Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying

United States officials in Baghdad were reported to be in possession of Iranian made weapons. In a brazen display of "intelligence", the Americans proudly showed off their Iranian-made weapons to reporters:

The BBC’s Jane Peel attended the briefing in Baghdad, at which all cameras and recording devices were banned.

Examples of the allegedly smuggled weapons were put on display, including EFPs, mortar shells and rocket propelled grenades which the US claims can be traced to Iran.

"The weapons had characteristics unique to being manufactured in Iran… Iran is the only country in the region that produces these weapons," an official said.

Someone call Michael Gordon.

At a briefing today in Baghdad, US officials accused Iran of arming al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army in Iraq:

The defense analyst said Iran was working through "multiple surrogates" — mainly "rogue elements" of the Shiite Mahdi Army — to smuggle the EFPs into Iraq. He said most of the components are entering the country at crossing points near Amarah, the Iranian border city of Meran and the Basra area of southern Iraq.

The US officials also neatly tied Iran into the 1983 bombing of the US embassy in Kuwait and the trafficking in arms in Iraq:

Last week, U.S. officials said they were investigating allegations that Shiite lawmaker Jamal Jaafar Mohammed was a main conduit for Iranian weapons entering the country. Mohammed has believed to have fled to Iran.

The "evidence" against Iran and the Mahdi Army continues to pile up. But there is something fishy here.

The Bush Administration claims that Iranians caught in recent raids buttress clams of Iranian involvement. The targets of American ire appear to be Iran and the Mahdi Army. However, the Iranians were captured in Kurdish held Erbil and in Abdul Aziz al-Hakim’s compound in Baghdad. In both instances, the Iranians were working with American allies in Iraq - the Kurds and the SCIRI. In the Erbil case, Kurdish leaders protested the American operation and in the curious case of the raid on al-Hakim’s compound, pressure from SCIRI forced the US to release their prize.

Now we come to Mr. Jamal Jaafar Mohammed. Most reports of his involvement in the 1983 bombing gloss over his political affiliation. Mr. Mohammed was at the time of the bombing a member of SCIRI, the same group that is now an ally of Mr. Bush, and is currently a member of the Badr Organization, which is the current incarnation of the military wing of SCIRI:

An engineering graduate from Basra University in southern Iraq, he was active in the Shiite opposition to Saddam and was affiliated with the political and military wing of the Badr Brigade. He served as a top commander in the militia in the 1980s.

The brigade was organized and trained by the Iranians to fight against Iraq in the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war and was led by Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, a key political figure here. Shiite officials say the Badr Brigade gave up its weapons and was transformed into a political movement after Saddam’s regime collapsed in 2003.

Mohammed ran for parliament on the Badr ticket. The organization is part of the Shiite alliance that also includes al-Maliki. Mohammed served as a political adviser to al-Maliki’s predecessor, Ibrahim al-Jaafari.

I should also note that the attack on the American and French embassies in Kuwait in 1983 were conducted by the Dawa Party and the SCIRI, which are both now our allies in Iraq. The Dawa Party is also conveniently the party that helped set up Hezbollah in Lebanon:

There are at least five such groups here, known as Al Fajr, Jihad, Jundullah, Hizbullah and Harisullah.

According to Shiite political sources, they are linked with the Iraqi Shiite underground organization Ad Dawa, which has been working to set up Iranian-style Islamic republics in Iraq and other Persian Gulf countries.

It is possible, the analysts and diplomats said, that the pro-Iranian groups have abducted Americans to exchange them for the 22 Dawa members who have been tried and convicted in Kuwait for the bombing Dec. 12 of the American and French embassies.

The Bush Administration has indeed made a fine bed with terrorists in Iraq.

There is very little doubt that Iran is supporting the Shia factions and the Kurds in Iraq. However, the factions Iran is supporting are the same factions that the Bush Administration is supporting. The Shia faction that gets the least support from Iran, and that is ideologically the least aligned with Iran is the Mahdi Army. Yet, the Administration’s plan, as laid out in the Hadley memo, appears to be to isolate the Mahdi Army and empower the very factions, Dawa and SCIRI, that Iran has been helping.

The Bush Administration is spinning a story about Iran that is full of contradictions. The Bush Administration cannot claim to target Iran for arming the same groups that the United States itself is arming, without addressing its own behavior and alliances in Iraq. It has been clear from the start that the United States has put in power terrorists and thugs (Dawa and SCIRI) in Iraq. To support its drumbeat to war against Iran, it cannot now cry foul without addressing its own hypocrisy in Iraq. To the extent that they have both sponsored the same actors in Iraq, the Bush Administration and Iran have been allies.

