Monday, November 5, 2007

The Mahdi Army: Quantified Murderous Tendencies

There's an unusually interesting post up at Kos today that claims the reduction of casualties is exclusively due to the temporary moratorium on violence that al-Sadr has imposed on his Mahdi army.

"No one seems to notice that, as with everything else in Iraq, the Iraqis are going to do what they want, when they want. When al-Sadr lays down his arms, there will be relative peace. When he takes them up, Americans will die in dozens."

According to the Telegraph, this temporary, 6-month halt for restructuring would have begun August 30th, or thereabouts. To be totally honest, I've been more than slightly apprehensive about what violence trends are going to look like after the Mahdi army reengages, and as I've said several times before, its very difficult to attach any particular meaning to the drop in numbers through casual observation.

But let's give this claim a shot anyway.

As is clear from the graph, which I built on numbers from icasualties.org, its fairly obvious that American casualties were declining long before al-Sadr called his goon squad off - the trend actually began 3 months before. And while ISF progress has been unstable, their casualties were trending down unevenly prior to the Mahdi draw-down as well.

What the data really points to in regards to the Mahdi army is the correlation between their draw-down date and the reduction in civilian deaths. Al-Sadr called his army off at the end of August, and the drop in innocent suffering is pretty shocking. For the same period, ISF casualties actually trended up, and American casualties trended down. On to what this means.

First, it should be readily apparent that the Mahdi Army has shockingly murderous tendencies. The Iraqi civilians are going to be in dutch when they reengage, and I for one am not going to give al-Sadr credit for deescalation when all that's happened was he told his thugs not to shoot and bomb innocent people. Especially when he did so to enable those thugs to reorganize so they can do the same thing more efficiently and obediently.

Second, even though significant militia activity was halted, ISF casualties rose. That probably means that the Iraqis are taking on more combat capabilities and more autonomy. From on-the-ground reports from people like Michael Yon, Michael Totten, and Bill Roggio, we know that to be the case. That's also backed up by the now-ancient GAO report and the Jones (ICOI) report, which are both in the required reading section. To further corroborate, see my post on the handover of Karbala province.

Third, US deaths are trending down, and have been since before the moratorium. This means, in all likelihood, that the surge is meeting with some success at some level, obvious or not. We know from on-the-ground reports that civilians are turning on extremists in droves, and that in turn means more insurgent activities are being halted through civilian cooperation, a good example of which would be the Anbar Awakening. Again, this is corroborated by ground-level sources. And it blows the opening quote from the Kos diarist out of the water.

From the original Kos posting:

"Regardless, the fortunes of Iraq will turn on Iraqi decisions made in Baghdad and Najaf, not in Washington, D.C. and the halls of Congress. As this situation shows, peace in Iraq lies in the hands of Iraqis."

I couldn't agree more. But for me to say, "my army will stop murdering all of you, and you will have peace" seems disingenuous. Then again, I'm not a leftist. I don't regard al-Sadr as a revolutionary hero akin to Che Guevara, I regard him as a fascist warlord much more like Che Guevara.

No comments: