Hezbollah has seized West Beirut and forced the closure of pro-government media - the reasons for the choice of target will become more evident in a moment. There are reports of eleven dead and 'dozens' wounded.

After months of Western media boredom with the umpteenth failure to elect a new President, what is going on in the Lebanon is now becoming of a matter of global interest once again.

What Happened

Hezbollah claimed that the pro-Western Government of Siniora had effectively declared war on it with a couple of measures designed to show the militia who was boss. 

The Government had declared Hezbollah’s telecommunications network to be illegal and unconstitutional and had removed an alleged Hezbollah-linked general from his job as head of security at Beirut airport.

Sunni-led Government and Hezbollah have thus been making strike and counter-strike at their respective technical communications infrastructures. Control of information, access and propaganda is vital to both.

The parallels with Al-Maliki's move on Basra are scarcely coincidental. Perhaps the Government had been watching Al-Maliki’s tactics in Iraq and believed that pressure might be exerted in the same way against its problem militia.

Perhaps months of tension over the Presidency has driven the Sunni Government of Siniora into ever more provocative acts in order to try and bind both internal security and the West into active support for its 'right' to govern.

Al-Maliki used the attacks on Basra and on Sadr City as means to bind the military to the state (by shaking out dissent), recapture control of key economic assets (the ports in the case of Iraq are echoed in the importance of controlling the airport in Beirut) and provoke the militia into wasteful resistance and internal splits.

Hezbollah - The Tougher Nut To Crack

Hezbollah are, however, just that bit hardier and more sophisticated than the Mahdi Army. It is alleged, plausibly, that the Mahdi Army has been learning directly from the organisational sophistication of its older brother.

It is probable that Al-Maliki was acting pre-emptively to halt the inevitable development otherwise of a similar state-within-the-Iraqi-state.

The Mahdi Army and Hezbollah have something else in common. Americans and Sunnis like to present both as creatures of foreign powers - Iran and Syria respectively - but this is nonsense. Allies are not controllers - although I might reconsider that statement in a British context.

Both operations are Shia first but still nationalist second. Neither is keen to see Iran or Syria be more than counterweights to what they see as an imperialist and colonialist Western offensive or occupation. 

So, any attempt to position the Hezbollah as anti-Lebanese in order to bring the military into play and to tip the balance of forces against it is not a certain strategy by any means - and less so than in Iraq in relation to the Mahdi Army.

The Presidency And A Weak State

A strong Lebanese Presidency could work (in Western theory) to integrate Hezbollah into the State as an internally-directed political movement rather than as an externally-directed revolutionary front that threatens Israel.

More to the point, Lebanon with a President is de facto part of the Western camp. Lebanon is effectively neutralized internationally without a President.

General Suleiman is the West’s candidate not because he is pro-Western (in fact, he is more of a Lebanese nationalist) but because it is in the West’s interest to take Lebanon out of its status as political no-man’s land.

Since Suleiman is also ‘candidate for the army’ (the least sectarian institution within the state), the army must also be presumed to be for order and for proper state formation, at least in principle. But it is also vulnerable to its own internal sectarian pressures.

The military had not moved in support of the Government at the time of writing, other than to act like a UN peacekeeping force to guard buildings seized by Hezbollah.

The situation is thus not directly comparable with Al-Maliki’s where the purpose was the capture of an unstable military for the Government interest. 

The Lebanese Army is not only retaining its factional neutrality – so far – it is becoming positioned as the arbiter between both Government and militia and defender of the nation against both Israel and Syria. 

It has even warned in effect that the Government’s brinkmanship (though not cast in these terms) contains dangers to military unity.

Lebanese national feeling may be resistant to Syrian interference or to ‘Greater Syrian’ sentiment but its most recent concern has been the fact of Israeli incursion. In the real world, Syria is a political but not such a military threat as Israel and the Army does not deal in 'politics'.

Hezbollah's Calculations

Hezbollah was thus an effective barrier to Israeli occupation, so the idea that the weakening of Hezbollah is in the Lebanese national interest may be self-evident to the Sunni elite and its Western allies but it is far from self-evident to some nationalists, including some in the Army.

