Posted on 04/19/2008 9:11:25 AM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
Churchill once quipped that “a lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to put its pants on.” On the whole, the international press has done much to advance this remark over the course of the last few weeks, telling tales of misconception as to what recently happened in Iraq’s southern port city of Basra. (James Hider, Juan Cole, and Reuters were among the worst transgressors.)
As some would have us see it, the story apparently goes something like this: Iraqi premier Nouri Maliki reluctantly sent his security forces south to reestablish control of Basra in the wake of the British withdrawal, and was humiliated and politically weakened when the insurrectionists of Muqtada al Sadr’s Jaish al Mahdi militia (or JAM) fought the Iraqi security forces to a standstill, forcing the central Iraqi government to accept a ceasefire on terms it deemed unfavorable.
Thankfully, there is more to the story. Some of these misconceptions about Mr. Maliki and Mr. Sadr should be countered.
To start off, this battle was not a surprise. It was well known in Iraq for some time that this was going to occur. Operation Calvary Charge (as it translates into) was actually delayed a week because influential Shi’a leader Abdul Aziz al Hakim initially got cold feet. It is a falsehood to suggest that the “rising violence” in Iraq’s once tranquil south transpired in a manner unanticipated by the Iraqi government. To the contrary, the Iraqi state, in a way unlikely just last year, directed the narrative of the violence – further testament that the new U.S.-Iraqi counterinsurgency strategy of ’07-’08 has been fruitful.
No doubt Gen. Petraeus would have preferred the Iraqis to concentrate on al Qaeda’s last urban bastion, Mosul, prior to addressing the militia enclave in Basra. And perhaps finishing off al Qaeda at last would have been the smart move, militarily. But it should not be overlooked that Nouri Maliki, who was once considered politically dependant on Muqtada al Sadr’s followers, finally displayed the kind of nonsectarian forcefulness we have been waiting to see from him – even if the timing was not necessarily advantageous for domestic political consumption here at home.
In traveling to Basra himself, and in bringing his war team with him, Mr. Maliki proved he’s not simply a “Green Zone politician.” In confronting instrumentalities of Iran, and in doing so without requiring U.S. ground support and against the immediate wishes of Gen. Petraeus, he has shown he is a marionette of neither.
Furthermore, we should shatter the pseudo-legend of Muqtada al Sadr. He may be a problem, but he is less of a problem today than he was yesterday. It would be a mistake to grant Sadr undue influence over his militia. This is not to say that the hefty and sweaty warlord is anything less than a murderous thug. He is. It constituted a severe lack of political courage in not arresting him back in 2004, when he was trivial, prior to his ’05-’06 glory days of sectarian ethnic cleansing and poisoning Iraq’s infant polity.
But we would be in error if we considered his “rule” over his militiamen to be singular or absolute. Quite the opposite; since the buildup of forces in early ’07 – when Sadr feebly declared a ceasefire and fled the battlefield to “study” in Iran – U.S. and Iraqi troops have quietly infiltrated and dissipated his once-terrifying JAM army. Last month, a downtrodden Sadr declared to Iraq’s Asharq al Awsat newspaper that he had “failed” as a leader. By most accounts, his masters in Iran agree; they have given up on him.
To undo this failure, the Iranians have dissected JAM into loyalist splinter-cells, the so-called “Special Groups,” composed of, and commandeered by, elite members of Iran’s deadly Quds Force, the external wing of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. The Quds network in Iraq (the Ramazan Corps) runs out of the Ramazan Command Center in Tehran.
The Ramazan Corps controls the Qazali and Shebaini terrorist cells and the various Special Groups within JAM (amongst other surrogates). Last year, the Iranian mullahs trifurcated the Ramazan Corps’ authority into the Nasr Command (operating out of the Iranian town of Marivan, concentrating on Iraq’s Diyala province), the Zafar Command (operating out of the Iranian town of Mehran, concentrating on Baghdad and surrounding Iraqi cities), and the Fajr Command (operating out of Iranian military bases in Khorramshahr and Shalamcheh to direct attacks in, and smuggle oil out of, Basra).
What happened in Basra is a microcosm of a much larger movement; an internal power struggle not between the two different Shi’a factions (those pro-Sadr and those pro-Maliki) as the media is telling us, but within the Sadrist movement and within the JAM militia more specifically. It is a fight between Iraqi Shi’ites who simply got caught up in wrong crowd – and now, in acknowledging the futility of their efforts, want exoneration from the Iraqi state – and between the Special Groups, more serious and focused militiamen killing under the auspices of the Iranian Quds Force and Ramazan Corps.
Even the feared “Mr. X,” a mysterious mafia-like JAM chief once wanted by the U.S., has now reached out to Captain Tim Wright’s Delta Company to begin a working partnership against the more extremist Iranian officers and Iranian-backed guerrillas within JAM. This is an opening Maliki should exploit, and he is.
Western press reports have labeled this Basra skirmish an embarrassment for Prime Minister Maliki and a triumph for the exiled Sadr. Well-connected Iraqi journalists like Nibras Kazimi, on the other hand, tell a different story; one where Maliki, once reliant on Sadr’s Shi’ite brethren, had to be coerced by his cabinet not to smash and snuff out the Sadrist movement from Iraqi politics for good.
