In East Baghdad, and Shia cities throughout the south, the Mahdi Army is no more. The Iran supported group was taken apart by government security forces during the last two months. All that's left of radical cleric Muqtada al Sadr's private army are a few hundred die hard members who are, for the moment, keeping their heads down. And for good reason. While appreciated in 2006 -7 for keeping Sunni Arab terrorists out of Shia neighborhoods, the Mahdi Army quickly evolved into a collection of self-serving thugs. Once civilians realized that the army and police were stronger, and moving in to stay, the cell phones came out and the police were buried in tips about Mahdi Army safe houses and arms caches. Sadr has been hiding out in Iran through all this.
Sunni Arab terrorist diehards are undergoing the same experience up north, but with more violence. Around Mosul, U.S. Special Forces ODA's, which have been chasing al Qaeda leaders for years, are having enormous success. The surge offensive drove many al Qaeda, and Iraqi Sunni Arab terrorist leaders to the Mosul area, where a spectacular last stand was supposed to give the terrorists a badly needed victory. Didn't work out that way, and now the terrorist leaders are either hunkering down, or running for the border. Either way, they are getting caught. The combination of wide spread cell phone availability, and anti-terrorist Iraqis, is giving the police and Special Forces the tips they need.
The downside of all this is that U.S. troops are now regularly travelling to areas, long been labeled "extremely hostile", they have never been in before. While those Sunni Arab towns are generally considered safe and well policed for Iraqis, there are still scattered groups of terrorists about, capable of pulling off an impromptu ambush or suicide bombing against foreigners. The terrorists are also using more women as bombers, there having been an outbreak of Islamic feminism on the Internet, where the women demanded that they be allowed to participate and die for the cause. Since women suicide bombers have been, and still are, quite rare, their chances of evading security are better. The overall result of this new freedom-of-movement is a near doubling of American combat deaths (from the record low last month of 19).
Several terrorist groups are trying to negotiate some kind of amnesty deal, using kidnapping victims as trade bait. These hostages have, in some cases, been held for a long time. The most prominent of these, five British citizens, have been captives for a year (as terrorists demanded the release of nine pro-Iran killers). This has put the government in a difficult position, as hundreds of Iraqis are being held (some may actually be dead, but even getting "proof-of-life" requires giving the kidnappers something.) While most Iraqis want the hostages released, they also do not want to reward the terrorists.
The defeat of the major terrorist organizations is bringing the spotlight back to Iraq (and the Arab worlds) primary problem; corruption. With reconstruction money and police pouring into Sunni Arab towns for the first time in seven years, there's been some culture shock. The Sunni Arabs have long been accustomed to the old rules (which Saddam Hussein exploited artfully) whereby local strongmen were paid off, and then these tough guys did whatever it took (murder, kidnapping, mutilation, etc) to keep the locals quiet. The new Shia government is trying (with mixed success) to get away from the old ways. It isn't easy. Centuries of tradition don't willingly change overnight. There will be more violence, as corrupt locals decide old school customs are worth killing for. Actually, they always have been, which is why most Arab nations are police states, where murder, or the threat of it, is the final arbiter of disputes with the government. Meanwhile, reconstruction efforts are delayed, or derailed, by rampant theft, lies and deception supplied by local officials.
U.S. troops are back to their pre-surge strength of 15 brigades, although troop strength is a little higher (142,000 versus 135,000) because some additional support units are still around. The surge offensive that began in early 2007 has reduced Iraqi civilian casualties by 80 percent and lowered violence against U.S. troops to 2004 levels. But a lot of this security is held together by U.S. troops, who still advise and assist Iraqi troops and police. U.S. Commanders believe that it's only a matter of time before all Iraqi units are capable of doing their jobs on their own, but for now only about ten percent of Iraqi police and military units are in that category. It may take 5-10 years to get everyone able to operate on their own. Meanwhile, ten of Iraq's 18 provinces have their security provided by Iraqi security forces, with Iraqis in charge (and U.S. forces just on call.)
Al Qaeda web sites are making a lot of noise about "why we lost in Iraq."
Intelligence agencies are fascinated by the statistics being posted in several of these Arab language sites. Not the kind of stuff you read about in the Western media.
