Moqtada al-Sadr Orders Six Month Ceasefire for Mahdi Army

Moqtada al-Sadr, who will someday be dictator of Iraq-Nam, has ordered his militia, the Mahdi Army, to halt all attacks on all rivals, including the US military, for six months. Washington and the Green Zone part of Baghdad have been cautiously welcoming of this move. The would-be autocrat has said he wants to clean out the rogue elements in his movement. Once again, he is proving himself stupid like a fox, and a very dangerous man.

There have been reports that his militia has been fracturing, and that could well be the case. By announcing the ceasefire, he is forcing local commanders to show their colors. If they halt violent actions, they are tacitly accepting his leadership. If not, the Americans and the Iraqis who answer to Prime Minister al-Maliki’s regime will hunt them down and kill them. Hojatoleslam (his Islamic title, ranking him in the middle of the scholarly pile) Al-Sadr gets his enemies to do his dirty work while posing as a man trying to make things work.

The catalyst for this move was the latest battle in the holy city of Kerbala, where the Shi’ite Mahdi Army fought with the armed wing of the Shi’ite Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council [SIIC]. At least 52 died and 279 were wounded on Tuesday, and quite likely more suffered than were reported. No sign of al Qaeda in Iraq, no Sunni militants participated. Kerbala was open civil war within the Shi’ite community itself.

The American surge of troops is having an impact, which is what one would expect from having more forces in the theatre. However, the US military itself, speaking through no less a warrior than Lieutenant General Raymond Odierno (who’s second in command in Iraq-Nam), stated, “The surge, we all know, will end sometime in 2008, in the beginning of 2008. We know that the surge brigades will leave at 15 months, so that will be somewhere between April and August of ‘08 when those units will leave based on the 15-month rotation.”

The Hojatoleslam’s six-month ceasefire runs from now until February. In other words, he has decided that his forces are going to sit out the surge, and he will be prepared and re-equipped to take up arms just as the Yanks have to start drawing down their forces. In the meanwhile, he can play political games with the Green Zone government, announce some time in January that the whole exercise is pointless and then, storm out of whatever talks are going on. He means to shoot his way into power, but unlike some military leaders, he understands the value of stealth as well as strength of the flanking maneuver as well as the frontal assault. A dangerous man, indeed.

© Copyright 2007 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

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