Cordesman - Rolling the dice for Iraq’s future

By Cernig

Anthony Cordesman of The Center for Strategic & International Studies writes that the Maliki/Hakim axis ' taking on Sadr's movement is a massive gamble. And he's very clear that any talk of Maliki's gun-point politicking being anything other than taking out ISCI's electoral rival for them is just deliberately ignoring the obvious.

It is becoming clearer and clearer that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s offensive in Basra is more of a power struggle with Sadr than an effort to deal with security, ‘militias,’ and ‘criminals.’ What is far less clear is how this power struggle will play out, and what its implication will be for the US and Iraq as a whole.

There are three options and none of them have a predictable outcome: First, Maliki can win, defeat Sadr’s militia—the Mahdi Army, or Jaish al Mahdi (JAM)—and marginalize the Sadr movement. Second, Maliki can provoke Sadr into open violence and a new form of insurgency. Or, both sides become locked in a lingering intra-Shi’ite power struggle that mixes violence with political power plays.

...Maliki’s effort to suppress the Sadr movement is clear. What is not clear is where Maliki is headed in terms of the overall structure of Shi’ite politics. One can pass over the irony that he obtained the Prime Minister’s office largely because Sadr used the votes of his bloc to give him the position once it became clear that his predecessor Ibrahim al-Jaafari would have to leave office.

This, however, leaves many unanswered questions regarding how Maliki’s break with Sadr have affected the relationships between Maliki, his relatively small Dawa Party, and main Shi’ite party in the country—the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC). There has been a near silence about how Maliki’s faction is interacting with the SIIC faction, led by Abdul Aziz al-Hakim and his son. It is hard to believe that Maliki acted without some arrangement between Dawa and the SIIC, particularly with the prospects of local and provincial elections at the end of this year and national elections in 2009. But this is Iraq, and almost anything is possible.

So far, Maliki seems to have avoided any challenge to the SIIC and the Badr Organization—the supposedly ‘civil’ branch of the SIIC that is its de facto militia. Maliki faces the problem that Dawa Party really does not have a meaningful militia of its own. The SIIC, however, not only still has a de facto militia but it controls some elements of the Iraqi Army and substantial elements of the police at the national and provincial levels.

Maliki seems to have been careful to avoid provoking the other Shi’ite parties in ways that might lead to a violent reaction. While he may talk about ‘militias’ and ‘criminals’ in a broad sense, almost all reporting to date indicates that he has focused almost exclusively on the Sadr militia and the Sadr faction.

And of the three options - win, lose or messy draw - Cordesman believes the outcome will be the latter and that "both sides [will] become locked into a lingering intra-Shi’ite power struggle that mixes violence with political power plays."

The practical problem is that it is much easier to provoke an ideological and political movement with even the most successful tactical attacks than it is to defeat it as a religious and political force. Iraq’s poorer and more religious Shi’ites will not disappear no matter how good the military gains are against the JAM. They will be a major political force in any future elections regardless of whether Sadr survives, Sadrists are allowed to run, or the elections are fair or partly rigged. No one in Iraq goes quietly into that great night.

...Other questions arise as to how Dawa and the SIIC will deal with the US once the elections are held and Britain is effectively gone from the south. It seems likely that they will continue ties to the US and keep their distance from Iran, but it will be much easier for them to play the US off against Iran if Sadr is gone.

...The Sadr movement has already survived being half-defeated on three previous occasions. The special groups can become far more terrorist and general in their targeting. Iran may be able to exploit Shi’ite divisions on a sustained basis, and al Qaeda in Iraq may be able to exploit the government’s need to deal with two fronts.

Other experts agree with Cordesman's analysis. Reidar Visser told Reuters:

"I think the threat should be taken very seriously indeed...The Sadrists represent a strong popular movement with deep roots in Iraqi society, and it is entirely unrealistic to deal with them through military solutions alone."

Which is true of more than just Sadr. No insurgency has ever been defeated while it holds strong grassroots support. Application of military power on its own cannot seperate an insurgency from its support and in fact often strengthens that insurgency when applied haphazardly. We've already seen that in Sunni areas of Iraq where the Awakening, a former insurgency, still holds strong support but has been bribed and cajoled into ending violence rather than defeated militarily. Likewise, Al Qaeda in Iraq destroyed its support by heavy-handed atrocities against the populace who had supported it and is now being defeated primarily by a backlash from those who used to give it shelter.

Unfortunately for Maliki, though,the Sadrist movement not only has strong grassroots support it is also the main provider of humanitarian assistance to its supporters (following the Hezboullah model) while he and his allies are largely seen as Persian elitist interlopers on the Southern Iraqi scene. Neither ISCI or the central government has yet found the ability to deliver what Sadr can without massive US support. In "hearts and minds", as in the military sphere, Maliki will have to rely on the US to fight his battles for him.

