move, countermove

Spackerman’s narrative on the upsurge of unrest from Shi’ite Baghdad down to Basra is roughly that Sadr is losing control of his forces and unable to maintain the ceasefire he extended last month. It follows that the civil disobedience campaign the Sadrists are apparently mounting now is the last line of peaceful resistance before the shooting resumes in earnest. See also the not-so-civil mortaring of the Green Zone the other day.

Most analysis I’ve seen casts the al Sadr as the aggressor in the latest round of violence. This doesn’t really seem to me to fit with the facts, at least as reported. Over the past few months it’s the security forces connected to the ISCI/Dawa factions controlling the government that have been on the attack against both al-Sadr’s organization and the Sadrist current generally - the Fadhila faction of which controls the port of Basra, which seems to be the main target of the security crackdown there – in advance of the local elections scheduled for later this year.

Behind that you have the US trying to lever the parties that remain in the governing coalition away from their pro-Iranian orientation, and the Iranian attempts to woo them back, which may have been the main reason for Ahmedinejad’s visit earlier this year. In this sense, the Sadrist ceasefire was an opportunity for the government to roll back the Sadrist current’s gradual absorbtion of Southern Iraq. ISCI and Dawa get an extensive fiefdom to the South, the US gets to flip an Iranian ally, and, not coincidentally, also has the way cleared to embed its awkward partnership in the Sahwa current as part of the government of a loosely federated Iraq. The oil law gets signed, the port of Basra opens for business, and the money rolls in. Nifty.

Except the Sadrists have options in Sunnistan too:

Voices of Iraq says the meeting, organized by the Sadr organization, included 300 tribal leaders, Shia and Sunni, from throughout Iraq, but the meeting also dealt with local issues including a promised re-opening of the "Bridge of the Imams" that links this mainly Shiite neighborhood on the west bank of the Euphrates with its twin district Adhamiya, mainly Sunni, on the east bank. (There is a nice satellite map on the website of the Meeting Resistance film, which was mostly filmed in Adhamiya.) Among the main points in the final statement of the meeting: A demand for scheduled withdrawal of the occupation forces from Iraq; and a statement to the effect the foreign forces are responsible for the internal divisions that have plagued Iraq since the invasion.

So: move, countermove. When the Sadrists sent trucks full of food and medical aid to the insurgents fighting second Fallujah back in 2004, the AQI element pulled the drivers out of the trucks and publicly beheaded them. But now those guys aren’t so much of a problem - partly thanks to the US-Sunni reconciliation. Also nifty.

People have been saying for a while that it's Sadr's move now, and I guess this is the move in question. the question is whether he's left it too late.

Comments

[Eric Martin]

ISCI and Dawa get an extensive fiefdom to the South, the US gets to flip an Iranian ally

I wonder about this. I think you're 100% in that we're trying just such a maneuver, but...we haven't been very good at flipping other people's proxies lately. More likely, we'll get bamboozled.

Either way, this:

The oil law gets signed, the port of Basra opens for business, and the money rolls in. Nifty.

is the real prize, isn't it.

Good piece. Not the least because of the masterful use of links ;)

[mullah cimoc]

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