Redstate

By streiff Posted in War — Comments (34) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

There are those chrysalis events in history which, when viewed in comfortable retrospect, are clear tipping points but at the time their significance was much less clear. Few, for instance, could have foretold the Boston Massacre or Tea Party were steps toward revolt and independence. In our own time, the Stonewall Riots are now widely regarded as marking the beginnings of the gay rights movement though at the time the verdict was somewhat different.

One of those events is occurring in Southern Iraq today. The outcome is uncertain but the outcome may very well have more impact on the future of Iraq than anything al-Zarqawi is doing or anything happening in the Sunni Triangle.

Read on.

The British Army is very, very good. On a man-for-man basis it is quite possibly the best in the world. Of our allies it is one of three I wouldn’t mind covering my flank, the ROKs and Australians being the others. It is fashionable in the British Army, however, to hold the American Army in disdain. If you serve with them it is a very short period of time before you run into patronizing condescension that will make your teeth hurt. Our training isn’t quiet as tough as it is at Brecon Beacons, we have too much money and don’t spend it wisely (maybe some truth here) and by-and-large we just aren't ready for prime time. Essentially, it’s overpaid-oversexed-over-here writ small.

[As an aside, here, I’d like to acknowledge that the American Army displays that attitude towards most other armies, but the Brits are the only one who do it to us – or at least the only one that we care about. We’re perpetually the younger brother looking to our older, more talented sibling for acceptance and rarely finding it.]

During the James Earl Carter regime, during the depths of despair of the American soul in the aftermath of the disastrous Desert One operation, I was posted as a baby lieutenant to Berlin Brigade. One night I was in one of the many Anglophone bars in Berlin, The Irish Harp in Berlin-Charlottenburg. The patrons were mostly British troops, one of the battalions in the British brigade at that time was 2d Battalion, Royal Irish Rangers and British ex-pats (largely retired military), with a smattering of GIs and Germans. The Germans were there mainly as gawkers because the owner-bartender was an avowed member of the IRA and been known to come across the bar after British troops who were too vocal about the Troubles.

Seated beside me at the bar was a Brit trooper. Inevitably the subject of the fiasco that was the Iranian hostage rescue attempt came up, “Too bad, mate, we offered to help. Our SAS (he pronounced the word “sass” where an American officer would have said “S-A-S”) could have done it like that.” He snapped his fingers. Hundreds of miles into hostile territory. Penetrating a prison guarded by an armed mob. Extracting 52 Americans. Flying hundreds more miles to safety. The SAS could have done it like that.

This attitude has been demonstrated time and again by the British division in Iraq. This opinion been voiced so frequently that being the un-Americans could be construed as British defense policy.

Speaking from his base in southern Iraq, the officer said: "My view and the view of the British chain of command is that the Americans' use of violence is not proportionate and is over-responsive to the threat they are facing. They don't see the Iraqi people the way we see them. They view them as untermenschen[my italics]. They are not concerned about the Iraqi loss of life in the way the British are. Their attitude towards the Iraqis is tragic, it's awful.

"The US troops view things in very simplistic terms. It seems hard for them to reconcile subtleties between who supports what and who doesn't in Iraq. It's easier for their soldiers to group all Iraqis as the bad guys. As far as they are concerned Iraq is bandit country and everybody is out to kill them."

and this:

While British soldiers "get out on their feet", Americans, he said, were reluctant to leave their armoured vehicles. When they did do so - and this was the experience even in Uum Qasr - US marines were ordered to wear their full combat kit.

One difference emphasised yesterday by senior British military sources was the attitude towards "force protection". A defence source added: "The Americans put on more and more armour and firepower. The British go light and go on the ground." He made it plain what approach should be adopted towards what he called "frightened Iraqis".

and my favorite:

Privately, British commanders were seething over the Marines' monthlong siege of Fallujah—the doctrine of "kill, kill and kill again," as a former British officer put it to NEWSWEEK. […] Now, military sources tell NEWSWEEK, British commanders are increasingly reluctant to commit troops to zones not under British control. "We'll do it our way—or no way," says a former senior British officer.

