Moqtada al-Sadr orders Iraq PM out of Basra

Telegraph UK ^ | 2:53am GMT 27/03/2008 | Damien McElroy, Foreign Affairs Correspondent

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

The Iraqi cleric Moqtada al-Sadr has demanded that the country's prime minister leave Basra where he is overseeing a military operation to purge the southern city of its radical Shi'ite militiamen.

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  Relations between Sadr and Nouri al-Maliki have deteriorated sharply as the two men clashed over fighting between Iraqi forces and gunmen in Sadrist communities in Iraq.

  
  An Iraqi man carries the body of his son, who was killed during clashes in Basra, during a funeral, while militia loyal to Moqtada al-Sadr guards a street in the city
  
  

  Mr Maliki gave followers of Sadr and other Shi'ite gunmen 72 hours to surrender their weapons and renounce violence or bear the brunt of a military crackdown.

  "We are not going to chase those who hand over their weapons within 72 hours," said Mr Maliki. "If they do not surrender their arms, the law will follow its course."

  A spokesman for Sadr said his movement had appealed to Mr Maliki to reduce tensions in the city by returning to Baghdad and sending a parliamentary delegation to seek an end to fighting.

  Liwa Sumaysim, a spokesman for Sadr said: "Sadr has asked prime minister Maliki to leave Basra and to send a parliamentary delegation to resolve the crisis in the city."

[reagan_fanatic]

[TXnMA]

"That boy’s in dire need of an a$$ whuppin."

Looooong overdue...

[cookcounty]

Good. The final battle is beginning.

[Sergeant Tim]

Stop breathing.

Now, pull the trigger straight back slowly with ever increasing pressure; the rifle going off should surprise you.

[1Old Pro]

time for al-Sadr to meet his virgins.

[Sergeant Tim]

"time for al-Sadr to meet his virgins."

I pity the goats.

[naturalized]

Offtopic: I have read that the end of this scene was unscripted, that Ford was sick that day, and that the look on his face saying that he was tired and not going to jack with this guy was genuine.

[ichabod1]

Just because US Americans may not have access to maps and can’t find places like the South Africa and Th’Iraq.

[gleeaikin]

And our CIA lost the maps they had of Tora Bora, when we were helping them against the Russians.

[SoldierDad]

In dire need of having a MOAB dropped on his head.

[xzins]

Al Sadr knows that he needs the surge to look like it’s failing if the democrats are to win in the fall. He needs the democrats to win, so they’ll be forced to pull out of Iraq in 90 days as both Obama/Hillary claim they will do.

He needs that to happen so chaos will reign. He thinks that he has a good shot of winning either control of Iraq or control of Shi’iteland in a civil war.

He’s right.

My guess is that he will die...it’s part of Maliki’s best solution.

[pgkdan]

Al Maliki needs to see that Mooki meets a quick demise and then be prepared to be brutal and put down any uprising by the Shi-ites as soon as they arise. Show no mercy. That’s all these pigs understand. The more we and the Iraqi’s talk and negotiate the weaker we seem to them.

[Pistolshot]

.....country's prime minister leave Basra where he is overseeing a military operation....

You folks have missed THE most important part of this story.

Nouri al-Maliki is Shi'ite also.

This is about law and order, and the Iraqi government instituting it. It's not about Sunni or Shi'ite, or Kurd. This battle will determine where stability in Iraq will head, into chaos, or representative government.

The most important part of this story, is the Iraqi Army is doing all the fighting.

[Moose4]

Calling al-Sadr a “cleric” is like calling Jeremiah Wright a “respected mainstream religious scholar.” Mookie isn’t a “cleric.” He’s Tony Montana with a turban. He’s the Iraqi version of Tookie Williams, a gangster street punk who just happened to have a famous, respected father who WAS a “cleric” killed in opposition to Saddam.

The biggest single mistake we’ve made in five years in Iraq was not causing Mookie al-Badteeth to assume room temperature the first time he stepped out of line.

}:-)4

[fishergirl]

“time for al-Sadr to meet his virgins.” UGH! Poor virgins! (You’re right, of course, he should’ve met them a long time ago.)

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Updates :

Iraq's Maliki says will fight militia "to the end" ( Showdown in Basra)

[RightWhale]

Be out of town by sundown or I will bust your little jail wide open!

[ArrogantBustard]

the rifle going off should surprise you.

The bullet passing through Mookie's skull will definitely surprise the Sadrists hanging around with him.

Mookie himself will never know what hit him.

Gotta love bullets that stay supersonic all the way to the target.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

I need to review some of my wild west movies,....I have fond memories of Cowboys and Indians.....watched with popcorn...

[LaurenD]

“The stupidity continues.”

The stupidity continues alright. I still have not ever been given a good answer as to how it can be that Iraq has always been a secular nation, if during their elections, not one secularist leader won a single seat. When they got a chance to vote, they voted to put in a bunch of Islamic clerics. That alone blows a hole the size of the Grand Canyon in the theory that Iraq is a secular country by nature of the people there. It makes far more sense that the sectarian conflicts were contained under Sadam, just as we have been trying to contain them since he was taken out. It blows a hole in the theory that most of the violence is because of outsiders coming into Iraq unless of course they were the only ones or mostly the ones that voted.

This is what happens when you go to war in a country with the goal of making things better for the people there, rather than to conquer it so it is rendered incapable of harming your own people.

There has only been one successful counter-insurgency in modern times (and by modern I mean since gun powder) and that was accomplished with brutal force. The British Colony of Malaya is the only one and while they did not kill every last person, they used the kind of brutality we could never get away with now. They separated people and put them in internment camps for one.

Back in the old, old, days insurgencies were easy to put down because they just killed every last person in the insurgency, took over their land and had their own people take over the place. That’s not what I’m advocating as a goal of warfare obviously. Just pointing out that there are those who believe this can work and those who believe it can’t but the history of warfare shows it never has without using far more brutal force than we ever will now.