Needlenose

On Sunday, the New York Times surveyed the eerie calm in Sadr City:

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.

. . . The change is showing up in the lives of ordinary people. The price of cooking gas is less than a fifth of what it was when the militia controlled local gas stations, and kerosene for heating has also become much less expensive. In interviews, 17 Iraqis, including municipal officials, gas station workers and residents, described a pattern in which the militia’s control over the local economy and public services had ebbed. Merchants say they no longer have to pay protection money to militiamen. . . .

. . . A member of the Shuala district council said: “They used to come and order us to give them 100 gas canisters. Now it’s, ‘Can you please give me a gas canister?’ ”

Such extortion is the plausible flip side of the Mahdi Army’s much-hyped delivery of services in the neighborhoods they controlled, and it gives a clue to why the Sadrists were unable (or perhaps more accurately, unwilling) to provide those services when they were in charge of several government ministries.

There’s a certain amount of hype in the NYT article about the diminished influence of the Mahdi Army, but still the tone of relief — and in some cases, revenge — rings true:

In Topchi, a Shiite neighborhood in western Baghdad, a handwritten list of militia members’ names was taped up in the market this month, with the warning for their families to leave town. Several of their houses were attacked.

Some militia members’ families went to the local council to ask for help. They found none. Mahdi militiamen killed four local council members over several weeks last fall.

. . . Now neighborhoods are breathing more freely. A hairdresser in Ameen, a militia-controlled neighborhood in southeast Baghdad, said her clients no longer had to cover their faces when they left her house wearing makeup. Minibuses ferrying commuters in Sadr City are no longer required to play religious songs, said Abu Amjad, the civil servant, and now play songs about love, some even sung by women.

At the same time, the expected triumphalism of the right-wing idiotsphere is (as usual) premature:

Majid, a Sadr City resident who works in a government ministry, said several Iraqi Army officers in his area had to move their families to other neighborhoods after Mr. Maliki’s military operation because the militia threatened them. Bombs are still wounding and killing American soldiers in the district. And early this month, one Iraqi officer’s teenage son was kidnapped and killed, his body hung in a public place as a warning, said Majid, who gave only his first name because he feared reprisals.

“People are still afraid of the Mahdi Army,” he said. “You still get punished if you talk bad about them.”

. . . The militia is painting its response on Sadr City walls: “We will be back, after this break.”

This sense of lying in wait is reinforced by the McClatchy News story about the Iraqi army’s Potemkin victory over the Sadrists in Amara:

It wasn’t yet dawn, and the Iraqi army unit was already behind schedule. It was about to launch a major operation against another cluster of towns overrun by Shiite Muslim militiamen. . . . The 40-vehicle convoy was about to leave the base when the commander, Brig. Gen. Nabil Yassin Azadi, ordered everyone to stop. “Where is the map? How could you forget the map?” he screamed at his subordinates.

By the time they arrived at their destination, the city of Majir al Kabir, the sun led them in, and the militiamen whom they’d hoped to surprise had left, disappeared into the nearby marshes or perhaps across the border into Iran.

. . . As they dashed about the province over those four days, Azadi’s troops fired no shots and uncovered few weapons, despite digging up patios with picks and shovels in vain response to a tip.

Both the Sadrists and the Iraqi government forces appear well aware that the latter has never beaten the Mahdi Army in a straight-up fight, and the former seem to be gambling that this will remain true even if they leave the field for several months before scheduling a rematch. Nevertheless, even a temporary, fraying truce represents a tactical retreat for the Sadrists, and an implied admission that an open fight now would be more damaging to their interests.

The question at the moment is whether the government-allied forces can convert the temporary concessions of ground and authority by the Sadrists into something permanent — for example, by providing the same or better benefits (in terms of security and services) without the accompanying levels of graft and brutality. If they settle for being the new warlords with different uniforms, the locals may forget much of their current resentment toward the Mahdi Army.

The New York Times reported over the weekend from Baghdad:

I’m inclined to reprise my analysis from the end of March, when a similar truce occurred in Basra:

Although some canny analysts frequently cite the Sadr movement’s grassroots support, this shouldn’t be overestimated — I don’t believe ordinary Iraqis’ support for Muqtada extends to violent resistance to keep senior Sadrists from being imprisoned, especially when that means volunteering their homes and families’ lives for possible destruction.

That’s the box Mookie is in… to maintain his popular political support, he needs to restrict himself to being a political actor. But if he does, the government (and the Americans) will use their official military leverage to whittle away at his ability to act politically.

As for the box the rest of Iraq is in, this plaintive Washington Post story today puts it well:

The Post‘s reporter, who met Yousif in 2002, quotes him from a profile written at the time: “The only thing Iraqis can do, [Yousif] says, is wait. They have no influence over the US. They can’t change their government themselves. ‘We are like cockroaches feeding on sewage,’ he says. ‘We survive.’” The substitution of one inept-but-brutal regime for another, and the presence of an overextended occupying army, doesn’t seem to have changed that underlying, sad reality.