The Lebanization and de-Iranisation of Hezbollah is a common goal of all nationalists but the means adopted to do this may well differ. It could be an own goal if the country is handed over to a Maronite-Israeli-French colonial administration in all but name.

In the event, Hezbollah acted with the grim determination that makes it such a heroic organisation in the eyes of the so-called Arab street, especially in this sixtieth anniversary year of the Naqba [the Palestinian catastrophe].

Initially, it resisted provocation (following tactics similar to those of Al-Sadr in Iraq) but when it acted, it acted decisively.

The same calculations must apply amongst Hezbollah politicians as they do within the Mahdi Army – how far to extend a mode of defence to one of attack and what a response to a provocation might mean for Iran and Syria. The Hezbollah response was thus very finely tuned.

The widespread fear is that the US and Israel will look for a chance to do something military to boost McCain in the forthcoming US Election, especially as Obama now looks increasingly likely to push an almost obsessively power hungry Hilary Clinton into second place.

The sheer energy of the resistance of the 'machine' to Obama suggests that powerful forces really do not want Obama as President any more than they once did Bobby Kennedy.

Though assassination is probably passé, it is reasonable to see the US' power ‘to do things’ overseas as being linked to the management of the democratic process at home. This is not conspiracy theory, just how things work.

Government Motivations

But back to Lebanon. Whatever calculations were going on in Washington and Tel Aviv (or Paris and London), Lebanese politics possesses its own momentum.

Even the most pro-Western Lebanese are deeply unwilling to see the country become a wasteland just to assist regional Great Power chess moves against one another.

Did Siniora’s Government place pressure on Hezbollah not to declare war but only to imply the possibility of a Western-backed war and extract Hezbollah's compliance with the real concern of the Western camp – the election of General Michel Suleiman as President?

This interpretation makes sense. Despite the rhetoric and the 'invasion' of Western Beirut, all parties seem to be prepared to use violence but only tactically. 

They are, in fact, operating in a restrained way, employing the rules of a finely tuned political game that can look scary in print and could get out of hand - but which is also carefully calibrated to get tactical rather than strategic advantage.

Nevertheless, this crisis does have qualities that suggest that a degree of brinkmanship on both sides is taking things further than the system may bear and one new factor is the emergence of economic problems into the 'mix'.

The Labour Unions Emerge As Players

Lebanon saw a general strike this week. High inflation, general in the region, has resulted in workers demanding very high wage increases. Government action to increase the national minimum wage was regarded as insufficient by the General Labour Confederation.

The strike, which Hezbollah decided to back with its formidable manpower by sealing off the airport, added to political tensions. The Government's moves might even be regarded as a sectarian provocation expressly designed to pre-empt a non-sectarian class alliance.

We are seeing the potential for a new alliance, albeit in its very early stages, between Islamist welfarist ‘street’ networks and organized labour.

Following patterns elsewhere in the world, such an alliance (similar to that between socialists and labour unions in Europe during its own industrial-developmental phase) would be of enormous potential import.

However, labour unions remain suspicious of Islamist influence. Worker and Islamist (essentially petit-bourgeois and economically conservative) concerns are far from identical. Secular trades unionists may justifiably fear Sharia culture as much as trades unions rightly feared Bolshevism. 

But class interest will tend to appear in times of economic crisis and the entire Muslim world is finding that inflation is destabilising the social structure.

Neo-Socialism - Western Liberalism's Worst Nightmare

We may also be underestimating the ideological effect of such bilateral dialogue as that between Venezuela and Iran (affecting in turn militia like Hezbollah and the Mahdi Army and even Hamas).

Redistributionist quasi-militarised strategies operating against corporate and bourgeois interests can, by removing the historic deadweight of Marxism, link up with conservative populist appeals in support of both the identity as well as the economic needs of the poorest in society.

This neo-socialism is every Atlanticist liberal's worst nightmare - a genuinely popular merger of identity politics and redistributionism. Too easily positioned as 'fascism', it is nevertheless not liberal.

The food crisis and inflation thus represents an interesting political opportunity for the labour movement to get both ‘bourgeois’ elites (like the Siniora Government) and radical networks (like Hezbollah) to bid for its support.

We have to use the Marxist term 'bourgeois' because it expresses precisely what we are talking about - local business and higher level professional networks integrated with the international marketplace.

These networks have to find ways to reassert sectarianism lest their own supporters find class a more interesting binding force than identity. This alone might trigger a move against Hezbollah just to remind the Sunni working class that it should not sup with the devil.

Lebanon and Egypt Compared

Of course, bourgeois elites are bourgeois because they believe in fiscal rectitude and Islamists, like Bolsheviks, have no long term interest in truly free trades unions. So the politics of all this are extremely volatile.

The three main players (Sunni middle classes, organised working class and Shia community) collaborate and compete with a fourth player, the military commitment to state security, and with a fifth, persistent foreign influence (notably Western soft power but also Syria) added to this frothy mix.

That this is not a problem just for Lebanon becomes clear when we look at Egypt. Just as Egypt has partially responded to union demands so the Lebanese tried unsuccessfully to do the same.

The Lebanese unions wanted a tripling in the minimum wage to over $600pm but the Government only offered $333 (still an increase from $200) – so militancy seems to have some determined political aspect underpinning it. It is about economics but not just about economics.

A general strike against a weakened state that is no position to ‘fire into the crowd’ and disperse demonstrators provides an opportunity for political recalibration as it might do in any number of other regional states where Islamists are struggling against more powerful state mechanisms.

Egypt should be the West’s greater concern because the situation had become so serious that the Government bought off the State apparat with inflationary salary increases that are likely to increase rather than diminish the anger of those outside the system.

The Egyptians increased fuel and tobacco prices and vehicle licence fees to pay for public sector pay rises. They are claiming (not very plausibly) that recent increases in public pay will only result in a 0.5% inflation increase.

This indicates the necessary commitment to ‘fiscal rectitude’ but it will also fuel inflation and partially redistribute the pain from public sector workers (presumably the apparat on which the regime depends for survival) to the struggling and smaller end of the private sector.

The difference between Lebanon and Egypt is the difference between a weak state and a strong state - strong 'bourgeois' states offer few opportunities for working class and 'petit bourgeois' (aka Islamist) revolt.

The threatened day of action in Egypt prior to these Government fixes over pay fizzled out quite quickly.

It was one of those Facebook non-events that we have now come to expect – like protests against Burma or Tibet, media-friendly but ultimately meaningless because they are not backed up by adequate physical organization on the ground.

But the principle stands that the Muslim Brotherhood and labour unions who have been getting angry for different reasons inside Egypt might be bound together by a specific anger over inflation in staple products as things get worse. 

Hence, the current geo-political panic over inflation. 'It's the politics, stupid'.

Back to Lebanon

As we write, having captured West Beirut, Hezbollah is challenging the State to remove its roadblocks to the airport. It promises a campaign of civil disobedience if this week’s decisions are not reversed.

The airport represents the economic lifeblood of the wealthy business elite of the country while the independent telecommunications network of Hezbollah is a key strategic asset in any resistance to another incursion by Israel.

Hezbollah rightly suspect Western pressure on Siniora to ‘deal with’ strategic infrastructures that advantage Hezbollah in its resistance strategies. Capturing telecomms and re-capturing the airport is analogous to Al-Maliki's investment in capturing the ports.

However, the actual rather than the potential extent of the crisis could be exaggerated.

It is not in the union interest to destabilize the country but merely to demand a greater share of the increasing prosperity amongst the middle classes (despite political instability) at a time of rapid inflation. Hezbollah remains fundamentally defensive at this stage.

Like the Mahdi Army, Hezbollah is under attack rather than being the aggressor. We would do well to remember this. Lebanon may be lurching in small escalations to some sort of definitive crisis in which the West is, sadly, playing a provocative role.

To Washington, Paris, London and Tel Aviv, Lebanon is merely a front in the war against Iranian influence. Civil war is not yet (just) on the cards but the situation is not a comfortable one for those few who care about civilian lives in a small country on the West's Eastern frontier.

