"I tell the evil Bush, leave our land, we do not need you or your armies.... I tell the occupiers ... you have your democracy and we have our Islam; get out of our land."
A couple of days ago I wrote about how the new Bush-Maliki deal might undermine any gains we have made on the security front in Iraq over the last three months. This deal gave Bush an "enduring" presence in the form of bases on top of Iraqi oil fields and it gave Maliki protection from all other Iraqi factions. I thought this might irritate some other folks in Iraq, to say the least. And it has.
His name is Moqtada al-Sadr. And one day he is going to come for Iraq. Some analysts believe that he wants to establish a Hezbollah like presence in southern Iraq; some say he wants to get involved in politics and carve out a sphere of influence for himself; some say he might want a small fiefdom in southern Iraq. My reading of the situation leads me to believe that those analysts are grossly underestimating his ambitions.
I think he wants all of Iraq.
Now, can he get all the way into Kurdish territory? Very unlikely and I doubt even he wants to go this far. But does he want to capture the Iraqi government? I think the answer is yes. At that point, the Kurds will spin off into their own territory and Sadr (if he gets this far) will let them go, mostly because he won't have a choice.
Now that Bush and Maliki have made their intentions clear and Sadr has had three months off to recoup and consolidate his power, he is almost ready for battle. Hence, the war cry from last week and the Mahdi Army (Sadr's army) now walking around the streets in martyr's white. They're coming. Not if, but when. They're coming.
Anyone who thinks Sadr is going to let Bush and Maliki run Iraq and be satisfied with crumbs off their table doesn't know Sadr at all. The questions now is: will we be ready when he comes? Are we expecting it? Do we have a battle plan? What happens when the insurgency picks up intensity again? What happens when the Mahdi Army rejoins the battle?
I don't know the answer to that. I just hope we're not underestimating them. I also hope we're not basking in the glow of the surge's fake success. The violence has gone down in Iraq, but it's not because we have more troops there. It's because the Sunnis and the Mahdi Army have stopped fighting us ... for now. But what happens when they come for us again? Are we ready?