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calendar   Sunday - February 25, 2007

The Third Wheel In Iraq

OK, what’s up with this porky pig looking towel head? First he disappears to Iran when US troops start arriving in Baghdad and beginning to work on getting things under control. Then his aids say he wasn’t in Iran but was still in Iraq. No one knows for sure where Porky is but he has suddenly started reining in his militia.

The US wants the Iraqi leader, Al-Maliki (a loser if ever I saw one) to apply pressure to Sadr to disband his army altogether but Maliki needs Sadr’s support from his fellow Shiites. Meanwhile, the Mad Mullahs are supplying Shiite insurgents in Iraq with armor-piercing explosives and .50 caliber long-range rifles for snipers - all to be used to kill American troops. This has got to be the biggest cluster f**k I have ever seen and Sadr is at the center of it.

The solution? Take out Sadr and close the border with Iran. Shoot anyone trying to cross into Iraq. And get rid of Maliki and put someone in charge with some balls (and brains). I hope General Petraeus is listening ...

Iraq Rebel Cleric Reins In Militia; Motives at Issue
BAGHDAD (NY TIMES) - February 25, 2007

imageimageMoktada al-Sadr, the radical Shiite cleric and founder of the Mahdi Army militia, discovered recently that two of his commanders had created DVDs of their men killing Sunnis in Baghdad. Documents suggested that they had received money from Iran.

So he suspended them and stripped them of power, said two Mahdi leaders in Sadr City, the heart of Mr. Sadr’s support here in the capital.

But did he do so as part of his cooperation with the new security plan for Baghdad, which aims to quell the sectarian violence tormenting the city? Because his men had been disloyal, taking orders from Iran, whose support he values but whose control he fights? Or was it just for show — the act of an image-conscious leader who grasped the risk of graphic videos and wanted to stave off direct American action against him?

Mr. Sadr has been the great destabilizer in Iraq since 2003, wielding power on the streets and in the ruling Shiite bloc, thwarting the Americans and playing out at least a temporary alliance with Iran.  With the new security plan for Iraq under way, every question about Mr. Sadr’s motives touches on a different facet of Iraq’s complicated struggle.

He now finds himself under pressure from several sources. One is his popular Shiite base, which demands protection from devastating Sunni attacks. Another is Iran, with which he has had long but difficult ties. Then there are renegade factions of his own militia that resent his move into the political mainstream.

Finally, the Americans, who have accused Iran of supplying Shiite militias, including Mr. Sadr’s, with an especially deadly roadside bomb known as an explosively formed projectile, or E.F.P, which has killed an increasing number of American soldiers.

It is not clear whether the Americans will move directly against him. The United States has demanded that the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki act forcefully against the Mahdi Army; Mr. Maliki, however, owes much of his political strength in the ruling Shiite coalition to Mr. Sadr’s backing.

For now, American and Iraqi officials say Mr. Sadr seems to be cooperating with the effort to pacify Baghdad, ordering his men not to fight even as American armored vehicles roll into Mahdi strongholds in eastern Baghdad. He seems to be cleaning house of fighters who could taint him by association with Iran or with death squad killings. His aides say he has called for a sectarian truce. “Moktada al-Sadr said to protect your clerics, protect your shrines and cooperate with the government,” said Hazim al-Araji, head of the Sadr office in western Baghdad. “So no actions have been taken.”

In perhaps his boldest move yet, Mr. Sadr has assisted the joint Iraqi-American campaign against parts of his militia, signaling whom to arrest and telling others to flee, said two Mahdi commanders and a Shiite politician in Baghdad. On his own, they said, Mr. Sadr has “frozen” more than 40 commanders, including about 20 with links to Iran.

The moves are part of an organizational overhaul, the Sadr aides said. Though Mr. Sadr’s whereabouts are unknown — the Americans say he is in Iran, which his aides and Iran dispute — a new Mahdi general for all of Baghdad has been appointed for the first time, they said. Mr. Sadr has also selected new commanders for east and west Baghdad.

Some of the Sadr aides and commanders who described Mr. Sadr’s recent moves during separate interviews in Najaf and Baghdad refused to give their names, saying they had not been authorized to speak and feared reprisals from current or former members of the militia.

They said the cleric allowed the arrests of members of his own militia, or suspended them himself, because evidence showed that they had not obeyed his orders and because he wanted to show Iran, American officials and his militia that he was a strong leader who must be respected and feared.

“He wants to prove to the people that he has full control of his militia,” said a 47-year-old Mahdi commander from Sadr City who referred to himself as Jabar Abdul al-Hahdi. “He wants to show he’s in charge.”

Mr. Sadr’s conflicted relationship with Iran mirrors Iraq’s. Each country’s majority Shiites revere the other’s clerics and visit the other’s religious shrines. But they speak different languages, are dominated by different ethnic groups, and fought each other in a long war in the 1980s.

- More ...


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Posted by The Skipper   United States  on 02/25/2007 at 07:58 AM   
Filed Under: • Iraq •  
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