Tribal group plans mobilization against federalism

Something called the Central Council for Iraqi and Arab Tribes, headed by Ali al-Faris al-Dulaimi, and a related group called the Republican Gathering, described their current activities as the start of a nation-wide mobilization for national unity, and reported on the first two general meetings, the first for tribes in the area around Baghdad, and the second in Karbala, with participation of a lot of tribes in the Middle Euphrates district, stressing that in both cases the consensus was opposition to any form of federalism. The statement said those promoting federalism as a cover for their narrow interests will earn nothing but disappointment and loss, because the tribes of Iraq have prepared themselves for the sacrifices that will be necessary in the struggle for the preservation of the unity of Iraq, its honor, and its sovereignty.

Azzaman reports the content of these statements on an inside page of the newspaper today (Tuesday October 31, on page 4) without comment or elaboration, under the heading: "Tribal council: Federalism aims at the breakup of Iraq". It appears the groups referred to could be new, or at least the reporter was unable to immediately assess their importance.

One US-coup candidate taken to Amman for safekeeping

As noted a couple of days ago, Azzaman reported on the weekend details of what Washington had in mind as a possible military government for Iraq, and one of the points was there could be nine to eleven military people involved. Today's Al-Quds al-Arabi (Tuesday October 31) tells what happened to one of these persons already, Muhammad Abdullah al-Shahwani, described as head of Iraqi intelligence. Citing sources close to Shahwani in London, the paper says US forces had to suddenly airlift him to Amman after learning of a plan to assassinate him, along with members of his group. The Americans told Shahwani to stay in Amman until further notice, and someone else has been appointed to replace him as head of Iraqi intelligence. This report says the supposed assassination plot was involved "armed militia tasked with the protection and escort of senior officials in the government and ministers, and the protection of their houses in the Green Zone".

The journalist adds: Shahwani's name has been one of those repeatedly mentioned as one of the "American candidates for an role in the military government "which Washington is rumored to be planning to set up in Baghdad at the end of this year." The latter point about rumored timing is new. The Azzaman item cited above implied this might be a November 7 thing.

Government-Baath meetings, and US-resistance "communications" continuing

Al-Hayat says there were meetings for two days in a row, Sunday and Monday, in Amman, between a delegation from the Iraqi government and "Iraqi personalities including former Baathist leaders and officers in the disbanded [pre-2003] army." And there were also "communications" [apparently not necessarily meetings] between "factions of the resistance and the Americans". The journalist's source for this was the Iraqi ambassador to Jordan, Saad al-Hayani. The main demands of the "opposition personalities" and the "Iraqi resistance" were the following: A timetable for withdrawal of "the occupation forces" and a return of the disbanded [pre-2003] army, dissolution of the militias, revocation of the law on dissolution of the Baath party, and return to work of those fired under that process, and a cleaning-out (literally "whitewashing") of the Iraqi prisons.

Al-Quds al-Arabi, for its part, reports the Iraqi-government meeting with "Iraqi [political] personalities of various orientations" in a somewhat less dramatic way. Al-Quds says the main purpose of the meeting was simply to invite Iraqi political people living abroad to participate in the Baghdad National Reconciliation meeting now scheduled for sometime in the first half of November, and give voice to their opinions in complete freedom. In this version, the former Baathists views on repealing the de-Baathification legislation and so on were brought up, but this wasn't the only topic. Several participants said they all agreed there aren't serious differences between Iraqis, and one said they wonder who is behind the recent wave of killings. The Al-Quds piece doesn't mention the US-resistance contacts.

The Baghdad meeting will be the next in the series of National Reconciliation meetings, this one planned for political parties and groups. They are expecting 200 people from within the country and around 70 to 80 Iraqis living abroad to come and attend too. The meeting has already been postponed a couple of times in the past few weeks, the first time following the disputed federalism vote on October 11. Earlier meetings in this series have not received good reviews. See for instance this earlier post on criticism of the last meeting.

Other related events were going on at the same time:

(1) US National Security Adviser Steven Hadley paid a surprise visit to the Green Zone, to confirm to Prime Minister Maliki some of the things that Bush said to him in their teleconference on the weekend. Hadley was accompanied by Ambassador Khalilzad, and one of the things agreed on was a joint council to coordinate US-Iraqi relations, including General George Casey and Zal for the US, and the ministers of defence and interior for the Iraqis.

(2) Foreign Minister Zebari said the Syrian Foreign Minister Muallam has agreed to visit Baghdad, probably next month, and Zibari called this a test of Syrian behavior. Zebari also said Iraq is requesting another year extension of the UN mandate for the multinational forces because their presence is necessary to keep the peace.

Al-Qaeda gaining on the national resistance: Mutlak

Saleh al-Mutlak, leader of the second-biggest Sunni coalition in Parliament, the National Dialogue Front, said on Sunday that US tactics are causing AlQaeda to make gains at the expense of the Iraqi national resistance. He said US prisons in Iraq are in effect schools for new AlQaeda recruits, turning moderate Iraqi civilians into radicals. And he said some existing members of the Iraqi national resistance are starting to lose confidence in the resistance, and are joining AlQaeda. Fundamentalists used to comprise no more than two to four percent of the resistance, Mutlak said, but "AlQaeda is growing day by day in Iraq. That is a fact." Moreover, he said, the recent passage of the law on procedures for creation of federal regions has "emboldened AlQaeda to establish governments in those areas they controlled", with the idea of establishing that "we have our region", in the form of the Islamic Emirate. Mutlak described this as a frightening development, adding that AlQaeda plans to use these as launching bases for further gains.

The remarks were reported in Arabic by Reuters on Sunday, and were picked up by Al-Hayat in its Monday edition. The interview took place in Amman, where there have been reported contacts between the US and the national resistance. Mutlak has been promoting these talks, and these remarks are by way of warning that delays will be to the benefit of AlQaeda, whose aims the national resistance does not support. The interview wasn't picked up by any of the mainstream US papers, because it doesn't fit. Readers of the US media only would have no way of knowing that there is an Iraqi national resistance, there being only a vague category of "Sunni insurgents", a phrase often used to blur the distinction between the domestic resistance on the one side, and AlQaeda on the other. (See the earlier post here called "Meet the resistance" and prior posts).

Here is what Fareed Zakaria has to say about the Sunnis in his latest fatwa:

The Sunnis, for their part, seem consumed by their own anger, radicalism and feuds. They remain so incensed with the United States for their loss of power that they have been, until recently, blind to the reality that if not for U.S. forces, they would be massacred. What political leadership the Sunnis have is weak and does not appear to have much leverage with the insurgents. There is no Sunni with whom to make a deal.

The Sunni political parties are not "consumed by their own ...radicalism". They are threatened by the radicalism of AlQaeda, and what Mutlak is saying is that it isn't crystal clear which side of that divide the US administration is really on.

(Mutlak isn't the only one who thinks US policies in Iraq are continuing to nourish AlQaeda. See the fine summary by AbuAardvark the Academic of a recent piece in Al-Quds al-Arabi for the overall picture). What is new here is that a moderate Sunni leader is complaining that this American-nourished AlQaeda popularity is eating into the domestic Sunni base, with which, supposedly, the US is interested in negotiating.

Bush to Maliki: Don't pay any attention to the Nov 7 coup stories

Azzaman reports this morning from Washington (Saturday October 28) that US officials say the option of an emergency Iraqi "salvation government" is on the table for discussions in the Bush administration, adding the following details: The anonymous Bush administration sources say Prime Minister Maliki "could" be himself head of the new government, "however" it could be composed of between nine and eleven individuals, who could be Iraqi military people who enjoy the confidence of the people. And "observers" say the idea of a salvation government is based on the idea of a suspension of Parliament, and a freezing of the constitution, for a period of at least two years, which would be followed by new elections under the supervision of the UN. Purposes of the hypothetical government would naturally include provision of basic services, security, and so on.

The Washington observers added there could be surprises in the Iraqi situation, not least because the US congressional elections are upon us. They said: "Anything could happen that might improve the situation by way of reflecting positively on the US administration of Iraq, which is under heavy criticism from the Democratic Party, which is looking forward to a better position in the coming Congress". And the writer adds that the Democratic criticism is especially strong given the spike in US casualties this month.

Maliki, for his part, dismisses this coup talk as election-time posturing, and says the Iraqi security situation would be much improved if it were not tied to the US-administration's apron strings. The journalist quotes Maliki: "If there is a single party responsible for the shaky security situation, it is the occupation".

The above is the top Azzaman story this morning, spread across the top of the front page.

LATER that day, Maliki phoned Bush just to talk, and they arranged a confidence-building teleconference session, after which press secretary Show said (according to Wapo.com):

Snow said that Bush assured Maliki of continuing U.S. support despite midterm election criticism of the war. "Both leaders understand the political pressures going on. But the president told him: Don't worry about politics in the United States because we are with you, and we are going to be with you," Snow said.

Meet the resistance

Al-Quds al-Arabi reported on Friday October 27 (here is the permanent PDF link) the creation of a 25-person group to represent the Iraqi resistance, representation to include: Baathists, the Iraqi Patriotic Alliance, the general leadership of the armed forces, Patriotic Socialists against the Occupation, the Muslim Scholars Association, the Ayatollah Ahmad al-Hasani al-Baghdadi, the Nationalist Nasserist Movement, the Islamic Army, the Rashideen Army, and the Brigades of the 1920 Revolution. This brief article also names ten individuals in the group, not all of them well-known.

Three of them, however, are leaders of the Iraqi Patriotic Alliance, which was known pre-2003 as the Iraqi National Alliance (no name-change in Arabic), and represented the mostly exile Iraqis who opposed the Saddam regime, and who were not connected either with the CIA-supported Iraqi National Congress, nor with the Iranian-supported SCIRI group. The Iraqi National Alliance met with Saddam in 2002 in an attempted reconciliation ahead of the US invasion, then devoted itself to armed resistance following the invasion.

Needless to say this group of independent resistance fighters has received no attention whatsoever in the Western press, where the the correct line has been rigorously enforced to the effect that the only armed opposition was composed of Saddamist dead-enders and radical Islamists.

The leader of the IPA, and a member of this 25-person group, is Abdul Jabar al-Kubbaysi, a civil engineer, a member of the Socialist Arab Baath party in his youth, then a Saddam opponent in exile, joining the armed resistance to the US occupation in 2003, arrested and held by the Americans from September 3 2004 to December 28 2005. Another member of the 25-member group is Ahmad Karim, ex-Iraqi Communist Party, then part of a breakaway "patriotic" branch of that party when the leadership of the Iraqi party supported the US-inspired economic sanctions. And a third IPA representative in this 25-member group is Awni al-Qalamji, currently the official spokesman for the IPA, and the person who wrote the Al-Quds al-Arabi piece summarized here a couple of days ago.

The best introduction to the world of the Iraqi National Alliance is this interview with al-Kubbaysi dating from December 2002 and translated into English. The whole thing is well worth a read, but I would like to highlight a couple of parts, first on their relationship to the Saddam regime:

Al-Kubaysi: Yes, we have a mass following inside Iraq. This is because we haven't come out of nowhere. But we don't have organized forces. Historically, the Arab nationalist current in Iraq had two wings: the Baath and the Arab Nationalists' Movement. We paralleled or more than paralleled the currently ruling Baath current. Our masses are in agreement with the regime in broad patriotic and
Arab nationalist terms, but not on the issue of freedoms, which are still a matter on which we differ. The ruling party rules by itself. The masses whom we met when we came here support the regime in its patriotic and Arab nationalist orientations, and are ready to fight in defense of Iraq against the embargo and any aggression. But they believe that the spread of political openness will strengthen the resiliance of the homeland to aggression and embargo. These masses welcomed our arrival. They considered it a step on the right path. Even if the regime wants to kill us we must
fight together with it against aggression. If we don't, we will lose the justification for our existence.

Then there are these remarks on the sectarian and/or racial nature of most of the other opposition groups at the time (this is 2002 and al-Kubbaysi is being interviewed in Iraq):

FAV: Are we to understand from all that that there is no Iraqi opposition abroad with any weight or credibility which could form an alternative to the regime?

Al-Kubaysi: No! [There isn't.]

FAV: Even those who are with the Iranians?

Al-Kubaysi: You said "Iraqi", not extensions of the Iranians. Be aware of the fact that the opposition abroad is split up along ethnic and confessional lines. If America brings them in, there will be massacres in Iraq, because they are oppositions that are narrowly restricted in terms of what religious and ethnic groups belong to them. Not only that, but there are six or seven Turkmen parties, for example. In addition there are three Assyrian organizations. These have never established Iraqi organizations; rather they have established a climate and a basis for the growth
of real domestic civil warfare. There will be blood-letting if they are fated one day to take power. From this we see the importance of the movements in our Iraqi National Alliance and of the rank-and-file of the Communist Party (whose leaders are now pursuing a destructive and unpatriotic course).

The real patriotic Iraqi oppositionists today are the ones who own nothing and are supported by no foreign state. If they came to Iraq, they would come together on the basis of their patriotic line in it. Even the Kurds...

A preemptive strike on the so-called "Biden plan"

Reidar Visser is a historian, known for his Shiite research, and the go-to person for understanding the internal ins and outs of the Shiite parties and movements in Iraq. He is also the person who has most closely followed the Iraqi federalism debate and the federalism legislation. While he doesn't often comment publicly on the US so-called "debates" on Iraqi issues, occasionally on key issues he does, and today he publishes, via JWN, a piece warning that the "Biden plan" for the partition of Iraq is "illusory and spurious", violates the Iraqi constitution, attempts to revive the post WW I imperialist approach, risks alienating vast numbers of Iraqis, alarms Iraq's neighbors, and feeds the theory that the US is in the region not to plant democracy, but to divide and conquer. In case you missed the point, the title of the piece is "There is no Biden Plan".

On specific points, he notes that the "plan" is unconstitutional because federal regions under the constitution would have to be created "from below" via local votes, and cannot in any way be imposed from above. And the "plan" would require a prior constitutional amendment respecting sharing of oil-revenue, but given the agreed-on legislative timetable this could only be based on the current 18-governate structure, so that too is illusory.

Readers of this blog don't need any help understanding the importance of one of Visser's other points, namely that the whole concept of federal regions and separation can exascerbate rather than ease inter-group tensions, so that imposing a concept like "the Biden plan" by fiat would be not pacifying but extremely inflammatory.

