Two different kinds of "rejection"

AlHayat, which has the most comprehensive account of the treaty story this morning, begins its story, headed "Shiia-Sunni unity in rejection of the treaty..." this way:

Political and religious currents came together yesterday in rejection of the proposed Iraq-US treaty, considering it "an infringement on sovereignty" and "binding future generations"; and observers stressed that the latest version includes text relating to the establishment of 400 locations and bases [for the American forces], exemption [from Iraqi legal process] for American soldiers and citizens, and elimination of any responsibility [on the American side] for participation in the rebuilding of Iraq.

In the course of the article, the journalist goes on to underline the difference between two types of "rejection": Absolute rejection of any treaty being arrived at under the US occupation--in other words, linkage of treaty-rejection to a demand for actual troop-withdrawal--by the Sadrists and the Sunni resistance (he quotes from a statement by the Political Office for the Iraqi Resistance which describes the proposal as "a gift of something by those who do not own it, to those who do not deserve it") on the one side, and the conditional rejection of particular points by the GreenZone politicians on the other.

The journalist stresses that the objections attributed to the Supreme Council, and likewise to the Islamic Party of Iraq, are objections to particular clauses only, and he notes: "These protests [by Hakim and Hashemi respectively] have not stopped the Iraqi Foreign Ministry from announcing that the negotiations will be continued; and informed sources said Crocker has informed the Iraqi politicians that the US rejects holding a general referendum on the clauses of the agreement adding that it would be bad if Iraq were unable to exit from Clause 7" (of the UN charter, which governs the current status of US forces in the country).

It is worth noting that both the Sunni politician Hashemi and the Shiite politician Hakim are on the same page in this, both saying they reject certain terms proposed by the Americans, but both part of the government that is willing to continue the negotiations. This is contrary to the suggestion that the NYT is still trying to convey, namely that there is a sectarian division involved in this:

But there are many Iraqi politicians who support the negotiations, including Sunni leaders who view an American military presence as a bulwark against what they fear could be an attempt by Shiite leaders backed by Iran to renew a sectarian grab for Baghdad and the mixed areas around the capital.

Failing to note at the same time that Shiite leaders like Hakim and Maliki also support the negotiations, and the decisive point is not Sunni versus Shiia, but rather that if the US forces were to leave, the result would be to threaten the toppling of the current ruling group--Sunni and Shiia alike--by nationalists--also Sunni and Shiia alike.

The other potentially misleading part of today's news is the idea that Sistani is determined that there should be a national referendum on any such treaty or agreement, and since a referendum would certainly lose, that he is in effect against any such agreement. AlHayat, which has staked out a position in this by reporting previously that sources close to Sistani said he was bound and determined there will have to be a referendum, today acknowledges that Sistani's representative in Karbala didn't mention the referendum idea in his Friday-sermon comments on the issue:

[Sistani's] representative in Karbala didn't touch on the issue of a referendum in his Friday sermon yesterday, but he stressed that the marja'iyya is "attentive to what is being planned," and he said it is "desirous of getting Iraq out of Chapter 7, which it has been in since the beginning of the decade of the 90s..."

which is about as ambiguous as you can get.

Moreover, according to a SupremeCouncil website, another cleric in the Sistani group, Sheikh Sadreddin Qubanji, said in his Friday sermon at a major Najaf place of worship that the people reject any agreement that doesn't protect the complete sovereignty and interests of Iraq.

However, he stressed that this rejection does not go to the root of the agreement, as is being propagated in channels of communication outside of Iraq to the effect that this is the selling of Iraq to America....The Imam urged those in authority in Iraq and outside of Iraq to study the agreement carefully, and to respect the views of Iraqis, and not to launch emotional images and generalities against them, and to be objective in disussions of this matter.

And later on he said any agreement would have to respect certain basic principles:

and these are: national sovereignty and avoiding any infringement of it; participation of all political entities in the writing of the clauses; that it be clear and transparent; that it respect the will of the Iraqi people; and the need to expose it to Parliament, to the people, and to the religious marja'iyya."

To me this does not read like a radical insistence on submitting any agreement to a national referendum. Moreover, the reference to foreign media exaggerations, and the need to be calm and objective, suggests a degree of concern about being railroaded. (Which does not, of course, alter the fact that close scrutiny by Sistani's circle certainly adds to the problems the Americans are going to have in trying to carry out what was originally supposed to be a quiet wink-and-a-nod perpetuation of their control over the country).

Another point that calls out for comment this morning is that the Bush administration and the right generally do not appear to have a strategy for dealing with the problem of having this in the spotlight. For instance, last Tuesday it was reported that US officials were telling Iraqi authorities to hurry up and reply to charges (in Nasrullah's speech) that the GZ politcal process is a sham, and to assert that it is purely Iraqi and that the politicians are completely autonomous. Finally, yesterday, President of the Republic Talabani went ahead and enunciated this as a reply to Nasrullah, at a time when people are no longer focused not on Nasrullah but on the US-Iraq treaty.

And it appears the US info-ops machine has nothing substantive to say about the broad Iraqi opposition to the treaty, except to split hairs by saying it isn't a treaty, only a "status of forces agreement" and a "strategic framework agreement", and to insist there isn't any demand for "permanent" bases (without saying what "permanent" means) or fixed troop-levels (in other words, without touching on the issue of uncontrolled troop-presence, troop-movements, powers of "arrest" without reference to Iraqi legal proceedings, exemption of Americans from Iraqi law, and so on).

The reason for this info-ops failure is plain to see. The argument they are mobilized to make has always been that without a US troop-presence there would be civil war (and as noted above, the NYT took a half-hearted stab at keeping this theme alive), but the Sunni-Shiia politial unanimity in opposition to the treaty makes this a harder argument to make. So they are stuck.

Americans, for their part, are trained at being kept in the dark on any kind of "national security" topics like this, so that the theme of absolute secrecy surrounding the talks, a key point for the Iraqis, doesn't even seem to be an issue in the English-language media.

Sunni resistance spokesman: Let us all stand against this, each in his own way

The Association of Muslim Scholars of Iraq, headed by Harith al-Dhari, the most important single spokesman for the Sunni resistance, issued a statement today that it introduced as follows: "The long-term agreement with the American occupation will have no weight with the Iraqi people, and the nationalist forces will take it upon themselves to reply to those responsible, and to hold to account those who are involved in it, and without a doubt there will be a new price to pay in the blood of pious martyrs"--but that ends with a call to every anti-occupation segment of Iraqi society to participate in resisting this move, each in whatever way they can.

The statement opens with a description of those who are negotiating this agreement as "the five-party pact", referring to the two main Kurdish parties, the Supreme Council, Dawa, and the Islamic Party of Iraq--

whom the occupation has polished and presented to the world as the representatives of Iraq, but they represent no one but themselves, and that small group that is with them and with the occupation, pressing ever forward to carry out these agreements, to the extent that the ambassador Crocker goes to Najaf and boasts, announcing in his sly and scummy way, that it is the government of Iraq that is requesting the forming of this agreement. But their efforts are already exposed and widely understood, as a presentation of Iraq to the enemy on a plate of gold, just so that they can retain their positions and their privileges...

The two sides have put up a cordon of secrecy and silence around these talks, so that they can arrive at the document they want without any particular effort.

With that as factual background--the narrowness of the group that is involved in this, the secrecy, and the lack of any popular input or support--the statement turns to the question of legitimacy.

Now everyone knows that Iraq in its current condition is not able to be a counterparty capable of negotiating with any other country in the world, and so it is natural that this will be to the benefit of the United States of America, and that Iraq will lose much of its sovereignty, and its independence, and its wealth.

This agreement, inevitably, will mean the military, economic, and cultural hegemony of the American occupation, which it aims to impose through a long remaining period of occupying the land of the two rivers, under a variety of names, and using a various phony legal pretexts, taking the appearance of this long-term agreement between two countries, but whose essence is: American protectorate over Iraq.

But in any event this agreement will have no weight [or importance] for the people of Iraq, and the nationalist forces will see to the reply delivered to the owners of this process, and will hold to account those who are implicated in it. This will undoubtedly involve a new price in the blood of pious martyrs. And those who sign this agreement will bear their burden, and they will pay their price.

Clearly the uncompromising argument and the menacing tone are a little different from what Sadr's statements convey by way of demonstrations, explanations and softer force. But this AMSI statement concludes with a unifying call:

Our Iraqi people, and all of the political and social and tribal forces that stand up to the occupation and resist its presence--all are urged--today-- to express their anger and their disgust in all the ways that are available to them, and to send messages of denunciation and clear statements of opposition and refusal of the taking such a step, because "the arrow does not return to the bow", and "oppression is the worst pasture (?)"

A radical Sunni argument against the treaty

A Sunni member of parliament by the name of Omar al-Jabburi (described as a member of the Arab Bloc for National Dialog*) said he opposes the proposed treaty with the United States because in order to be sound and binding, an agreement would have to be between two parties each with an independent will, and as long as the American occupation continues, that cannot be said of any Iraqi government. The remarks are reported as follows by Aswat al-Iraq:

"Iraq is still a country under occupation, and consequently it is one of those countries that lacks political stability and security, and consequently any pact arrived at in these difficult circumstances will be deemed to be not agreed to. We fear that [any such pact] would have negative effects on the future and on the independence of Iraq." He added, "For us to be sure of the soundness of the security agreement, it would have to be arrived at between two independent wills, and we are convinced that the Iraqi will, under the continuation of the occupation, is not present. And therefore we fear for the good relations [of Iraq] with its Arab and regional environment, as long as such an agreement were to continue".

This is a fairly radical rejection of the treaty proposal, because it says no matter how the approval-process is handled in a technical sense, no Iraqi agreement can be considered authentic as long as the country is occupied by a foreign army. (This echoes in a partial way the earlier Sunni-resistance argument that no political structures set up under the occupation are valid, and the whole political process should start over one the occupiers have left). Naturally, it remains to be seen how widely this line of argument will be taken up by the various Sunni organizations.

_____________

* I am not sure if this is Alyan's group or that of Saleh al-Mutlaq. They were originally one group, their names are very similar and often confused, and I'm not sure there is a lot of policy-difference between them. Mutlaq led the Sunni parties at the negotiations on the 2005 constitution, and he opposed its ratification, arguing that the federalism provisions represented a threat to national unity.

Basra paper: Secrecy about the contents of the treaty reminds us of 1948

The Basra newspaper AlMannara, reporting on news earlier this week that said the government intends to continue these negotiations, had this to say:

It is worth mentioning that the Iraqi people, up to now, know nothing about the course of these negotiations on an important agreement that could bind Iraq forever, because Iraqi politicians don't think it necessary to inform people about the details of these negotiations, in spite of the fact that this agreement relates exclusively to the land of Iraq, and to the future of the people of Iraq, and not to the future of the political parties and blocs, or to the personalities, that are currently in charge of this matter. Those that are negotiating with the United States are obliged, legally and also morally, to give people the details of what they are doing behind the scenes, so that there isn't a repeat of the famous story of Portsmouth, which was one of the causes of the aggravation of popular resentment against the regime of the monarchy.

The Portsmouth Agreement of 1948 was basically an extension of the treaty of 1930 that had made Iraq a de facto appendage of the British Empire "under the guise of revising it" (says Hanna Batatu in "The old Social Classes...", his big book on Iraqi history), and he adds that the rulers at the time "could and did foresee trouble, even though the scale and intensity, when it came, took them completely by surprise". One of the measures they took was to install a Shiite as Prime Minister, for the first time since the start of the monarchy, on the idea that having a member of the majority sect in that position would "blunt the edge" of the expected popular opposition, but it didn't help. The uprising triggered by the Portsmouth Agreement, led by the Communist Party, was ultimately put down, but it remains a symbol of popular opposition to just this kind of back-room "negotiations" between a foreign power and its local puppets.

It should be noted that one of the clauses in Moqtada's call for a campaign against this is described in his first point: "Inform the people about each clause of the agreement, and the extent of the damage that it will cause." The fact this list leads off with this simple demand for information hasn't been reported at all by the English-language media or the big pundits. Which is significant because it isn't only the Iraqi people, but also the American people, who haven't been told anything specific about what is in this proposed agreement, and what exactly is being negotiated.

Bush's long-term Iraq treaty hits choppy waters

(1) Sistani reportedly already on board with the referendum idea

AlHayat this morning (Thursday May 29) says one element of Sadr's call for a campaign against the proposed long-term US-Iraq agreement is in conformity with a measure the Najaf marja'iyya is said to be already in favor of:

Sadr insisted on the need for holding a general referendum before approving this treaty, and that is something that is in step with the Najaf marja'iyya, which supports the idea of a referendum, according to leaks from people close to it. Sadr had said in his statement, "How pleased and glad I am by the issue of fatwas, one written and another oral, barring the treaty..." He was likely referring to a fatwa issued by Ayatollah Kazem al-Haeri in Qom. And sources close to the Shiite authority Ali al-Sistani told AlHayat that Sistani had urged Prime Minister al-Maliki during his recent visit to Najaf to be circumspect in his dealings with the treaty, and he urged him to organize a referendum with respect to it.

(2) Government people saying the July deadline won't be met, citing "unfavorable circumstances"

Moreover, AlHayat also says that Sadr's call for a campaign against the treaty is already causing backtracking and new expressions of caution by government spokespeople, who are now saying the negotiations will take longer than the earlier-indicated end-July deadline. The journalist writes:

Apprehension about American pressure on Iraqis to accelerate negotiations ahead of the aforementioned deadline [end of July] became apparent, and it extended to government circles, where Ali al-Adeeb, a leader of the Dawa Party said: "All of the Iraqi political blocs have reservations about the treaty, just as all Iraqi citizens are against the idea of passing such a treaty without exposing it to the people via their representatives in Parliament". He stressed the need to study the treaty and discuss the clauses, and if there is benefit in it for Iraqis, then it can be signed.

Al-Adeeb's explanations were in response to the call by Moqtada al-Sadr for organization of "popular and parliamentary and Hausa-based" activities against the treaty...

and the journalist outlines some of the points, including demonstrations, organization of delegations to other countries for international solidarity against the treaty, and so on.

Specifically on the point about extending the talks past the end of July, the reporter says this:

Sources said Iraq has informed the American delegation of its intention to extend the talks to the end of the year, on account of unfavorable domestic conditions, and [they informed the Americans also of the need for] deep study of the form of the American military presence in Iraq, and of the proposals for ending [that presence] in case it is no longer necessary.

(3) The meaning of the July deadline

And the journalist explains:

The earlier-defined deadline of announcing the treaty before the end of July was connected with the approaching end of the era of president Bush, and the advent of a new administration which might change the direction of the negotiations and more generally the attitude to the war in Iraq.

Correction re the Provincial-elections debate

In an earlier post on the debate over the provincial-elections law, through ignorance I left out an important point. In reference to the question of "open lists" versus "closed lists", I took at face value the remarks of the head of the electoral commission, one Faraj al-Hadayri, who said open lists would be too difficult to manage. What I left out has to do with (1) "who is this guy" and (2) "why did he say that." Today Reidar Visser has posted a little essay on current policy, and included in that he writes:

Today, the latest phase in the forced ethno-federalisation of Iraq is being played out as the Kurdish–ISCI ruling minority tries to fashion a provincial elections law that can suit its strategy of minimising popular impact on the elections results. Open lists that would give voters the opportunity of overruling party elites in their choice of candidates have been discussed in Iraq recently, but the KDP-appointed president of the “independent” electoral commission, Faraj al-Haydari, has already deemed this “impracticable”. Similarly, the idea of smaller electoral districts is being dismissed because of Kurdish concerns over Kirkuk. This all echoes the December 2005 parliamentary elections, in which no less than one third of ISCI’s members of parliament were “elected” not on the basis of the popular vote but rather were promoted as a result of party manipulations of the list after the ballots had been cast. But then again it is only two months since the Kurds and ISCI fought tooth and nail to avoid any timeline for elections; it would be naïve to expect a sudden change of priorities just because the provincial powers law has been adopted by parliament.

In other words, Faraj al-Haydari is the nominee of one of the Kurdish-separatist parties, and his views are in line with the whole Kurd-SupremeCouncil strategy of minimizing popular influence in the provincial elections (if and when they get to be held at all).

The rest of Visser's essay has to do with calls at the current Stockholm conference this week by the GZ government and the US for unconditional support for the Maliki administration via debt-relief, opening of embassies, and so on. The effect of this would be merely to strengthen the Maliki administration in its current sectarian policies. Visser says "the picture of US policy-making in this area is depressing. Despite a declared intention of pursuing a unifying policy, through its peculiar choice of Iraqi allies, the US is in fact contributing to fragmentation...." And he adds: "The current machinations by the [Maliki's] government to influence this autumn's provincial elections could serve as a forewarning of what kind of methods it may choose to employ in the federalisation process later on."

Now that I know who Faraj al-Haydari is, I'll be able to follow that story a little better.

Big changes

AlQuds al-Arabi, in its lead editorial yesterday (Tuesday May 27), said Nasrullah's Liberation Day speech has region-wide importance, and in that respect they focus on his remarks about Iraq. The editorialist, after discussion domestic Lebanese implications of the speech, writes:

His remarks on Iraq were perhaps the most surprising and noteworthy in his speeh, because when he calls on Iraqis--government and people, Sunni and Shiite--to resort to resistance to liberate their country, and when he stresses the failure of the political process which emerged from the womb of the occupation--when he does that he is also replying in a very direct way to all the criticism that has been directed against him and against the resistance which he leads, for leaning in favor of the sectarian government [in Baghdad] and in favor of the Shiite parties that are involved in it, and for failing to support the resistance to that government and to the American occupation.

The instigation to resistance in Iraq on the part of the leader of Hizbullah, and with this unprecedented clarity, represents the taking of a strong position against the ruling group, in the name of Shiia Islam, and [in the name of] all who participate in this project from among the Sunni parties. And it also represents the taking of a strong position against the religious leaders and the marja'iyya who had issued fatwas requiring participation in the political process under the occupation, and who have refrained from supporting the resistance, and from announcing jihad against the occupation and its aggressions.

Sayyed Nasrullah, as it was made clear in his speech, has put his weight behind the Sadrist trend, and the other armed groups--Sunni and Shiite, religious and secular--that are fighting against the occupation, and he doesn't leave out of his speech any fighting group.

This represents a a major change in his position, and perhaps this will be reflected in a strong way on the Iraqi scene in the weeks and the months to come.

