A Second Hand Conjecture

Bret Stephens of the Wall Street Journal is a frustrating columnist. In April he made the head scratching argument that Khost province in Afghanistan, which has, along with the rest of RC-East, experienced a 36% jump in insurgent attacks over last year, was really on the verge of victory and only John Kerry says otherwise.

Today he writes that FARC, the LTTE, and the Sadr militia are really the same because they were defeated militarily. He of course ignores the very salient fact that neither are alike at all and each required completely different tactics to weaken. The Sadrists have been quelled through concerted American-backed military action in a warzone; the Tamil Tigers were undermined by decades of systematic police and intelligence work before the latest of many military forays to the north of Sri Lanka, most of which had failed (according to some excellent research by RAND scholar C. Christine Fair). And FARC? FARC has been around for 30 years, wholly impervious to our best efforts to undermine it militarily. FARC is weakened now because of political and economic changes. Not the military.

But Stephens feels comfortable spending a week strutting around a few disparate FOBs in Afghanistan, then declaring victory. So I don’t really take what he has to say at face value… or any value at all. But his column is a textbook example of what happens when you really love your hammer—everything looks like a nail.

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Interesting if true…

Alseyed Josef Alsadar a member of the honored Sadar family wrote a letter to Alrafedain news which said: ‘Muqtada Alsadar has tainted the reputation of this respected family, and the family disowns Muqtada. We are as innocent of him as the wolf is of the blood of Josef (Biblical (Old Testament I believe) and Koranic reference). The family is working on ways to discipline him with in the family. Consultation for this are held at the highest level to come up with punishments for its rogue son.

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This will be good news if it happens…

http://hotair.com/archives/2008/04/07/sadrs-political-universe-continues-to-shrink/

Iraq’s major Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish parties have closed ranks to force anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr to disband his Mahdi Army militia or leave politics, lawmakers and officials involved in the effort said Sunday.

Such a bold move risks a violent backlash by al-Sadr’s Shiite militia. But if it succeeds it could cause a major realignment of Iraq’s political landscape.

The first step will be adding language to a draft election bill banning parties that operate militias from fielding candidates in provincial balloting this fall, the officials and lawmakers said. The government intends to send the draft to parliament within days and hopes to win approval within weeks.

“We, the Sadrists, are in a predicament,” lawmaker Hassan al-Rubaie said Sunday. “Even the blocs that had in the past supported us are now against us and we cannot stop them from taking action against us in parliament.”

And it looks like Sadr is reading the writing on the wall…

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080407/wl_nm/iraq_dc_23

Iraqi Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr will consult senior religious leaders and disband his Mehdi Army militia if they instruct him to, a senior aide said on Monday.

The surprise announcement was the first time Sadr has proposed dissolving the Mehdi Army, one of the principle actors in Iraq’s five-year-old conflict and the main opponent of U.S. and Iraqi forces during a recent upsurge in fighting.

It came on the day Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, in a television interview, ordered the Mehdi Army to disband or Sadr’s followers would be excluded from Iraqi political life.

Senior aide Hassan Zargani said Sadr would seek rulings from Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq’s most senior Shi’ite cleric, as well as senior Shi’ite clergy based in Iran, on whether to dissolve the Mehdi Army, and would obey their orders.

That effectively puts the militia’s fate in the hands of the ageing and reclusive Sistani, a cleric revered by all of Iraq’s Shi’ite factions and whose edicts carry the force of Islamic law, but who almost never intervenes in politics.

“Moqtada al-Sadr has ordered his offices in Najaf and Qom to form a delegation to visit Sistani in Najaf and (other leaders) in Qom to discuss the disbanding of the Mehdi Army,” Zargani told Reuters.

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Fred and Kimberly Kagan have a decent analysis of what we do and don’t know about the situation in Iraq.

Just the highlights (as I see them)

Do Know

* The legitimate Government of Iraq and its legally-constituted security forces launched a security operation against illegal, foreign-backed, insurgent and criminal militias serving leaders who openly call for the defeat and humiliation of the United States and its allies in Iraq and throughout the region. We can be ambivalent about the political motivations of Maliki and his allies, but we cannot be ambivalent about the outcome of this combat between our open allies and our open enemies.

* The Sadrists and Special Groups failed to set Iraq alight despite their efforts–Iraqi forces kept the Five Cities area (Najaf, Karbala, Hillah, Diwaniyah, and Kut) under control with very little Coalition assistance; Iraqi and Coalition forces kept Baghdad under control.

* Sadr never moved to return to Iraq, ordered his forces to stop fighting without achieving anything, and further demonstrated his
dependence on (and control by) Iran.

Don’t Know

* What was his (Maliki) precise aim? He continually spoke about fighting “criminal elements,” but then issued an ultimatum for the disarmament of all JAM (a task clearly beyond the means of the forces he sent to Basra).

* Did Maliki accept a deal with Sadr in return for his stand-down order and, if so, what was involved? We know what Sadr’s demands were (at least publicly), but he ordered his forces to stop fighting before Maliki publicly accepted his terms.

Read the rest…

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Let’s see, the Mahdi Army is in retreat, and the ISF is continuing operations, and sending reinforcements.

Isn’t it OBVIOUS that Maliki is loosing.

Update -

This puts things into perspective…

Mission accomplished has been duly declared, although the JAM in Basra remains apparently intact and raids are still ongoing to seize some of the weapons whose surrender was the accomplishment the mission was aimed at. I’ve given up trying to figure out who won, a conclusion I reached when I found myself nodding along with this theory that Sadr’s actually in cahoots with Maliki to target the “rogue” JAM units who are operating essentially as renegades but under the Mahdi Army banner.

Read the whole thing…

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