Sadr, Badr, Big Difference, Right?

This could be the start of something big.

BAGHDAD - Radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr has blamed the United States and the Iraqi government for the death of a senior aide in the holy city of Najaf.

The cleric's office issued a statement in which al-Sadr promises he won't "forget this precious blood" but he urges his followers to "be patient."

Friday's statement comes hours after Riyadh al-Nouri was gunned down as he drove home after attending prayers. Al-Nouri was the director of al-Sadr's office in Najaf.

You can only anger the head of the most powerful populist movement in Iraq so many times. Sadr is being cautious because he has morphed into something of a statesman (at least that appears to be the perception in Iraq) over the last couple years, and taking the high road works for him. Eventually he won't have to; and he can say he was "dragged" into the conflict. This is the movement that routed the Iraqi security forces in Basra. It is dormant only in the way that a sleeping giant is dormant.

Of course, stateside we get a very Manichean view of things, where Sadr is the enemy and the Maliki forces are on the side of the righteous. Matt Duss and Brian Katulis demolish that argument.

Speaking before Congress, General Petraeus said, "Iran has fueled the violence in a particularly damaging way through its lethal support to the special groups," referring to Shiite splinter groups allegedly receiving support from Iran. According to the general, the recent clashes between Shiite groups stretching from Basra in the south all the way to Baghdad "highlighted the destructive role Iran has played in funding, training, arming, and directing the so-called special groups."

Conservatives such as Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, have latched on to this incomplete description of the ongoing intra-Shiite struggles in Iraq as the latest reason why our over-stretched military forces must remain in Iraq [...]

These depictions ignore an inconvenient truth: The leaders in Iraq's current government are closely aligned with Tehran and represent some of Iran's closest allies in Iraq. This is perhaps best illustrated by the warm welcome Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad received in his visit to Iraq last month, which punctures the myth that the current battle is between a unified Iraqi government and fringe groups receiving support from Iran.

There is little doubt about who is Iran's primary proxy in Iraq: the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq. This leading Shiite faction, now a key member of the ruling coalition in Iraq's government, was founded in the early 1980s by exiled Iraqi clerical activists in Iran, with the blessing and support of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

The Quds Force, a special branch of the ayatollah's Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, created and trained the supreme council's armed wing, the Badr Corps, for the express purpose of eventually serving as an arm of the Quds Force in Iraq. The supreme council was among the Iraqi exile parties with which the U.S. worked in the lead-up to the 2003 Iraq invasion, even though it maintained close ties to Iran. And the Iraqi Shiite faction continues to receive Iranian funds.

And now, the Badr forces essentially make up the backbone of the Iraqi police and Army. We once again have armed, trained and supported bad actors who will not remain loyal because we paid them off. Amazing how the concept of blowback remains so foreign to this Administration. Or rather, remains so foreign with respect to Iraq; in Afghanistan we're starting to figure this one out.

NATO commanders in Afghanistan have decided to end local police training, fearing that cops in remote areas -– most of whom once fought for tribal warlords –- might one day turn their weapons against Kabul and the U.S.-led coalition.

The change in policy perhaps signals a shift in Western attitudes towards the growing ranks of sanctioned tribal armies that perform routine security functions in Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan. The “Sons of Iraq” militia groups, in particular, are a key facet of the U.S. strategy for preventing extremists from taking root in vulnerable Sunni communities.

But some military officers have questioned the long-term wisdom of arming sectarian groups whose allegiances are notoriously fickle.

Of course, we're still arming sectarian groups inside Iraq, in fact on both sides of the sectarian divide, with the Badr Brigades inside the security forces and the "Sons of Iraq" Sunni Awakening groups outside. We are sustaining and furthering an eventual inter-sectarian civil war.

The Basra Aftermath

Well, in the aftermath of the great Basra debacle of Aught-Eight, the Coalition of the We Can't Leave Yet is assessing its options.

The Bush administration was caught off-guard by the first Iraqi-led military offensive since the fall of Saddam Hussein, a weeklong thrust in southern Iraq whose paltry results have silenced talk at the Pentagon of further U.S. troop withdrawals any time soon.

President Bush last week declared the offensive, which ended Sunday, "a defining moment" in Iraq's history.

That may prove to be true, but in recent days senior U.S. officials have backed away from the operation, which ended with Shiite militias still in place in Basra, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki possibly weakened and a de facto cease-fire brokered by an Iranian general.