Actually two things are happening here: One is the change the editorialist refers to in the position of Nasrullah--namely the embracing of all Iraqis under the aegis of resistance, and the abandonment of any apparent or alleged sectarian bias in favor of the GreenZone parties. The other change is in the attitude of AlQuds al-Arabi itself, which has been the strongest pan-Arab voice in support of the Sunni armed resistance in Iraq, and which seems now prepared to give up any apparent or alleged sectarian pride of place for the Sunni resistance, in favor of likewise embracing all Iraqis under the aegis of resistance to the occupation. It is as if the one change immediately triggered the other in a kind of anti-sectarian logic, which, as the editorialist notes, could soon start manifesting itself on the Iraqi scene.

Text of Sadr's statement on mobilizing against the Iraq-US security agreement

Moqtada al-Sadr published the following statement on Sadrist websites:

How pleased I am and gladdened, with the issue of two fatwas, one written and the other oral, ruling out the agreement or security treaty between the oppressive power, and I mean by that the occupation, and the current government of Iraq. Because now it is incumbent on me not to stand with my arms folded, as I was before the issue of these their blessed fatwas, and I am obliged to do what I can to support them via the people, to the extent I am able, and to the extent I have earned any esteem among the beloved people of Iraq, who do not exhaust me, nor do they exhaust the marja'iyya; rather we propose to issue directives and orders, some to the people, and some to the specialists. To wit:

1--Inform the people about each clause of the agreement, and the extent of the damage it will cause

2--Unified parliamentary and political movement to bring together all of the blocs and the other political party trends against this agreement

3--Information escalation to be organized by a group that specializes in just that

4--Demonstrations after Friday prayers each Friday, in all areas of Iraq, each [to participate] in his own area, until further notice, or until such time as the government puts an end to the [idea of the] agreement

5--Undertaking a referendum if the government agrees to that, and if they do not, then an announcement by the Offices of the Martyr Sadr within and outside Iraq, in coordination with the other movements against the agreement of a million-signature petition

6--Organization of Iraqi delegations to be sent to:
(a) Countries of the region, and particularly neighboring countries, for support for the people of Iraq, and standing with them against the agreement;
(b) Some western countries along with the UN, the Organization of the Islamic Council, the EU, and so on, as long as they are not participants in the occupation

7--Renewal of the popular, political--indeed religious--demand for the departure of the occupation forces, or for a schedule for their withdrawal.

8--Warning the government not to sign the agreement because it is against the interests of the Iraqi people; and informing the government that signing the agreement is not in its own interests either

9--Activating the role of the clerical Hauza and asking it to stand against this agreement in whatever way they deem appropriate

It seems that the initial reference to two fatwas, one written and one oral, refer to the statement of Ayatollah Haeri (summarized and linked to here), and to the reported oral statement(s) by Sistani in opposition to the agreement. This seems to have been a minimum requirement Sadr felt had to be met before he could mobilize people as agent of the Marja'iyya, giving this religious weight, rather than acting on his own. The ninth point, however, suggests that although Sistani may have orally given the go-ahead, there aren't current plans for any specific ongoing role for the Marja'iyya in this. It seems clear the timing, coming one day after Nasrullah's liberation-day speech in Beirut, has some significance too.

Washington to GZ officials: Come on, assert your autonomy !

Never a dull moment. US Embassy employees (says nahrainnet.net, citing high-level sources) have been told to contact senior GZ government officials, including some 20 Maliki "advisers" to make sure they respond to the remarks of Hizbullah leader Hasan Nasrullah with the appropriate talking points, inluding this one: Nasrullah should be criticized for meddling in Iraqi affairs ! Moreover, one of the things he said is that the GZ political process is a creation of the Americans, and not an accomplishment of the Iraqis themselves. The US embassy employees' task is also to make sure that the Iraqi officials insist that the political process is purely Iraqi ! Here's the lede:

The American administration was severely irritated by the speech of Hizbullah general secretary Hasan Nasrullah in which he called on Iraqis to turn to resistance to save Iraq from the occupation. High-level sources asserted that US Embassy employees received instructions from Washington to raise this issue with the Iraqi government, in order to motivate them to criticize that call, and to assert that it constituted an intervention in internal Iraqi affairs.!

______________________

Speaking of resistance, the DVD of the film "Meeting Resistance" by Steve Conners and Molly Bingham is out in DVD, which you can find out about at their website meetingresistance.com. It will be shown on AlJazeera (Arabic) this afternoon (Tuesday May 27) at 5:00 GMT, and there's a list of other showings and events on their site (including a session with Siun at Firedoglake on Thursday June 5 at 4:30 Eastern Time). I think the film is going to end up being an important historic document, because it captures various Iraqis' own various explanations why there was no alternative for them, and it isn't something anyone could venture to film any more. So you'll want the DVD even if you can arrange to see it elsewhere.

"Wonderful progress in national reconciliation"

Whether it is oil-management, football, or musical chairs in the Green Zone, the Maliki administration continues in its no-accomodation style, while Maliki's office issues a fine statement of "progress in national reconciliation", no doubt to be circulated at the Stockholm international donor's conference that starts this week.

(1) Oil Minister tries to fire the head of the Southern Oil Company

Basra provincial council, controlled by the Fadhila party, has rejected a demand from the national oil ministry that it replace the director of the Southern Oil Company, and AlHayat puts this in the context of the ongoing struggle between Fadhila (headed locally by Basra governor Wa'ili) to retain local control, in the face of a takeover attempt by the GreenZone government, in this case represented by Oil Minister Shahristani.

People close to the relationship between the local Basra administration and the latest [Baghdad] decisions locate this within the struggle between the major parties in Basra [referring to Fadhila on the one side and the Supreme Council on the other], and between the governor of Basra Mohammed al-Wa'ili who belongs to the Fadhila party, and the Oil Minister Husein Shahristani concerning charges of [Wa'ili] being involved in oil-smuggling.

(For the latest on the Fadhila charges against the other side, see this recent post in which Wa'ili's brother says the oil ministry is controlled by the son of Ayatollah Sistani, and accuses Maliki and Shahristani of corruption).

The news of the local council's rejection of the demand to replace the Southern Oil director came in a press onference by the vice-president of the local council, who said the council also rejected a demand that they replace the head of the local security agency. (The latest demands from Baghdad have something to do with a Basra council decision to ban importing of alcoholic drinks into the province, but it isn't clear to me what the connection is supposed to be).

(2) Sports Minister threatens "enemies of the new Iraq"

FIFA, the world football federation, announced the suspension of the Iraqi team from World Cup playoffs in retaliation for the Maliki government's decision to fire the Iraqi Olympic Committee and replace it with another to be named by his Minister of Youth and Sports, and this has heated things up even further, with vice-president Tareq al-Hashemi going so far as to write a letter to president Talabani about the issue, and the government blaming this escalation on "enemies of the new Iraq". AlHayat writes as follows:

Yesterday the Iraqi government, through the Minister of Youth and Sports, Jasim Mohammed Jaafar, renewed its insistence that it will not change its decision, even if the decision to freeze the Olympic Commttee results of the Iraqi football team being banned from the World Cup playoffs, adding that there are political individuals in the Olympic Committee, whom he did not name, "who are working to internationalize this Iraqi sports crisis, in order to achieve political aims". He said, "These parties will face punishment for their actions against the Iraqi government," and he added, "there has been recruitment for the team over the last three years by trends that are opposed to the new Iraq".

(3) Cabinet talks near collapse: IAF

Also on the national political level, the (Sunni) Iraqi Accord Front "expressed doubts about the seriousness" of Maliki in bring the issue of the return of IAF to the government to a conclusion, "and [the IAF] accused him of procrastination and playing for time, and of turning this into a farcical 'return' of the Sunni parties to the government, in spite of his insistence that he will announce the filling of the vacant cabinet position within a few days."

The journalist notes that Maliki's office yesterday issued a grandiose statement about the significant success his government has had in effecting national reconciliation and bringing other parties into the government, with an specific announcement to come in a few days. (Yesterday's press release from Maliki's office said: "National reconciliation has achieved its objectives, and this has become clear from advances in the political process and security improvements, and agreements beween political blocs...") But the IAF, the journalist writes, says it presented its final list two weeks ago and has heard nothing, and doesn't expect any early resolution of this. A spokesman said the bloc will make one last attempt to see if it can prevent the total collapse of this. In the course of this article, the journalist reviews differences between the Hashemi of the Islamic party, who is vice-president, and Khalaf al-Alyan of the National Dialog Front (who, as noted earlier, has a history to taking more anti-occupation positions).

Nasrullah to Iraqis: Now is your testing time

Hasan Nasrullah, following the swearing-in of the new Lebanese president, congratulated Lebanese on the agreements reached at Doha last week, reaffirmed the role of Hizbullah as an armed group in defense of the nation, and he also talked in his speech about armed resistance and politics elsewhere in the region. Here is what he said on the subject of Iraq:

To summarize very briefly about Iraq, where the American occupation controls the land and its assets, they have been playing in recent years the game of occupation and democracy, and today we are starting to see what are the aims of the American democracy in Iraq, and what are they? To go back to the period right after the occupation, the Iraqi people, who had been one entire people before that, split into two parts, those that believe in the political process, and those who believe in resistance, especially armed resistance. We in Hizbullah naturally lean in favor of the resistance, from the point of view of our beliefs and our convictions, and from the point of view of our political and real experience also. At a certain point they provisionally supported the political process, but now they have arrived at the difficult and decisive testing-point, namely the stance vis-a-vis the treaties and agreements that America wants to impose on Iraq and its people, and America is demanding that the government and the parliament sign them.

The aim of the American game of democracy now stands exposed. They have opened up the case in front of everyone, Islamists and nationalists, so that they now know who are their friends, and who are their allies. They have shown what the game is, setting up a "parliament" and deriving from that an "elected government" so that everyone says "parliament" and "elected government", and now the day comes when they demand of this government and of this parliament that they legalize the occupation, by agreements that will give America sovereign authority over Iraq, putting security, political decisions, oil, and all the assets of Iraq at the disposal of the Americans--this is the Americans, and this is where the believers in the political process, whether Shiite Islamists, or Sunni Islamists, or nationalists of any kind, will face their test: You say you participated in the political process to minimize damage; and you say you participated in the political process to deter the occupation. But now comes the test: Will you hand over Iraq to the Americans forever and forever? Or will you take up the position that is demanded of you by your religion and your Islam, and your Arab nature and your morality, and your humanity?

Today in the name of all those that are assembled here, and in the name of all free people in the Arab and Islamic world, I call on all Iraqis, and all their religious and political leaders, to take up the strong and historic position and prevent the ultimate fall of Iraq into the hands of the occupation. Like the Lebanese resistance, and the Palestinian resistance also, the Iraqi resistance in its many factions has been able to inflict loss after loss on the American army, and now it is time to adopt the strategy of liberation by resistance, just as the Lebanon and Palestine have done. This strategy is the only means available for the recovery of the wounded Iraq, wealthy and strong in its people and its ummah.

Commission head warns provinial elections could be delayed (Also: Kurd-UIA split over Kirkuk)

Leaders of the parliamentary blocs failed to reach agreement yesterday on important points relating to the provincial-council elections expected for this coming fall. They will be meeting again in the coming week, but AlHayat (Monday May 26) says it is now generally expected that parliamentary passage of the necessary election-procedures law "will be delayed", considering that in the month that has passed since the date (Oct 1) was announced, the parties have failed to agree on important points.

Among the main points are the following: (1) The nature of the party-lists that will be presented to electors at the polling-stations, particularly whether they will be "closed lists" (voter only gets to vote for the party's list as it stands, winning candidates to be named according to the priorities in that list) or "open lists" (voter also gets a chance to indicate individual preferences within the list); and connected with that, if there are open lists, then what to do about quotas in provincial councils for women, and minority representation. (2) A question relating to "number of constituencies" (not explained here); and (3) Whether to hold the elections all on the same day, or on different days.

Head of the Iraqi High Commission on Elections, Farj Al-Haydari said in the event the legislators decide on either or both of open lists and/or elections on different days, his organization will need additional time to prepare, and the result will be a delay in the elections. (Haydari has called the idea of local elections on different days "unreasonable" and dangerous, because from a security point of view, the Iraqi security forces would have to be on call for emergencies on all of those days, neglecting other tasks; and from technical points of view because of the increased possibilities for manipulation). So there are two uncertainties: One is how long it will take the parties to agree on the electoral-procedure, and the other the length of any resulting delays in preparation required by the Commission.

The AlHayat journalist notes that delays in organizing this are nothing new, considering that the constitution calls for provincial elections to have been held immediately after the end-2005 national-parliament elections.

The journalist doesn't mention this specifically, but given the complexity of these issues, and particularly in switching to open lists, and/or to sequential elections, there is plenty of room for foot-dragging by those so inclined.

____________

Azzaman on Tuesday May 27 highlights another unresolved problem in election-planning. The Kurdish parties (allies of Maliki and the UIA in the government) are asking that the elections in Kirkuk be postponed until after there is a clause 140 referendum on the status of Kirkuk (which there probably won't ever be: The constitutional deadline for holding it is past, and the UN commission and a lot of politicians recommend a political-compromise solution instead. For instance, the paper says, 110 parliamentary deputies (including the UIA) delegation presented to parliament a proposal to break Kirkuk into four electoral districts, with 32% representation for each of the Arab, Kurdish, and Turkmen districts, with 4% for the other minorities. The journalist notes more and more politicians are warning the elections might not end up being held on time.

Now playing

The Nahrainnet article referred to in the prior post ends like this:

And people of religion asked the Sistani office and the other authorities to intervene to prevent American intelligence from controlling the city of Hussein, peace be upon him,

in effect making this another direct challenge to Sistani and his Najaf colleagues, on the lines of the Haeri statement of last Wednesday which challenged them to take a clear stand against the proposed bilateral security agreement. In fact, one view is that these events, and the AP story about armed resistance to the occupation, are part of a continuing series of challenges to Sistani and and the other Najaf authorities, the AP story being in effect a similar challenge, in that case to either confirm or deny support for armed resistance.

If we step back, we an see that there are really two main families of theories about the AP story and the surrounding Sistani news:

(1) The above-mentioned "challenge to Sistani" theory, according to which these represent pressure on Sistani on behalf of the Sadrists and like-minded people who want to see the Najaf authorities take a stronger and clearer line against continued American military involvement in the country, and they are challenging the authorities to do so.

(2) Another theory is that the AP story (and a supporting item Juan Cole dug up this morning in Farsi, to the effect Sistani has banned sale of food to the American forces) represent first and foremost a move by Sistani and his circle to start hinting at a tougher position against the Americans, in implicit support of the Sadrist position. This might represent "real" toughening, or merely "image improvement," but the main point of this family of theories is that the stories are mostly being initiated by the Najaf side, not by the challengers.

The first point to notice is that the two theories are not mutually exclusive. Both of these moves could be going on at the same time. The second point is if there is any toughening or image-improvement by the Sistani group in Iraq, it is completely invisible. No attempt was made to put the implications of the AP story into the Iraqi news system. And as far as the Karbala office-opening is concerned, there isn't any suggestion of any "hinting at a tougher position" on the part of Sistani there either. In fact the brazenness of the Americans' idea of having their first big provincial ribbon-cutting right in the religious heart of Iraq suggests the Americans, for their part, don't think there's any such thing as a Sistani tightening, implicit or otherwise.

On the other hand, the "challenge to Sistani" theory finds support not only in this type of story, but also in such things as a re-reporting of the Wai'li/Fadhila attack on the Supreme Council and the Najaf authorities today in the Jordanian paper Al-Ghad (pretty much verbatim from the report last Tuesday, May 20 in Akhbar al-Khaleej, summarized in this earlier post). (Although this is an outright attack, it fits the "challenge" theory in the sense that it is added pressure on Sistani to do something to re-establish popular credibility). And in the report from an Iranian news agency about Sistani's alleged opposition to the the proposed bilateral agreement (the point again being: why doesn't he announce this).

So in terms of Arabic coverage, there are these "challenges", and if there is any response indicating to Iraqis any "tougher position" from Najaf, it is completely invisible.

However, there is another point, so obvious to English-language readers that they might overlook it entirely. The Sistani image-enhancement that appears to be so lacking in Arabic-language coverage is abundantly overflowing in the coverage by the big-circulation IC blog.

--Friday, after swallowing the AP story whole, Cole writes: "the risk that his silence would produce a backlash against him in favor of Muqtada al-Sadr, may have helped impel Sistani toward this militancy." --Saturday, having found only two lines in a Sharq al-Awsat story in support: "The phone conversation that Al-Sharq al-Awsat had with the aide in Najaf suggests that if Sistani hasn't already started authorizing attacks on foreign soldiers in Iraq, he may not be far from it." --Sunday, having dug up the don't-sell-food-to-Americans fatwa in Farsi: "But if Sistani is laying the grounds for a Gandhi-style non-cooperation movement, he certainly could put a crimp in the American military's style in Iraq." In short, this is a picture of an activist/militant Sistani, not yet out of the closet perhaps, but getting there, methodically.

I think it is obviously speculative to say what Sistani has in mind with respect to image or strategy in Iraq. What is not at all speculative is to understand that if American opinion (which is in favor of withdrawal) were to turn against Maliki/Hakim and their Najaf support-team, the result could be to threaten the continuation of US military support for them in the coming administration. Maliki/Hakim and their Najaf support-team need to be presented to the American people as closet supporters of the "withdraw-the-troops" movement, in order to keep the ball in motion. It is of course a tough sell. But when it comes to info-ops, experience should have told us by now that no job is too tough.

The result is that we are being treated to a double-feature: First, investment-promotion and the touting of Iraq as the biggest developing-country market in the world, secure and politically stable to boot. And secondly, the best part about it is that the ruling bloc with their support-team can't wait to join up with the "American-troop-withdrawal" movement. You couldn't fool Iraqis with this kind of thing, but the Americans?

Crocker to world business leaders: I have come to Karbala, you should too. (Updated with a critique: "When pigs can fly")

Ambassador Crocker, in a rare excursion outside the Green Zone, visited Karbala and Najaf on Saturday. In Najaf, his reported remarks were mostly argle-bargle on the proposed bilateral US-Iraq security agreement, but in Karbala, where he helped inaugurate a "joint American-Iraqi coordination office" for development projects, the press-conference remarks as reported by Aswat al Iraq were a mine of useful and interesting information. (The version as it was intended to reach Western readers, with the heroics and the pixie-dust, is here.)

(1) This is a US-Governate joint venture, not US-Baghdad

The center is actually joint venture between the US government and the local government of Karbala, not the government of Iraq (according to the reported remarks by the head of the Karbala Governate Council's development committee).

