Middle East News
Iraqi premier pledges offensives against "outlaws" (Roundup)
Apr 3, 2008, 14:55 GMT
Baghdad - Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said Thursday the next days would see crackdowns against criminals in areas under their control, and he urged the political group of Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr to rid itself of outlaws.
More violent attacks were meanwhile reported across Iraq.
Al-Maliki launched an offensive codenamed Charge of the Knights against fighters of al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia on March 25 in the southern city of Basra.
Speaking at a news conference, al-Maliki said there were areas in Baghdad that needed a 'Charge of the Knights' to clear them of criminal gangs.
'Outlaws should return to their senses and leave people in Sadr City, Shula and Kazimiyah to live in freedom,' al-Maliki was quoted as telling reporters by the Voices of Iraq news (VOI) agency.
Sadr City, Shula and Kazimiyah - all Mahdi Army strongholds in Baghdad - have seen deadly clashes between government troops and al- Sadr's loyalists in the wake of the launch of the Basra crackdown.
'Those criminal gangs believing that they are above the law and that their force is above the army are deceiving themselves,' al- Maliki warned.
'There will be battles in the next days in areas that have fallen hostage to those gangs,' the premier vowed.
Speaking at another press conference Thursday, al-Maliki said the Basra offensive did not target any political groups but criminals committing thefts and smuggling.
He urged al-Sadr, who called his fighters off the streets on Sunday, to clear his militia of outlaws.
Meanwhile, violence continued to flare in Basra, where US airstrikes destroyed a house in the Kobla district on Thursday. According to earlier reports the attack killed four civilians.
The US military confirmed the air raids were conducted by a US fixed-wing aircraft, but said there was no reports of any civilians killed.
Sources at Iraq's Defence Ministry said Iraqi army forces detained the leader of Thaar-Allah Shiite party, VOI reported.
The Shiite party leader, Youssef Sinawy, was taken from his house in Basra together with his three brothers. A Sinawy security guard was killed after heavy clashes with Iraqi troops.
Sinawy is listed among the targeted militants in Basra's security operation, reports said.
Thaar-Allah was established in 2005 as a political movement and became a party after elections in Basra city.
In 2006, the Shiite party has been involved in several clashes with the Iraqi police. Since then, Thaar-Allah has been accused by Iraqi forces of committing violent crimes in the city.
In another development in the city of Hillah, south of Baghdad, two terrorist suspects were detained and three civilians wounded during a military operation, US forces said, adding that the incident was under investigation.
Earlier reports said night guards by mistake opened fire on a US patrol early Thursday in Jamiyah, a district in the city centre.
Later, a US gunship shelled the scene of the shooting, killing five policemen and injuring 11, including two women in their homes, the officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said.
Separately, seven people were killed and 12 injured in a suicide bombing in the northern city of Mosul last night, VOI reported.
A suicide bomber blew up a car near a checkpoint in west Mosul, General Khaled Abdel-Sattar, an army spokesman in Nineveh province, told VOI.
A woman and a child were among the dead, five children and three soldiers among the wounded.
In Baghdad, Iraqi police told VOI that a civilian was killed and another seven were wounded when a car bomb was remotely detonated in Harethiya district.
The casualties, including women and children, were moved to Baghdad's Yarmouk hospital.
COMMENT
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Older Talkback
page: 1
I wishy all you alqueda get outy my twon. I no likey you. My donkey it sick, my camel it no want to takey me anyplace. Go away and don't come back you sons of a greasy swineherders. Dido for you Sadr-Wadr.
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has been in office too long. It is time for a new election to see what the Iraqi people want. al-Sadr should be given a place on the ticket (next to al-Maliki) and lots of money and press to run so he is given an honest shot at the head job. If he looses so be it, and visa versa. But, he should be forewarned that he has to accept his lot in life.
'he should be forewarned that he has to accept his lot in life.'
Lance, I think that is the problem that many people aren't getting. What do you plan to do if he doesn't? Right now Iraq has an elected government yet Sadr has a huge militia armed to the teeth that ignores central government authority.
