I’ve repeatedly suggested that there is an emerging alignment between the Sadrists and political factions close to the NOIA insurgents and ex-insurgents. Here’s some news – a new coalition including Sadr, various mix’n’match factions including the Dialogue (close to NOIA), a chunk of Dawa that has split from SCIRI, and the Allawi fanclub (yes –…
Read More Using up SCIRIAz-zaman, via Cole reports that the Iraqi government “honoured” SCIRI…sorry…ISIC militiamen for their role in the Basra fighting, and that some 10,000 of them were officially signed up to the Government’s own forces (I thought they already were). The reason for this step is apparently that large numbers – thousands – of men in the…
Read More MutinyThe Times has been doing the best reporting from Iraq by far at the moment. Here’s some evidence. Now, to substance. Note this: “We have received a shipment of Strela antiaircraft rockets,” Abu Sajad boasted to a Sunday Times reporter.“We intend to use them to prove to the world that the Mahdi Army will not…
Read More leave it, Daz, he’s not worth itWell, it’s not as if we weren’t warned; the Iraqi government had been threatening to move against Fadhila in Umm Qasr, and there had been increasing tension between the Iraqi government and the Sadr movement going back to Christmas. Not so long ago, there were demonstrations in Sadr City against Sadr; they thought the movement…
Read More Send lawyers, guns, and moneyYou may recall that we’ve followed the career of the Iraqi Special Forces, née Ministry of the Interior Commandos, née 36th ICDC Battalion in some detail. This force is one of the few reasonably capable Iraqi units, made up of a mix of exiles and SCIRI Badr Corps men. Kazimi has a mildly hagiographic post…
Read More The Colonel of the 36thApparently the alternative to the Baker commission/TYR solution in Iraq – get the fuck out under a negotiated settlement with Iran – that the White House is floating is a “tilt to the Shia and Kurdish 80 per cent. I find it a little hard to work out how we are meant to tilt to…
Read More Pinball WizardIn this post, we analysed the options open to the Iraq Study Group. Supposedly, the original brief foresaw 8. Number 8 was one last push, and it seems that this is exactly what we’re going to get. Note that it is sourced to the President and “Pentagon officials”, rather than the Group itself. In that…
Read More Option 8The chatter is building up that a serious change in policy in Iraq is afoot. Supposedly, there is talk of an ultimatum to the Iraqi government to do various defined things or face undefined sanctions (this is an old John Paul Vann idea from South Vietnam), but there are also reasons to imagine that the…
Read More Talking to Iran, part 2Maps are nice, aren’t they? So let’s have a look at a few maps of Iraq. This one shows Iraq’s administrative divisions, its roads and its rivers. Note especially that there are essentially two major roads between Baghdad and Basra. One runs along the Tigris valley parallel to the Iranian border. The other runs just…
Read More Talk to Iran. Now.This is the kind of good news that only illuminates how terrible your problems are. Yeah, it’s cracking that the Iraqi spooks (supposedly) got to hear about a plot for the Final Shootout, but it’s pretty bad news that the speaker of parliament’s bodyguards were behind it. Worse, it looks like a hell of a…
Read More Near-miss