Clipmarks | Mahdi army Clips

Juan Cole on Biden: he reads journals!!

Sat, 23 Aug 2008 20:46:46 GMT

clipped by: masbury
clipper's remarks: "It struck me as the sort of thing that should happen in our democracy every day-- you write something in your specialty, and your elected representative calls you to talk about it. No lobbies, think tanks, etc. involved." That's high praise! Imagine having a VP informed by people who've given their lives to studying these issues, rather than people trying to angle for more money. Contrast it, for instance, with Cheney's energy policy crew of rich industry insiders.

Clip Source: www.juancole.com

Sen. Biden called me to testify before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Iraq in April 2004, when there was heavy fighting between the Mahdi Army and the US military. He did so on the basis of a journal article I had written on the Sadr Movement in the Middle East Journal, which he had read. That knocked my socks off. People in Washington don't often read journal articles. It struck me as the sort of thing that should happen in our democracy every day-- you write something in your specialty, and your elected representative calls you to talk about it. No lobbies, think tanks, etc. involved.

So it was a positive impression! And in the hearing he was informed and articulate.

A warm congratulations to Senator Joe Biden on his VP candidate position on the Democratic ticket!

Tags: biden

Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army now a social svcs org.

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 05:18:25 GMT

clipped by: willhelm
clipper's remarks: My, how quickly they learn.

Clip Source: online.wsj.com

BAGHDAD -- Anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr -- long a thorn in the side of the U.S. military and Iraqi government -- intends to disarm his once-dominant Mahdi Army militia and remake it as a social-services organization.

Wonders never cease

Tue, 05 Aug 2008 03:50:36 GMT

clipped by: sillysam

Clip Source: www.foxnews.com

Al-Sadr Plans to Turn Militia Into Civic Organization

Anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr is planning to disarm the Mahdi Army by turning the militia into a civic and social service organization, a significant strategic shift, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal.

In a brochure obtained by the paper and confirmed by Sheikh Salah al-Obeidi, Sadr's chief spokesman, the Mahdi Army will now be guided by Shiite spirituality instead of anti-American militancy. A new guiding principle will also be introduced: al-Mumahidoon, indicating that his supporters will be the foot soldiers of the Shiite messiah, Imam Muhammad al-Mahdi, who Shiite Muslims believe will return to rid the world of evil.

Iraq Poised to Explode

Tue, 29 Jul 2008 11:27:24 GMT

clipped by: abailart
clipper's remarks: Not a stunningly original analysis but sometimes the obvious needs repeating over and over.

Clip Source: www.thenation.com

Despite the Optimism of the Neocons, which has pushed mainstream media coverage to be increasingly flowery about Iraq's political progress, in fact the country is poised to explode.

There are at least three flashpoints for an explosion, any or all of which could blow up over the next couple of months. (Way to go, Surgin' Generals!) The first is the brewing crisis over Kirkuk, where the pushy Kurds are demanding control and Iraq's Arabs are resisting.

second is in the west, and Anbar, where the US-backed Sons of Iraq sahwa ("Awakening") movement is moving to take power against the Iraqi Islamic Party, a fundamentalist Sunni bloc

third is the restive Mahdi Army of Muqtada al-Sadr, which is chafing at gains made by its Iranian-backed rival, the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI).

Tags: iraq factional internicine war, kurds, north iraq-turkey, iran shiites

Don't Look Now--but the Surge is About to Backfire as Iraq poised to Explode

Mon, 28 Jul 2008 23:49:21 GMT

clipped by: papananook
clipper's remarks: The first is the brewing crisis over Kirkuk, where the pushy Kurds are demanding control and Iraq’s Arabs are resisting. The second is in the west, and Anbar, where the US-backed Sons of Iraq sahwa (”Awakening”) movement is moving to take power against the Iraqi Islamic Party, a fundamentalist Sunni bloc. And third is the restive Mahdi Army of Muqtada al-Sadr, which is chafing at gains made by its Iranian-backed rival, the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI)
The final crisis-to-be is the Sadr vs. Badr one. The Times today suggests that Sadr is weakening:

The militia that was once the biggest defender of poor Shiites in Iraq, the Mahdi Army, has been profoundly weakened in a number of neighborhoods across Baghdad, in an important, if tentative, milestone for stability in Iraq.

Don’t believe it. Sadr’s rivals, ISCI, don’t have anything like the popular base that Sadr has. And underneath Sadr is a volatile mix of neighborhood, local and regional militias, mosques, and econom

Clip Source: www.commondreams.org

While everyone’s looking at Iraq’s effect on American politics — and whether or not John McCain and Barack Obama are converging on a policy that combines a flexible timetable with a vague, and long-lasting, residual force — let’s take a look instead at Iraqi politics. The picture isn’t pretty.

