To arrest or not arrest.

At Informed Comment, their is talk of the arrest of Ammar al-Hakim.

Well, now he isn't under arrest, and has been apologized to by the American ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad.





Juan Cole:

The US military is giving three reasons for his arrest: He entered Iraq at a closed border station, his passport was expired, and his party was armed to the teeth. In fact, however, his passport was valid until September 17, 2007, and nobody travels overland in Iraq without being armed. It is most likely that the US doesn't want Shiite leaders slipping over to Iran in this way, because it is trying to reduce Iranian influence with US allies in Iraq. That is, al-Hakim's offense was probably his trip itself, though that cannot be admitted by Washington.

Al-Zaman reports in Arabic that al-Hakim complained of being hooded and treated roughly while in US custody. Al-Zaman says that al-Hakim's cell phone eas confiscated, and hints broadly that the real reason for the arrest was to get access to his telephone records and the documents he had with him. The US suspects the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq of getting aid from the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, and Washington wants it stopped.

Al-Zaman provides two other interesting but unconfirmed narratives. One is that al-Hakim's party came under fire as they entered Iraq near Kut and one or two of his guards were actually killed. The paper also reports an allegation that the US in arresting al-Hakim was acting on a tip from the Sadr Movement of Muqtada al-Sadr, which is popular in the Kut region and is a rival of the al-Hakims.

In contrast, al-Hayat reports that the US may have been hoping that the convoy coming from Iran was that of Muqtada al-Sadr, whom they have determined to arrest. In that case, the incident would be a case of mistaken identity.

Al-Hakim says his guards were abused and still have not been released. US military sources say that they were following procedure in verifying his identity, since passports can be forged, and that the issue had to go to Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki for resolution since the latter had prohibited lower-level officials from just releasing detainees.

I am unconvinced by this explanation, since there was not good reason to doubt al-Hakim's passport, and it can't have taken 12 hours to call al-Maliki. There is also the question of why US troops were even in the area, since it is a Polish sphere of operations. They had to have come over for some specific purpose. The likelihood is that it was an intelligence operation of some sort.

The incident, which produced a small demonstration in Basra and a lot of bad feeling among Iraqi Shiites, demonstrates the dangers of Bush's cowboy policies in Iraq, such that he recently urged suspected Iranian agents be shot on sight. If Ammar had been killed instead of arrested for 12 hours, there would have been hell to pay.

This could have gone much much worse. The army got lucky.