The latest on Iyad Allawi’s plan to re-take Iraq via Prof. Cole:

Al-Hayat reports that Iyad Allawi, a secular ex-Baathist Shiite who leads the Iraqi National List (25 seats in parliament), visited Kurdistan on Saturday. He is attempting to convince the Kurdistan Alliance to join his new coalition in parliament. Allawi has said that his list will leave the ‘national unity government’ headed by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.

Allawi’s list is small and he is deeply disliked by most of the religious Shiites that dominate parliament. I can’t imagine that he can actually form a government given the present distribution of seats. But al-Hayat reports that Allawi was accompanied on his trip to Kurdistan by none other than US ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, which the daily read as a sign of US support for dumping al-Maliki and trying to install Allawi as Prime Minister. (Allawi served as interim prime minister in 2004, having been appointed by the US and UN for this purpose. He is an old CIA asset.)

Read the rest.

Simply nothing will come from this; it’s mostly a non-story. What is worthy of note, however, is that Amb. Khalizad is joining Allawi on this ill-begotten souljourn, which highlights the Bush administration’s inability to give up on installing a secular government in Iraq. But, also, it suggests that the administration is no longer interested in working with the religious Shi’a parties. (more…)

Muqtada al-Sadr’s power grab strategy in the wake of massive sectarian clashes within Sadr City is clear. The first part concerns his allies in the cabinet, who have threatened to quit the government if Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki meets with President Bush in Jordan next week:

Describing Bush as “the killer of Iraqi people,” politicians aligned with al-Sadr repeated their demand for the withdrawal of U.S. troops and said Iraqi officials should sever all ties with the United States. Al-Sadr’s allies are the backbone of al-Maliki’s Cabinet, and even a temporary suspension of their participation would cripple, if not topple, Iraq’s fragile U.S.-backed government.

“They are telling the ordinary people that if the American forces withdraw from Iraq, this will provoke more violence. We say, since the minute they stepped on this ground, chaos and instability have spread throughout the country,” said Saleh Hassan al-Agili, one of 30 legislators from al-Sadr’s parliamentary bloc. “We reiterate that the departure of the occupying forces will restore stability, security and the brotherhood of the Iraqi people.”

Residents in some Sunni areas of Baghdad said they saw U.S. patrols in their areas Friday, but a U.S. military spokesman would confirm only troop movements to “enhance existing security arrangements.” An American attack helicopter destroyed rocket launchers in Sadr City after Shiite militants there fired six times into a Sunni neighborhood, according to a U.S. military statement. No casualties were reported.

If the American forces were to leave, al-Sadr’s militia forces would find themselves free of constraints.

The second part of Sadr’s plan: feign an interest in peace with the Sunnis, utilizing Hareth al-Dhari, the leader of the Sunni Association of Muslim Scholars, as a focal point:

Al-Sadr issued a challenge to his onetime ally and current nemesis, leading Sunni cleric Hareth al-Dhari, during prayers Friday in the southern Shiite city of Kufa.

“I demand Sheik Hareth al-Dhari issue a fatwa (a religious decree) prohibiting the killing of Shiites, so as to spare Muslim blood,”al-Sadr told about 5,000 followers.

He also called on his Sunni counterpart to ban his supporters from joining al-Qaida or other terrorist groups, and to participate in rebuilding a Shiite shrine in Samarra that was heavily damaged in a February bombing that unleashed the sectarian bloodletting.

In exchange for al-Dhari’s agreement, al-Sadr said, he’d condemn any aggression against the Sunni cleric, who leads the militant Association of Muslim Scholars. Al-Dhari has been out of the country for several weeks and didn’t respond immediately to al-Sadr’s challenge.

Once Sunni insurgents renew their attacks on Sadr-aligned Shi’ite strongholds, Sadr will undoubtedly withdraw his gesture of goodwill toward al-Dhari and the Sunni community. Sadr’s ensuing aggression will then be viewed as completely justified by his constituent Shi’a, a boon to his political chances in the event of a governmental collapse following the potential walkout of his loyalists from the cabinet.

The third facet of the Sadr plan: calling for Shi’ite consolidation. Around himself, that is:

Al-Sadr also beseeched rival Shiite parties to put aside their political differences and unite in a call for calm. Otherwise, he implied, the central Shiite religious authority, known as the hawza, could become irrelevant.

“Why has the devil made his way between us? This will serve only the colonizers and will harm the hawza,” al-Sadr said. “Here is my hand - I put it forward in reconciliation. Will there be a hand reaching out for mine?”

Sadr is positioning himself as a leader, no longer content to play the kingmaker to Maliki’s Da’wa party. When Maliki meets with Bush (he really has little choice, for his own sake), al-Sadr’s allies will quit the government and create a constitutional crisis. Sadr, appearing committed to creating an Iraqi solution to an Iraqi problem, will emerge as the biggest winner in comparison to a weak prime minister that has been effectively painted as an ineffectual pawn of an outside power. Then, rising to power, Sadr will continue the process of Shi’ite consolidation and attempt to set the vilayat-al-fiqh system in place, similar to the Iranian model.

Or so goes the Sadr plan. He’ll run into several obstacles, of course, including the United States, the rival SCIRI and Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the quietist Shi’ite clergy loyal to Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, and a Sunni insurgency that is unlikely to buy into a Sadrist version of Islamic populism (forget that Sadr is a Shi’ite, he’s merely a mid-level cleric.) Regardless, the pawns are in place and chaos is sure to ensue, as always.

