US crackdown on Shias fuels anger

US crackdown on Shias fuels anger
Monday 20 October 2003

US troops sealed off roads around the house of an Iraqi Shia Muslim cleric, while another religious leader warned the crackdown would only backfire.

Soldiers surrounded buildings used by local cleric Sayyid Mahmud al- Hassani on Saturday with armoured vehicles while helicopters circled overhead.

Three US military police and two Iraqi police were killed on Thursday night in fighting in the city which US forces blamed on supporters of al- Hassani. He is a sympathiser of firebrand Shia leader Muqtada al- Sadr, who opposes the US-led occupation of Iraq.

US officers would not comment on whether they were hoping to arrest al-Hassani. His supporters said he had left his home after Thursday's shootout in which local people said eight of his followers had been killed.

After arresting one of his followers, American soldiers surrounded al-Hassani's office building, witnesses said.

--snip--

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/00E4DFD1-1D91-40CE-832A-57E82EAC3993.htm

"Bring 'em on." I heard last night on MSNBC that the Iraqi governing council is calling on former Iraqi soldiers to come help the coalition fight the terraist.
I swear this whole misadminstration were sniffing glue as kids, probably ate lead based paint chips as well.

they're asking for the old army to reform? I have to find something on that..

the current rotating head of that quisling council, no less.

Check off another lie given for the invasion and occupation.

Congress members to take up arms and aid the coalition. The INC gave the US the faulty intelligence, they have been very vocal in their opposition of Saddam, calling for him to be overthrown for years, and apparently there are over a million members worldwide including Kuwaitis and Saudis. First up, hand Chalabi and his nephew some gear.

with al-Sadr and supporters like al-Hassani?

I'm sure the Iraqi Council and their US masters want to avoid a civil war amongst the Shiites, on the other hand Muqtada al-Sadr and his followers are armed insurrectionists who want to establish a fundementalist Islamic state in Iraq, modelled on the worst excesses of Khomeni in Iran.

Will the more numerous moderate Shiite factions support a crackdown on radicals like al-Hassani, or will the situation bring civil war?

If "moderate" is just defined as an interchangeable euphemism for "collaborator", as it so often is, and "radical" for "independent"--then the model is irreconciliably flawed right out of the blocks.

Ayatallah al-Udma Sayyid Sistani personally downplays the potential for conflict with Sayyid Sadr; Sistani shifts the blame for the tension on the occupation itself. The both of them oppose the occupation and are generally for Islamic laws applied as the most fair tool of judgement--whatever is said about Sistani in the press that is meant to flatter him and set him aside from the Sadrs or Hakims in the same respect are inaccurate.

The difference between them is mostly a generation gap (that, and the Persian-born Sistani is of the exalted position of Grand Ayatallah, as Sadr's martyred father was, and Muqtada Sadr himself as the lesser accomplished position of Hojjatolleslam but aspiring towards the position of Ayatallah), a demographic gap that dates back a decade to the competition between Sistani and Sadr's father after the death of the previous highest Najafi authority in the early 90s. Sayyid Sistani may be the most respected leader in the Najafi hawaza among the elder generation, notoriously passive, but Sadr has the wider draw of his father's among the younger generation and working poor sections of society exactly because he is an activist leader and not passive. Striking at Sadr would overnight give him exponentially more admiration than he'd otherwise get on his own strengths.

No self-respecting faction in Iraq would support the invaders suppressing any among them, though some may favour it in a burst of opportunistic self-promotion. Along those lines, it is speculated that some of the older Shia factions like Hakim's SAIRI and the 3 branches of al-Daawa signed on to the quisling council just because they couldn't match the same activist popular support that the Sadrists can and instead hedged their bets with receiving power on a platter from the invaders rather than from popular consent. At any rate, they're all resting on the safe bet that should there be any real democratic tally taken, the lion's share of power is delivered to the various Shia factions anyway. That is exactly the reason no such democratic election has yet to or will take place any time soon (when's that other puppet Karzai's election, anyway?), as well as on the side the fact that the first two demands of any real independent Iraqi popular body will demand the 2 things the invaders don't plan to give up--immediate removal of all foreign armies from Iraq, and full Iraqi control of economic wealth and services. Instead, Bremer wants to get all services and oil sold off to multinational corps before going forward with an election probably as dubious as the rigged mechamism that Russia went through with their puppet Kadryov.

What would I suggest be done about them? It may be too late to prevent something like the Israeli invaders/occupation forces faced in Lebanon (with the parallel of the students of Sadr's father and Fadlallah being the first bursts of what would later become a widely popular resistance), but I would suggest putting all power to a real Iraqi government, elected through popular participation and not a selected handful of consentual quislins, arranage funds for humanitarian aid and reconstruction (not peacekeepers or any such charade) to be channeled through the UN and Iraqi-accepted NGOs to repay for the catastrophic damage deliberately brought about in Iraq, and removing all foreign troops immediately before making things irreconciliably fractured. I know that's not going to happen, for the colonization project as yet has cost far too much to duck out without a return on the investment for the criminals behind this. So as a practical step towards perhaps defusing things, first of all ceasing all harassment of independent Iraqis, for that will just make heroes of them and push them further into the camp of open resistance.

Sadr recently made a remarkable offer for a concession--that he would drop his opposition to the quisling Iraqi Governing Council if the colonial-proconsul Bremer's veto over it was dropped. As a practical course, I would suggest taking whatever olive branch that is offered up in the situation, be grateful that any such concession is even offered, and not inflame an unfolding catastrophe any more than it has already.

But it may be a bit late for that, and what I personally would suggest is really resting upon the assumption of an open window that is perhaps already shut. If that is the case then it is already on the model of Lebanon, and all that really can be done is to bleed needlessly and lash out blindly, only to be thrown out at some later date, like the British were before for example. :shrug:

do you have any other sources for information on this? I check out Asia Times and Al-Jazeera, but any place you could direct me to would be appreciated.

It's hard to be optimistic with the clowns we have running this show - I could see perhaps many of the factions accepting a short term "peace keeping" occupation if under the aegis of the U.N., but, like you say, there is absolutely no way the Iraqi people are going to accept foreign control of their natural resources and services. The seeds of a full scale revolt are being planted, and seemingly, watered by the Bush administration.

I did not support the US invasion of Iraq, but I subscribe to the "you broke it, you bought it" school of post war thought. My main fear is that the incompetent idiots we have running things now will leave an Iraq even worse off than the one we supposedly "liberated".