Following-up on my story from late last week regarding the recent uptick in Shiite-militia-driven violence in southern Iraq, it would appear that Muqtada al-Sadr has, indeed, blinked:
In a possible turning point in the recent upsurge in violence, Muqtada al-Sadr ordered his Shiite militiamen off the streets Sunday but called on the government to stop its raids against his followers.
Of course, this falls rather well short of Iraqi PM al-Maliki's demands that the militias 1) turn-in their weapons and 2) officially renounce further violence. That's not a surprise, really. This is now a negotiation between Mookie the Headdressed Punk and Nouri al-Maliki - "our guy", I suppose, in this battle.
But the fact of the matter is that al-Sadr has blinked and the Iraqi government is officially "happy" about this turn of events - especially, I assume, the part where Sadr's people urged their followers "to cooperate with the government to achieve security." Seriously, that's really a pretty big deal.
What Mookie is demanding in return is that the al-Maliki government stop "illegal and haphazard raids" and to release any detainees who have yet to be charged by the government - meaning that, I suppose, al-Sadr has officially adopted the position of the US Democrat Party with regard to the Gitmo detainees. No comment from either St. Barack or The Witch to that development.
But it couldn't be that Iran had anything to do with this - right?
In an effort to curb the growing violence, two senior Shiite lawmakers close to al-Maliki - Hadi al-Amri and Ali al-Adeeb - traveled to Iran and asked authorities there to stop the flow of weapons to al-Sadr's Mahdi Army, according to two officials.The lawmakers - both of whom have close ties to Iran - also asked the Iranians to pressure al-Sadr to come up with a face-saving initiative, according to the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject.
Nope- nothing to see there, folks. Iran's not involved at all.
It's not at all clear that the Iraqi forces were making substantial headway in the battle to subdue Mookie's "Army" - so perhaps this unsteady truce is about the best we can hope for at this point. What this almost certainly means however is that al-Sadr isn't going to go away - that he's stared-down the US (twice!) and now the Iraqi government and continues to consume oxygen on a regular basis - and the longer that remains the status-quo the longer Iraq is going to remain a dangerous and unstable place, I'm afraid.
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