Another Chapter emerges in the U.S war against democ.......Terror

US plot to overthrow elected Palestinian government exposed
Part One
By Jean Shaoul
8 March 2008


The United States plotted the armed overthrow of the Hamas government elected by the Palestinian people in January 2006, according to "The Gaza Bombshell", an article based on leaked documents and interviews with key players in the Bush administration that was published in the latest edition of the US magazine Vanity Fair.

Vanity Fair called the affair "Iran Contra 2.0", a reference to the Reagan administration's funding of the Nicaraguan Contras by covertly selling arms to Iran in contravention of official policy. This latest plot was prepared not by some middle-ranking spies and military personnel, but by the State Department with approval from the very top of the political establishment, including President George W. Bush. It was implemented by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Deputy National Security Advisor Elliott Abrams, who has a long history in plotting coups and illegal activities on behalf of US imperialism.

The plan was being prepared and implemented at the same time as Bush publicly professed that the last great ambition of his presidency was to broker a deal that would create a viable Palestinian state, bring peace to the region and further his "freedom agenda" of engineering the election of pro-US regimes throughout the Middle East.

The intention was that Muhammad Dahlan, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's national security advisor and a Fatah strongman, would facilitate the downfall of Hamas with forces armed by the US. Dahlan, who has worked closely with the FBI and CIA since the 1990s, was publicly described by Bush as "a good solid leader" and privately called "our man."

But the plan back fired. Instead of removing Hamas, its effect was to provoke a tragic and ongoing factional struggle between Fatah and Hamas that brought Palestine to the point of civil war and a pre-emptive coup in Gaza by Hamas to forestall the coup planned by Fatah last June. The result was yet another foreign policy debacle for Bush.

While some of this was known at the time, the full extent of Washington's skulduggery was not. The article by award winning British journalist David Rose, who also writes for the Observer, provides documentary evidence of the conspiracy, setting out the nuts and bolts of the plans. It also provides a revealing insight into what passes as policy making within the Bush administration, its modus operandi and the tense relations and divisions within the neo-conservative circle surrounding Bush.


The coup plan is hatched

"The Gaza Bombshell" explains how, after the death of Yasser Arafat in November 2004, the White House insisted upon early elections _ under the guise of giving the Palestinians the chance to choose new leaders who were not "compromised by terror". This was intended to forestall growing support for Hamas. Dahlan and Abbas repeatedly told Bush that the elections should be delayed until Fatah was ready. But Bush and his advisors would not listen.

Hamas came to power in January 2006 as a result of widespread disaffection with Fatah over its readiness to agree a rotten deal with Bush and its own endemic corruption. An offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas does not represent a progressive alternative to Fatah but articulates the interests of sections of the Arab bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie.

When democracy resulted in the wrong party winning, the Bush administration was taken by surprise. Condoleezza Rice told reporters. "I don't know anyone who wasn't caught off guard by Hamas's strong showing." According to Vanity Fair's sources, a Department of Defence official said, "Everyone blamed everyone else. We sat there in the Pentagon and said, 'Who the f*** recommended this?'"

The White House rejected any idea of working with Hamas, even though leading Israelis including Ephraim Halevy, a former head of Mossad, supported such an approach. A senior State Department official said, "The administration spoke with one voice: 'We have to squeeze these guys.' With Hamas's election victory, the freedom agenda was dead."

First, the US ensured that the Quartet, made up of the US, the United Nations, the European Union and Russia, terminated aid to the Hamas government, depriving it of most of its budget and the means of paying salaries. Second, Israel closed its borders with Gaza and severely restricted the Palestinians' freedom of movement. These measures were designed to turn the Palestinians against Hamas. Israel arrested 64 Hamas officials, including half of its elected legislators, most of whom are still in detention today, making Hamas's parliamentary majority inoperable.

Washington was furious when Hamas began holding talks with Abbas in an attempt to form a "unity government". In October 2006, Rice went to see Abbas. According to officials present at their private meeting, she told in him in no uncertain terms that the US expected him to dissolve the government of Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh as soon as possible and hold fresh elections.

Abbas, like Yasser Arafat before him, found himself being asked to sign off on a civil war. Unlike Arafat, Abbas agreed, albeit reluctantly, to take action within two weeks.

