United for Peace of Pierce County, WA - We nonviolently oppose the reliance on unilateral military actions rather than cooperative diplomacy.

In a Monday morning analysis, Ross Colvin of Reuters said that Moqtada al-Sadr "may emerge stronger" from Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's failed attempt to crackdown on Shiite militias in Basra.[1] -- "Analysts say Iraqis may be about to witness a new phase in the cycle of violence that has gripped the country since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 — intra-Shi'ite bloodletting that could tear Iraq apart and more deeply embroil U.S. forces," Colvin added. -- In Sadr City on Monday they were celebrating Maliki's defeat, the Times of London reported.[2] -- The Iraqi prime minister "had to suffer the humiliation of talking peace with Hojatoleslam al-Sadr at his home in the Iranian city of Qom before the militia chief showed his true power and ended the war within hours," wrote James Hider. -- In a separate analytical piece, Hider called the battle for Basra "the first full-scale battle of Iraq's long-feared Shia civil war," and suggested, not very convincingly, that the confrontation "may have started by accident."[3] -- According to this scenario, there were "plans by General Mohan al-Furaiji, the Iraqi Army commander, to launch a campaign against the outlaw militias in Basra," but this was to begin "in June. When it started abruptly on Tuesday some British officials said that they had received less than 24 hours notice. -- Some suggested that General al-Furaiji, an experienced officer not known to share plans with his staff, had been moving forces into place when the al-Mahdi Army, which has infiltrated the police and army, were tipped off." -- The Los Angeles Times posted a translation of Moqtada al-Sadr's statement.[4] ...

BAGHDAD -- Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's crackdown on militias in the southern oil port of Basra appears to have backfired, exposing the weakness of his army and strengthening his political foes ahead of elections.

U.S. President George W. Bush has praised the crackdown, calling it a "defining moment" for Iraq, but it has unleashed a wave of destabilizing violence in southern Iraq and in Baghdad that risks undoing the security improvements of the past year.

It has also exposed a deep rift within Iraq's Shi'ite majority -- between the political parties in Maliki's government and followers of populist cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.

Analysts say Iraqis may be about to witness a new phase in the cycle of violence that has gripped the country since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 -- intra-Shi'ite bloodletting that could tear Iraq apart and more deeply embroil U.S. forces.

Sadr on Sunday pulled back from all-out confrontation against Iraqi security forces and their U.S. backers, ordering his Mahdi Army militia to stop fighting. While Basra was reported to be calm on Monday, mortar attacks shook Baghdad.

"It will be a short honeymoon, especially with election time coming up," said Mustafa Alani, an analyst at the Dubai-based Gulf Research Center.

Provincial elections are due to take place by October, with the Sadrists, who boycotted the last polls in 2005, vying for control of the mainly Shi'ite, oil-producing south with a powerful rival, the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council.

"The stand-off is not over yet, it's only a truce . . . provincial elections will trigger the battle again," predicted Hazem al-Nuaimi, a political analyst based in Baghdad.

Maliki flew to Basra last Tuesday to personally oversee a military operation he said was aimed at "cleaning up" the lawless city, which is controlled by criminal gangs and militias allied to various Shi'ite political parties.

The operation was lauded by U.S. and British officials as evidence of the growing strength of the Iraqi army, but by the weekend it had largely stalled, with Iraqi troops having failed to dislodge the gunmen from their strongholds.

Embarrassingly, Iraq's defense minister had to admit that despite much preparation, his forces were not ready for such fierce resistance. U.S. and British forces have intervened, launching air and artillery strikes to support Iraqi troops.

The fighting provoked a furious backlash by Mahdi Army fighters in other towns and cities in the oil-producing south. Hundreds have been killed in violence that Iraqi security forces have struggled to contain without U.S. military help.

"What has happened has weakened the government and shown the weakness of the state. Now the capability of the state to control Iraq is open to question," said Izzat al-Shahbander, a moderate Shi'ite politician from the Iraqi National List party.