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The United Nations is trying to get Gulf countries to channel more foreign aid into global multilateral institutions and away from Arab/Islamic-specific bilateral projects.

John Holmes’ the UN’s Emergency Relief Co-Ordinator has been having talks in the Gulf and he seems optimistic, according to the Financial Times today, that the Gulf States are moving in this direction, although the process will take time.

The Gulf Arab Decision

This is very significant because decisions by Gulf countries, singly or together, will dictate whether they are going to remain with traditional models of giving (essentially the zakat writ large where aid almost exclusively assists the Arab and Muslim community).

The alternative model being proposed by the UN is that the Gulf Arabs become part of a more global liberal vision of the West. The probable outcome is some token hedging of bets to get the West off their back to the degree that Gulf Arabs feel that they need or do not need to do this.

There is a political dimension to this, of course. This is not just about charity but what charity means in the world.

For example, some funds have gone to Islamic educational investments that have reinforced conservative traditionalism. If not directly contributing to insurgency, such investment is seen by many in the West as maintaining cultural conditions from which radicalized elements emerge.

This really irritates hard-line Westerners and especially secularists associated with a pro-Israel stance.

This group, in particular, has developed increasing influence within the formal ‘international community’ on the back of a neo-conservative US Administration and is keen to press its current but waning advantage as its sponsor, the US Presidency, changes ownership.

The Moral Dimension and 'Spin'

The ‘moral’ dimension (basically the PR spin) is that the profits of high energy should be redirected to cover the costs of high food prices. 

This suggests to the public that there is some simple implicit exchange between Arab luck or greed and the serious problems of the non-Arab developing world.

In fact, the issue is far more complex than this. Many Arab and Muslim countries are in the front line of the food crisis, notably Egypt, Pakistan, Bangla Desh and Indonesia, while Gulf countries themselves are suffering from serious and potentially destabilizing food inflation.

The issue here is whether the Western liberal ideology of universal provision and of implicit world governance is better than traditional charity given within a culture zone whose customs are based on revelation.

A traditionalist might easily turn around to, say, the Philippines and say, “Of course, we can help you if you join us in sharing the Prophet’s revelation”.

Of course, most significant Gulf Arabs are highly modern in their own thinking but they have to consider cultural expectations in their community and Holmes' persistent lobbying works against hundreds of years of ingrained habit.

Traditionalism Versus Modernism

Muslims are not alone in looking after their own – families, tribes, Jews, Catholics, trades unions and nationalists all adopt similar strategies.

It will be a momentous political and cultural development if the Gulf Arab community switches tack and diverts substantial funds (rather than token bribes) to the universalist, multilateral and essentially secular-liberal model of giving.

Before we assume that the modern way is better than the old way (which it is in dealing with the super-excluded without direct access to a community with resources), we should note the disadvantages of the secular liberal approach.

It is bureaucratic, it creates an expensive middle class of administrators, ‘experts’ and fund-raisers and it becomes subject to political manipulation by the largest universalist power (currently the UN but soon the EU).

More important politically, it abandons the prime directive of national governance, social cohesion, by shifting funds from the lower middling sort or poorest in a rich area to the poorest in far-away places.

This can happen within nations, of course. The growing sink-pits at the heart of Southern English towns contrast with the over-development, against market common sense, of degraded Northern Towns that just happen to be more likely to be New Labour voters.

This redistribution from communities that are integral (including nations) to regions away from the source of funds is ‘progressive’ but it leaves behind three legacies.

First, an emotionalism that debases political debate because only through emotion can a constituency be created to legitimise transfers. We have called this Clooneyism elsewhere.

Second, there are less funds for local and national community infrastructures, creating ‘conservative’ resentments.

And, thirdly, a prejudice against democracy develops amongst international progressives because it is influence over elites rather than a democratic mandate that permits the redistribution to take place at all.

The Ambiguity of the United Nations

But the UN has other problems and we have referred to these before.

The UN and the entire panoply of multilateral aid has, over the last two decades, increasingly become seen – in our opinion quite rightly – as highly ambiguous in its claims to universalism.