Given the superficial, illusory and perverse nature of the "Biden plan", Visser says he is alarmed by the prospect that this could end up not only mudding the waters in the US political debate on Iraq, but could actually dominate the debate and define its terms.

If you're not alarmed too, you haven't grasped the situation.

Bush's Shiite relationship on the rocks; Who will be his next partner?

There's broad agreement Bush is threatening to topple the government he himself created in Baghdad, but the unanswered question is: What will his next creation look like?

One immediate reaction to the recent threat is to welcome the boost this gives the opponents of the occupation generally. An editorial in the Egyptian opposition daily Al-Gomhuria says the latest developments are evidence not only of the failures on the military and security levels, but more importantly the failure of the effort in Baghdad to stigmatize all opponents of the occupation as terrorists. This is a great victory for the national resistance, the editorialist says it is also an incentive for the Iraqi population to continue "with all strength and defiance" on the road of resistance, taking care to prioritize national unity at the same time, "lest the occupation be forced out the door of nationalism, only to return by the window of factionalism."

But from the other side, the follow-up question has to be: Bush will replace Maliki with what? The Al-Quds al-Arabi editorial today is titled "The days of the Maliki government are numbered" and it says Bush is looking for new interlocutors on the Iraqi scene, now that the honeymoon with the Shiites is over. The editorialist says the "political and possibly military coup" that will oust Maliki is just a matter of "time and timing", adding this could come faster than most people in and outside of Iraq think, because the "situation is has gone beyond what is tolerable for the US, not to mention the Iraqis". But the editorialist doesn't say much about who the new local allies will be, except to note recent intermittent reports about US meetings with armed Sunni resistance groups, leaving that puzzle really unanswered.

A columnist in Al-Hayat today (link gone missing) poses an interesting and relevant question in a piece called "Why is the resistance in Iraq limited to the Sunni Triangle?" (by Hasham al-Dajani, Thursday October 26, on the opinion page). He notes that the traditional type of "national resistance" groups, focused on fighting the occupier, are pretty much limited to central Iraq, aka "the Sunni triangle". And he calls attention to what he says is the non-ideological nature of a lot of the Sunni resistance, which he links primarily with the disasterous decision to disband the Iraqi army at the same time that the general security situation was deteriorating, and families were struggling economically. What the Americans did was to create a whole class of people with their backs to the wall economically, and who possessed weapons, knew how to use them, had military training, and had ample reason to hate the occupation. While the Americans tarred all of these groups with the Baathist-Saddamist stigma, this writer cites one group that specifically denied it had any Saddam loyalties. If anything, the writer says, these groups had more Islamists than Saddamists.

(With respect to the Shiite south, this writer says immediately after the American invasion, there were signs of Shiite resistance, but this suddenly went silent, and the Shiites under Sistani's leadership devoted themselves to the democratic process. The writer speculates: This could be partly an Iranian strategy to ward off real American pressure on their nuclear program. Putting the matter the other way, he says the fact the US is keeping the Iran-sanctions issue alive could be to make Iran think twice before unleashing Shiite resistance in Iraq.)

In any event, his main point is that heart of the resistance is in Sunni territory, and a lot of it is non-ideological. It could be just coincidence, but this does look like an effort by a Saudi intellectual to highlight a potential answer to the question: Bush to replace Maliki with what? How about non-ideological resistance groups in the Sunni heartland?

This would answer another question, about the nature of the mistakes that have been intimated, both in Bush's own statements, and also in the subsequently-repudiated statements in Arabic on Al-Jazeera by State Department official Fernandez ("there has been stupidity and arrogance"). The specific reference, on the above hypothesis, would be to the Bremer decision to disband the Iraqi army, and the aim would be to ingratiate the Bush administration with some of these Sunni groups.

"Islamic Emirate" extending its presence "under the cover of political darkness"

Elaph.com is a Riyadh-London news agency. Probably a good description would be to say that if Asharq al-Awsat is pure Saudi regime, and al-Hayat is somewhat less so, and more news-oriented, then Elaph is even a further step away from the regime and in the news-oriented direction, with the added caution that it doesn't appear to believe in consistent or tight editorial control in any direction, which can be a good thing.

Today Elaph reports on events in Diyala province, which lies just to the northeast of Baghdad, between Baghdad and the Iranian border. Its capital is Baaquba. Elaph said there was a "spread of bloody fighting in the province between police [Iraqi Interior Ministry] and armed groups, which have imposed complete control over parts of the province following announcement [in those areas] of an Islamic Emirate. Police have asked from military reinforcements [from the Iraqi Defence Ministry], following death or injury to 14 of the police personnel, among them [a senior police person], along with death and arrest of dozens of the rebels".

The journalist says residents report that "administrative and economic life in the capital Baaquba has come to a halt, with intermittent armed confrontations within the city, and bloody fighting in surrounding areas, which has escalated since the armed groups announced an Islamic Emirate in some of those areas, together with shows of force in villages and towns [around Baaquba] starting three days ago".

"And they [the residents of Baaquba] noted there are contradictions in statements by the American authorities respecting the Iraqi situation, given the dark (or murky) cover over political and security scenes, to the extent that armed groups are now starting to exploit this [the dark or murky political cover] to extend their armed operations, and this led today to the deaths of five Americans [in Anbar province], which brought the death toll to..."

By "contradictions" the journalist is referring to what he calls Bush's "tough warning" to Maliki about American patience running out, as contrasted with the ongoing military cooperation.

Back on the local Diyala situation, the journalist quotes the provincial police chief who said there have been battles between police and AlQaeda around Muradiya and Bani Saad resulting in five police deaths and nine wounded, and five AlQaeda deaths and dozens of arrests. "And the police chief confirmed that the armed groups have been staging parades and distributing pamphlets urging support for the Islamic Emirate, but [the police chief] said they have been "driven out and finished off."

But the official spokesman for the Interior Ministry said these fights are continuing, and he confirmed that there is a request for help from Defence Ministry (Iraqi Army) help to reinforce the position of the police in the region.

For comparison, here is the entire CNN report on these events:

Iraqi security forces clashed with gunmen Thursday morning in two cities in Diyala province, a Diyala Joint Coordination Center official said.

One firefight erupted in Muradiya, just south of Baquba, and a second began in Kan Bani Saad. Baquba is about 35 miles north of Baghdad.

In Kan Bani Saad, at least four people were wounded in fighting and taken to a hospital in eastern Baghdad's Sadr City neighborhood, a hospital official said.

There were no immediate reports of casualties in Muradiya.

On the connection between the federalism vote and the recent escalation in violence

Al-Hayat (Wednesday October 25) quotes two Iraqi political leaders with explanations of the connection between the October 11 federalism-procedures vote and the recent escalation in violence, and one dissenter who said there isn't any such connection.

Sadrist member of parliament Baha al-Araji said it is well known that the Sadrist position is no federalism as long as there is occupation. He noted his group has pressed for passage of resolutions in parliament calling for a fixed timetable for withdrawal, and also the revocation of the infamous Order # 17 of Paul Bremer, which granted immunity from prosecution for US troops, and which helps explain a lot of the recent US attacks on Sadrist offices.

Al-Araji added that under the current electoral system, people were elected to the national parliament merely because their names were put on "closed lists" by the various coalitions, referring to the "proportional representation" system in which people vote for a coalition and not directly for individuals. He said the Sadrists are waiting for the occupation to end, so that there can be new elections that would clearly indicate the will of the people, on questions as important as the political shape of the country.

To explain the situation in the South, he notes that the first step in any application for creation of a specific federal region would be a vote of the provincial council. Thus it is in the interest of proponents of federalism to discredit the Sadrists, in order to reduce their chances in provincial-government elections. And he said it is for this reason that stories circulate attributing the recent wave of riots, killings and chaos to the Sadrists.


Next the journalist quotes Omar Wajie, a member of parliament for the Islamic Party, part of the Accord Front (Sunni), who essentially agrees that there is an important connection between the federalism vote and the recent escalation in violence. Wajie said the Sadrists are under tremendous pressure in the South, because of their stance against federalism, and also because of other positions of theirs, and "we" (meaning the Accord Front) agree with a lot of what they say, including their call for a fixed timetable for withdrawal (of the US troops) and other points.

Wajie added that this political connection is also something that has to be understood as background for the recent escalation of violence in Baghdad too. His point is that the heated-up rivalry has spilled over into Baghdad, referring to what he calls the creation of "artificial crises, where certain political forces find it in their interests to strike out at this or that other group in order to advance their own interests."

The journalist concludes with a dissent from Fadhila party member Karim al-Yaaqubi, who said there isn't any real connection between the federalism vote and the spike in violence. He said the Sadrists have a very large presence in the South, and there isn't any possibility they could he hindered from getting appropriate representation in the provincial councils. He said what has been happening in the South is owing to internal causes in the Mahdi Army and the Sadrist party.

Al-Yaaqubi added that the next real issue in the South will be creation of a new electoral system (for the provincial councils), and here he agreed that the old system, with its "proportional representation" system for putting candidates on closed lists had a lot of drawbacks.

"Political failure means a better environment for the national resistance"

An Iraqi writer says the failure of the political process since the October 11 vote on federalism-procedures means the US will be putting more, not less, into its military campaign, but it also means new opportunities for unity in the ranks of the national resistance.

Awni Al-Qalmaji (spokesman for the Iraqi Patriotic Alliance, the coalition of resistance groups, see this post), writes a lengthy piece on the Al-Quds al-Arabi opinion page today called "The Baker Commission, the law on the creation of Regions, and the Bush fiasco". (Now there seems to be the right title, wrong article there. If they don't correct that, you can find the text in pdf format here: it is at the bottom on the page). He takes as his starting point the commonly-held idea that Bush was pushing hard for the October 11 passage of the law on the creation of regions as part of the US strategy for the weakening of Iraq under the umbrella of a parliamentary process. This is a point that isn't particularly controversial in Iraq, in spite of which, or because of which, the point isn't mentioned in the Western press. For instance, under the procedures outlined in the law, the Fadhila branch of the Shiite coalition could hope for an autonomous Basra, something they consider ultimately one of the Gulf states, while Hakim would consider it part of his nine-province Southern confederation. Turkmen groups are able to dream of an autonomous Kirkuk (where they would have some influence, more at least than in bigger units). There are the Sadrists to consider; and so on. It was a recipe for intensified civil strife, and that was the result. But it was also the end of the parliamentary political process.

Al-Qalmaji writes at length about the vote and the ill effects of the vote, including the alienation of the Sunni political parties, and the creating of an entirely new dynamic: It no longer matters whether you are in Parliament or not, what matters is your local power-base (in preparation for the various federalism procedures contemplated in the law). So rather than uniting the "legal" Parliamentary participants to confront the "illegal" resistance (thus promoting the parliamentary process), the result is the opposite. Local interests of the same origin, whether "legal" or "illegal", are united to confront competing interests. (An example would be ex-Baathist army officers joining with Sunni parliamentarians in the creation of ad hoc fighting units in Al-Anbar province). The political process has been blown apart. (This isn't a theory or an ingenious interpretation; it is an accepted fact. In spite of which, or no doubt because of which, it doesn't appear in the Western press.)

Al-Qalmaji stresses the point: Part of what Bush was trying to accomplish here was to keep the parliamentary process plausible and alive, and this he clearly failed.

But what is interesting and original in Al-Qalmaji's piece is his following argument. Having failed in control via the political process, America is going to concentrate its efforts on the military side. The main battleground will likely be Baghdad, with more troops assigned there (see the link below), and in addition to that, more US troops sent to Iraq, perhaps in the tens of thousands. Al-Qalami adds there is a possibility Arab states will be pressured to sent troops to stand shoulder to shoulder with the occupation forces. And he doesn't rule out the possible use of "limited weapons of mass destruction". "Because--and we should never forget this--the United States considers the struggle on Iraqi soil to be a fateful struggle, and a defeat there would mean a defeat for its empire globally".

"But will resort to the behavior of the wounded lion be enough"? Al-Qalmaji resorts to the "I will not discuss..." rhetorical device to remind readers of the success of popular resistance against the Americans in Vietnam, Lebanon, and Somalia. Another thing he says he will not discuss is the particular difficulties the American forces find themselves in currently, such as frequent inability to safely go outside their fortified areas. What he does want to talk about is this: Popular support for the resistance has been the main reason for the Americans' military failure so far. And the recent events (the October 11 vote and the disintegration of the political process) can only intensify that factor. The other options have been closed off; the only hope for the future is with the resistance.

Moreover, where often in the past there have been shifting alliances and "hesitant and uncertain" behavior in the resistance, the conditions have now been created for a clear polarization between the resistance on the one side, and the occupation on the other, and this will be a great incentive for the eventual unification of all the resistance factions in a "national front, with a common political program and common leadership."

There are lengthy concluding discussions on the need to differentiate the national resistance front from "other armed groups" and avoid the stigma of "terrorist". Also on the need to keep the focus on national interests and avoid reverting back to notions of carving up the country.

In fact this is about a 1500 word essay, so I've left out a considerable amount. What makes this interesting isn't all the detail anyway. It is the idea that the failure of the political process presents new opportunities for the national resistance. It is perhaps worth noting in this connection that the US military (according to the NYT today) is now talking about increasing, not diminishing the level of its forces in Baghdad.

The view from Riyadh: It should be possible to fit the pieces together

It's Monday already, and time to check in with Maamoun Fandy, former senior fellow at the Baker Institute, confidant of Saudi King Abdullah, and currently weekly columnist with Asharq al Awsat. Today's column (Monday October 23) helps us understand how an influential Saudi see the current regional crises.

As always, the analysis starts from the threat of Iranian influence in the Arab world. In current circumstances, most of that influence and that threat is exercised through Syria, so the aim is to try and wean Syria away from Iran. That much has been said many times before, but here is where the discussion gets interesting.

First: The former Syrian regime of Assad the father also had a relationship with Iran, but in that case Syria was able to use Iran. In the current regime of Assad the son, the relationship is reversed, and Iran is using Syria as a tool. Next: On the question of what could entice the Syrian regime away from Iran, the answer is the return of the Golan Heights. To get the Golan Heights back, you need to negotiate with Israel, and that means getting Washington to pressure Israel to do that. So the question becomes: What would Washington want in exchange, and the answer is clear: Stability in Iraq. Summarizing the argument up to there, Fandy says the old formula was "land for peace", but Arab regimes have to understand that this has changed, and the formula is now "stability in Iraq for peace".

