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.

From the Los Angeles Times today:

In a move to separate mosque and state, the Iraqi government said Thursday that Islamic houses of worship should be off limits for campaigning in provincial elections scheduled for the fall.

Government spokesman Ali Dabbagh also said that photos of anyone but the candidates would be banned from campaign advertising.

Prime Minister Nouri Maliki’s administration issued the recommendations in the hope of preventing a repetition of the use made of the country’s revered religious figures in the 2005 election campaign.

Shiite Muslim political slates plastered their campaign literature with images of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, Iraq’s most influential religious leader, and some mosques sent out cars with loudspeakers promoting candidates.

. . . Even before the announcement, Iraq’s religious leaders appeared to be voluntarily backing away from the practice. Sistani this week prohibited the use of his name or image by any groups.

Of course, if Sistani’s edict came before the Maliki government’s ruling, it’s pretty clear that this is less a matter of “separating mosque and state” than it is of complying with the grand ayatollah’s wishes.

Given the well-deserved flak Sistani & Co. have received from ordinary Shiites for their unsubtle 2005 endorsement of a government that has turned out to be largely corrupt and incompetent, it’s no surprise that they would seek to step back this time around so as not to tarnish themselves any further. Â

It’s also in keeping with the grand ayatollah’s tendency to involve himself only when necessary — the national elections determined not only who would try to run the country but who would write the new constitution, so the victory of a Shiite-dominated slate was very important to him. Â Even in previous voting, though, he allowed the various factions within the alliance to compete with each other on a provincial level.

Note that the ruling was phrased in way that also banned Muqtada al-Sadr’s movement from using his image to identify candidates that it supports. Â I’m not sure I believe his loyalists’ claims that they endorse the decision, but in a way I guess forcing them to operate below the radar could help to protect them (given the ongoing U.S./Iraqi government crackdown that has already blocked the Sadrists from contesting the elections directly). Â

If Mookie’s grass-roots support is as genuine as it’s purported to be, then his people should still be able to communicate to voters who he’s backing… as will the Shiite religious hierarchy through its extensive local networks. Â They’ll just be less visible and thus a bit harder to blame, that’s all.

Just when you might have been thinking you could, oh, “relax” a bit and just worry about Afghanistan going to hell, there’s more bad news from Iraq today. As Alissa Rubin reports for the New York Times:

Two insurgent bomb blasts struck at pro-American Iraqi targets in Anbar province just west of Baghdad and in the northern city of Mosul on Thursday, and the police said at least 30 people were killed and 80 wounded.

Iraqi police officials said three American marines were among the dead in the Anbar attack, which came just as the American military command was preparing to hand control of the province, once considered the hotbed of the insurgency, over to Iraqi forces.

The bombings extended a pattern of multiple-casualty attacks in recent days that are clearly intended to kill local Iraqi leaders, in particular those who are believed to have collaborated with American forces against insurgents.

Both attacks on Thursday raised questions about assertions that Al Qaeda in Iraq and other Sunni extremist groups had been largely vanquished.

As Rubin notes, these attacks are by the folks the Bushites and their dwindling fan club thought we might have actually defeated in Iraq, as opposed to those who we bought off or who temporarily stood down for their own reasons as part of the pretend accomplishments of the “surge.”

Those latter groups — the Sunni tribes involved in the “Bribing” “Awakening,” and the Shiites loyal to Muqtada al-Sadr — have stayed quiet in part because they are hoping to pick up some opportunities for graft political clout in Iraq’s long-delayed provincial elections… which, um, continue to be delayed.Â

How long will they continue to pursue the carrot of political legitimacy before they realize there’s a stick attached that never gets any shorter? And as their patience frays, and the U.S. ultimately has to begin bringing home the extra brigades that were sent to Iraq last year, what’s going to keep the violence from spiraling further?

And what will happen if all this unraveling occurs right in the middle of a U.S. presidential campaign?

(Cross-posted at Firedoglake.)

From the Associated Press today:

It’s notable that Sistani’s allies made a concerted effort to leak this news the day after the grand ayatollah met with prime minister Maliki, during which he likely conveyed his thoughts on what kind of agreement with the U.S. (if any) would pass muster with the marjaiya.

Substantively, though, in many ways this news shouldn’t come as a surprise. Sistani has never been willing to endorse the U.S. occupation, even as he was letting American troops level much of his home city of Najaf in order to flush Moqtada al-Sadr out of the Imam Ali shrine in 2004. And conversely, no matter how (literally) bloody the rivalry between Sistani’s allies/followers and Sadr’s has been, the grand ayatollah has repeatedly intervened in disputes to support or even rescue Mookie when the latter’s back was against the wall.

I don’t think this news story is a move to “counter the populist appeal” of Sadr, as the AP story and some blogger commentaries have theorized — if Sistani wants to burnish his anti-occupation street cred with the Iraqi people, I doubt he’ll do it through anonymous leaks to the Associated Press. Instead, it seems more logical that he’s trying to signal to an American audience (namely, the Bushites) not to push their luck too far with regard to Sadr.

And it’s probably a signal he wants the Sadrists to notice, as an “I’ve got your back” gesture to help grease their current truce with the Maliki government… all in service of keeping Iraq’s Shiite factions, if not on the same page, at least not outwardly at each other’s throats. Which, of course, has been Ayatollah Sistani’s primary goal for almost as long as there’s been an occupation to oppose.