Indeed, the British effort in southern Iraq in general, and Basra in particular, has long been regarded as the bright spot in Iraq. The Mahdi Army fought only briefly in Basra. IED attacks on British troops have been minimal.

There are growing indications, however, that this superficial calm has masked a threat of uncertain provenance. Politically, the British may very well have confused the absence of conflict for peace. Militarily the British reliance on soft power and the hands-off “Officer Friendly” approach may have given the radical fringe of Shi’a political wannabes a critical opening.

There were initial rumblings of the situation:

THE students had begun to lay out their picnic in the spring sunshine when the men attacked.

“There were dozens of them, armed with guns, and they poured into the park,” Ali al-Azawi, 21, the engineering student who had organised the gathering in Basra, said.
“They started shouting at us that we were immoral, that we were meeting boys and girls together and playing music and that this was against Islam.

“They began shooting in the air and people screamed. Then, with one order, they began beating us with their sticks and rifle butts.” Two students were said to have been killed.

Standing over them as the blows rained down was the man who gave the order, dressed in dark clerical garb and wearing a black turban. Ali recognised him immediately as a follower of Hojatoleslam Moqtada al-Sadr, the radical Shia cleric. Ali realised then that the armed men were members of Hojatoleslam al-Sadr’s Mehdi Army, a private militia that fought American forces last year and is now enforcing its own firebrand version of Islam.

The picnic had run foul of the Islamist powers that increasingly hold sway in the fly-blown southern city, where religious militias rule the streets, forcing women to don the veil and closing down shops that sell alcohol or music.

The murder of Steve Vincent was a clear indication that things were going terribly wrong. He is widely believed to have been kidnapped and executed by members of the Basra police force at the behest of those angered by his op-ed in the New York Times. An op-ed that exposed British acquiescence to the infiltration of that police force by the Mahdi Army.

The unraveling of the status quo has proceeded at a rapid pace. At some point, British authorities decided that the Mahdi Army was presenting a clear threat to the success of their mission and they unleashed the SAS and Special Boat Service on the Basra leadership of that militia.

Two clerics associated with Moqtada al-Sadr were arrested by the British. Significantly:

The initial version of the military's statement sent to reporters referred to the Mahdi Army as a "terror organization." A revised version sent about an hour later deleted that reference.

That the military would label the Mahdi Army as a terrorist organization in a press release certainly reveals how the British Army views the Mahdi Army internally and it is difficult to imagine how this bell can be un-rung. It probably portends a more vigorous action against Sadr and the Mahdi Army.

In an attempt to engage in age old bartering, the Basra police managed to arrest two SAS troopers at a police roadblock under nebulous circumstances.

We may never know what they were doing at that particular place, in Arab dress, or whether they engaged in a gun battle with Basra police, but, to paraphrase Clint Eastwood as Harry Callahan, we can be fairly certain they weren’t out collecting for the Red Cross.

The SAS is no stranger to controversy or dirty wars. On May 14, 1977, SAS Captain Robert Nairac was abducted and killed by the IRA. Rumors around his death are many but he had been linked in some circles with the equipping, training, and directing of paramilitary groups in South Armagh. On March 7, 1988 the SAS killed three IRA volunteers in Gibraltar that became an international cause celebre. This was followed on March 19, 1988, by two SAS corporals being dragged from their car and executed after approaching an IRA funeral. It is strongly believed by many in the community that the killing of Jean Charles de Menezes was much more likely the work of the SAS’s Pagoda Troop than of the metropolitan police.

Yesterday the British forces in Basra upped the ante and used tanks to free those prisoners. Predictably, this has been a dramatic event:

When British officials apparently sought to secure their release, riots erupted. Iraqi police cars circulated downtown, calling through loudspeakers for the public to help stop British forces from releasing the two. Heavy gunfire broke out and fighting raged for hours, as crowds swarmed British forces and set at least one armored vehicle on fire.

