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Operation Calvary Charge (New Info)
An article by Nibras Kazimi, Visiting Scholar at the Hudson Institute Operation Cavalry Charge in Basra is going much better than anticipated; solid leadership coupled with a much-diminished enemy is harvesting very quick results. Here are the key points on Day 2 of the operation: * The word from Hayyania, one of Basras most populated and poorest neighborhoods, is that the situation is calm and under control. The Iraqi Army has taken up positions in the main thoroughfare while the criminal gangs and the Sadrists seem to be sitting this one outtheyre not engaging the government troops and are instead keeping a low profile. * Both the Army commander of Operation Cavalry Charge, Lt. Gen. Mohan Hafidh al-Freiji, and the police commander, Maj. Gen. Jalil Khalaf al-Muhammadawi, are very able commanders and brave men, with al-Muhammadawi, an ex-tank officer in the Iraqi Army, tending towards brutality. Hes also helped by the fact that he can draw upon important tribal relations in the all-important Albu-Muhammed tribe of nearby Amara Province. * The Iraqi Army is operating with the utmost restraint which reflects their good training and new ethos; this in not the Saddam-era Army whose first instinct is to level rebellious neighborhoods to dust. Maliki has given the criminal cartels 72 hours to come out with their hands over their headsthis is not a battle, its rather a law-enforcement stand-off.
* Many parts of Baghdad where one would assume the Sadrists could potentially be troublesome such as Husseiniya, Bunook, Shia Ghazaliyya, and Washash experienced no acts of violence. The places where there was limited violence and tension were Sadr City, Bayaa, and very sporadically in al-Shula. In fact, most of the people who Ive spoken to throughout the day, many of whom were out and about travelling across wide swaths of Baghdad, seemed surprised that the situation was that calm.
* The Sadrists can only keep the shops and schools closed through intimidation, including spraying some shop owners with gunfire in the Bab al-Shargi neighborhood. But it is also interesting that one form of intimidation taken by Sadrist activists has been to take photographs of shops that have remained open despite the call for a strike. This sort of behavior indicates that although the Sadrists may not be able to anything about this defiance now, theyll remember these scabs and settle these accounts later. This shows weakness. * The radically Sunni al-Sharqiyya TV (owned by Saad al-Bazzaz, who in recent years has financed his media conglomerate with monies from the dethroned ex-ruler of Qatar, the Barzanis and the U.S. Department of State) is curiously propagating and amplifying Sadrist ( maybe Iranian) psyops. Whats even funnier is that al-Sharqiyyas bogus reporting is looping back into western reporting on the situation in southern Iraq. It seems that news of the situation in the provinces of Diwaniyya, Kut and Hillah have been widely exaggerated by al-Sharqiyya and consequently by certain western media outlets that are pretending to be covering the story when what theyre really doing is taking questionable reporting by an openly hostile TV station and passing it on to the western news consumer as original and objective reporting. * Ahmad Chalabi is trying to reconcile the Sadrists with Maliki. No word on whether Maliki is receptive to this overture. Posted by: Mike Sylwester 2008-03-28 |
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