...Maybe Not Even A Truce

By Cernig

Moments after I hit "publish" on my last post about Iraqi experts who think the current truce in Basra won't last until the October elections, I came across this report from the London Times that suggests it may already be fracturing.

Nouri al-Maliki, Iraq’s increasingly isolated Prime Minister, claimed yesterday his campaign to stamp out illegal armed groups in Basra had been a “success” despite being forced to sue for peace with al-Mahdi Army militia who fought his men to a standstill.

...Despite a ceasefire agreement with al-Mahdi Army, Mr al-Maliki said his men would still arrest anyone caught illegally carrying guns in public, a move that could trigger renewed clashes.

Harith al-Athari, the leading Sadrist in Basra, said yesterday that al-Mahdi militiamen were being “exposed to random arrests and raids, houses of the members were being burnt. This is in violation of what has been agreed upon.” Another prominent Sadrist, Sheikh Hazim al Arraji, accused the security forces of extrajudicial executions during the recent fighting. He said seven al-Mahdi Army fighters were arrested and shot in Karbala, a shrine city south of Baghdad, and another six were executed in Mahmoudiya, a small town just south of the capital. There was no independent confirmation of the killings.

Sheikh al-Arraji said the Sadrists were still committed to the ceasefire but accused government forces of violations of the tentative truce.

In Sadr City, the crumbling Shia slum where al-Mahdi Army is still the absolute law, an American helicopter fired a missile at gunmen who attacked a US tank, killing six people. Sadr City police said snipers - whom they accused of being American soldiers - opened fire on a funeral procession, killing four people. One of the dead was said to be an old man shot in the forehead as he opened up his shop, another an elderly woman who died after a bullet hit her in the face in a market.

An army spokesman denied the involvement of US troops in the incident, but locals were furious at the shooting. “Moqtada made a peaceful initiative and we listened to him, but it seems the Americans are not listening to reason, they want to fight. We cannot stand it any more, our people are being killed for nothing,” a local tribal leader, Sheikh Abu Zaydan, shouted.

March was the deadliest month for Iraqis since last Summer. "At least 1,247 Iraqis were killed - nearly double the tally for February and the biggest monthly toll since August, when 1,956 people died violently." Maliki and US occupation forces seem determined to continue pressuring Sadr's forces - perhaps still convinced, against all the evidence, that "the ability of the Mahdi Army to resist had been reduced by U.S. military actions as well as by its presumed internal disorganisation" .

But if they need further evidence of who has the weaker faction right now - Sadr or Maliki, then the London Times' tale of Maliki having to ask for his vehicles back might give them a hint.

Despite his vows to tough out the stinging failure of his Basra campaign, Mr al-Maliki hit a plaintive note in a televised address in which he pleaded for captured army vehicles to be returned to his troops.

“We heard that one of the political parties has taken 50 vehicles that belong to the Government,” he said. “By God I will not get out of Basra unless I get them back, no matter what it takes ... I am ready to give cars for all those who have taken government vehicles if they give those cars back, so that we can keep the rule of law.”

A car is even better than a pony!

Comments

[1MaNLan]

Give me a minute here...Apparently, if JAM steals a vehicle and then returns it, then they are entitled to a free vehicle? So, if the Americans hand Iraq back over to Iraqis...then.....they are entitled to a free country. Well, that's even better than double coupons.

[Steve Hynd]

LOL IMaN,

Trouble is, the free country the Bushies would probably decide they were entitled to would be Iran....

Other suggestions on a postcard to: The Bush Foreign Policy team, C/O The AEI, Washington D.C. "No country too small to hype as the next big threat".

Regards, C