IRAQ - WHAT TO DO: DROP THE HAMMER NOW
By RALPH PETERS
The NY Post
April 12, 2004 -- NORTHERN IRAQ
ON Saturday, Iranian agents ambushed an American convoy on the road between Mosul and Akre in Iraq. The attack did not go as planned: Our troops responded sharply, killing two Iranians, wounding a third and capturing two more.
They were carrying their identity documents.
And you haven't heard a word about it. The administration doesn't want to admit how much American blood Teheran has on its hands.
To be absolutely scrupulous, this report comes from a single, if impeccable, regional source. I hope other journalists in Baghdad and Washington will press to verify the incident. The American people have a right to know.
As this column reported last week, the extent of Iranian involvement in the recent revolt goes very deep. The facts that follow have been confirmed by at least two sources exclusive to The Post.
Moqtada al-Sadr is Iran's man in Shi'a Iraq. Several months ago, he slipped across the border to meet with Hezbollah terror chiefs that Teheran had invited from Lebanon. The factions struck a deal to cooperate against the Coalition in Iraq.
Hundreds of Iranian agents and fighters have been confirmed to be in Iran. The actual number is probably in the thousands. They've swelled the ranks of Sadr's "Mahdi Army" and stiffened its backbone.
Nor is Sadr's band of thugs composed entirely of religious radicals, as media reports suggest. The Islamic fanatics are a minority in Sadr's militia.
Sadr began building up his forces immediately after the fall of Baghdad. (If the civilians in the Pentagon didn't have a plan, Sadr did.) The cleric issued a fatwa - which he lacked the authority to do - announcing that looting was acceptable as long as a fifth of the goods or profit was donated to a "religious institution." Guess which one. He enriched his organization and gained recruits from Iraq's underclass and the criminals released en masse by Saddam before he fell.
But those criminals, petty and otherwise, are only the foot-soldiers. As the months went on, Sadr recruited unemployed - and impoverished - Ba'ath Party activists, the old regime's security thugs, survivors of Saddam's Fedayeen and gullible young people (those last being the few who truly believe they're serving a holy cause).
Sadr worked with the Iranians to help them broadly infiltrate the country with Teheran's Revolutionary Guards and intelligence operatives. His Shi'a faction also built bridges to the Sunni insurgents in the cities of central Iraq. Hezbollah took care of the coordination with international terrorists.
The administration knows much - probably all - of this. And more.
When Sadr encouraged his "army" to rise up last week, he thought he was ready. But once again a gangster in search of a throne underestimated G.I. Joe.
Wherever his thugs rose up, our soldiers shut them down. Efficiently, effectively and courageously.
But now, in the face of a Coalition victory, a cancerous danger threatens. President Bush is on the verge of making the same mistake his father made at the end of Desert Storm and that his Pentagon advisers encouraged him to make last year - stopping half-way.
Moqtada Sadr's organization must be destroyed. Sadr must be captured or killed. If he hides in a mosque, go in after him. We're not impressing our enemies with our restraint - they play the religion card as the ace that never fails.
And the parallel operations in the Sunni Triangle must be pursued to the complete subjugation of Fallujah and the defeat of any terrorist who raises a gun.
Our president must make no mistake: Any "settlement," any halt short of the annihilation of the killers who want to destroy the future of Iraq, will be read throughout that troubled country and the greater Islamic world as a resounding victory for the terrorists. They'll be viewed as having defeated the U.S. military, stopping it in its tracks.
Reality is immaterial. In the Middle East, perception trumps facts. Only uncompromising strength impresses our enemies. The president can't afford to listen to the counsels of caution.
Nor can we afford to listen to Arab opinion, as we did in 1991 with disastrous results. Doubtless, Hosni Mubarak, Egypt's "president," will tell Bush to stop the operation in Fallujah during his visit this week.
The apologists for terror are piling on, from the hateful rhetoric of al-Jazeera, which encouraged attacks on Americans all week, to the corrupt sheiks of the Persian Gulf who are responsible for so much of the decline of the Arab soul.
If we do not pursue our enemies unto their deaths while we have the chance, Fallujah will prove to be Bush's Mogadishu. And the forces of global terror will have won again.
Ralph Peters is the author of "Beyond Baghdad: Postmodern War and Peace."
http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/22552.htm From Lebanon:
Fighting Muqtada al-Sadr - and Hizbullah?
