Security situation in Iraq appeared to unravel Monday when a militia loyal to radical Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada al Sadr began shutting down neighborhoods in west Baghdad and issuing demands of the central government.
Simultaneously, in the strategic southern port city of Basra, where Sadr's Mahdi militia is in control, the Iraqi government launched a crackdown in the face of warnings by Sadr's followers that they'll fight government forces if any Sadrists are detained. By 1 a.m. Arab satellite news channels reported clashes between the Mahdi Army and police in Basra.The freeze on offensive activity by Sadr's Mahdi Army has been a major factor behind the recent drop in violence in Iraq, and there were fears that the confrontation that's erupted in Baghdad and Basra could end the lull in attacks, assassinations, kidnappings and bombings.
As the U.S. military recorded its 4,000th death in Iraq, U.S. officials in Baghdad warned again Monday that drawing down troops too quickly could collapse Iraq's fragile security situation.
Pentagon officials said that military leaders are watching for any signs of backsliding as they consider whether to keep drawing down troops below pre-surge levels....
On Sunday, a barrage of at least 17 rockets hit the heavily fortified Green Zone and surrounding neighborhoods, where both the U.S. and Iraqi government headquarters are housed, according to police. Most of them were launched from the outskirts of Sadr City and Bayaa, both Mahdi Army-controlled neighborhoods.
On Monday, the Sadrists all but shut down the neighborhoods they control on the west bank of Baghdad. Gunmen went to stores and ordered them to close as militiamen stood in the streets. Mosques used their loudspeakers to urge people to come forward and join the protest.
Fliers were distributed with the Sadrists' three demands of the Iraqi government: to release detainees, stop targeting Sadrist members and apologize to the families and the tribal sheiks of the men.
The Iraqi security forces issued a statement promising to deal with those who terrorized shopkeepers and students.
"It's an open sit-in until the government responds to our demands. If the government doesn't respond, we will have our own procedures," said Hamdallah al Rikabi, the head of the Sadr offices in Karkh, in western Baghdad.
In the southern port city of Basra, where Shiite groups are battling for power, the Mahdi Army is the most feared force. The British military pulled out of the city late last year, leaving the city in the militia's hands.
The Iraqi government announced a three-day security plan, beginning 5 p.m. Tuesday, to seal Basra off from other governorates and countries, shut down schools and all institutes of education and ban vehicles from entering the province. Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki, as well as the ministers of defense and interior, were in Basra on Monday.
Since Sadr froze his militia on Aug. 29 and renewed the freeze in February, militia members and Sadrists have railed against the government for targeting and detaining their members. In Basra, Sadr's office rejected the security plan and warned that it'll react if attacked or if Iraqi forces detain more Sadrists.
As Shiite violence rises, U.S. troop deaths also appear to be rising in places such as Baghdad, where the American military is thinning out its presence as part of its drawdown of five brigades. Attacks against civilians in the capital are rising, according to statistics compiled by McClatchy. Next week, the U.S. will finish pulling out the second of five surge brigades. As part of the drawdown, the military has moved battalions out of Baghdad toward more violent areas such as the northern city of Mosul and Iraq's northeastern Diyala province.
As the troop presence has shifted, so has the violence. For the first time since January, a majority of U.S. troops were killed in Baghdad, not in outlying northern provinces. Indeed, the U.S. military reached the death of its 4,000th soldier in Iraq on Sunday, when four U.S. soldiers were killed in southern Baghdad.
So far, this month, 27 soldiers have been killed in Iraq. Of those, 16, or 59 percent, died in Baghdad. In January, 25 percent of U.S. deaths happened in Baghdad, or 10 of 40.
Civilian casualties in Baghdad are also on the rise, according to a McClatchy count. After a record low through November, when at least 76 people were killed and 306 were injured, the deaths began to rise. In December, it crept up to 88 people killed, in January 100 and in February 172. As of March 24, at least 149 people were killed and 448 were injured.
McCain, meanwhile, has returned from his recent trip to Iraq to proclaim that "we are succeeding":
Fresh off his eighth Iraq visit, Sen. John McCain declared Monday that "we are succeeding" and said he wouldn't change course -- even as the U.S. death toll rose to 4,000 and the war entered its sixth year.
To underscore his view of the stakes in Iraq, the certain Republican presidential nominee twice referenced a recent audio tape from Osama bin Laden in which the al-Qaeda leader urged followers to join the al-Qaeda fight in Iraq and called the country "the greatest opportunity and the biggest task.""For the first time, I have seen Osama bin Laden and General (David) Petraeus in agreement, and, that is, a central battleground in the battle against al-Qaeda is in Iraq today. And that's what bin Laden was saying and that's what General Petraeus is saying and that's what I'm saying, my friends," McCain said.
"And my Democrat opponents who want to pull out of Iraq refuse to understand what's being said and what's happening -- and that is the central battleground is Iraq in this struggle against radical Islamic extremism," he added. McCain also said Democratic rivals Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton were naive and "dead wrong" to want to withdraw troops.
"We're succeeding. I don't care what anybody says. I've seen the facts on the ground," the Arizona senator insisted a day after a roadside bomb in Baghdad killed four U.S. soldiers and rockets pounded the U.S.-protected Green Zone there, and a wave of attacks left at least 61 Iraqis dead nationwide. The events transpired as bin Laden called on the people of Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Saudi Arabia to "help in support of their mujahedeen brothers in Iraq, which is the greatest opportunity and the biggest task."
