Army Invades Sadrist District in Basra;
Violence Kills more than a Score
The Iraqi military made incursions into Sadrist neighborhoods in Basra on Wednesday, AP says. The show of force provoked fears of an outbreak of fresh fighting.
It turns out that McCain had said that Muqtada al-Sadr's influence was waning in a recent interview. But then when Muqtada reasserted himself, McCain claimed to have all along been concerned with the Mahdi Army.
AFP reports that political violence killed at least 15 in Iraq on Wednesday:
'insurgents killed at least 15 people and wounded several others in spate of bombings and shootings across Iraq on Wednesday, AFP quoted Iraqi officials as saying. Four people were killed and four others were kidnapped at a fake checkpoint near the central town of Al Dhuluiyah, in Salaheddin province, police said.
In the province of Diyala, insurgents killed six people, including three Iraqi security personnel, police said.
The three security guards were killed in a roadside bomb attack in the town of Mandeli, east of the provincial capital of Baquba, police Major Muhammad Al Kharki said.
The others killed were two policemen and a woman in separate roadside bomb attacks in and around Baquba, police added. In Baghdad, several armed men fired at a civilian car and killed two women working for a mobile telephone company, a security official said. Their driver was wounded.
Three people were killed and 13 others wounded, including cameraman Maytham Ibrahim working with Iraq's independent Al Diyar satellite television, in a roadside bombing in Baghdad, officials said.
Ibrahim survived but lost a leg, station’s news editor Imed al-Abadi told AFP.
He was walking down a street on his way to cover clashes between Shia militiamen and Iraqi and US forces that have ravaged parts of eastern Baghdad for more than a week when the attack occurred."
McClatchy reports political violence for Wednesday:
' Baghdad
- At dawn , the American planes bombed some targets in Sadr city, police said .
- Around 7 am, a roadside bomb targeted a police patrol in Qahira neighborhood (north east Baghdad) .Three people were injured in that incident .
- Around 7 a.m. A roadside bomb targeted civilians in Talbiyah killing 3 civilians and injuring 14 others.
- Around 1 p.m. a mortar shell slammed into Dawodi neighborhood injuring 2 civilians.
- Around 2 p.m. gunmen attacked a civilian car killing two women and injuring the driver (a police man) and a third woman survived. The three women are employees of a cell phone company.
- A roadside bomb targeted cleaning workers in Al Mashtal injuring three workers.
- A mortar shell hi Al Mashtal neighborhood injuring 2 residents.
- Police found 2 dead bodies throughout Baghdad, one in Sadr city and one In Mahdiya.
Diyala
- At dawn, 3 IEDs exploded targeted three houses at Sadiyah village of Khanaqeen (east Baquba) .One woman was killed and a man was injured in those explosions .Police arrested 17 suspected in a raid after that incident.
- Around 7 am, a roadside bomb exploded at Mandli near Balad Ruz (75 kmeast Baquba).Three people were killed and 8 were injured.
Salahuddin
- In the morning, gunmen killed two security forces members(a policeman and a soldier ) and kidnapped two civilians at Kubeiba village (10 km east of Dhulwiyah) when they made a false check point in the entrance of Bishkan village of Dhulwiyah).
Kirkuk
- Tuesday night, a suicide bomber tried to make one of the supporting councils’ leaders in Hawija (west of Kirkuk) ,but the leader’s guards opened fire on him who was shot dead with another person who was killed accidentally at the same site.
- A parked car bomb targeted Kirkuk police chief convoy today. The attack caused damages to one police vehicle.
Basra
- In the morning, the Basra commander operation center and the spokesman of the MOD survived from an assassination attempt with the Hurra TV correspondent injured at Hussein (Hayaniyah) neighborhood (west Basra) when gunmen opened fire on them, eyewitnesses said .While the MOD spokesman , Mohammad Al-Askri,said that a roadside bomb targeted their patrol surviving from this attempt.
Nineveh
- A parked car bomb targeted a police vehicle in Al Quds neighborhood in Mosul, killing a passing by woman and injuring four policemen.