Gareth Stansfield, a professor of Middle East politics at the University of Exeter in England, said Maliki had staked his political credibility on the show of force in Basra and lost.

"Maliki's credibility is shot at this point. He really thought his security forces could really do this. But he's failed," he said.

While Maliki has sought to portray the operation as an effort to reassert his government's control over Basra and crack down only on "criminals," not political parties, many analysts believe it is politically motivated.

The Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, the biggest Shi'ite party in government and an ally of Maliki's Dawa party, is battling for control of Basra in an often violent turf war that pits it against Sadrists and the smaller Fadhila party, which controls the local oil industry.

Sadrists accuse Maliki and the Supreme Council of trying to crush them ahead of the October provincial elections in which they are expected to make big gains at the expense of the Council, which controls many local authorities in the south.

"This is him (Maliki) basically preparing for an election. They need to disarm Sadr. The strongest militia in the city will control the vote," said Alani.

But Sadr aides say the Mahdi Army will not give up their weapons, raising the prospect of another confrontation, as the Iraqi military says it will press on with the Basra operation.

"Clearly Sadr has gained a victory. This was not a fight he picked and his forces looked strong. He has consolidated his position," said Stansfield.

The cleric, who is widely believed to be in Iran furthering his religious studies, now looks like the victim of political manoeuvring by Shi'ite parties in government.

"The Sadrists may have been strengthened in many people's minds. Many have seen the onslaught as unfair," said Reidar Visser, an expert on southern Iraq who edits the Web site www.historiae.org.

Iraqis will now be watching to see what happens next, but after enduring a bitter Sunni Arab insurgency and then a wave of sectarian violence between Shi'ites and Sunnis, they have become accustomed to expecting the worst.

"It's true there are no clashes, gunmen, or explosions," said Jabbar Sabhan, a civil servant in Basra, "but the situation is still dangerous. I don't trust the words of politicians."

(Reporting by Randy Fabi, Waleed Ibrahim and Ahmed Rasheed; Editing by Samia Nakhoul)

NOURI AL-MALIKI HUMILIATED AS GAMBLE TO CRUSH SHIA MILITIAS FAIL
By James Hider

SADR CITY -- The soldiers guarding the entrance to Sadr City were jumpy, despite a ceasefire announced by al-Mahdi Army Shia militia. And with good reason: a huge boom rolled across the militia stronghold as a roadside bomb struck a passing vehicle. American armored vehicles sped off to the aid of stricken comrades.

Overnight al-Mahdi Army has melted back into the population in Baghdad and Basra after its leader, the anti-American cleric Hojatoleslam Moqtada al-Sadr, ordered it to stop fighting government forces. In Sadr City and other militia strongholds they do not need to be seen. Their presence is felt everywhere.

Walking across the lines separating the U.S. and government forces from the barbed wire sealing off Sadr City, an Iraqi army major muttered: “You’re going in without guards? You’ll be kidnapped for sure.” The Sadr Office had, however, arranged an escort for visiting journalists: a police car with three officers. “Don’t worry,” the driver reassured his passengers. “We know where all the IEDs are.”

The police in areas controlled by al-Mahdi Army work closely with the militia and would never dream of interfering in its fights with the Government that pays their salaries.

At the Sadr Office in the center of the massive slum in northeast Baghdad, home to 2.5 million impoverished Shias, the receptionists greeted visitors with sweets to mark their victory over Nouri al-Maliki, the increasingly isolated Iraqi Prime Minister, who directed the assault on Shia rogue militias in Basra, the lawless southern oil city. “This is for victory over Maliki,” one said with a grin. “The fighting ended on our terms.”

Certainly Mr. al-Maliki’s huge gamble appeared to have failed yesterday. Having vowed to crush Shia militias with a 30,000-strong force in Basra, he ended up suing for peace with the people he had described as “worse than al-Qaeda.” Al-Mahdi Army kept its weapons and turf.