Update: The NY Times reports that Shi’ite militia have attacked Sunni neighborhoods in Baquba and Baghdad. Sadr’s Mahdi Army is being blamed, which is certain to make his attempt to appear as the peacemaker fall flat. The attacks are rather telling, since they suggest that Sadr doesn’t have complete control over the situation and would be unable to instill any sort of peace if allotted a greater position of power. Also, it’s possible that some of these attacks are being made by the SCIRI’s Badr Brigades, since they effectively discredit Sadr in the eyes of the Sunni despite his populist rhetoric. None of this is surprising — no one truly holds the reins of chaos in Iraq, least of all the United States.

Sadr City in Baghdad was hit by several car bombs in a sophisticated attack today, killing 160 Iraqis. Details from the New York Sun:

Iraq sealed its borders last night and braced for a deadly onslaught of sectarian retaliation after Sunni extremists murdered at least 160 people in coordinated car bombings and mortar attacks in Baghdad.

The assault on the capital’s Shiite stronghold of Sadr City, which also injured more than 250 people, was the deadliest insurgent attack to be unleashed in the city since the fall of Saddam Hussein in May 2003.

The government imposed an indefinite curfew in Baghdad and shut the country’s main airports and ports.

…

“Many of the dead have been reduced to scattered body parts and are not counted yet,” the health minister, Ali al-Shemari, said.

The Shi’a have retaliated, of course, firing rounds of mortars into a Sunni neighborhood in Baghdad on two occasions. The cycle of revenge continues without any apparent end in sight.

The Iraqi government is blaming al Qaeda insurgents, which makes sense. A lot of Iraqi Sunnis aren’t fond of al Qaeda, seeing them as outsiders bent on claiming control of their country. If al Qaeda operatives did or did not commit the act, the Maliki government will place the blame on them in an attempt to appeal to Iraqi nationalism across sects. Unfortunately, Maliki has little to no control over, well, anything, and the cycle of revenge will continue and push Iraq closer to all-out civil war.

Regardless, it appears as if the Iraqi government believes outside forces are directly responsible since they have attempted to close the Iraqi borders. An impossible task, of course, but an attempt has to be made so that Maliki can prove himself pro-active in combating the ever-growing insurgency. In the current Iraqi climate, however, the Shi’ite leader responsible for the most Sunni deaths will reap the greatest benefit.

The BBC is reporting on a potential spring pullout of British troops from Basra:

The UK has “confidence” it may be able to hand Basra’s security to Iraqi forces “at some point next spring”, the UK’s Foreign Secretary has said.

Margaret Beckett told MPs Iraq’s fate was “hanging in the balance” and said it was necessary “to hold our nerve”.

“The progress of our current operation in Basra gives us confidence we may be able to achieve transition in that province… at some point next spring.”

Good news, right? The Iraqis are finally standing up as the Allies sit down, but, per usual, the complexities of the situation have to be taken into account. Basra, the city and region, is predominantly Shi’ite, and as such the intra-Shi’ite rivalries will continue to spiral out of control. Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army has a strong presence, as does the SCIRI’s Badr Brigades. Besides that, Basra’s ruling Fadillah party, tenuously aligned with Sadr, is also armed and fights to retain control against mounting pressure from militant SCIRI loyalists. Even with the British troop presence, Basra has been the scene of numerous clashes between Shi’ite factions and tribes over the last several months.

If the British troops do indeed leave this coming spring, the pace of Basra’s spiral into utter chaos may well increase. With the British out of the way, the Sadrists will be able to fully focus on the SCIRI in hopes of locking their control over Basra’s vast oil fields. The unfortunate part is that there may be no better choice left for the British since the militia infestation of the local police forces is too far along to be purged. To do so would create the same sort of problem seen with the purging of Ba’athists from Hussein’s government directly following the initial invasion.

Basra could potentially serve as a microcosm of what could happen politically and militarily in a Baghdad left to provide its own governance and protection. If the Shi’a are incapable of pulling themselves together in Basra, then there will be little hope that a viable ruling coalition will form any time soon in Baghdad. Finding a peaceful solution for the Sunni problem appears to be a secondary concern to religious Shi’ite leaders who are too consumed with greed to realize their country is fracturing at its seams.

There are a couple major things happening this week on the Syrian front in the Long War. First, Damascus has officially normalized diplomatic relations with Iraq. It might seem like a surprising turn of events, but it really shouldn’t be. The secular Syrian and religious Iraqi governments both are interested in repressing Islamist (read: Sunni) extremism, and both hold positive, albeit complicated relations with Iran. Syria has been routinely accused of allowing Sunni extremists to utilize Syria as a base of operations, but any government complicity in such operations is most likely rooted within the regime’s Old Guard, aka the Ba’athist hardliners that are still completely loyal to the late Hafez al-Assad. The Old Guard wants a resurgence of pan-Arab Ba’athism, specifically the Syrian kind, and would be overjoyed to see Iraqi Ba’athists come to power and owe Syria for their successes. So, the current policy course correction can mean one of two things: 1.) The Old Guard Ba’athists are seeing reality, finally, and know that the religious Shi’a are in Baghdad to stay, or 2.) Hafez’s son, Bashar, is finally reining in his father’s old friends and adopting pragmatism as an operational imperative. Or maybe it’s a combination of the two. Regardless, the geopolitics of the Middle East continue to shift.

In Lebanon, pro-Syrian/Iranian forces are causing massive headaches. Pierre Gemayel, Lebanon’s Minister of Industry and a leading anti-Syrian Christian, was assassinated on Tuesday. Gemayel’s death is an ominous omen suggesting that a time of increased hostility between the historically combative Lebanese factions is at hand. With the recent resignations of Hizbollah and Hizbollah-allied Shi’ite cabinet ministers and Gemayel’s death, a governmental crisis is almost guaranteed. Hizbollah will soon call for free elections and will see significant gains, and if it does not, Fuad Saniora’s government will continue to be held hostage.

I hate to admit it, but this is just the beginning.