The system is redistributive and progressive (broadly a good thing, subject to the long term anti-democratic political effects on the giving nations) but it is also an instrument of the West.

The ‘international community’ (as it likes to style itself) is not all nations but only the wealthier nations who created the UN at a time of collapsing empires.

Its legitimacy is extremely dodgy by any sound philosophical principle and derives, in practice and ultimately, from a de facto right of conquest as do all rights to make law and regulation that are not revolutionary. 

However, instead of moderating its claims through democratic revolution, UN claims are moderated through bureaucratic negotiation in order that the fiction that the UN is universal (based originally on aspirational texts rather than facts on the ground) can move into the realm of fact.

Just as the ‘international community’ operates in defiance of national democratic politics in the cause of world peace and social justice, so those same institutions of world peace and social justice get twisted into meeting the demands of the primary originators and backers in the West.

This is not to minimise the contribution of, say, China or Russia - or developing countries - but the mismatch of interests and the source of primary funding always skew the UN to the softer end of the Western interest. Bureaucrats, NGOs and multinationals bend in the same direction.

This is not just perception, it is reality. Every non-Western potential donor from the Gulf to China knows that it would have to contribute an awful lot to get even a smidgeon of the global influence exercised by the US and EU, let alone Canada and Japan.

The Palestinian Case Study

An example of the real life politics of multilateral donation can be found in the case of Palestine.

For years, Gulf Arab (notably Saudi but also other GCC) funds flowed into relief for the Palestinians, not always to the levels required, but based on some sense of ‘brotherhood’.

These funds still flow into Palestine but they are now routed through UN bodies for political reasons – to deal with Western and Israeli claims that the funds were used for liberation purposes and not just relief.

To old-style traditionalists, liberation was a form of welfare relief but the West has decided otherwise after 9/11 and conservative leaderships in the Arab World shared their assessment that they may have been nurturing a revolutionary viper.

So, the UN became the convenient tool for getting funds away from the liberatory model and into a pure welfare model where, to be blunt, for all the claims of neutrality, it is largely used to buttress, in effect, one faction and one model for Palestine rather than another.

Whether this is the right or wrong policy is not the point – the ‘international community’ thinks it is and ‘insurgents’ will think it is not - but the general thrust is the point.

Universalism in aid and the multilateral system have not yet reached the point where they actually represent the global population in any accountable way but represent only one vision, detached from direct democratic control by several removes, of what is good for the global population as a whole.

The Vision

This vision is one in which charity is directed at specific political crisis points (like Palestine) or points of absolute deprivation or disease (like famine or plague).

It still sees the world in terms of the infection of prosperous and stable areas by weak or damaged areas – hence the obsession with ‘failed states’ – and charity for the most destitute is offered along lines that would be familiar to Victorian reformers like Charles Dickens.

Unfortunately, like Victorian reformers and certainly like Dickens’ wonderful satiric character, Mrs Jellaby, it often leaves problems untouched in the homelands so that a universalism that seems progressive abroad also seems to leave collapsing social cohesion at home.

If the Gulf Arabs do start supplying funds in significant quantities to multilateral institutions, we may take it as a significant political act.

It will strengthen the liberal progressive system dominated by the ‘West’ but also, ultimately, raise questions about these States' traditionalist legitimacy.

The next step will have to be that these States must modernize rapidly and undermine domestic conservatism through rapid economic growth and policies of social inclusion or remain very repressive until they 'crack' from the strain.

Domestic conservative thinking is certainly not going to like the loss of charitable preference for its own culture - while radicals are not going to like any more explicit and 'transparent' denial of liberation as a component of welfare.

A Nagging Doubt

We leave with one nagging oddity in John Holmes' briefing to the Financial Times, published on 30 April. It was noted that local Gulf rulers will give funds privately and quietly.

Holmes then said that this was “not enough to meet the demands and requirements of transparency needed these days”. Apart from the tradition in Muslim giving that you do not shout about what you do, this statement says a great deal about Western priorities.