Despite the Optimism of the Neocons, which has pushed mainstream media coverage to be increasingly flowery about Iraq’s political progress, in fact the country is poised to explode. Even before the November election. And for McCain and Obama, the problem is that Iran has many of the cards in its hands. Depending on its choosing, between now and November Iran can help stabilize the war in Iraq — mostly by urging the Iraqi Shiites to behave themselves — or it can make things a lot more violent.

There are at least three flashpoints for an explosion, any or all of which could blow up over the next couple of months. (Way to go, Surgin’ Generals!)

Shiite Militia in Baghdad Sees Its Power Ebb

Sun, 27 Jul 2008 19:40:43 GMT

clipped by: bmeuppls
clipper's remarks: Looks like Mookie Al Sadr lost big...

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

BAGHDAD — The militia that was once the biggest defender of poor Shiites in Iraq, the Mahdi Army, has been profoundly weakened in a number of neighborhoods across Baghdad, in an important, if tentative, milestone for stability in Iraq.

It is a remarkable change from years past, when the militia, led by the anti-American cleric Moktada al-Sadr, controlled a broad swath of Baghdad, including local governments and police forces. But its use of extortion and violence began alienating much of the Shiite population to the point that many quietly supported American military sweeps against the group.

In a further sign of weakness, Shiite tribes in several neighborhoods are asking for compensation from militia members’ families for past wrongs.

Tags: politics, iraq

Mugtada al-Sadr keeps the truce for now....

Tue, 22 Jul 2008 15:41:49 GMT

clipped by: ratilfar
clipper's remarks: Cont....

Such tales abound. Sudani said she'd heard of troops bursting into a woman's home and arresting her four sons, as a soldier threw the mother to the ground and put his boot on her head. Iraqi troops are said to have seized gasoline canisters from a Sadr City resident and distributed them to others, claiming they were from the government.

Ali Jassim, 30, another resident, said his cousin's phone rang at a checkpoint with a ringtone containing a chant about Sadr. When soldiers heard it, they slapped him, he said.

Sadr's militia, the Mahdi Army, has suffered a series of setbacks since last spring. It lost control of Basra, Iraq's second-largest city, and the southern city of Amara after Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki ordered his forces to retake those areas. Many charge that Maliki is waging a political war against his former allies in time for fall's provincial elections.

Clip Source: www.mcclatchydc.com

BAGHDAD — Under sweltering heat Friday, the prayer leader urged the crowd of thousands to show forbearance and not to retaliate for what he called daily humiliations at the hands of the Iraqi army.

The plea has become a weekly ritual. Baghdad's Sadr City district after Friday prayers is a massive slum seething with unrest, which backers of firebrand cleric Muqtada al Sadr are managing to control, but only just.

"There is anger inside our people. There is a volcano that wants to erupt. But we are obedient to Sayed Muqtada," said Nadhil al Sudani, a Sadr City resident and the chief of security for the women's section of Friday prayers, referring to Sadr with an honorific.

"It is only Muqtada's orders that are stopping us. The Iraqi army knows that they would become hostages within hours," one worshipper told a McClatchy reporter after Friday's sermon.

Tags: iraq, sadr, baghdad, war, tension, army, surge, truce

US and Iran share same proxy in Iraq

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 14:17:31 GMT

clipped by: sparky2301

Clip Source: www.informationclearinghouse.info

Nir Rosen, one of the most astute and knowledgeable correspondents in the region, observes that the main target of the US-Maliki military operations, Moktada Al Sadr, is disliked by Iran as well: He's independent and has popular support, therefore dangerous.

Iran "clearly supported Prime Minister Maliki and the Iraqi government against what they described as 'illegal armed groups' (of Moktada's Mahdi army) in the recent conflict in Basra," Rosen writes, "which is not surprising given that their main proxy in Iraq, the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council dominates the Iraqi state and is Maliki's main backer."

"There is no proxy war in Iraq," Rosen concludes, "because the U.S. and Iran share the same proxy."

Tags: iraq, iran, us

Amara; The Case Of The Invisible American War Machine; And What, We Used To Call "Censorship"

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 15:41:51 GMT

clipped by: ratilfar
clipper's remarks: Cont...

Gone is all that nasty documentation of American soldiers imposing themselves on either innocent or opposition-sympathizing Iraqi civilians as embedded photographers were known to relay two or three years back. (In a particularly egregious example, you might even recall the raid in February '07 where the Iraqis -- who were supposed to lead the mission by barely showed up -- caused American Staff Sgt. Hector Leija to pay with his life ... further leading the military to flip out that the NYT dared even document the whole obscene mess.)