So what does "stability in Iraq" involve? The way Fandy sees it, this is primarily a matter of solving the Shiite question, and that from two standpoints, the religious and the political. With respect to religion, he says the aim should be to move the locus of ultimate Shiite authority from Qom to Najaf (he doesn't say how tht is supposed to be done). And politically he says this involves the Arab regimes recognizing a role for the Shiites in Iraq, but this would also involve "dealing with the Shiite issue" elsewhere in the Gulf region.

This reader would have liked Fandy to elaborate on these points about solving the Shiite issue, so that this wouldn't sound quite so glib, but instead me moves back to his macro anti-Iran argument. He asks: Even accomplishing this (he means weaning Syria away from Iran via all of this circuitous route), would the result be stability in the region? Only, he answers, if it was also possible to "neutralize" the Iranian influence on groups like Lebanese Hizbullah, Palestinian Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and others. For this to happen, again, Syria is the key. And thus the solution of the main equation is this: Exchange of Golan Heights for neutralizing Iranian influence on these groups. (Depending however on the other equation: trading Iraq stability for US pressure on Israel). In other words, Syria would have to show itself capable of playing a role that would involve "swapping Hizbullah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad for the Golan Heights".

Easier said than done! Fandy recognizes it would be an awful risk for Syria to make concessions based on something as uncertain as US pressure on Israel re the Golan. Arab regimes could help in the process, especially the rich ones, with what he calls "economic bribery". But there is an even more important possibility, and that is Arab regime intervention in the extremely complicated Syria-Lebanon question to assure Syria of a return to its rightful historical importance in Lebanese affairs, as the closest of the Arab regimes to Lebanon, and the best-situated to help fend off Lebanese civil war. So that Syria, having left Lebanon via the door of UN Resolution 1559, would be able to return via the window of Arab cooperation.

A side-benefit of this approach would be the possibility of Arab pressure on Washington to let the Syrian question revert from being an "international" one (referring to the current focus on the Hariri investigation) to being an Arab one, for resultion via the Arab League or any other Arab mechanism.

Putting the two "scenarios" side by side (meaning return of the Golan Heights, or return to Lebanon), Fandy says the first would be by far the preferable one, adding it might not be as difficult as it looks, when you consider that even some in Israel recognize that the Golan Heights don't have nearly the strategic importance that was ascribed to them in 1967, (partly a reflection of new longer-range rocket technology). The "return to Lebanon" scenario--and he stresses he doesn't mean a military return, or a return of the Syrian mukhabarat--has more drawbacks, not least that it would upset a lot of Lebanese.

Fandy concludes: Given the Arab aim of bringing Syria back into the Arab fold, and the parallel American aim of weaning Syria away from Iran, there are really only two main options for getting Syria to do this: Golan or Lebanon. "If we exclude, that is, the alternative of confrontation!"

"America dictating the Iraqi partition scheme"

Al-Quds al-Arabi prints a selection of recent gems from the Iraqi press, as usual picking papers that mostly aren't themselves available on the web, leading off with an article in the weekly Al-Shahid al-Mustaqbal (independent, publishing since summer 2003, I believe), bearing the title: "Open Bidding for Import of new Rulers for the Democratic Iraq". Actually the bidding hasn't started yet, but this is the threat the journalist says Condoleeza Rice brought with her on her recent visit to the Green Zone.

By way of background, the journalist notes there have been many governments in Iraq in the last three years, the original Governing Council of Lords (Bremer and his group), then the two "provisional" governments, the first (Allawi) with a strong reputation for skimming and corruption, and the second (Jaafari) with an "international reputation for the disregard of human rights, violating the honor of Iraqi men and Iraqi women, with the identity and the nationality of [here Al-Quds inserts three dots]." Bush, faced with the need to boost his sagging approval ratings, and "raise the level of his terrorist occupation administration of Iraq", decided to send Rice to meet in the Green Zone with people called "the business coalition", apparently meaning the Malaki group, and told them that they had a probationary two-month period, after which if the performance wasn't satisfactory, there would a call for bids from the "rulers in the anterooms of the Bush administration", for creation and import of a government that would provide security and basic services. Criteria would include low-cost and low-maintenance. And it was made clear that the candidates would include persons from the same factions as those who came to Iraq with the advancing tanks, but they would be personally unknown, either to Iraqis or to Arabs in general.

Al-Quds doesn't give a date for the article, but clearly it was published before the NYT announcement--I beg your pardon, the "leak"--in its edition of Sunday October 22 to the effect the US is working out details of just such a threat. Nicer language though.

Another item in the Al-Quds selection for this week is an editorial in the newspaper of the Muslim Scholars Association, (Sunni), Al-Basa'ir, about the recent vote on the bill respecting procedures for federalism. The editorialist says this isn't just a case of feeling our way, of the free play of domestic politics. On the contrary this is "literally the application of the American wishes", for a division into sect- and race-based regions. It was already their policy in the Bremer era. And the extraordinary efforts that went into passage of the bill [in the famous disputed vote of October 11] appears to have been the result of specific instructions from Rice during her visit of Oct 7. The idea is to first partition Iraq, and then to partition the rest of the region, to produce what they are calling the "New" or the "Greater" Middle East.

Naturally acceptance of the idea of partition has a lot to do with the Iraqi negativity and pessimism respecting not only the security situation but the occupation-controlled political situation as well. But there is another factor the editorialist notes in closing, and it is from the American point of view. In their search for an exit strategy from the "quagmire" of Iraq, the idea of partition is something that meets the American need for "anything that could be called with American logic a victory in this preemptive war that America originally launched with the conviction it would be restoring national security".

Prediction: Democrats will roll over for a continuation of the federalism/partition strategy

It could come as a disappointment to Democratic activists working their hearts out for a Democratic breakthrough on Nov 7, but the coming debate on Iraq policy risks being a debate about nothing, no matter what the Democratic Party input. Having ridiculed the major Iraqi nationalist groups as "ex-Baathist dead-enders", "followers of fiery cleric Moqtada al-Sadr", not even sparing the mainstream Sunni political parties, to the point where they can't be treated seriously, the Bush administration has set the table for the almost-inevitable continuation of a federalism/partition policy. Not only are major players scrubbed from the media accounts, there isn't any chronology either.

Take Ramadi. In the US media, this is another case of armed groups fighting one another. While US forces would like to stop the fighting, they are unable to do so. Likewise in the South, with Sadr and the SCIRI forces doing the fighting and the UK trying to restore peace. There isn't any real chronology or structure to the events, because in the US government/media view there doesn't need to be. It is the same thing repeated over and over.

In the Arab press, on the other hand, there are nationalists, and there is a chronology, and some of its main points are the following:

Weekend of October 1: Rumors of a Sunni coup. US forces arrest a bodyguard of one of the main Sunni political leaders and accuse him of plotting with an AlQaeda person. Several Sunni political-party leaders accused of connections to "takfiiri" (extremist Sunni terror) groups. Government leader boasts of cooperation from Al-Anbar tribes in fighting AlQaeda in that province (pointedly not mentioning any participation by the Sunni parties). The honor of the Sunni political parties and their leaders is impugned.

October 11: The bill setting out procedures to set up regional-government units is pushed through parliament by the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) and the Kurds, with the cooperation of the US, in the face of a boycott by the nationalist groups, including the Arab Sunni parties and Shiite groups including the Sadrists and the Fadhila party. There are many alleged irregularities in the completely secret voting process. Not only the honor, but the political relevance of political Sunni groups is impugned. Sadrists too feel sidelined.

The Sadrists and other anti-SCIRI Shiite groups in the South prepare to fight for preservation of their spheres of influence on the ground, ahead of the menace of SCIRI-dominated federalism. Weapons prices in Basra skyrocket.

October 19: AlQaeda parades through Ramadi in Al-Anbar province, to mark the declaration of an Islamic Emirate of Iraq (to include all of the Arab Sunni provinces). Local tribal leaders say they have the cooperation of former Baathist army officers for a confrontation with AlQaeda, but needed supply of weapons and vehicles from the Iraqi government is in doubt. The government-Sunni connection has been put in question, pitting in ad-hoc fashion tribes, Baathists and others on the one side against AlQaeda on the other.

October 20: In the South, Amarah exlodes as the Sadrist Mahdi army moves to take back from SCIRI a traditional sphere of influence. The federalism vote has had the effect of re-igniting Sadrist-SCIRI violence.

(The above-mentioned events and their background is all covered to some degree in previous postings here, starting with "Significant political timing in Baghdad coup allegations" on October 2 and working forward to yesterday. Leaving out, obviously, the postings that don't relate to Iraq).

You could say Bush's Kurd-Sunni-Shiite tricycle has lost two of its wheels. The credibility of the Sunni political parties has been trashed, ending any pretence of inclusive central government involving the Sunni parties. Among other results, this set the stage for the AlQaeda confrontation with ad-hoc local alliances including Baathists in Anbar. And in the Shiite south, the Sadrists also saw their political influence reduced to zero, so that the question of spheres of influence in the South was also taken out of the political arena and back onto the streets.

The federalism scheme failed politically, driving the Sadrist and Sunni parties out of the political process. But that won't be part of the coming "Iraq-policy debate", because the underlying facts haven't been adequately reported, or else not reported at all. And that sets the stage for the easiest of conclusions: "The strategy wasn't bad, but there was poor execution. On with the federalism/partition project".

For nationalists and others in the region, US policy is synonymous with breaking up and cantonizing the region in an overall divide-and-conquer strategy. In this, the US government is planting the seeds of enormous resentment. It would be a shame if the Democrats didn't think about that, and instead roll over for the continuation of the federalism/partition project just out of sheer ignorance.

Amarah

(Please Note: At the end of this there is a link to an excellent essay on the meaning and background of the current SCIRI-Sadr situation. "Nonarab-Arab" agrees with me on the negative role of the US in this, he spells it out better than I do, and he offers useful historical background. He's interested in critique, so please offer him your views on it. --Badger)


Azzaman is the Iraqi newspaper that has been threatened with penalties and possible closure on account of its forthright coverage of the disputed federalism-procedures vote of October 11. (See earlier post "Azzaman stands tall").

The New York Times reported the federalism-procedures vote as non-problematic, and a victory for SCIRI leader Abdulaziz al-Hakim, with a big picture of him. (See the earlier post "Iraqi federalism vote: Behind the disputed numbers...") Hakim is the leading proponent of a big SCIRI-controlled nine-province federal unit in the south and center of Iraq. This is opposed by other powerful Shiite groups including the Sadrists and the Fadhila party. (And of course also by the Sunni nationalists).

One result of this disputed vote has been the exit of Sunni political leaders from the Baghdad political process, exemplified by the Al-Anbar Salvation Council (see previous post).

But another result of this disputed vote is a sudden rise in tensions in the South, as groups jockey for position ahead of actual implementation of the federalism procedures. Here is a paragraph from today's Azzaman account of the Amarah fighting:

Sources said Baghdad has been isolated from the South, with traffic stopped on the main road connecting the capital with the provinces of the South. And they said Basra has witnessed an unprecedented wave of weapons smuggling across the Iranian border. They said weapons prices have multiplied to unprecedented levels. [And at the end of the piece, the journalist quotes specific examples by type of weapon]. And they said these developments come in the wake of passage of the law respecting regions [the federalism-procedures law], with the religious parties attempting to re-divide [their areas of influence within the South] ahead of application of [the eventually expected] implementation laws.

For the New York Times, not only was the October 11 federalism vote non-problematic, but the resulting escalation in violence in the South naturally has nothing to do with it either. What the NYT piece tells us this morning is this: "...[this exposed] deep fissures in the country's Shiite leadership...[including] a dynastic rivalry between families, dating back decades". Adding that "[Sadr's] role in the assault remained murky". Culminating with a quote from Rumsfeld: "It's their country, he said at a news conference, they're going to have to govern it. They're going to have to provide security for it, and they're going to have to do it sooner rather than later."

The trick here is to intimate, by leaving key things out, that the US has had no role in the political evolution of this: it is all a question of innate Iraqi violence. It is a commonplace and a cliche among Iraqi nationalists and others that the US aim is to split the country up. Instead of taking this up and reporting the key events in the political process, the official US press instead resorts to this filthy story about innate Iraqi violence.

Here's the link to the excellent essay I referred to above: It's at http://nonarab-arab.blogspot.com
He has lots of other very thoughtful posts. Take a look. I think he has a patient but clear style, a nice change from the brittle harshness of the Badger. What do you think?

Anbar Salvation Council versus AlQaeda: Prologue

Thanks to political failure in Baghdad, it appears (Al-Hayat, Friday October 19) Bush is getting ready to negotiate with the Islamic Army of Iraq and other resistance groups, "secretly" in Amman. The likely content of those talks is so far a complete mystery. But closer to home, in Ramadi, the new Iraq is getting ready to witness the first of the new type of armed confrontations, pitting AlQaeda against Sunni Iraqi nationalists, the latter including local tribal groups, existing armed resistance groups, and also Sunni political groups that have now become fed up with the government.

Al-Anbar province extends all the way from the western outskirts of Baghdad to the Syrian border. Ramadi is one of its main cities, close to Baghdad, and it is where AlQaeda held a parade or demonstration on Wednesday to underline startup of the Islamic Emirate which they claim will include all of the Sunni-Arab provinces of Baghdad. Arrayed against AlQaeda and promising to dislodge them from Ramadi is a new organization called the Al-Anbar Salvation Council (pending a better English version of the name), whose exact makeup is still a little unclear, but whose concept is to include all of the Al-Anbar tribes, along with officers in the former (Saddam era) army, and also current personnel in the Iraqi police and army.

Remarks made to Al-Hayat paint a mixed picture of the new Al-Anbar Salvation Front, as it tries to organize to take back Ramadi from AlQaeda. On the one hand, the person described as the leader, one Abu Risha, says the tribal people, former army officers, and others, are all available, and in fact already control the outskirts of Ramadi, but they are waiting for the necessary material and armaments support from the Iraqi government. But others say Abu Risha isn't the man to organize the tribes because too many of the urban leaders object to him. Moreover, some oppose the idea of accepting any support from either the Iraqi government or the US. Finally, relations with the existing armed resistance groups, including Islamic Army of Iraq and others, is completely unclear.