(2) An ambiguous "message"

Crocker said the his visit to Karbala "sends a message to all of the global corporations, that they should invest here" in Karbala, and also a message to the Arab states that they should open embassies in Baghdad, (although actually, considering that the Karbala project involves the Governate, not the national government, the "message" to the Arab states could be read the other way, as a sign of Shiite go-it-alone ambitions in the Center/South, not of national unity in Baghdad).

(3) Crocker mum on funding

Crocker didn't want to talk about financial allocations for the new center, or for projects. In answer to a question about that, he said: "The important thing is not the financial allocations, because the possibilities exist, rather the important thing is what we can accomplish". He mentioned a sum in Iraqi dinars, which the VOI reporter points out to readers amounts to less that $17,000 US. The governor of Karbala was not sidetracked by that. He said: "America will get involved [using the same term often translated as "meddling" or "intervention"] because it is one of the donor countries, as a party assisting Iraqis in the financial allocations that are assembled for the implementation of projects. And that is what we are hoping for from this joint coordination office."

(4) Because the $8 million pump-priming is not from Baghdad, naturally, but from the US

Nothing was said about particular projects or their financing during the press conference, but the VOI reporter followed up afterwards, and he writes:

[The head of the local-council's developent committee] told VOI after the press-conference that the Americans "have offered $8 million as a first payment for the implementation of a number of projects in the health sector" within the governate. He didn't offer any other details about these projects, but he said: "We're holding meetings right now to define these projects, and what we are hoping for is that this visit [of Crocker's] will hopefully bring global corporations to carry out investment projects in Karbala."

Given the Iraqis-should-pay mood in Congress, it isn't surprising that Crocker didn't want to highlight this $8 million initial American contribution to Karbala development. First of all because it isn't Iraqi money, but also because this is a project that doesn't involve the central government in the first place, the "coordination" office being a joint venture between the US and Karbala, not the US and Baghdad.

So the actual "message to global corporations" could well be not to worry about Baghdad, but rather to hurry up and get in on the ground floor in the Shiite heartland, with American sponsorship and support. And not to worry too much about the contrast between investment-promotion in the Najaf/Karbala Center on the one hand, and military operations against dissident regions like Basra, Sadr City and Mosul on the other.

Update:

(5) Moreover, this is a particular red flag to the Sadrists and others in the clerical establishment

The Sadrist news-site Nahrainnet, for its part, wasn't particularly enthusiastic about the project. They write:

The holy city of Karala witnessed on Saturday a visit from Ambassador Ryan Crocker, to open a Consulate, which they have named a "development office", in order to camouflage its real security, intelligence, and military purposes.

The site is in an agricultural area southeast of the city, and a broad expanse of this land has been appropriated to isolate this office for security purposes, the writer says. He adds:

Several religious persons from the clerical Hausa commented that this constitutes an American attack and a contamination of the holy land of Karbala, and calling it a development office is a lie and a falsehood, because the aim is the realization of American security and intelligence control over the city, which is one of the most important of our holy cities.

Followups

(1) Sources think Maliki is working on dividing the IAF

A couple of posts back, I noted one of the roadblocks in the way of the Iraqi Accord Front (IAF) rejoining the government--namely the rejection by the Maliki government of the nominees of Khalaf al-Alyan, reviewing who he was and what that rejection meant. Today, AlHayat has some additional remarks by an IAF person that point in the same direction, only more bluntly.

The issue of the IAF rejoining the government...is still suspended, waiting for the position of [Maliki] on the list of candidates the IAF has presented. High-level sources said accusations of "belonging to the Baath" or "close to a banned party" have pursued lists that have been proposed [earlier] by the IAF, and sources in the IAF are convinced this represents an attempt to obstruct the return of the IAF to the government, ahead of [trying to] split its ranks, dismantle it. An Islamic Party official by the name of Omar AbdulSattar said he doesn't understand the reasons for the current delay by the government in approving the latest list.

(2) Meanwhile, Maliki will be touting "political progress" next week in Stockholm

Maliki leaves tomorrow or the next day for Stockholm, for a regular annual meeting of the 50 or so countries that are signatory to the "international covenant" that was signed May 2007 in Sharm-el-Sheikh. If you want to be reminded what that covenant consisted of, you'll have to ask someone else. In any event, the GreenZone paper AlSabaah says one of the points Maliki will be touting in his address to the meeting will be the political progress that he has made in the recent period of time! It is possible we have here another motive for last Thursday's visit to Najaf to try for some good PR from Sistani.

(3) No sign of Sistani image-refurbishment in Iraq

Speaking of Sistani, the evidence so far is that there isn't any basis at all for thinking that the Najaf authorities were responding to domestic pressure and trying to distance themselves from the oppressive policies represented by the Sadr City campaign. On the contrary, they seem to have made no meaningful effort to have any part of the AP story reflected in Iraqi news accounts. On the Sistani.org official website, the only reference to the meeting is a few lines from the AFP story, which merely quoted Maliki on the theme of Sistani's "support for the government in general". And Aswat al Iraq, which would be the natural place to launch something into the Iraqi media, dismisses the whole dustup this way:

A source close to [Sistani] denied reports circulated by global [meaning foreign] news agencies about Sistani having issued a fatwa permitting the use of arms to oust the foreign forces from Iraq, stressing that [Sistani] has been calling for peaceful resistance since the fall of the prior regime.

The "not at the present time" phrase, so far, seems to have occurred only in a couple of lines at the end of a story in AlSharq al-Awsat this morning; and on the obscure website I cited yesterday.

(By contrast, the big proponent of refurbishing his image, and holding out the prospect of an eventual turn against the foreign forces by Najaf (and by Maliki and Hakim too!) was none other than Juan Cole himself. Whether refurbishment of the Najaf/Maliki image in America via Cole was in any way behind the whole AP kerfuffle or not, of course one cannot say. But the fact it didn't have that effect at all in Iraq does make one wonder...)

"Eventually, but not right now"

Moqtada al-Sadr's spiritual authority Kazem al-Haeri (or Hae'ri or other spellings) issued a statement from his office in Iran (where he has been since the 1970s) on Wednesday May 21, taking as the occasion a commemoration of the birth of Zainab, daughter of Imam Ali and granddaughter of the prophet Mohammed. The actual purpose of the statement was to denounce the long-term bilateral security agreement that is being negotiated by the Americans and the GreenZone authorities (read on and you'll see the connection), and in particular to bluntly center out the Najaf authorities (Sistani in particular, without naming him) for failing to take a position on this. (RoadstoIraq blogger Ladybird calls attention to this statement, posted on Haeri's website, and says the recent byplay over Sistani is best understood as a game played out in religious terms between the Sadrists and Maliki over where Sistani stands). Let's see where that takes us.

Haeri denounces the proposed agreement as an attempt by the occupation to perpetuate their control and wasting of the resources, culture and people of Iraq, and he says in any event such an agreement would be binding on no one except the persons who sign it. He concludes:

And I say to the occupation in the words of our lady Zeinab: "Carry out any treachery that you can; make every attempt that you can; exert all of your efforts. For you will not be able to erase our memory [from the minds of the people], and you cannot suppress our inspiration."*

I say to you my dear sons: The blessed clerical Hausa of Iraq is stronger, more pure and blameless, higher and more noble, than to recognize the legality of any agreement of this kind.

This obviously constitutes an in-your-face challenge to Sistani and the rest of the Najaf authorities, who have so far made only vague remarks about the proposed bilateral agreement. RTI thinks the information leaked to AP about the right to armed resistance was the same kind of a challenge, putting Sistani and the other Najaf authorities on the spot in another way, by making them deny the news.

And she cites an Iraqi news-site (which is new to me) called Iraq Alaan (Iraq now), which runs a picture of Sistani and a brief item that says Sistani's office does in fact deny the news, but in an interesting way.

[A source close to the office of Sistani in Najaf] denied on Friday what was reported on a number of sites to the effect the authority Sistani is preparing to issue a fatwa inviting armed resistance to the occupation.

[The source said] there is no truth to the report in general or in particular, adding that the attitude of the authorities from the beginning has been that "Iraq is not ready for jihad or military confrontation at the present time, after the damage and destruction that is left after the wars of the prior regime".

The source added: Sistani supports resistance to the occupation, but not by military means, at the present time.

(The authority Sistani is the most prominent religious authority of the imami Shiites in Iraq and the world, and the spiritual leader of the clerical Hausa in Najaf).

It is the "eventually, but not right now" defense. According to this account, Sistani's office says he is in fact for "resistance" but not "by military means at the present time" citing national weakness. If this this "all in good time" argument sounds familiar, it is because it is also the position Juan Cole takes. This morning he wrote: "I have all along believed that Sistani would ultimately issue a fatwa saying that it was illegitimate for there to continue to be foreign troops on Iraqi soil." And in this connection he vouches for the good faith of Hakim and the Dawa party: "When al-Maliki and Abdul Aziz al-Hakim feel strong enough domestically, their first order of business will be to vastly reduce American military influence. They represent the Islamic Mission (Da`wa) Party and the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (founded by Ayatollah Khomeini), after all. There is likely a limit to this marriage of convenience."

I don't know how Juan arrived at that surprising view, so closely aligned with the Sistani "not right now" defense. What I do think is that it would help raise the quality of the discussion if Juan would be a little less modest about his relationship with the Supreme Council, Najaf-Hakim-Maliki axis. For instance, it might help explain his silence about the Sadr City bombings when they were going on, and his showy denunciation of them now as "brutal", even though they were conducted under the authority of this same Maliki and his group, who, he assures us, are the type of people that will eventually do the right thing.

In any event, focusing on Haeri's in-your-face challenge to Sistani over the bilateral agreement gives us another way of understanding why Maliki paid his surprise visit to Najaf the next day (in addition to the "investor-confidence" issue discussed in a prior post).

_________
* Here is a bigger excerpt from that sermon of Zeinab's in a translation appearing on a Shiite website, just to make sure you get the message:

“What you consider today as spoils of war will become ruins for you tomorrow and on that day you will find what you have sent from before. Allah does not oppress his servants. I express my complaint only to Allah and have trust in Him. You may therefore do any treachery that you have, make all your attempts, and try all you can. By Allah, you cannot remove us from the minds (of people), and you cannot fade our message. You will never reach our glory and can never wash the stain of this crime from your hands. Your decisions will not be stable, your period of ruling will be short, and your population will scatter. In that day, a voice will shout: “Indeed may the curse of Allah be upon the oppressors….”

Alleged plan to activate 2005 bilateral agreements that combine economic and military advantages for the US

The semi-official Syrian paper Al-Watan published a story on Monday May 19, citing "journalistic sources in Baghdad" on the subject of Iraqi-government plans to implement four bilateral US-Iraqi agreements signed in 2005 by then State Dept official Robert Zoellick and the then Iraqi finance minister Ali Adbul Amir Alawi. The signing, in July 2005, took place only 10 weeks after his appointment as finance minister by the incoming Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari (May 2005). Although they had first and second reading in the Iraqi parliament in early 2007, they were never approved by parliament. I did not see the Al-Watan article at the time. It was dug up and translated yesterday by an outfit called Global Policy Forum, which among other things monitors UN policies.

The four agreements in question are the following:

The US-Iraq Investment Incentive Agreement
The US-Iraq Trade and Investment Framework Agreement
The US-Iraq Agreement for Economic and Technical Cooperation
Memorandum of Understanding on Agricultural Cooperation

There is a lot in this short article, and the translation is good, so you should read it. Two points immediately stand out:

(1) Plan to circumvent legislative approval

The sources told Al-Watan that the plan is to implement these agreements before the end of 2008 without parliamentary approval. Although the explanation isn't 100% clear, it appears the justification would be that when they were signed, there was a provision in place that permitted entering into international agreements by representatives assigned by Cabinet with the approval of the Presidential Council. (I haven't found any such provision in the Coalition Provisional Authority acts, but who knows?)

(2) "Economic" agreements including important military concessions

A second point worth underlining is that the sources' description of the agreements included this, according to the paper:

"The sources continued: "These pacts are closer to commandments imposed on Iraq than agreements between two independent states. They grant the American side immunity, all the traveling prerogatives from and into Iraq and the right to protect the undefined American missions with American military troops that can roam the country without any restraints"

In other words, these agreements with "economic development" titles incorporated important military components as well.

The Al-Watan story unfortunately doesn't include the text of the agreements, but according to the description they included a broad plan for privatizations:

"Moreover, [the sources continued],the agreements exempted all the American companies and individuals from taxes and customs in what contradicted even the controversial Iraqi investment law... The pacts also proposed a transitory plan through which the remains of the Iraqi public sector are to be privatized and destroyed.

There is a lot that isn't completely clear in this, and the other caution is that the story doesn't appear to have been picked up anywhere, so corroboration is a problem. However, it stands to reason that in the current climate the Maliki/Bush team would be on the hunt for any available means--plausible or otherwise--to lock in the colonial relationship over the long term, while minimizing disclosure.

Morever: It does seem too much of a coincidence that this should have surfaced just at the time that the Maliki administration is rolling out its "Iraq--Foreign investment paradise" campaign. The fact this surfaced in Syria suggests the point here could be "Paradise--for whom exactly?"

What happened in Najaf

Prime Minister Maliki paid a surprise visit to Najaf on Thursday, where the two big events were: first, a speech to members of the provincial council, including the governor and other local officials, and secondly his interview with Ayatollah Sistani and the subsequent spin.

(1) What Maliki said to the Najaf council

In his speech, Maliki could not have been more clear on the theme that Iraq is on the brink of a boom in foreign investment. Aswat al Iraq begins its summary of the visit this way:

[Maliki] stressed, on Thursday, that all the energies of the state have been exhausted for the purpose of bringing about security over the past several years, at the expense of investment and construction, and he indicated that Iraq needs big global corporations for investment and the improvement of services, and it was this that he promised to focus on in the coming period of time.

And Maliki went on to say that security will continue to be the top priority and the top challenge for his government, assuring his Najaf audience that his government will not take their eyes off this issue for even an instant. The reporter says Maliki continued:

"And we are not suffering from any shortage of finance for electricity or water or other services. Rather, this [lack of progress in these areas] is owing to the fact that foreign governments have barred their corporations from coming into Iraq on account of the lack of security, and the lack of financial guarantees. Now, however, a flood of global corporations in a variety of sectors is starting to pour into the country for the purpose of construction and investment in the country."

On the issue of financial guarantees and the need to satisfy the requirements of the foreign corporations, Maliki was quite clear, according to this account, adding:

He explained that "the government has decided to deposit money to the account of a number of large global corporations, to guarantee their work in a number of service projects in the country which they are undertaking", indicating that "Iraq is in need of big foreign global corporations for development [projects]."

This was not the first indication that Maliki and his people are beating the drum for foreign investment (see for instance this grandiose speech by deputy Prime Minister Barham Saleh at Sharm-el-Sheikh last week), but so far as I know it was the first explicit reference to this idea of a division of tasks: Namely that the government will continue to focus on security, a task which has been "exhausting all of the energy of the state", while using its financial resources to attract foreign corporations to undertake "development and investment" projects, including "services".

(2) What Sistani said to Maliki, and the spin

Naturally we do not know that was said in the meeting between Maliki and the Ayatollah Sistani, but we do know how this was spun by Maliki's people to make it appear that Sistani agreement with extending the rule of law implied specific approval for what the Maliki government has been doing by way of security operations. Here's how Aswat al Iraq described the spin:

[Maliki] said on Thursday that [Sistani] and the Najaf authorities in general expressed support for the government's measures to extend the rule of law, and limiting weapons to the hands of the state, and the efforts to make the political process in Iraq succeed.

And he quotes from the Maliki press-release:

"The religious authorities generally support the government in the extension of the rule of law", and the statement added that his conversation with Sistani "focused on topics which serve Iraq".

So while Maliki's account of the talks was in the most general terms possible, still as far as possible he tried to highlight the theme of "weapons only in the hands of the state" as if this was an endorsement of his recent campaigns.

Nahrainnet spells out the implication, first quoting Maliki, then indicating what "observers" think:

[Maliki said] "Our conversation focused on issues that serve Iraq, and the religious authority in general supports the government in extending the rule of law." Observers think this support is tantamount to support for the military operations that the government has been carrying out with the support of the coalition forces in Basra, Baghdad, and Mosul.

In other words, it almost seemed possible to spin Sistani's position as being in favor of weapons exclusively in the hands of the government and in the hands of the foreign military forces that it relies on for support. So there was a need to reply to that (see the remarks below on the AP story).

As noted here earlier, the Maliki government is in the process of trying to announce the inauguration of a new phase in Iraqi development: Following supposed improvements in security, and in the political process, the theme now is that while the government continues to focus on these two themes, it is time to inaugurate the new phase, which will be characterized by Iraq using its financial clout to attract foreign corporations to carry out the tasks connected with economic development.

And the key point is that the promise of this brave new world of foreign investment is being rolled out against a background of continuing reliance on foreign military power in the country. A "bold vision", you might say.

There is a lot that could be said about the AP yesterday that said:

Iraq's most influential Shiite cleric has been quietly issuing religious edicts declaring that armed resistance against U.S.-led foreign troops is permissible — a potentially significant shift by a key supporter of the Washington-backed government in Baghdad....So far, al-Sistani's fatwas have been limited to a handful of people. They also were issued verbally and in private — rather than a blanket proclamation to the general Shiite population — according to three prominent Shiite officials in regular contact with al-Sistani as well as two followers who received the edicts in Najaf.

Most likely the "edicts" themselves were not that controversial, having apparently been issued to members of his protective agency and thus not outside of his own circle. The news is in the touting of them by AP and their sources. And the disclosures were made to an English-language news agency, not to an Arabic-language one, suggesting the message, it that is what this is, is to the Americans.

And that is where the context comes in. Maliki, with his speech on the new era of foreign investment, and then his implication at the same time that Sistani agrees with continued foreign military involvement, was very boldly outlining a vision for the future of Iraq that went beyond anything that had been made public up to then, and obviously it was a vision not acceptable to the Ayatollah. Or, some would say, to any decent Iraqi for that matter. And I think that is the point of all of this: Not that the Ayatollah is against the occupation, something everyone already knew, but rather that Maliki and his American sponsors have for some reason made a point of touting a foreign-investment-first policy, against a background of foreign military involvement, that they would have been better off continuing to keep under wraps. (And probably, if you had to come up with a reason for rolling out the foreign-investment-first policy at this particular time, the answer would be that this was seen as necessary in order to foster an atmosphere of "investor confidence").