One wonders, though, whether the US should be fighting the battles of a leader and his allies who want to turn oil rich Southern Iraq into a de-facto province of Iran. Sadr is actually trying to stop that happening. He has strong ties to Iran but doesn't have thousands of members receiving actual pensions from the IRGC/Qods Force, unlike the ISCI's Badr Brigade. He's more Iraqi nationalist than either Maliki or Hakim. It's just that the US doesn't like his brand of nationalism, which is anti-American. He'd rather be an Iraqi Shiite strongman (a Shiite Saddam, in a sense) than an Iranian proxy, but has found that the enemy of his enemy can be his friend. Maliki and Hakim, on the other hand, have found that the enemy of their sponsor can also be their friend if they make the right noises. Thus their sucking up to the US to get its help in ruling Iraq as long as it takes to partition it (with Kurdish complicity). Mostly this gets ignored by Americans who want to take a far rosier (and jingoistic) view of events in Iraq, out of a natural wish to cheelead for their own country - but even they should be questioning if their country is backing people it should be, by now.

Postscript - and just before I hit publish on this, I realised Eric had been reading Cordesman too.

Comments

[Peter Hofmann]

Good Post, but hey, let`s talk about class.

[Eric Martin]

Well Cernig, I only got the Cordesman links because you're so selfless ;)

[1MaNLan]

Thanks Eric and Cernig...great minds think alike, I guess.

I realize that I need to learn a lot more about Maliki/Dawa and SIIC. I understand that Sadr is using the Hezbollah model effectively, and that his support, especially amongst his traditional base of urban poor has always been strong and remains so. But what model/strategy does Dawa or SIIC use to hold and grow support? Do they even have an identifiable strategy beyond some tribal affiliations and handing out a lot of paychecks? Whatever they are doing, is their model leading to increasing levels of support as compared to (or at the expense of) JAM, or the opposite? It occurs to me that nothing that I have read on the blogs has addressed this angle.

I am wondering what Maliki and company will do to counter the JAM at the social/political levels. I doubt that they think that the military response alone... killing or imprisoning every Sadr supporter they find... will give them "victory" (whatever the hell that means in the Iraqi context) at the end of the day.

Do you guys have any information on this? Anyone you can point me towards? Thanks.

[Cernig]

Hi 1MaN,

I think there's a strong element of Dawa/ISCI doing a Saddam on their fellow Shiites in that they're trying to enforce a strongman dictatorship of a minority elite over the majority by militia bullying at the ballot box and by using their control of the Iraqi military to take out rivals. They all spent their exiles in Iran and thousands of ISCI/Badr Brigade personnel receive pensions from the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. Badr fought against iraq on Iran's behalf during their war and was set up specifically as a counter to the Iranian opposition militia, the MeK/NCIRI. Common Shiites in the South seem to be pretty OK with a united Iraq, by and large, but Dawa and ISCI are trying to enforce a federal partition which could easily pave the way an Anschluss situation with Iran later.

Regards, C

[1MaNLan]

Thanks. I'm trying to absorb this. Saddamism with a shiite federalist face? No "hearts and minds" except perhaps as repositories for electric drills and bullets?

Dawa and SIIC are going to use the Saddam model to suppress their own community? After they wipe out the Sadr organization...that got its start fighting Saddam because of the way that he suppressed their community? That is the kind of irony that can drown a whole community.

[Cernig]

Hi 1MaN,

Remember, it isn't Maliki or Hakim's community. They've not lived on the Iraqi Shiite street in decades and have no personal emotional investment in it. The kind of regime they're used to, from living there as priviliged guests all those years, is the Iranian one - a veneer of democracy over a totalitarian core.

Regards, C

[Eric Martin]

I think that's basically right. ISCI/Dawa's stewardship has been marked by rampant corruption, embezzlement, with freqeuent recourse to patronage to shore up support.

But that's a difficult game to play unless you have a powerful police/military/intelligence apparatus backing it up. They don't really have that. What they have are US/Brit forces.

Interesting role we're playing, huh.

[1MaNLan]

I gather that Maliki is a sort of Shiite Chalabi in the sense that he is rather shady, is beholden to patrons and cronies, comes in from the outside to take on the strongman role, and plays to both US and Iranian interests. Chalabi was not successful in becoming PM, of course (although I think he is still a "player").

Given our pattern of supporing the Saddams, the Chalabis, the Alawis and now, the Malikis of the world, I get the sense that we would support any number of corrupt gorillas as long as they actually get the natives in line, give us those long term bases and let us keep our hands on the oil spigot.

[1MaNLan]

I just realized that Chalabi is also a shiite...was thinking he was Sunni.