According to al Qaeda, their collapse in Iraq was steep and catastrophic. According to their stats, in late 2006, al Qaeda was responsible for 60 percent of the terrorist attacks, and nearly all the ones that involved killing a lot of civilians. The rest of the violence was carried out by Iraqi Sunni Arab groups, who were trying in vain to scare the Americans out of the country.
Today, al Qaeda has been shattered, with most of its leadership and foot soldiers dead, captured or moved from Iraq. As a result, al Qaeda attacks have declined more than 90 percent. Worse, most of their Iraqi Sunni Arab allies have turned on them, or simply quit. This "betrayal" is handled carefully on the terrorist web sites, for it is seen as both shameful, and perhaps recoverable.
This defeat was not as sudden as it appeared to be, and some Islamic terrorist web sites have been discussing the problem for several years. The primary cause has been Moslems killed as a side effect of attacks on infidel troops, Iraqi security forces and non-Sunnis. Al Qaeda plays down the impact of this, calling the Moslem victims "involuntary martyrs." But that's a minority opinion. Most Moslems, and many other Islamic terrorists, see this as a surefire way to turn the Moslem population against the Islamic radicals. That's what happened earlier in Algeria, Afghanistan, Egypt and many other places. It's really got nothing to do with religion. The phenomenon hits non-Islamic terrorists as well (like the Irish IRA and the Basque ETA).
The senior al Qaeda leadership saw the problem, and tried to convince the "Al Qaeda In Iraq" leadership to cool it. That didn't work. As early as 2004, some Sunni Arabs were turning on al Qaeda because of the "involuntary martyrs" problem. The many dead Shia Arab civilians led to a major terror campaign by the Shia majority. They controlled the government, had the Americans covering their backs, and soon half the Sunni Arab population were refugees.
Meanwhile, the "Al Qaeda In Iraq" leadership was out of control. Most of these guys are really out there, at least in terms of fanaticism and extremism. This led to another fatal error. They declared the establishment of the "Islamic State of Iraq" in late 2006. This was an act of bravado, and touted as the first step in the re-establishment of the caliphate (a global Islamic state, ruled over by God's representative on earth, the caliph.) The caliphate has been a fiction for over a thousand years. Early on, the Islamic world was split by ethnic and national differences, and the first caliphate fell apart after a few centuries. Various rulers have claimed the title over the centuries, but since 1924, when the Turks gave it up (after four centuries), no one of any stature has taken it up. So when al Qaeda "elected" a nobody as the emir of the "Islamic State of Iraq", and talked about this being the foundation of the new caliphate, even many pro-al Qaeda Moslems were aghast. When al Qaeda could not, in 2007, exercise any real control over the parts of Iraq they claimed as part of the new Islamic State, it was the last straw. The key supporters, battered by increasingly effective American and Iraqi attacks, dropped their support for al Qaeda, and the terrorist organization got stomped to bits by the "surge offensive" of last year. The final insult was delivered by the former Iraqi Sunni Arab allies, who quickly switched sides, and sometimes even worked with the Americans (more so than the Shia dominated Iraqi security forces) to hunt down and kill al Qaeda operators.
If you can read Arabic, you can easily find these pro-terrorism sites, and see for yourself how al Qaeda is trying to explain its own destruction to its remaining supporters. While it's common to assume the Information War has been going against the West, this was not the case when you checked with what was going on inside the enemy camp.
After a month of fighting, the Mahdi Army has disappeared from the streets of Basra, the largest city in the south. The army and police are everywhere, and people are providing information on where Mahdi Army personnel are hiding out, and the locations of their weapons caches. Up north, in the Sadr City section of east Baghdad, the Mahdi Army is still fighting hard. But the army and police have the upper hand, and are pushing the Shia militiamen back block by block. Mahdi Army leader Muqtada al Sadr has responded by threatening to order his men to go after American troops if the government does not back off. That's won't work, because the Mahdi Army is not particularly skillful, and not very united either. He recently ordered his troops to stop fighting Iraqi soldiers and police, and concentrate on the Americans. The Iraqi security forces have not reciprocated, and continue coming after the Mahdi Army.