When there was no action, Rice sent Jake Walles, the US consul general in Jerusalem, to present Abbas with an ultimatum. A "talking points" document prepared for him by the State Department and authenticated as genuine by US and Palestinian officials, stated:

"We need to understand your plans regarding a new [Palestinian Authority] government. You told Secretary Rice you would be prepared to move ahead within two to four weeks of your meeting. We believe that the time has come for you to move forward quickly and decisively."

"Hamas should be given a clear choice, with a clear deadline: ... they either accept a new government that meets the Quartet principles, or they reject it. The consequences of Hamas' decision should also be clear: If Hamas does not agree within the prescribed time, you should make clear your intention to declare a state of emergency and form an emergency government explicitly committed to that platform."

Since no one doubted that such an ultimatum would lead to fighting on the streets, the document said that the US was already working to strengthen Fatah's security forces: "If you act along these lines, we will support you both materially and politically, we will be there to support you." Abbas should be encouraged to "strengthen [his] team" to include "credible figures of strong standing in the international community." This was a reference to Muhammad Dahlan.

In the long term, Abbas and the handful of Palestinian millionaire and even billionaire families whose interests he represented were entirely dependent upon Washington and had no choice but to comply. But he was still reluctant to initiate a fratricidal conflict and did not dissolve the Hamas government. So the US instead worked to provoke a civil war, which it thought Hamas would lose, by boosting military support for Fatah. Abbas was sidelined in favour of direct talks with Dahlan.

Dahlan had been Yasser Arafat's security chief in Gaza, which he had run as his own personal fiefdom. He headed up the Preventive Security Service, an outfit of thugs, whose trademark was kidnappings and torture. It was an occupation that had made him a very rich man.

Rose's article cites a State Department official as saying that David Welch, assistant Secretary of State, who was in charge of Middle East policy, "didn't fundamentally care about Fatah. He cared about results, and [he supported] whatever son of a bitch you had to support. Dahlan was the son of a bitch we happened to know best. He was a can-do kind of person. Dahlan was our guy."

This apparently alarmed Avi Dichter, Israel's internal-security minister and the former head of its Shin Bet security service. When he heard senior American officials refer to Dahlan as "our guy": "I thought to myself, the president of the United States is making a strange judgment here."

Bush's schemes fell afoul of his administration's previous polices. While Fatah's forces were numerically superior, most of its strength had been destroyed by the US-backed Israeli invasion of the West Bank in 2002, aimed at destroying Arafat's political and security infrastructure. Furthermore, without the economic support from the EU, there was no money to pay Fatah security forces, with the result that Fatah could neither control Gaza's streets _ Hamas's power base _ nor protect its own personnel.

Dahlan tried to convey an impression of strength. He initiated a series of kidnappings accompanied by torture. Fighting broke out between Fatah and Hamas. Atrocities were committed on both sides. Soon dozens were dying each month.

The US security coordinator for the Palestinians, Lieutenant General Keith Dayton, met with Dahlan. He said that US would supply weapons and training. Dahlan should take responsibility for all the Palestinian forces as national security advisor and the number of separate forces would be reduced. This would include disbanding Dahlan's own Preventive Security Service, widely known to be perpetrating kidnapping and torture.

When Dahlan ridiculed the idea, saying, "The only institution now protecting Fatah and the Palestinian Authority in Gaza is the one you want removed," Dayton replied, "We want to help you. What do you need?"

The project was hugely controversial even within the administration. Some agreed with the general approach, but thought Dahlan was soiled goods and wanted nothing to do with him. Others disagreed about the type of weaponry and the cost. Israel itself was worried that arms destined for Fatah would end up in Hamas's hands and was reluctant to cooperate. It stipulated that only light weaponry would be acceptable.

The $86.4 million financial support package promised by Dayton, with the ostensible purpose, according to a US document published by Reuters, of paying to "dismantle the infrastructure of terrorism and establish law and order in the West Bank and Gaza", never materialised.

Congress dragged its feet, finally blocking payment in January 2007. The House Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia feared that military aid to the Palestinians would end up being used against Israel, a forecast that ultimately proved to be correct. Congress finally approved a reduced, $59 million package for non-lethal aid in April 2007.