According to remarks to Al-Hayat published in the Saturday October 21 edition, the leader of the Salvation Council, or perhaps better described as the would-be leader, Abdul Satar Abu Risha, said all of the tribes and former army officers and current government police and army personnel are standing by waiting to hear from the office of Prime Minister Maliki the government's final answer to their request for assistance in the form of vehicles and arms. Abu Risha says the group as it now stands lacks the "material military capability" to sustain a military operation on the scale that taking back Ramadi would require. The group controls the area surrounding Ramada and all access points, he said, but lacks the wherewithal to go into the city proper.

As for relations with the existing armed national-resistance groups like Islamic Army of Iraq and the Brigades of the 1920 Revolution, Abu Risha said the tribes traditionally fight on their own, and would not be coordinated with other groups like these, but in the case of the 1920 Revolution Brigades, he said coordination should be possible in the future.

But Abu Risha's viewpoint isn't the only one. This Al-Hayat piece also cites remarks by Khalif Alyan, a leader in the Iraqi Accord Front, which is the biggest of the Sunni coalitions in parliament. Alyan's remarks are particularly interesting as an expression of the new Sunni rejection of the Maliki government. Alyan said the followers of his group would object to joining in the Anbar Salvation Council if any of the tribes were to accept Iraqi government support or US support. And he said he was skeptical of the ability to Abu Risha to actually bring the tribes together in the way that he claims to be able to do. Alyan added that the clan leaders in Ramadi and other cities in Anbar that he has spoken to object to the idea of any group "based on Abu Risha". And to drive the point home, he said if the Salvation Council ends up accepting Iraqi government or US government support, the result will be fitna or all-out civil war in Anbar.

On the question of overall strategy, Alyan said the creation of a balanced security force, and a political process "open to all resistance groups" both require the elimination of AlQaeda from the province, and the reason is that the AlQaeda aim of setting up an Emirate ultimately supports the US aim of breaking up the country. In other words AlQaeda and the US are in some sense partners in the project of breakup, while his group (Iraqi Accord Front as a potential partner or member of the Anbar Salvation Council) is nationalist and anti-breakup.

There are also remarks by Salvation Council member (apparently a tribal person) Hamid al-Hayish, who complained that one of the obstacles to moving on Ramadi right now, is that at least part of the sensitive area is supposed to be in the particular bailiwick of the Mayor of Ramadi, Ma'moun Rashid, and of the Islamic Party. The mayor seems to be a particularly unknown quantity. Abu Risha said the government wants the Salvation Council to coordinate with him, but the AlQaeda parade went right in front of his house, and apparently he isn't that keen on taking them on.

There is no mention in this lengthy piece of the fact that Ramadi is said to be "occupied" by US troops. It does not seem to be a consideration, at least for the people cited here.

Tale of two so-called "nations"

Yassir abu Hilala, writing today Thursday Oct 19 in the Jordanian newspaper Al-Ghad, says yesterday's AlQaeda parade in Ramadi didn't have any practical significance, being merely part of the ongoing "public relations war." He backs up to tell us a little of the history of the group that has functioned in Iraq, starting after the fall of the Taliban in Afghanistan, initially as a more or less nameless group led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, then as "Unity and Jihad", until eventually Zarqawi pledged allegiance to Bin Laden, and the group became known as "AlQaeda in the land of the two rivers".

What follows is interesting. People talked about the fact that Zarqawi wasn't Iraqi, and neither were Bin Laden and his circle, and there were questions whether the leadership understood the ins and outs of the Iraqi situation. The result was the formation of the Mujahideen Shura (advisory) Council, nominally headed by an Iraqi, Abdullah Rashid al-Baghdadi by name, and supposedly open to Iraqis. But operations (including financing and "conceptual" issues) remained in the hands of AlQaeda, i.e., the foreigners. Here is where it might start to dawn on the astute reader what Hilala's point is: This problem of public-relations Iraqization is exactly the issue that the Americans have faced.

Resuming, when Zarqawi died there was a natural expectation that his successor as head of operations would be an Iraqi, but instead the successor was Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, who is Egyptian. So this issue of Iraqization continued, and the next move in that direction was the recent announcement about the Alliance of the Mutayyibin whose point was that AlQaeda was joining itself with tribal leaders. The writer explains that in pre-Islamic times, there was a ceremony of washing the hands in perfume (Tayib) before making important alliances, and there are aspects of the old stories that apply here, supposedly giving the name resonance and importance. (If I could follow the details I would offer them here, but I fear getting it wrong). (NOTE: A fellow blogger kindly posted an explanation with background of the "perfumed hands" reference here). In any event, the Mutayyibin Alliance was preparatory to this announcement about the Islamic Nation, supposedly, or in a public-relations sense, the culmination of the Iraqization of the movement. And naturally, the head of the Islamic Nation has a good Iraqi name: Abu Omar al-Baghdadi.

The parade yesterday didn't mean much in practical terms, and certainly the geographic scope of this is very narrow. But then so is the Green Zone, Hilala notes. They each have their Green Zone and their public relations apparatus, the "nation" in the Green Zone and AlQaeda's "nation". What is certain, says Hilala, is that what we don't have in Iraq is a real nation.

Mind over matter

AlQaeda paraded through Ramadi on Tuesday, and Iraqis continued preparations to try and retake the region from AlQaeda. But US experts, in their various ways, are exploring alternative worlds where maybe this isn't really happening. Juan Cole assures us this morning that the Marines already occupy Ramadi, so those paraders had better watch out! (Technically he's right, apparently. See the comments. MarkfromIreland, who knows about these things, says the Marines do occupy the place. Whether they control it or not is another question). Other academics are toying with the idea the whole Islamic Nation announcement might be a psych-ops hoax. And the NYT doesn't mention the Ramadi situation in their main Iraq stories this morning.

Knight-Ridder published a piece in July indicating that US forces had pretty much abandoned the idea of controlling Ramadi. Earlier this week, Al-Hayat reported the formation of a "Council for the Salvation of Anbar", described by its leader as including Anbar tribal people, and also army officers from the Saddam era standing ready to "put down [AlQaeda-controlled] Anbar", once they got the go-ahead from the government, from which they were expecting assistance in this.

This morning, the Iraqi newspaper Al-Sabah reports on further plans along these lines. It says the US forces are "coordinating with the Anbar tribes to establish a better security situation". And it says the above-mentioned Council for the Salvation of Anbar was "continuing its efforts to free the province from the terrorists that are followers of AlQaeda." The Al-Sabah journalist adds that "companies from the private sector are undertaking the supply of goods for the rebuilding of the city of Qa'im".

More particulary, the Governor of Anbar, Ma'moun Rashid held a joint press conference with the head of US forces in the western region (mostly Anbar), in which he (the Governor) said that he and the Anbar tribal people were "studying security operations in Ramadi and other cities in the province". And the Governor added that he has already obtained good results, including agreement to set up a joint commitee half from the tribes and half from the provincial council, for discussion and studies of proposals for the rebuilding of Anbar, from several points of view: Security, the economy, and the fight against corruption.

For its part, the Salvation Council said one of its units attacked on Wednesday morning an AlQaeda base "in the Zanqura region south of Ramadi", killing three, taking three prisoner and seizing a vast quantity of weapons.

In Ramadi itself, according to Reuters, AlQaeda people paraded through the city, while mosque loudspeakers read out the Mujadideed Shura Council statement about establishment of an Islamic Nation in the Sunni provinces of Iraq. A leader told the Reuters reporter: "With God's help, we will establish the Shariah here, and we will fight the Americans."

For an explanation what the parade was supposed to mean in public-relations terms, see the following post: "Tale of two so-called nations".

Local resistance groups, tribal leaders, and ex-Baath people uniting under the National Resistance banner

A wide range of groups is coming together to distance themselves from the AlQaeda declaration of a mini-state in the middle of Iraq, criticising not only the politics of the move, but also the terror strategy. The groups, says Al-Hayat (Tuesday October 17) include well-known Iraqi armed groups, Baath party people, other political groups, and tribal leaders.

Armed national resistance groups generally criticized the AlQaeda announcement as an "Islamist scheme", adding that the AQ terror tactics harm the national resistance movement. In particular the writer quotes Abdurrahman abu Khawla who said he represented 17 different groups with names like Islamic Army, Army of the Mujahideen and so on, active in various areas including Baghdad and Anbar, and one of his complaints against AlQaeda was the following: "They rely as part of their strategy on hidden explosive devices, but that only means that the occupation forces themselves, along with the intelligence services of neighboring countries, are able to carry out the same kinds of operations, and lay the responsibility on what they call the Baathists and the former Saddamists." He said the national resistance groups' door remains open to negotiations with the occupation forces, based on their withdrawal, release of all their prisoners, Iraqi and foreign, and recognition of the national resistance, because it is the legitimate representative of all Iraqis.

Particularly on the issue of Baath party involvement, the journalist says a meeting yesterday in Kirkuk including tribal leaders and others, was attended by Baath leaders as observers, and this was the first public appearance of any Baath party leader since the party was outlawed by Paul Bremer in 2003. This is part of a Baath resurgence, the writer says, and he notes in this connection the public statement issued by Saddam Hussein via his lawyer, calling on Iraqis to renounce killing each other, and concentrate on ending the foreign occupation. Saddam Hussein said he forgives those who betrayed the location of his sons, leading to their being killed by the Americans . An adviser to PM Maliki told the journalist that the question of involving the Baath party in the National Reconciliation process was in fact the major reason (in addition to "technical difficulties) for the recent postponement of the next scheduled meeting in that series, originally to have taken place October 21.

In connection with this, the journalist quotes Satar abu Risha, head of something called the Council for the Salvation of Anbar, "a group emanating from local tribal confederations." Abu Risha said he has completed the organization of "special batallions" including officers of the former Iraqi army, and they are standing ready to "put down [the AlQaeda-controlled] Anbar", once they receive the go-ahead from the government. More specifically, the group says it is ready to attack Ramadi and free it from AlQaeda, and is expecting help from the Interior Ministry in this. There is a lot going on these days, so the journalist doesn't stop to underline this point: Local groups including those formerly outlawed or shunned by the government, are organizing to fight against AlQaeda with the government's expected approval.

The journalist ends his account of this with the following one-sentence paragraph, one of those gems of British understatement: "British State Minister for Army Affairs yesterday urged his country to hold discussions respecting its military presence in Iraq and Afghanistan". Good idea.

In case you're having trouble following the thread of this: What has happened is that the Iraqi nationalists in Parliament were brushed aside in the disputed vote last Wednesday, leaving a vacuum to be filled. The candidates for this are (1) AlQaeda with its proposal to represent the Sunni part of the country, and (2) local groups still convinced that the main obstacle to national unity is the foreign occupation, but before dealing with the US-led occupation, there is now the additional need to clean out the AlQaeda occupation of Anbar.

Azzaman stands tall

Reuters reported on Monday that the Iraqi parliament had asked the government of president Talabani to close down the newspaper Azzaman and the TV station Al-Sharqeya as punishment for their coverage of the federalism vote last Wednesday. Then a few hours later Reuters said the administrative office of Parliament issued a clarification that said the request wasn't specifically to close down those institutions, but merely to "call them to account", and the statement stressed Parliament didn't define what this "calling to account" should involve, leaving that up to Talabani. But Azzaman had already published its Tuesday edition, reporting this as a threat of closure (which a reading of the original announcement would certainly lead one to believe was the intent), and taking the opportunity to review its honorable history in Iraq, and to note that Reuters saw fit to testify both to Azzaman's success as one of the very few independent papers in the crowded Iraqi newspaper field, and also to note that the sister TV station had risen to a top position in the local TV field in the three short years of its existence. Azzaman also took the opportunity to repeat its point about the key role of the four Iraqi List (Allawi group) members in the disputed vote. The parliamentary announcement fulminated against Azzaman and Al-Sharqeya in very general terms as unprofessional, biased, and having posed a theat to the national security, without spelling out any actual errors of fact. It was a statement echoing the "liberal media bias=encouragement of our enemies" media strategy of the Rove White House.

In its Tuesday piece, Azzaman stressed the independent nature of its coverage, and in particular its independence from any political parties or groupings. The newspaper and the TV station both were deluged with messages of solidarity from Iraqis who recognized (as the paper put it) that these are independent media outlets that represent, not party views, but the point of view of Iraq and Iraqis generally. This may sound like a cliche, but in this case it isn't. In fact, the whole point of this struggle over the bill (according to Azzaman, and I agree), is that there is such a thing as legitimate Iraqi nationalism, with the aim of holding the country together and preserving the millenium-long tradition of different sects living side-by-side under the same political umbrella. (NOTE: It would have been better to put this in a less grand way. See the comments).

Iraqi nationalism has disappeared from the political vocabulary of the Western experts and the Western media, and I regret to say the latest example of this is Juan Cole's description of Azzaman and Al-Sharqeya as having a "mild secular, Arab nationalist tone". See what I mean? The newspaper spills its guts to keep alive a point of view that represents Iraq and all Iraqis, including Kurds who are not Arab, and any racially Persian Shiites who are also not Arab, with the idea of holding the country together, and our friendly expert tells us this newspaper is of an"Arab nationalist" tone. It was only a slip, but it illustrates how far our experts are from helping us understand what is happening.

Man in the know says the US might divvy the region between Israel and Iran

Mamoun Fandy had his weekly column in Asharq al-Awsat yesterday (Monday October 16). He's worth paying attention to, for one reason, because he is close to the Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz. For instance when the king wanted to impress the world with his concern for Lebanon and the Lebanese, August 26, in a spin-correction following his initial one-sided condemnation of Hizbullah, he chose as his interlocutor Mamoun Fandy, who came through with the right stuff. But Fandy also used to be on the US government payroll as a senior fellow at the US Institute of Peace, an outfit funded by the US Congress, and after that he was a Senior Fellow at the James A Baker Institute. He's the quintessential missing link.

The earlier Fandy column that I summarized here was an analysis of the three factors threatening the Arab state: (1) US imposition of western-style democracy; (2) Iranian fomenting of internal dissention via the likes of Hizbullah, Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood; and finally (3) the whole idea of elevating Islam to an authoritative position that rightly belongs to the state as such (the "secular state" I said, but a commenter objected to that). I noted that his view of Iran reminded me of the McCarthyite era US attitude to communism: An Iranian under every bed.