The latest chapter in "political reconciliation"--Updated

The Maliki/Bush script at the moment has three parts: Improved security; improved political situation; incipient investment boom; a chicken in every Iraqi pot, vote Republican. Not much attention has been paid to the "political improvements" part of the story, which as far as anyone can tell is limited to the fact that the Iraqi Accord Front (IAF, biggest Sunni parliamentary bloc) have proposed names of their respective party members to re-fill the cabinet positions that the IAF resigned from last August. The more meaningful idea of naming competent people without exclusive reference to their political affiliation, and shrinking and rationalizing the number of cabinet posts, has been scrapped, reflecting the GreenZone clubhouse dynamics. But even at that, there seems to have been an unexplained problem with some of the names.

AlHayat this morning gives us an important clue. There are three main components of the IAF: the Islamic Party headed by Tareq al-Hashemi; the Peoples Assembly headed by Adnan Dulaimi and the National Dialog Council headed by Khalaf al-Alyan (or 'Ulyan). Maliki is said to have rejected the nominees of the latter, the group headed by Alyan.

The quick way to understand the meaning of this, if you have a few moments, is to type "Alyan" into the search-box at the upper left of this page, and you will be reminded of what he has stood for over the past couple of years. For instance:

(1) In October 2006, at startup of the Salvation Council boom, Alyan was against the idea of any of these groups accepting aid from either the US forces or the sectarian GreenZone government, since in his view both AQ and the American occupation were for the breakup of the country. This is from the above-linked post, referring to Abu Risha's plans for an alliance with the US to fight AlQaeda:

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.

(2) At the time of the political blowup over the start of the wall-building campaign with the Adhamiya wall in April 2007, Alyan's Baghdad home was ransacked by government forces and his security detail arrested, while he was in Amman. The following is from a post here at that time:

Khalaf al-Alyan, one of the three leaders of the Iraqi Accord Front, the biggest bloc in Parliament, was quoted last week from Amman predicting announcement soon of a multi-bloc coalition to oppose Maliki, is quoted this morning in several Iraqi papers as calling on the rest of the IAF leadership to issue a clear warning to Maliki that they will leave the government if the Adhamiya wall policy is continued, but in the current statements, he appears to have dropped the multi-bloc aspect of this, talking only about the IAF itself. (See this summary of Iraqi papers by Aswat al-Iraq).

So no doubt what is going on is the process of sifting the Iraqi Accord Front so as to accept the "reconcilables" while at the same time rejecting the likes of Alyan with their Iraqi-nationalist ideas. It is the same principle that that outlined in the famous Hadley memo and continued through the Sadr City campaign, of sifting the Shiite trends, accepting those that are "reconcilable" and setting up the others targeting by the US military.

To say the least, you could say this is the opposite of a policy of allowing creation of a meaningful two-party system, unless by that you mean one party in power, and the other to be targeted militarily as the "bad guys".

Still, Azzaman this morning says the idea of a GreenZone coalition of non-reconcilables, including Sadrists and Alyan's group along with others, is still under discussion. Unfortunately their website is unavailable this morning, so I can't give you the link or details.

Update:

Azzaman is back. The item in question focuses on the refusal of the Iraqi List to rejoin the government, in spite of invitations by Maliki, and the explanation given by their spokesman Osama al-Najaifi, namely that Maliki hasn't been "serious" in his offers in this regard, but also because of the following:

He explained that the Iraqi list is working on discussions and agreements with leaders of the Fadhila party and the Sadrist trend, along with the Dialog Council led by Khalaf al-Alyan, and the Arab Dialog Front of Saleh al-Mutlaq, the aim being a unification of our positions. He said "the results of our discussions with these political blocs encourages us to continue, and what we are trying for is the creation of some kind of parliamentary coordination."

It will be recalled that efforts to form a roughly similar group have been reported from time to time in recent months, culminating in this January 13, 2008 announcement of a so-called "12-party agreement" (including the Sadrists, the Iraqi List, and some Sunni groups including Alyan's and Mutlaq's, with Fadhila first reported in, then out) and that among their common "nationalist" aims were opposition to privatization of the oil sector, and opposition any further Clause 140 procedures as demanded by the Kurds on Kirkuk.

What today's reports seem to indicate is that this idea of a "nationalist"-oriented parliamentary opposition is still alive, in some form. And the fact that one of its proponents, Khalaf al-Alyan, is also a leader in the IAF has been a roadblock (or one of the roadblocks) to an agreement on IAF rejoining the government.

Iraqi investment boom just around the corner ? (Updated with the latest from Najaf)

The GreenZone newspaper AlSabaah reports from Cairo, where an "investment conference" has been going on, that Iraq has signed contracts worth over $63 billion with a number of global investment corporations, for startup of a number big construction projects. "These include," says the headline, "construction of the big port in Basra, the Baghdad International Airport, gigantic projects in Najaf, and the construction of what will be the largest residential city in the Middle East". The journalist explains:

Major projects, according to Dr Ahmed Radha, president of the Iraqi National Investment Agency, include the big Basra port, rebuilding of the Baghdad Airport, and also construction of housing units and a complete residential city that will count as one of the biggest modern cities in the Middle East...He explained that the value of these projects is: $12 billion for Basra port-construction; $17 billion for construction of the Baghdad Airport along with a commercial city and hotels; 200,000 housing units and hotels [in a] tourist city at the corniche (?) in Kufa in Najaf province, with a value of $34 billion; and construction of a new city of Kut for $650 million.

And it is downhill from there as far as the values are concerned. With the exception of the Baghdad airport, these mega-projects are all in the center and the south of Iraq.

(Presumably the contract arrangements for construction of the US mega-bases elsewhere in the country are just as big or bigger, only not as widely-publicized).

And naturally, there aren't any actual contract details or even names of the corporations involved.

On the same theme, Aswat Al-Iraq says Maliki met with the Australian ambassador on Wednesday and urged him to get in on the ground floor of the coming Iraqi investment boom, suggesting agriculture and construction sectors might appeal to him. He said "the political situation has never been better or stronger," following the recent security improvements in Basra, Baghdad, and Mosul.

Update:

And as if to underline the fact that this is mainly a south-central theme, AlHayat (Thursday morning May 22) reports remarks by the governor of Najaf province, urging Arab and Islamic countries in particular to open consulates in Najaf because:

Najaf is witnessing an important construction and investment upswing, particularly considering it is characterized by peace and security, so that Islamic and Arab countries can open consulates there in order to serve its thousands of visitors.

He didn't specifically mention the alleged $34 billion Kufa construction project mentioned above (Kufa being also in Najaf province), but he expressed similar promotional fervor in other ways: The opening this year of the new Najaf airport will enhance the world standing of Najaf in the domains of science, politics and culture, and they are hoping for designation as the "Capital of Islamic Culture" in the year 2012.

Also, the Najaf governor, sounding just a little like a head of state, "renewed calls for cooperation from Saudi Arabia in opening up a land-route for the annual Hajj pilgrimage; and for the signing of a bilateral investment and commercial agreement".

Doha success: Among other things, a defeat for Saudi prestige

The announcement in Doha, Qatar of the Lebanese agreement came too late for the Wednesday Arab papers, but for the moment it seems worth noting that the Syrian semi-official paper Al-Watan anticipated the success of these talks in an editorial on Sunday May 18, taking it as the sign of the end of the era of real or imagined Saudi leadership in the region. Already the Lebanese authorities had ordered the rollback of the provocative decisions on Hizbullah's communications network and airport-security, and all the parties had agreed to undertake settlement-talks in Qatar. Given that Saudi Arabia had been the sponsor of the Taif Accord that set up the current political framework in Lebanon, the editorialist said, these events (backdown of the March 14 parties, and recourse to Saudi-rival Qatar for talks) already signaled "the end of the Saudi era, and the beginning of a new era..." starting with Qatar representing the start of a "new Taif agreement".

The editorialist talked about the history of Saudi political failures in the region: failure of the "Mecca agreement" that was supposed to bridge the differences between Fatah and Hamas, and likewise the failure of Saudi efforts to mediate a Lebanese agreement, attributing all of these failures to Saudi one-sidedness, summed up in their latest ridiculous proposal:

Following establishment of a new balance of power by the Lebanese opposition on the ground with the events of May 7...the Saudi kingdom issued an alarm and called for the dispatch of Arab troops to Lebanon to "rescue" the loyalist forces. This in spite of the fact that during the July Israeli war on Lebanon, the Saudi authorities did not budge, nor did they propose the sending of a single Arab soldier for the defense of that country..."

The editorialist says Syria distinguished itself not only by not intervening in the recent events, but also by supporting the Qatar negotiations, implying that their success would constitute a historic defeat for the Saudi political pretensions in the region.

Over and above the fact that the Qatar talks succeeded, I think it is interesting that the Syrians knew that they would be successful, given the whole trend of recent events, and I think this can be seen as part of the general feeling of a new direction in regional events, reflected in the recent indications in Egypt and especially in Jordan of a need to get re-oriented away from the recent lock-step alliance with America and its Saudi allies. (Taking into account, however, the caution about habitual Arab-regime behaviour that Abdulbari Atwan continually warns us about).

The Wa'ilis and the Hakims (Updated)

Here is the latest set of charges in an ongoing war of words between leaders of two of the main power centers in Basra, the Shiite nationalist Fadhila party, headed locally by the Basra governor Mohamed Musbih al-Wa'ili, and the Iran-oriented axis of Hakim and/or Maliki. Naturally there is no way of assessing the actual content of any of the following charges, or how much of it is merely personal, but I think the story is interesting anyway, as an indication of the bitterness of the continuing war of words (and interesting too for the fact that AMSI republishes the accusations against the Hakim axis). [UPDATE: For an assessment, see the remarks of Reidar Visser in the comments]

Here is the story:

Ismael Musbih al-Wa'ili, a leader of the Fadhila party and brother of the governor of Basra, told the newspaper Al-Akhbar al-Khaleej that control of the Iraqi oil ministry is in the hands of Mohamed Radha al-Sistani, son of the famous Najaf Ayatollah, to such an extent that no decisions respecting oil operations can be taken without his approval! This brief report doesn't explain how that allegedly came about, but Ismael Musbih al-Wa'ili also said Maliki and his oil minister Shahristani have received large sums of money for permitting the Iranians to infiltrate into the Majnoon oilfields and two other districts, all in Iraqi territory.

Ismael Musbih al-Wa'ili also told the newspaper that he was recently visited in Kuwait by Maliki's office-director who came to him with a proposal for settling the differences between the two sides, and among the demands in connection with that was that the Wa'ili family would use their good offices with the Saudi authorities to arrange for an invitation for an official visit by Maliki to Saudi Arabia, something he declined to do. He admitted his family has good relations with the Saudi authorities, but he said such a request would be contrary to the principle of national sovereignty.

He also said he had been arrested, tortured and held for five years in an Iranian prison in the late 90s for transmitting the sermons of Mohamed Sadiq al-Sadr (the Iraqi nationalist "Sadr II", Moqtada's father) to Iraqis living in Iran. He declined to name the person responsible for that, but the paper says he was clearly referring to Abdulaziz al-Hakim.

Reflecting the interest of this kind of story to Iraqi nationalists generally, the story was picked up and run verbatim on the website of the Association of Muslim Scholars of Iraq (AMSI), the main Sunni-nationalist authority in Iraq, without comment.

Jordan could be the first to step away from the "madmen of the White House"

Among the members of the "axis of moderate Arab states", it is Jordan that seems most highly motivated to move away from a complete submission American policy. This follows the setbacks in Lebanon and Palestine, and the insulting Bush speech on the weekend, but more importantly it is the result of a build-up number of factors, the main one being the dead-end in the Palestinian talks and the fear that Jordan could end up bearing the brunt.

Employing a combination of kremlinology and personal contacts, the Amman correspondent of Al Quds al-Arabi outlined in detail yesterday (pdf: scroll down to p. 6) the signs of this shift in Jordanian thinking. These range from the fact that the Religious Endowments Ministry has been permitting much more blunt criticism of America and Bush in the Friday sermons in the mosques, to consternation in government circles over the recent rejection by US allies Kuwait, Saudi, and the UAE of Jordanian requests for financial assistance in the face of rising oil prices, the fact that Bush has skipped Amman on his two recent "ill-omened" trips to the region, and most ominously the lack of any concern about the vulnerability of Jordan as part of a last-resort arrangement in Palestine. The journalist says the Jordanians have concluded that it is not just the Palestinians that are at risk in this, but Jordanian interests as well. He says this has led to decisions at the highest levels in Amman as follows:

"We will not permit any political or non-political solution (in Palestine) that is at the expense of Jordan and Jordanians, and we will stand against any "alternate" options and oppose any attempts at forcible migration to Jordanian lands, by any means available to us, including military force."

And the journalist continues:

The question now is: What has motivated the "moderate" Jordanian administration to bring up this idea of the "Jordanian option" [mass relocation of Palestinians to Jordanian territory], while there is still uncertainty surrounding the peace process and its trajectory? The answer lies in the persistence of sure signs that the Jordan-American relationship is going through an extraordinary period of actual crisis, [which has led to] Jordanian anxiety about the possibility that there exists a dark scenario in the minds of those who are called in political circles in Amman "the madmen of the White House". What this says is that the American indifference to the interests of Jordan is no longer a secret, and can no longer be hidden or dissembled under any cover....

Any requests made in Washington for increased economic assistance are met with the demand to send an ambassador to Baghdad. And the journalist says the Jordanian authorities have been made aware of the fact that the biggest instigator against them in Washington is Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki. This is reflected in the absence of any kind of assistance in respect to oil, and instead harrassment by the Iraqi authorities of Jordanian goods and merchants. In fact, says the journalist,

[Maliki] refuses to acknowledge that the approximately one million Iraqis who live in Jordan are in fact citizens [of Iraq] belonging under the protection of his government, clearly pushing [instead] the idea that these are Sunnis hostile to the current regime in Baghdad, and that their elite enjoys Jordanian protection, connected with Saddam Hussein.

Those are three of the broad reasons why the Jordanian authorities are said to be looking to realign themselves politically in the region: (1) Fear of Bush driving the Palestinian problem over the cliff leaving Jordan holding the bag; (2) The undeniable lack of any inter-Arab solidarity on the economic front, particularly from the oil-rich US allies in the Gulf; (3) Sectarian attitude from Bush's friend Maliki in Baghdad, who insists the failure to open an embassy amounts to a hostile act, and considers the one-million Iraqis living in Jordan not as Iraqis but as sectarian enemies.

The same Al-Quds al-Arabi journalist writes today about an interview with a senior person in the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood, the point of which is entirely summed up in the headline: "The Islamist opposition in Jordan warns against [an attempt to] put through a substitute for peace, at the expense of Jordan: On account of the weak Jordanian role in the region, and a frivolous foreign policy".

Atwan: Don't hold your breath

Among widely-read Arab writers, Abdulbari Atwan is probably the most consistently critical of the so-called moderate Arab regimes for their dictatorial nature and their lock-step submission to US demands. He writes this morning about the insulting speeches by Bush on the weekend, and asks what Bush intended to achieve with this, and if he is likely to succeed.

His basic point is this: Experience tells us that these regimes will eventually submit to any and every US demand, but this isn't always without some resistance. By attacking these regimes at their weak points (human rights abuses and so on), Bush was applying the usual pressure for compliance in a number of areas where he has failed to get full compliance so far, and they include the following demands: (1) Apply more pressure on the Palestinians to accept a temporary state with elastic borders and permanent Israeli settlements; (2) Pump enough oil to bring prices down and rescue the western economies; and (3) Open embassies and send ambassadors to Baghdad to support the Maliki administration.

Atwan agrees that the attack enraged Mubarak, who had his official media launch a ferocious attack on Bush, but he says experience shows these outbursts have a way of blowing over. Imagine, he says: This is a man whose "democracy" has killed over a million Iraqis and displaced several million more, threatened the national unity of the country and plunged it into sectarian war, a man who will be known to history for the atrocities of Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. Instead of refusing to see this man, the Arab regimes continue to roll out the red carpet for him and they still habitually welcome him as a guest to be honored. The reason, of course, is they have no popular support, fear any criticism such as the Americans are capable of mounting, and actually rely on American support for their survival. So the question is: Will the new round of pressure announced by Bush's insulting speech at Sharm-el-Sheikh be as effective as similar pressure has always been in the past.

Uncharacteristically, Atwan seems to be a tiny bit ambivalent. He writes:

President Bush, who in his speeches in Jerusalem and Sharm-el-Sheikh failed to criticize a single settlement expansion, or call for the removal of a single road-block in the West Bank, has killed the peace process that he said he came in order to support; he has insulted his Arab allies and provided a rich harvest for the Islamist extremists whom he says he is trying to combat, without actually intending to. The question now is whether the Arab states will reply to this insult, by seeking out real national alternatives.

We are not convinced they will do anything at all. [We think] they will swallow this insult as they have swallowed others. They will send delegations to Washington asking for pardon and proposals for complete cooperation. They will tighten the cordon around the starving people of Gaza. They will strengthen surveillance of the border, and order the closing of the Rafah crossing. They will increase the offer of oil. This is what they have always done in the past, and there is nothing to indicate that they will do the opposite this time.

We hope we are wrong.

"Axis of (anti-Iran) moderates": An idea whose time seems to be up

Both the Egyptian and Jordanian regimes have concluded that the Palestine-Israel talks are dead, at least for the duration of the Bush administration, Arab reports suggest. This led to an undiplomatic and possibly historic Mubarak-Bush dust-up at a Sharm-el-Sheikh conference, and a suggestion by an experienced Jordanian commentator that his country would do well to seek out a better relationship with Iran.


(1) Historic Dust-up at Sharm-el-Sheikh (Al-Quds al-Arabi)

What happened here is that Bush, in order to cover the fact that the Palestinian talks were a failure, started blathering about the promotion of democracy in the Mideast and other related talking points, "about which America had been silent for so long that people assumed it had dropped out of their vocabulary" (in the words of the AlQuds al-Arabi reporter), which so infuriated Mubarak that when it came time for the official speeches, he took care not to be in the hall to hear Bush's speech, and Bush reciprocated by not being in the hall for Mubarak's speech either. Mubarak, for his part, said in his speech that the Arab nations "will not be providing cover for any agreement that does not satisfy the Palestinians", and the Al-Quds al-Arabi reporter explained: When an Arab leader of the experience of Mubarak says a thing like that, you can take it as an anticipatory death-certificate for any further negotiations; and more particularly that the remark "reflects information confirming that the talks have reached a dead-end". And the Al-Quds reporter notes that the semi-official Egyptian paper Al-Jumhuriya described Bush as "a failed president", and his speeches as "fatuous" (or "idiotic"), something that paper would not have published without a green light from the powers that be. Egyptian authorities clearly hoped he will not be back, ever, the journalist adds.