So, when the Bush Administration claims that some Iranian arms have been found in the hands of Shia militia in Iraq, I am unimpressed. The United States has, over the last four years, armed the Shia militias to the teeth by equipping the SCIRI and Badr Brigade controlled Iraqi Interior Ministry. In the contest of arms shipments to Iraqi Shia militias, the United States wins the arms race hands down. Having armed, equipped and trained a party to a civil war, the Bush Administration has been the driving force of instability in Iraq. When the Bush Administration accuses Iran of fomenting sectarian violence in Iraq, it ignores the elephant in the room, that is, the United States.

Nir Rosen at IraqSlogger is reporting on rumors that Moqtada al-Sadr was present at Saddam Hussein’s hanging. In fact, he might have been one of the hangmen. Apparently, that is the reason they were chanting "Moqtada! Moqtada! Moqtada!".

The pro-Baathist website printed the following pictures showing similarities between the hanging pictures and Moqtada al-Sadr. These rumors have been flying around for a number of days now. However, given the circumstances of the hanging, it is not terribly far-fetched. So, here are the pictures for what they are worth.

So, what does everyone think? Ok, the pinky ring is just too funny

On Monday President Bush is scheduled to meet Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI). Mr. Hakim is to get the full treatment topped off with a White House meeting with Mr. Bush. On the heels of Mr. Bush’s ill-conceived summit meeting with beleaguered Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki comes another ill-conceived meeting with the head of the Badr Brigade militia in Iraq. Either Mr. Bush is involved in a bit of Machiavellian mischief in Iraq or he is utterly ignorant.

Mr. Hakim’s upcoming White House visit is remarkable and troubling. It marks the point where the President of the United States has become personally and publicly involved in the domestic politics of Iraq. It also marks the first time in this conflict that the President of the United States will host the leader of death squads in Iraq. I think it is safe to say that we have come a long way since Vietnam - a conflict in which the President of the United States was deciding which hill to bomb. In Iraq, the President of the United States is deciding which death squad to back.

Mr. Hakim’s SCIRI was formed by Iran in 1982 as a Shia insurgency group during the Iran-Iraq war. SCIRI was formed with the Hakim family at its center. While most Iraqi Shia fought against Iran in the Iran-Iraq war, SCIRI was the only group of Shia that supported Iran. SCIRI has since been funded by Iran while its military wing, the Badr Brigade, has been armed and trained by Tehran. Since the American invasion of Iraq, the Badr Brigade has taken over the Iraqi Ministry of Interior. One of the leaders of the Badr Brigade, Bayan Jabr, was until recently the Minister of Interior, in charge of the police forces. His police, that is the Badr Brigade, are largely responsible for the many tortured corpses that turn up on the streets of Baghdad:

In May 2005, Shiite militia groups in Iraq began depositing corpses into the streets and garbage dumps of Baghdad. The victims, overwhelmingly Sunni, were typically found blindfolded and handcuffed, their corpses showing signs of torture—broken skulls, burn marks, gouged-out eyeballs, electric drill holes; by that October, the death toll attributed to such groups had grown to more than 500. In November, American troops discovered more than 160 beaten, whipped, and starved prisoners—again, mostly Sunni—at a secret detention center run by the country’s Interior Ministry. Since then, Shiite militias have become so integrated into the Iraqi government’s security apparatus and their work so organized, systematic, and targeted that they are commonly referred to in Iraq (and in the American media) by their proper name: death squads. The death squads, which have expanded their area of operations from the capital across much of the country, are now believed to be responsible for more civilian deaths than the Sunni and foreign insurgents who are the United States’ ostensible enemies there. By any reasonable measure, Iraq is in a state of civil war, and some of its most ruthless and lawless combatants are members of the government’s own security units.

…

The rise of the death squads corresponds almost precisely to the April 2005 appointment of Bayan Jabr as interior minister in Iraq’s transitional government. The Interior Ministry, which is something like a combined FBI and Department of Homeland Security, controls billions of dollars and more than 100,000 men in police and paramilitary units. Jabr was a former high-ranking member of the Iranian-backed Badr Brigade, the military arm of the fundamentalist Shiite Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) that is now the dominant political force in the country. After taking over the Interior Ministry, he quickly purged it of Sunnis, and members of the Badr Brigade were widely incorporated into the ministry’s police and paramilitary units.

Jabr—who in May of this year was named finance minister in a new government headed by Nuri al-Maliki—has disavowed any personal or institutional responsibility for violence committed by the death squads. He has now acknowledged that some groups operated within the Interior Ministry while he headed it, but he insists that they were few in number; he blames much of the sectarian killing on terrorists “using the clothes of the police or the military.” At a press conference last November that followed the discovery of the torture chamber in an Interior Ministry building, Jabr said, “You can be proud of our forces. [They] respect human rights.” (For this article, Jabr did not respond to requests for comment sent to his press office in Iraq.)

