AP’s Qassim Abdul-Zahra wrote today that Nouri al-Maliki, the Daawa Party politician whom the Americans installed as PM in Iraq back in April,
- sharply criticized a U.S.-Iraqi attack Monday on a Shiite militia stronghold in Baghdad, breaking with his American partners on security tactics as the United States launches a major operation to secure the capital.
The militia thus targeted is part of Moqtada Sadr’s movement. Sadr is a crucial ally of Daawa within the UIA alliance.
It is also quite relevant to note (but not mentioned by AP) that the Iraqi Daawa Party has longstanding links with Lebanon’s Hizbullah, and that Sadr’s most notable recent action was a large-scale rally in Baghdad in support of Hizbullah.
The situation of the US military in Iraq seems to be deteriorating fairly fast. US military commanders have been trying to sell a narrative that Iraq is “on the brink of civil war”… I’m not sure if this is intended to justify the higher profile US forces have been adopting in Baghdad, to excuse their failure to bring security to the capital and the rest of the country, or to act as a sort of early excuse for an imminent pullout (okay, more realistically, a drawdown) of of the US troop presence from the country.
A couple of things are very clear, though. One is that the US-conducted “rebuilding” of the Iraqi security forces as a single unified (and pro-US) body has failed miserably and another, that there have been numerous signs of heightened sectarian violence in and around Baghdad.
Why, in this uncertain atmosphere, did the US military decide to go in and try to attack the Sadrists? I haven’t a clue. They “accused” the Sadrists of having run death squads, etc. But my understandinbg is that SCIRI and its associated Badr Corps has been much more involved in that than the Sadrists; but that has not led the Americans to launch notable attacks against Badr offices in recent times.
I would welcome any information readers could provide on all of this.
In the meantime, I am also grateful to Gilbert Achcar for having sent along this translation of a report in today’s Al-Hayat, which shows another dimension of the collapse of the pro-US political order in Iraq:
- Excerpt from a report published in Al-Hayat, August 7, 2006:
The president [Speaker] of the Iraqi Parliament, Dr. Mahmoud] Al-Mash’hadani spoke to Al-Hayat yesterday, at the end of an official visit to Damascus, where he met with president Bashar al-Assad… On the accusations directed at Syria and Iran of interfering in Iraq’s affairs, al-Mash’hadani said vehemently: “America installs itself between two countries like Syria and Iran that it considers as enemies and you want them to stay passive! That is not realistic at all, and if ever they intervene, it is to protect their national security. And we do not object to that, the national security of Syria and Iran is threatened by the American presence … Let’s suppose that they (the Syrians) interfere in Iraq’s affairs, why don’t you object to America’s rule over Iraq before objecting to Syria’s interference in order to protect its security? In this respect, Iraq has opened its doors to all countries, even to an Israeli presence, so has Syrian interference now become a threat to Iraq’s security? Who destroyed Iraq? Who plundered Iraq? Who stole from Iraq? Who humiliated Iraq? Who desecrated Iraq’s holy sites? Who damaged the honor of Iraqi women? It is none other than the blue jinn whose name is: the occupation.”
Al-Mash’hadani accused the American forces of standing behind terrorist attacks in Iraq, saying: “The occupation is the first and last cause of the problem, it has overthrown the [former] regime without a plan, it has suppressed the state with no reason, it has led to the resistance and it has infiltrated it, it has brought Al-Qaeda to Iraq…” After approving the statement that “American occupation troops stand behind some of the terrorist attacks,” he described today’s Iraq as “Americastan.”
Mashhadani, who is described as a Salafi (fundamentalist) Sunni from the Islamic Accord Front, has made a number of strongly anti-US statements in the past. (See this one, for a notable example.)
I suppose Bush and all his coterie of hangers-on may be sincerely perplexed, and asking themselves, “Why on earth aren’t these Iraqi politicians more grateful (and obedient) to us?”
Of course, the way the Bush administration has given continued and fawning support to the Israeli government, even as the latter has visited horrendous devastation on important populations of Muslims– both Shiite and Sunni– in Palestine and Lebanon probably has a lot to do with this…