Al Anbar
- A quarrel between men from the Awakening council , a U.S. sponsored militia, and policemen in Saqlawiyah, north of Fallujah, injured five men.
Labels: Iraq
posted by Juan Cole @ 4/03/2008 12:35:00 AM
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11 Comments:
Even now, imagine, even now, I am reading fresh mail telling me of fresh American bombing killing yet more civilians in Basra. How can we be bombing in the middle of a city that was shortly before the home of 1.7 million Iraqis? We are everyday now bombing in Basra for the sake of destroying supporters of al-Sadr who has only been trying to make peace.
Where is the right? Where is our right to destroy a people who mean us no possible harm?
Where is our right?
Day on day, we act in ways that should be impossible for America. We act in act that would shame imperial Britain, with never a care for what we are about. Where is our right?
We have betrayed our heritage, betrayed all moral heritage.
Dr. Cole, By mistake I posted this last night to the comments space following your March 31 column. I would be grateful if you could re-post it today. You have for some time been my most trusted source for information on events in Iraq and for that I am grateful.
In your Salon article posted April 1 you said that the main motivation for last week's attack on Basra was PM al-Maliki's desire to improve the government's position in advance of the upcoming provincial elections. I do not agree. There is more to suggest that the motives were military and not political and that this latest fiasco was produced and directed in Washington and London, not Baghdad.
First of all, it is hard to see what political gain al Maliki could hope to achieve by using the army and militias to attack the Sadrists-even if he had been successful. His failure has been politically disastrous. Secondly, in support of the view that the main motives were military, I refer to Damien McElroy's article at Telegraph.co.uk dated December 17, 2007 sub-titled: "Army's senior general concedes for the first time that American troops may have to be sent to Basra once British force levels are halved next year" In conjunction with the handover of responsibility to Iraq's security forces, the article states "Preparations for an Iraqi operation early next month (January 2008) to confront Basra's so-called "irreconcilables" - locals who pose the greatest threat to security - are under way with the UK lined up to provide surveillance, intelligence and aerial support." One might speculate that the delay was the result of reluctance on the part of al Maliki and his advisors to undertake a campaign in which the military and political risks were so great.
Basra's strategic importance to US interests, including its proximity to the main military supply route from Kuwait, the Umm Quasr naval base, Shatt al 'Arab waterway and the Iranian border, is too great for the coalition to cede control to the Mehdi army (notwithstanding they seem to have had de facto control of much of it for some time).
A number of bloggers have pointed out the close proximity of the Basra attack to VP Cheney's visit to Iraq. The barometer of whether the US will escalate or diminish its engagement in Iraq will be whether there is an increased involvement of US troops in the south in response to the past weeks' events.
A Sadr-Sunni Alliance?
I wonder what the possibility is, now, for an improvement in relations between the Sadrists and the Sunnis. During the fighting over Fallujah, Sadr was supportive of the Sunni insurgents.
Of course there is a lot of bad blood between them now as a result of the death squads and cleansing of neighborhoods that occurred over the past two years. But that seems to be abating, now, since the Sunnis have turned against al-Queda, and it is possible that common interests may lead to a new alliance between Sadrists and Sunnis.
As it stands now, both Sunnis and Sadrists have a common adversary in Maliki, and his Dawa/Badr Corps power base, and both would like to see the occupation end; while Maliki seems to have fallen in line with Bush. The Sadrists are less open to Iranian influence than Maliki, and oppose strengthening regional governments, both of which are positions the Sunnis also take.
They may have to hold their noses at first, but their common interests point toward closer cooperation, and an eventual alliance over the longer term.
wrbt99
Well looks like it is time for Gen. Petraeus and his traveling medicine show on Capitol Hill (with O'Hanlon/Pollack and the Brookings Boys Choir)
A perfect antidote for accidental ingestion of Bush's latest witches' brew of charts, graphs, fanciful claims, and empty rhetoric may be found in
TESTIMONY BEFORE THE SENATE FOREIGN RELATIONS COMMITTEE ON IRAQ
By William E. Odom, LT General, USA, Ret. 2 April 2008
Good morning Mr. Chairman and members of the committee. It is an honor to appear before you again. The last occasion was in January 2007, when the topic was the troop surge. Today you are asking if it has worked. Last year I rejected the claim that it was a new strategy. Rather, I said, it is a new tactic used to achieve the same old strategic aim, political stability. And I foresaw no serious prospects for success.
