Pat Dollard | Young Americans

The face-saving British media, along with the American Leftist media, were ecstatic at the prospect that Iraq was now about to blow up in George Bush and John McCain’s face. When the opposite happened, they tried to pretend the worst had happened after all, and that the Dems and their Leftist freakazoid base had every reason to celebrate. The very independent premiere news venue in Iraq, Voices Of Iraq, which is in no one’s pocket and is often critical of the Iraqi Government, saw things very differently.

Baghdad, Apr 1, (VOI) – Observers believe that Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr’s recent instructions to his Mahdi Army militias to end all armed activities in Baghdad and southern Iraq provinces would disclose the “recalcitrant groups” within his bloc.

Researcher Haydar Saeed said Sadr’s decision was very important for the government’s battle against Mahdi Army or the militias acting under this name.

“At least, the decision would draw a clear line between two groups: the one committed to the hierarchical loyalty to Muqtada al-Sadr and the other rebelling against this allegiance,” said Saeed.

Sadr had announced in a statement on Sunday that he would “disown anyone carrying arms and targeting government and service facilities or parties’ offices,” ordering his followers to end all armed activities in Basra and other provinces.

The capital Baghdad and other southern Iraqi cities, including Basra, the country’s second largest city and oil hub, were gripped by fierce clashes a week ago between government forces and cleric Sadr’s Mahdi Army militias, hours after Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki declared Operation Saulat al-Forsan (Knights’ Assault), which he said aimed at eliminating armed groups in Basra, 590 km south of Baghdad.

“Lacking its raison d’être, affiliation to the theological establishment, the second group – the rebels – would be the target for the government’s military operation,” Saeed reckons.

Reidar Visser, an expert in southern Iraq affairs, said targeting the Sadrists exclusively apart from other militias raises several question marks, perhaps the first of which had to do with political motives.

“The vague second battle of Basra seems outwardly acceptable to some extent: a port city rich in oil was sliding into a Mafia-like status, which negatively affected citizens’ security as well as oil proceeds, and so the central government had to interfere to clean (of gunmen),” Visser explains.

He viewed the issue from a different angle, believing in a disparity between the description of Basra as a “city ruled by the militias (in the plural form), and the facts about the military operations that targeted a certain one specific militia: Sadr’s Mahdi Army.”

“The objective of the operations – making Basra a safer place – would have made perfect sense if it included other militias rivaling the Sadrists: The (Shiite leader Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim’s) Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC) and the armed groups with links to the Shiite Fadhila (Virtue) Party, which has been in control over the oil protection guard force for a long time,” Visser said.

The Basra incidents, he added, do not have to do with preparations for local elections in October 2008 or with control over the process to build federal entities.
“If the local elections or the federacy question had been the motive, the target would have been the Fadhila, not the Sadrists. The Fadhila and some other secularist leaders in Basra want to realize one federal entity for the city, a counter-plan that comes in defiance of the SIIC’s dream of building a unified Shiite federacy,” said Visser.

Ibrahim al-Samaydaie, a political analyst, said he agrees with Saeed’s conclusion that Sadr’s statement would “help settle many outstanding issues between the Sadrists and the government.”

“The content of Sadr’s statement represents items for an agreement tabled by parties close to the Sadrist bloc on the following day of the crisis, but the government’s refusal caused further complications,” Samaydaie told Aswat al-Iraq – Voices of Iraq – (VOI).

The Iraqi government, he added, perhaps put on its thinking cap and was hesitant to accept the items of the agreement. “May be it (the government) relied on a U.S. intervention to settle the conflict after the Iraqi forces commence the operations, he said.

“The U.S. forces avoided direct involvement because they did not want to lose the freeze (on the Mahdi Army militias) declared by Muqtada al-Sadr, particularly during the critical period of local elections,” he added.

Besides, Samaydaie, noted the Americans realized through experience that the Iraqi political parties “clinch, in one way or another, a kind of understanding once a chance for settlement of pending issues via dialogue is in place, which actually happened during this latest crisis.