(2) Jordan seen repositioning (Abu Ruman in Al-Ghad)

Mohammed AbuRuman began his column yesterday (Sunday May 18) by noting the combination of Bush-policy failures in Palestine and Lebanon both. He wrote:

The political winds have been blowing in the opposite direction to what the "moderate Arab" nations were hoping for, because on both the Palestinian and Lebanese fronts, with both Fatah and the Siniora government suffering from difficult internal crises, and both Hamas and Hizbullah moving forward on the ground, albeit in stages. And in parallel with that and at the same time, comes Bush to the region, with speeches calling attention to his foolish bias, overlooking and skipping over the interests of the "friendly" Arab states, assuring Israel of his absolute support, thus strengthening the arguments of the rejectionists on the one side, and further embarrassing the Arab "moderates" on the other.

AbuRoman then talks about the whole idea of the "axes"--namely the "moderate" axis including Egypt and Jordan and others taking a position inimical to Iran and its "axis". This isn't working, he says:

The whole philosophy behind the "regional axes" was the political idea of a trade-off between an attitude toward Iran and its axis, and the realization of historic and decisive progress on the level of the Palestinian issue....So now that the freezing-up of that process is confirmed, the whole concept of the "axes" no longer serves these ["moderate"] countries...

AbuRoman stresses he isn't talking about throwing away the good relationship with the United States, rather he is talking about establishing an independent stance like that of Turkey, which has good relations both with the West and the Arab regimes; or Qatar, currently acting as host and go-between in what some think will be a successful precedure for ending the Lebanese government crisis.

A journalist with another paper (AlQuds al-Arabi, as it happens) noted in a press-roundup that Jordanian papers suddenly lacked their usual attacks on Hizbullah on the weekend, and said this is explained--at least according to rumors--by the fact that the Jordanian government has entered into talks with Iran, possibly indicating AbuRoman was writing about something that is already starting to happen.

Bush's Saudi visit: Something serious behind the comic-opera veneer?

US coverage of Bush's visit to Riyadh focused on the issue of oil production, almost completely ignoring the agreement that was signed by the two heads of state relating to nuclear energy production and other issues, but most importantly this (on the unimpeachable authority of Voice of America):

The agreement expands cooperation to better safeguard the kingdom's vast oil reserves and its pipeline distribution system, as well as borders.

Isn't that nice?

Oil-industry sources in the Gulf contacted by the news agency nahrainnet didn't think so. The reporter explains:

The joint communique said the United States and Saudi Arabia agreed on cooperation to secure energy production in the kingdom by protecting essential infrastructure, strengthening Saudi borders, and responding to increased requirements for energy. Oil sources in the Gulf told Nahrainnet: "The Saudis, with this agreement assigning to the United States protection of oil installations and oil fields in the kingdom, has taken an exceptionally dangerous step, because it has permitted the American military umbrella to take upon itself the taking of whatever steps it thinks will protect vital oil installations in the kingdom, even if other Gulf states like Iran think these [steps] are hostile to them, since [the possibilities] include establishment of missiles and surveillance networks, so this is a serious security development involving adding to the tinderbox of tension in the region.

The sources added: "The inclusion of this clause in the communique is an announcement of the signing of a security agreement between the two countries, including in its details the distribution of American experts in broad areas of the kingdom to construct a network of missile bases, information-gathering, intelligence and surveillance, and it will all be directed against Iran, because the Americans see no threat to regional oil, or to Saudi oil in particular, except from Iran, which has threatened to strike oil and non-oil assets of countries in the region if it is attacked by America or by Israel."

This is directly contrary to the spin that is being put on this visit by the American "foreign-policy expert" groupies, all buying into the idea that the purpose of the visit was to risk being rebuffed and humiliated on the question of boosting oil production. As you can see from the following excerpt from yesterday's NYT:

Jon Alterman, a Mideast expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said Saudi confidence in the United States has been “extremely shaken,” over the war as well as what Saudis perceive as Mr. Bush’s lackluster effort on behalf of the rights of Palestinians.

“They’ll be polite,” Mr. Alterman said, “but they’re not really going to put themselves out to help this president.”

Still, Mr. Bush had little choice but to try.

Near-term American troop-withdrawal: Brushed off in Washington, welcomed in Baghdad

US media coverage of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's visit to Baghdad on Saturday alternated between brushing it off with a short sentence (NYT), and assuring readers and members of the war party that the House rejection of continued war funding without a near-term withdrawal plan (in a measure she got passed just before this visit) will surely be short-lived.

But brushing off the whole near-term troop-withdrawal question is something for English-language readers only. For instance, the pan-Arab daily AlHayat quotes a variety of Iraqi officials who don't brush off the near-term US-withdrawal proposal at all. For instance, their reporter says:

The United Iraqi Alliance welcomed the non-binding decision of the American Congress respecting withdrawal of the American forces from Iraq by the end of this year. Ali al-Adeeb, a Dawa party leader and member of parliament, said the decision of the American congress to withdraw its forces from Iraq was a correct decision. He explained in statements to the press that "the policy [or orientation] of the Iraqi govenment is that this year will be the last year of renewal of the presence of foreign forces in Iraq".

And what about "readiness" of the Iraqi forces? Here is what Maliki adviser Yasin Majid told AlHayat: "The Iraqi security forces have attained a high level of preparedness, and the latest military operations are the best indication of that. We can now say that it has become possible to rely on the Iraqi forces to look after the security portfolio".

For a more detailed explanation, the reporter spoke to general Mahdi Sabih, described as in charge of the forces for the preservation of order, who said:

"The Iraqi forces are capable of managing the security portfolio in the country", and in particular he said: "The Iraqi forces are capable of filling the security gap that the multinational forces leave in the event of their withdrawal." [But] he stressed "the need to supply the Iraqi forces with modern and advanced weaponry".

A spokesman for the Iraqi Accord Front, the main Sunni bloc in parliament, was more ambiguous and non-committal.

For his part, Hussein al-Faluji of the Accord Front said "the question of withdrawal of the multinational forces is linked to the question of readiness of the Iraqi forces and their ability to take over the security portfolio." And he explained that the question of withdrawal depends on an agreement to be signed between the Iraqi government and these forces".

Sunni resistance calls for closing ranks against the Mosul campaign

In a statement published yesterday by the Political Office for the Iraqi Resistance (Sunni factions the biggest of which is the Islamic Army in Iraq), and summarized this morning in AlHayat, the group described the current military campaign in Mosul as an "an attack on one of the strongholds of the People of the Sunna and the Community [referring to all Sunnis], in order to put down all of the voices of rejection and resistance to this tyrannical occupation," and called on all the factions to close ranks and escalate their armed operations against the government.

The statement called the attack on Mosul "a confirmation of the mission of the new Iraqi army, via the destruction of Iraqi cities and the ejection of the mujahideen and everyone honorable, and the violation of the precincts of Iraqi men and women, nor to they distinguish between mujahid and others, because for them anyone who carries a weapon in the defense of his religion, his honor or his country is a target."

The statement described the Mosul campaign as part of a series of campaigns including those in Baghdad, then Basra, then Revolution City (Sadr City), and now Ninawa, by "the so-called moderate participants in the political process" to prepare the ground so that local elections can be held without incident. In the Mosul campaign in particular, the statement said, the aim to help realize "the dreams of most of the Kurdish leaders, who have thrown in their lot with the Safavid project for Iraq".

The Mosul campaign is also an effort by Maliki "to vindicate [or whitewash] himself with his brothers in the Shiite ranks, after the events of Basra and Revolution City, as well as an effort to win the favor of the Kurdish leaders and come out appearing as a strong-man in the eyes of his patrons and his followers."

AlHayat also sumarizes a statement by the "Abu Mohammed", spokesman for the Izzat al-Douri or loyalist wing of the Iraqi Baath party. The Baath spokesman condemned what he called the criminal activities of the occupation govenment, supported by the sectarian and racist militias and the American forces, against the people of Mosul in general, and against their Baathist comrades in particular. This statement too called for strengthening of the resistance in the face of the continuing attack by the government and its allies.

GreenZone clubs stymie restructuring plan

The director of the office of the presidency of the republic, Nasir al-Ani, told a reporter for Aswat al Iraq:

that the retention by the main blocs of their allocations [in terms of number] of portfolios in the government, which Prime Minister Maliki is trying to fill now, has stymied the idea of downsizing it, which means that we are back to repair and filling posts that have been vacant since last year.

Al-Ani is himself a member of the Iraqi Accord Front, the main Sunni parliamentary bloc, and he explained that

at first, there was an agreement to propose technocrats, and the idea was to first reduce the ministries to 22, and then restructure them to 17 after merging similar ministries like science and technology with higher education, environment with health, and agriculture with natural resources. But it seems the blocs hung on to their ministries, and the concept wasn't successful, so we're back with the project of patching up and filling vacancies, in other words the return of ministries to the blocs that abandoned them, such as the Iraqi Accord Front.

"Mahdism" and the Sadrist resistance (with an update in real time)

The Sadrist site alamara.net has this at the top of its main page this morning (Friday May 16). (The dots are what I left out being not sure of the meaning). It is a prayer, not attributed to anyone, and headed: "The resistance remains our strength, and our aim is the liberation of Iraq."

Know, our protector and the lord of time, that we have progressed with your aid in the preparation of your state, the state of right, which will fill the earth with justice and with equity...even as we have filled the hearts of the ...occupier with fear and dread.

And know, our Sayyid Moqtada al-Sadr, that we will not yield to anyone but you, nor will we go forward except with you--no matter how the agents and infiltrators lure the people from you, and no matter how they try to kill us and to expose our corpses. They kill only the body, whose destiny is dust, but not our spirit or our mind, and not the sadriin within us, and we say to them... your group is nothing but numbers, and your days are fated...God will not suppress our inspiration or erase our memory.

The mention of exposure of corpses refers back to a report a few days ago of Iraqi government forces driving around Sadr City with bodies to intimidate the people. And obviously the whole prayer is on the occasion of the cease-fire, if that is what it is.

More particularly, in addition to the points about loyalty and religion, there is that striking reference to what sounds like a "millenarian" belief in a new world of justice on earth, that is in preparation. As it happens, Reidar Visser has just published a study talking about some of the constituent elements in the Sadrist tradition, among them: Social conservatism; Iraqi nationalism, which is very pronounced among the Sadrists compared to, for example, the Dawa and SupremeCouncil trends; a tendency in some groups to question the authority of the established authorities, in favor of direct inspiration; and finally, "Mahdism" or the theme of emergence of the hidden Mahdi and the establishment of a state of universal justice.

Visser explains that the Mahdist theme isn't in and of itself special to the Sadrists, but has been integral to Shiism over the centuries. But what is particularly worth noting about post-2003 Iraq is the repeated emergence of forms of "pure" Mahdism, with groups like the "Army of Heaven", the followers of Ahmed al Yamani, and others. What makes them distinctive and radical is (1) the intensity of their belief in a near-term emergence of the Mahdi, and (2) their unequivocal rejection of the Najaf authorities, in favor of the inspiration and relevation given to those who understand what is about to happen.

Moqtada al-Sadr, Visser says, has made frequent references to "establishment of the Mahdist state", but he notes:

It needs to be appreciated that such evocation of the Mahdi's appearance is a perfectly integral aspect of traditional Shiism and not something which in itself can justify the label of unorthodoxy. While some of the rhetoric of the Sadrists may perhaps prompt suspicions of mysticism, Sadrist policies are often down-to-earth to the point where those looking for the exotic may end up feeling disappointed. One Sadrist manifesto, for example, begins with a dramatic assertion that it is the ambition of the Sadrists to pave the way for the "government of total justice [i.e., the state of the Mahdi, Visser's brackets] but then goes on to enumerate a plan of action featuring comparatively mundane items, including "the fair distribution of natural resources such as oil among the Iraqis, without regard to religion, sect, or ethnicity."

But Visser adds that Sadr and the Sadrist trend, for all their continued respect for the structure of authority in Najaf and their specific Iraqi nationalism, still belong at one end of the same spectrum or broad family, to which the "pure Mahdists" also belong at the other end. And his point is that this possibility or risk of a turn to radical Mahdism, along with radical separatist thinking, that emerges from time to time in the South, should be borne in mind by the people who concoct policy for the Americans and the British, because a frontal assault on Sadr and the Sadrists could push the movement or at least important parts of it in the radical direction (both in terms of separatism and in terms of Mahdism).

(From a policy perspective, it is the same point that is made time and again with respect to Sunni groups, in the sense that rejection of the accommodating trends in the MB and elsewhere serves to help the takfiiri types in their recruiting. And this kind of policy-recommendation always arouses in me the same nagging feeling: Surely along with the mind-set of the various Islamic groups, something else even more important needs to be studied: namely the mind-set of the Western policy-elite itself, which persists in these destructive and counter-productive policies of negotiation-by-violence, even when the effects of it are made clear to them).

But my point here is a completely different point. It is that for Sadr and the Sadrists, the fight against the occupation is seen through the lens of "Mahdism" in the sense that their whole training and tradition is steeped in the expectation of a strong kind of historical change, meaning, for instance, that relations--for instance between the Mahdi Army and the Iraqi forces--will not always be as they seem to be now, namely in this case in a relationship of enmity. And the "preparing of the way" for the new world includes points as "mundane" as learning how to fight the enemy without at the same time fighting other Iraqis. This isn't the "pure Mahdism" of the crazies like Ahmed al Yamani and the others. But at the same time, it does represent for the Sadrists a guiding principle that is an inner strength, or perhaps an inner weakness depending on your point of view, but that in any event is a feature of their behavior it might be worth keeping in mind when trying to understand their behavior.

___________________

UPDATE: As of the end of the day Friday, the first news item under the above-quoted invocation went like this:

[Sadr office spokesperson Salah al-Obeidi] said a delegation including five leaders of the Sadrist trend arrived in Sadr City on Friday, bearing with them with instructions from the leader Sayyed Moqtada al-Sadr to continue implementation of the agreement that has been signed with the United Iraqi Alliance. Obeidi told AFP there is what he called good cooperation between the [UIA] and the Sadrist trend, and he said there is hope for a withdrawal of the American forces from Sadr City at the earliest possible time.

For his part, Sheikh Muhamad al-Musawi, who heads the delegation, in the Friday sermon today, urged the people of Sadr City to respect the agreement and to cease firing. He added in explanations to AFP that the advise of Moqtada al-Sadr is for avoiding the shedding of blood, and [the text said] "that he does not wish for any Iraqi to kill his brother Iraqi."

Musawi said the leader Sayyed Moqtada al-Sadr informed them that if a person wishes to become a martyr, it is incumbent on him to fight the American forces; and that "the Sadrist trend loves peace, and extends its hand to the Iraqi security forces", in his words.

Reflections of a Sadrist internal debate about the agreement

A group calling itself the Sons of the Army of the Imam Mahdi published a statement yesterday in the resistance-oriented newspaper Al Badil alIraqi (albadeeliraq.com) in which they said the "agreement" between the Sadrists and the UIA, and the accompanying statement purporting to be in Moqtada alSadr's handwriting, are forgeries perpetrated by sellouts around Sadr, and should be ignored. They cited differences in style compared to earlier authentic Sadr statements, inauthentic handwriting, and said the affixed at the bottom even appears to be photoshopped, in addition to their substantive claim, namely that adherence to this would be disastrous for the Mahdi Army.


(WARNING: Alkufanews.net, mentioned below, as of Thursday evening, seems to be infected with a virus, so it isn't a good idea to check it out.)
I don't know enough to evaluate any of that, but the fact of the matter is that the documents (16-point agreement and the handwritten intro) appear to have been scrubbed from the Sadrist news-site Alkufanews.net where they had been posted earlier yesterday (the site, having been down "for maintenance", came back online yesterday but with blank space in the boxes where the statements had been. And the another popular Sadrist news-site, nahrainnet.net, now has no reference to the agreement at all. Another Sadrist site still posts both.

There is another factor that suggests the internal dispute about this is being taken seriously. The remarks by the main spokesman for the agreement, Salah alObeidi, printed in AlHayat this morning, include, first of all, a warning that the provocations by the American and Iraqi forces could well sink the agreement. This seems to be an acknowledgment that insofar as the dissidents feel anxiety about this, the anxiety is not without merit, and is being taken seriously. Then he goes on to make a series of interesting remarks about the Najaf authorities, including the Ayatollah Sistani. Obeidi says:

"All of the religious authorities are in non-agreement with dissolving the Mahdi Army, and even the Ayatollah Sistani is not in agreement with that". And Obeidi said: "The decisions of Sayyid Moqtada al-Sadr are not issued until they have been referred to the authorities and their views taken. The religious authorities do not accept cutting out the Sadrist trend, or any other entity, from the political process. This was referred to by Sistani's depute Abdulmehdi al-Karbala'i in his sermon on Friday..."

And [Obeidi] continued: Sistani's office rejects the very concept that is at the center of the thinking of the governing groups and of the occupation, namely disarmament, because that would mean, in the current balance, an unacceptable [result] because of the existence of other militias of other groups that are armed, within sight and hearing of the state [authorities], such as the Awakenings, and the Asaysh (?) and others. So why is the government targeting the Mahdi Army in particular?

And in this connection Obeidi repeated the story about Sistani's alleged remark to Maliki on the occasion of their first meeting after his election as Prime Minister: "The Mahdi Army is your winning political card; don't lose it".

The above remarks are probably intended to be soothing in the context of the anxiety about the "agreement" weakening the Mahdi Army and the Sadrist movement as a whole.

And AlHayat concludes with two other remarks by Obeidi, also best understood as part of his response to the opponents of the agreement. First, he suggests it is most of all the Americans who are against any agreement of this type. He says:

"The American forces occupying Iraq are not pleased when calm and stability reigns; rather they are continually striving to eliminate the Sadrist trend and to bar it from the political process". He said, "The Americans have been trying to provoke the Mahdi Army since [the agreement was reached on] Saturday."

Finally, Obeidi acknowledges that Sadr has delegated a lot of authority to others, perhaps partly acknowledging the involvement of others than Sadr himself in structuring this agreement, but with Sadr's explicit authorization (and not, as the dissident group claimed, by way of usurping his name).

Obeidi seems to be saying: To the extent an agreement like this accords with mainstream Najaf thinking, this should be seen as positive, not as negative, for the Sadrist movement in the long term; to the extent the Americans will be trying to sink it, this too is an indication an agreement like this is to our advantage. And the fact that Sadr himself wasn't involved in all the details isn't a decisive argument against it.

Naturally, as indicated by the Badil al-Iraq piece, and the fact that some Sadrist sites have gone so far as to scrub the agreement-text from their sites, this isn't necessarily going to be the convincing argument.

