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January 31, 2007

More Questions About The Battle At Najaf

Topics: Iraq

So how is it that a messianic Shiite cult with obvious military skills, the "Soldiers of Heaven," accumulate so many weapons and no one even know about them? How did a shadowy cult that few Iraqis had ever heard of manage to assemble such a huge force seemingly without attracting the attention of the authorities earlier? What was this battle about?

Juan Cole believes that the Najaf battle was most likely Shiite-on-Shiite violence, with millenarian cultists making an attempt to march on Najaf during the chaos of the ritual season. Seattle Pi has an analysis. The WaPo calls it a plot to kill Shi'ite Clerics.

Consider for a moment who benefits from the mass murder of Shia pilgrims and senior Shia clerics who support reconciliation and national unity. Strategy Page has the answer: the Islamo-fascist killers who fear the emergence of a democratic alternative to tyranny and terror in the Middle East:

Sistani offers a modernizing Shia alternative to Iran's radical leaders. That's why targeting Sistani immediately suggests a touch or two of Iranian involvement, at least in terms of funds and operational advice.

Radical Shia groups in Iraq benefit from such a horror. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government has launched a new series of raids on Moktada Sadr's Shiite Mahdi Militia. That's put the Sadrists in a bind. Sadrist propagandists assert that the Shia radical militias protect Shias the government cannot defend. Savagery in Najaf plays into the propagandists' hands -- even though the nominal leader of the Soldiers of Heaven also called himself "the mahdi."

Saddamist and Sunni rejectionists also benefit from murder and chaos. We know from documents captured in February 2004 that al-Qaida saw a Sunni-Shia war as its only path to victory in Iraq. Saddam's supporters gambled that they could murder their way back into power by killing Iraqis and inciting ethnic as well as religious conflict. Saddam's holdouts have been trying to stage an "Iraqi Tet" since 2004, achieving a media-driven psychological victory that will force the United States to abandon Iraqi democrats.

Do these disparate, philosophically antithetical rejectionist groups cooperate? Coalition intelligence analysts suspect they do -- at least at the wink-and-nod level. Iraqi democrats and clerics like Sistani are their common enemy -- a modernity and moderation that seeds their defeat. Shia clerics in Najaf told The New York Times that at least one Soldier of Heaven Shiite leader allied himself with Saddam Hussein in 1993. That's one open-source indication of cross-fertilization.

So last weekend the Soldiers of Heaven -- allegedly a Shia faction, but certainly a rejectionist organization -- gathered at least 600 fighters (and possibly more) outside of Najaf on a farm owned by a supporter of Saddam's regime.

Too bad for the would-be assasins, the Iraqi government struck first.

Posted by Richard at January 31, 2007 2:53 PM

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• More Questions About The Battle At Najaf - Jan 31, 2007