The dozen or so factions of the Mahdi Army vary in their loyalty to Sadr, or to political solutions. Several of the Mahdi Army factions are basically criminal gangs masquerading as religious zealots. Sadr denies he is a pawn of Iran, but as Mahdi Army houses are captured, more Iranian weapons and equipment show up, as well as religious propaganda from Iran. Iraqi president Maliki has told Sadr that the offensive would halt if the Mahdi Army surrenders all its weapons, stops attacking, or trying to infiltrate (by joining) the security forces, and hands over members wanted for crimes. So far, Sadr refuses, probably because many of his followers would turn on him if he tried. But Sadr also realizes that the Iraqi soldiers and police are capable, eventually, of grinding the Mahdi Army into nothingness. Another month or so of fighting and the Mahdi Army will be no more.
Al Sadr, and many of his followers, see all this violence against them as a plot by the Badr Organization to be the last major militia standing. The Badr Organization began as a Shia anti-Saddam exile group, in Iran, a quarter century ago. But the Badr "Brigade" renounced the use of force, formed a political party, and urged its Brigade members to join the army and police. This they did, and many believe these former militiamen are still loyal to their Badr Brigade bosses. But the Badr leaders insist that the Brigade is no more, and the Badr Organization is strictly political. In any event, the Badr people have been more cooperative with the government than the Sadr crew.
Meanwhile, Sunni Arab politicians have returned to the government. These Sunni Arab political parties had walked out of the government nine months ago, angry over the failure to guarantee their rights, safety and share of the oil revenue. Since then, the Sunni Arab terrorism effort has been shattered, with many of the Sunni Arab terror groups switched sides and joined the war against al Qaeda.
Iraq is trying to get its Arab neighbors to forgive some $65 billion in Saddam era debts, without much success. Most of the money was borrowed in the 1980s, when Iraq was at war with Iran. Iraq has already had some $65 billion in debts, mostly to Russia and European nations, forgiven. But the Arabs want their money. The other Arab states in the region see Shia dominated Iraq as a potential ally of Iran, and not "real" Arabs. Conservative Sunni Arab clerics regularly preach that Shia Moslems (like most Iraqis and nearly all Iranians) are heretics and not to be trusted.
The government is openly proclaiming the decline, if not complete destruction, of Sunni Arab terrorist group al Qaeda, at least in Iraq. There are far fewer suicide bomb attacks, and most of them are individuals wearing explosive belts, rather that more elaborate car or truck bombs. Moreover, the targets are all "soft" (easy to reach civilians). Al Qaeda is trying to be selective, going after the leaders of Sunni Arab groups that switched sides in the past few months. It is this kind of brutality that caused Sunni Arab groups to turn on al Qaeda, but that kind of logic is lost on the remaining terrorists.
Up north, Turkish warplanes and artillery continue to hit suspected PKK bases along the Iraqi border. The Kurdish government in the north protests, but quietly. No one in the region wants to get into a squabble with the Turks, especially not the Turkish army.
In East Baghdad, and Shia cities throughout the south, the Mahdi Army is no more. The Iran supported group was taken apart by government security forces during the last two months. All that's left of radical cleric Muqtada al Sadr's private army are a few hundred die hard members who are, for the moment, keeping their heads down. And for good reason. While appreciated in 2006 -7 for keeping Sunni Arab terrorists out of Shia neighborhoods, the Mahdi Army quickly evolved into a collection of self-serving thugs. Once civilians realized that the army and police were stronger, and moving in to stay, the cell phones came out and the police were buried in tips about Mahdi Army safe houses and arms caches. Sadr has been hiding out in Iran through all this.
The downside of all this is that U.S. troops are now regularly travelling to areas, long been labeled "extremely hostile", they have never been in before. While those Sunni Arab towns are generally considered safe and well policed for Iraqis, there are still scattered groups of terrorists about, capable of pulling off an impromptu ambush or suicide bombing against foreigners. The terrorists are also using more women as bombers, there having been an outbreak of Islamic feminism on the Internet, where the women demanded that they be allowed to participate and die for the cause. Since women suicide bombers have been, and still are, quite rare, their chances of evading security are better. The overall result of this new freedom-of-movement is a near doubling of American combat deaths (from the record low last month of 19).
