Here's a story you won't hear quite this way in the mainstream media:
All too recently, US Vice President Dick Cheney was in Baghdad, meeting with the leadership of the current US-supported Iraqi government. Shortly after he left, an announcement was made that the Iraqi presidency council had withdraw its objections to the new provincial elections law, which it is expected would create a much more representative picture of Iraqi political perspectives than the current government shows.
In other words, passing the provincial elections law would weaken the parties currently in power by empowering other parties with a broader political base among Iraqis, such as the Sadr movement, al Fadhila party, and parties with support among many Sunnis from areas which largely boycotted or were excluded from the previous elections. The parties in power now were threatened by this, but under pressure from Cheney and others, they allowed it to pass.
Why?
Maybe a part of this reason can be seen in recent developments in the "security" arena. The mainstream headline is "Iraqi forces target Shiite militias". This is an essentially meaningless statement. And it obscures the context mentioned above and the realities of what seems to be happening yesterday and today.
One way to describe what is happening is that members of some Shiite militias (most significantly the Badr Brigade, the armed wing of the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council, which holds immense power in the "Iraqi security forces") are targeting members of the Mahdi Army, the militia loyal to Moqtada Sadr, who leads the Sadrist Movement. It's a push to dismantle or weaken the organization and power of the Sadrists and others who oppose SIIC and Dawa in advance of any new provincial elections, helping SIIC to consolidate its power base.
What the news reports don't mention is that the same parties directing the "security operations" against rival parties' militias in Basra, Baghdad, and the rest of the South are one side of the power struggles that have been ongoing in Basra and elsewhere for years. Their militias are not being targeted with this security offensive. In fact, that would be nonsensical, because their members are actively involved in the offensive, wearing their Iraqi army uniforms.
And the Americans are providing air and other support to the whole thing, backing one side in an intra-Iraqi conflict against another, and propping up the power of parties that enjoy less public support in the areas of conflict than those they are fighting. The Americans see Sadr's popularity and opposition to the ongoing US occupation as a threat, and so they're happy to team up with the parties allied to the US occupation to eliminate what is perceived as a shared threat.
Everybody wins.
Everyone, that is, except the political parties opposing the current parties in power, especially the Sadrists.
And representative democracy, the Iraqi public, and the truth.
The discourse on Iraq in the English-language media is littered with broken lenses. but rather than recognize them for the flawed, scratched, and warped views they give us, those who bring us the news just keep wearing them.
One such framework is the (much critiqued on this blog) reductionist "Sunni vs. Shiia" lens. Another is the narrative that posits a legitimate, representative Iraqi government, backed by benevolent US forces, locked in a struggle against rogue militias and terrorists.
The "Iraqi forces opposing Iranian influence" narrative is similarly useless, given that the party whose forces are leading the current offensive, and whose interests would be most served by its success (SIIC), is also the party in Iraq with perhaps the closest links to Iran (it was founded there). Claiming that the Mahdi Army, regardless of its actions and history, is more a tool of Iran than SIIC's Revolutionary-Guard-trained Badr Brigade is laughable.
None of these lenses serve the goals of a future of peace, security, and self-determination for Iraqis.
There has been some good blogging on the current developments already (from which much of this analysis is taken or concurs), and here are some links:
And while we're looking more closely at political developments in intra-Iraqi conflicts, here's a good piece on the ever-more rapid unraveling of the "success" of the US strategy of arming and funding the "Awakening Councils".
Many Iraqis and Iraq watchers have been saying that this summer is when everything will break loose. An Iraqi colleague (and a keen observer with many links in Iraqi civil society) who I spoke with yesterday thinks summer is too optimistic. April, he says, is when the next phase explodes.
