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.

I’ve uploaded a couple of my extended writings to the new Essays section. More should be coming shortly.

Migration has increasingly become a hot button issue in the era of globalization. As economics forces countries to become more open, the barriers separating states and their people have lessened, and in some as cases been completely lifted. The European Union pursues a policy of open borders between its member states, while the countries of the NAFTA region restrict border access with varying degrees of success. For free trade to be effective, access to countries has to be fairly easy to gain, although this has raised a number of security concerns in a world threatened by terrorism. Also, migrant workers tend to fill large gaps within their new countries’ workforce populations, making them invaluable. However, the massive influx of migrant workers into Europe have highlighted cultural assimilation problems that open borders are incapable of repairing. The United States with its continuing Mexican immigration issues may see similar issues as low wage immigrant laborers create tension with domestic Americans who view their presence as detrimental to the economic wellbeing of the American-born worker.

The European Union and NAFTA are not exactly similar at their core, but their experience with migrant labor can be compared to a point. The EU, unlike NAFTA, is a confederation of states more similar to a United States of Europe than a a trade bloc. The EU member states are politically and economically cohesive units despite sharing different cultural backgrounds. NAFTA, on the other hand, is a trade zone minus political cohesiveness – the three countries have only agreed to free trade with one another, which has not resulted in completely open borders for the free movement of labor. Completely open borders in the NAFTA region would lead to a massive influx of Mexican workers into the United States since the economic situation and standard of living pales in comparison to the US and Mexico. Despite some border restrictions, Mexican laborers still make their way into the US illegally, and more than doubled in number from 1990 to 2000. The EU also feared similar problems when it admitted the poorer states of the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia in 2004. A number of Europeans were concerned that the poor from these new member states would immediately flood into their countries to achieve a better standard of living, or worse – siphon money from their welfare state systems (the Roma, or Gypsies, mainly from Poland and Slovakia were a major concern). Obviously, an open border system in the EU invites such situations, but it exists for a reason – the Europeans have held a historic propensity to welcome migrant labor. Migrants from the Middle East and North Africa were invited into Europe following the second World War to aid in reconstruction, and continued migration is required to fill labor gaps in European states where the retired population has begun to vastly outgrow the labor force. Legalized migration is required so workers can be taxed to pay for continuously growing welfare state policies. The US also sees a need for migrant workers, mainly for construction and manufacturing work that many Americans do not wish to accept themselves. Also, American businesses benefit since they are capable of paying illegal immigrants less money than they otherwise would be required to pay by law. Unlike the EU, these migrant workers do not directly benefit the US welfare state outside of paying sales tax on items consumed. Under the Bush administration’s guest worker program, it seems that taxes will not be taken out of temporary workers’ pay since they are, theoretically, temporary US residents who will never benefit from welfare services after retirement.

Security is a major concern when it comes to migration across borders. While there has yet to be a clear-cut case of cross-border terrorism (there was debate that the 9/11 hijackers entered the US via Canada, but that was proven false) , Canada’s lax standards on amnesty and refugees has created concern in the US. Also, Mexico’s desire to bring in foreign capital via tourism has led it to not pursue a visa policy for a number of countries, including those in the EU. It would be fairly simple for a terrorist to move through Europe and enter Mexico with no more than a passport, and then enter into the US. Such potential problems are inescapable in today’s age of increased global trade and mobility, and it is doubtful that anything short of complete border clampdown can keep the countries of the world completely safe. But what is safety without the ability to grow and experience all the world has to offer, anyway?