Covert funds

According to the Vanity Fair article, the coterie around Bush were simultaneously scouting around for an alternative, covert means of getting funds and weapons to Dahlan. Congress's reluctance to provide funding meant that "you had to look for different pots, different sources of money," said a Pentagon official.

A State Department official added, "Those in charge of implementing the policy were saying, 'Do whatever it takes. We have to be in a position for Fatah to defeat Hamas militarily, and only Muhammad Dahlan has the guile and the muscle to do this.' The expectation was that this was where it would end up_with a military showdown."

There were, this official said, two "parallel programs"_the overt one, which the administration took to Congress, "and a covert one, not only to buy arms but to pay the salaries of security personnel."

The covert plan, according to State Department officials, consisted of Rice phoning and meeting up with the leaders of four Arab nations_Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. She wanted them to provide Fatah with military training, pledge funds to buy weapons for its forces and pay money into accounts controlled by President Abbas.

As David Rose explained, the scheme was similar to the Iran-contra scandal where the Reagan administration sold arms to Iran, an enemy of the US, and used the proceeds to fund the Contra rebels in Nicaragua in violation of a congressional ban. Some of the money for the Contras, like that for Fatah, was provided by Arab allies as a result of US lobbying, while the arms were channelled through Israel.

Supplying arms to Dahlan and Fatah was not illegal, because Congress had never explicitly outlawed it. But "It was close to the margins," a former intelligence official with experience in covert programs told Rose.

By late December 2006, four Egyptian trucks crossed an Israeli-controlled border point into Gaza and handed over their contents to Fatah. These included 2,000 Egyptian-made automatic rifles, 20,000 ammunition clips, and two million bullets. When news of the shipment leaked, Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, an Israeli cabinet member, said on Israeli radio that the guns and ammunition would give Abbas "the ability to cope with those organizations which are trying to ruin everything"_ meaning Hamas.

As Avi Dichter pointed out, since Israel had to approve all weapons shipments, it was unlikely to want Washington to send high-tech weaponry into Gaza in case it was used against Israel. A State Department official is quoted as saying, "One thing's for sure, we weren't talking about heavy weapons. It was small arms, light machine guns, ammunition."

Rose believes that it could even have been Elliott Abrams himself who held back from sending in heavy weaponry, to avoid breaking the law for a second time in the same way. In 1991, Abrams had been convicted and fined for unlawfully withholding information from Congress during Iran Contra affair but was later pardoned by the first President Bush.

One of his associates says Abrams, who refused an interview for the Vanity Fair article, was torn over the policy_between the disdain he felt for Dahlan and his overriding loyalty to the Bush administration. David Wurmser, Vice President Dick Cheney's former adviser, admitted that Abrams was not the only one: "There were severe fissures among neoconservatives over this. We were ripping each other to pieces."

Rice herself was in for a shock. When she went to the Middle East in January 2007, her Arab allies stonewalled and refused to cough up. This was not simply because they had differences with Washington. Rather, as one official told Rose, "The Arabs felt the US was not serious. They knew that if the Americans were serious they would put their own money where their mouth was. They didn't have faith in America's ability to raise a real force. There was no follow-through. Paying was different than pledging, and there was no plan."

This official believed that Rice's trip with the begging bowl raised "a few payments of $30 million"_mostly, as other sources agree, from the United Arab Emirates. Dahlan himself says the total was only $20 million, and confirms that "the Arabs made many more pledges than they ever paid."

To be continued

US plot to overthrow elected Palestinian government exposed
Part Two
By Jean Shaoul
10 March 2008


With Fatah's social base almost totally eroded in January 2007, and without the funding promised by the Arab regimes, according to David Rose's The Gaza Bombshell in Vanity Fair, Fatah strongman Muhammad Dahlan now had insufficient financial support to carry out the coup attempt Washington expected of him.

He used his new weapons to storm the Islamic University of Gaza, a Gaza stronghold, provoking Hamas to attack Fatah-held police stations. Even now, Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas was unwilling to preside over a civil war. So he acceded to Saudi King Abdullah, who had long been trying to broker an agreement between the two factions, and went with Dahlan to meet Hamas in Mecca. On February 8, 2007, he struck a deal with Hamas for a National Unity government.

While Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh would remain prime minister, he would allow Fatah members to hold several key cabinet posts. Haniyeh did not agree to recognise Israel, one of the three tests required by the Quartet (the US, the United Nations, the European Union and Russia) for restoring economic aid. In return, the Saudi King Abdullah agreed to pay the Palestinian Authority's salary bills.

While there was rejoicing on the streets of Gaza, the Bush administration was astounded by the news. This was not what it wanted or expected from its key ally in the region. According to a State Department official, "[Secretary of State] Condi [Condoleezza Rice] was apoplectic."


Plan B%u2014The plan for a coup

David Rose cites and posts on Vanity Fair's web site an extraordinary series of documents to show how the US responded by redoubling the pressure on its Palestinian allies to oust Hamas, with the State Department drawing up an alternative to the new unity government: "Plan B."

That these documents should have been leaked and authenticated by officials shows how bitter the internecine divisions in Washington have become.

According to a State Department memo, Plan B's objective was to "enable [Abbas] and his supporters to reach a defined endgame by the end of 2007. The endgame should produce a [Palestinian Authority] government through democratic means that accepts Quartet principles."

Plan B reiterated Walles's ultimatum delivered in late 2006, calling for Abbas to "collapse the government" if Hamas refused to sign up to the Quartet's conditions. Abbas was to call early elections or impose an emergency government.

Plan B set out explicit arrangements to suppress Palestinian militants and opposition to Abbas and prevent any attacks on Israel. While the unity government remained in office, Abbas had to maintain "independent control of key security forces." He must "avoid Hamas integration with these services, while eliminating the Executive Force or mitigating the challenges posed by its continued existence."

Washington clearly expected that the covert funding pledged by its Arab allies would be forthcoming, as the memo recommended that "Dahlan oversees effort in coordination with [US security coordinator for the Palestinians, Lieutenant] General [Keith] Dayton and Arab [nations] to train and equip 15,000-man force under President Abbas's control to establish internal law and order, stop terrorism and deter extralegal forces."

Vanity Fair's sources confirmed that the State Department, in consultation with the Palestinian Authority and the Jordanian government, developed the objectives of Plan B in a document entitled "An Action Plan for the Palestinian Presidency."

The early drafts of the Plan emphasised the need to strengthen Fatah's forces in order to "deter" Hamas. The "desired outcome" was to give Abbas "the capability to take the required strategic political decisions...such as dismissing the cabinet, establishing an emergency cabinet."

Rose explains that "the drafts called for increasing the 'level and capacity' of 15,000 of Fatah's existing security personnel while adding 4,700 troops in seven new 'highly trained battalions on strong policing.' " The plan would provide "specialised training abroad," in Jordan and Egypt, and pledged to "provide the security personnel with the necessary equipment and arms to carry out their missions."

The budget for salaries, training and "the needed security equipment, lethal and non-lethal," was estimated at a further US$1.27 billion over five years, a massive sum for such a small country.

The plan states: "The costs and overall budget were developed jointly with General Dayton's team and the Palestinian technical team for reform"%u2014a unit established by Dahlan and led by his friend and policy aide, Bassil Jaber.

Jaber told Rose that the budget was the result of the work he had done with Dayton and his team. He said, "The plan was to create a security establishment that could protect and strengthen a peaceful Palestinian state living side by side with Israel." What it in fact meant was the launching of a brutal civil war against Hamas and any opposition to Israel and its Palestinian collaborators.

Palestinian Authority officials in Ramallah drew up the final version, which differed from earlier drafts only in that it presented the plan as if it had come from the Palestinians, not the State Department and Jordan. It claimed the security proposals had been "approved by President Mahmoud Abbas after being discussed and agreed [to] by General Dayton's team."

Abbas had now explicitly signed up to a State Department blueprint for a coup against a government in which his own party was participating, an all-out civil war against Hamas and the suppression of all opposition to Israel. In return, he was given a vague promise of support for a non-contiguous mini-state, where Palestinian businessmen would have a licence to exploit their own working class as long as they did Washington's bidding.