Mr. Jabr is just a small taste of the violent nature of the secretive Badr Brigade. While Moqtada al-Sadr’s rag-tag Mahdi Army gets all the press, the well-trained and battle hardened Badr Brigade continue their killing machine with ruthless efficiency.

While SCIRI and the Sadrists are both involved in sectarian violence against Iraqi Sunnis, there are significant and important differences between the two forces. While SCIRI is a pro-Iranian Shia party, the Sadrists are Shia nationalists. The goal of SCIRI, as its name pretty much gives away (Note to Mr. Bush: READ), is to form an Islamic republic in Iraq, and failing that, to form an Islamic state in the south of Iraq. Moqtada al-Sadr’s group, on the other hand, opposes any partition of Iraq. The politics of SCIRI and the Sadrists flow from their respective religious ideologies. SCIRI follows the Qom School of Shia thought, while the Sadrists follow the Najaf School (or quietist approach) of Shia thought. Briefly, the Qom School, that is the Iranian approach, believes that the state should be run by the ulema, the Muslim clerics. The Najaf School, followed by most Iraqi Shia, believes in "quietism", which believes that the ulema should not directly govern but have influence on the government. These two schools of thought are incompatible, and therein lies the conflict between the Iranian-backed SCIRI and the nationalist Shia movement of Sadr. If Iraq is to come through the meat grinder, it is the nationalist Sadrists and the nationalist Sunnis who will have to reconcile; the SCIRI will be left to the mercy of their Iranian backers.

Mr. Bush’s desperate grasp at "diplomacy" is once again ill-conceived. If the goal is to reach out to Iran to resolve the crisis in Iraq, giving legitimacy to its proxy in Iraq is not the best approach. Mr. Bush first must decide what the goal of American foreign policy in the region should be. I don’t believe it should be the expansion of Iranian hegemony into Iraq. Throwing American support behind SCIRI, and no doubt a high profile visit by Hakim to the White House signals American support of SCIRI, is a dangerous course of action. Iran certainly has a legitimate interest in a stable Iraq and the removal of American forces. That should be a starting point of dialogue with Tehran. The starting point should not be support for the Iranian clergy’s puppets in Baghdad. That kind of approach makes an already weak George W Bush look weaker.

In his knee-jerk attempt to isolate Moqtada al-Sadr, Mr. Bush apparently is throwing his weight behind the next Shia he sees. But, that has always been the problem with George W Bush. His bubble is very small and populated with only a few actors. It is this kind of narrow and myopic vision that has led him domestically to cronyism, such as his ill-fated nominations of Harriet Miers and Bernard Kerik, and internationally to charlatans and death squad leaders, such as his backing of Ahmad Chalabi and now Abdul Aziz al-Hakim.

We should demand some curiosity from the leader of the free world. Tomorrow, when the President of the United States shakes hands with a death squad leader and an Iranian puppet, we should all ponder how far the Decider has fallen from his grand visions of democracy in Iraq.

The Bush Administration has effectively signed Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki’s Death Warrant. The memo from National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley that undermined the Bush-Maliki summit in Jordan has now made Nouri al-Maliki a marked man in Iraq. Whether that was the intention of the leaked memo is unclear, but it will certainly be its effect, regardless of whether Maliki meets Mr. Bush or not.

Most of the reporting on the memo has focused on the aspects which have called into question Mr. Maliki’s commitment or his competence. Those parts of the memo may have been designed to embarrass Mr. Maliki, however the parts that deal with what the United States wants Mr. Maliki to do are the most explosive. It is these latter parts that most likely contributed to Mr. Maliki’s snub of Mr. Bush.

The memo proposes that Maliki create a new political support base independent of the Dawa party and Moqtada al-Sadr. The memo proposes steps that Maliki should take, as well as support that the United States will provide, to achieve this end:

There is a range of actions that Maliki could take to improve the information he receives, demonstrate his intentions to build an Iraq for all Iraqis and increase his capabilities. … Maliki should:

…

Bring his political strategy with Moktada al-Sadr to closure and bring to justice any JAM actors that do not eschew violence;

…

If Maliki is willing to move decisively on the actions above, we can help him in a variety of ways. We should be willing to:

…

If it is Maliki’s assessment that he does not have the capability — politically or militarily — to take the steps outlined above, we will need to work with him to augment his capabilities. We could do so in two ways. First, we could help him form a new political base among moderate politicians from Sunni, Shia, Kurdish and other communities. Ideally, this base would constitute a new parliamentary bloc that would free Maliki from his current narrow reliance on Shia actors. (This bloc would not require a new election, but would rather involve a realignment of political actors within the Parliament). In its creation, Maliki would need to be willing to risk alienating some of his Shia political base and may need to get the approval of Ayatollah Sistani for actions that could split the Shia politically. Second, we need to provide Maliki with additional forces of some kind.

