Whoever they are, the people who planned and put in motion the onslaught on Basra have yet again dragged themselves into the quicksands of the Sadr movement. If the US vice president, Dick Cheney, fresh from a visit to Baghdad in the days before the biggest troop deployment of the US-trained Iraqi armed forces, doesn’t phone the prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, to demand a hasty retreat, then Iraq is heading for a major uprising.
Maliki, as commander-in-chief, went to Iraq’s second city himself to direct operations against the Sadr movement, at the helm of two armoured divisions and thousands of policemen. Bombardment of neighbourhood strongholds began at midnight on Monday, with British and US planes providing air cover. Maliki gave the Mahdi Army (without naming it) 72 hours to surrender. Within minutes, it became clear that the Mahdi fighters, led by cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, were in no mood to do so. They fought back and tightened their grip - joined by deserters from government forces.
Maliki declared on Thursday that there will be no negotiations and that he was leading the Iraqi forces in a battle to the finish. An elated George Bush gave Maliki his full support - the “kiss of death”, as one Baghdad resident put it. Maliki and British officers strove to portray the Basra operation as the independent decision of the Iraqi government. That was quickly proved to be wishful thinking as US planes flew to the rescue of government forces. Bombing missions included Basra, Hilla, Nassiriya and Baghdad. Hundreds, and, some report, thousands, of people are believed to have been killed or injured.
Within 48 hours of the initial assault, many of Iraq’s southern cities were visibly controlled by the Mahdi Army. More alarmingly still for Maliki’s “charge of the knights” operation, many areas of Baghdad were not only staging protest marches but were evidently controlled by Sadr supporters, joined by various anti-occupation allies.
Yesterday, Maliki was forced to extend the deadline to ten days and to loosen the curfew in Basra to allow access to food and water. He even offered payments to those handing in their arms. He must have been shocked to see how swiftly hundreds of thousands of people answered Sadr’s call to protest the Basra siege. Placards were brandished declaring him “the new dictator”.
A trade union leader in Basra reminded me this week that March was the month in 1991 when Saddam launched his infamous campaign to crush an uprising, which began in Basra and spread to most of the country. This week’s attacks, he said, were much more ferocious that those 17 years ago. There are other disturbing echoes: Saddam’s forces were being observed by US and British planes, which were in full control of Iraqi air space as the March uprising was so brutally crushed.
The scale of the outcry has forced Grand Ayattollah Sistani to call for a peaceful solution to the conflict, even though his various spokespeople initially supported the assault. By Friday, government officials were falling over themselves to get to TV stations to declare that the fighting was not against the Sadr movement at all. With an eye on the sentiment and reality on the streets, some officials even heaped praise on Sadr, insisting the conflict was with “ordinary criminals”.
Many Iraqis are linking what they regard as a premeditated and unprovoked attack on a relatively peaceful city with Cheney’s visit and Washington’s insistence that the US-trained Iraqi armed forces should do more of the ground-fighting, while the occupation forces resort to air attacks and emergency support.
They are also linking it to the fact that oil and dock workers’ unions, declared illegal, are in full control of the ports and the major oil fields. These unions are strongly opposed to the US-backed oil law to privatise the Iraqi industry and allow the major oil companies to control production and marketing. The law is also opposed by the Sadr movement, which was expected to win a decisive victories in forthcoming elections.
Once again, the occupiers have miscalculated the depth of resentment in Iraq. And once again, the occupation is seen by many Iraqis as a divisive force, the root of the bulk of the violence. For most Iraqis, it is the occupation which threatens to ignite civil war. Only an end to the occupation and complete withdrawal can put Iraq on the long and tortuous path of rebuilding its tormented lands.
Sami Ramadani was born in Iraq and became an exile from Saddam Hussein’s regime in 1969, as a result of his political activities in support of democracy and socialism. He opposed the sanctions imposed on the Iraqi people (1991-2003) and the invasion of Iraq (2003). He is active in the movement to end the US-led occupation.
© The Guardian 2008
Basra is all about oil. It what the Iraqis will jointly protect. It will give the US a unified enemy, so all the casualties will be justified. Dien Bien Phu or look out Iran?
Hoa binh
When and if the U.S. forces withdraw from Iraq it will be rightly seen as an admission of very destructive idiocy on the part of The Superpower. Those responsible for it are understandably resistant to making this admission, not to mention forfeiting any chance of controlling the oil.
It’s the occupation, stupid!
It never ceased to amaze me how the Americans consistently fail to make realistic assessments of the political and social facts on the ground in Iraq and, instead, rely on no more than egocentric, wishful thinking. The resultant miscalculations are then followed by more disasters, followed then by more miscalculations, and so on, and so on…
There is a very odd narcissism in American policy in Iraq. It is all about what America is “doing” and how it plays back home. The “surge” supposedly resulted in a temporary drop in violence, and, well, isn’t that nice for everyone nice and safe in the States to hear from their talking heads on the telly.
The problem was that the “surge” had nothing to do with it. Sadr’s cease fire, America paying off the Sunni insurgents not to attack Americans anymore, and wide scale displacement and ethnic cleansing are the reasons the violence temporarily abated. None of the basic conditions that supported the violence ever changed. In fact, Iraq is arguably a more divided, armed, and dangerous powder keg than it was one year ago.
There is no coherent thinking or strategic objective in American Iraq policy that I am aware of. As stupid as it sounds, the reason America is in Iraq right now is because America is in Iraq right now. There is really not much more to it than that.
What a surreal nightmare for those of us who watch and read from a safe distance. What a very real nightmare for the people of Iraq.
anwong - think outside the box. America is the leader of an empire that is trying to control the world. This country was founded to be a country, but we are now find ourselves in imperial decline. Americans were raised to build a country, not an empire.
Hoa binh
In the Cold War days we used the term, “When the balloon goes up”.
anwong, when the Neo-Cons finally get the armageddon they feel is inevitable, in their pursuit of rapture and the great reunion with some fairytale fiction of the savior . . . do you reall think there will be a safe distance?
When the balloon goes up . . . what a nightmare for us all.
Tennegon, the neoconservatives are mostly Trotskyite secularists and not truly religious types. They foresee a nation guided by an enlightened elite of leadership, which, of course, must include them.
Religious extremists support neoconservatives not because of their cunning, Machiavellian cynicisms and pretenses, but rather since the neocon’s soaring aspirations and Manichean perspectives somehow fit with their own religious eschatology and world views.
Whatever strange bedfellows are joined here, the consequences of disastrous policies must run their course, and in time, be experienced by any and all who perpetrate, support, or allow them. Denial and self protection are quite durable though, and people can adhere to narcissistic fantasies of power and safety long after any semblance of these have long vanished.
In time, it will not matter though. Alea iacta est. The winds of Karma will follow their own laws no matter what anyone wants to believe.
We are witnessing the end of five hundred years of Euro/American imperialism and unbridled capitalism.
Lemesee …
The world has to have oil.
Either the use of oil or the fighting to obtain it will end civilization as we know it.
Can’t live with it, can’t live without it.
Beam me up …
Would we not have been “better off” by paying “market price” for oil instead of trying to steal it?