SHI’ITE UPRISING MARKS DANGEROUS IRAQ PHASE

Sunday wasn’t just another in a long series of tragic days in Iraq. When Shi’ite mili­tias loyal to the cleric Muqtada al-​​Sadr launched a series of coor­di­nated attacks yes­ter­day, it marked the begin­ning of what could be the most dan­ger­ous phase yet of the allied occu­pa­tion.
“The dif­fer­ence here is the type of vio­lence and who’s fight­ing,” Josh Marshall explains.

Almost all the para­mil­i­tary vio­lence — the shoot­ings and ambushes and road­side explo­sions — have come from the Sunni minor­ity con­cen­trated in the cen­ter of the coun­try.
Violence from the Sunni areas has never been dif­fi­cult to under­stand. They lost out on priv­i­leges and sta­tus when Saddam was over­thrown. And the future looked even more bleak, because the even­tual han­dover of author­ity to a demo­c­ra­t­i­cally elected gov­ern­ment all but insured the dom­i­na­tion of the Shia major­ity which the Sunnis had been lord­ing it over for decades if not cen­turies.
In other words, time was never on the side of the Sunni rejec­tion­ists. From the start their inter­ests were in desta­bi­liz­ing and dele­git­imiz­ing the occu­pa­tion.
Time, how­ever, was very much on the side of the Shia. From a cyn­i­cal view­point, why not let their American and Sunni ene­mies bloody each other into exhaus­tion in the cen­tral Iraq and sit back and wait on the day — not too dis­tant, cer­tainly — when they would inherit the new Iraqi state?
A cen­tral ques­tion has always been, when would the Shia come off the side­lines? … Now, they seem to have come off the side­lines with a vengeance.

Juan Cole says that by clos­ing down Sadr’s news­pa­per, and going after one of his top capos, the Coalition Provisional Authority baited the cleric into this fight. But why?
THERE’S MORE: The counter-​​attack against Sadr has begun, Cole and Chris Allbritton report. He’s locked him­self inside a mosque, David Koresh-​​style. Will U.S. forces do him the favor of turn­ing him into a mar­tyr?
Meanwhile, 2,500 Marines have encir­cled Falluja, to retal­i­ate for last week’s heinous attacks there.

April 5th, 2004 | War Update | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.