At the end of April 2007, part of an early draft was leaked and published by the Jordanian newspaper, Al-Majd. Hamas saw it for what it was: the blueprint for a US-backed Fatah coup.

The publication of the Action Plan ended the relative calm that the unity government had brought to the occupied territories. Bitter factional fighting broke out all over again. With fortuitous timing, Dahlan had left Gaza for Berlin where he had undergone knee surgery. As he had said about Fatah's claim of strength, "I knew in my heart it wasn't true." On another occasion, his estimation was that "We are late in the ball game here, and we are behind."

Tensions rose further when 500 of the newly trained Fatah National Security Force recruits arrived from Egypt, complete with new weapons, vehicles and uniforms. A frequent visitor from one of the Western aid agencies said, "They had new rifles with telescopic sights, and they were wearing black flak jackets. They were quite a contrast to the usual scruffy lot."

Fighting escalated, with 250 Hamas members having been killed by Fatah since the beginning of 2007.

On May 23, Lieutenant General Dayton himself gave the issue a public airing by discussing the new unit in testimony before the House Middle East subcommittee. He insisted that all the aid going to Fatah at Washington's behest was "100 per cent non-lethal." This was manifestly untrue.

On June 7, the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz reported that Abbas and Dayton had asked Israel to authorise the biggest Egyptian arms shipment yet, which included dozens of armoured cars, hundreds of armour-piercing rockets, thousands of hand grenades and millions of rounds of ammunition.

A few days later, just before the next batch of Fatah recruits was due to leave for training in Egypt, Hamas began its counter-offensive in earnest.

Fawzi Barhoum, Hamas's chief spokesman, told Rose, "Finally we decided to put an end to it. If we had let them stay loose in Gaza, there would have been more violence." Mahmoud Zahar, the former foreign minister for the Haniyeh government, who now leads Hamas's militant wing in Gaza, told Rose, "Everyone here recognises that Dahlan was trying with American help to undermine the results of the elections.... He was the one planning a coup."

According to Zahar, Hamas's original aim was fairly limited: "The decision was only to get rid of the Preventive Security Service. They were the ones out on every crossroads, putting anyone suspected of Hamas involvement at risk of being tortured or killed."

When Fatah's forces beat a speedy retreat, however, Hamas decided to get rid of them once and for all. The fighting was ferocious and savage. Within five days in June 2007, its forces had taken control of Gaza and routed Fatah, whose fighters either went into hiding or left for the West Bank.

Some Fatah personnel did not fight because they feared that, with Dahlan absent, his forces were bound to lose. "I wanted to stop the cycle of killing," says Ibrahim abu al-Nazar, a veteran party chief. "What did Dahlan expect? Did he think the US Navy was going to come to Fatah's rescue? They promised him everything, but what did they do? But he also deceived them. He told them he was the strongman of the region. Even the Americans may now feel sad and frustrated. Their friend lost the battle."

Fatah was and is riddled with divisions. There were some who wanted to continue opposition to Israel and they also refused to fight Hamas. Khalid Jaberi, a commander with Fatah's al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades told Rose, "Fatah is a large movement, with many schools inside it. Dahlan's school is funded by the Americans and believes in negotiations with Israel as a strategic choice. Dahlan tried to control everything in Fatah, but there are cadres who could do a much better job. Dahlan treated us dictatorially. There was no overall Fatah decision to confront Hamas, and that's why our guns in al-Aqsa are the cleanest. They are not corrupted by the blood of our people."

Plan B backfired spectacularly on the Bush administration.

In Gaza, Hamas took possession of Fatah's arms and ammunition%u2014including the new Egyptian guns supplied under the covert US-Arab aid program. Other groups, if not Hamas itself, have continued to fire rockets into Israel's southern towns.

Abbas and Fatah have been even more discredited. They were confirmed yet again in the eyes of the Palestinians as Jerusalem and Washington's paid subcontractors. Such is the opposition to Fatah in the West Bank that Abbas and his so-called Fatah government now preside over little more than Ramallah.

Although it came to power as a result of popular disgust with Fatah over the latter's collaboration with the Americans and the Israelis, Hamas is no political alternative for the Palestinian masses. It speaks for petty bourgeois and bourgeois Arab interests.