This approach would require that we take steps beyond those laid out above, to include:

Actively support Maliki in helping him develop an alternative political base. We would likely need to use our own political capital to press moderates to align themselves with Maliki’s new political bloc;

Consider monetary support to moderate groups that have been seeking to break with larger, more sectarian parties, as well as to support Maliki himself as he declares himself the leader of his bloc and risks his position within Dawa and the Sadrists;

…

We should waste no time in our efforts to determine Maliki’s intentions and, if necessary, to augment his capabilities. We might take the following steps immediately:

…

Tell Maliki that we understand that he is working his own strategy for dealing with the Sadrists and that:

• you have asked General Casey to support Maliki in this effort

• it is important that we see some tangible results in this strategy soon;

Nouri al-Maliki is being asked to sever his ties with the Dawa party to which he owes his loyalties for most of his life and to undercut his power base by throwing Moqtada al-Sadr under a bus. To add to this fanciful agenda, Hadley suggests this absurd gem at the end of the memo:

If Maliki seeks to build an alternative political base:

• Press Sunni and other Iraqi leaders (especially Hakim) [Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a Maliki rival] to support Maliki

• Engage Sistani to reassure and seek his support for a new nonsectarian political movement.

I will just make two brief observations here. First, trading Moqtada al-Sadr for Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, SCIRI and the Badr Brigade is not exactly moving in the right direction. I should add that al-Hakim was the head of SCIRI’s Badr Brigade and that SCIRI is Iranian backed and believes that Iraq should be ruled as a Shia Islamic state. Second, the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani does not exactly believe in a nonsectarian political movement. He believes that Iraq should be rightly ruled by the Shia majority.

The notion that Maliki wants to be Washington’s man in Baghdad is misplaced and it has been misplaced from the start. Maliki is a prominent member of the Dawa party which has a long history of anti-Western activities. When Maliki was first chosen as Prime Minister in April of this year, amid all the euphoria, I wrote the following:

Lost in all the euphoria at seeing progress in Iraq is whether or not this is progress in the right direction for Iraq or the United States. I had written in an earlier article that the likely replacement for al-Jaafari would either come from his own Dawa party or from the SCIRI. I had also suggested that neither outcome would be a positive outcome. We now have our answer. Ibrahim al-Jaafari has been replaced by another Dawa party member albeit one that is more hard-line. In fact while Ibrahim al-Jaafari has been the titular head of the Shiite alliance, al-Maliki has done all the heavy lifting. It is no surprise then that he would ascend to the Premiership.

Jawad al-Maliki has been the spokesman for the Dawa party and the Shiite alliance. He was involved in the drafting of the Iraqi Constitution and more significantly was a member of the de-Baathification committee set up by the United States. He has been a critic of the U.S. invasion of Iraq and has close ties with the Shiite militias, especially the Mahdi Army.

…

After pushing hard for al-Jaafari’s ouster, the United States has gotten a more pro-Iranian Dawa party member. We have certainly come full circle in the Middle East. We have put in power in Iraq a person Saddam Hussein had sentenced to death. We have put in power a person who was involved in terrorist activities against not only Iraq but also Western and American targets in the Middle East. We have put in power a party, the Dawa party, that invented the modern suicide car bombing - a party that was involved in bombing the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait and in the killing of 241 U.S. Marines in Beirut.

We have brought democracy to the Middle East. We have handed over Iraq to an Iranian nurtured and funded Islamist alliance (Dawa and SCIRI). I do not believe this is what the American people bargained for when we embarked on the invasion of Iraq. If we are holding out the hope that these Islamist parties whose stated goal is to bring about an Islamist revolution in Iraq will somehow smell the sweet scent of Democracy and become torchbearers of freedom and liberty, we are likely to be as disappointed as Dick Cheney was when we were not greeted as liberators. This is a far cry from the search for Weapons of Mass Destruction and the defeat of al Qaeda.

There was no reason to suspect, even back then, that Maliki would actively work against al-Sadr and the Mahdi Army. Unsurprisingly, the Bush Administration ignored reality in pursuit of a fantastical agenda of misplaced hope and ignorant ideology.

Today, having failed to ride Maliki to "victory" in Iraq, the Administration has chosen to undermine him. They have called him out as their patsy. They have designated him as their man to break apart the Shia hold on Iraq. I doubt that those who are the targets of Washington’s plan, the Dawa party and Moqtada al-Sadr, will take too kindly to Mr. Maliki upon his return to Baghdad. With the leaked memo, Washington has ensured Mr. Maliki’s political demise, and perhaps his death as well. Mr. Maliki’s demise will also ensure that future Iraqi leaders will keep their distance from Washington, lest they suffer the same fate.