Surely, we would think, if the funds are coming through to benefit the poor (and keep bureaucrats in jobs) that should be enough. The only question should be, how do get more out of the Gulf Arabs. But, no, the givers have to be ‘transparent’.

Is this because certain parties fear that Arab giving is ‘political’ and need reassurance or is it because the international community does not just want the funds to help the poor?

Is it that conservative Sunni Arab political endorsement of the multilateral system as the best one for global poverty relief, better than faith-based or nationalist solutions, is now necessary in the war against traditionalist insurgencies?

You sense the Gulf Arab rulers being quietly drawn into taking sides in a war about which their instincts are to remain more neutral - opposing the methods of traditionalist extremists but not wanting to abandon traditional values as much as many Westerrners would like.

Holmes adds that, working through the UN means that “it is very clear where the money is going” (yes, through a bureaucracy as well as to the recipients) and that this is a “fundamental” benefit.

This seems to give the game away, doesn’t it? The West does not like flows of capital it cannot see and touch because cash is king in politics as everywhere else in life.

This is really very close to PR blackmail: if you want a good image and you do not want sniping that this or that bit of cash has landed in the hands of a terrorist supplied to order by a Western intelligence service, then you will give us the cash and we will spend it wisely on strengthening the system that we wish you to be part of.

This is not charity, this is high politics.

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As widely predicted, General Petraeus has recommended a pause in troop draw-down in Iraq for at least 45 days after the ‘surge’ troops withdraw in the summer.

He was also specific that Al-Maliki’s operation in Basra was against his advice and was poorly planned. He refers to the security created by the surge as “fragile”. The situation in some areas is “unsatisfactory” and “innumerable challenges remain”.

Surge - Success or Prelude to Civil War?

Petraeus' recommendation would leave 140,000 troops in place for a little longer while ‘consolidation and evaluation’ took place. It is left open whether the 45 days might be extended but the possibility is not negligible.

On a tactical level, the ‘surge’ is undoubtedly a success. Despite a recent increase in tension and violence, the overall picture is one of a massive reduction in deaths (especially civilian deaths) since the end of 2006 and a significant fall in high profile attacks since this time last year.

Whatever one thinks of the war, the US military has responded to global criticism and has operated effectively to move the country from violent anarchy to the early stages of state formation (or rather re-formation).

But closer analysis suggests that the reason for the change in circumstances owes as much to political deals and compromises as military deployment. The military presence in itself would have achieved nothing without some change in American attitudes.

But the story may not have a happy ending after all. What the ‘surge’ has also done is to create a countervailing force to the Shia militia which has certainly tamed insurgency, albeit selectively, but which has also increased the risks of civil war in doing so.

The Problem of Al-Sadr

The political strategy behind the surge replaced one problem with another. US troops, the Sunni conservative ‘awakening’ amongst the tribal leaders and the largely middle class and mostly Sunni ‘Sons of Iraq’ have been armed and mobilized not only against gangsters and Baathist and Al-Qaeda irreconcileables but also implicitly against the Mahdi Army.

The Mahdi Army have been slowly consolidating into a formidable military force in its own right under the partial protection of a 'truce' that served American purposes as much as Al-Sadr's. 

This truce was either the prelude to a mutual accomodation or to armed conflict and we are now about to find out which, as Al-Sadr threatens to end it.

Al-Sadr, in the light of a shift in American policy from alleged attempted assassination to recognition of his status, holds the key to the settlement of Iraq.

He has become central to the way that the dice will fall – proportionately, so does the conduct of the Government and the Sunni bloc towards Al-Sadr.

This is why Al-Sadr’s current threat to end the truce is a matter of grave concern. Al-Sadr’s implicit co-operation has been as important to American strategy as any Gulf cash-fuelled Sunni conservative resistance to extremists.

Al-Maliki's Impatience

The situation in Iraq now has an opportunity to get a whole lot worse because of a decision by Al-Maliki. Effectively defeated in an ill-conceived and poorly executed move against a stronger enemy, Al-Maliki is now in danger of compounding the error by removing the incentive for Al-Sadr not to engage in armed resistance.