Despite all that, McCain told reporters: "I don't think I would change the strategy now unless General Petraeus recommended it. I think he's trusted by the American people, the president and by me. And General Petraeus again showed me facts on the ground where the surge is succeeding."
A few thoughts are in order here:
First and foremost, I will repeat my earlier predictions: McCain has so thoroughly tied himself to the supposed success of The Surge that when violence inevitably returns to Iraq, the entire premise of his campaign will be destroyed.
Second: Make no mistake about it, but violence will unfortunately return to Iraq. The strategic purpose of The Surge was to provide the security necessary for political reconciliation. As the story above makes clear, that reconciliation has not happened. The Surge may have prompted a momentary pause in the Iraqi civil war, but it could not end it. Which brings me to...
Third: The idea that Gen. Petraeus, or any other general for that matter, should be allowed to set national security policy is crazy. It is up to our political leaders to set policies and make decisions about when and where to apply military force. It is up to our military leaders to then devise the military strategies and tactics necessary to meet our political goals and objectives. Our system is founded on the idea that we have civilian control of the military. If our goal is an endless occupation of Iraq, then I have little doubt that Gen. Petraeus' strategy is the one we should follow. But that just begs the question: should our goal be the endless occupation of Iraq? Hiding behind the general might allow us to temporarily avoid answering the question, but it will not make it go away.
Fourth: This idea that we must stay in Iraq because Osama bin Laden says so is ludicrous. And to understand why you need go no further than bin Laden himself. From a speech delivered to the world on September 11, 2004:
"The mujahedeen recently forced Bush to resort to emergency funds to continue the fight in Afghanistan and Iraq, which is evidence of the success of the bleed-until-bankruptcy plan -- with Allah's permission...
All that we have to do is to send two mujahedin to the furthest point East to raise a piece of cloth on which is written al-Qaeda, in order to make the generals race there to cause America to suffer human, economic, and political losses without their achieving for it anything of note other than some benefits for their private companies....This is in addition to our having experience in using guerrilla warfare and the war of attrition to fight tyrannical superpowers, as we, alongside the mujahedin, bled Russia for ten years, until it went bankrupt and was forced to withdraw in defeat... So we are continuing this policy in bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy."
Bin Laden wants us to stay in Iraq because he believes that this war will bankrupt us. His goal is to defeat us precisely the same way he defeated the Soviets. So far, we're $1 trillion in, and there's no end in sight. McCain suggests we must stay because Osama says we must stay. But he never bothers to ask, apparently, why our declared enemy wants us to stay.
Fifth and final point: Notice bin Laden's statement about raising a piece of cloth on which is written al-Qaeda? This is an admission that he plans to use the al Qaeda in ways that will cause us to overreact, drawing us into conflicts where we will do ourselves far more harm than good. He recognizes that for most Americans, the brand itself is enough to create the perception of a threat even where one does not otherwise exist.
After reading that, does the existence of "al Qaeda in Iraq," a group that did not exist prior to our invasion of that nation, make more sense? AQI is a branding initiative designed to keep us bogged down in Iraq. By slapping the AQ brand on an otherwise unaffiliated group, bin Laden recognizes that he can drive US foreign policy in his desired direction.
All of this is a very long way of saying something very simple: If bin Laden's admitted goal is to bankrupt our nation, why should we take his approval of our mission in Iraq as a positive thing?
This is why civilian control of the military is such an important principle. To Gen. Petraeus, AQI represents a clear and present dangers to the soldiers under his command. It is irrelevant to him whether or not AQI represents a true strategic threat to the United States, because what is and the strategic interests of the United States are not his to define. Those decisions belong to the civilians under whose command he serves. So long as we are in Iraq, he must confront any and all groups that pose a threat to his mission and to his soldiers. It is up to our political leaders to decide whether or not his mission meets our larger strategic goals.
Bin Laden has declared that he will use the AQ brand to further his mission to bankrupt our nation. Shouldn't we consider that when reacting to events in the world? Doesn't that matter?
UPDATE: Marc Lynch makes explicit the long-term dangers of allowing the judgment of military leaders to dictate policy in Iraq:
The Awakenings strategy was a smart, tactically successful adaptation to developments on the ground, and Petraeus's team has done the best it could with the hand it was dealt. But it has always been the case that the Awakenings strategy built up military power outside of the Iraqi state, and has never had a plausible theory of how that power would be harnessed into a unified, legitimate state. It achieved some of its short-term tactical ends, but worked against the strategic goal of creating an effectively sovereign Iraqi state with a security architecture sustainable without US forces.
From Petraeus' point of view, the Awakenings strategy makes perfect sense. Any time you can convert an enemy into a friend you've achieved at least short-term military success. The problem, of course, comes from the fact that this strategy, however successful in the short-term, works directly against our long-term political objectives. To create the short-term space necessary for long-term political reconciliation, we have helped finance and arm a portion of the population that sees its own national government as a threat to its long-term existence. The short-term directly undermines the long-term.
Now to be clear, this isn't Petraeus' fault. He was told to use The Surge to improve security in Iraq, and he has done an admirable job. But The Surge was always meant to be a means to an end, and not an end in and of itself. It was a sound military strategy in service of a set of deeply flawed political goals.
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