Fandy said these three factors were linked together in the following way: US pressure for "democracy" merely gives the Islamists legitimacy, because they can scream against Western meddling, and people on the street say they are right to do so. And the Islamists, for their part, give cover to the Iranians, because people on the street think of Iranian (i.e. Islamic) influence as benign compared to that of Israel, for example. So it is a three-sided problem, but the nub of it is this issue of Iranian plotting to destroy the Arab state from within.

This week's column is interesting because Fandy appears to be making an effort to damp down the anti-Iran tones a little, making the assessment of the Iranian threat look more like a result of what he calls "cold analysis" rather than the knee-jerk impression that came through so strongly in the earlier piece. He says: Let's run through the various criteria and try and assess which is the most dangerous for us, Israel or Iran.

Inevitably, in the end, he takes us back full circle to the McCarthyite smearing of any opposition as "Iranian".

But there is a more important point tucked into the middle of this piece. Fandy says it is quite possible that the US, Israel and Iran could end up making a deal along the lines of the Sykes Picot line that carved up the region between France and England after WW I, in this case between Israel and Iran, with the US acting as overlord.

Here is a bit of a summary.

Fandy's first point in his Iran-Israel comparison is that they are both non-Arab states seeking influence in the Arab region. Second, they both occupy Arab lands. Israel occupies parts of Palestine, Jordan, and Lebanon. Iran occupies three small islands in what it calls the Persian Gulf, actually belonging to the Emirates, so this is much smaller in area and population compared to what Israel occupies. (Never heard of that issue, did you? Neither did I).

Getting down to more serious issues, Fandy asks about the intentions of Iran and Israel. He says history shows both aim to be the sole agent of America, Iran in the limited area of the Gulf, but Israel in the whole of the Middle East. This idea of being the chosen American agent goes back at least to the era of the Shah in Iran, he says, and it is self-evident in the case of Israel. It follows, he says, that any struggle between Iran and Israel is going to be a struggle for the prize of being America's sole agent; only the geographic scope of the ambitions differs.

The dangerous prospect right now (for the Arab states), says Fandy, would be if the US Israel and Iran were to come to terms and agree that Iran would have influence over the Gulf, with the rest of the region put under Israeli hegemony. If we study the American scene carefully, says Fandy, we can see that precisely this kind of a "splitting of influence" is indeed possible. First, he says: "There are parties in New York and Washington that are convinced that the only route out of the Iraq crisis goes through Tehran." And secondly: "There are a number of oil majors which, pursuing their own interests, are applying pressure in the direction of arranging a deal between Washington and Tehran, the basis of which would be to permit Iranian gas access to American markets". Fandy adds: "I know very well that this [deal respecting gas] is something that has been discussed in circles close to the [Bush] administration, as a reasonable price in return for the concept of a division of influence."

Fandy inserts a lengthy digression on signs of "intellectual cover" for the idea of a US alliance with Iran, an alliance that no doubt seems strange to [Arab] readers when they first hear of it. He cites a couple of researchers at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York who have written extensively on Iran and are (Fandy notes in his irritating way) both of Iranian extraction, and only one of them Muslim. Fandy's main point here is that some think the number one enemy of the West is Sunni Wahabism, and in this Iran is a potentially important ally. This would be a major justifying piece in any US policy of divvying up the region between Israel and Iran. (The researchers he cites are Vali Nasr and Ray Takeyh, but it would be risky to say what Fandy is attributing to whom and whether it is fair or not. His point is that this is an influential hatchery of policy ideas, and he sees the outlines forming for what he calls "intellectual cover" for the idea of a deal that would include Iran. Clearly it is not something that pleases him).

In any event, he says, the point is that this idea of "dividing the Arab body" between Iran and Israel is a serious possibility, a kind of modern Sykes-Picot agreement, only this time an undisclosed agreement.

This then, Fandy says, is the framework within which the Israel-Iran competition is taking place. (Meaning it is for a greater or lesser portion in an eventual deal). Still, he says, we should understand the tools at the disposal of the two sides in order to be able to participate in the struggle and not just be mere bystanders. The main point here is that while Israel is militarily more powerful, Iran is more powerful in its ability to infiltrate and cause social upheavals, the spectre of a lacerating sectarian war always lurking behind any discussion of Iranian influence.

Fandy has some choice remarks about media too, where he says Iran is the more influential. It has Manar (the Hizbullah TV channel in Lebanon) and a channel some call "Manar 2" referring to Al-Jazeera. And in newspapers, "it has [ostensibly Arab] dailies" that circulate in the capitals of the Mideast and Europe, but "we don't mention them by name", which he says is perhaps another sign of the Iranian influence.

And so we are back full circle to the McCarthyite smearing of any opposition as "Iranian".

Fandy concludes: And so in these respects (infiltration and media) clearly the Iranian threat is the more serious of the two.

My view: US opposition to Iraqi nationalism bears its grotesque fruit

The dismemberment of Iraq is well-advanced, and the nationalists are in disarray. How has this happened? Here's the chronology in a nutshell:

The Kurds have their traditional claim to the north, with potential for elbowing the Arabs out of oil-rich Kirkuk. That was what the academics call a "given". Then SCIRI in the person of Abdulaziz al-Hakim staked its claim to the south, winning a bitterly disputed vote in parliament on Wednesday, and effectively pushing aside other Shiite groups including the Sadrists and the Fadhila, which have their own power bases in the south and don't like the idea of a SCIRI empire in the whole southern region, and pushing aside also the Sunni parties and other nationalists focused on the need for a strong central government as the obvious priority. That was really the key event. And now, in what you could call the logical outcome, four days after the federalism vote, AlQaeda stakes its claim to the center, from Anbar in the west to the Iranian border in the east, and from the southern outskirts of Baghdad up to Kirkuk in the north.

The dream of the nationalists for unity around the re-establishment of a strong central government has increasingly become just that: a dream. That's because the Sadrists and Fadhila in the south now have the territorial ambitions of SCIRI to contend with; and the Sunni parties based in the center will have the impossible task of differentiating themselves from the Islamic Nation pretensions of AlQaeda. How did it happen?

Not long ago, it was still possible to imagine the nationalist aims of the Sadrists and those of the Sunni and secular parties coming together as the core of the new Iraq. That possibility has now been blown apart, and not just through violence, but also through politics. How exactly?

The simple answer is that the nationalists were effectively sidelined. If anyone ever has a chance to write the history of this period, they will undoubtedly point to a lot of things we currently have no inkling of, but that history will surely include at least the following three cornerstones (actually "missing links" as far as the Western media is concerned):

(1) US support for SCIRI. There was aggressive US support for the SCIRI candidate in the long-drawn-out dispute over appointment of a Prime Minister during the winter and spring of 2006.The question-mark that hung over this issue is still there: Why would the US support the candidate of the party generally recognized as closest to Iran? And the answer will turn out to be: It is because he supported federalism and opposed the nationalist trend of the Sadrists and others. (Eventually there was a compromise in the person of Nuri al-Maliki, who, as it is now clear to see, was just the person to stand aside and let the federalism campaign take its course under the guidance of SCIRI leader Hakim).

(2) Willful blindness in Washington. Lack of support for the nationalists in the US Congress. History will award at least a cameo appearance to Senator Joe Biden of Delaware, senior Democrat in the Senate Foreign Affairs committee, for his federalism proposal. You don't actually need to know anything about the proposal, except that it was wrapped in a thick blanket of generalities, and also this: When he was asked how he proposed to go about convincing the other side in the Iraqi debate (the nationalists) to switch to his proposal, his response was in effect to deny that there are any nationalists. Here's the exchange with a reporter at Biden's press conference:

The second question is, what’s your message to the people on the other side who are resisting that proposal? Why should they buy into your plan?

BIDEN: Well, I don’t think the militia—some of the militia, I don’t think the jihadis, and I don’t think the—a lot of the former Saddamists are going to buy into it under any circumstance. The question is how do you buy away their support? How do you undermine their ability to continue to have the kind of sway and impact they have? And that’s the answer to your second question.

Translation: "Nationalists = militia, jihadis and former Saddamists". Biden is actually a Democrat, but his approach seems to owe a lot to the Karl Rove wing of the Republican Party, where the procedure is this: Opponents of the president = validators of terrorism, pre-9/11 anachronists. (Here's the link to the Biden q&a. The above text is toward the bottom, the questioner is Jeff Morley of Wapo.com).

(3) Adamant US opposition to a withdrawal-timetable. Sadr and the Sunni parties continued to demand a firm timetable for US withdrawal from Iraq. For the Sunni parties, this was a condition for helping to bring the armed Sunni national-resistance groups into the political process. The US priority has been to not commit to a US withdrawal timetable, and this was a major reason why the National Reconciliation process has stalled, and why the process has become one of increasing splits and divisions, culminating in the events of the last week.

(4) The skulduggery of October. Washington favorite and former CIA asset Iyad Allawi heads a group called the Iraqi List, with 25 members in parliament, and Allawi's ostensible position was to oppose this federalism bill and join in the boycott. But the federalism forces were having a problem assembling a quorum, and inexplicably eight of Allawi's people showed up and voted for the bill, something Azzaman and al-Hayat both agreed "tipped the balance" in favor of the bill. Embarassed, Allawi's group has now promised an internal "investigation" to see why this happened. This is what they call "sloppy execution". Washington ally Allawi ended up being centered out.

Consistent US support for the dismemberment of Iraq seems counterintuitive given the concerns about Iran. On the other hand there is no evidence of any US support for the nationalists, and there are at least the above four indicators of US support for the SCIRI federalism project.

Until recently, the predominant political debate in Iraq has been between two priorities: (1) Reconstituting a strong central government, keeping a sense of national identity, fighting the foreign agenda of dismemberment, and (importantly) ensuring the prompt removal of the foreign occupation forces; and (2) legalizing, via federalism, the formation of spheres of influence, where separation would calm violence because it is a form of apartheit, prioritizing local and sectarian aims. The nationalists and the federalists. It was at least a debate that stayed within the bounds of common human decency; it was a rational debate.

Now, in the circumstances that have come about, the predominant debate is a different one. The federalist position is the same. But imperceptibly, the nationalist position has been drowned out, and the alternative to Kurdish and Shiite federalism is a new one. It is the AlQueda position: Fighting the Kurds with their Jewish support in the north, and the "rejectionists" with their Safavid support in the south. The US position has been that legitimate nationalism doesn't exist, and that those calling for a withdrawal timetable were the terrorists and their supporters. Now the US policy-makers have significant support from AlQaeda, which also agrees that legitimate nationalism doesn't exist.

The lesson is that if you succeed, as the Bush administration has succeeded in doing on so many fronts, in squeezing out and demonizing the rational argument on the other side, the result will eventually be that your own position loses any connection to common sense (the Bush administration has already gotten that far), and eventually you could find yourself in a symbiotic relationship with groups that are just as crazy and just as atavistic as you are (this is the situation that is dawning in Iraq).

Dramatic fallout from the federalism vote

The jihadis declare a Sunni state from Baghdad to Kirkuk, in response to the federalism vote; the main Sunni political coalition goes to court to challenge the legality of the federalism vote; Allawi's group "investigates" why its members facilitated the federalism vote; National Reconciliation meeting postponed indefinitely; and the Council for National Security meeting in continuous session.

The Mujahideen Shura Council, representing AlQaeda in Iraq and affiliates, announced the creation of an "Islamic Nation of Iraq" to include Baghdad, Al Anbar, Diyala (west and east of Baghdad respectively), Salahaddin, Kirkuk, Ninawa (to the north), and parts of Babil and Wasit provinces to the south of Baghdad. The announcement urged all Sunni leaders in these areas (religious and tribal and so on) to pledge allegiance to one Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, (an AlQaeda regional commander in Baghdad). The announcement said this is being done "following the evolution of a Kurdish nation in the north, and the decision on a federalism for the Rejectionists [Shiites] in the Center and the South, with the help of the Jews in the north, and the Safavids in the south". The announcement appeared on the right website to be considered authentic, and the newspaper al-Hayat today (Monday October 16) treats it as authentic, but there apparently hasn't been any actual confirmation.

Al-Hayat notes this is one part of the fallout from the disputed parliamentary vote last Wednesday approving prodedures for setting up federal regions. (See the earlier post called "Behind the contradictory numbers" Oct 12). In other fallout from that event, the newspaper says the Iraqi Accord Front, the main Sunni group that opposed the bill and boycotted the session, has filed a lawsuit with the constitutional court challenging the legality of the bill, alleging a number of violations of law during the procedure. A sopkesman for the Accord said his group was surprised by the whole proceeding, but particularly by the behavior of one of its own members (Mashhadani), who also happens to be Parliamentary speaker (and apparently was instrumental in making sure there was either the reality or the appearance of a there was a quorum present, before he too left the chamber to join the boycott).

And in a similar vein, the Iraqi List, led by former CIA asset Iyad Allawi, said it is going to hold its own "investigation" to see what reasons caused eight of its members to unexpectedly attend the session and vote for the bill, when Allawi had clearly instructed the group to join the boycott. On the day following the vote, both the newspapers Azzaman and al-Hayat pointed the finger at these Iraqi List members as having tipped the balance in favor of passage.

Meanwhile, faced with an escalation in sectarian slaughter, the Political Council for National Security said it is in continuous session since Sunday and continuing for the coming days, in order to keep track of the situation. And the Ministry for National Dialogue said a meeting in the National Reconciliation series, this one supposed to bring together "political groups", scheduled for October 21, has been postponed until further notice for unspecified reasons. See the earlier post on Sept 19 for some notes on the earlier meetings in this series.

Saudi regimes backsliding ?

There are two indications Arab regimes are getting cold feet about the whole idea of punishing Hamas and Syria just because the US said they should.

I. Saudi cold feet ?

Saudi media report with implied approval the views of an Egyptian ally of Hamas.

