Things are coming to a head in Najaf. There is a temporary lull but there is no doubt that it is temporary.

Offensive Operations Halted in Najaf
Negotiations Underway During Lull in Fighting

U.S. forces ceased offensive operations in the embattled city of Najaf Friday morning, according to Marine and Army officers, barely 24 hours after launching a multi-pronged offensive against the Mahdi Army of Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr. Commanders indicated the new cease-fire orders were designed to allow political negotiations to proceed between Sadr and the interim Iraqi government. "There’s a hold on all offensive operations," said Maj. Bob Pizzitola of the Army’s 1st Cavalry Division’s 5th Regiment, which patrols the vast cemetery that extends north of the shrine of Imam Ali, the sacred site that has doubled as a Mahdi militia headquarters during the conflict.

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Bush gambles as Najaf burns

One has to wonder why the Bush administration has selected such a risky strategy, fraught with possibly disastrous consequences. The only explanation that makes sense is that the administration is desperate. In Iraq, US control is slipping away one city at a time, a process that actually accelerated after the "transfer of sovereignty" on June 28. A dramatic military offensive may be the only way the administration can imagine - especially since its thinking is so militarily oriented - to reverse this decline. In the US, the administration's electoral position is not promising: its hope for a dramatic economic turnaround has been dashed; a post-sovereignty month of quiescence in the US media about Iraq did not reduce opposition to the war; and recently there has been a further erosion of confidence in Bush's anti-terrorist policies. No incumbent president (the Harry S Truman miracle of 1948 excepted) has won re-election with a less-than-50% positive job rating. (The president's now stands somewhere around 47%.) A dramatic military victory, embellished with all sorts of positive spin, might reverse what has begun to look like irretrievable erosion in his re-election chances. The Bush administration appears to have decided that it must take a huge risk to generate a military victory that can turn the tide in both Iraq and in the US. The agony of the current US offensive begins with the death and destruction it is wreaking on an ancient and holy city. Beyond that, the primary damage may lie in the less visible horror that animates this new military strategy. The US is no longer capable either of winning the "battle for the hearts and minds" of the Iraqis or governing most of the country. But by crushing the city of Najaf, the marines might be able quiet the rebellion for long enough to spin the November election back to Bush.

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Tom Engelhardt reproduces the above article and adds his comments...

Tomgram: Schwartz on Americans rolling the dice in Najaf

What's wrong with this picture? The United States invaded Iraq to "liberate," above all others, that country's oppressed Shiites, so many of whose rebellious relatives were buried in those "killing fields" Saddam Hussein created while crushing their 1991 uprising; killing fields that were an obligatory stopover for Paul Wolfowitz and his ilk on their brief passages through Iraq. ("We thank all of the citizens of Iraq who welcomed our troops and joined in the liberation of their own country," said George Bush on the USS Abraham Lincoln in his "mission accomplished" speech, as on countless other occasions.) So who are we killing now -- and whose dead bodies are we counting up with a certain pride? Iraqi Shiites. ("Captain Carrie Batson, a marine spokeswoman, said: 'We estimate we've killed 300 anti-Iraqi forces in the past two days of fighting.'") We also invaded Iraq to "liberate" suffering Shiite cities, including the Shiite slums of Baghdad, which had been given the short end of the electricity, food, and jobs stick by Saddam. Now, in those cities, still lacking regular electricity or clean water, short on food, and short on jobs, what are we doing? We're strafing, rocketing, and bombing parts of them. Both Najaf and Sadr City, the vast Shiite slum in Baghdad, experienced this yesterday.

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Endgame in Najaf?
by Juan Cole

If I were thinking conspiratorially, this is what I would say: The Mahdi Army continued to be a challenge to the caretaker government of Allawi and could possibly have launched violence at any time. The Bush administration may have feared leaving this element of uncertainty out there, with the risk that it might explode in their faces in October just before the election. So they could have thought that there are advantages to just taking care of the problem in August, on the theory that the American electorate can't remember anything that happened more than one month previously. Likewise, if they finish off the Mahdi Army, it sends a signal to other potential challengers to the Allawi government and they may think it will be strengthened. Likewise, the Mahdi Army's control of so many neighborhoods was a problem for the proposed January elections, and might have allowed a Sadrist party "machine" to dominate the returns from them. The problem is that in actual fact they are undermining the credibility of the Allawi government as an independent actor. They are probably also actually increasing Muqtada's popularity, and the likelihood there will be new recruits to the Mahdi Army. The radical Shiites are reworking the conflict as a defense of Iraq's independence from brutal American Occupation. On Thursday, the Board of Muslim Clergy, a Sunni fundamentalist organization with substantial support from Sunni Muslims, issued a fatwa or ruling that no Iraqi Muslim may participate in an attack on other Iraqi Muslims in support of the occupying power. That is, even the hard line Sunnis, who mostly don't like Shiites, are siding with Muqtada against Allawi and Rumsfeld on this one.

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Intelligence Officials: Iran Battling U.S. In Iraq

Senior intelligence sources in the U.S., as well as officials in the Middle East, claim that the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran has made a strategic decision to confront American forces in Iraq's Shi'a heartland. Those senior intelligence sources (a total of five separate individuals who either now serve or have served in key intelligence positions) base their belief on evidence showing that Iran has armed Shi'a groups in southern Iraq with sophisticated weaponry, has provided political and military guidance to Shi'a groups, has made and maintained contacts with Sunni resistance leaders in "the Sunni triangle" in central Iraq, and is pursuing a program of escalating confrontations between Shia militias and American troops. Among the weapons shipped to the Shi'a militants are sophisticated anti-tank rockets and anti-aircraft missiles, according to these sources. "The rhetoric coming out of the Bush administration has convinced Iran that military conflict is inevitable and rather than await an attack at a time and place of America's choosing, the Iranians will try to inflict significant damage to U.S. forces on Iraqi soil by means of the Mahdi Army and other Shi'a groups," an informed intelligence source told This Is Rumor Control. Senior officials of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency would not comment on these reports, but a former senior intelligence officer said that the conclusion was "a no brainer." As he noted: "If you had U.S. troops on your doorstep and George Bush calling you a part of the axis of evil you would take steps to protect yourself. And it would be better to protect yourself on Iraqi soil than to have to do so on Iranian soil. That is what they are doing. Are we surprised? We shouldn't be."

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  thanks to The Blogging of the President: 2004

But Juan Cole isn't so sure about that...

Kadhim on the Najaf Crisis

Abbas Kadhim, an Iraqi Shiite scholar who knows Najaf intimately, has published an op-ed that questions the common wisdom about the movement of Muqtada al-Sadr. He points out that, despite the claims of some politicians in the Allawi government, Iran is not in fact implicated in the Sadr movement.

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