The political fallout

The scale of the leaked documents and interviews included in Rose's Vanity Fair article and the confirmation of the evidence from so many official sources so soon after the events are extraordinary. They come from high-level Republicans, who support US militarism in the Middle East in furtherance of US's geo-strategic interests, but who are furious at yet another fiasco in policy implementation.

This follows hard on the heels of the ongoing failure of the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, Israel's failure to "take out" Hezbollah in the Lebanon and most recently, the Palestinians' mass break-out from Gaza, which has profoundly destabilised social relations in Egypt and strengthened Hamas. To the extent that both Hamas and Hezbollah are viewed as proxies for Iran, then Washington has been unable to score any successes against Iran.

The failure of the attempted coup by Fatah has led to bitter recriminations within the Bush administration. The vice president's office is clearly riven by divisions, and it, in turn, is at odds with Rice and the State Department, the Pentagon and the CIA, all of whom are closely involved with the Israel-Palestine conflict.

David Wurmser, Vice President Dick Cheney's Middle East Advisor, resigned his post within weeks of Hamas taking control. He assisted in preparing Vanity Fair's article. His own assessment of the situation in Gaza contradicts the official Washington line that Hamas mounted an illegal coup against Fatah. He said, "It looks to me that what happened wasn't so much a coup by Hamas but an attempted coup by Fatah that was pre-empted before it could happen."

Rose cites comments from neo-con critics who formerly played leading roles in the Bush administration, including both Wurmser and former UN Ambassador John Bolton, who blame the State Department for seeking to use a local strong man to do their work.

Bolton told Rose that relying on local proxies such as Muhammad Dahlan is "an institutional failure, a failure of strategy." He blamed Rice, who he said, "like others in the dying days of this administration, is looking for a legacy. Having failed to heed the warning not to hold the elections, they tried to avoid the result through Dayton [the US security coordinator who reached the agreement with Dahlan]."

Bolton has written a book entitled SurrenderIs Not an Option, in which he criticises the Bush administration for changing its foreign policy objectives during its second term.



The Vanity Fair article appeared just as Rice set off for yet another visit to the Middle East and was clearly timed to undermine her position.

The article has provoked angry denials from the Bush administration. Bush's spokesperson Dana Perino said, "There is no accuracy to that story." State Department spokesperson Tom Casey called the piece "absurd," "untrue" and "ridiculous." Rice herself dismissed the Vanity Fair article as "ludicrous," while making clear that the US has funded and continues to fund the PA and supply it with weaponry. "If the answer is that Hamas gets armed by the Iranians and nobody helps to improve the security capabilities of the legitimate Palestinian Authority security forces, that's not a very good situation," she said. "As long as Iran funds Hamas, the US will back security funding for the Palestinian Authority."

The Gaza Bombshell reveals the degree to which political life in the United States has become a series of intrigues, in which small cliques within the ruling class fight out critical questions and use a servile media to manipulate public opinion and obscure the real issues.

The nominally liberal media barely reported the revelations by Vanity Fair, relying on a short précis of Rose's article. None of these media outlets made a comment as to the significance of Rose's article or any reappraisal of their analysis of US foreign policy in the Middle East that accepts the claims of Bush and Rice to be acting as peacemakers between Israel and the Palestinians.

In Britain, the Guardian%u2014the sister paper of the Observer, for which Rose writes%u2014had access to the documents, but apparently made no effort to commission Rose to do an exposé. We know the Guardian saw the documents because of a brief comment made in passing by the newspaper's columnist and associate editor Seumas Milne: "As confirmed by secret documents leaked to the US magazine Vanity Fair%u2014and also passed to the Guardian..." Had Milne not written this, no one would have been aware that this was the case.

Concluded

Clashes and tensions in southern Iraq
By James Cogan
17 March 2008

Fighting has broken out in major cities in southern Iraq amid rising tensions between the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI), the main Shiite party within the Iraqi government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, and rival Shiite parties and militias. US forces are openly aligning with ISCI.