A hard-line news-site based in Riyadh give a respectful hearing to the views of Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood leader Akef (quoting an interview with him in the Saudi newspaper al-Riyadh). The news-site notes Akef said the scheme to remove the legitimate Hamas government is no longer just a US-Zionist scheme, but has become an "international" one, led by the US. Akef says the Palestinian crisis is part of a "comprehensive US strategy to close down the Arab League and foment sectarianism and divisions in the region generally, and in particular the fomenting of civil war in Palestine". (The reference to shutting down the Arab League probably refers to the fact that Syria, an Arab League member, was excluded from the recent Cairo meeting of GCC plus Jordan plus Egypt foreign ministers). Akef said although the immediate threat is in Palestine, people should realize this has region-wide implications, (it is part of an "attack on the ummah as a whole") because of the overall US plan for fomenting sectarianism and divisions everywhere in the region. The summary in al-Riyadh quotes Akef as summarizing motives for the US-Israel led attack on Hamas as follows: It is because Hamas has failed to "throw itself into the embrace of the American policy, and doesn't act in accordance with the Washington agenda".

As for the Hamas strategy itself, Akef described it as based on the unity of the ummah, and protecting its collective powers from the depredations of the Americans, in conjunction with the fostering of a culture of resistance as the basic way of dealing with the Zionist threat. This probably refers to Hamas hard line on recognition of Israel, because of the idea that caving in would shatter the unity of the resistance.

It was only about a week ago that Mamoun Fandy, a writer close to the Saudi king, wrote in Asharq al Awsat (see the earlier post "Echoes of the Cold War..." on Oct 8) that both the Egyptian MB and the Palestinian Hamas are creatures of Iran, and tools for the destruction from within of the Arab state. It looked to me like the inauguration of a joint Saudi-American project to demonize those standing up to the US as Creatures of the Evil Axis (Persian section). But here we have a mainstream Saudi newspaper, Al-Riyadh, and even a hard-line website like Islammemo linked to above, quoting with implied approval the quite opposite views of the MB leader.

One possible explanation is that while there is no longer any real diversity of opinion in the Western press (where no news organization is allowed to express support for either Hamas or the MB, not to mention Hizbullah), perhaps the liberal diversity-of-views tradition lives on in Saudi Arabia.

II. Egyptian cold feet ?

And Egypt deviates from the isolate-Syria line.

The pan-Arab London-based daily Al-Hayat printed a lengthy piece about a quick unnanounced visit to Damascus of the Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman, said to have been in the context of Egyptian efforts to improve their relationship with Syria, bring the Assad administration back into the process of negotiating for a joint Israel-Palestian release of prisoners, and generally back into hoped-for discussions about a comprehensive settlement.

Citing unnamed sources, the journalist says Arab states represented at the Cairo meeting with Rice (where Syria was deliberately excluded) are now trying to smooth ruffled feathers. The Egyptians say Mubarak actually advised at that meeting against pressure on Syria and urged dialogue instead. Others said it was frankly a mistake to exclude Syria. And some pointed out you can't have a comprehensive regional peace agreement without Syria. If this friendship drive succeeds, the next step could be an Egypt-Syria summit, the journalist suggests.

"The Safavid apostates"

A videotape urging Bin Laden to fire the existing leadership of AlQaeda in Iraq, attributed to one Abu Osama al-Iraqiya, appeared on an internet site late last week (sponsored by something called "Qalama Haqq", about which, needless to say, nothing is known). A summary of the contents was published by Agence France Presse with a Dubai dateline, and the AFP account was reported by Al-Quds al-Arabi on its front page on Friday October 13. The tape was played on the Dubai-based Al-Arabiya TV. Reuters picked up the Al-Arabiya TV summary, and this appeared on the WaPo website, but then the story died, and today (Saturday October 14), Al-Quds al-Arabi reports, again on its front page, statements by an official representative of the Mujahideen Shura ("Advisory") Council in Iraq (said to be the foreign fighters' umbrella group), to the effect there is no truth to the tape, calling it a fabrication by "the crusaders and the renegade [or apostate] Safavids".

The speaker on the tape complained bitterly that the Iraqi AlQaeda organization had run amok, was killing prominent Sunni figures, was displacing Sunni families, and was generally alienating people to such an extent that some are saying they are actually making the task of the Crusaders and the renegades easier. The speaker also complained that the Iraqi AlQaeda leadership had ignored and rejected earlier strictures of Zawahiri in which he warned the then-head of AlQaeda in Iraq, Zarqawi, that he should work toward uniting Muslims rather than dividing them, referring particularly to Zarqawi's misguided policy of killing Shiites. The speaker on this tape implores Bin Laden: "You hold in your hand the keys to fitna; it is yours to open or to shut". The struggle in Iraq would continue, he assured Bin Laden, but you have to get rid of current leadership. (The imlication is that Zarqawi's successor, the current leader, hasn't done enough, and the drift to fitna is continuing).

Today's Al-Quds piece quotes someone called Abu Leith al-Muqaddasi from the "media committee of the Mujadideen Shura Council", who passed a message to Al-Quds al-Arabi that said "there is no basis in truth to the tape, which is a pure fabrication by the Crusaders and the renegade Safavids."

At about the same time as the appearance of this disputed tape, there also appeared a new tape from the Mujahideen Shura Council itself, announcing the formation of a new coalition of armed groups, incorporating also local Iraqi tribal leaders, in a clear attempt to underline its denial that there is any discord in the ranks at all.

So there you have it. From somewhere, either in the psych-op world or in the real world, the issue is raised: Foreign mujahideen in Iraq are killing people indiscriminately, including Shiites, and this will lead to fitna if something isn't done to stop it. The reply from the official umbrella group for foreign mujahideen: There isn't a problem, in fact this type of complaint is exactly what you would expect to hear from the the enemy, namely the Americans (the Crusaders) and the Iranian Shiites (the apostate Safavids).

There has been some sophisticated discussion in Al-Academiya about this issue, including a cameo appearance by the humble Badger to try and minimize the inevitable distortions, but unfortunately this petered out and the assembled experts apparently decided to go with Al-Quds al-Arabi for once in their lives and dismiss the tape as a hoax.

Fair enough. But what about this new description of the enemy as "Crusaders and Safavid apostates"? It isn't the "Zionist enemy" any more, it is the "Safavid apostates". This is a major departure. I've tried to indicate in earlier posts the way in which official Saudi thinking has shifted from an Israel-the-enemy to a race-based Persia-the-enemy position (posts dealing with texts by Mamoun Fandy and Ghassan al-Imam, starting with the Oct 8 post called "Signs of a latent Saudi-Israeli alliance to confront Iran") in line with the new Bush anti-Iran approach for the whole region.

What is at issue here is the conversion of Sunni-Shiite rivalry into a full-throated race-based anti-Persian campaign. Always a good idea to know what the issues are.

Iraqi federalism vote: Behind the contradictory numbers

The Iraqi parliament voted (Wednesday, October 11) 140 to nothing, in a more-or-less routine vote, to approve the federalism-procedures bill. Or did they? The New York Times said so. But the Iraqi paper Azzaman said the vote was 138 to nothing, the figure representing exactly one-half of the membership (275) plus one, moreover it said a lot of people thought there was something funny about the vote. Al-Mada, another Baghdad paper, agrees with Azzaman on both points. The pan-Arab al-Hayat, another standard source, says the vote was 148 on the yea side, out of 175 attending. And yes, says al-Hayat, there were indeed complaints about how it was done, quoting the leader of one of the opposition groups who said the whole procedure was a put-up job (mu'amara).

The Iraqi papers saw this as part of a fight for the soul of the country, and not a clean fight either. None of them has an integrated story about what happened, but they all, or most of them, say people saw lots of problems (of which the bizarre discrepancy in the numbers is only one indication).

First on the differences in the reported numbers. Al-Mada provides the only real leg-up for understanding this. Their reporter says Parliament Speaker Mashhadani ordered everyone but the parliamentarians themselves out of the chamber before the vote, including the members' staff; and he ordered the direct electronic transmission to the outside to be cut, creating a hermetically sealed environment for the voting. So journalists certainly didn't get a chance to count the votes. Why there wasn't at least an official tally afterwards, perhaps no one can tell us.

Azzaman says some people also questioned the legality of the voting procedure. Apparently the main complaint is that it took so long to pressure the necessary numbers to come in and vote (several hours), that the statutory period for this was exceeded.

Who voted (for the bill) and who didn't (by boycotting the session)? Reidar Visser, the meticulous authority people turn to in cases like this, describes the boycotters of the bill as follows:

The boycott was largely inter-sectarian and Iraqi nationalist: it united all the Sunni parties of both secularist and Islamist colours and Shiite nationalist–Islamists, primarily supporters of Muqtada al-Sadr, as well as the Fadila. At least one Turkmen representative also joined the main group of active boycotters, whose combined parliamentary strength is around 105 seats. Their objections range from virulent opposition to the principle of federalism (as seen among the Sunni groups), via preference for a system that would avoid sectarian federalism (Fadila; they also considered the adoption of the law at this time unhelpful to the process of national reconciliation) to rejection of federalism in a context of occupation (supporters of Muqtada-Sadr). A conspicuous common denominator for many of these factions is their background as the “domestic” resistance to the former regime – as opposed to those deputies who are returnees from exile.

And he describes the proponents of the bill as follows:

The principal backers of the bill were the Kurdish parties and the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), who together account for 88 seats. The balance of some 50 seats is believed to have come at least partly from Iyad Allawi’s secularist alliance of 25 representatives – whose principal figures reportedly took part in the vote (Hamid Musa, Mahdi al-Hafiz, Wail Abd al-Latif, Safiyya al-Suhayl and Mufid al-Jazairi have all been specifically mentioned). The remaining votes that were required – perhaps between 30 and 40 (an unspecified number of Allawi supporters protested against their leaders and stayed away from the vote) – must have come primarily from the “grey” middle segment of the Shiite United Iraqi Alliance (UIA), the 54 or so deputies who are neither SCIRI nor Sadrist and label themselves “independents” or come from one of the two main Daawa factions. Lately the Daawa faction called Tanzim al-Iraq has changed its traditionally anti-federal rhetoric, and with its party mouthpiece now attacking those who “reject federalism on the pretext of national unity” it is very likely that they are drifting towards a pro-SCIRI position. On this particular vote they may have been joined by some members of the main Daawa branch as well as by independents, but the numbers make is clear that there must have been additional Shiite resistance to the bill on top of the protests by Fadila and the main Sadrist faction – despite the fact that there was reportedly enormous pressure on deputies to turn up for the vote.

At the very least it is worth emphasizing Visser's main point (or one of them anyway), namely that the core of the opposition came from groups that had stayed in Iraq to resist the Saddam regime, while the proponents were by and large from the exile groups. People were not just voting about nice political-theory models.

This was by no means just another vote. Azzaman, in addition reporting allegations of illegality, and calling this a black day in the history of Iraq, quotes a Fadhila person who said this will mark the end of the latent and partial civil war, and the entry into open civil war. Azzaman actually points the finger at four members of the Allawi group (so-called Iraqi List) as responsible for tipping the balance, in a separate article headed in dramatic fashion "The four who changed history". The writer takes the trouble to name each of them, adding that they did this in the face of "vehement popular opposition" to the measure.

My point is that NYT reporting of this as a routine vote and another small step in the right direction, is about as misleading as it can be.

I was hoping for a more scientific verification of my hypothesis that foreign coverage in the New York Times is the voice of the State Department, but unfortunately the State Dept website hasn't issued its fatwa on this yet. Fearless prediction: They'll say the vote was 140 to nothing, no particular problems, rather a reflection of the strength of the Iraqi democracy.

Understanding the new Saudi-American ideology

Ghassan al-Imam is another weekly columnist at the Saudi-oriented Asharq al-Awsat newspaper, like Mamoun Fandy who was mentioned a couple of posts back. Like Fandy, he seems to be able to offer an authoritative rendition of current Saudi regime views, in broad outline, that is. Al-Imam's latest column dated Tuesday October 10, starts like this:

Following the jihadi Hizbullah war, the Arab order [meaning the big Arab regimes including Saudi Arabia] was frankly in a state of anxiety about national security, and pessimism about the future. The reason was the escalating wave of narrow-minded religion, and the political-chaotic exploitation of it by fundamentalists controlled by the brotherhood, the jihadi-hood, and the takfiiri-hood.

Notice the contemptuous lumping together of the Muslim Brotherhood (religiously inclusive) with the takfiiris (the opposite); the dismissal of the Hizbullah response to the Israeli attack as "jihadi"; and the outpouring of Arab-street admiration and support for Hizbullah as a reflection of "narrow-minded religion". (The word here means strict or puritanical or narrow-minded; some take the liberty of translating this as "extremist", making it sound more like Condi speaking).

Al-Imam goes on to explain the anxiety of Arab officialdom has been on the rise "since the return to power of the Khomeni revolutionaries, and their resumption of the export of the Shiite revolution to the Arabs, igniting a religious rising via their 'support' (Al-Imam's quotation marks) for the Palestinian cause, based on delaying any political settlement, and concocting losing confrontations whose price would be paid by Lebanon and the West Bank and Gaza".

Suspension by Israel and the US of the Palestinian peace process gave Iran a further chance to promote "emotion on the Arab street", and this provided further cover for its (Iran's) other aims, which included among other things "strengthening its agent regime in Iraq, financing and training militia and sending them to tear apart this Arab country (Iraq), and splitting it up according to the federalism project and (the project of) self-governing regions".

And what have the Arab regimes done about this? Nothing yet, says Al-Imam, citing general weakness and internal dissension as one reason. But he says there is a much more important reason for the lack of any anti-Iran response, and it is the following

The official Arab order has behaved, and still behaves, with self-flagellation and refutation of itself and of its future, and it has done this since the 70s of the previous century. Confronted with radical nationalism [he is talking about Nasser] and Marxism [probably talking about the Baath movement, although not really Marxists], they formed an alliance with the traditional religious-institutional order. [This traditional religious-institutional order], in the course of its religious instruction, was able to lay the groundwork and prepare the framework for a politicization, and a party-ization of religion. It built up missionary and other fundamentalist organizations that became politicized and narrow-minded. And from them in turn were hatched the so-called "jihadi" and takfiiri organizations, which are even more closed and more intolerant [actually "more takfiiri", meaning more inclined to excommunicate anyone outside their group].