Clip Source: bagnewsnotes.typepad.com

Last week, I thought there was something fishy about the photos from Amara, and now a new TIME article bears it out.

First, some background: In nearly every account of the push two weeks ago to clear out the Mahdi army from the southern city of Amara, the operation was described as an initiative of "Iraqi forces backed by US troops." Yet, in combing through the newswire images of the Amara action, I found a striking absence of involvement on the part of the Yanks.

...With one exception -- involving the first photo above, as part of that standard portrait of the "captured enemy weapons haul."

Shortly after the morning's mission, four American soldiers visited al-Moussawi's station to inquire about progress made in dismantling an office used by the Sadrists. One of the soldiers, who said they were under orders to prohibit the press from photographing them, put the number of American troops brought into the area since last month at around 1,000.

Tags: iraq, war, media, coverage, pictures, truth, deception, pr, image, manipulation

Some Iraqi News Not Reported By "The Media"

Sat, 28 Jun 2008 12:36:55 GMT

clipped by: merrie
clipper's remarks: Meanwhile Bill Roggio reports that a released Gitmo detainee is back to the front and is responsible for attacks inside Iraq: The detainee, Abdullah Salih al Ajmi, drove a armored truck packed with explosives into a Iraqi army base and detonated it, killing 13 Iraqi army soldiers and wounding 42.

http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2008/06/released_guantanamo.php

Just the tip of the iceberg I’m afraid after our courts release a large chunk of these guys.

Al Qaeda in Iraq, through its puppet organization the Islamic State of Iraq, released its latest propaganda video on June 23. The video contains a montage of attacks throughout Iraq, and features two Kuwaiti al Qaeda operatives who conducted strikes in Mosul. One of the operatives was released from the US military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The Islamic State of Iraq used footage taken at Combat Outpost Inman by this reporter in Mosul in March of this year.

Clip Source: www.floppingaces.net

The remnants of the Mahdi Army have gone underground, forming an armed network on a much smaller scale. How small? Think of the Spartans at Thermopylae, and cut that in half while removing the courage and the military skill.

The military wing of the Sadrist Movement, the political party loyal to Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr, is “turning itself into a secret armed organization,” an Iraqi intelligence official told the Gulf News on condition of anonymity.

Iraqi intelligence reports suggest the group’s numbers have dwindled from around 50,000 to as few as 150 in the past few years.

Intelligence officials credit decisions by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to launch military offensives against Shiite militants in the southern parts of the country as deterring the group. An Iraqi intelligence official reports as many as 2,000 Mehdi Army fighters were killed in recent operations in Basra, Sadr City and the provincial capital of Maysan, Amarah.

Tags: mahdi army, basra, sadr city, mosul, the islamic state of iraq

The Surge is....oh no, not again!

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 14:51:29 GMT

clipped by: ratilfar
clipper's remarks: "And the GAO report finds just that, that the Bush administration has no plan for what to do next. With the 18-month surge coming to an end in July, the report says that the administration has not set out "strategic goals and objectives in Iraq for the phase after July 2008 or how it intends to achieve them" and "an updated strategy is needed for how the United States will help Iraq achieve key security, legislative, and economic goals."

The report acknowledged that violence was down in May (after rising in March and April) and attributed the reduction to three factors: "1) the increase in U.S. combat forces, 2) the creation of nongovernmental security forces such as the Sons of Iraq, and 3) the Mahdi Army's declaration of a cease fire." What do these three conditions have in common? They are all temporary and unlikely to continue in the future.

Clip Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

The statement is made in the U.S. media, over and over again, as if it is as factual as the sun rising in the morning and setting in the evening: "The surge is working." But just because the media has parroted the talking points of the Bush administration and John McCain's campaign in making such an assertion, it does not make it true. And a report released by the U.S. Government Accounting Office (GAO) yesterday does something that McCain and the White House probably wish would not be done: actually evaluating progress in Iraq against the goals the administration laid out in January 2007 when undertaking the surge. Guess what? In many material ways, the surge isn't working. Sorry to rain on the parade of CNN, Fox News, ABC, CBS, etc. with the facts.

The mainstream media is barely even acknowledging the report's release. At the time of this writing, the GAO report didn't even warrant a headline on the CNN.com home page,

Tags: gao, iraq, war, surge, facts, you, can, use

More good news

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 03:06:53 GMT

clipped by: sillysam

Clip Source: www.foxnews.com

Iraqi, U.S. Forces Take Over Al-Mahdi Stronghold Without Firing a Shot

They came at dawn, thousands of Iraqi troops and U.S. special forces on a mission to reclaim a lawless city from the militias who ran it.