I see no reason to change my judgment now. The surge is prolonging instability, not creating the conditions for unity as the president claims.
....
A number of reasons are given for not withdrawing soon and completely. I have refuted them repeatedly before but they have more lives than a cat. Let try again me explain why they don’t make sense. ...
Let me get this straight. Muqtada or Iran called for a unilateral halt to the fighting, last week, because the Mahdi Army had bloodied the Iraqi Army?
AsiaTimes : “The Other Iraqi Civil War : the invisible battle for Mosul”, Pepe Escobar
. . .an interesting news-analysis by Mr. Escobar, imho; that asks, among other things: “So where is the Kurd-Arab border?”
The "incursions" of the Iraqi Army into Sadrist areas were common until the latest clashes in Basra and the rest of the Sounth. The deal was, and is now, to set up checkpoints and run patrols but not to attack any Mahdi members.
Maliki and Bush ordered the IA to pounce on the Mahdi Army as a prelude to actually annihilate it! But the IA was literally defeated. The defections were significant but still small compared with the 30,000 assembled force. The IA did actually lose in battle.
The rules of engagement are now back to no-attack. So the IA does not intimidate anymore. But the loss of trust has driven the Mahdi Army into high-alert mode, and big violence can flare up even by accident.
However, the IA has begun to attack the minor militias who are in fact the nastiest of them all. The head of the Thaar-Allah militia has been captured already and he is very close to Iran and a serious mass-murderer and theif.
As much as I appreciate your critical commentary on McCain's wandering positions, his candidacy is stillborn at best. Given that he and his party are gasping for breath - low voter turnout, the weakness of his candidacy, the low fund-raising numbers - I think your attention ought to be turned to giving critical advice for the remaining Democratic candidates.
Hopefully your knowledgeable voice will be heard louder in the Democratic camp and carry sufficient weight to shape policy in a more 'fact-based' direction. No sense working to undermine a party that has worked so hard for 8 years to undermine itself.
At times like these, when someone has taken on the mantle of a third term for Bush, they are no longer worthy of the valuable effort you put in to layout systematic arguments against their nonsense rhetoric; they should instead be relegated only to scorn and ridicule.
THE BIN LADENS : An Arabian Family in the American Century
interviewer: Biggest Bush mistake re: Osama?
Steve Coll: Giving Osama the narrative of ‘total global war’ that Osama wanted.
wrbt99 : “A Sadr-Sunni Alliance?”
imho, Mr. Sadr's best endgame strategy is to refine his Fundamentalist Shi'ite cause into a greater calling : appealing to any and all Iraqi ‘Nationalists’. Together they would be motivated to hammer the Kurds against the anvil that is Turkey for The Prize up north; while the Americans "attack IRAN", in a sense, ie., in their de facto Zone d'Occupation Iranienne within IRAQ... within which is The Prize down south. If "Bush is irrelevant in Iraq", then imho Baghdad is irrelevant in the endgame that will be ‘IRAQ’.
Prof. Cole,
It's not at all your style to post this. And that's no matter at all - that's not why I'm writing.
Why I'm writing is to say what I've said once or twice before and what certainly bears repeating: thanks.
I don't know how you do it. I can't begin to imagine what it's cost you. And that's by way of saying, I'm not just "glad" you do do it - I'm lost in admiration. You've been a beacon of sanity and intelligence and integrity in this never-ending national nightmare.
Again: thanks.
And if it ever does end - and you're ever in London - and you could spare the time and were game - well, I'd love to treat you to a very nice lunch
Best regards,
David T.
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