What Tipped the Balance?

by emptywheel

John Amato provides some perspective on the most ominous development of the week, when Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani announced that he can no longer restrain his followers. Sistani announced this in the last few days. But, as one of Amato's readers pointed out, David Ignatius reported that Sistani was worried about this back in July.

David:.. the most important and powerful personality in Iraq is signaling the Bush administration this week that he is worried that the situation in Iraq is spinning out of control. He is the crucial person. If he gives up on this effort-this effort is over…

So what happened in the interim? What tipped the balance?

For starters, Sistani began to express this concern (if his concern is to be dated to Ignatius' comment) at the same time as he issued a fatwa condemning the Israelis for the attack on Qana, in Lebanon.

For several days Lebanon has been exposed to a continuous Israeli aggression, targeting its defiant people and its infrastructure on a wide scale. This has led to hundreds of people being martyred and wounded and tens of thousands of people being displaced as well as vast destruction to houses, roads and other civilian establishments.

All this blatant repression is occurring under the persistent disregard of the whole world - except for a few ineffective words of condemnation and disapproval here and there. The world community needs to move on to stop the continuation of this flagrant aggression.

This, in turn, came not long after Moqtada al-Sadr announced he and his militia would not sit by as Israel attacked Lebanon.

The radical Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr said Friday that Iraqis would not ''sit by with folded hands'' while Israel struck at Lebanon, signaling a possible increase in attacks from his mercurial militia, the Mahdi Army.

In a written statement, Mr. Sadr also said that he considered the United States culpable in the conflict unfolding in Lebanon, since America was the largest foreign ally of Israel.

And since this warning about increasing violence in Iraq, from both the Shiite leader--Moqtada al-Sadr--whose power seems to be growing and the Shiite leader--Sistani--whose power seems to be waning, we've seen events like this:

British troops abandoned a major base in southern Iraq on Thursday and prepared to wage guerrilla warfare along the Iranian border to combat weapons smuggling, a move that anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr called the first expulsion of U.S.-led coalition forces from an Iraqi urban center.

"This is the first Iraqi city that has kicked out the occupier!" trumpeted a message from Sadr's office that played on car-mounted speakers in Amarah, capital of the southern province of Maysan. "We have to celebrate this occasion!"

It's perhaps worth noting that Amara, the town where Sadr celebrates having expelled coalition forces, is the same city where one of Sistani's top aides was just assassinated.

Gunmen have killed a representative of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, a revered Shia cleric, in the southern Iraqi city of Imara.

Police said that Sheikh Hassan Mohammed Mahdi al-Jawadi, 56, was gunned down in front of his office by gunmen in a car on Sunday.

Mind you, I'm not suggesting that's all there is to this, that there is nothing more to the decline into full-scale civil war than a reaction against the Israeli attack on Lebanon. The article on Sistani's increasing marginalization lists much more tangible reasons--like Shiite vulnerability to Sunni attacks
--that Shiites are switching loyalty from Sistani to Sadr.

Hundreds of thousands of people have turned away from al-Sistani to the far more aggressive al-Sadr. Sabah Ali, 22, an engineering student at Baghdad University, said that he had switched allegiance after the murder of his brother by Sunni gunmen. "I went to Sistani asking for revenge for my brother," he said. "They said go to the police, they couldn't do anything.

"But even if the police arrest them, they will release them for money, because the police are bad people. So I went to the al-Sadr office. I told them about the terrorists' family. They said, 'Don't worry, we'll get revenge for your brother'. Two days later, Sadr's people had killed nine of the terrorists, so I felt I had revenge for my brother. I believe Sadr is the only one protecting the Shia against the terrorists."

And when it comes right down to it, Sistani's waning influence seems to relate primarily to the failure of his requests and warnings to have any effect.

He said a series of snubs had contributed to Ayatollah al-Sistani's decision. "He asked the politicians to ask the Americans to make a timetable for leaving but they disappointed him," he said. "After the war, the politicians were visiting him every month. If they wanted to do something, they visited him. But no one has visited him for two or three months. He is very angry that this is happening now. He sees this as very bad."

I'd hazard to saw that, while everyone long recognized Sistani to be critical to our success, the Bush Administration and its allies never ceded the issues to him that would ensure he'd continue to exert influence. They didn't give him the things he asked for, and as a result, people turned to Sadr, who promised to take those things rather than ask nicely.

We're only now rushing the Intelligence Community to come up with an NIE on Iraq (and we know the quality we get when we rush NIEs), after John Negroponte stonewalled on the NIE for over six months. Wouldn't it have been nice to have had some assessment on these issues--particularly the relative influence of Sistani and Sadr--back when we still had time to respond effectively?

Comments

[boilerman10]

emptywheel,

In addition to Sistani's latest, I would also refer you to Professor Cole's place, and have you read the posting about the Israeli scheme to attack Syria and Iran.

Dr. Cole considers this extremely dangerous, simply by the tone he uses in the posting.