There are certain groups who want power at the expense of everyone else and they don't give a rats ass what other people think. They will terrorize the population with bombings, beheadings, murder, and rape to get what they want.
Spare us the romantic 'freedom fighter' BS. The terrorists and militias are not fighting for freedom - they are fighting for dominance. The only hope for freedom that Iraq has ever had was bought for them in blood by the US/UK. If we leave, everyone in the middle is screwed.
Moving them towards democracy - and the rule of law - will be hard slogging.
PS - I'm all for regular elections in Iraq that would allow them to 'adjust' course. I think they will have a major set of regional elections in October that will address one of the biggest obstacles to political progress.
To put it briefly: al-Maliki is a donkey's ass bought and paid for by the U.S. and the Iraqi people know it. He is not a man of the people or for the people. He is a man of opportunity with all the trimmings of a weak figurehead. Iraq needs a tough leader, not compromised by foreign influence. They also need a leader strong on their culture and religion, a leader of strong Islamic faith. I am sure that most U.S citizens don't like to hear that truth, but the hell with U.S. citizens, it is none of their business.
The U.S. blood was spilt inorder to butt into other people's business. That is not a good excuse and a wasted effort. A Christian occupying force is never a good idea in a Muslim land, no matter what good, or ill-conceived, intentions they have. They are thought of as tainted, for better or worse. If the U.S. really wanted to make progress they would hire millions of Muslim Islamic U.S. citizens and train them as police officers and pay them exceedingly well and send them to Iraq to keep the peace with their brothers; and specifically not grease the wheels of Christian based corporations, and the U.S. should dump the Pope in regard to international affairs and hob knob with the Muslim leaders. Sorry to break it to you, but to win at something you must face reality no matter how painful or bigoted it is.
More and more Iraqi people are discovering that freedom and democracy are very good things.
A new day is dawning in Iraq.
A government 'of, by and for the people' is the new standard now in Iraq and it won't be going away any time soon.
Next regime change will happen to the evil, unelected clerics in Tehran.
Praise Allah in advance for the day said clerics are taken away to meet the hang man.
Lance
'al-Maliki is a donkey's ass bought and paid for by the U.S.'
A good propaganda peddler doesn't smoke his own stuff.
He may be a donkey's ass, but he is one selected as compromise candidate between competing factions precisely because he didn't have his own provate army. Blaming everything on the US is just stupid lance.
'the Iraqi people know it.'
The Iraqi people 'know' what the autocratic and theocratic propaganda machines (and their western apologists) tell them. Whatever they do know, it is very unlikely that you have any notion of it.
'He is a man of opportunity with all the trimmings of a weak figurehead.'
Again, selected by the Iraqi factions specifically because of this trait.
'Iraq needs a tough leader, not compromised by foreign influence.'
Um, ok lance. And who might that be? Iraq probably does need a tough leader who is compromised neither by foreign influence, nor factional allegience, nor autocratic ambition. Let's all hold our breath.
'They also need a leader strong on their culture and religion, a leader of strong Islamic faith.'
Which one lance? Are you retarded?
'The U.S. blood was spilt inorder to butt into other people's business.'
A brutal dictator ignoring UN disarmament requirements and supporting terrorists cannot be allowed to set such an example post 911.
I'm not sure what you have been smoking lance but for several decades at least Saddam had not been minding his own business to the tune of hundreds of thousands (at least) dead.
'If the U.S. really wanted to make progress they would hire millions of Muslim Islamic U.S. citizens and train them as police officers and pay them exceedingly well and send them to Iraq to keep the peace with their brothers;'
Are you under the impression that muslims don't like to kill muslims? Do you know who has been killing, slicing, drilling, raping, and blasting muslims in Iraq for the last few years lance?
Answer: other muslims.
'Sorry to break it to you, but to win at something you must face reality no matter how painful or bigoted it is.'