Sheikh Salman al-Freiji, the head of the Sadr Office, said that Mr. al-Maliki was a tool in the hands of the Americans. “The American project has been to split the Iraqi sects and community from Day 1,” he said. “They tried to split Sunnis from Shia. Now that has failed, they are trying to split the Shia.” He said that an al-Mahdi Army freeze on operations, introduced in August, was still in place but reserved the right to attack the “illegitimate American occupation.”

Hundreds of people died in Mr. al-Maliki’s blitz to end the reign of militias in the south but after a week his army has failed to defeat them and his political capital has crashed through the floor. Having vowed to fight the militias to the end, he had to suffer the humiliation of talking peace with Hojatoleslam al-Sadr at his home in the Iranian city of Qom before the militia chief showed his true power and ended the war within hours.

Mahmoud Othman, an independent Kurdish lawmaker, said that the latest spasm of violence merely showed Iran’s huge influence in Iraq, holding enormous sway over al-Mahdi Army and the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, the main Shia party in the Government, as well as its own militia, the Badr Brigades. “It’s a big victory for Iran over America and for Moqtada over Maliki,” he said. “Iran has the upper hand in Iraq. They are choosing the time to start trouble and they are choosing the time to end it.”

Mr. Othman said that the meeting with the Iraqi delegation -- two members of the Sadrist bloc, a member of Mr. al-Ma-liki’s Dawa party and Hadi al-Ameri, the head of the Badr Brigades -- had been coordinated by Brigadier-General Qassim Suleimani, the head of the Quds Brigades, the foreign operations branch of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. “Iran is just trying to make Maliki weak so he will accept their conditions,” Mr Othman said. “And he did accept. The United States has made a mess for the last five years, it’s very clear.”

John McCain, the U.S. Republican Presidential candidate, yesterday expressed surprise that Mr. al-Maliki should have instigated a battle in Basra without notifying the U.S. “Maliki decided to take on this operation without consulting the Americans,” he said. “I am surprised that he would take it on himself, to go down and take charge of a military offensive.”

As a crippling, five-day curfew was lifted, thousands of people streamed into and out of Sadr City past American tanks and Iraqi armored vehicles. Someone had spray-painted Rafah on a concrete barrier, a reference to the Gaza crossing point that bottles up Palestinians. People barely flinched as fresh shooting erupted in a distant gunfight, in which U.S. forces killed 25 of an estimated 100 militiamen who tried to ambush them. In Baghdad few people put their faith in ceasefires.

--Formed al-Mahdi Army in June 2003, declaring that his purpose was to protect Shia religious institutions in the city of Najaf. He also founded a newspaper that was banned.

--In 2004 he led a bloody uprising in Najaf only fully quelled by the intervention of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the senior Iranian cleric.

--Though supporters stood as part of the ruling United Iraqi Alliance Shia bloc in the 2005 elections, al-Sadr led a boycott of the Government and pulled out his six ministers

--Born near the Iraqi town of Hilla in 1950. His grandfather was a prominent poet and briefly a government minister.

--Left Iraq in 1979 and spent more than 20 years in exile in Syria and Iran. The Saddam Government condemned him to death in absentia in 1980.

--Returned to Iraq in 2003 and became deputy head of the committee responsible for purging former party officials from government jobs.

The fighting in Basra, Baghdad, and across Iraq's south is the first full-scale battle of Iraq's long-feared Shia civil war, which has caused hundreds of deaths and destroyed the hard-won calm of the past six months. But many in the coalition believe that the “defining moment in Iraq's history,” as it was described by President Bush, may have started by accident. Coalition officials dismayed by the dismal performance of the Iraqi forces they trained, and by the bold but misguided leadership of Nouri al-Maliki, the Prime Minister, appeared as confused as everybody else about the timing.

Some have hinted that the battle may have been triggered purely by chance, as each side maneuvered for future control of Basra, the gateway to Iraq's vast, but largely untapped, oil wealth. Several coalition officials said that they were aware of plans by General Mohan al-Furaiji, the Iraqi Army commander, to launch a campaign against the outlaw militias in Basra, but had been led to believe that it would start in June. When it started abruptly on Tuesday some British officials said that they had received less than 24 hours notice.