The chief target of both the US military and ISCI are elements of the Shiite fundamentalist Sadrist movement and its Mahdi Army militia, which have now split with cleric Moqtada al-Sadr over his collaboration with the occupation and refusal to oppose ISCI's claim to hegemony over the Shiite population.

Last August, Sadr prohibited members of his organisation from resisting operations against them by either US forces and or Iraqi government security apparatus%u2014which proceeded to exploit the ceasefire to launch unprecedented raids into Sadrist-controlled areas. Hundreds and possibly thousands of Mahdi militiamen were killed or detained in Baghdad and the ISCI-held Shiite religious cities of Najaf and Karbala.

On February 23, Sadr ordered a continuation of the ceasefire. His decision appears to have been rejected by a significant faction of his movement. The British military suffered its first fatality for the year on February 29, when suspected Sadrist militiamen carried out a rocket attack on the British base at Basra airport. Last Monday, alleged Sadrist-linked militiamen mortared a US base on the outskirts of the city of Kut. On Tuesday, an improvised explosive device (IED) killed one American soldier and wounded two others near Diwaniyah. The following day, three US troops were killed and two more wounded by a rocket attack on their base near Nasiriyah.

American special forces units, ISCI-controlled police and Iraqi army units have responded with a major assault since Tuesday to drive members of the Mahdi Army out of their strongholds in the working class suburbs of Kut. At least 13 people were reported to have been killed. A police commander told Reuters: "We have purged four neighbourhoods and arrested a group of Mahdi Army gunmen, including a senior leader." A fifth neighbourhood, he claimed, had been "sealed off". Militiamen on Wednesday fired as many as 11 Katyusha rockets at the US base from one of the suburbs which police had declared under their control. American troops fired mortars into the residential area in retaliation.

More clashes took place in Kut over the weekend. Wire reports indicate that dozens of alleged Sadrist supporters have been rounded up during police raids.

Sadr issued a statement on Thursday denouncing the militia resistance and demanding that they honour his ceasefire. It is doubtful his orders will be obeyed. Peter Harling of the International Crisis Group, which published a study on the frictions within the Sadrist movement in February, told Reuters: "There is tremendous frustration among Sadrists at the rank-and-file level." Harling observed that many Sadrists fear the US military is assisting ISCI to destroy them. Sadr's ceasefire is rendering even greater assistance.

The conflict between ISCI and the Sadrist movement has deep roots. ISCI represents a faction of the Shiite clerical and propertied elite which, following the crackdown on the Shiite fundamentalist movement by Saddam Hussein's Baathist regime in 1980, turned to Iran as a means to gain political power in Iraq. ISCI's Badr militia fought alongside Iranian troops against the Iraqi army in the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war. Following the 2003 US invasion, ISCI offered its full collaboration to the occupation and has participated in every government formed in Baghdad since.

The Sadrist wing of the Shiite establishment, by contrast, supported an Iraqi victory in the Iran-Iraq war, on the basis of Arab nationalism. It initially rejected any participation in the puppet regimes formed under the US occupation. In 2004, it fought a short-lived uprising against American forces and the Iraqi "transitional government" of ex-Baathist Iyad Allawi. After suffering heavy losses, Moqtada al Sadr accepted a US ceasefire and abandoned armed resistance in September 2004. His movement proceeded to form an alliance with ISCI and Da'wa to ensure Shiite dominance over the governments in Baghdad formed since elections in 2005.

Two issues continue to bitterly divide ISCI and the Sadrists, however. They are in a power struggle over which clerical faction should control the major Shiite shrines in Karbala and Najaf and the huge revenues that come from donations by pilgrims from around the world. The Sadrists resent the domination over the cities of Iranian-born and ISCI-backed Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, believing the Sadrist wing of the clergy would be in control if it were not for the 1999 assassination of Sadr's father, Mohammed Sadeq Sadr, by the Baathist regime. During the failed Sadrist uprising in 2004, the Madhi Army temporarily seized the shrines from ISCI forces, but was forced to hand them back as part of the ceasefire terms.