Why the war-party's reading of this is wrong

The point that Moqtada has emphasized consistently in all of his recent statements is that the Sadr trend is at war with the occupation only, and not with the Iraqi forces. The strategy is to drive out the occupation (1) without triggering civil war between Iraqi groups; and in fact (2) use the process as preparation for an Iraqi government freed from the filth of the occupation. You can see this in his statements of April 8; April 19; and April 25. (Discussion of the latter here). I won't bother to quote the relevant parts again, because the strategy is clear: Fight the occupation without triggering an intra-Iraq war.

So it should have come as no surprise that the May 12 Sadr/UIA agreement has the same structure. The commitment is the same as it was in the document that ended the Basra fighting: the cease-fire is limited to Iraqi institutions (civil institutions, army and police); it does not extend to the occupation forces. In the case of the most recent agreement, it is true that the Green Zone is included among the institutions that is not to be attacked. But there is no possible reading of this agreement, or of any of the earlier statements, making this any kind of a capitulation to the occupation forces.

It is made to appear that way in the corporate media, the milblog world and elsewhere, because there are two things are particularly hard for the war-party to understand: (1) that the Sadrist approach does not assume a relationship of enmity between the Sadrists and the government forces, but rather a cooperative one, or at least one that has to become cooperative and will become cooperative in the process of purging the American involvement; and (2) general expressions respecting cease-fire and so on do not implicitly include the American forces, which first of all are not party to the agreement, but more important, since the Americans are in Iraq for an aggressive and destructive aim and no other, a cease-fire with them would be a contradiction in terms.

The purpose of this post is merely to gather together the above links to earlier statements, so as to point up the consistency in Sadr's position in this. And also to point up the propagandistic character of the latest media theme, namely "can Moqtada control his people"? The relevant question is not that, but rather how the Americans will go about resuming their attack on, and exposure to, this anti-occupation group, and what happens then.

Text of the May 12 Sadr/UIA agreement

القائمة الرئيسية يا علي با يعناك القائمة البريدية البريد الإكتروني خيار التسجيلإضافةإلغاء عدد زوار الموقع اخترنا لكم / استمع التسجيل الصوتي الكامل لخطبتي صلاة الجمعة المباركة من مسجد الكوفة المعظم ليوم 27 ربيع الاول 1429هـ بإمامة الشيخ عبد الهادي المحمداوي لحفظ المقطع انقر هنا اكلك ايمن واختر حفظ بأسم

نص اتفاق التيار الصدر مع الائتلاف الضامن للحكومة لانهاء الازمة . أرسلت في الأثنين 12 مايو 2008 بواسطة admin روابط ذات صلة · زيادة حول · الأخبار بواسطة admin أكثر خبر قراءة عن : نص بيان الهيئة السياسية العليا لمكتب الشهيد الصدر حول نتائج الاجتماع المشترك للهيئة السياسية والكتلة الصدرية واللجنة المركزية العليا لمكتب السيد الشهيد الصدر(قدس) في النجف الاشرف. خيارات صفحة للطباعة

جميع الحقوق محفوظة للموقع

An information-operation based on three fictions

The Sadrist trend has published the text of the 14-point agreement, in printed characters so that anyone can read it, together with an introductory statement in Moqtada al-Sadr's own hand, which is a little more difficult to read. The key part of the handwritten remarks says this:

In the event of commitment by this government to the clauses that have been signed by the brothers assigned by us under the seal of this office, then the faithful should commit to what is contained therein and comply with it. However [or "provided that"] there is formed a supervisory council for the implementation of the agreement, so as to protect the power [or honor] of the Iraqi people and the Iraqi resistance."

So the first point is that this doesn't appear to be the unconditional commitment that the information-machine says it is. Secondly, given that air-strikes and other actions by the American forces have been a major recent point of contention, let's have a look at what the agreement has to say about the role of the foreign forces. Surprisingly enough, the only reference to the foreign forces is in point 12, which says:

Where the above points [legitimate law-enforcement, searches and so on] require it, the government is the relevant party for determining what Iraqi force is required for the extension of security in the city, avoiding recourse to foreign forces.

That is the only reference to the foreign forces in the whole agreement. What then, you may ask, is the spokesman for the American forces talking about when he says (as quoted this morning by AlHayat):

"The American forces are still present in Sadr City, and they have not withdrawn, as it is spelled out in the latest agreement signed by Sadr and the Shiite parliamentary parties". He added that "the mission of the American forces is now to support the Iraqi forces", indicating that "the movements of the American forces in the city have been very limited in the last couple of days, but armed persons have continued through yesterday to target the American forces, contrary to what is spelled out in the latest agreement."

And the answer is, the US forces' spokesperson is making this up, because the agreement nowhere mentions the foreign forces, except in Clause 12, as noted above, where the point is that the Iraqi forces will avoid having recourse to them.

So the points so far are: (1) The agreement doesn't say anything about the foreign forces or about firing on them or not firing on them. The commitment is to not interfere with the Iraqi forces in their legitimate law-enforcement activities, or with the operation of government institutions--and the agreement does specifically include "the Green Zone" under that heading. The American forces would like to think they are an Iraqi government institution, but pretending they come under that umbrella in the agreement is pure fiction. And (2) Sadr spelled out for his followers in the introductory message that, in any event, the obligation on Sadrists to comply with the terms of the agreement depends on government compliance. And he added that there is to be a supervisory council to protect the interests of the Iraqi people and the Iraqi resistance.

Finally, the story this morning about an "agreement to disband the Mahdi Army" includes a similar piece of misinformation. Juan Cole, for instance, quotes the UIA spokesman Jalaladdin al-Saghir as having told AlHayat that "Sadr made an undertaking to dissolve the Mahdi Army". That isn't what Saghir said. He said: "The agreement recently formed with the Sadrists will lead eventually to the dissolution of the Mahdi Army", indicating that "the agreement did not mention that directly", adding however that the references in the agreement to not carrying weapons in public, turning over wanted persons, the authority of the state, and so on "cannot be interpreted except as a necessity for dissolving the Mahdi Army, sooner or later."

The three fictions, when you put them together, form part of an info-ops campaign to the following effect: (1) The Sadrists have collapsed morally because they have committed not to fire on the occupation forces; (2) they have collapsed strategically because (some say) they agreed to dissolve the Mahdi Army; and (3) the focus of attention now is supposedly on Moqtada's ability to control the Mahdi Army, not on the destabilizing belligerence of the American forces, whose presence in Sadr City isn't authorized by the agreement in the first place.

Latest news (with an update)

In the course of an interview with AlHayat printed yesterday, (Monday May 12) the head of the security and defence committee of parliament, who is also the head of the Badr Organization, Hadi al-Amiri said this:

With respect to the Awakening Councils, which have been formed and continue to be formed by the American army, Al-Amiri disclosed that "there is an agreement that the members of the Awakening Councils will not exceed 60,000, and that only 20,000 of them will be taken up by the organizations of the army and the police as individual members, and not as sects, and distributed according to the organization of the army and the police".

And he said that the American army's continued creation of Awakening Councils is a matter private to themselves, the Iraqi government bears no responsibility for the consequences [tabaat: the same word has the sense of "responsibility for consequences"] either material or moral from that, except for the creation of employment opportunities for them.

(If anyone is in a position to wake up any of the Democratic party policy-groupies, please let him or her know that the Badr Corp chief says Petraeus has a free hand and is continuing to form and deputize new armed groups, contrary to the idea that America is extricating itself from this process. You could also refer them to the series of posts here on what's happening in Diyala prefecture in particular).

______________

On the same theme of promotion of domestic discord, this morning's Azzaman leads its top story as follows:

Head of the Iraqi government Nuri al-Maliki has gone back on his promise to the people of the city of Mosul, second-biggest city in Iraq, not to target its people in the military campaign. The forces executing these operations, and associated with the leadership, have arrested 150 Iraqi officers, many of them medical and engineering and administrative officers who had been in the former Iraqi army, in an operation that was described by the Council of Ninawa Tribes, in a special meeting last evening, as an operation of revenge against those who participated in actions that their duty and their country required during the war between Iraq and Iran.

The tribal council went on to say that the former military people in Mosul were expecting to rejoin the service so as to do their part in fending off the scourge of AlQaeda, but instead have been surprised by this wave of arrests of the elite, which they described as state terror.

(UPDATE:The Association of Muslim Scholars of Iraq (AMSI) describes the arrests as follows:

On the third day of the operation being undertaken by the joint forces of the occupation and the government and the militias of the parties that belong to the government, along with the forces of the Kurdish Peshmerga and what are called the Awakening Councils, these forces arrested over 120 officers of the former Iraqi army, including those who were in military manufacturing in the former government, most of them living in the Arab section of Mosul. And likewise these forces arrested a number of university professors and students in an arbitrary fashion in various areas of Mosul.

The arrest of this elite group, with the participation of militias and forces answering to political trends and sects, in the second-biggest city in Iraq, constitutes a clear demonstration showing that this military campaign has a dimension beyond what has been announced and that its objective is to wipe out those citizens of the governate who reject what the occupation has brought with it, and its backers, and it targets military and civilian expertise...)

Earlier reports have described the Arabs of Mosul as primarily concerned about Peshmerga participants exploiting the campaign to help extend Kurdish influence. Instead the first complaints we hear since the declaration of the campaign's start on Saturday (May 10) is that the campaign is being used by the Iranian trained Badr organization to settle accounts dating from the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-88 (Azzaman) and a more general accusation from AMSI to the effect the campaign is targeting anti-occupation and national-expertise groups as a whole.

(RTI notes that there was a report several months ago to the effect one of the campaign leaders was approaching the local Baath party trying to arrange cooperation, something that has obviously turned out to be a campaign of arrests instead).
_________________

On the other side of the coin, there are efforts, less-publicized because non-violent, to reaffirm pan-Iraqi solidarity and unity. Today, for instance, Aswat al Iraq reports on a visit by 144 tribal leaders from the provinces of Salahaddin and Diyala (both north of Baghdad) to a major shrine in Karbala, a visit with an entirely symbolic purpose. The article concludes:

One of the Diyala sheikhs, Rashid al-Hamid al-Maraha, said "There are a number of tribal sheikhs who wished to visit Karbala to announce that Iraq is one. With this visit to the doorstep of the Husseiniya, on behalf of the people of Diyala, Shia and Sunni, we announce to the whole world our unity. Among us are leaders of the tribes of Dulaim, and of the Abeed, and the Bani Tamim, and the Izzat, none of them representing any party or sect, but only representing Iraqi unity."

How do these two worlds relate, that of the arming of new sectarian groups by Petraeus and the settling of accounts by the Badr and so on, on the one side, and the dream of Iraqi unity on the other? If you can get a pulse in any of the Democratic-party policy experts, tell them this is the issue, that in involves the US ending its harmful involvement in this, and they had better come to grips with it soon, lest they and their party end up as partners and successors in the shame and the disgrace of what has been done so far.

New Maliki/Bush theme: The strong executive (with an update)

Prime Minister Maliki told parliament on Monday the government needs $5 billion in addition to what is in the existing budget for 2008, in order to "stimulate operations for the building of Iraq, and undertaking strategic projects in every part of the country," blaming damage done to the educational system by the prior regime, destruction caused by terrorism, and so on. And he said there is a need to compensate those who have been damaged in the recent fighting. (He didn't mention the damage caused by the American bombing). But in addition to the various noble aims to be served by this $5 billion Maliki also referred also to an interesting cash-flow problem:

[Maliki] explained that this sum will be by way of a guarantee for corporations, in the sense that we can permit them to draw down amounts directly from it after completing a portion of their projects. Because there is a common opinion among the corporations to the effect that Iraq is slow [to pay] and obstructs the handing over of payables to the corporations.

That was the only specific use he referred to for the $5 billion; the rest was generalities.

(UPDATE: Most of the $5 billion was probably related to proposed oil-field servicing contracts; see the comments).

Some said the proposal coming from the executive branch was unconstitutional, because budgetary proposals are supposed to come from Parliament.

______________


Another constitutional issue was raised with respect to the General Amnesty Law. Azzaman's lead story on Monday May 12 started like this:

The Iraqi government announced [Sunday] an amendment to the General Amnesty Law which was passed by Parliament late last year in its capacity as the supreme legislative authority in the country. Salman Jamili, a member of parliament, described the amendments as a violation of law. He told Azzaman: "Legislation that is issued by Parliament cannot be changed or amended except by Parliament itself". He stressed that in the event the government tries to apply these amendments, Parliament will go to court to compel the government to apply the law as it was passed by Parliament without any amendments.

Azzaman explains the gist of two of the government's "amendments": One is to prohibit the release of individuals not only on the basis of crimes committed, but also on the basis of belonging to prohibited organizations; and another is to nullify the provision about mandatory release of those held six months or more without having appeared before a judge.

______________

I mention these two "constitutional" issues because of the context. Maliki has just explained that the government agrees to the Sadrist-UIA agreement only insofar as it is in accordance with the "rules" respecting government monopoly of armed force and other aspects of government authority. It would have been possible for the Maliki administration to have approved of the agreement and made itself a party to it, as a manifestation of national reconciliation. Instead it took the "executive authority" approach. Similarly, it would have been possible to have worked politically for an amendment to the General Amnesty Law rather than "announcing" amendments that it is clear there is no chance of Parliament ever passing. (Recall that passage of this law late last year was part of a complicated package of political trade-offs). Or to have worked with Parliamentary leaders to make sure that the $5 billion proposal emerged as a Parliamentary proposal, rather than as a PR coup for the executive.

It seems, in other words, that Maliki and the Americans could in a transition from the earlier rhetorical emphasis on "national reconciliation", to a (rhetorical) and no doubt also real, emphasis on the powers of the executive branch, whether or not this encroaches on the rights of the legislative branch, not to mention on the whole idea of governing based on broad national agreement. The point of this will become more apparent when there has to be an announcement about a bilateral long-term security agreement between "Iraq" and the United States. Because faced with weak prospects for a broad-based Iraqi government, the parties are no doubt planning to rely instead on arguments about the inherent rights of the executive branch. It will be the only argument left to fall back on.

Mortar fire on residential areas: "Poor aim" or warcrimes ?

Storytellers under the command of General Petraeus have come up with an explanation for recent mortar that lands in seemingly random residential neighborhoods injuring and killing civilians, and this is relayed to us courtesy of a group of self-described "counterinsurgency experts", somewhat of the Monte Python variety, as follows: "...Sources say [the campaign of air-strikes on launch teams in Sadr City] has been largely effective...Rockets continue to be fired, but the aim is going down as the top-notch teams have been eliminated." In other words: (1) Recent US airstrikes in Sadr City in fact killed launch-teams that were firing on the Green Zone; (2) those launch-teams they killed were, by divine help, those with the most experience and the best aim; (3) which left only the launch-teams with less-good aim. Hence, by clear implication, (4) the recent stray mortar attacks emanated from the Mahdi Army in Sadr City. There isn't any evidence cited for any of that, but as any stand-up people will tell you, it isn't about the story itself, it's about the delivery, and this one is being told to us with that deadpan delivery that we have come to know and to rely on.

But there is also a different explanation, one the counterinsurgency experts didn't mention.

The Sadrist news-site Alkufanews.net, citing a secular resistance-oriented news-site, says the following explanation is circulating among Baghdad residents. Local residents, this report says, have witnessed many cases of the firing of mortar from areas that are under the control of the American forces aimed at populated areas of Baghdad.

Residents who have seen this firing of mortar at random on residential areas explain it as a deliberate attempt to blacken the reputation of the Sadrists and the Mahdi Army, and to incite the people hit by these against the Sadrist trend, to create an atmosphere of hatred against the Mahdi Army.

The report reminds readers of similar allegations that circulated two years ago:

The circulation of these reports calls to mind similar news that was circulating in Baghdad two years ago, when residents asserted that they had seen hooded fighters undertaking mortar-launching from areas under the control of the coalition forces , on residential areas. They emphasized the impossibility of imagining any armed person having the ability to set up a launch base in such an area, and to fire mortar from there, in broad daylight, and within sight of the coalition forces, against civilian areas and targets in various parts of the capital.

Alkufanews cites as its source "the secular news agency Al-Badeel al-Iraqiya" (albadeelaliraq.com, a non-Islamist resistance-oriented news-site).

On reflection, it seems only natural that the counterinsurgency experts would have left out the alternate explanation. Their theme, after all, was that their sources say the US forces continue to follow respectable counterinsurgency policies, so that even mentioning the other explanation would no doubt have seemed, to their sources, to be disrespectful.

Political science and the Sadr City bombings

The secretariat of the United Iraqi Alliance held a meeting today (Sunday May 11) presided over by Abdulaziz al-Hakim, head of the main component of that bloc, namely the Supreme Council. Naturally Maliki, who belongs to the other major component, the Dawa party, was also in attendance. Following the meeting, Maliki made lengthy remarks to the journalists in attendance (apparently not including any western journalists).

His first point was that these meetings are important as a point of contact between the parliamentary blocs on the one hand, and "the executive authority" which he, Maliki heads, on the other. So for instance when he stressed the utmost importance of this meeting, he added:

We are convinced that [meetings like this] form the solid basis for launching joint activities between the lists and blocs that participate in the government [on the one hand], and the executive authority [on the other], and these activities will continue today with the UIA. And there are preparations with the other lists and blocs too, to put them also in the picture respecting the political realities...

Having established the distinction between the "lists and blocs" on the one hand, and the "executive authority" of the government on the other, Maliki gave his interpretation of the agreement with the Sadrists.

His point was that the agreement with the Sadrist bloc was in the sphere of agreements among the political blocs, and as far as "the executive authority" is concerned, it agreed with the agreement, but only because it represented the application of a principle that the executive authority applies everywhere and to all groups, namely that weapons are to be exclusively in the hands of the government. He said:

[The Sadrist-UIA agreement] requires some explanation, because what was arrived at, and the points of agreement, are the rules [dawaabit: "general rule, canon (moral), precept or order"] for action and interaction in the field that apply to all sides and tendencies and parties and trends, to which they must all be committted in their actions in the area of security. But what occurred was bilateral relationships and discussions between the UIA and the Sadrist trend, and not between the government and the [Sadrist] trend.

Now the government, as long as it sees that any type of effort [like these discussions and agreement] as long as it arrives at the actual goals and objectives that we desire--including non-intervention in the affairs and operations of the police and the army, not possessing heavy weapons, not using these weapons to attack the institutions of the state--and we wish them to be legalized and to be committed to the rules of order, and so on--then the clauses that result are the same clauses that we have been announcing and even distributing from airplanes.