So, it is unsurprising that Mr. Maliki had no appetite for dinner with Mr. Bush in Amman. When he finally does sit down to breakfast with Mr. Bush, it may very well be his last meal.

Tim Russert lives in the faux reality created by George W Bush about Iraq. He is apparently convinced that America will stand down when Iraqis get mowed down.

Appearing on CNN’s Late Edition Russert left the comfortable inanity of being a moderator to wade into foreign policy punditry. That led to the following manly exchange between Blitzer and Russert:

BLITZER: He’s trying to balance a realistic assessment. At the same time, he uses the phrase "a turning point," which may or may not happen.

RUSSERT: We do not know if this will be a turning point. The reason is, are there enough young Iraqis who will step forward and say, "I believe in this new democracy. And to prove that, I’m willing to shed my blood and give my life."

It is then and only then can Americans start coming home. That’s the unanswered question. Do the Iraqis believe, across the board, in their government and willing to take on the insurgency without any question? [Emphasis added by me.]

How noble of Russert to offer up the blood of young Iraqis so that Mr. Bush’s war on reality can be won. It would be noble if it reflected even a basic understanding of the situation in Iraq. The Iraq mess moved well beyond a fight between insurgents and Americans a long long time ago. It is now a civil war with militias on all sides carrying out ethnic cleansing, torture and wholesale massacres. In this civil war the American military are merely another militia. But unfortunately for Russert, instead of seeing reality, he has bought hook line and sinker Mr. Bush’s talking points about "suiciders".

Mr. Russert might have benefited by listening to the Deputy Prime Minister of Iraq Barham Salih, a Kurd, who was on Late Edition before Russert. In a telling exchange Salih balks when Blitzer asks him if the Kurdish militia, the peshmerga, should have to disarm:

BLITZER: The British defense secretary said this on Tuesday. Des Browne said, "Armed militias are widespread and a grave threat to the stability of Iraq and the rule of law. Any government, if it is to survive, must establish a monopoly on the use of force. At the moment the Iraqi government clearly lacks this."

Is the new Iraqi government of Prime Minister al-Maliki taking steps already, right now, to disband, to disarm the various militias?

SALIH: The prime minister made this issue a priority. And this is one of the most difficult issues that will face this government and perhaps this government will be judged by.

We know who the terrorists are. And the terrorists are on one side and the rest of the people of Iraq are on the other. Everybody should be united in tracking the terrorists.

But the issue of organized armed groups who are acting outside the state and outside the law are becoming a serious problem for our politics and our society. And we have to deal with it.

The prime minister has committed to taking serious steps in that direction. And all the key parliamentary blocs are supporting him in this mission.

I cannot say that this will be done easily because we have a serious problem in that context and certainly in certain areas of Iraq. But the prime minister and the government are determined and committed to resolving this issue.

We know that it will be a bit difficult, but we are committed to doing so because without that, there will be no stability in Iraq.

BLITZER: Let me play for you what the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, told me last Sunday here on "Late Edition." Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ZALMAY KHALILZAD, U.S. AMBASSADOR TO IRAQ: Well, it’s still a challenge, an important challenge.

The prime minister has said, and we agree with him, that those ministries should be occupied by people who are unifiers, that are not people with ties to militias, people who are broadly accepted by the Iraqis.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: This militia issue, clearly a critical issue. I assume you want the Badr militia, the Mahdi militia to be disbanded. What about the Peshmerga?

You’re a Kurd. The Peshmerga is the militia of the Kurds in the north, some 70,000 militia members in the Peshmerga.

Will that be disbanded as well?

SALIH: I’ve just come back from Kurdistan. I was on a short trip to Sulaymaniyah and Erbil. Thank God the situation there is stable and secure because the Peshmergas have been enrolled in the security services, the police.

And in accordance with the Iraqi constitution, there is a provision that every federal region in Iraq can have its regional guards, very much like your National Guards in the United States.

So the Peshmerga is really not an issue in dispute as such. The issue of militias and the issue of bringing in people in charge of the security portfolio that are unifiers and are seen by most Iraqis as competent and non-sectarian will be an important challenge for this government.

And this is why the prime minister really has taken his time and is consulting and consulting. And I hope, at the end of this process, we will bring in people who can do this difficult task. And we’ll deal with the issues of militias by laying ahead of us a road map for rehabilitation and reintegration of these people back into public life of Iraqi politics or Iraqi state.

BLITZER: So let me just press you on this point. So there’s one standard, as you see it, for the Peshmerga, which will be integrated into the new Iraqi security force, another for the Shiite militias, the Badr militia, the Mahdi militia?

Is that what you’re saying? Those militias should be disbanded but not necessarily the Peshmerga?

SALIH: No, I’m not saying that at all. The Peshmerga — and you have to remember the historical context as well. The Kurdistan regional government has been in existence over the last 14 years. And this issue of militias has been dealt with for almost a decade now. That has been dealt with, by and large.