Secondly, the two tendencies have opposed standpoints toward the Iraqi nation-state. While the Sadrists insist on the maintenance of Iraq as a strong central state, ISCI has the sectarian perspective of dissolving Iraq into a loose federation of autonomous regions. The unstated objective of regionalism is to create conditions in which as much as possible of the revenues generated by oil and gas in Shiite southern Iraq is kept in the hands of the Shiite elite and not paid to a central government. The Sadrists draw the bulk of their support from the Shiite population in Baghdad, and so insist that the national state should have the sole jurisdiction over oil and gas developments and decide the distribution of the revenues.

From next month, a federalism law enacted in October 2006 takes effect. The legislation enables provinces to hold referendums on whether they wish to combine with other provinces to form a "region". ISCI's stated plan is to combine the nine majority Shiite provinces in the south into one autonomous federal state.

ISCI faces obvious obstacles. In the first provincial elections under US occupation on January 30, 2005, ISCI or the Da'wa Party of Maliki won control of seven of the nine Shiite provinces, primarily due to the fact that the Sadrists did not contest the ballot as an organised faction. Sadrist supporters, however, won control of the Marsh Arab province of Maysan.

In an even greater setback to ISCI, the Basra-based Sadrist breakaway Fadhila, or Islamic Virtue Party, wrested control of the governorship of the oil-rich Basra province, where Iraq's largest oil fields and only port are located. Tendencies within Fadhila advocate the establishment of Basra as a region on its own%u2014apart from the rest of southern Iraq. No government it controls will agree to a referendum on a southern region. Without the inclusion of Basra, however, ISCI's ambitions to marry its political control of Karbala and Najaf with the resources of the oil industry cannot be realised.

ISCI is left with few options. It can defer its plans until the holding of new provincial elections and seek to take control of all nine southern provinces. The provincial election law passed by the Iraqi parliament last month set down October 1, 2008 as the date for new elections.

Reliance on a democratic vote is problematic. There is mass disaffection with ISCI due to its association with the US occupation and the catastrophic living conditions the Shiite masses face. Sadrists%u2014with or without the blessing of Moqtada al Sadr%u2014will contest the next ballot and may well win not only in Maysan, but also in provinces such as Qadisiyyah (capital at Diwaniyah), Dhi Qar (capital at Nasiriyah) and Wasit (capital at Kut). Fadhila would potentially retain control of Basra.

ISCI's alternative, and the one it appears to be pursuing, is to ensure that no elections take place under anything resembling free and fair conditions.

On February 25, Iraqi vice president and ISCI leader Adel Abdul al Madhi used his vote on the Iraqi presidential council to veto the provincial election legislation on the grounds it gave too much power to the central government over the provinces. The parliament will now have to re-debate the law when it resumes sitting on March 18. The Sadrist delegation in Baghdad has threatened to call for a general strike if the legislation is not enacted in its original form.

Amid political confusion and tensions, this week's operation in Kut is a sign that moves are underway to physically drive the Sadrists underground in southern Iraq. There are also hints at efforts to shatter the Sadrists and Fadhila in Basra and Fadhila-linked trade unions in the oil fields and the port.

ISCI representatives in the city have organised daily demonstrations over the past week demanding action against "criminal gangs" and "militias"%u2014coded references to Fadhila's paramilitary forces and Madhi Army cells. The New York Times published an article on March 13, which foreshadowed military operations in Basra by ISCI-dominated divisions of the Iraqi army, backed by US and British troops, to meet these demands.

The Times report began: "Several senior Iraqi officials said on Wednesday that the government might soon deploy Iraqi government Army troops to seize control of this city's decrepit but vital port from politically connected militias known more for corruption and inciting terrorism than for their skill in moving freight."

Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Barham Salih, a Kurdish ally of ISCI, told an investment conference in the city: "There must be a very strong military presence in Basra to eradicate these militias." National security advisor Mowaffak al-Rubaie%u2014who threatened Fadhila last December with military intervention%u2014declared Baghdad would "launch a campaign to rid us of the bad elements" and denounced the "weakness of the local government".

The Times article specifically referred to "a militia-controlled union" at Basra's Um Qasr port that would have to be "subdued". Rubaie issued a pointed warning to the Fadhila governor, Mohammed al-Waili, who ISCI has been trying to remove since early 2007, saying: "Whoever gets in the way will be dealt with swiftly, decisively and with no mercy."