House of War

From the blog of Hayder Al-Khoei — grandson of Grand Ayatollah Abdul-Qasim Al-Khoei — I found this post on hearing the music of Lebanese singer Nancy Ajram in what was the heartland of Sadrist Iraq really affecting:

Things just arn’t the same as they were in Kufa. When the US and Iraqi armies battled Moqtada’s army in 2004 most of the people that wandered the streets of Kufa were militiamen. Even in times of peace this town was a bastion for the Mehdi Army. Historically, Kufa has always been the heart of the Sadrists in southern Iraq.

The local police were either sympathetic to the Sadrists, indifferent when it came to their crimes or Sadrists themselves. In many instances the police would man checkpoints together with the militia. If the Sadrists needed police cars or equipment they would either steal them from the police or be given them by the police. Anyone wearing jeans, having the wrong haircut or playing music loud from their cars would be humiliated, taken out of their cars and beaten with sticks in the middle of the street.

Those days are long gone. Now commandos and Rapid Intervention Forces patrol the streets alongside the police, there is no room for the Sadrists to breathe. Yesterday we had to drive over a mile to find a space to park alongside the river bank. The river was lined with families and teenagers laughing, enjoying dinner, drinking tea, playing backgammon or smoking sheesha. Every few minutes a car would drive past with Arabic music on full volume blaring out of the windows and there was not a single Sadrist there to shut them up. Some of the older men even encourage the teenagers, with beads swinging in their hands they shout “hele, hele” as they hear the sweet voice of Nancy Ajram.

Al-Khoei’s pleasure at the relaxed atmosphere in Kufa reflects the broader improvements in security that led Stephen Biddle, Michael E. O’Hanlon, and Kenneth M. Pollackto proppose, in a recent article in Foreign Affairs, a strategy for troop withdrawal from Iraq that doesn’t come at the cost of stability.