So the good thing about the Sadrist trend is that they have responded positively to these rules, and for our part, when we see this committment, then we will move toward the second stage, which is establishment of security and stability, and ending all of the sanctions and the weapons...The following stage will be construction and the providing of more services...

Maliki's point is that the government only agreed to this UIA-Sadrist agreement insofar as it embodies the same "rules" that his government has been leafleting Sadr Sadr City with, namely that there is to be no interference with the state and its institutions. It is up to the government to enforce this rule, so naturally whenever any parties agree among themselves to abide by these rules, the government will of course agree to that.

The executive authority, according to Maliki's interpretation as explained here, is paramount in the sense that while parties and blocs may make agreements among themselves, in the final analysis the only legitimate meaning that such agreements can have is to support the government within the framework of "the rules". The government does not bind itself by agreements with political parties or blocs; rather, such agreements are by definition within the framework of the "rules", of which the executive authority and only the executive authority is the arbiter. (Starting to sound familiar)?

This is the explanation for the frightening remarks attributed to Maliki spokesman Ali Dabbagh and Badr Organization head Hadi al-Amiri this morning in the corporate media:

[Sadrist spokesman] Obeidi said the agreement allows only Iraqi forces to conduct raids in Sadr City, not the U.S. military. But Dabbagh told The [LA] Times that the deal did not address the role of foreign troops, a point underscored by Hadi Amri, a member of the ruling alliance's negotiating team.

"There is no point that prevents the Americans from performing military operations in Sadr City," Amri said. "The U.S. forces are and will continue bombing . . . the places that are launching mortar rounds or rockets at their bases and/or the Green Zone."

Of course this raises the question how a ceasefire agreement can be structured to as to allow continued bombing by one of the parties. But the answer to that question is simple. This is not, in the minds Maliki and his allies, a cease-fire at all, but merely an agreement among political parties and blocs to abide by the state-supremacy rules of which the executive authority is the arbiter. There is nothing to prevent the state from calling in air-support in pursuance of its establishment of these state-supremacy rules; on the contrary.

This is the mind-set. While it doesn't explain the internal Maliki-SupremeCouncil tensions, it does help to understand their common ground. Moreover, I think it also helps us to (partly) understand why it is that the Democratic-party policy people have fallen silent so suddenly since the Sadr City bombings started. Because as you can see from a review of Marc Lynch's posts over the last few months, the central theme has been to stress the need for central authority as opposed to regional fragmentation, but now that the central authority turns out (!) to be just what you would expect from a trusted representative of the occupying forces, they are at a loss for words.

Wiggle-room (With an update on continued US airstrikes)

You will perhaps think me picky, reader, but I was looking forward to a definitive statement from Aswat al Iraq/Voices of Iraq about the nature and content of the agreement referred to in the previous post, so as to put to rest all the ambiguity. Imagine my disappointment on finding that there are slight but potentially important differences between their Arabic-language version and their English-language version.

(1) The Arabic version quotes Dabbagh as referring to "talks between the UIA and the brothers from the Sadrist trend to support security and stability in Sadr City and [other] areas where there have been security problems, and an agreement was reached, consisting of 14 points, between the Sadrist trend and the UIA, which transmitted the views of the government. The English language version says this: "'There are talks between a UIC [=UIA] delegation and the brothers from the Sadrist bloc, and a 14-point agreement was reached,' Ali al-Dabbagh told VOI on Saturday". The thing about the UIA "transmitting the views of the government" isn't there. (And in neither the English nor the Arabic version is their any mention of the American forces or the Maliki-Bush relationship, so the question of the government's actual status in this is important).

(2)The Arabic version quotes Dabbagh's version of one part of the agreement as follows: "Among the clauses is an end to armed manifestations (muthaahira or muzaahira if you prefer) clearing Sadr City of all explosive devices and mines, closing illegal courthouses..." and so on, compared to a slightly different expression in the English language version, which runs as follows: "'The agreement included the clearing of Sadr City of all explosive charges and mines, the closure of all illegal courthouses, ending all armed activities and acknowledging that the Iraqi government is the sole party that runs security issues and decides sending any forces to any area to impose order and security,' Dabbagh noted". So "an end to armed manifestations" in Arabic has become "ending all armed activities" in English. If I am remembering correctly, this expression about "armed manifestations" or something very like it, was part of the compromise agreement between the Lebanese government and Hizbullah for the implementation of the UN resolution that followed the July war of 2006 and called for disarming Hizbullah. The idea had to do with keeping weapons out of sight.

(3) On the question of picking up wanted persons, there is an interesting (?) difference as well. The Arabic version quotes Dabbagh as follows: "On stopping military operations in Sadr City, Dabbagh said: 'Military operations in Sadr City are in pursuit of outlaws, because there are people that are wanted by the law, and we expect that the Sadrist trend will cooperate in the government extending its authority.'" the English has something quite different, as follows:

Zaynab al-Kanani, a member of parliament from the Sadrist bloc, had said on Friday that several Sadrist delegations under Sheikh Ubaydi have met with members from the UIC and other parliamentary blocs during the past couple of days to reach a solution to the crisis between the government and the Sadrists.
She said the outcome of the meetings was good but there are still some pivotal issues pending consultations and might take some time to reach an agreement over.
"One of these issues is the handover of more than 40 gunmen against whom arrest warrants were issued," Kanani said.
Ubaydi, however, said the agreement provides for "the right of the Iraqi security forces to conduct raids in search of wanted people in accordance with controls and citizenship rights [no doubt meaning "subject to due process and civil rights"."

So the conclusion is that there is probably a lot more grey-area wiggle-room that might appear on the face of it. Because

(1) It still isn't exactly clear what the relationship is between the "government" and the UIA in this, or what the government's actual obligations are under this, or the relationship between this "agreement" and its other "agreements" for instance that with the United States.

(2) There seems to be a clause about banning "armed manifestations", which could indicate an informal compromise something like what was adopted in the 2006 case of Hizbullah.

(3) There is still ambiguity about the potential scope of Iraqi army arrest operations, which depending on your reading, could be limited to execution of existing outstanding arrest warrants, arresting of anyone as long as it is subject to due process and civil rights (prompt charges or else release, for instance), or a more general obligation on the part of the Sadrists to help the government extend its jurisdiction.

In short, the whole package of unclarity in this probably marks this as what we call in Japanese an agreement "with the irridescence of a butterfly's wings."

_____________
*Voices of Iraq posted this at 9:30 pm Baghdad time on Saturday May 10:

Baghdad, May 10, (VOI) – Three large parts of Sadr city were subjected to heavy bombardment that was continuously carried out by U.S. helicopters, starting from Saturday 3:30 p.m. until now, despite the Iraqi government and representatives of the Sadr movement having signed an agreement to stop confrontations in the city.

Reporter of Aswat al-Iraq – Voices of Iraq – (VOI) said that airstrike operations covered the areas of Jameela, al-Gayiara, and al-Dakhil, but he could not contact medical sources to learn whether there were any casualties among Sadr city's residents.

McClatchy takes sides (revised, then updated)

McClatchy this morning reports that "In a big concession, militia agrees to let Iraqi troops into Sadr City," relegating to the fifth paragraph the news that this is a tentative agreement between Shiite parties subject to agreement that hasn't yet been obtained from Maliki and Sadr. (See also the previous post for the run-up to this, and the update below). Moreover, Azzaman, which reports on this same topic relying on the same single source (Sadrist member of parliament Baha Araji), describes its scope and contents rather differently, and includes a reference to this all-important point, not mentioned in the McClatchy version:

A source close to the Iraqi government said Maliki is not obligated to implement any agreement that is contrary to the decision to disarm the militias, which is an absolute obligation [undertaken] by Maliki with American president George Bush at the tie of the Baghdad Security Plan [aka the Surge].

Azzaman describes the negotiations between the Sadrists on the one side, and the United Iraqi Alliance (mainly Supreme Council and Dawa) on the other as an attempt to revive or recreate the agreement of several months ago between Sadr and Hakim, indicating that it aims, among other things, to resolve problems between them in the South and Center of Iraq.

With respect to the Sadr City part of the agreement, Azzaman says this:

Araji explained to Azzaman that the document does not contain any clause relating to the dissolution of the Mahdi Army, or to the handing over of arms, but it does include a clause relating to the handing over of persons with pending charges relating to lawbreaking or criminal activity.

(Recall that in earlier accounts of these negotiations this appeared to relate to a list of people described as "over 40 individuals"). And the Azzaman reporter tells us quite frankly that the UIA side of the negotiations has "maintained silence and has not commented on the meetings [leading up to this] at which there has not been any direct official representative of the government".

McClatchy's scoop, then, is that the agreement includes a clause that would let Iraqi forces arrest anyone in Sadr City found with heavy weapons, relegating to the 10th paragraph this remark of Araji's: "The Iraqi forces, not the American forces, can come into Sadr City and search for weapons, Araji said. We don't have heavy weapons, and we want this to stop."

So there is the Azzaman version: A tentative agreement between the Sadrist trend and the SupremeCouncil/Dawa parties, broad in scope, including provisions to stop the fighting in Sadr City that Araji said don't include a clause respecting general handing over of weapons, with the warning that no government person was directly involved in the talks, and in any event a government person says Maliki won't agree to anything short of disarmament, on account of his "absolute obligation" to Bush in that regard. By contrast, McClatchy picks one clause (and without quoting it) to describe a "major capitulation" by the Sadrist trend, implying that final agreement by Maliki and Sadr will be merely a question of formal signing of the document, with no reference either to the broad scope that Azzaman refers to, or to the point about Maliki's "absolute obligation" to Bush.

In a nutshell, this appears to be a case of McClatchy inserting itself into the negotiating process in order to spin the process as a major defeat for the Sadrists and a victory for the Maliki/Bush alliance (but without mentioning Bush anywhere in the story).

To put it another way, Azzaman points us in the direction of the key problem, which is Maliki's relationship to Bush, while McClatchy tells its story about one clause in a broad, tentative agreement, touting this as a victory for Maliki, without reminding its readers of the role of the American forces or of Bush.
________

UPDATE: Reuters quotes Maliki spokesman Ali Dabbagh to the effect "Maliki has approved this agreement". But the Reuters piece serves to highlight all of the other problems with the original McClatchy piece, namely: (1) There isn't any clear statement what the agreement calls for. Sadrist spokesman Salah al-Obeidi is quoted as follows: "Ubaidi said that after the four-day ceasefire, Iraqi forces could enter Sadr City and detain anyone they wanted as long as they had an arrest warrant. He said the agreement called for aid to be delivered to residents and roads opened." That isn't what the McClatchy piece said. And (2) The ambiguity respecting the American forces is highlighted when Reuters quotes Obeidi as follows: "He said he expected the pact to take effect either on Saturday night or Sunday with a total halt to all Iraqi military activity for four days. He did not mention the U.S. military." And the Reuters reporter tells us: "The US military said it was not aware of any agreement".

UIA politicians getting involved in Sadr City settlement talks (Updated)

There have been a number of proposals for ending the crisis in Sadr City, AlHayat reminds us this morning, including

two from members of parliament, one from President of the Republic Talabani, and a proposal by leaders of Sunni tribes calling for an immediate end to the military operations and a peaceful resolution of the crisis, none of them successful in ending the crisis. Instead, the military operations in Sadr City continue, with seven reported killed yesterday and 19 wounded, while meanwhile the government forces closed the radio station Al-Ahad belonging to the Sadrist current.

Against this background, the AlHayat reporter says there is now an initiative by the Shiite "Alliance" (meaning the United Iraqi Alliance, or UIA, which now consists only of Dawa, the Supreme Council and a few independents) with what some call a proposed comprehensive settlement, and others a merely a framework for talks. What is new is that the proponent is the bloc that is ostensibly one of the few remaining supporters of the Maliki administration (in the parliamentary sense at least), so this raises the question whether Maliki would reject a proposal coming from this group as he has rebuffed the others.

There are several versions of this, the first from Supreme Council politician Jalaladdin Al-Sagheer:

[Al-Sagheer] said the bloc has proposed an initiative for the comprehensive resolution of the crisis between the Sadrist trend and the government. He added: "A broad-based meeting was held and it issued a proposal including an end to the military operations in Sadr City in exchange for the Sadr trend voluntarily turning over a number of wanted and armed persons, to end the suffering of innocent people in the city." Sagheer didn't mention the issue of "dissolving the Mahdi Army", but he said "this proposal, if it is accepted, will not bind the government, however the UIA will use its weight with the government to urge it to accept it".

That's the first version of the proposal. Here's another version:

A source within the council that prepared the proposal, who didn't want his name disclosed, said the proposal includes limiting the operations within Sadr City to the Iraqi forces and withdrawing the American forces; releasing citizens that are arrested, where there aren't specific accusations against them, within a specified period of time not to exceed 24 hours; and turning over weapons within the city in exchange for monetary payment.

And here is another version:

Sadr spokesman Salah Al-Obeidi told AlHayat: "The new proposal was presented to the Sadr trend by Shiite parties within and outside the UIA bloc and it is for having urgent discussions and a resolution of the crisis at the earliest time.

Obeidi said the Sadrist trend is in agreement with that, adding there were to be discussions Thursday evening "with political leaders in the UIA, and perhaps [with people in] the government", for preliminary talks and so that all of the parties get a chance to table their demands. The journalist concludes:

Obeidi said he doesn't know the purport or the tenor of the proposal, "but we will meet with them in any case in order to understand the content [of what they have to propose]".

He said "It appears that a number of parties in the UIA have become dissatisfied with the government's escalation, and with its rejection of the dozens of proposals that have been made for a resolution of this security crisis, which is starting to generate humanitarian crises, including killing of innocent civilians, and forced dislocation of hundreds of people".

_______________

UPDATE: A Sadrist member of parliament, Zeinab al-Kanani, told Aswat al Iraq on Friday May 9 that several Sadrist delegations led by Salah al-Obeidi have been meeting with members of the UIA and other parliamentary blocs since yesterday (Thusday), with a view to resolving the crisis. She said the results are going well, but there are some key issues that remain unresolved, including the issue of turning over armed persons against who there are arrest warrants, the number of such persons being over 40. She said the Sadrists do not object to the question of house-searches for the purpose of disarmament, adding that in the last few days there have been searches that have occurred without any incidents to speak of. She said she is inclined to think that the next few days will see an agreement with the government that will defuse this situation.

Nasrullah's press-conference remarks

The press-conference remarks by Hassan Nasrullah yesterday (Thursday May 8) provide a couple of pointers on the general topic of defense of Arab nationalism against the proponents of fitna and civil war.

The first point is the importance of an orderly exposition of ideas, locating the current crisis in the context of the overall defense of the nation. Following introductory remarks, Nasrullah said:

I will be talking to you about a number of topics. The first topic is the communications network, and it is our intention in this press conference to describe this issue as it is, not to deliver sermons or issue slogans. This stage is a difficult stage, but at the same time it is still susceptible to logic and reason, and to responsible decision-making. So the first topic is the communications network, the communications network of the resistance. The second will be the airport/General Shoukair; and the third will be the current political crisis and how to deal with it and how to end it.

On the first topic, I have a couple of definitions, because it is possible that in Lebanon people know the story of the communications network of the resistance, but it is possible that outside Lebanon some people think we have set up a telephone system to avoid paying fees and taxes...

So the first definition is this: In every army of the world, even in the old armies, there has been what is called a Signal division, whether this has been based on pigeons, or whether it has been based on voice, or on a number of different systems together, at every stage there has been developed, along with infantry and artillery and so on, a Signal division, and the meaning of that is communications....

Okay, now this communications function can take a number of forms...

And Nasrullah goes on to explain that a major reason they were able to prevail in the Israeli war of summer 06 was that they had a secure communications nework for command and control, and he reminds his listeners that the Israeli government's own Winograd report pointed out that very fact. Therefore, says Nasrullah, the demand, or even the suggestion, by the governing coalition that the Hizbullah electronics communications network was illegal and should be taken down, amounted to a declaration or war against the resistance. And naturally that had to be met with a firm reply.

It might seem that this point about orderly exposition of ideas is too simple to mention, so to grasp the importance of it, you should read the AP story today on the crisis, and you will see that the issue of the communications network is not even mentioned. Hizbullah control of important Beirut locations is presented as something almost completely unmotivated, as an aggression, so to speak, or a manifestation of fitna. That is the point about the deliberately fragmentary recounting of events. If you leave out the major causal events, or present them in some jumbled-up fashion, then events will look as if fitna is already upon us, and the way Nasrullah combats that is to re-tell the story from the beginning, to make sure that the context is well-understood.

There is a second point, and it is that Nasrullah also locates the current crisis in the recent history of the resistance. In his introductory remarks, he says this:

To be sure, the subject of this press conference, which is the first we have held since the end of the July war, is the recent developments and the dangers that have come over the Lebanese scene in the last few days. But first I need to say that since those decisions that were taken by the team in power on that dark night, there has begun a completely new stage in [the history of] Lebanon, so that the date of that session, as far as we are concerned, is as important as the 14th of February 2005 [assassination of Rafiq Hariri] and the convulsions that brought Lebanon into a completely new stage with ehe martyrdom of Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri. We are now [similarly] faced with a completely new stage in Lebanon. Because Lebanon after that dark [or oppressive] session is not like Lebanon before that oppressive session, and it is incumbent on the team in power to understand that they have put Lebanon in a totally new situation, in view of the seriousness [or danger] of the decisions they have taken, and the background of them, and their scope.

And Nasrullah turns immediately to the explanation of the national-defense significance of the communications network that the governing coalition threatened to declare illegal.

So in addition to locating the crisis in the strategic framework of the defense of the nation, Nasrullah also puts it in a historical context. Where the Washington-based narrative is one of endlessly recurring outbreaks of fitna (together with generally incredible stories about US attempts to impose order versus outlaws), Nasrullah's account is a historical one in the modern sense.

For a complete summary of Nasrullah's remarks, there is an excellent translation of many lengthy excerpts by mideastwire.com, posted on syriacomment.org. Naturally, reading the whole thing will better illustrate what I'm trying to get at.

My purpose in this post is merely to show how the remarks are structured, to indicate by contrast how the fragmentary reporting style of the AP, NYT and others is really not just a manifestation of sloppiness, but rather is part of the whole Washington-imposed background picture that says: There is nothing that happens in the region that isn't a manifestation of fitna, because fitna is already upon us.

To paraphrase Obama: No it isn't.

Frightening silence

(It appears that Bush's man mini-Hariri has backed down in the confrontation with Hassan Nasrullah, so possibly the new Lebanese civil war will not take place, at least not now.)

