Exclusive: What Really Happened in Basra?


Author: Nicholas M. Guariglia

Date Published: 2008-04-18


What Really Happened in Basra?

Nicholas Guariglia

 

Churchill once quipped that “a lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to put its pants on.”  On the whole, the international press has done much to advance this remark over the course of the last few weeks, telling tales of misconception as to what recently happened in Iraq’s southern port city of Basra. (James Hider, Juan Cole, and Reuters were among the worst transgressors.) 

           

As some would have us see it, the story apparently goes something like this: Iraqi premier Nouri Maliki reluctantly sent his security forces south to reestablish control of Basra in the wake of the British withdrawal, and was humiliated and politically weakened when the insurrectionists of Muqtada al Sadr’s Jaish al Mahdi militia (or JAM) fought the Iraqi security forces to a standstill, forcing the central Iraqi government to accept a ceasefire on terms it deemed unfavorable.

 

Thankfully, there is more to the story. Some of these misconceptions about Mr. Maliki and Mr. Sadr should be countered.

 

To start off, this battle was not a surprise. It was well known in Iraq for some time that this was going to occur. Operation Calvary Charge (as it translates into) was actually delayed a week because influential Shi’a leader Abdul Aziz al Hakim initially got cold feet. It is a falsehood to suggest that the “rising violence” in Iraq’s once tranquil south transpired in a manner unanticipated by the Iraqi government. To the contrary, the Iraqi state, in a way unlikely just last year, directed the narrative of the violence – further testament that the new U.S.-Iraqi counterinsurgency strategy of ’07-’08 has been fruitful. 

           

No doubt Gen. Petraeus would have preferred the Iraqis to concentrate on al Qaeda’s last urban bastion, Mosul, prior to addressing the militia enclave in Basra. And perhaps finishing off al Qaeda at last would have been the smart move, militarily. But it should not be overlooked that Nouri Maliki, who was once considered politically dependant on Muqtada al Sadr’s followers, finally displayed the kind of nonsectarian forcefulness we have been waiting to see from him – even if the timing was not necessarily advantageous for domestic political consumption here at home.

           

In traveling to Basra himself, and in bringing his war team with him, Mr. Maliki proved he’s not simply a “Green Zone politician.” In confronting instrumentalities of Iran, and in doing so without requiring U.S. ground support and against the immediate wishes of Gen. Petraeus, he has shown he is a marionette of neither.  

           

Furthermore, we should shatter the pseudo-legend of Muqtada al Sadr.  He may be a problem, but he is less of a problem today than he was yesterday. It would be a mistake to grant Sadr undue influence over his militia. This is not to say that the hefty and sweaty warlord is anything less than a murderous thug. He is. It constituted a severe lack of political courage in not arresting him back in 2004, when he was trivial, prior to his ’05-’06 glory days of sectarian ethnic cleansing and poisoning Iraq’s infant polity.

 

But we would be in error if we considered his “rule” over his militiamen to be singular or absolute.  Quite the opposite; since the buildup of forces in early ’07 – when Sadr feebly declared a ceasefire and fled the battlefield to “study” in Iran – U.S. and Iraqi troops have quietly infiltrated and dissipated his once-terrifying JAM army. Last month, a downtrodden Sadr declared to Iraq’s Asharq al Awsat newspaper that he had “failed” as a leader. By most accounts, his masters in Iran agree; they have given up on him.

           

To undo this failure, the Iranians have dissected JAM into loyalist splinter-cells, the so-called “Special Groups,” composed of, and commandeered by, elite members of Iran’s deadly Quds Force, the external wing of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.  The Quds network in Iraq (the Ramazan Corps) runs out of the Ramazan Command Center in Tehran.

           

The Ramazan Corps controls the Qazali and Shebaini terrorist cells and the various Special Groups within JAM (amongst other surrogates). Last year, the Iranian mullahs trifurcated the Ramazan Corps’ authority into the Nasr Command (operating out of the Iranian town of Marivan, concentrating on Iraq’s Diyala province), the Zafar Command (operating out of the Iranian town of Mehran, concentrating on Baghdad and surrounding Iraqi cities), and the Fajr Command (operating out of Iranian military bases in Khorramshahr and Shalamcheh to direct attacks in, and smuggle oil out of, Basra).

