I want to draw your attention to the following New York Times article.
It talks about the decline in influence that the Sadrist militia group, the Mahdi Army, has had in Baghdad in recent months. I'll cut and paste the first part of the article below, but let me hit a few of the major points. It talks about how pervasive the presence of Mahdi Army militants (known as JAM for their Arabic abbreviation) was in Baghdad, through their exploitation and terrorism of the local population in nearly every neighborhood.
While JAM inspired and ran a criminal network that profited from nearly every conceivable illicit enterprise, the most insidious was their seizure and control over the provision of government services. Because the Iraqi government controls the distribution of a variety of necessary products, notably cooking fuel (kerosene), citizens are reliant upon a system that can be subverted by corrupt, incompetent or compromised officials and exploited as a source of illegal income for the mafia-like militant groups.
Last year, a few of us at the PRT, the Embassy and some of our military counterparts worked with some trusted Iraqi officials to develop a strategy to combat this kind of corruption and exploitation by terrorists and criminal militants.
The article below and the sentiment that it evokes was exactly the kind of results we hoped our work might achieve.
I want to take a moment to salute Sayeed Jabour, a real Iraqi patriot, for being the kind of patriot that his country needs right now. He has risked his life daily to see this kind of progress come to pass, and a new faith arise in a new Iraqi government. Colleagues of his - and ours - have paid the ultimate price for such patriotism.
You'll never know the full story about what's really going on in Iraq. Everybody sees it through their own prism. But every now and then you get a glimpse that teaches you something. So keep looking.
A Shiite Militia in Baghdad Sees Its Power Wane
By SABRINA TAVERNISE
Published: July 27, 2008
BAGHDAD — The militia that was once the biggest defender of poor Shiites in Iraq, the Mahdi Army, has been profoundly weakened in a number of neighborhoods across Baghdad, in an important, if tentative, milestone for stability in Iraq.
It is a remarkable change from years past, when the militia, led by the anti-American cleric Moktada al-Sadr, controlled a broad swath of Baghdad, including local governments and police forces. But its use of extortion and violence began alienating much of the Shiite population to the point that many quietly supported American military sweeps against the group.
Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki struck another blow this spring, when he led a military operation against it in Baghdad and in several southern cities.
The shift, if it holds, would solidify a transfer of power from Mr. Sadr, who had lorded his once broad political support over the government, to Mr. Maliki, who is increasingly seen as a true national leader.
It is part of a general decline in violence that is resonating in American as well as Iraqi politics: Senator John McCain argues that the advances in Iraq would have been impossible without the increase in American troops known as the surge, while Senator Barack Obama, who opposed the increase, says the security improvements should allow a faster withdrawal of combat troops.
The Mahdi Army’s decline also means that the Iraqi state, all but impotent in the early years of the war, has begun to act the part, taking over delivery of some services and control of some neighborhoods.
“The Iraqi government broke their branches and took down their tree,” said Abu Amjad, a civil servant who lives in the northern Baghdad district of Sadr City, once seen as an unbreachable stronghold for the group.
The change is showing up in the lives of ordinary people. The price of cooking gas is less than a fifth of what it was when the militia controlled local gas stations, and kerosene for heating has also become much less expensive. In interviews, 17 Iraqis, including municipal officials, gas station workers and residents, described a pattern in which the militia’s control over the local economy and public services had ebbed. Merchants say they no longer have to pay protection money to militiamen. In some cases, employees with allegiances to the militia have been fired or transferred.
At the peak of the militia’s control last summer, it was involved at all levels of the local economy, taking money from gas stations, private minibus services, electric switching stations, food and clothing markets, ice factories, and even collecting rent from squatters in houses whose owners had been displaced. The four main gas stations in Sadr City were handing over a total of about $13,000 a day, according to a member of the local council.
Um Hussein, a mother of 10 in Sadr City, the largest Shiite district in the capital and one of the poorest, said her family’s fuel bill had dropped so far that she could afford to buy one of her daughters a pair of earrings with the savings. Others interviewed listed simpler purchases that had now become possible: tomatoes, laundry detergent, gasoline.
One young man said that even though his house was right across from a distribution center that sold cooking gas, he was not allowed to buy it there at state prices, but instead was forced to wait for a militia-affiliated distributor who sold it at higher prices.
“We had to get our share of the cooking gas from Mahdi Army people,” Um Hussein said. “Now, everything is available. We are free to buy what we want.”
For the full article...
