If Sadr stops blowing up US troops with purportedly Iran-supplied weapons, then Dubya will have to resort to the “nuclear threat” scenario to justify his attack on Iran.
Or perhaps Saddam’s missing WMD’s will turn up on the Iranian side of the border…

Posted by: ralphieboy | Aug 29 2007 19:21 utc | 3

Has Sadr ever had a chain of command control over the all field units of the Mahdi Army? I have been under the impression that it has always been kind of a loose, decentralised organisation of young Shia with more of identity then orders.
But this is sort of a gut impression and I am not sure what I base on.

Posted by: a swedish kind of death | Aug 29 2007 19:26 utc | 5

I personally think #3, the command structure has broken down and Sadr wants to re-organize, re-arm, re-train, and create a better-disciplined force. The Mahdi Army has always been one of the less effective militias in the current Iraqi milieu, relying upon its almost-infinite manpower to compensate for tactical incompetence. My suspicion is that Sadr has gotten some support from factions within the IRG who are willing to assist him in professionalizing the militia into a more effective fighting force, and he’s trying to buy time to make that happen. (For the record, various factions within Iran back various factions amongst the Shia in Iraq, oddly enough Prime Minister Malaki is head of one of those Iranian-backed factions).
In short, everybody in Iraq is preparing for the end game, which happens after the U.S. leaves. All signs are that the U.S. will have to leave soon due to a collapse in force structure on the part of the U.S. military, which is running out of equipment, officers, and morale. So the various Iraqi factions are now more interested in preparing for the end game where they fight amongst themselves for supremecy than in fighting the U.S. military, with the exception of course of the “al Qaeda in Iraq” group and various foreign fighters, who seem to enjoy the sport of blowing up American vehicles with IED’s.

Posted by: Badtux | Aug 29 2007 21:47 utc | 7

I agree with Badtux. This is an end game maneuver. Sadr definitly wants the US out AND Iran out of Iraq. Also, this tactic will allow him to see which of the factions are truly on his side and will take orders. He needs to know this if he’s planning for future operations.

Posted by: Iron butterfly | Aug 29 2007 23:13 utc | 9

Sadr has been reading Tom Friedman and studying ju jitsu.

Posted by: biklett | Aug 30 2007 0:00 utc | 11

Here is another possibility:
Everyone who can, from Ahmadinejad and the IAEA on down, is doing their level best to take off the field any possible pretext for Bush to attack Iran. I doubt it is true, but at least it is nice to imagine Bush stripped of all his phony pretexts and left with no reason to push the ATTACK button. The Emperor with no clothes kind of thing.

Posted by: Bea | Aug 30 2007 0:24 utc | 13

Shrub: “pretexts? let me pull some pretexts outta my ass like last time. lessee, these here Iranians are pure evil terrists and we want their oil, er I mean this has nothing to do with oil. bombs away!”

Posted by: ran | Aug 30 2007 0:37 utc | 15

We’re not there so accepting that we are all guessing anyhow, I reckon it is some play on 2. Sadr didn’t lose his shirt in Kerbala by all accounts he got the targets he aimed at and forced Hakim to ask Maliki for a curfew, and shorten the pilgrimage thereby curtailing Hakim’s income stream.
By cutting a deal and and offereng to cease fire, something he could hardly do if had no control over his militia, he gets to make his point and live to fight another day without copping the consequences.
After all it wouldn’t play too well into the surge report if a fucking great intra shia cnflict was going on right as Dubya’s telling the world how he’s won the west. That would cause a backlash which would definitely include re starting the assasination attempts. I doubt al_Sadr considers himself bulletproof. His father, father-in-law, and his two brothers have all been assassinated. That would make anyone concentrate.
al-Sadr has made most of his gains with this sort of creeping incrementalism. I may want to see Maliki’s quislings and the amerikans get their asses kicked back into the middle of last century, but al-Sadr may reason that the more he can achieve quietly, the stronger he becomes.
If he has Basra and still controls most of Shia Baghdad, I guess he’s going to try and fill in the spaces between. al-Sadr is an Iraqi nationalist and will want the whole lot, although his lebanese Shia connections and through that connections to Syria, have never really been called in to question by amerika. That is strange after all his cousin Imam Moussa as-Sadr was the founder of Amal. Amal was one of the prime movers of Syrian intervention in the Lebanon.
Amal discouraged Shia from involving themselves in the Lebanese civil war, which was waged by leftist elements led by the PLO on one side and the right wing xtian Phalange on the other. Yet after everything was washed up it was the Shia who had consolidated the most.
Maybe that is the plan. Moqtada has insufficient formal religious education to become a great religious leader, but he does have plenty of popular political pull. Imam Moussa as-Sadr reappears from the deserts of North Africa and together with Moqtada in Iraq and Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah in Lebanon a swathe of Shia populated states is united in a confederation under the leadership of the former Imam now Ayatollah.
that is the scenario which has the ibn-Saud mob shitting. amerika too no doubt. The only problem is that the Shia arabs (not Persians that’s a bit different) have been the proletariat of the ME. They are the poorest and most oppressed and their leadership tends to go a bit ‘soft’. The leadership is humanist and puts silly ideas like the welfare of the people ahead of political power so they never seem to land the killing blow.
That is what the PLO maintained was the problem with Amal in Lebanon. They weren’t ruthless enough. Maybe they didn’t want to be cannon-fodder for a Sunni powerplay. The Imam must be dead by now – surely his demise would have been a condition of the repprochment with Libya.
So it’s head or heart stuff. Any champion of the underdog would put his heart into wanting the Shia finally get a share of power. On the other hand thinking with the head tells us that the Sunni have successfully withstood many, many Shia attempts at insurrection over the centuries. What is so different now?
This must be what Moqtada wrestles with. How far can he go with an alliance with Sunnis? Will they set up the Shia to get wasted by the amerikans then step in and take back control?
So softly softly catchee monkey goes Moqtada al-Sadr. Two steps forward and one step back negate Maliki without letting the amerikans and the Sunnis get too tight. Wrest the economic control of Kerbala from Hakim and the political control will follow. Don’t stick up too high over the parapet, lest someone attack you before the time is right.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Aug 30 2007 6:34 utc | 17