 

What happened in Basra is a microcosm of a much larger movement; an internal power struggle not between the two different Shi’a factions (those pro-Sadr and those pro-Maliki) as the media is telling us, but within the Sadrist movement and within the JAM militia more specifically. It is a fight between Iraqi Shi’ites who simply got caught up in wrong crowd – and now, in acknowledging the futility of their efforts, want exoneration from the Iraqi state – and between the Special Groups, more serious and focused militiamen killing under the auspices of the Iranian Quds Force and Ramazan Corps.

           

Even the feared “Mr. X,” a mysterious mafia-like JAM chief once wanted by the U.S., has now reached out to Captain Tim Wright’s Delta Company to begin a working partnership against the more extremist Iranian officers and Iranian-backed guerrillas within JAM. This is an opening Maliki should exploit, and he is.

 

Western press reports have labeled this Basra skirmish an embarrassment for Prime Minister Maliki and a triumph for the exiled Sadr. Well-connected Iraqi journalists like Nibras Kazimi, on the other hand, tell a different story; one where Maliki, once reliant on Sadr’s Shi’ite brethren, had to be coerced by his cabinet not to smash and snuff out the Sadrist movement from Iraqi politics for good.

           

It seems, as it were, the Maliki administration opted for a more docile approach. A deal was allegedly cut, whereby the Sadrist hierarchs agreed to a ceasefire with Baghdad, and in return named the violent rogues within JAM for the Iraqi central government to arrest. In the days following the supposed “defeat” for Mr. Maliki, 155 JAM guerrillas in Basra, who dishonored or planned to dishonor the ceasefire, were arrested by the Iraqi military (215 had been killed).  Harith al Athari, one of the Sadrist spokesmen, complained of “random arrests and raids… this is in violation of what has been agreed upon.” (Mr. Athari was apparently not privy to the terms of the deal.)

           

Much still has yet to be sorted out. I have been wrong before, and it will take some time until the long-term ramifications of this skirmish in Basra are fully known. But thus far we know that Mr. Maliki is not a man who suffers fools gladly. He is willing to jeopardize his future, political fortunes, and life, to challenge a radical and illegal entity within his sect, within his party bloc, and supported by his Iranian neighbors.  

           

This unexpected self-styled assertiveness by Mr. Maliki came as a total surprise, not only to me, but for wannabe leaders like Dr. Ibrahim al Jaafari and Dr. Iyad Allawi, who are now reconsidering their prospects in Iraq’s elections next year. The Basra display sent shockwaves throughout Iraq’s political spectrum, and it puts the Iraqis in a much stronger position, militarily and politically, if they ever so choose to take the drastic step Maliki was reportedly close to taking in outlawing the Sadrists not just as a militia, but as a party.   

           

An unknown two years ago, Maliki became an accidental compromise choice for prime minister by the major elected Iraqi parties.  Today, after confronting the JAM militia – the mere thought of which would have seemed unimaginable just last year – and in doing so while preventing violent outbreaks in Najaf, Karbala, Kut, Hillah, and Diwaniyah; in doing so while keeping Baghdad under control; in doing so without ground support from the U.S. or prior approval from Central Command; in doing so with so few Iraqi military casualties, while garnering a favorable and peaceful alternative in the aftermath of curtailed hostilities, I think it is fair to say many depictions as to what transpired in Basra are overblown and inaccurate. 

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FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Nicholas Guariglia is a polemic and essayist who writes on Islam and Middle Eastern geopolitics. He is a student at the John C. Whitehead School of Diplomacy and International Relations at Seton Hall University, where he is studying U.S. foreign policy. He also contributes to www.globalpolitician.com and www.worldthreats.com. He can be reached at nickguar@comcast.net.

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