Emptywheel, I am sure you are aware of my strident anti-war position. I contend that we lost control of the occupation the moment the Abu Ghraib photos were released internationally, and our mission since then has been daily amplification of the degree of failure we are suffering.

2647 dead US troops the last I read at the casualty counter. When it stops is up to the voters. But emptywheel, we are going nowhere in Iraq. Iran has been the big winner. If Israel is deceived again by the neo-con warhawks and does attack Syria the big winner will be the Muslim Brotherhood, and the overwhelming Sunni majority of Syria and not the Shia or Ba'athists.

If anyone lights off a spark over there with some stupidly ignorant bravado, that 2647 number is going to look like a "good day" by comparison.

We face a towering peril, and it is not from terrorists, nor Iran, nor radical Islam, but far more from the belligerance and incompetance of George W. Bush, his "team," and his allies.

[boilerman10]

Emptywheel,

I just looked at the casualty counter.

My God, we're up to 2653 already.

And it started over lies and jingoism.

[Mimikatz]

Juan Cole's posts, especially the one about Sistani, are icreasingly pessimistic. Iraqis are leaving Baghdad and going to Kurdistan, which will soon try to pull up the drawbridge.

Perle's comments and the supposed Israeli push into Syria sounds like someone's pipe dream, given that the Israeli government's conduct of the last war is under investigation and the government is in chaos.

But Iraq is deteriorating fast, and that is very serious.

[readerOfTeaLeaves]

Just an observation, from a 'global' perspective: carbon dioxide combines with seawater to form a weak acid (carbonic acid). This releases hydrogen ions, which build up, making the seawater more acidic. Move the acidity level one unit along the pH scale, and you actually have a ten-fold increase (or decrease) in concentration. (In other words, changes are not simply a linear 1 + 1 + 1; changes occur in magnitudes: 1 + 10 + 100 log scale). Things get toxic in a hurry.

When I think of what must be happening to the soils throughout Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, and the Near East, then add global warming -- which means less snow in the Himilayas, which in turn means less water coming down to nourish the soils, it sickens me. There are chemical processes at work that are cause for deep concern.

The political disturbances lend themselves to media reports, whereas the more ominous indications are soil temperatures, soil acidity measures, soil absorbtion rates, stream flow levels. The region is undergoing profound environmental degradation; Sistani is a political symptom of more ominous alterations. I doubt the news of Sistani is simply a linear shift; I assume this is the social equivilent of one move along the pH scale -- a tenfold increase in social toxicity.

[boilerman10]

Mimikatz,

Lest we forget that we are going nowhere fast.

This video from Iraq

This widely ridiculed video from Iraq dating from the time of the Nick Berg killing is a sobering reminder of just how little we have come in Iraq.

It was ridiculed then, but how sadly prescient it is now.

[DeanOR]

AP today: Authorities found the tortured, blindfolded bodies of 33 men scattered across Baghdad Monday and the U.S.-led coalition said eight troops had died, a day after
Iraq said the capture of a top terror suspect would reduce violence.

[ab initio]

Sistani is expressing frustration at the slide into civil war in Iraq and the consequences for innocent Iraqi families caught in the middle who pay the ultimate price.

The recent fire fights in Diwaniyah between the Iraqi "military" and the Sadr militia are instructive. Sistani called for restraint but nothing happened. The governor had to make a deal with Sadr.

There is not only a civil war between Sunni and Shia. There is a war between different factions of Shia - Sadr & SCIRI. There is another war between the Kurds & the Arabs & Turcomen, which will explode further when the Kurds annex Kirkuk and the oil wells there.

Bush/Cheney and the neocons have unleashed the dogs of war. The situation is so complicated with all these factions fighting each other that it can't be neatly stereotyped and then add in all the external actors like Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt weighing in on various Sunni factions and the Iranians probably both directly and indirectly playing a major role and of course the Syrians. What we are likely to see is a bloodbath maybe 1-2 million civilians killed in the conflict. A possibility of it spreading to the neighboring countries. Eastern Saudi Arabia with its majority Shia who have serious grievances with the Sunni royals is a good example. It just so happens that is where the majority of Saudi oil production comes from. Iraq is disintegrating before our very eyes and our government light the fire.

[CaseyL]

I don't blame Iraqis for fleeing to Kurdistan; it's the least unsafe, most stable piece of Iraq right now, and likely to remain so. I also don't blame Kurdistan for planning to raise the drawbridge once the refugees start arriving en masse, because just letting everyone in is a sure recipe for getting dragged into the civil war.

I do wonder, though, what if anything Turkey will do. They've made it clear they don't want a de facto Kurdish state on their border, for fear it'll give Turkish Kurds ideas. But a Kurdistan destabilized by too many refugees would, I think, be even worse from Turkey's perspective, because that would mean Iraq's civil war could spill over the border into Turkey.

Jesus, what a mess.

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