But politicians are generally rational actors and Al-Maliki is probably no exception, so what can he be up to?

The most likely scenario before Basra was that Al-Sadr would slowly shift his movement into democratic constitutionalism. Decommissioning of arms might then take place after Al-Sadr had created a strong or even dominant role in Parliament.

However, there is an equal likelihood that Iraq would be faced with its own permanent state-within-a-state like Hezbollah in Lebanon.

If you wanted a strong and independent Iraq, you would accomodate Al-Sadr. You might even accomodate Al-Sadr if you wanted a strong and independent Iraq that, in the end, would remain within the Western family. After all, everything is negotiable on the right terms.

But if you feared that Al-Sadr would displace you politically, backed by his threat of armed resistance, or if you had a visceral dislike of militarised sub-national actors and feared what such actors might do to your interest if they captured the state democratically, then your interest would be in crushing the Mahdi Army before it grew and became truly indestructible.

Al-Maliki has now confronted Al-Sadr with a stark choice that seems designed for confrontation – to disband his militia or face exclusion from future Iraqi elections. This is very brave and stupid or it is very clever and rational. 

It is stupid if you want to avoid an early civil war but it is not if all your instincts are that the longer you leave action against the dissident militia, the stronger they get - and if you can force the occupiers to do your dirty work for you by provoking the other side into revolt, then all the better.

An Ultimatum To Risk All

Al-Sadr is almost certainly not in a position to disband his militia without guarantees about the conduct of constitutional democracy that could not be delivered. Al-Sadr would be a fool to agree on guarantees that might be offered by either SCIRI and Al-Maliki or the occupiers.

Al-Maliki made his ultimatum on CNN which suggests an appeal to US public opinion (the rest of the West looks on aghast at the sudden deterioration of conditions in the country).

His 'play' (such as it is) is predicated on drawing the US deeper into maintaining his power while he has a US Administration in place that cannot withdraw from the country. Perhaps he believes that he needs to put US military power decisively into play now or lose the opportunity forever.

The Sadrists, naturally, rejected the demand and cited their role as a resistance movement against occupation – effectively stating that there would be no disbandment until Western troops had left.

There seems to be no room for manouevre. The scenario laid out by Al-Maliki for Al-Sadr to contemplate between readings of the Koran is of a disenfranchised armed militia watching an Iraqi State slowly accrue power, backed by the occupiers, until it is ready to send in armed troops to close it down by force.

On paper, we have a Sunni/Government/Western side now ready to face off a Shia/Iran side in a way that should seriously worry anyone fearing ‘another Vietnam’.

Vast forces are ready to be triggered at a moment's notice in what is really a struggle for power over the rebuilt state machinery between two wings of the Shia - the urbane and the sophisticated on the one side and the brute masses on the other.

Is There A Way Out?

There is a way out but it might split the Mahdi Army and create turbulence that might not descend into a civil war but which could extend insurgent violence by another year or two.

Al-Sadr has said that he will be consulting with Al-Sistani and others. This provides an opportunity for an extended negotiation and joint efforts (probably including Iran as well as the occupiers) to move the Mahdi Army from militia to constitutional party status without conceding political ground for the populist anti-Western party.

Some Mahdi radicals can probably already ‘smell’ a sell-out and this would be a victory of sorts for Al-Maliki because it would reduce the scale of the Sadrist political and insurgent threat.

However, it would also mean a significant Sadrist political presence, anti-Western, populist and Islamist, in place, accepted and hungry for reward.

Al-Sadr’s initial response remains, however, defiant: “The Iraqi Government should know that the Mahdi Army will stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the Iraqi people to to provide all they need from security, stability and independence.”

In short, Sadrism in either its political or military form, is based on a nationalist revolt much like Irish Republicanism in Northern Ireland, whether Sinn Fein or IRA.

Al-Sadr then cancelled the major anti-US demonstration in Baghdad on the Fifth Anniversary of the fall of the City (perhaps knowing that violence against his demonstration could be a turning point that would push the country over the edge), while the authorities put a curfew in place.

Meanwhile, Back In The Boondocks ...