Sorry to break it to you lance, but you are really really dumb. I agree that facing 'reality' is important, but it does not follow that your sophomoric delusions represent reality.
page: 1
Austin BayApr 3rd, 2008 - 16:06:55
After his outlaw militiamen raised white flags and skedaddled from their latest round of combat with the Iraqi Army, radical Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr declared victory.
He always does. He understands media bravado. He wagers that survival bandaged by bombast and swathed in sensational headlines is a short-term triumph. Survive long enough, and Sadr bets he will prevail.
This time, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki issued a contrarian press release, however, calling the Iraqi Army's anti-militia operations in southern Iraq a 'success.'
A dispute over casualties in the firefights has ensued, as it always does. An Iraqi Interior Ministry spokesman alleged that Sadr's militia had been hit hard in six days of fighting, suffering 215 dead, 155 arrested and approximately 600 wounded. The government spokesman gave no casualty figures for Iraqi security forces.
No one, of course, could offer an independent confirmation, but if the numbers are accurate they provide an indirect confirmation of reports that Sadr's Mahdi Militia (Jaish al-Mahdi, hence the acronym JAM) had at least a couple thousand fighters scattered throughout southern Iraq. This is not shocking news, but a reason to launch a limited offensive when opportunity appeared.
Numbers, however, are a very limited gauge. The firefights, white flags, media debate and, for that matter, the Iraqi-led anti-militia offensive itself are the visible manifestations of a slow, opaque and occasionally violent political and psychological struggle that in the long term is likely democratic Iraq's most decisive: the control, reduction and eventual elimination of Shia gangs and terrorists strongly influenced if not directly supported by Iran.
Other Shia militia and gangs confront Iraq, but Sadr is the most vexing case. His father, a leading Shia cleric, was murdered -- many Iraqis believe at the order of Saddam Hussein. That makes his father a political and religious symbol.
And Sadr knows it. So do his financiers.
For four years, the U.S.-led coalition and the Iraqi government have intermittently sparred with Sadr, sometimes in parliament, sometimes in the streets.
The Iraqi government's strategy has been to bring former insurgents into the political process. Since interim Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi articulated that goal in mid-2004, the central government's complex array of enemies has sought to thwart that program.
Saddam's old cohorts managed to convince themselves that if they spread enough money around, killed enough people and hammered the U.S. electorate with bloody headlines the United States would leave and the Iraqi government would eventually collapse -- and they would return to power. Saddam's capture, trial and execution has all but snuffed out the old-line Baathists. Recall Maliki stoutly defended his decision to carry out the court's sentence of capital punishment. He bet with Saddam dead the tyrant's cult of personality would wither. It has.
Al-Qaida pursued the same strategy of blood for headlines. Al-Qaida in Iraq tried to ignite a sectarian war -- its now-dead emir, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, made that goal explicit in February 2004. Al-Qaida massacred en masse, to the point that U.S. Sen. Harry Reid (D for Defeatist) declared the war in Iraq lost. Then, the Sunni tribes in Anbar turned on al-Qaida. Sunni political integration is by no means complete, but al-Qaida has failed.
Now the Shia-led Iraqi government focuses on its chief Shia nemesis. How the Iraqi government handles Sadr matters. In August 2004, Sadr's thugs grabbed the Grand Mosque in Najaf. Sadr was counting on Americans to bomb the mosque. The United States opted to follow the political lead of Shia Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. Sistani's aides told coalition officers: 'Let us deal with Sadr. We know how to handle him and will do so. However, the coalition must not make him a martyr.'
The Iraqi way often appears to be indecisive, until you learn to look at its counter-insurgency methods in the frame of achieving political success, instead of the frame of American presidential elections.
In southern Iraq and east Baghdad, Sadr once again lost street face. Despite the predictable media umbrage, this translates into political deterioration.
Think of the Iraqi anti-Sadr method as a form of suffocation, a political war waged with the blessing of Ayatollah Sistani that requires daily economic and political action, persistent police efforts and occasional military thrusts.
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