It seems, as it were, the Maliki administration opted for a more docile approach. A deal was allegedly cut, whereby the Sadrist hierarchs agreed to a ceasefire with Baghdad, and in return named the violent rogues within JAM for the Iraqi central government to arrest. In the days following the supposed “defeat” for Mr. Maliki, 155 JAM guerrillas in Basra, who dishonored or planned to dishonor the ceasefire, were arrested by the Iraqi military (215 had been killed). Harith al Athari, one of the Sadrist spokesmen, complained of “random arrests and raids… this is in violation of what has been agreed upon.” (Mr. Athari was apparently not privy to the terms of the deal.)
Much still has yet to be sorted out. I have been wrong before, and it will take some time until the long-term ramifications of this skirmish in Basra are fully known. But thus far we know that Mr. Maliki is not a man who suffers fools gladly. He is willing to jeopardize his future, political fortunes, and life, to challenge a radical and illegal entity within his sect, within his party bloc, and supported by his Iranian neighbors.
This unexpected self-styled assertiveness by Mr. Maliki came as a total surprise, not only to me, but for wannabe leaders like Dr. Ibrahim al Jaafari and Dr. Iyad Allawi, who are now reconsidering their prospects in Iraq’s elections next year. The Basra display sent shockwaves throughout Iraq’s political spectrum, and it puts the Iraqis in a much stronger position, militarily and politically, if they ever so choose to take the drastic step Maliki was reportedly close to taking in outlawing the Sadrists not just as a militia, but as a party.
An unknown two years ago, Maliki became an accidental compromise choice for prime minister by the major elected Iraqi parties. Today, after confronting the JAM militia – the mere thought of which would have seemed unimaginable just last year – and in doing so while preventing violent outbreaks in Najaf, Karbala, Kut, Hillah, and Diwaniyah; in doing so while keeping Baghdad under control; in doing so without ground support from the U.S. or prior approval from Central Command; in doing so with so few Iraqi military casualties, while garnering a favorable and peaceful alternative in the aftermath of curtailed hostilities, I think it is fair to say many depictions as to what transpired in Basra are overblown and inaccurate.
I never did understand the MSM narrative that Sadr’s stand-down was somehow a victory for Sadr and a defeat for Maliki and us.
It was absurd on its face. Ten years ago it might have worked.
Even the feared “Mr. X,” a mysterious mafia-like JAM chief once wanted by the U.S., has now reached out to Captain Tim Wright’s Delta Company to begin a working partnership against the more extremist Iranian officers and Iranian-backed guerrillas within JAM. This is an opening Maliki should exploit, and he is.
The Leftist Media is working hard at finding only negative stories....Here is a discussion of one report from the McClatchy Papers:
McClatchey Misreports Iraq War Report
******************************EXCERPT*********************
At least the AP isn’t alone in its bias and misreporting. Jonathan Landay and John Walcott from the tabloid news organization McClatchey ran a story via The Miami Herald that took a report about the Iraq war and omitted some key facts to make it appear as the Iraq War is a debacle today:
The war in Iraq has become ”a major debacle” and the outcome ”is in doubt” despite improvements in security from the buildup in U.S. forces, according to a highly critical study published Thursday by the Pentagon’s premier military educational institute.
The report released by the National Defense University raises fresh doubts about President Bush’s projections of a U.S. victory in Iraq just a week after Bush announced that he was suspending U.S. troop reductions.
The report carries considerable weight because it was written by Joseph Collins, a former senior Pentagon official, and was based in part on interviews with other former senior defense and intelligence officials who played roles in prewar preparations. It was published by the university’s National Institute for Strategic Studies [SWJ Note: Institute for National Strategic Studies], a Defense Department research center…
What key facts did it omit? The fact that the report was about the years 2002-2004, not today. The Small Wars Journal decided to do some journalism (something these two reporters failed to do) and contact the author of the report, Joseph Collins:
The Miami Herald story (”Pentagon Study: War is a ‘Debacle’ “) distorts the nature of and intent of my personal research project. It was not an NDU study, nor was it a Pentagon study. Indeed, the implication of the Herald story was that this study was mostly about current events. Such is not the case. It was mainly about the period 2002-04. The story also hypes a number of paragraphs, many of which are quoted out of context. The study does not “lay much of the blame” on Secretary Rumsfeld for problems in the conduct of the war, nor does it say that he “bypassed the Joint Chiefs of Staff.” It does not single out “Condoleeza Rice and Stephen Hadley” for criticism.
Here is a fair summary of my personal research, which formally is NDU INSS Occasional Paper 5, “Choosing War: The Decision to Invade Iraq and Its Aftermath.”
This study examines how the United States chose to go to war in Iraq, how its decision-making process functioned, and what can be done to improve that process. The central finding of this study is that U.S. efforts in Iraq were hobbled by a set of faulty assumptions, a flawed planning effort, and a continuing inability to create security conditions in Iraq that could have fostered meaningful advances in stabilization, reconstruction, and governance. With the best of intentions, the United States toppled a vile, dangerous regime but has been unable to replace it with a stable entity. Even allowing for progress under the Surge, the study insists that mistakes in the Iraq operation cry out in the mid- to long-term for improvements in the U.S. decision-making and policy execution systems.
The study recommends the development of a national planning charter, improving the qualifications of national security planners, streamlining policy execution in the field, improving military education, strengthening the Department of State and USAID, and reviewing the tangled legal authorities for complex contingencies. The study ends with a plea to improve alliance relations and to exercise caution in deciding to go to war.
What is it with reporters today? They find something that they can spin into a “sky is falling” type story on Iraq and they forget to do any sort of journalism at all?
The article above is excellent and a must read for those who know there really is a war on terror going on. The Miami Herald report, luckily, was not picked up by the rest of the MSM because, I assume, the rest of them were not so dumb as to not notice the dates of the publication.
bttt
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