I haven’t posted a great deal about the operations being conducted in Iraq against militia factions in the Basra area by Iraqi security forces supported by U. S. and, presumably, MNF-1 forces.
BAGHDAD – U.S. jets widened the bombing of Basra on Saturday, dropping two precision-guided bombs on a suspected militia stronghold north of the city, British officials said.
Maj. Tom Holloway, a British military spokesman, said U.S. jets dropped the two bombs on a militia position in Qarmat Ali shortly before 12:30 p.m.
Basra is Iraq’s commercial and oil hub, and militant followers of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr have been battling Iraqi and coalition forces in the southern city since Tuesday.
“My understanding was that this was a building that had people who were shooting back at Iraqi ground forces,” Holloway said.
The number of people killed in the latest strikes was not yet known, he said.
Iraqi police said that earlier in the day a U.S. warplane strafed a house and killed eight civilians, including two women and one child. They spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to release the information. The U.S. military had no immediate comment on the report and it was not possible to independently verify it.
British jets also have been providing air support in the area. The British military had no immediate information but said it also was looking into the reports of civilian casualties.
American forces launched their first airstrikes in Basra Friday as Iraqi troops struggled against strong resistance in the nation’s commercial center and headquarters of the vital oil industry. Clashes there have sparked retaliatory fights in Baghdad and other Shiite cities.
The simple reason is that I don’t know that there’s much to be made of it. It would be interesting to know precisely which Iraqi security forces were taking part in the operations but that information hasn’t seemed to have been forthcoming. As I’ve mentioned before, the Badr-dominated Interior Ministry has its own army.
I don’t understand the thinking of those who see some sort of hypocrisy or inconsistency or signs of collapse in the activity. The ability to prioritize isn’t hypocrisy it’s just commonsense.
Much of this stuff was a foregone conclusion when the U. S. invaded Iraq in 2003. It’s a matter of demographics. Iraq has a majority of Arab Shi’ites. Basra is Iraq’s largest Shi’ite Arab city (other than Baghdad) as well as the chokepoint of the southern Iraqi oil industry. If the central government is to survive it will need to reduce any groups that challenge its authority, particularly in the vicinity of Basra. That includes Shi’ite militias as well as foreign fighters, Ba’athist restoriationists, and Sunni militias.
That the various Shi’ite groups have Iranian support should be a surprise to no one. The Iranians have cannily exploited their sectarian ties to the various Shi’ite factions and, as best as I can tell, are playing the groups against one another. If we have any brains we’ll do the same thing but I’ve seen no evidence that we’ve the subtlety to pull that off.
So we’ll probably support the Maliki government down the line and it’ll be every bit as awful and every bit as aligned with Iran as a Sadrist government would be.
Generally, I agre with Tariq Alhomayed’s view:
If the ‘Knights’ Assault’ operation was aimed at protecting the whole of Iraq, then there would have been grounds for genuine reconciliation between the multitude of sects in Iraq through Nouri al Maliki’s government. When Iyad Allawi’s government laid siege to Najaf so as to pursue the Shia Mehdi army, it was also simultaneously crushing the terrorist Sunnis in Fallujah – the situation then is very different from now. This is why what is taking place in Iraq today can be summed up as one party trying to get rid of the competition, however they are all under the same umbrella and it is executed in a manner reserved for Mafia movies!
Still, I think we’d be prudent to acknowledge the suspicions held by Sunni Arabs in the region of an Iranian-dominated Iraq while treating them with skepticism. The Iraqi Shi’ites have their own interests, too.
