Breaking - Najaf Curfew Follows Sadr Aide's Assassination

By Cernig

It looks like someone isn't content to use government forces alone to go after Muqtada alSadr's people, and the Shiite might just be about to hit the fan.

Iraqi police imposed a curfew to prevent an outbreak of violence in the southern Shi'ite holy city of Najaf on Friday, after a senior aide to anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr was shot dead.

Police set up road blocks and drove through the city with loudspeakers ordering shops closed and people off the streets after Riyadh al-Nuri, a top Sadr aide whose sister is married to the cleric's brother, was gunned down.

Sadr blamed the United States and the U.S.-backed Iraqi government for the slaying.

"This is the hand of the occupier and his successor reaching out traitorously and aggressively against our precious martyr," the cleric said in a statement. "It is my vow that I will not forget this precious blood."

Dozens of angry followers gathered at Shi'ite Islam's main cemetery in the holy city to bury Riyadh.

In a speech to mourners, Sadr aide Abdul-Hadi al-Mohammedawi quoted the cleric as saying followers should remain "calm and not to drift into strife".

...Maliki has threatened to exclude Sadr's movement from participating in provincial elections later this year unless he disbands his militia and turns over weapons.

But in a Mehdi Army statement read over loudspeakers in Sadr City mosques on Thursday night, the militia was defiant.

"They want us to disarm, but they are seeking to take away the dignity and honour of the Iraqi people," it said. "They want to turn Iraq into another Palestine, but we say to the tyrants that we will not abandon our weapons."

Sadr's call to "not drift into strife" may well be a call to his followers not to react piecemeal and thus invite defeat in detail. The most obvious candidates for the hit job on his aide are his Badr Brigade rivals, who have widely penetrated the Interior Ministry troops and the Iraqi Army.

Meanwhile,  a Badr/ISCI statement that Grand Ayatollah Sistani has called upon the Mahdi army
to give in weapons to the government is being uncritically accepted by pro-occupation pundits like Bill Roggio. That version of Sistani's view on the current Shia-on-Shia violence contrasts sharply with an earlier sadrist statement that said Sistani had backed them and said the JAM shouldn't hand over its weapons. But neither statement actually came from Sistani, his direct aides or his office. I've a strong feeling Juan Cole was right a few days ago when he wrote, essentially, that Sistani had sat on the fence and told both sides to sort it out. Both are now claiming his backing.

Sistani has been in the past the "cat herder" who has defused such situations and with no definitive pronouncement from him the situation could dissolve into even more anarchic tit-for-tat violence very quickly now. Events in basra recently and even those of last few days, with airstrikes and rocket attacks in Baghdad killing close to 100 people, look like just the prelude to the main event. Not good.

Update The WaPo adds this:

[T]he Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council controls the security services in Najaf. Sadrist officials said al-Nouri was slain about 300 yards from a security checkpoint but that it took police about 10 minutes to respond to the sounds of gunfire.

Not good at all.

Maliki has called the assassination a "savage crime" and ordered an investigation "to pursue and arrest the killers," while President Talibani says it's an attempt "to destabilize the country" and encourage "fighting among brothers in religion." I smell a move to blame AQI for what was probably a hit by the Badr Brigade, quite possibly by their members within the Security Forces. Iraqi government official investigations, however, always find exactly what the Iraqi government wants them to find.

Comments

[courtneyme109]

Badr Corps? YAWN. How about the Iran's Praetorian Fanboys in the Revo Guard?

"According to Ibrahim Yazdi, once a top adviser to the late Ayatollah Khomeini, the "Basra Plan" was devised as a compromise. The ayatollah wanted the war with Iraq to continue until the fall of Baghdad, after which he hoped his armies would march on Jerusalem. His advisers, including Yazdi, knew that Iran could not win such a war and tried to placate him by offering him Basra."

Since Mookie's chief minion was the 'reasonable one' the cat who always cried 'cease fire', 'restraint' etc - a better case could be made that the newly eclipsing IRRGC decided to grant him instant, easy access to the perfumed gardens of Paradise.

http://www.nypost.com/seven/03312008/postopinion/opedcolumnists/the_basra_battle__signs_of_iran_104323.htm?page=0

[Steve Hynd]

Coutney, citing the serial fabulist Amir Taheri doesn't go anywhere. Don't you remember his infamous "yellow stars" fairy tale? That the NY Post is still publishing stuff by Taheri leavesa the paper itself totally devoid of credibility.

Regards, C

[courtneyme109]

Reckon al asharq (largest english Daily in the ME) or the Gulf News are rags too? They carry the guy.

Aside from Taheri - the fact remains Iran tried for 6 years to capture Basra way back in the last millenium at a horrible cost (despite 100's of K's of Besijis, plastic keys and the careful shepherding of IRRGC's - like Tehran's latest headknocker Radan) and never grabbed it.

The fact that Iraq publically blames nearly everyone but the IRRGC is (this part of the world) significant.

A better case could still be made (sans Bodansky, Taheri etc al) that the mullahs or the Revo Guards tried to stick their bloody finegrs into sweetly oiled pies - and drew back a nub.

[Steve Hynd]

Courtney,

Al arshaq is a wholly-owned mouthpiece of the Saudi royal family. GDN syndicates all kinds of rubbish from both Left and Right in the US. No prize for those, I'm afraid.

"A better case could still be made (sans Bodansky, Taheri etc al) that the mullahs or the Revo Guards tried to stick their bloody finegrs into sweetly oiled pies - and drew back a nub.

Go on then, make it. Be sure to account for why so many ISCI guys are still drawing Qods Force pensions, why the Iranian Officers arrested in Iraq in Dec 06 were arrested at Hakim's compound selling him weapons or why NCIRI says the Maliki government is a wholly owned proxy for Iran, won't you.

Regards, C