Monday, May 12, 2008

Your friendly local JAM to the rescue

'Sadr continues to have more legitimacy than the central government or the coalition. Part of this is due to family reputation, part is due to Sadr's nationalism, and part is due to the extensive efforts by the Sadrists to provide essential services to the impoverished residents of Sadr City. It is also a byproduct of the dysfunctionality of the Maliki government and the inability of the government of Iraq to surge humanitarian aid into Sadr City during the recent fighting. In other words, in the competition to provide governance and legitimacy, the Sadrists have a significant advantage and will likely continue to do so.'
http://abumuqawama.blogspot.com/2008/05/limits-of-coin-in-sadr-city.html

My general feeling about abu muqawama is that he (or they) are Military Intelligence, well-informed, but often just too clever-clogs for their own good. The above excerpt is a good example. There is a gloss of common sense about it, until you try to understand what it is saying. According to this analysis, the central govmt and by extension Maliki are lazy and/or negligent in not providing essential services in Sadr City. The Sadrists have valiantly and altruistically leaped into the gap to provide 'essential services' to the people. That means, traditional COIN tactics can't work because the people LOVE and RESPECT their militia, who provide them with all their human wants.

So, what are 'essential services'? How many JAM power stations are there? How much of the water and sewage infrastructure was installed by JAM? Hospital supplies? Road maint and road building? Businesses to employ the young folk? That would be zero, none, none, none, none, none and none. They provide 'security' in the same sense that the Gotti's and the Lucchese did. They do have a history of being anti-Saddam and being the same religion, but so was Maliki.

What this argument lacks is the actual gist of the situation. Because the JAM control Sadr City, nobody, not even Saddam, could get anything done there. Its pitifully poor because its 2 million ignorant Shia in the vice grip of an armed militia. The present govmt don't provide services there because anybody with the balls to show up to provide them would be murdered by the JAM. They don't try because they're not stupid or suicidal. I'm sure Mr Maliki would like 2m shia voters to vote for him, and if by providing basic services to them he could get them on board he would. But he can't.

Sadr City is basically a separate city from Baghdad; if Maliki ever wants to run Iraq properly, i.e. like the government of Denmark run Denmark, Sadr City must be part of Iraq, not a seperate mini-state. Every enclave like Sadr City is a permanent danger to the integrity of the Iraqi state, because enclaves are superb for intrusive forces like Irans Qods Force "Special Groups". It has to go. It may take six months, it may take two years, but it will have to be eliminated as a fact. It is faintly funny to hear Abu Muqawama say that the US can't really do anything about JAM in Sadr City. Did he/they say the same thing before Fallujah? How many Sunni terrorists are there in Fallujah?

It has struck me many times during the last four or five years that the old American can-do attitude, the bullishness, has disappeared dramatically from especially yanks younger than about forty. It is much more likely these days to hear from Americans why things are impossible, too much trouble, not worth the effort, just can't be done. Shame. I liked the old America so much more.

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