Alright, y'all, I'm back to the show.
It's Anti-War Radio.
Now, when Gareth Porter writes something, I bring him on the show to talk about it.
And he has written something.
For Interpress Service, IPSnews.net Original.antiwar.com/Porter.
In fact, it's antiwar.com/Porter.
We'll forward you right on there.
The latest is called, What is Sodder's Game on Future US Troop Presence?
Welcome back to the show.
How are you doing?
I'm fine, thanks, Scott.
Okay, now, here's the thing.
You sit there for a second.
I'm going to make a couple of assertions, and then I'm going to turn it over to you.
Okay.
It used to be that the Ba'ath Party ruled Iraq.
It was predominantly a Sunni party, especially at the highest levels.
And the Arabs are the majority in Iraq, as opposed to the Kurds.
But the Sunnis are the minority among the Arabs in Iraq.
Right.
So then America invaded and overthrew the Ba'athists, and fought a giant civil war on behalf of the Ba'ath Brigade of the Supreme Islamic Council and the Mahdi Army of Muqtada al-Sadr, and safely completed ensconcing of them in power in Baghdad in, say, oh, I don't know, 2007, 2008.
They finally pretty much finished up winning that civil war.
And so now their only problem is there's this religious leader on the Shiite majority side that we even fought this war to install in power who wants us to go or not.
Tell us about Muqtada al-Sadr.
Well, first of all, just one point that I would make, which is a bit different from the presentation that you just made, which is otherwise perfectly correct, and that is that Sadr, although he did not resist the initial U.S. invasion of Iraq, it's quite true, that within one year or year and a half he had begun a military resistance to the U.S. and has maintained that degree of resistance to U.S. presence in varying degrees, I guess I should say, a resistance to U.S. presence ever since.
And of course it's important to understand that within the Shiite community or the Shia community, the real big conflict here has been between the Badr Brigade people, who represent the middle and upper class of the Shia community, and Sadr, whose constituency clearly is the poor and dispossessed of the Shia community.
So that's part of the background, I think, of this story.
So now, what is Sadr's game here?
Well, wait a minute, hold the Sadr's game, because as long as you're going to go ahead and clarify that, we should also clarify that Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the leader of the Badr faction, the Supreme Islamic Council, has died.
His son didn't have the wherewithal to hold it together, and Muqtada al-Sadr is now the dominant force inside the Iraqi Supreme Islamic Council, as well as the Iraqi National Alliance, the majority party that rules the parliament and supports Nouri al-Maliki, the Prime Minister.
So he resisted, and our guys fought battles with him from time to time over the years, but still the war was to make him the ayatollah, basically, whether that's what they were trying to do or not.
No, I think that that is, in fact, the larger and longer-term effect of the U.S. war.
That is absolutely correct.
But nevertheless, in the wake of the Shiite, basically their victory over the Sunnis in the civil war in 2007, 2006, 2007, the fact is that the United States and Sadr are still very much at odds.
And so, you know, Sadr is a very complex figure politically at this point, and really this is the main point of my article, is that he apparently wants to play an ambiguous two-sided double game, if you will, with regard to the U.S. presence there, despite the fact that he continues publicly to rail against the U.S. military presence, and indeed has continued to carry out military attacks on U.S. military targets.
Nevertheless, the evidence now is that he is trying to maneuver so that the Nouri al-Maliki government can allow or reach an agreement, that he will allow an agreement between the government and the United States to station U.S. troops.
And this is coming from the Office of Iraqi Military Intelligence, which is responsible for relations between the al-Maliki government and Sadr.
And this is an office called the International Liaison Office, which is run by a former East German intelligence officer, who in fact later on became Sadr's political advisor, precisely when the United States was trying to carry out major attacks and to weaken the Mahdi army in 2007-2008.
So this is a very important development that Sadr now, because of his very ambiguous on-and-off relationship with Nouri al-Maliki, he is telling al-Maliki that he will not try to bring the government down by opposing any request by al-Maliki for a continued U.S. military presence.
And that is something very new, because it's the first time that he has made a move towards an accommodation with the U.S. presence.
Of course, this is not public, it's all private, and this is something that is at odds with Sadr's public position.
Now, the other side of this coin at this point is that the United States military certainly, and other U.S. officials who are working on Iraq, are not buying the idea that Sadr has changed his stripes on opposing the U.S. military presence.
They are still saying, and they were telling me when I was writing this story, we don't see any clear evidence, or any evidence at all, in the case of the U.S. military, that Sadr has changed.
