Battle for Baghdad, How Arabs Radicalized Iraq

The Battle of Baghdad:
The picture in Iraq got a little muddier this week, just before the Ashoura commemorative on Monday. According to some Arab media reports, the fighting around Najaf involved a mysterious group of Sunnis, including Al-Qaeda, as well as a fringe Shi'a group called Jund al-Samaa', Soldiers of Heaven. This would be quite an oddity, to have Al-Qaeda cooperating with fringe Shi'a groups, since the Wahabis consider all Shi'as heretics. It is almost as unlikely as Nazis and Jews making common cause. The Iraqi satellite TV station AlFayhaa quotes a Najaf security official that this was actually a wholly al-Qaeda operation, and that the name 'Soldiers of Heave' is a fake title used to imply that Shi'as are involved. The reports indicate that they had planned to murder top Shi'a clergy and kill as many pilgrims to the shrines as possible. They were also reported to be quite well armed, not your usual low-budget Al-Qaeda suicide operation.

It looks like the Iraqi government, and the United States, may get their wish in ejecting the Sadrist al-Mahdi militias from the streets of Baghdad, thus avoiding a messy confrontation. Yet the continued terror bombings by Sunni groups may encourage support for splinter Shi'a groups. This might weaken the Sadrists in the capital, but at a cost: the splinter groups will have no part of the political process, and they will be more likely to take the law into their own hands. As long as the Wahabi/Salafi terror bombings continue, there will be some popular gravitation among the Shia's to these militias.
Some Arab media, esepcially the Saudi media, are unhappy with the Sadrist shift back toward the political process: they were hoping for a battle that would destroy al-Mahdi army, thus clouding the situation in Baghdad. Now that battle may not come, which is a good thing because nobody should want all of Baghdad to look like Haifa Street with splinter Shi'a militia groups fighting Iraqi and American forces.
Interesting how the situation in Iraq is now being summarized as the "Battle of Baghdad". That is because the rest of Iraq is already divided along sectarian/ethnic lines. Baghdad is the main point of contention now, and perhaps Kirkuk will be later this year.
Those who criticize the regionalism proposals for Iraq, including U.S government officials, are probably trying to assuage allied Arab feelings. Iraq is in fact divided into semi-autonomous regions whether we like it or not: the Kurds are firmly in control in the North, the Shi'as are firmly in control in the South, and the Sunnis can control the West unmolested if they would not carry on suicide bombings in other parts of the country.

How The Arabs Radicalized Iraq:
The Arab regimes, and their elites, bear much responsibility for the ongoing disintegration of Iraq. The Arab media complain about American ineptness in handling the post-Ba'ath situation, yet they and their rulers have done much to exacerbate the sectarian tensions that feed the situation in Iraq. They have refused to deal on an equal basis with an elected Iraqi government, and their monarchs and dictators have made inflammatory statements about the dangers of the Shi'as gaining majority rule. King Abdullah of Jordan started the ball rolling with his irresponsible, and plagiarized, warning about a "Shi'a Crescent", then Egypt's aging President-For-Life Mubarak stated to the press that "Shi'as were more loyal to Iran than to their own countries". Saudi state-employed Wahabi sheikhs started issuing fatwas reiterating their well-publicized views that the Shi'as are heretics who are out to convert and control. Now we have the seeds of a regional sectarian conflict. Old derogatory sectarian terms like Safawis and Shoubis, often used by the Ba'ath in the past, are being dusted up and used to refer to the Shi'as on a daily basis by mainstream Arab newspapers in the Persian Gulf monarchies. These terms were last used by the same media during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, when the Gulf states were cheering Saddam on, acclaiming him a hero.

Now the regional media, as usual echoing their absolute rulers, are calling for a reversal of Iraq: reinstate the old gas-throwing, chemical-using army that murdered Kurds, the same army that invaded Kuwait and was poised to take over the rest of their oil fields. They want an old and reliable military man, i.e a Sunni, installed as a benevolent dictator: perhaps they guess that they can easily buy off such a man, even though they could not completely buy off Saddam. They have a mind-set that does not accept change: they still believe that the Americans run everything in Iraq, that we can change the government at will. Just like the older generation, our parents, always believed that the Brits ran the Middle East overtly or covertly, which they did for a while. Perhaps they should stop watching novellas, or is it Looney Toons, and switch their television sets to the hearings on C-Span occasionally to appreciate the struggle that is raging within the United States about the Iraq situation.

Love and Tribalism in Arabia- The Tragedy of Fatima and Mansoor:
Al-arabia TV reports that a Saudi appeals court has ruled that the court-ordered divorce of a young couple is valid, even though both the man and woman, and their children want to remain married. The original case was brough to court by the wife's male relatives, her brothers, who claimed that they have discovered that the husband was not 'tribally compatible' with the family. The couple had escaped after the first ruling but were caught by the police and charged with living in sin. The woman, Fatima, has refused to leave the prison where she is staying with her infant child, for fear that her family will marry her off quickly to an old man.
Cheers
Mohammed