{"id":3067,"date":"2008-04-09T14:37:08","date_gmt":"2008-04-09T20:37:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/?p=3067"},"modified":"2008-04-09T14:37:08","modified_gmt":"2008-04-09T20:37:08","slug":"reidar-visser-maliki-hakim-and-iran%e2%80%99s-role-in-the-basra-fighting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/?p=3067","title":{"rendered":"Reidar Visser: Maliki, Hakim, and Iran\u2019s Role in the Basra Fighting"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By Reidar Visser (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.historiae.org\">www.historiae.org<\/a>)<\/strong><br \/>\n<strong>9 April 2008<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>[Expanded version of an article published in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jamestown.org\/terrorism\/news\/article.php?articleid=2374086\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Terrorism Focus<\/em><\/a> vol. 5 no. 14, with added commentary on the Petraeus\/Crocker congressional hearings about US Iraq policy.]<\/p>\n<p>One week after the upsurge of violence in Basra, questions about the motives and the implications of the fighting still linger. The issue of Iran\u2019s involvement remains especially obscure.<\/p>\n<p>A recurrent explanation suggests that the operations were an attempt by Nuri al-Maliki and Abd al-Aziz al-Hakim to weaken the Sadrists ahead of October\u2019s provincial elections, and perhaps to also further Hakim\u2019s scheme of a single Shiite federal entity, which many Sadrists have resisted. On the surface this seems plausible. This has clearly been a political operation and not a purely security-guided one: Many militia forces in Basra unaffiliated with the Sadrists were left untouched. Also, the Maliki-Hakim axis is the sole remnant of the United Iraqi Alliance; to its backers it would be prudent to stick together and guard against encroachments on their local power bases. As for the United States, as long as it policy remains tied to Hakim\u2019s Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI) it can perhaps make sense to give the green light to operations against the Sadrists, even if the timing (on the eve of the Crocker\/Petraeus hearings) and the scale of the attack (after one year of trying to differentiate between \u201cmoderate\u201d and \u201chardliner\u201d Sadrists) may not have been of its choosing.<\/p>\n<p><strong>[<a href=\"http:\/\/www.historiae.org\/iran.asp\">Read the article<\/a>]<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Reidar Visser (www.historiae.org) 9 April 2008 [Expanded version of an article published in Terrorism Focus vol. 5 no. 14, with added commentary on the Petraeus\/Crocker congressional hearings about US Iraq policy.] One week after the upsurge of violence in &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/?p=3067\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3067","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdXTf-Nt","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3067","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3067"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3067\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3067"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3067"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3067"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}