His promised day brigade is still carrying out attacks against the United States, they're responsible for having killed U.S. troops, and as far as they're concerned, Sadr is still the enemy.
So you have a very interesting situation, where he's trying to accommodate U.S. presence in this very complicated way, and the U.S. military does not believe it, and they are still demanding that he essentially dismantle the promised day brigade.
That's the only way they'll be satisfied that Sadr is ready to make peace with the United States.
And he's not going to do that, it's clear that he's not going to do it.
So it's not at all clear that he can, in fact, carry out an accommodation with the U.S. that will be acceptable to the U.S., and that conflict apparently is going to continue.
Well now, so recent attacks on American troops had been attributed to his militia, you disagree?
Well, you know, I think that the evidence is that, in fact, promised day brigades not only carried out attacks, but those attacks did, in fact, cause U.S. casualties.
How many and how much of the total casualties is another question.
In June, 15 American troops in Iraq were killed, which is the highest figure since June of 2008, so that's very significant.
And, of course, you can assume that there's a multiple of that which were wounded as well.
I have no doubt that some of those casualties are attributable to the promised day brigade, and, you know, the people who were telling me this, giving me this story, wanted to minimize as much as possible the killed and wounded that can be attributed to the promised day brigade, but they cannot absolutely say that there were no casualties caused by the SADR attack on U.S. troops.
But I think that there is some reason to believe that SADR was, in fact, while attacking the U.S. targets, U.S. military targets, meaning U.S. bases and convoys, he was not trying to cause maximum casualties.
I think that's probably true.
And so there's a nuance here.
There's an effort by SADR to minimize the casualties, which is simply not being accepted or believed by the U.S. military.
This is Antiwar Radio.
I'm Scott Horton.
I'm talking with Gareth Porter from Interpress Service and Antiwar.com/Porter.
All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the show.
It's Antiwar Radio.
I'm Scott Horton talking with Gareth Porter from Interpress Service and Antiwar.com.
That's Antiwar.com/Porter.
The latest piece is called What is SADR's Game on Future U.S. Troop Presence?
Now, Gareth, I think you say in this article, and you were alluding to this a minute ago, that there are indications that July is different from June, that maybe if SADR was orchestrating attacks against American forces last month, that something's happened to change his mind in the meantime, or there are indications that he had ordered a new strategy.
Right, and I think the important, the first thing that I haven't mentioned, which needs to be added to this storyline, is that according to this ILO, the arm of the Iraqi military intelligence, which handles relations with SADR for al-Maliki, basically there was a major, not a physical meeting, but an exchange of views between SADR and Maliki last weekend.
And what happened in that exchange of views was that basically Maliki wanted to know, point blank, what SADR's intentions were.
Was he going to use a request for troops, U.S. troops to stay in Iraq against the government and try to bring it down?
Or was he ready to support the government, or to continue to support the government, and not try to use that issue politically?
And in the background, of course, was SADR's previous threat to reactivate, not deactivate, but reactivate the Mahdi Army, which in fact has been deactivated since 2008, since 2009, excuse me.
And so basically SADR responded to that by assuring Maliki that he would not try to bring the government down, that he would not obstruct or stand in the way of a request for U.S. troops.
And so this was a major move by SADR, and he then issued a public statement on his website, which in a very sort of low-key way tipped his hand, if you will, by saying that he would not reactivate the Mahdi Army, and explained that because there was corruption and malfeasance in the Mahdi Army, that they were not ready to be reactivated.
So he was not going to do that, as he had threatened to do in April, if U.S. troops continued to remain in Iraq past the December 2011 deadline.
And he also essentially said that the Promised Day Brigade would be the only force that would have the authorization to resist U.S. troops, and they would do so only if U.S. troops remained beyond the deadline.
So in other words, he was saying that between now and the end of the deadline, that the Promised Day Brigade would stand down, which of course could be viewed, and I think should be viewed, as another signal by SADR with regard to his intentions.
So there are a number of things that are going on here which point in that direction, but it still remains true that SADR cannot afford to stop military resistance to any continued U.S. presence, because he'll lose his following.
He simply cannot be in a position of accepting the U.S. military presence publicly.
And so my source was telling me that if the U.S. military presence does remain, of course SADR will have to continue to make attacks on U.S. bases and convoys.
But he would do so in a way that would be aimed at not causing large numbers of dead or wounded.
So it's a very, very subtle approach that SADR apparently is taking on this, trying to have it both ways.