But even with the Iraqi constitution that was ratified a few months back, there is a single provision calling for the establishment of regional guards, very much like the United States, where you have a national guards for the states.

But these, all military units of Iraq, including the Peshmergas or the regional guards of Kurdistan, will be going back to the same chain of command, ending in Baghdad at the ministry of defense and the prime minister.

This is where the crux of the problem in Iraq lies. The Kurds want the Shia and Sunni to disarm. The Shia want the Sunni and Kurds to disarm. The Sunni want the Shia and Kurds to disarm. Iraq has fractured across sectarian lines with each ethnic group with its own militia. A so-called "Unity" Government cannot survive if, as you just heard from the Deputy Prime Minister, each group wants an exception to protect their militias from disarming. This, Mr. Russert and Mr. Bush, is a recipe for a civil war.

Against this backdrop comes an incisive article in The Washington Post written by Nir Rosen. Mr. Rosen has spent nearly two years in Iraq following the disintegration of Iraqi society. His article is a gripping first hand look into the heart of the problem:

Every morning the streets of Baghdad are littered with dozens of bodies, bruised, torn, mutilated, executed only because they are Sunni or because they are Shiite. Power drills are an especially popular torture device.

I have spent nearly two of the three years since Baghdad fell in Iraq. On my last trip, a few weeks back, I flew out of the city overcome with fatalism. Over the course of six weeks, I worked with three different drivers; at various times each had to take a day off because a neighbor or relative had been killed. One morning 14 bodies were found, all with ID cards in their front pockets, all called Omar. Omar is a Sunni name. In Baghdad these days, nobody is more insecure than men called Omar. On another day a group of bodies was found with hands folded on their abdomens, right hand over left, the way Sunnis pray. It was a message. These days many Sunnis are obtaining false papers with neutral names. Sunni militias are retaliating, stopping buses and demanding the jinsiya , or ID cards, of all passengers. Individuals belonging to Shiite tribes are executed.

…

At first, the dominant presence of the U.S. military — with its towering vehicles rumbling through Baghdad’s streets and its soldiers like giants with their vests and helmets and weapons — seemed overwhelming. The Occupation could be felt at all times. Now in Baghdad, you can go days without seeing American soldiers. Instead, it feels as if Iraqis are occupying Iraq, their masked militiamen blasting through traffic in anonymous security vehicles, shooting into the air, angrily shouting orders on loudspeakers, pointing their Kalashnikovs at passersby.

Today, the Americans are just one more militia lost in the anarchy. They, too, are killing Iraqis.

…

The world wonders if Iraq is on the brink of civil war, while Iraqis fear calling it one, knowing the fate such a description would portend. In truth, the civil war started long before Samarra and long before the first uprisings. It started when U.S. troops arrived in Baghdad. It began when Sunnis discovered what they had lost, and Shiites learned what they had gained. And the worst is yet to come. [Emphasis added by me.]

If you still believe that the war in Iraq is about "suiciders" and fighting them there so we don’t have to fight them here, read Nir Rosen’s article very carefully. It becomes quite clear that the "progress" made by the Green Zone politicians is restricted to the Green Zone only. On the streets of Baghdad and the rest of Iraq it is the militias who rule and dole out swift justice. With the Badr Brigade, the Mahdi Army and the Peshmerga firmly entrenched with their leaders occupying senior positions in the "Unity" Government; the stage is set for large-scale bloodletting.

I am reminded of the situation in Afghanistan after the Soviet backed Government collapsed in 1992. Then a so-called "Unity" Government was formed with the various militias occupying various ministries of the Government. The "unity" collapsed rather quickly as different warring ministries began to engage in full-scale warfare. The country plunged into anarchy. The result, as everyone knows, came in the form of security and stability provided by a fundementalist group known as the Taliban.

Though there are certainly differences in the internal dynamics of the various groups that exist in Iraq and those that existed in Afghanistan in 1992, the parallels are also quite striking. Afghanistan should serve as a cautionary tale for what can happen when well armed militias are "integrated" into a "Unity" Government. But as long as our leaders are focused on the "suiciders" the lessons of history will be ignored and we will be condemned to repeat the past.

The New York Times is reporting today that Shia and Sunni Iraqis have begun to flee from mixed Shia-Sunni areas. This migration comes on the heels of increased sectarian strife, death squad activity; and bombings targeting political figures, businesses, ordinary citizens and religious establishments.