Which casualty rate is dropping? It is difficult to know the Iraqi people’s causalty rates since they are supressed by amerikan dictat. However anecdotal evidence tells us the out of Baghdad deaths have surpassed any reduction in Baghdad especially the horror in the North recently.
The baby-killers are still losing as many as ever:
May 2006 79 killed May 2007 131 killed
June 2006 63 killed June 2007 108
July 2006 46 July 2007 88
August 2006 66 August 2007 79

Posted by: Debs is dead | Aug 30 2007 7:48 utc | 19

Exercising the right to be completely wrong, and speaking without any
basis in fact, why not consider the possibility that Mookie is engaged in
under the table negotiations with the U.S. and it’s allies in Iraq? As a Sciite and Iraqi nationalist, and without Alawi’s CIA contamination, Sadr could (if amenable to suitable “boundary conditions”) be a perfect successor to Maliki (and Saddam). The difficult point, of course, is negotiation of a cease-fire between the Sunni and Scia factions of the resistance, but perhaps a suitable timetable for U.S. withdrawal could be used as one incentive leading to a cease-fire and fig-leaf declaration of U.S. success.

Such conjecture is, of course, pure political fantasy but one suspects that the U.S. military would, if given a chance, be much more willing to engage in such negotiation than would their political masters in Washington.

Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | Aug 30 2007 9:14 utc | 21

Here in Denmark, the people who read their news script on tv/radio have been saying that Sadr is (once again) in Iran.
Question: is this also the meme in US news at the moment?
Reason: As far as I know from my ignorance, Sadr has hardly been commuting to Iran (to get orders from his terror masters). Instead he has been in Iraq playing his own game which is nationaalistic and in no way excludes cooperation with certain Sunni forces

Posted by: Chuck Cliff | Aug 30 2007 15:31 utc | 23

Muqtada says a lot of things, like two million man marches to Samarra, or stand down orders in Sadr City – that never actually happen(ed). Rather like what Debs said, he’s looking for reactions to exploit for incremental advances on many fronts simultaneously. But then at some point the usefulness of “rogue elements” operating with only tacit, deniable approval will have run its course and then (maybe now?) a more disciplined a-la Hezbollah chain of command is needed – when the going gets tougher.

Posted by: anna missed | Aug 31 2007 5:16 utc | 25

I did quite a lengthy … could call it a “speculative exercise in ME-style conspiracy-theory analysis???”… on the Kerbala clashes on another forum, was wondering whether/how all those current rumors-etc. of a US-backed Allawi coup being in the offing might conceivably factor into the Karbala clashes and Sadr’s stand-down-and-tighten-up decision.
Here’s the gist of it (see original for sub-links, full quotes etc):
Iraqi shi’ite parties/leaders in general – including both al-Hakim jr. and al-Sadr – are more than willing to engage in contained, limited rivalry skirmishes, but the last thing that Iraqi shi’ites as a group are collectively prepared to countenance is a full-scale shi’ite vs shi’ite civil war – which would weaken them all in the face of their common enemies, practically destroy the political/numerical advantage of their heavy demographic predominance in Iraq and wreck the fragile credibility of shi’ite-dominated government of Iraq “as such”… so when rivalry-clashes risk getting out of hand, experience shows the leaders invariably draw back from the brink. (Also noting that even before the Karbala clashes, Sadr had been calling for provincial and national-level pan-Shi’ite “cupola meetings” to settle their factional turf wars.)
Faik the only “party” that would stand to gain from serious inter-shi’ite warfare is that of Allawi and his backers?? Which makes one wonder – is Sadr’s purge designed to weed out only backstreet hotheads and undisciplined local-unit bossmen, or does he also suspect infiltration + deliberate provocation-ops by “double agents” planted by the likes of Allawi’s mysterious secret spy-force?
Remember what Sadr said in his interview with Renato Caprile of “la Repubblica” back in Jan. 2007?