By the end of the day, al-Amarah was under Iraqi government control — without a shot being fired.

The city had been taken over by Moqtada al-Sadr's al-Mahdi Army two years ago after British troops handed it to an ill-prepared Iraqi Army. On Thursday, the city's streets were crawling with Iraqi security forces. Soldiers searched houses as police manned checkpoints and Soviet-era tanks guarded bridges over the Tigris River.

Key Iraqi Leaders Deliver Setbacks to U.S.

Sat, 14 Jun 2008 17:02:36 GMT

clipped by: ratilfar
clipper's remarks: "Premier Rejects Terms of Proposed Pacts; Cleric Reactivates Militia"

The Surge? What Surge?

Clip Source: www.washingtonpost.com

BAGHDAD, June 13 -- The Bush administration's Iraq policy suffered two major setbacks Friday when Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki publicly rejected key U.S. terms for an ongoing military presence and anti-American Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr called for a new militia offensive against U.S. forces.

During a visit to Jordan, Maliki said negotiations over initial U.S. proposals for bilateral political and military agreements had "reached a dead end." While he said talks would continue, his comments fueled doubts that the pacts could be reached this year, before the Dec. 31 expiration of a United Nations mandate sanctioning the U.S. role in Iraq.

Maliki's comments came as Sadr called for a new armed wing of his Mahdi Army militia to fight U.S. troops. Sadr had ordered the militia to cease carrying weapons last August -- a leading factor in the recent decline in violence --

would operate in "total secrecy" and attack only American forces.

Tags: iraq, politics, war, surge, occupation, control, conquest, empire

Obama's Plan For Defeat

Sat, 14 Jun 2008 00:54:19 GMT

clipped by: merrie
clipper's remarks: But Obama and the Democrats would forfeit every one of these successes to a declared policy of fixed and unconditional withdrawal.

The disconnect between what Democrats are saying about Iraq and what is actually happening there has reached grotesque proportions. Obama will keep pulling out his 2002 speech opposing the war. But McCain's case is simple. Is not Obama's central mantra that this election is about the future not the past? It is about 2009, not 2002. Obama promises that upon his inauguration, he will order the Joint Chiefs to bring him a plan for withdrawal from Iraq within 16 months.

If McCain cannot take to the American people the case for the folly of that policy, he will not be president. Nor should he be.

Clip Source: www.townhall.com

The choice could not be more clearly drawn. The Democrats' one objective in Iraq is withdrawal. McCain's one objective is victory.

McCain's case is not hard to make. Iraq is a three-front war -- against Sunni al-Qaeda, against Shiite militias and against Iranian hegemony -- and we are winning on every front:

We did not go into Iraq to fight al-Qaeda.

But al-Qaeda chose to turn it into the central front in its war against America.

-- As for the Shiite extremists, the Mahdi Army is isolated and at its weakest point in years.

Its sponsor, Iran, has suffered major setbacks, not just in Basra, but in Iraqi public opinion, which has rallied to the Maliki government and against Iranian interference through its Sadrist proxy.

Even the most expansive American objective -- establishing a representative government that is an ally against jihadists, both Sunni and Shiite -- is within sight.

Tags: iraq, mccain, obama, al-qaeda, mahdi army, al-sadr, iran's sadrist proxy

Sadr Organizing Force to Liberate Iraq from US Occupation

Fri, 13 Jun 2008 22:00:25 GMT

clipped by: blueridge
clipper's remarks: It's a war for independence and self government which will likely gain him major support from other groups as well. They vow to only fight the U.S. occupation forces. You see "Operation Iraqi Freedom" has not made them free, but enslaved and under a US puppet government that also is increasingly dissenting. This will make Sadr a national hero and end the "sectarian" violence always claimed in US propaganda.

Clip Source: news.yahoo.com

Iraq's Sadr plans new armed group to fight US forces

KUFA, Iraq (AFP) - Iraq's hardline Shiite leader Moqtada al-Sadr announced on Friday that he plans to form a new armed group to fight US forces in Iraq.

In a statement issued to his nearly 60,000 strong Mahdi Army militia, the anti-American cleric said the fight against US forces will now be waged only by the new group.

"The resistance will be carried out exclusively by a special group which I will announce later," Sadr said in a statement which was read out at a mosque in the holy Shiite town of Kufa.

"We will keep resisting the occupier until the liberation (of Iraq) or (our) martrydom."

Sadr said the group will direct its operations against US forces and will be banned from fighting Iraqis.

"This group will be professional and it will be the only group carrying arms which will be directed against the occupier. It will be banned from using arms against any Iraqis."

Tags: iraq, sadr, u.s. occupation of iraq, war