The daily body count in Iraq ranges anywhere from 30 to 60 deaths, depending on which source you cite. That translates to 10950 to 21900 deaths per year if the current trend remains steady and does not accelerate. To put these numbers in perspective, consider that during the rule of Saddam Hussein from 1979 to 2003, the US Government’s estimate of the number of deaths is 300,000. That is, about 12500 deaths per year. The current death rate in Iraq equals or far exceeds the deaths during the rule of Saddam Hussein. So, if you pose to the common Iraqi the Ronald Reagan question, "Are you better off today than you were four years ago?" it should not come as a surprise if the answer is "No."

The reader can continue the gruesome exercise of comparing body counts with such well-known civil wars as Lebanon and Algeria. If you do work the numbers you will find that in terms of the death rate, Iraq today either equals or exceeds the death rates in these and other civil wars of the 20th Century.

The consequence of the Shia and Sunni communities separating geographically will be further bloodshed. Mixed communities were the last strands of the chord holding Iraq together. Without the countervailing force of these mixed neighborhoods there is nothing to slow the rapid acceleration of sectarian strife. 

Into the imbroglio enter the United States. We have not too subtly asked the Iraqi Prime Minister to step down. Washington Post is reporting today that there are now calls from within Iraq for the Prime Minister to step down. The United States may unfortunately get its wish here. It is unfortunate because al-Jaafari’s likely replacement will be Adel Abdul Mahdi. Abdul Mahdi is the candidate backed directly by SCIRI (Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq). I think the name of the organization speaks for itself. Incidentally, the Badr Brigade, the militia blamed for a large number of the killings, is the military wing of SCIRI.

The pushing aside of al-Jaafari, with the backing of the United States, will further de-legitimize the Iraqi Government. It will certainly give no comfort to the Sunni minority to see the U.S., however inadvertently, offering support to SCIRI. Further compounding the problem is the large-scale infiltration of the Iraqi police and army by the Badr Brigade and Mahdi Army militias. Of these police forces, GlobalSecurity.org reports that the U.S. Army General in charge of security in Baghdad, General James Thurman, said this week:

Iraqi troops and police units are more and more often taking the lead in counter-insurgency operations in Baghdad and the three provinces to the south that come under his responsibility. He also says more Iraqis are calling a special phone number to report insurgent activity. He says there have been more than 3,000 such calls since January, and that most of them have resulted in military operations that found insurgents, criminals or weapons caches.

The paradox is what looks like progress in training the Iraqi police and military is in fact resulting in these forces creating the very instability we are training them to control. We have, like it or not, taken sides in this civil war. Our stated objective is to stay out of any civil war that may be occurring or may occur in the future. But, the reality is that you cannot have a 138,000 strong army sitting on its hands while a civil war rages all around. The logic of the situation will force the United States to choose one side over another (consider the examples of Lebanon or Somalia).

What then will be the role of the U.S. military in Iraq with civil war breaking out all around them? There is no viable role for the military in Iraq that does not entail a long-term entanglement in the conflict - with the outcome decidedly uncertain. It is time, then, to withdraw our troops in some sort of orderly fashion. Very little further damage to our credibility will result from a quick withdrawal. Our three years in Iraq have damaged our credibility to levels below which it is unlikely to go.

I think the Iraqi conflict train has already left the station. We are left only with trying to affect a quick resolution of the civil war. This does not require a military presence, and in fact, a military presence might hinder any such progress for reasons mentioned above. Our goal from this point should and must be to try to work to ease tensions within Iraq and to work with Iraq’s neighbors to contain the conflict within Iraq’s borders.

It is not an attractive proposition, but we are where we are. 

As sectarian violence spins out of control in Iraq, today The Washington Post reports that Moqtada al-Sadr’s compound was struck with two mortars. He was inside and survived injury.

 After the attack, al-Sadr released a statement with the obligatory call for calm. As translated by The Associated Press:

 "I call upon all brothers to stay calm and I call upon the Iraqi army to protect the pilgrims as the Nawasib (militants) are aiming to attack Shiites everyday," the statement said, according to the Associated Press. 

Or did he? The Post article points out:

 In the past two months, attacks on two Shiite targets — a Shiite shrine in the city of Samarra, and Baghdad’s Sadr City neighborhood, a stronghold of Sadr support — have unleashed the greatest sectarian bloodletting since U.S. forces overthrew Saddam Hussein in 2003. Sadr issued similar appeals for calm after both attacks.

 However, Sadr’s thousands-strong Mahdi Army militia is accused by many U.S. officials and others in the violent retaliation to the mosque bombing and Sadr City attack.

 Al-Sadr uses the word "Nawasib" in his statement. It is a very loaded word and is code for inciting violence in otherwise benign statements. "Nawasib" is understood by the Shiite to mean "those who declared hostility against the household of the Prophet". It is an insult used to refer to Sunnis. It is not a word you would use when you are interested in reconciliation. It is a word you would use to incite hate and violence. To make the comparison more immediate, consider that there are similar words that racists use in the United States (and I will not repeat them here) when they are interested in hatemongering.