Caprile: Some say that the army and police are heavily infiltrated by your men and that the marines would never be able to disarm you on their own.
Al Sadr: “The truth is exactly the opposite: it’s our militia that’s swarming with spies. And in any case, it’s not a hard task to infiltrate a people’s army. And these are the very same people who have been committing unworthy deeds to discredit the Mahdi Army. There are at least four armies ready to strike us. One is a “shadow force” which no-one ever talks about, trained under the most secret conditions in the Jordanian desert by the Americans. And then there’s the private army of Allawi himself, that infidel who will soon take Maliki’s place, which is readying itself for the fray in the former military airport of Muthanna. Then there are the Kurdish peshmergas, and lastly there are the American regular troops.”

…………
Re Allawi and all the rumours of an imminent “replacement-coup” against Maliki, seems there had been an actual coup-attempt, or at very least a well-advanced plot in that direction as recently as July 2006. … [long War-and-Piece quotes and link…]
…..
Hmmmmm…? So maybe Maliki’s recent statements are inspired not just by only-natural desire to paper over divisions to preserve threatened Shi’ite unity but real suspicion/certainty of Allawi-Baathists-n’-Spooks involvement in the fighting in Karbala?

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has said militants involved in violence in Karbala wanted to blow up Imam Hussein’s shrine. (…) Al-Maliki earlier said his troops had restored calm to Karbala and blamed “outlawed armed criminal gangs from the remnants of the buried Saddam regime” for the violence.

Absolutely NO way Shi’ite religious-party militants of whatsoever persuasion – however undisciplined, trigger-happy, hotheaded, bloodthirsty etc etc – would even think of blowing up one of the Shia world’s most sacred shrines!
So either Maliki is using “conspiracy theories” to demonize-isolate quasi-mahdi rogue fringes Sadr wants to get rid of while distracting attention from/defusing residual SIIC/Sadr tensions, or… there really was a lot more to the Karbala clashes than met the eye.
———
P.S. I agree that much/most of what is currently happening on the Iraqi scene consists of local power-plays in a perspective of US withdrawal (except maybe from Kurdistan?) in a 1-to-3-yr framework.

Posted by: parvati_roma | Aug 31 2007 15:22 utc | 27

Thanks! Here’s another link:
http://www.strategytalk.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=58036
– my long-long Kerbala-etc. post’s right at the bottom of the thread.
P.S. (* saying HI! and waving, blowing kisses… *) I’ve been a lurker-fan of this forum for a long long time, knew a couple of the posters here from the lovely Eurotrib forum where I posted for a while as Eternalcityblues… but that’s more a sustainable-energy issues etc. forum and like quite a few people on this board, I’m essentially a hardcore Iraq-war, ME and international-geopolitics newsfreak. So will be back!

Posted by: Anonymous | Aug 31 2007 16:01 utc | 29

Thanks for the link, Alamet. Very interesting indeed.

Posted by: parvati_roma | Aug 31 2007 16:54 utc | 31

More here:

“The administrators of the two holy shrines received intelligence information few days before the pilgrimage that there was an organized plot to foment clashes between armed gunmen and the police forces,” Sheik Abdul-Mahdi al-Karbalai told the congregation at the Imam Hussein mosque during Friday prayers.
He said the plot was designed to “create chaos around the two shrines” and seize control of them. He did not say who was behind the alleged plot.
In the wake of the carnage, Muqtada al-Sadr, the country’s most powerful militia leader, suspended activities of his Mahdi Army for up to six months, purportedly to purge the ranks of unruly splinter factions that threaten to discredit his movement among Iraqi Shiites.
Al-Maliki’s government said in a statement Thursday that al-Sadr’s decision offered a “good chance” to “suspend the work of other militias” to restore “the integrity and sovereignty of Iraq.”
Al-Sadr’s order appeared to have had a calming effect in Baghdad, although a little-known faction in southern Iraq — the Free Men’s Brigade — said it would not abide by the decree.
Al-Sadr loyalists in Baghdad suspect the Free Men’s Brigade includes mostly Shiites who were supporters of Saddam Hussein.

???

Posted by: parvati_roma | Aug 31 2007 20:46 utc | 33

One angle Sadr may be exploring, with regards to the stand down of his Mahdi army – and all the Allawi coup talk, is that he may be preparing in advance for such an event. As it stands the Maliki government is in a death spiral, so it makes a certain amount of sense that Sadr might want to position himself for that eventuality, particularly if the post coup government is secular (Allawi), declares martial law, and throws out the constitution. By appearing to defer, for the moment (6 months at least) to Maliki he cannot only not be blamed for the overthrow of the UIA government but in the aftermath, may be seen as its its last and only hope for salvation. Given that the coup will be seen as yet another american betrayal of the Shia, Sadr would be pre-positioned with a legacy of having embodied that mistrust and resisted the occupation AND have control of a militia capable of an immediate military response. He will then be seen as not only as their best and only hope against oppression returned, but also as a visionary worthy of his name.

Posted by: anna missed | Sep 2 2007 9:20 utc | 35