Yeah, you say in your article he was telling his people, shoot only at very hard targets, like armored vehicles with really good armor on them, so there will have been an attack today, but no one will have gotten seriously hurt.
He's really worried about picking a major fight and the war starting all over again.
He doesn't have the power to repel a full-scale invasion of East Baghdad, etc.
Well, I think, you know, I don't know what his calculus is with regard to, you know, how much he fears of having a new military confrontation with the United States.
That may be part of his calculus, that he doesn't want to, you know, have that kind of, you know, large-scale confrontation.
I think also that, you know, part of his calculus, which I didn't discuss in the piece, but is important, is that, you know, he really sees himself now as the kingmaker, clearly, in the Iraqi government.
He's not going to take an official position, presumably.
I don't think that's what he has in mind.
But what he does believe is that the next prime minister after al-Maliki is undoubtedly going to be a sadrist.
He is going to be in a position to choose the next leader of Iraq.
And so it's going to be his government in the future.
And what he's being told is, look, our military is not capable of guarding our borders.
It's too weak.
We need the Americans here to give us training and to help us ward off any foreign threat.
And they're telling him that Iran is a foreign threat.
And despite the fact that Sadr, you know, has indeed gotten training from Iran in the past and no doubt has gotten money from Iran, I think that he is listening to what they're saying.
And he's responding to that.
He's ready to allow some U.S. military presence there to help the Iraqi military, which is still the Iraqi military itself is the leading force in Iraq trying to get the United States military to retain troops there.
That's their baby.
They think that's in their interest.
And so there is this byplay between the Iraqi military and Sadr that is apparently resulting in his change of mind, at least privately, if not publicly.
So, you know, really, he wouldn't have to fight.
All you'd have to do is just tell Maliki, I'm withdrawing support from you.
We could vote no confidence or whatever and get rid of Maliki and put a sadrist in there as soon as he felt like, really, at this point.
But you're saying that his incentive is for now to let Maliki stay and to let the Americans stay to ward off the Iranians.
Right, and of course, you know, as my source told me, look, I mean, he's going to continue publicly to be against the American military presence and he'll continue to carry out attacks.
He has to do that because otherwise he loses his constituency.
So, I mean, that's how complicated this situation is.
He is indeed playing a double game.
He's inheriting power and at the same time he needs to hold on to his Shia constituency because that is indeed what allows him to hold that power.
Well, it's just like the surge in 2007 and 2008.
It was half fighting the Sadrists in East Baghdad and half helping them finish off the Sunnis and helping them win a final victory for Baghdad.
It's 85% Shiite city now.
That was the Mahdi army that did, you know, I don't know, half of that ethnic cleansing.
Right, but I think that the U.S. military was not consciously trying to help the Mahdi army do that.
I think it was still happening despite the U.S. military.
Well, they were trying to help the Bata Brigade do it.
They ended up benefiting Sadr more because, as you said, he represents a lot more Shia.
Absolutely, they were prepared to help the Bata Brigade up to a point.
I don't think they were prepared to help the Mahdi army at all.
And so I think it was happening despite the wishes of the U.S. military.
They did not want to help the Mahdi army consolidate power at the expense of the Sunnis, but they were not able to do that much about it in 2007.
They were still in a position where the Mahdi army could still operate pretty freely, although there were some places where the U.S.
If you read Nir Rosen's book, you find that there were some places in Baghdad where U.S. military was effectively blocking the Mahdi army's operations.
Really?
Oh, I actually have Nir Rosen's book.
I haven't read that part.
Yeah, it's very good on that.
It's very informative, and it tells, I think, more fully than any other source the story of the complications that attended the U.S. surge, particularly in Baghdad.
The only problem with that is, in real time on this show, with you as a guest and with others, we talked about all this then, that they can fight Muqtada al-Sadr in East Baghdad if they want, as long as they're helping the Bata Brigade finish the cleansing, so-called, of the Sunni Arabs from Baghdad.
Ultimately, Sadr's going to be the kingmaker here, because as you said, Hakeem only represented the rich Shia, and the vast majority of the Shia ain't rich.
He's the only one with legitimate, bottom-up power.
I think the U.S. military and civilian people running the show simply were not sharp enough to figure that out in 2007.
They should listen to anti-war radio, I guess.
They should read IPS News.
Absolutely.
Antiwar.com/Porter.
Thanks very much for your time, Gareth.
Thanks for having me again, Scott.