In fact, it is pretty well accepted that this is in fact what the Saudi regime, at least, did in response to their fears about a nationalist-leftist upsurge in the 60s and 70s, then amplified with their support for jihad against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. What the Saudi regime is now saying, and this is amplified and explained by writers like Al-Imam and Fandy, is that this whole alliance with religion was a mistake. The "correct line" is no longer the state wrapped in the flag of religion. The correct line is now the state independent of religion. This is a huge 180-degree turn in Saudi ideology and policy. Fear of secular activism in the 70s led the Saudi regime to embrace religion as its ideology; now the fear of Hizbullah and others has led the Saudi regime to reverse course, renounce official religion, and embrace the secular state as its ideology. In both cases the Saudi policy nicely complements that of the US: Anti-communism in the 70s; neo-con demonization of religion-based activism in the new century. What is more virulent this time around is the fact that the animosity is more finely calibrated and has a racial component (race-based anti-Persian feelings on the Saudi side; generalized fear of Arab terror for the Americans); and the more-aggressive Bush "preemptive" approach in place of mere "containment".

Huwaydi's believe it or not

Fahmy Huweydi is a widely-read journalist, writing in many Arab newspapers, sometimes described as an intellectual and not an Islamist, a necessary remark, because people assume if anyone is widely-read in the region these days, he is probably an Islamist of some description. Huweydi isn't.

Writing in the Arab Emirates newspaper Al-Khaleej on Tuesday October 10, he underlines the dizzying changes in the region's political map since the Israel-Lebanon war, or really you should call them attempted or proposed changes, because he stresses what the US and Israel want isn't necessarily what will happen. The piece is headed "Coup in Arab Priorities and Alliances".

He opens with a long series of "who would have imagined" sentences, highlighting the weirdness of Arab regimes conniving in the starvation of Palestinians on the issue of recognition of Israel; the suddenness of the shift from hyping the Israeli threat to hyping the Iranian threat instead; the strangeness of the proposed Israel-Sunni coalition; and so on.

He then offers an encyclopedic account of the visible events of the last few weeks indicating what Washington was about. Shortly after the war, the US sent a senior person to Amman essentially to warn Abbas that he was under no circumstances to make a deal with Hamas for a national-unity government, otherwise his scheduled meeting with Bush would be cancelled. The reason for this was the creation of a new doctrine, namely the updated "axis of evil" which is to include Hamas (along with Hizbullah and Syria and Iran). Abbas was to hold off from any agreement to give time for pressure on Hamas to work its effects. Abbas complied. Following Abbas' Washington visit, there was another meeting, this one in Aquba, Jordan, including heads of the intelligence agencies of four Arab states, including Egypt and Jordan, along with the head of Shin Beit Yuval Diskin, Abbas and his intelligence chief, and others, to talk about the need for a hard line with Hamas on the issue of recognition of Israel, multilateral cooperation in areas including isolating Hizbullah, and in fighting "terror", particularly in Palestine. There was reportedly a reference to toppling the Hamas government.

Being a scrupulous man, Huwaydi notes that most of the above was first reported on October 3 and 4 by two newspapers, the new Lebanese paper Al-Akhbar, and Al-Quds al-Arabi. It was then picked up by many others. But there was never any follow-up, and there were never any denials from any of the parties, he notes.

Turning to Israel, Huweydi lists a whole sequence of statements by civil and military people in that country, laying out the new position, to the effect that Israel's survival in the face of the threat from Iran et al, cannot be assured on a go-it-alone basis, and that therefore friendly relations must be established with the "moderate" Arab regimes that traditionally side with the US. Part of the new line was the idea of a congruence between Israel and the Arab regimes in opposition to opposition movements like Hizbullah and Hamas. Huweydi calls attention to the fact that none of these statements said anything about how the Arab regimes were supposed to go about convincing their populations of this. He says an Israeli journalist asked Defence Minister Peretz: "Do you think raising the cry of 'fighting fundamentalist Islam' is a good way for the Arab regimes to convince their people to form an alliance with us?" Huweydi quotes Minister of Internal Security Avi Dichter to the effect no concessions to the Arab regimes are needed, "because their interests in this are the same as ours". In any event, that is the plan, and Huweydi adds: As it happens, these are Sunni regimes, thus supposedly well-configured for a confrontation with this alleged "Shiite crescent" threat.

Finally Huwaydi says "What does it all mean?" And his answer is this: What is being proposed to the Arab regimes and their populations is colossal. They are being asked to leave the Palestinians to be dealt with "internally" by Israel, abandoning them in order to stand shoulder to shoulder with Israel in confrontation with Iran. In the final analysis, he says, the Arab regimes are being asked to give up the claims deriving from their Arab and Islamic identities, in order to integrate themselves into this US-Israeli grouping. He concludes: "Condoleeza Rice, on her latest trip, was no doubt distributing to the various parties membership-forms for this new 'Israeli-Sunni-Moderate' alliance. Believe it or not."

Echoes of the Cold War in the current Saudi world-view

Mamoun Fandy writes opinion pieces for Asharq al-Awsat, the Saudi-funded pan-Arab newspaper based in London, and the fact he is close to Saudi king Abdullah bin Abdulaziz (see prior post) gives us a chance to try and understand the Saudi regime's current worldview. A good place to start is his piece on the "triangle of destruction" (meaning destruction of "modern Arab states") in Asharq al-Awsat for Monday Oct 2, 2006. Main points can be summarized as follows:

There are three sides to this triangle. First there is American pressure for democratic change. This is potentially destructive of Arab state and civil institutions, but it is in the final analysis merely pressure "from the outside", meaning there isn't any real internal constituency.

More serious is the second side of this triangle, and this is the pressure from inside Arab states for breakup, examples including Hizbullah in Lebanon, Hamas in Palestine, and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. All of these movements are created and fostered by Iran. Some might say the MB is Sunni so it isn't controlled from Iran, but this isn't true, Fandy says, as people understand who observe all the trips the Egyptian MB people take to Iran. Same the visits to Tehran by Hamas leaders. This laser-like focus on Iran as the sole cause of these movements is startling. In fact Fandy calls this the "Iranian project to destroy the Arab state from within." For me it reads like a throwback to the Cold War days when McCarthyites and others attributed any progressive movement at all to meddling by Moscow. At the very least, it suggests an extremely Iran-centered focus to the current Saudi mentality.

The third side of this "triangle of destruction" is what Fandy calls in a negative way the "dialogue of cultures" movement. The cartoons, the Pope, and other hot topics are taken up not on a nation-by-nation basis, but as cultural issues, with the undesirable outcome that Islamists like Qardawi and Turabi, and Egyptian MB leader Akef come to be regarded as spokesmen for all of the Arab or Islamic world, when they are not. In fact they come to regard themselves as "substitute leaders", substitutes, that is, for the legally constituted state. Moreover, what is more dangerous still, is that issues and problems that are issues of civil law between nations, have a tendency to be regarded in the "dialogue of civilations" light, and thus to become "Islamized" when they are not religious issues at all but secular issues. Thus we hear demonstrators in Cairo calling out the name of Ahmedinejad, and demonstrators in Sudan calling out the name of Nasrullah. Young Moroccans go to Iraq to participate in struggle together with the "Association of Muslim Scholars". Issues that originally were civil and secular issues are in these ways Islamized. And Fandy adds quite suggestively, even the issue of nuclear bombs is Islamized. This latter expression indicates one of the clear motives here. Iran is Islamic, so this tendency to "Islamizing" of issues, in addition to undermining the state generally, more particularly works against the idea of Iran as the enemy.

This little essay by an intellectual close to the king shows the overall anxiety: The state is being undermined from three directions at the same time. By the United States via demands for "reform"; by Iran via the fostering of internal movements to split the society from within; and finally by the whole "dialogue of civilations" movement, which encourages people to think in terms of an irrelevant Islamic unity at the expense of a focus on the legally-constituted institutions of the state.

Signs of a latent Saudi-Israeli alliance to confront Iran

Israeli Prime Minister Olmert held a lengthy secret meeting with highly-placed members of the Saudi royal family during mid-September, according to reports in the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahrunoth on Sept 25. The reports said the meeting had the approval of the US, and was triggered by growing Saudi anxiety about Iran as a military threat. The Israeli newspaper called this an historic development in the Israeli-Saudi relationship. Saudi and Israeli officials officially denied the reports of the meeting, and officials in Jordan (later reported as the country where the meeting was held) have denied the Jordanian king helped arrange the meeting. But there seems to be a consensus in the media that the meeting did occur, and big question being which side leaked the report and why.

Abdul Bari Atwan of Al-Quds al-Arabi offers the following solution to the puzzle.

Starting a few months ago, there have been the following early indicators of a progressive Saudi approach to Israel:

(1) Prince Turki bin Faisal, Saudi ambassador to the US, gave an interview to an Israeli newspaper at the spring 2006 meeting of the Davos group in Sharm el Sheikh, in which he offered Olmert advice on how to settle with the Palestinians. Then about a month later, he made a widely-publicized statement advising the Palestinians to adopt the tactics of Mahatma Gandhi, and to give up armed resistance.

(3) In July, there was the surprising initial criticism by Saudi Arabia of Hizbollah for triggering the problem by taking the Israeli soldiers, without any criticism of Israel, even though it was bombing Beirut and other Lebanese targets at the time. Olmert publicly priased the Saudis for saying this, noting it was the first time that an Arab regime had backed Israel in a war.

(4) The BBC, in a late-August edition of its NewsNight TV program, broadcast a taped report that included remarks by Mamoun Fandy, a writer (and columnist for Atwan's competitor Asharq al-Awsat newspaper) who is close to the Saudi king and sometimes described as an adviser to the Saudi king. Fandy said there was a meeting in Washington July 23 (during he war) that included in addition to Rice and Bush, the following three: Saud bin Faisal the Saudi Foreign Minister; Turki bin Faisal the ambassador to the US; and Prince Bandar bin Sultan, former ambassador to the US, and now head of the Saudi national security council. Fendi said one of these three authorized him to repeat the following parts of the discussion, namely that the Saudis told Bush that the Mideast country that has historically offered the most valuable services to their country has been Israel, citing its role in the defeat of major Saudi enemies Gamal Abdul Nassar in the 1967 war; Saddam Hussein via their lobbying in support of the US attack; and their current efforts against Hizbullah, "also a bitter enemy" of Saudi Arabia. The other remark was that Saudi Arabia and the Bush administration are "on the same page" as far as the current regional state of affairs is concerned, a clear reference to targeting the current main Saudi adversary Iran.

So the September meeting between Olmert and members of the Saudi royal family in Amman was a logical development of this relationship of latent Saudi-Israeli alliance, the escalation in the relationship being a reflection of growing Saudi anxiety about Iran as a military threat.

Atwan thinks that makes the question of who leaked the news relatively easy to solve. The Saudis have always relied on absolute secrecy where details of their cooperation with the US has been concerned, for instance with respect to logistical help in the attack on Iraq. It is a fixed characteristic of the way they operate. The Israelis, on the other hand, to use Atwan's expression, have always preferred, when Arab states "come looking for love, that the relationship be a legal and an open one." This tactic of secret meetings followed by disclosure is one they have followed with any number of other Arab regimes, and the situation is no different here.

Food for thought

Asharq al Awsat, Saturday Oct 7, prints a summary of the Ellen Knickmeyer piece in the Washington Post of Friday, talking about conversions of Syrian Sunni individuals to Shiism, a result of their admiration for the performance of Hizbullah in the Israel-Lebanon war. The only identifier of the source of this is Knickmeyer's name in the byline; it is presented as a straight news story.

There are sixteen comments appended to the article, many from readers in Saudi Arabia, but also some from other Arab countries and from Arab readers in Europe as well. The comments are mixed. Those that welcome the phenomenon generally take the position this shows the secondary nature of the sect-differences, the important thing being Muslim unity, one stressing also the idea that the historical roots of Shiism in Egypt and the Levant, going back to the Fatamid kingdom in the twelfth centure or thereabouts, are still a factor to be considered.

What I would like to highlight is the nature of the negative reactions to this phenomenon. Some of it is religious in nature (for instance, that those converting are of a weak faith, and the strong should pray for them). But by and large those expressing a militant concern about this phenomenon do so on racial and geopolitical grounds. Here is how one commenter put it:

When King Abdullah II of Jordan warned of a Shiite Safavid crescent there were those who enraged, and there were those who laughed, and when Egyptian president Mubarak spoke about the control of the Safavid sect in Iran and the world was upset. It is incumbent upon the Arab nation, which has been so long silent in the face of Syria's throwing itself into the welcoming arms of the Farsi Safavids on the day when Iraq is preoccupied with fighting off the Farsi ambitions at the eastern gate of the Arab world--It is incumbent, I say, to remove this Safavid thorn [lest it] work the destruction of the entire edifice of the Arab world, which God forbid, unless God corrects us with an historic and an effective leader, and I pray that from among those who govern us there will be one who can stand in that place. It is more than necessary. And God is our help.

I cite this not as a scientific sampling of opinion, but merely to introduce readers to the language of the hardcore Iran-at-the-gates psychology, bearing in mind that this Iran-threat psychology is precisely what the new Bush administration is trying to foster in the ranks of its Sunni-regime allies.

Bush rallies the troops

There was a front-page piece in the Wednesday Oct 4 edition of Yedioth Ahrunoth, apparently reporting the following: (1) A "secret report" that Olmert has seen describes Bush as having told European governments that this is not the time to renew negotiations with Syria, and repeating to them the Bush meme to the effect Syria "knows what it has to do". (2) In the last few days there has been a sharply worded note from Bush to the Israelis warning them against resumption of any negotiations with Syria, particularly on the Golan Heights issue, because any talks would only embolden the Syrian regime in its rearmament of Hizbullah. (3) The newspaper report added that Bush told the Europeans that they must adopt a tougher approach to potential arms shipments to Hizbullah via Syria. Israel, Bush told the Europeans, cannot stand idly by, and could take matters into its own hands via military attacks on such shipments.

This is really a reconstruction of the YA story, which is in Hebrew (which I don't read), and which isn't included in the English-language items that appear on the paper's YNetnews.com website. So far I have seen summaries of the story in only three places, two in Arabic, namely Al-Hayat, al-Manar, and a two-sentence summary in English in an obscure Israeli site called Israelnationalnews.com. The above is a composite from those reports. (I found the latter two thanks to a commenter on the SyriaComment blog.)

Clearly the gist of the YA piece is that Bush is warning Israel and the European governments off any resumption of any talks with Syria, and in a nifty Rovian-wedge move, warning the Europeans that if they don't toe the line the result could be Israeli military action, while warning the Israelis that if they talk to Syria the result would be increased arms shipments to Hizbullah.