By Michael Young
Daily Star staff
Saturday, April 10, 2004
Commentary
As the Bush administration seems to be doing everything right to ensure that its valuable Iraqi experiment fails, there has been growing speculation, both in the media and among analysts, of a possible Hizbullah link to events in Iraq.
On Tuesday, Al-Hayat published a front-page story that indirectly touched on Hizbullah. Citing an Iraqi security source, the paper linked the recent upsurge in violence by followers of Muqtada al-Sadr to the recent expulsion of Iran's charge d'affaires in Baghdad, Hassan Qazemi Qummi, allegedly an officer in Iran's Revolutionary Guards. The paper went on to say that Qummi had been in Lebanon, and noted that the security source "tied this to statements by Muqtada al-Sadr that his movement was an extension of Hizbullah in Lebanon and Hamas in Palestine."
Similar allegations of Iranian involvement are circulating inside Iraq's Governing Council, where, also according Al-Hayat, there is a sense that Iran, other than having influence over Iraqi Shiite politics, is now playing an increasing role on the ground. The newspaper noted that coalition sources tied the recent incident in Fallujah, in which four Americans were burned to death, to the activities of the Sadrists, noting that Iran had a vested interest in keeping the Fallujah front heated up to draw attention away from Iranian infiltration into Iraq.
Such reports, including allegations this week that Revolutionary Guards elements were involved in the Iraqi fighting, may be self-serving. However, American belief in such information may explain why coalition forces decided to attack Sadr at such a sensitive time in the pre-June 30 transfer-of-power process.
For almost a year Sadr was left alone by the US, despite evidence that he was indeed responsible for the murder of Sayyid Abdul Majid al-Khui at or near the Imam Ali mosque in Najaf. Those who opposed arresting him argued it was not time to arouse Shiite hostility. Supporters of the arrest option argued, on the contrary, that Sadr was a thug with little popularity, who had even antagonized Ayatollah Ali Sistani. Moving against him, therefore, would entail minimal costs.
Why, many are now wondering, did the latter group suddenly win out? Some senior Pentagon officials had for some time favored hitting Sadr and his Mahdi Army, and this may have taken on greater urgency in the run-up to the June 30 deadline. Yet on his own Sadr represented little threat to the established order in Iraq. The US, therefore, may have decided to act now because it felt that a critical mass had been reached in terms of Iran's, and Hizbullah's, maneuvering in Iraq.
A number of observers have suggested that Iran may, in fact, be playing all sides. Purportedly, the Revolutionary Guards and Hizbullah are assisting Sadr and the Mahdi Army (though the CIA has said no evidence exists of Hizbullah activity in Iraq); while the Iranian leadership, in particular Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the former president, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, support the Badr Corps of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI). If this information is correct, it would suggest not only that the Iranians are hedging their bets, but also that Hizbullah has made valuable inroads into the Iraqi conflict.
It may also explain why the US decided to move against Sadr, even though a simultaneous two-front war against Shiite and Sunni groups represented a major risk. Perhaps the oddest comment this week was the one suggesting that this situation might lead to civil war. For the moment, Iraqi groups seem united against the Americans. As Shiite reactions following the recent Ashoura bombings showed, it is always preferable to blame the US than to point a finger at Sunni groups.
Amid the turbulence, the US received paradoxical sustenance from an archenemy: Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. In a cassette released earlier this week, the Jordanian, if it was indeed he, claimed
responsibility for a number of past bombings, including that which killed the leader of the SCIRI, Ayatollah Muhammed Baqer al-Hakim, and labeled the Shiites infidels. For a moment, the ecumenical message of Sadr - that his group somehow drew both from the Shiite Hizbullah and the Sunni Hamas - was rendered inconsequential.
The Americans still believe the uprising is a limited affair and that Sunnis and Shiites, at least those that count, will not unite against the US. But they are also wary of the actions of Iran and Hizbullah, who are most alarmed by the prospect of American success in Iraq. Only time will tell if Hizbullah's secretary general, Hassan Nasrallah, is a player there, but it is more than likely that this week's fighting was partly, though not entirely, an effort to ensure he doesn't become one
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=1&categ_id=14&article_id=1954
The NYPost has been doing a very good job lately covering Iran and the regime's connections to Iraq.