Some suggested that General al-Furaiji, an experienced officer not known to share plans with his staff, had been moving forces into place when the al-Mahdi Army, which has infiltrated the police and army, were tipped off. That would explain why the plan went off half-cocked, leaving Mr. al-Maliki bogged down in a seemingly unwinnable showdown with the al-Mahdi Army militia that is nominally controlled by Shia cleric Hojatoleslam Moqtada al-Sadr. Neither side can afford to back down. For Mr. al-Maliki, it would be political suicide, bowing to the rule of militias and clearing the way for the al-Mahdi Army to fulfill its goal of emulating Lebanon's Hezbollah militia. For Hojatoleslam al-Sadr, it would signify an end to his potent mix of anti-American demagoguery backed up by participation in parliament and maintaining a powerful grassroots militia that the U.S. wants to see dissolved as quickly as possible.

In the tangled web of Shia power politics, where a plethora of militias, criminal gangs, and Islamic parties vie for control of the oil-rich south, a confluence of U.S., Iranian, and national interests is being played out in the fog of war. Hojatoleslam al-Sadr, who is believed to be in the Iranian shrine city of Qom, has only a loose control of his diffuse al-Mahdi Army, which had carried out a sectarian war with Sunni insurgents before declaring a ceasefire last August.

Joost Hilterman, an Iraq analyst for the International Crisis Group, said that he believed a visit by Dick Cheney, the U.S. Vice-President, more than a week ago may also have helped to trigger the latest crisis. Mr. Cheney, keen to point to some sign of political progress to back the security gains of last year's U.S. surge, pushed the Government to sign a law to provide for provincial elections in the autumn.

But that was a “slap in the face” for the Supreme Council, seen by many as having come to power on the back of the U.S. invasion. It lacks popular support in Iraq, and claimed many of its local government seats only because the anti-American Sadrists boycotted the last elections.

The Supreme Council may have urged Mr. al-Maliki to push ahead with the operation to undermine the Sadrists, who wield power in part because of their grassroots militia spread across the south and center of Iraq. But the new Iraqi Army, trained by the U.S. and Britain, fared badly against militiamen fighting on their own turf, often with heavier weapons and with a religious fervor lacking among many policemen and soldiers. Only when U.S. and British forces started to weigh in did Hojatoleslam al-Sadr agree to a ceasefire, although it was unclear if his militia would comply.

Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr called for an end to the ongoing clashes between the government and his Mahdi Army militia on Sunday. Sadr made his statement after negotiatioms with representatives from the government's ruling Shiite coalition.

The pledge calls for his men to stop fighting, but demands the Iraqi security forces stop targeting his supporters and release all of his followers who have been detained in Iraqi jails. Even after his statement was released, fighting continued in some parts of Baghdad and the southern port of Basra between his supporters and Iraqi police and army. Sadr's statement is below:

"If two parties of believers have started a fight then try reconciliation between them but if one side was insisting on attacking the other then fight the attackers until they obey God's law then do reconciliation according to God's justice."

Starting from the Sharia responsibility and to save precious Iraqi blood, the reputation of the Iraqi people, the unity of land and people, and to prepare for the independence and liberation from armies of darkness and to put down the fire of sedition that the occupiers and their followers want to ignite among the Iraqi brethren, we are asking the Beloved Iraqi people to be on the level of responsibility and Sharia awareness of saving blood, Iraq, and its stability and independence.

3. Demanding the government to apply the General Amnesty law and release all the prisoners that was not proved to be guilty and especially the prisoners of Sadr movement.

4. We announce our innocence from any one who caries the weapon and target the government and services apparatuses and establishments and parties offices.

5. Cooperating with the government apparatuses in achieving security and condemn criminals according to the legal procedures.

7. Working on returning the displaced people that moved due to security events to their original places.

8. We are asking the government to take care of the Human rights on all of its procedures.

9. Working on achieving the constructional and services projects all over the governorates.