"There is no empirical evidence that the Iraqi forces can stand up" on their own, a senior U.S. military official in Washington said, reflecting the frustration of some at the Pentagon. He and other military officials requested anonymity because they weren't authorized to speak for the record.

The British had the same reaction, which is not a promising one given five years of training the Iraqi security forces. And yet this shouldn't necessarily be the response. The Basra nightmare showed that the surge had limits and that it was doing little more than keeping a finger in the dike - standing in for the Iraqi security forces and paying off Sunni militias so that everyone keeps a lid on the violence. The Iraqi forces have no power because their loyalty is paltry compared to the tribal militias. And the mission exposed the degree to which Iran - in this case controlled by a guy on the US terrorist watch list - exercises territorial control over the nation and the region. In response to the failure, Nouri al-Maliki has recruited 10,000 Badr Brigade militia into the security forces, essentially joining the Mahdi Army militia since he couldn't beat them (it's clear that the regular forces were defecting by the thousands). The fact that Maliki added 10,000 Shiite militia after telling the Sunni militia groups that he had no room for them is sure to raise tensions. As is the continuing air raids in Sadr City.

' "We realized what kind of government we have: They are like foxes," Abu Amir said. "The Americans are our enemies, not our friends. Maliki is an agent of the Americans. '

So, we have the professional armies transformed into militias protecting sectarian power groups. The Americans are superfluous and quickly growing hated. And the Joint Chiefs of Staff recognize that the Army will be disintegrated without a draft if forces continue to be deployed at the same levels. No wonder nobody in Washington wants to release the next intelligence estimate on Iraq publicly. What's already out there is damning enough.

You can add to all this the moral depredations of our Iraq policy. We are either unable or unwilling to rescue those Iraqis who helped us and bring them to this country. A female soldier is more likely to be raped by one of her colleagues than be killed by enemy fire. And the contractors are either overcharging the government or poisoning our own soldiers due to lax environmental standards. All of these regrettable episodes would end with a complete withdrawal.

All the while, professional liars like Robert Kagan are so utterly and completely clueless about events on the ground that even Joe Klein has to kill him for it.

Fresh from his assertion that the Iraq civil war was "over" a week ago, here's Fred--plus added bonus attraction Kimberly--Kagan reinforcing their profoundly warped view of Iraq in the Weekly Standard. There are several truly disingenuous, and flat out misleading, things here:

1. The promulgation of the myth that Maliki's Folly was to clean out "terrorists" rather than a violent election-year ploy to clear out his legitimate Sadrist political opposition.

2. Perpetuation of the myth that effective Iraqi Security Forces actually exist and aren't primarily composed of (a) pro-Maliki and pro-Hakim militias and (b) former Iraqi soldiers more interested in making a living than in fighting. (Add: No acknowledgment that U.S. troops in the field simply do not trust their Iraqi counterparts...Oh, and I should also add: Some of the most "effective" ISF units are Kurdish pesh merga militias.)

3. Conflation of the "special groups"--trained and supported by the Iranian Qods force--and the Jaish al-Mahdi, which is the main Sadrist Iraqi nationalist militia. Kagan, a military historian, should check with David Petraeus about the relationship of those two separate forces. Indeed, part of Sadr's cease-fire strategy was allow the U.S. to cleanse Iraq of the "special groups." Sadr's no hero, but if he's a terrorist then so are the majority of Iraqi Shi'ites--i.e. his supporters.

4. No mention at all of the Badr Corps, the pro-Iranian Hakim militia that is Sadr's main enemy in Basra and Maliki's best friend. No mention of the widely held belief that the Iraqi Army units in Basra are riddled with Badr militia members.

5. No acknowledgment of the sheer complexity of the situation--the fact that all Shi'ite militias are receiving support from Iran, the fact that Sadr may be the most popular political figure in Shi'ite Iraq, courtesy of his father's fierce anti-Saddam, anti-Persian nationalism. No acknowledgment that our policy toward the various Shi'ite factions might be more successful if we were as nuanced as the Iranians.

The situation is truly complex and our presence is only making things worse. Whether we leave now or in ten years the same fundamental dynamic will be in place if we don't change course. And so rather than pause our drawdown of forces I think it makes more sense to see the Basra mess as a moment of clarity, where we recognize that the situation is untenable, our soldiers are only targets, and that the only surge needed is diplomatic and regional, not military. It's time to leave.