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Subject: [ctrl] Embarrassed US Starts to Disown Basra Operation
http://www.antiwar.com/porter/?articleid=12613
April 1, 2008
Embarrassed US Starts to Disown Basra Operation
by Gareth Porter
As it became clear last week that the Operation Knights Assault in Basra
was in serious trouble, the George W. Bush administration began to claim
in off-the-record statements to journalists that Prime Minister Nouri
al-Maliki had launched the operation without consulting Washington.
The effort to disclaim U.S. responsibility for the operation is an
indication that it was viewed as a major embarrassment just as top
commander Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker are about to
testify before Congress.
Behind this furious backpedaling is a major Bush administration
miscalculation about Moqtada al-Sadr and the Mahdi Army, which the
administration believed was no longer capable of a coordinated military
operation. It is now apparent that Sadr and the Mahdi Army were holding
back because they were still in the process of retraining and
reorganization, not because Sadr had given up the military option or had
lost control of the Mahdi Army.
The process of the administration distancing itself from the Basra
operation began on March 27, when the Washington Post reported that
administration officials, speaking anonymously, said that al-Maliki had
"decided to launch the offensive without consulting his U.S. allies." One
official claimed, "[W]e can't quite decipher" what is going on, adding
that it was a question of "who's got the best conspiracy" theory about why
Maliki acted when he did.
On March 30, the New York Times reported from Baghdad that "few observers
in Iraq seem to believe that al-Maliki intended such a bold stroke," and
that "many say the notoriously cautious politician stumbled into a major
assault."
The Times quoted a "senior Western official in Baghdad" – the term usually
used for the ambassador or senior military commander – as saying, "Maliki
miscalculated," adding, "From all I hear, al-Maliki's trip was not
intended to be the start of major combat operations right there, but a
show of force."
The official claimed there were "some heated exchanges between him and the
generals, who out of hurt pride or out of calculation or both then
insisted on him taking responsibility."
These suggestions that it was Maliki who miscalculated in Basra are
clearly false. No significant Iraqi military action can be planned without
a range of military support functions being undertaken by the U.S.
command. On March 25, just as the operation was getting under way in
Basra, U.S. military spokesman Col. Bill Buckner said "coalition forces"
were providing intelligence, surveillance, and support aircraft for the
operation.
Furthermore, the embedded role of the U.S. Military Transition Teams
(MTTs) makes it impossible that any Iraqi military operation could be
planned without their full involvement.
A U.S. adviser to the Iraqi security forces involved in the operation told
a Washington Post reporter by telephone on March 25 he expected the
operation to take a week to 10 days.
Operation Knights Assault also involved actual U.S.-Iraqi joint combat
operations. U.S. military spokesman Maj. Gen. Kevin Bergner denied on
March 26 that there were any "conventional" U.S. forces involved in the
operation. Only on March 30 did the U.S. command confirm that a joint raid
by Iraqi and U.S. special forces units had "killed 22 suspected militants"
in Basra.
Some observers have expressed doubt that the Bush administration would
have chosen to have Maliki launch such a risky campaign against
well-entrenched Shi'ite militiamen in Basra until after the
Petraeus-Crocker testimony had been completed. But that assumes that Vice
President Dick Cheney and the Pentagon recognized the potential danger of
a large-scale effort to eliminate or severely weaken the Mahdi Army in
Basra.
In fact, the Bush administration and the Iraqi military were clearly taken
by surprise when the Mahdi Army in Basra attacked security forces on March
25, initiating a major battle for the city.
For many months the Bush administration, encouraged by Moqtada al-Sadr's
unilateral cease-fire of last August, had been testing Sadr and the Mahdi
Army to see if they would respond to piecemeal repression by striking
back. The U.S. command and Iraqi security forces had carried out constant
"cordon and search" operations which had resulted in the detention of at
least 2,000 Mahdi Army militiamen since the August cease-fire, according
to a Sadrist legislator.
Resistance to such operations by the Mahdi Army had been minimal, and Bush
administration officials attributed Sadr's apparent acquiescence to
restraining Iranian influence and the decline of the Mahdi Army as a
fighting force.
At the meeting with Iranian Ambassador Hassan Kazemi-Qomi July 24,
Ambassador Crocker had held Iran directly responsible for what he called
"militia-related activity that could be attributed to Iranian support."
After the Sadr cease-fire, top officials of the Maliki government as well
as rival Shi'ite party leader Abdul Aziz al-Hakim had told U.S. officials
that Iran had intervened to convince Sadr to end Mahdi Army fighting,
presumably because of its desire to stabilize the Shi'ite-dominated Iraqi
regime.
In an interview with the Washington Post Dec. 23, David Satterfield, a
senior advisor to U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and coordinator
for Iraq, said the decline in the number of attacks by Mahdi Army
militiamen "has to be attributed to an Iranian policy decision" and
suggested that the policy decision had been made "at the most senior
level" in Tehran.
Pentagon officials weren't sure why the Mahdi Army was not fighting back,
but the Los Angeles Times reported Oct. 31 that they hoped both that the
gradual decline in attacks would continue, and such a decline "means that
Iran has heard their warnings." Two weeks later, Maj. Gen. Jim Simmons, a
deputy to Petraeus, said the Iranian "initiatives and commitments" to
withhold weapons "appear to be holding up."
Petraeus, meanwhile, was convinced that the ability of the Mahdi Army to
resist had been reduced by U.S. military actions as well as by its
presumed internal disorganization. His spokesman, Rear Adm. Gregory Smith,
declared in early November, "As we've gone after that training skill
levels amongst the enemy, we've degraded their capability…."
Then came Sadr's announcement Feb. 22 that the cease-fire would be
extended. That apparently convinced Petraeus and the Bush White House that
they could now launch a large-scale "cordon and search" operation against
the Mahdi Army in Basra without great risk of a military response.
That assumption ignored the evidence that Sadr had been avoiding major
combat because he was in the process of reorganizing and rebuilding the
Mahdi Army into a more effective force. Thousands of Mahdi Army fighters,
including top commanders, were sent to Iran for training – not as "rogue
element," as suggested by the U.S. command, but with Sadr's full support.
One veteran Mahdi Army fighter who had undergone such training told The
Independent last April that the retraining was "part of a new strategy. We
know we are against a strong enemy and we must learn proper methods and
techniques."
Last week a Mahdi Army commander in Sadr City was quoted by the Canadian
Press as saying, "We are now better organized, have better weapons,
command centers, and easy access to logistical and financial support."
The ability of Mahdi Army units in Basra to stop in its tracks the biggest
operation mounted against it since 2004 suggests that Shi'ite military
resistance to the occupation is only beginning. By making that point just
before Petraeus' testimony, Sadr has posed a major challenge to the Bush
narrative of military success in Iraq.
(Inter Press Service)
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