May 19,2008:
Eight weeks of fighting have
caused the Mahdi Army over 4,000 casualties (dead, wounded, captured, deserted).
For an outfit estimated to have a peak strength of 6,000, that's some pretty
serious losses. The Mahdi Army can quickly recruit new gunmen. Nearly every
family has at least one firearm. But the new recruits are green, and die easily
in combat, if they don't run and hide when the shooting starts. So the Mahdi
Army has a manpower shortage. More resilient are the pro-Iran factions, which
are sometimes led by Iranian Special Forces (Quds Force) operatives. There are
several of these running around (and pursued by Iraqi troops and American Special
Forces).
The
government has offered an amnesty deal to Mahdi Army members, including cash
payments and help finding a job. Unemployment is still a problem in areas
dominated by al Qaeda or Shia militias. Economic development is stunted in
these areas, as the terrorists and pro-Iranian activists want to keep the
population poor and angry at the government. Overall, the economy has been
growing steadily since 2003, because most of the country has been free of the
violence that grabs most media attention.
In the
north, Turkish warplanes and artillery continued attacking PKK targets across
the border in Iraq. This has been going on for at least two days, and appears
to have hurt the PKK, which has not been as active in eastern Turkey as they
were last year. In the last month, these air and artillery raids are believed
to have killed or wounded several hundred PKK members, and caused even more to
move. This disrupted organizing attacks in eastern Turkey. The Turks have also
been sending teams of commandos into Iraq, to take prisoners and capture
documents and other useful stuff.
May 18,
2008: Up north, al Qaeda is making a
last stand in Mosul. This city has thousands of armed Sunni Arabs with no place
to go. The Kurdish population up there hates the Sunni Arabs, and wants to
drive them south. Mosul is the last major city with a chain of safe houses
reaching back to Syria (still a source of recruits, cash and weapons.) Iraqi
and American troops have begun another offensive to clean out al Qaeda, and the
terrorists can't stop it. The al Qaeda men have nowhere to run, so they either
stand and die, surrender, or desert. There is a higher concentration of key al
Qaeda operatives in Mosul, and this can be seen by the higher proportion of
those captured (about half) being leaders or technical experts already known (to
the U.S. or Iraqi forces) by name and function. The loss of so many of these
key people in the last year is why terrorist attacks are down by more than
half, and those still occurring are less sophisticated and deadly.
Those who
leave al Qaeda know they can make a living by joining a criminal gang. This is
only a temporary solution, as U.S. forces have lots of information on the
gangs, and will go after them big-time once al Qaeda has been reduced to
remnants. The gangs are more hated than al Qaeda, because the criminals are in
your face every day, in so many ways (kidnapping, extortion, rape and theft.)
May 15,
2008: A ceasefire with the Mahdi Army
took effect, but some fighting continued with factions that, well, take orders
from Iran. The Iranian factions are moving into western Baghdad, trying to draw
troops away from eastern Baghdad, where the Mahdi Army is about to lose control
of the last neighborhoods it occupies. Without these bases and safe houses, the
Mahdi Army and Iranian backed factions will be much less effective. In effect,
they will be armed fugitives, with many more cell-phone equipped Iraqis ready
to call in where they are and what they are doing.
Muqtada al
Sadr, the charismatic cleric who heads the Mahdi Army, is being urged to get
out of the warlord business and stick to politics. Al Sadr runs a political coalition
that controls ten percent of parliament. But Sadr, who is hiding out in Iran at
the moment, has to worry about radical faction in Iran. These groups want more
anti-American and anti-Sunni violence in Iraq. The Iranian radicals are a
minority in Iran, but the majority there fears them. The Iranian radicals are
quick to use violence, and most Iranians do not want to risk starting a civil
war.