 The radicals use our ignorance of their culture against us. They are very adept at playing the Bush Administration for full advantage, on the one hand, getting material support as the "good" guys in the Green Zone, and on the other hand, using that "material support" to kill innocents while we are patting ourselves on the back for teaching these people about democracy.

 Hate always has many names. In Iraq, Hate sometimes likes to call itself "Nawasib".

Every Muslim in the world recognizes the title of this post. Those words begin every chapter (surah) but one of The Koran.  The Arabic words Rahman (most gracious) and Rahim (most merciful) are considered to be two of the ninety-nine attributes of Allah. Grace and Mercy are the foundation of the religion of Islam. The word Koran itself is generally translated to mean, "Read". This is the first word in The Koran - "Read". Ignorance is not consistent with being a Muslim.

We live in a world where much killing is committed in the name of religion. And, much killing today is being committed in the name of Islam, in the name of Allah. I recognize that the reader may now want to point out that much killing has been and is being committed in the name of other religions also. Why do I single Islam out today? The simple answer is that I am a Muslim. I am not ready to cast stones at others without taking down the glass in my own house.

The New York Times gives us today a glimpse into hell. The Times article gives us chilling commentary on evil manifested. I argued in an earlier post about the danger in Iraq from the Mahdi Army and the Badr Brigade; but the Times article brings into the mainstream the atrocities these groups are committing in Iraq. They are not committing your run of the mill killings; they are using creative tools of the torture trade like electric drills. What kind of animal do you have to be to drill a man’s head for brutal pleasure?

They are committing these atrocities, the systematic killing of Sunni Muslims, with ruthless efficiency and in the name of Islam. I say to them: Read. I say to them that I have seen your faces before. You have killed in other places and at other times in the name of some cause or other. I have watched you kill mothers, fathers, husbands, wives and I have seen you kill children. I have watched you from a child’s hiding place as you nearly beat a man to death in search of my own father. I have seen your coward’s eyes behind the hot muzzle of your weapon. I have seen the blood on your hands.

Madness has been unleashed in Iraq and we have all been its enablers. I grieve for the ordinary citizen of Iraq. I say to you that this too shall pass. Reason lies at the end of this meat grinder. But I fear a lot of killing is left to be done before reason returns.

The latest series in the "stay the course" op-eds comes from Iraqi prime minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari. Jaafari, Tehran’s man in Baghdad, writes that his "first challenge will be to stifle terrorism". This is a very laudable goal. I have no doubt that Jaafari and the SCIRI want to stifle "terrorism". I do wonder whether their definition of "terrorism" might not be different than our definition of terrorism. I found the following from al-Jaafari’s op-ed quite revealing:

Sidelining Moqtada al-Sadr’s group from the Governing Council was a mistake. Had it been integrated into the political process back then, long before the formation of the Mahdi Army, events would have turned out differently in the south. I corrected this policy and brought Sadr’s group into the democratic process. This inclusive approach resulted in the huge nationwide turnout for the December elections and a parliament that truly reflects Iraq.

During my term as elected prime minister, Sadr’s group has not attacked any coalition troops. Furthermore, Sadr and several Sunni leaders are now catalysts for maintaining the peace in Iraq, calling on their followers not to retaliate against terrorist provocations, which aim to ignite civil war.

Unfortunately, we have suffered setbacks during the past year. The most troubling was the discovery of prisoner torture in an Interior Ministry jail in November. As soon as I learned of these despicable acts I formed an investigative committee made up solely of Sunni leaders, and I await its findings.

The long-term solution to this problem will be multifaceted. We must ensure that all security forces receive proper training and that there is a chain of command that holds commanders and officers responsible for such abuses. In addition, the various militias that fought Saddam Hussein’s regime honorably must be fully integrated into Iraq’s security forces without concentrating any particular group into any one division. Finally, we need to strengthen the country’s nascent judiciary, which suffered years of coercion and corruption under the former regime, to guarantee its independence and impartiality. [Emphasis added by me]

Sadr’s group, that is the Mahdi Army, along with the Badr Brigade of SCIRI have been systematically murdering their political rivals and Sunnis. They have certainly been "integrating" themselves into the Iraqi security forces. There will be no rule of law in Iraq as long as Islamist militias are allowed to set up shop under official sanction. The recent reports of death squads roaming the streets are not encouraging.

We have served up Iraq on a platter to the Iranians through their SCIRI proxies. We have turned what was the most secular Arab country, through our bumbling, into a de facto province of Iran. Don’t let the mild mannered front man fool you, I fear that al-Jaafari’s vision for Iraq is a rule of law based on an extreme interpretation of Islam. The Mahdi Army and the Badr Brigade will insure that the men and women of Iraq get in line, with the women at the back of the line, of course.