I don't know why the story hasn't been picked up anywhere in the West.

One particularly important point is the Bush reference to possible Israeli strikes on "arms shipments" in this pre-US-election month (aka the month of the "October surprise").

Another is the illustration of how Bush has gone about attempting to close the allied ranks in his new "moderate versus extremist regimes" strategy.

(Yedioth Ahrunoth has a good reputation for news-accuracy so far as I know. For instance it is still elaborating on the story it broke late last month about a meeting between Olmert and high-ranking people in the Saudi royal family. If you don't read Hebrew but have some Arabic, the latest installment is summarized in Al-Quds today, Friday Oct 6).

Anti-Shiite measures in Jordan: First fruits of the new Bush strategy?

Jordanian newspaper Al-Ghad published on Wednesday October 4 on its front page an analytical piece that said Jordanian authorities say they are starting to become worried about the growth of Shiism in that country, even though the writer admits there aren't more than a few hundred actual Jordanian Shiites, and as the writer also notes, many if not most Jordanians don't even understand the difference between a Shiite and a Sunni.

The "concerns" are said to be based, first of all, on connections between Hamas and Jordanian members of the Muslim Brotherhood [implied connection to Shiite Iran, I guess], secondly on the fact thousands of refugee Iraqi Shiites are settling in Amman, and finally on the street-popularity of Lebanese Hizbullah leader Nasrullah, and the risks of street-reactions in the event there were trouble with Iran in connection with the US pressure on that country. The writer also says the authorities say they have noticed an upswing in religious Shiite evangelism in recent years.

Jordanian experts say the government has been compiling a data-base of Iraqi Shiites in Amman, noting some dangerous connections to Iran. The Iraqi immigrant Shiites and native Jordanian Shiites are also checked to guard against any religious proselytizing, and anyone found doing so is expelled from the country immediately. The religious "concerns" apparently date back a few years; the "political Shiism" factor is new.

I would appear from all of this that one way of the other, if you are a Shiite in Jordan, you can expect to be under surveillance or worse. This is the first time in history that the Jordanian regime has taken Shiism to be in any way dangerous.

Could this be one of the ugly harbingers of the new Bush campaign to gather the Sunni Arab regimes together to fight the Iranian-Hizbollah (Shiite) menace? Williams College professor Marc Lynch, who highlighted this piece on his blog, says the thought occurred to him, not in so many words, of course.

NYT: Voice of the State Department

People talk about degrees of state control of media in some Arab countries, but what about trying this kind of analysis in the United States?

Put today's (Wed Oct 4) articles on the Rice mission in the Washington Post and the New York Times down side by side, and maybe you'll see what I mean. The WaPo piece said the eight Arab foreign ministers with whom Rice met in Cairo "rebuffed" her plan to form a united front against Syria and others. They rejected her proposal "bluntly". She came under "friendly but firm pressure" to produce results not just words on Palestine. That is about the way independent Arab media saw it. (One example, from the Iraqi newspaper Azzaman, where the gist of the story is that the Jordanian and the Egyptian foreign ministers both told Ms Rice in no uncertain terms that establishment of a Palestinian state has to be the first priority; and the Egyptian minister explicitly rejects the idea of a new "axis" against Syria and others).

The NYT on the other hand, reports on the trip from another planet entirely. The entire piece is taken up with Ms Rice's often-repeated words of concern and hope for Palestine, and it doesn't even mention the fact that she has been proposing a united front to confront Syria and others, let alone that she was rebuffed. This is exactly the official Saudi-media presentation of the issue. (An example from the Saudi newspaper Al-Jazirah, where the Saudi foreign minister celebrates the solution of the Palestine-Israel issue as something that will have beneficial effects all over the region. In other words, what Rice said for her newspaper, the NYT, is exactly what the Saudi minister is saying for his newspapers).

Let's take it as a reasonable working hypothesis that the NYT, in its foreign coverage, is the voice of the State Department. I think this could help sort some of the daily confusion, because unfortunately a lot of people start the day with the NYT, but not everyone realizes they are in effect reading State Dept press releases, just the same as Saudi readers are taking in the official Saudi version (which in this case seems to be identical).

Phantom US Senate Delegation in Baghdad

A US Senate delegation headed by Armed Services Committee chairman John Warner arrived in Baghdad on Monday, according to Iraqi newspapers, and had talks with Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki. NYT, reporting on Iraqi events later Monday, ignored the visit of the Americans, or didn't know about it.

(It isn't clear whether this is the same US congressional delegation that a Kuwaiti newspaper said was due to visit Beirut in mid-October to talk about federalism for Lebanon and other startling topics. (See the posting below headed "Al-Seyassah: US congressional delegation to discuss federalism for Lebanon and/or military escalation").

Maliki told Senator Warner during their meeting Monday that the Iraqi government's programs are on track, making particular mention of the National Reconciliation project. Malaki added that the US election campaign is having the effect of accenting the negative in Iraq, but he is not discouraged by this. The Warner delegation's arrival had been delayed from Sunday because of security concerns.

The Iraqi newspaper Al Sabah said on Tuesday October 3 that Malaki met in Baghdad on Monday with a US Senate delegation led by Armed Services Committee chairman John Warner. The delegation was scheduled to arrive in Iraq on Sunday, but their arrival was delayed until Monday for security reasons, explains another Iraqi newspaper Al Mada (about halfway down that big multi-item web-page, the item headed "Istaqbal wafdan al Congress..."). There isn't a lot of information on what was said. Al Mada says nothing about the contents of the discussion.

Al Sabah says Malaki "outlined the security situation, the efforts in the fight against terror, and the prospects for political development, with particular reference to the progress that is being made in the National Reconciliation."

After outlining what he said was progress in the development and performance of the Iraqi armed forces, Malaki added this: " The atmosphere of electoral competition in the United States constitutes pressure in the direction of minimizing the positive aspects of the Iraqi experience and shining the spotlight on the negative. Still, this picture doesn't diminish our confidence that the direction we are going is a positive direction..." and that "terror and the militias" will come to an end.

The newspaper says Warner confirmed the confidence of the United States in Maliki's ability "to lead Iraq to safe ground, confront the terrorist challenge, and realize the aims of the Iraqi people."

Al Mada, while it didn't have any information on the contents of Maliki's meeting with Warner, it did however outline the contents of another interesting meeting. The newspaper says Maliki met with deputy premier Tariq al-Hashimi, Accord president Adnan Dulaimi and another Accord leader, with representatives of the main elements of the UIA (Sadrist, Daawa, SCIRI and Badr) also attending. The report says all participants expressed extreme anxiety about the security situation, and all agreed on the immediate need for rebuilding the bridges of confidence and trying to restore normalcy. The report says they agreed on a number of measures that need to be taken immediately, and some are expected to be announced within a few hours (within a few hours of the newspaper's Monday night deadline, presumably).

SUBSEQUENT NOTE: Good old Yahoo news. It seems Detroit-area papers carried an AP story on Tuesday that quoted Carl Levin (he's from there), ranking Democratic member of the Armed Services Committee, accompanying Warner on this trip, and said the other two members of junket were Mark Pryor (R) and Jeff Sessions (D). The story could have been on the travel page. None of them said anything of note. It is a five-day trip, and they will now visit Israel before returning home. So I guess this isn't the same delegation that will reportedly be visiting Beirut around the middle of the month to talk about federalism for Lebanon.

Significant political timing in Baghdad coup allegations

There was a whole series of surprising announcements in Baghdad on the weekend, causing Azzaman to run a full-page headline on Monday on "Baathist plans for a coup d'etat", backed up by charges by Sadrist Shiite parliament-member Araji to the effect a vice-president and a deputy-premier have both been involved in terror (not naming them, but indicating there are two of each, and there wasn't any question he was referring to the Sunnis in each case, namely vp Tariq al-Hashimi; and vice-premier al-Zobaie).

Al-Hayat, for its part, led with statements by national security adviser Rubaie (Shiite) to the effect the authorities had arrested an al-Qaeda person who "confessed" that he was involved with one of the bodyguards of Irqai Accord leader Dulaimi (Sunni) in a plot to bring in a lot of wired cars, including into the Green Zone; and just for completeness Rubaie said the bodyguard in quesiton had "confessed" to this plot as well. Al-Hayat also reported the accusations by Araji noted above, but in a more skeptical way, noting only that he didn't name them, nor did he indicate any evidence.

Al-Hayat notes that there is interesting political timing. Today (Monday October 2) is the day scheduled for second-reading of the federalism bill. There had been a move by some Sadrists and other Shiites to band together with Sunni groups in opposition to this (being both more of the "nationalist" than of the "federalist" persuation). Al-Hayat notes that the events of the weekend put this alliance in jeopardy, particularly considering the sweeping denunciations by the Sadrist Araji of the main Sunni group in parliament (the Accord Front). Araji went so far as to say that the Accord Front was exploiting its relationship with the Sadrists to provide support to the "takfiiris" (Sunni extremists who consider Shiites heretics and try to kill as many of them as possible). And Araji said the whole National Reconciliation process is a sham.

On the other side of this, Al-Hayat quotes in detail remarks by an Accord member warning against letting these statements lead to a complete break in the relationship between Sunnis and Shiites in the political process, considering that a lot of what Araji said was based on inaccuracies, and in any event there isn't any evidence for any of it.

(There is one part of this that only Azzaman and not Al-Hayat reports, and that is that last week there were Baath-related websites indicating "comprehensive" preparations for a coup, including nicknames of the leaders, said to be persons of high rank in the former regime; and including "code" involving instructions for various of the old-regime security and military units to start carrying out specific tasks once the order was given to begin the struggle. Azzaman notes there isn't any independent authentication of this, saying only that a government person assured the reporter than anything like this on the web is analyzed and dealt with, you shouldn't think it is just being ignored.)

What exactly is the "missing link" here, missing that is from the Western coverage of this?

It is the context. Iraq currently has a coalition Shiite/Sunni government, with a project for National Reconciliation. Just on the eve of second-reading of the federalism bill (an important milestone in the debate between the federalists and the "nationalists", for want of a better term), there is this series of announcements that could blow apart, not only the Reconciliation scheme, but the whole idea of coalition government at the center. The Western headlines about "Shiite calls for a cabinet shake-up" don't really get to the point of all of this, leaving readers bewildered by lists of seemingly random acts of violence, obscuring even the major polical guideposts.

The Rice Doctrine: Will Arab regimes buy into the new story?

Joseph Samaha, in a two-part series in Al-Akhbar, on Saturday and Sunday September 29 and 30, explains the latest version of the US State Department's Grand Scheme for the Middle East.

Citing a Sept 15 policy speech by Rice's right-hand man Philip Zelikow, as well as the recent Rice press-interviews, Samaha says the new scheme is as follows: In order to face up to the alliance of "extremists" (Syria, Iran, Hamas, Hizbullah) there needs to be an alliance of "moderates", which would include, in addition to the US and the main European countries, the following: Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, the Siniora government in Lebanon--and Israel. Samaha underlines the fact this is the first time the US has tried to put Israel side by side with the big Arab regimes in its Middle East strategy. And this is in fact the first issue that has to be dealt with, because there is a risk that such a role for Israel could destablize some of the "moderate" regimes. Something has to be done about that, and that something is of course related to the issue of Palestine.

Quoting from the Zelikow speech, Samaha says the idea is to implant in the Arab regimes a "feeling" (actually I guess he said "a sense") that there will be progress on the Palestine issue, and a "view" to the effect that the parties will "trying" sustain such a policy. Samaha underlines "feeling" and "view" and "trying" to point up the fact that the US isn't proposing anything actually be done along those lines; it is a question of perceptions. And events since the Zelikow speech confirm that. But that is what Rice will be marketing to the "moderate" Arab regimes this week, and Samaha says it will be amusing to observe the chattering of the regimes and their controlled news media, to the effect that a solution to the Palestinian crisis is upon us, and the only thing standing in the way is the eradication of the extremists. His implicit point being that the regimes and their populations are all too familiar with this marketing of illusions, and welcoming will be formal and superficial. That is the short version of the Samaha articles.

(Samaha doesn't discuss this, but it is useful to remember by way of background, how different the latest Grand Scheme for the Middle East is from the prior Grand Scheme, which was the promotion of democratic reforms in the region, starting with Iraq).

With respect to the recent Israel-Hizbullah war, Samaha, who is Lebanese, underlines the absurdity of the US marketing strategy in the following way. Essentially the new schema or template for all Mideast conflict and all wars is "extremists versus moderates", so the Lebanon war was "really" between the aggressor Hizbullah, acting for the extremists, and the moderate regime of PM Sinoira.

(Israel, according to the recent Rice briefings, was merely helping to establish an "appropriate environment" for a victory of the moderates. Analogously, in Palestine currently, the Israeli "assistance" is taking the form of an economic blockade designed to show that the extremist Hamas is unfit to govern.)

The funny thing is, Samaha writes, that to those of us who lived through the war, it seemed as if the bombing and other destruction was being carried out by the Israelis, not by Hizbullah. On New Authorized view, we are supposed to think of this as having been an Arab-Arab war between moderates and extremists. His point: This might be a little hard to sell.

On the more general question of "distribution of roles" in the new US scheme, Samaha notes that the role of the Arab regimes will be secondary (presumably things like providing military bases, post-war cleanup, and so on), while the Israeli role will be primary, so there is the question how that will sit with the Arab regimes. Similarly, the scheme calls for the big, dictatorial Arab regimes (including Saudi Arabia and Egypt) to step in and assist the smaller-but-democratic Arab regimes (Lebanon and Iraq), so that too is a potential fault-line. For instance, assistance to Lebanon and Iraq is based on the idea of cleaning up after the Israeli and American violence, not perhaps the most attractive concept.

But the main point, as noted above, is that marketing of this scheme depends on the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow: A satisfactory Palestinian settlement. Will the Arabs believe in it?

The US administration, Samaha says, is hoping that the shock of the Israel-Lebanon war will have caused the Arab regimes to "wake up" to threats posed by the extremists, overcoming any concern or skepticism on the Palestine issue.

You can read the Zelikow speech here, but I suggest it would be quicker and easier to learn Arabic and read the Samaha version. The Zelikow language is very tough if you don't know the insider jargon. Or you could skim. Samaha concentrates on Zelikow's "Section X, Israel and its Neighbors".