The political reaction in the US to Petraeus’ testimony was muted. John McCain had clearly been lined up to argue for staying the course. The criticism that he is the 'continuation of Bushism by other means' seems increasingly correct.

The request for a pause and the risk of US participation in the management of pre-civil war manouevrings in Iraq comes just as Obama and Clinton are shaping up for a brutal fight over the last significant round of Primaries.

The candidates have more to lose than gain by getting embroiled in Iraq with so much ground uncertain. Much of the politics of the issue has degenerated into personal sniping. America, in the round, is as much at sea over Iraq as ever it has been.

We should also note that Al-Maliki is getting a lot of support from the other parties in his Government – not only Sunni but ‘bourgeois’ Shia and closet Baathist – for his tough stand against Al-Sadr. 

Many of these have come to accept occupation as the way things are and see US troops and their allies' cash as tools for use against local enemies.

We should also not underestimate the class dimension to this political battle. The forces of middle class order feel that is perfectly appropriate to call in foreign troops against the mob.

If this happened, they believe, it would be a short sharp violent repression with many lost lives. This is an old, old story of the protection of 'liberty', property and order against the great unwashed and one in which Washington has played a leading role on many occasions.

Iranian Decision-Making

Whatever the American propensity to use armed force to restore middle class values, the Iranians (or some Iranians of a revolutionary bent) are said to be stiffening Sadrist spines and teaching irregular warfare tactics.

This makes the Mahdi Army as uncomfortable for the US as Hezbollah is for the Israelis - these are 'partisans' with some potentially interesting techniques in defeating the will and capability of regular soldiers who cannot deploy the tactics of the SS.

The Iranians almost certainly do not want a violent civil war next door. They would be inclined to support constitutionalism with Lebanese characteristics where they can influence matters through one armed faction. But there is another pressure here. 

They equally do not want a pro-Western Iraq with a massive US air presence hidden away in the desert and capable of turning its historic cities into dust at the flick of a switch. It does not trust America and history suggests that this is a very wise stance to take, 

The US has been releasing its intention to remain embedded in the country using the same base strategy it adopted in Europe in the Cold War. 

Yet the 'leaked' documentation that appeared in the Guardian this week also emphasised that the US intended only to defend and not to attack - is this an indirect message to the Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs?

Reassurance about long term US intentions in Iraq might shift Iranians off the fence of wanting a stable Iraq, but only if it is dominated by their type of Shia, whether constitutional insiders or those whose power is derived from street movements.

Al-Sadr, no creature of Iran and a nationalist with Islamic characteristics, may represent their one chance to sustain an anti-Western position (albeit that it will not necessarily be any more pro-Iranian in power) that might remove the threat of US armed intervention in Iran from an Iraqi base at some future time of trouble.

It would be no surprise to find Iran playing many sides - talks with the Saudis, dialogue with the US military, manipulation of factions in Baghdad, stiffening of insurgent resistance capability - until it is clear in its own mind what the threat is and how it can be best averted.

If you remember that the US has sustained a nearly thirty year vendetta against the revolution of 1979, has expected a peculiar cowboy justice to be exercised against Iranian 'terrorism' and backed an extremely bloody assault on Iran by Iraq under Saddam Hussein, then Iranian calculations must be that the US is determined to bring down its regime by any means whatsoever.

So, regardless of Al-Maliki’s attempts at state formation and Sadr’s tough decisions about how much fighting he can take before he is crushed by American intervention, the balance of fear inside Tehran of a US or Israeli air strike now or a more massive US-Iraqi threat to its revolutionary settlement later must now be factored in.

The ultimate prize for Iran is the dissolution of American containment policy, whereas the cost for the US is the loss of a key strategic oil state after massive expenditure of blood and money.

Of course, the whole problem might be solved if the US simply accepted the revolutionary settlement of 1979 and stopped bearing grudges - after all, if Nixon could go to China, why not?

But a final word from the Petraeus-Crocker testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee. John Warner asked whether all this sacrifice was bringing about a more secure America. Petraeus still refused to be drawn on a fundamentally political question – “ultimately, it can only be assessed by history”, he said.

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