[Marxism] Iraqi Army Takes Last Basra Areas From Sadr Force: Iran calls Sadr forces "outlaws"

["Mike Friedman" <mikedf@xxxxxxxx>]

Iraqi Army Takes Last Basra Areas From Sadr Force
Khaldoon Zubeir/Getty Images

By JAMES GLANZ and ALISSA J. RUBIN
Published: April 20, 2008

BAGHDAD ? Iraqi soldiers took control of the last bastions of the cleric
Moktada al-Sadr?s militia in Basra on Saturday, and Iran?s ambassador to
Baghdad strongly endorsed the Iraqi government?s monthlong military
operation against the fighters.

By Saturday evening, Basra was calm, but only after air and artillery
strikes by American and British forces cleared the way for Iraqi troops to
move into the Hayaniya district and other remaining Mahdi Army militia
strongholds and begin house-to house searches, Iraqi officials said. Iraqi
troops were meeting little resistance, said Maj. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf,
the spokesman for the Iraqi Interior Ministry in Baghdad.

Despite the apparent concession of Basra, Mr. Sadr issued defiant words on
Saturday night. In a long statement read from the loudspeakers of his Sadr
City Mosque, he threatened to declare ?war until liberation? against the
government if fighting against his militia forces continued.

But it was difficult to tell whether his words posed a real threat or were
a desperate effort to prove that his group was still a feared force,
especially given that his militia?s actions in Basra followed a pattern
seen again and again: the Mahdi militia battles Iraqi government troops to
a standstill and then retreats.

Why his fighters have clung to those fight-then-fade tactics is unknown.
But American military and civilian officials have repeatedly claimed that
Mahdi Army units trained and equipped by Iran had played a major role in
the unexpectedly strong resistance that government troops met in Basra.

Whether to counter those allegations or simply because, as many Iraqis
have recently speculated, Mr. Sadr?s stock has recently fallen in Iranian
eyes, the Iranian ambassador, Hassan Kazemi Qumi, on Saturday expressed
his government?s strong support for the Iraqi assault on Basra. He even
called the militias in Basra ?outlaws,? the same term that Prime Minister
Nuri Kamal al-Maliki has used to describe them.

?The idea of the government in Basra was to fight outlaws,? Mr. Qumi said.
?This was the right of the government and the responsibility of the
government. And in my opinion the government was able to achieve a
positive result in Basra.?

Strikingly, however, Ambassador Qumi simultaneously condemned American-led
operations against the Mahdi Army in the Shiite enclave of Sadr City,
where major new clashes broke out on Saturday. He said the American-backed
fighting in that densely populated district was causing only civilian
casualties rather than achieving any positive result.

?The American insistence on coming and having a siege on a couple of
million people in one area and striking them with warplanes and shelling
them randomly ? many innocent people will be killed through this
operation,? Mr. Qumi said. ?The result of this operation will be the
sabotage and destruction of buildings, and many people will leave their
homes.?

The events in Basra, in contrast with the Mahdi Army?s continued fighting
in Sadr City, renewed questions about where the Sadrist movement stands in
Iraq?s unstable political landscape. While his faction has often played
the spoiler in Baghdad?s Shiite political structure, his followers also
represent the poor and disenfranchised, who were battered under Saddam
Hussein, making it difficult for the government to write them off.

In his statement on Saturday, Mr. Sadr seemed to be claiming the moral
high ground despite having to cede territory in Basra. He compared the
Iraqi government to that of Saddam Hussein and said that the government
had become the enemy along with Sunni extremists and the Americans.

?You are using the politics of Saddam and his followers when he banned the
Friday Prayer and displaced women and children; when he created divisions
among groups of Iraqis; and used the politics of assassination,? the
statement said. ?If you do not stop we will announce a war until
liberation.?

Still, at one point he sounded an almost plaintive note, saying, ?This
government has forgotten that we are their brothers and were part of
them.?

The combination of the Iranian ambassador?s stance and the retreat of
militia fighters in Basra may give fuel to accusations by some American
and Sunni Arab officials that Iran has taken a powerful and increasingly
open role in Iraqi politics.

Mr. Maliki?s abrupt assault on Basra last month has been widely criticized
as being poorly planned. But it is believed to have been encouraged by the
Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, a crucial element of his governing
coalition. Many members of the armed wing of the council, called the Badr
Organization, joined the government?s security forces early in the Iraq
conflict, and have been battling the Sadr-led forces. Mr. Sadr?s political
movement is also an important rival of the Supreme Council.

Because leaders of the council and its armed wing spent years and
sometimes decades in exile in Iran during Saddam Hussein?s regime, it was
assumed that the silence of the Badr Organization during the Basra
offensive indicated that Iran had given at least tacit approval for the
move.




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