fighting American and Iraqi forces, regularly lobbing mortars and rockets into the Green Zone....
Under continued pressure from U.S. and Iraqi forces, Sadr has warned that he might declare all-out war. In the same Post article, Condi said "I don't know whether to take him seriously or not." Here's a tip: take him seriously.
Dr. Irack reports that he has been reading heavily on the subject of the Sadrists, and, recently at least, I have not -- we're working hard out here in real economy land. I therefore defer to his greater knowledge and, quite possibly, superior analytical skills (abu muqawama is a great counterinsurgency blog, by the way). However, I wonder whether either Iran or the Sadrists will risk an all-out fight even if Maliki's government and the United States keep pressing. Why? Because the Iranians much prefer the Mahdi "army" to survive than for it to become dominant or go down in humiliating defeat. Me, a couple of weeks ago:
Having armed and trained the Mahdi "army," Iran does not want to see its most important asset inside Iraq either win a decisive victory over the government (however unlikely that might be) or get ripped to shreds. If the Mahdi army weakened the Maliki government too much, the United States might throw in the towel and back a Sunni restoration. That is the last thing Tehran wants because it resurrects Iran's worst nightmare, the possibility in the future of another ruinous conventional war with Iraq. If, however, the Maliki government and the United States wiped the deck with the Mahdi thugs -- much more likely -- Iran would lose its principal means for exerting influence inside Iraq. Tehran's hope for a weak, Finlandized Shi'ite government would be less likely than a relatively strong coalition Arab/Kurd government backed by the United States for decades to come. The best result for Iran, therefore, is to preserve the Mahdi army as a constant threat that can be rolled out as necessary to destabilize, threaten, or deter the government of Iraq.
I still believe this, which is why Sadr keeps offering up his "ceasefire." Continued Iranian sponsorship hinges on Sadr remaining a thorn, but only a thorn, in the side of the Shiite government in Baghdad.
3 Comments:
By 
Dawnfire82, at
Thu Apr 24, 12:12:00 PM:
The road to real Iraqi sovereignty will be paved with dead and broken bodies of the Mahdi Army. They want to negotiate and operate as if they were a government themselves, and that is unacceptable. It must be disbanded or destroyed, or the government cannot maintain its legitimacy any more than the Lebanese can in face of Hezb Allah, Great Britain could in face of the American patriots, or the Union could in face of secessionist armies.
I hope Maliki knows this. Fortunately, I think he does. Unfortunately, most journalists are too stupid to see beyond the 'fighting is bad and militias are scary' wall, so this line of thinking never seems to be presented.
By 
, at
Thu Apr 24, 12:52:00 PM:
The Iranians must also consider the possible end effect of supporting forces that continue to attack Coalition (read: American) and Iraqi interests. Lobbing rockets into the Green Zone may have some short-term benefit (the most obvious perhaps being to influence reflexive anti-war bias in this country) but long term the disadvantage for Tehran lies in being exposed and called out. Already even the Democrats are starting to see reality here, with Hillary especially emphatic concerning retaliation for direct aggression. For now, attacks on Iraq by Iranian proxies seem not to register, except to further fuel the argument of why we have to get out of the arena as soon as possible. But this is a schizophrenic foreign policy likely not to hold up under recognizable Iranian agression, whether conducted directly or by proxy.
By , at
Thu Apr 24, 04:17:00 PM:
Henry Kissinger on Iran:
"We will reach a point…at which one has to admit two conclusions. One, that Iran is clearly going ahead to build a capacity that must lead to a nuclear capability. And secondly, that the present methods [of constraining Iran] are not succeeding. Does one then decide to go into a blockade of Iran, or into real global sanctions, or other steps? I'd prefer to leave that until we are closer to that moment. But we have to accept the fact that such a moment may be coming."
Kissinger may be a fossil with an outsized ego, but that doesn't mean his views aren't worth consideration. The issue with Iran isn't the little stuff, like Sadr, it's the big stuff. The Iraqi government deserves our full attention and support, as does the more difficult situation in Pakistan and Afghanastan, but truly, the nuclear issue is one that will require a determined America.