Witnesses said they saw Basra police exchanging fire with British forces. Sadr's Mahdi Army militia joined in the fighting late in the day, witnesses said. A British military spokesman, Darren Moss, denied that British troops were fighting Basra police.

The subsequent rioting and the statement by Brigadier John Lorrimer, commander of UK forces, was ominous and eerily reminiscent of Steve Vincent’s op-ed on the collusion between the police and the Mahdi Army:

"Later in the day, however, I became more concerned about the safety of the two soldiers after we received information that they had been handed over [by the Basra police] to militia elements. As a result I took the difficult decision to order entry to the Jamiat police station. By taking this action we were able to confirm that the soldiers were no longer being held by the IPS [Iraqi police service]. An operation was then mounted to rescue them from a house in Basra.

This could be simply another case of al-Sadr’s violent acting out. Or it could be something much more serious that another rising by and resultant thumping of the Mahdi Army.

Amir Taheri writes:

Suppose that the tussle over Iran's nuclear plans goes to the Security Council — which fails to take a decision, thanks to Russian and Chinese vetoes, and America (after much huffing and puffing) launches airstrikes against Iran's nuclear installations.

Iran's retaliation could begin with orders to the forces it controls inside Iraq to attack U.S. and British troops. The Lebanese branch of Hezbollah would launch massive rocket attacks against Israel, while Hamas and Islamic Jihad (whose leaders spent the past month in Tehran, meeting Khamenei and his aides) would begin suicide operations against Israel from Jerusalem and the West Bank.

Sadr is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Pasdaran and there is strong suspicion that Sadr and others are acting at the behest of Tehran:

Apart from the activities of al-Sadr’s supporters, military intelligence has concluded that Iran has been supporting a local terror group run by Abu Mustafa al-Sheibani, who is blamed for the murder of at least 11 British soldiers.

In a secret report, military intelligence warned commanders that attacks on British forces were being deliberately intensified, with the use of a new bomb, developed in Iran, that can penetrate the thickest armoured protection.

This combined with Iran’s newly hardline and un-nuanced stance (as the WaPo headline reads ”Iran's President Does What U.S. Diplomacy Could Not”) on its nuclear weapons programs makes Taheri’s theory believable.

So as we are left to ponder these happenings, a series of questions come to mind:

• Is Sadr acting alone? Given his history it is not unreasonable. He has as much to fear from a stable Iraq as Zarqawi. His links to Iran are strong but not unusual considering Iran’s history of sheltering anti-Saddam groups. The fact that the SCIRI’s Badr Brigades are not implicated in this fight could mean that either Sadr is acting alone or that the ties between SCIRI and Iran have been hugely overblown (my position).
• If Iran is calling the shots in Basra, what is their game? Is it a bargaining tool to make the Brits back off their position on Iranian nukes by demonstrating the nuisance they can make of themselves? Or is it, as Taheri postulates, the first stage in an Iranian war to drive the US and UK from the Gulf?
• Why have there been no actions against US forces by Sadr? Other than he may be more than a little circumspect about repeating his last uprising. If Iran is calling the shots here one would think that withdrawing his militia from Najaf and Karbala is a counterintuitive action if Iran has given him instructions to begin operations against the US and UK… unless they are under the illusion that they can dust up the Brits in Basra and remain unmolested in the rest of Iraq.

Regardless of the answers to these questions the event that will shape the future in Iraq are the actions of the British in Basra in the next month.

• Will they attempt to pretend nothing has happened and go back to business as usual?
• Or will they eject Sadr and his acolytes from Basra and most importantly purge the Basra government of their influence?
• If they elect to eradicate Sadr’s influence in the run up to the Constitutional referendum on October 15, can they do it by themselves or will they require the diversion of American troops from the Sunni Triangle?

And in other news:

In Baghdad's heavily Shiite district of Sadr City, assassins killed Fadhil Amshani, a cleric and follower of Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr, as he headed to the Sadr movement's office, said Qahtan Rubaie, a Sadr spokesman.