Meanwhile, on the level of what is actually taking place in Sadr City, the reports of conditions there are fragmentary, minimized by the corporate media except for their "parental-guidance" type of entertainment value--CNN currently has a clip with the Hollywood PG rating attached to it--and except for the endless interpolations about how the US forces are merely following the lead of those crime-fighting Iraqis. But the reality is frightening.

Yesterday:

Entire sections of Baghdad's embattled Sadr City district have been left nearly abandoned by civilians fleeing a U.S.-led showdown with Shiite militias and seeking aid after facing shortages of food and medicine, humanitarian groups said Wednesday. ...Claire Hajaj, a UNICEF spokeswoman based in Jordan, said up to 150,000 people — including 75,000 children — were isolated in sections of Sadr City "cordoned off by military forces." She said about 6,000 people have been forced to flee their homes and that some areas of southeastern Sadr City were virtually abandoned.

Today:

Iraqi soldiers for the first time warned residents in the embattled Sadr City district to leave their houses Thursday, signaling a new push by the U.S.-backed forces against Shiite extremist who have been waging street battles for seven weeks.

There are reports that refugee camps are being set up at sports stadiums and other facilities.

This is not happening by divine intervention. This is happening because the US is escalating its military attacks on the city.

CSM, also today: "Residents of this city's embattled Sadr City district are growing increasingly anxious that an escalation in fighting is imminent. They reported that soldiers with loudspeakers warned people in one section to move out, while others said that on Thursday, for the first time, the US carried out daytime airstrikes." Also for the first time, the US forces attacked Sadr City from the north rather than from the south:

The US focus on the southern part of Sadr City left residents all the more surprised by the fighting they described in the northern section outside the security wall. "We did not expect that," Abu Hawaraa said, adding that it led to a fight that left several houses destroyed. "The Americans came in with Humvees and tanks, but some of those vehicles did not get out," he said. "I saw by my own eyes that two of the humvees" and at least two other vehicles were destroyed.

These reports in the corporate media--all of them--are in the form of fragments interspersed with exculpatory statements from American officials to the effect that (1) The Americans are only following the lead of the Iraqi forces (which is manifestly not true) and (2) the whole Sadr City operation is nothing more than an attempt to protect the Green Zone from rocket attacks, the American forces subsequently having been "drawn into" full-scale urban combat.

But in fact, daily airstrikes and heavy-weapons and tank-supported warfare in this densely populated urban area represents a major shift in US military strategy. (A major shift, that is, compared to what we were told the new strategy is). You don't need to be a military expert to see that. You can read any of the accounts of the US military's new "COIN" (counterinsurgency) doctrine, to see that the strategy--supposedly--is to avoid bombing urban areas and similiar massive-force tactics, and instead to concentrate on winning the hearts and minds. Explanatory material about this "progressive" approach was a very popular genre at the time of the Surge and the appointment of Petraeus.

One of the main popularizers of the doctrine was Colin Kahl, now a Democratic Party foreign policy consultant of some description. But while he (and others like him) trumpeted the doctrine when it was introduced, now that it is being abandoned and the policy is gradually reverting to the barbarism of the 19th century, they have gone back into their shells and are saying nothing.

Perhaps that is slightly unfair. For people who could read the very, very fine print between the lines, Colin Kahl had this to say back in December 07:

The U.S. military's new counterinsurgency manual is an overdue step forward in doctrine. But a look back at the history of counterinsurgency offers a sobering reminder of how low the odds of success are -- as Iraq is showing all too well.

That's from the summary of his essay in Foreign Affairs in Dec 07, subtitled "Is there a future for Counterinsurgency," which in the jargon means: Is there a future for counterinsurgency "best practices"--hearts-and-minds counterinsurgency--or if not...

Now that it is May 2008, it is clear that what comes after the "...or if not": Tanks and airstrikes in Sadr City, followed by massive population dislocations and refugee camps, followed by what we can so far only imagine.

So you should read Colin Kahl's Dec 07 essay, where he points out how unlikely it is that this hearts-and-minds type of Counterinsurgency can be successful in Iraq. Naturally you will expect him to discuss how the US military strategy might react to that. But there is nothing of the kind. The essay is a model for the kind of obfuscation that is a badge of the true policy-elite. As the discussion proceeds, Iraq gradually fades from his field of vision, and Colin Kahl talks about other things, future wars, and so on.

Another bit of recommended reading is the year-old briefing outline by military-strategy bigshot Andrew Krepinovich, discussed in the earlier post here called "Flim-flam". Krepinovich's slide collection offered a rare look at what Capitol Hill staffers were told about actual military-policy options, as opposed to what the public was being told about "civil war strategies". When it came down to what you do when the hearts-and-minds approach doesn't work, he talked about the massive-force option, adding it was unlikely the US would resort to this "except in the most dire of circumstances". And his interpreter Kahl said in a commentary: "[Massive force would be] incompatible with the norms against targeting civilians embraced by the US military and political leadership..."

Now that the use of massive force against civilian areas is upon us, the whole policy establishment has gone silent on this issue. All that is reported in the news are the fragments like those noted above, interspersed with phrases of exculpatory jargon. And the policy-elite are still putting out studies casting the US forces in the role of the benevolent adjudicator and proponent of reconciliation.*
_____________
* Here, just to illustrate, are a couple of paragraphs from the same Colin Kahl, dated March 08 (via Marc Lynch, who seems to have a acquired a taste for this kind of thing).

A policy of conditional engagement—a nuanced middle position between “all in” or “all out”—offers a better chance of producing lasting progress in Iraq. Under this strategy, U.S. negotiators would make clear that Iraq and America share a common interest in achieving sustainable stability in Iraq, and that the United States is willing to help support the Iraqi government over the long-term, but only so long as Iraqis move toward political accommodation......

In such a context, the best way to push groups toward compromises on the critical issues of oil, federalism, provincial elections, and the integration of Sunni security volunteers into the Iraqi army and police is to establish a broad framework for withdrawal—but also demonstrate a willingness to leave residual forces in the country to support the Iraqi government if accommodation is reached.

Possibly we are in the realm of psychic abnormality, and these policy-groupies think what is happening now in Sadr City actually isn't happening because it doesn't fit any of their stories.

Nahrainnet: The campaign against Hizbullah tracks the campaign against the Mahdi Army

The Sadrist news-site Nahrainnet.net pays a lot of attention to recent statements by the top Sunni mufti in Lebanon Mohamed Rashid al-Qabbani, and by the right-wing Christian militia leader Samir Geagea. Nahrainnet's point is that the ideological campaign against Hizbullah in Lebanon, by the US allies and agents there, tracks very closely the current Iraqi-government campaign against the Mahdi Army: the campaign being to try and strip them of their nationalist identity, and make them appear to be sectarian groups, aimed at controlling the state with foreign support, at best, and criminal gangs at worst. Here is how the article begins:

The mufti of the Republic of Lebanon...Qabbani, adopted the position of the Lebanese government, which is supported by America and Saudi America, in launching a PR war against Hizbullah, and an attempt to impose a sectarian image on the growing differences between the loyalists and the opposition. [The mufti said in a speech yesterday] "Sunnis in Lebanon are fed up with the excesses of Hizbullah," accusing the party of undertaking an "occupation of Beirut"!

The Nahrainnet reporter says Qabbani described Hizbullah as "trying to establish hegemony over Lebanon, with foreign support, under the pretext of resistance."

And the March 14 forces were quick to support the attitude of the mufti and the government, accusing Iran of supporting [Hizbullah] with the aim of an armed coup to control the country. The government, for its part, accused Hizbullah of bringing in armed gangs with the aim of seizing power.

This "Hizbulah=sect/gangs" part of the public-relations campaign is obviously very similar to the Maliki administration's campaign against the Mahdi Army, but on these particular points the Nahrainnet reporter draws the parallel only implicitly.

The explicit comparison is made for him by the US-allied warlord Samir Geagea, whom he quotes as follows:

The president of the executive council of the Lebanese Forces [a political party, despite its name], which is part of the March 14 government coalition, accused Hizbullah of being behind the current workers' agitation. And along the lines of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, Geagea, known for this close relationship with Israel, said "Hizbullah is becoming another Mahdi Army in the alleyways and streets of Beirut"!!

And the journalist adds a few remarks on Geagea's own militia, its training in Jordan, and so on.

So what the Nahrainnet reporter sees is the another example of the same pattern: US allies, supported by their own militias (Badr Corp in Iraq; Geagea/Jumblatt et al in Lebanon) accusing the resistance forces of being nothing more than street-gangs themselves, in an attempt to drain the resistance of its nationalist identity and appeal.

(For a survey of different and detailed views on the current events in Lebanon, a recommendable approach would be to start with the comments to a collection of articles on the syriacomment.org website. Without, however, losing sight of the main point. In Lebanon, as in Iraq, this is an attempt by the US and its agents to try and strip the major nationalist groups of their nationalist credentials, and turn the story into one of sectarian gang-fighting and nothing else. For instance, one might want to be particularly careful when reading the on-the-street Nir Rosen accounts, whether they have his name on them or not, because the latest from him ("...even in Iraq I haven't seen this kind of anti-Sunni sectarianism...") looks a lot like his earlier attacks on the alleged anti-Sunni sectarianism of Moqtada.)

War-crimes update: Hospital closing was part of the attack on another Baghdad district

Reuters affiliate AlertNet reported yesterday that (1) the Iraqi army arrested 42 members of the Iraqi police on Monday, apparently in the Shiite district of Sho'ala (one of various spellings), where (2) the Iraqi forces also stormed a major hospital, the Mohammed-Bakr Hakim hospital in the same area, beat some employees and arrested others, forcing the closure of the hospital, as part of a military attack on the district.

For an explanation of the background to this phenomenon of some Iraqi security people arresting others, you have to go back to the April 8 statement of Sadr:

But I am convinced that our genuine Iraqi army and police, [people] who have God and love of their country in their hearts, and treat the Iraqi people as their brothers, have not, and will not, raise their hand to kill or to arrest their sons and brothers--indeed, their fathers and mothers--and have not, and will not, stain their hands with the blood of their people, or torture them in the pits of the American prisons or elsewhere, as the occupiers have done to us, and before them the Haddam.

The Iraqi police who were arrested were possibly among the people that Sadr was talking about.

AlertNet, by contrast, puts the Maliki/US sectarian spin on this, writing: "The soldiers detained 42 policemen suspected of collaborating with "outlaws" on Tuesday, an officer of Baghdad's security spokesman Major-General Qassim Moussawi's office said. Iraq's police are seen being as infiltrated by Shi'ite militiamen, using the cover of their uniforms to mount attacks."

The storming and closure of the Sho'ala hospital on Monday morning wasn't widely reported. There is only this very brief piece in AlertNet yestereday, and the following contemporaneous account from the resistance-oriented yaqen.net website. Yaqen reported:

[Hospital director Rikabi said] government forces stormed the Sho'ala hospital, ordered the expulsion of all the sick and the wounded, and prevented the reception of any [new] wounded people.

Witnesses said the Husseiniya mosques controlled by the Mahdi Army issued exhortations to the people of Sho'ala to continue to confront the joint government-American forces. Sources in the local Sadr office said the joint Iraqi-American forces launched an attack on the district from four directions...on Monday morning (May 5). [Adding] that the attack focused on districts 11, 12 and 13 of Sho'ala, and that the blockade of the area continues.

The Yaqen reporter says there was fighting in the area between the joint forces and the Mahdi Army. He quotes the hospital director as having said "early this morning" (probably meaning before the hospital was closed) that the hospital was seeing "a large number of dead and wounded, but he didn't give specific numbers".

And that is the hospital that the Iraqi/American forces closed.

Because, says AlertNet, the hospital was "suspected of treating Shiite militiamen."

Info-ops: "Iraqis could attack Israel" and Cole helps move the story along

Michael Gordon of the NYT writes that "Hizbullah trains Iraqis in Iran, officials say", which in one sense isn't unusual, given the the NYT has hosted this genre of unattributed "information operations" stories since the era of Judith Miller and no doubt before that. But notice the reference to "Hizbullah" (meaning Lebanese Hizbullah), and how it is being introduced into the Iraq story. Notice too how American readers are encouraged to swallow the Hizbullah part of the story, and the implications of that.

Because here is the spin that Juan Cole puts on the NYT story. He says: "I am suspicious of this story not because it is necessarily untrue (how would I know?) but because it shares with typical Bush administration propaganda the 'gotcha' technique in which questions of proportionality, significance and causality do not arise." "Proportionality"--because the information is based on interrogation of only four captured persons. "Significance"--because given the size of the Mahdi Army, training a few of them in Iran is not that big a deal. And "causality"--same argument, a small amount of this type of training isn't in any sense a decisive thing. He doesn't mention Hizbullah.

Cole says, in effect: Assume the story is true, and ask yourself: so what?

Uncharacteristically, Cole fails to pay any attention to the top story on the front page of Azzaman this morning, where there is a very clear answer to the question "so what"?

The Azzaman story quotes the Iraqi Defense Minister to the effect Iraqi authorities have recently found, in the Basra area, a "huge ground-to-ground rocket of recent manufacture" with Iranian markings on it. The reporter then switches to quoting unnamed "intelligence sources" who had a lot to say about the capabilities of that rocket they found: (1) It is the first time they have ever found a rocket of this type in Iraq, and it is a type that is not available in the black market; (2) it is a "strategic rocket" with an "enormous destructive power"; (3) Lebanese Hizbullah used "a copy of that generation and of Iranian manufacture" in the war with Israel in 2006; (4) they agree with the Michael Gordon piece in the NYT to the effect Hizbullah is providing training-experience to Iraqi militias in Iran, and they add that this could include training in firing rockets of this type; (5) a rocket of this type could wipe out a whole city of tens of thousands of residents; (6) in order to fire this type of rocket, you need a team with several members that have "advanced technical training", normally available only by passing several qualifying courses, and not available to the militias in current [normal] circumstances.

So that's the first part of the answer to Juan Cole's "so what" question.

The second part of the answer is even more enlightening. The Azzaman reporter continues:

In answer to a question about the possibility of using this strategic rocket against neighboring countries and Israel, these intelligence sources said an extension of the range of the rocket is not a complicated operation, and could be done within Iraq if these was some support for that.

They explained that the discovery of this first stategic rocket in Basra constitutes a danger to the security of Iraq and to the security of the Middle East. They said they are worried about the existence of a large number of rockets of this type having been brought into Iraq together with launch teams, and they stressed that if that happens, then we are on the precipice of an Iraqi and regional catastrophe.

Cole advises dismissing the NYT story not because it isn't true, but because Hizbullah-training of the Mahdi Army or any other Iraqi militia would be insignificant in the larger scheme of things. To the extent that the bobbleheads who follow him (and presumably they are still a significant number) adopt the naturalness of Hizbullah doing a little training of Mahdi Army people, they are being set up for the next leg of the info-operation, already on the same day outlined in Azzaman, namely that Iraqi militia are getting the frightening capability for long-range rocket attacks on Israel.

The unfortunate appearance is that Cole is part of this operation, using his informed commentator status to encourage his readers to swallow the bait.

Pinocchio comes to life: "We will not be railroaded"

The corporate media have settled on an explanation for the contradictory statements from Baghdad on the "Iranian intervention" theme: Namely that Iraq is vacillating between Iranian and American influence.

It is an explanation that is so superficial as to be almost meaningless. More important is the evidence of a developing split between Hakim-led Supreme Council on one side, and Maliki and his circle on the other.

(1) First, key elements have been left out of the corporate-media account of the recent events (links provided in recent posts): The idea for the recent delegation to Tehran clearly resulted from a phone call from Bush to Hakim on Wednesday. And Maliki's close associate Sami al-Askari quickly pointed out that the idea for this did not come from Maliki. It was a first indication that Maliki wanted to distance himself from this initiative.

(2) Second, the corporate media account doesn't have an explanation why the delegation was arranged via Hakim and not via Maliki: The hawkish statements about Iranian arming and training of Iraqi militias have come mainly from American officials, and were echoed in the hoopla surrounding the the Hakim delegation. It is not as if the enthusiastic support for Washington's blame-Iraq campaign emanated from Maliki's circle. And that no doubt explains why the delegation was arranged via Hakim and not via Maliki (something that is otherwise unexplainable).

(3) So when Ali Dabbagh, in his statements on Sunday, expressed reservations about the quality of the evidence that was being talked about, he wasn't so much altering the Maliki position: he was merely pointing up once again the difference between what the Hakim group have been saying (at the instigation of Washington) and Maliki's position.

Here's part of what Ali Dabbagh said (according to the AlHayat account this morning, Monday May 5). First he said the Maliki administration will set up a commission to study whatever evidence may or may not exist. And the AlHayat reporter elaborates:

Dabbagh added in press-conference remarks in Baghdad [on Sunday] that the purpose behind this commission [to sift the evidence] is "to be able to stand on firm evidence, and not on intelligence based on the estimates of individuals". He stressed: "We do not want to be pushed by some push into entering into a fight with any of our neighbors, and certainly not with Iran". He was referring to the war between 1980 and 1988, in which an estimated one million people died. "It is enough what we have already had by way of tensions for which a horrible price has been paid, as a result of outsiders pushing Iraq into an position of enmity with Iran or with any other country. What we want is to form relationships with neighboring countries in a way that will serve the interests of Iraq."

I think the best way to understand these recent events is by analogy from what has already happened: The Sunni parties were alienated from the Washington-supported Maliki government starting with the execution of Saddam and the passage of the federalism-procedures law in the fall of 2006; the Sadrists were finally alienated from the Washington-supported Maliki administration via the American military attacks in the "surge" era. In both cases those who were alienated were those who didn't toe the American line (federalism procedures etcetera; dissolving the Mahdi Army). What has now happened, it seems, is that the Maliki group has come awake to the fact that Washington's support actually centers on Hakim's group, and that they (Maliki's circle) are now the ones that are expected to toe the Washington line. The Sunni parties, in their way, rebelled and left the Maliki cabinet, in the interests of a unitary Iraq; the Sadrists are on their way to becoming a full-blown resistance; and now, in his pitiful way, Ali Dabbagh on behalf of Maliki is purporting to stand up and say: "No, we too will defend the interests of Iraq, and not allow ourselves to be pushed around by outsiders".

American forces' militia policy in Diyala: Fostering civil war, or merely out of control?

AlHayat prints another article by its journalist Mohamed Al-Tamimi (who wrote the piece that was summarized earlier here) again quoting sources in Diyala province to the effect the Americans are exacerbating, not easing, sectarian and security tensions in and around the capital Baquba. He writes:

Sheikhs and security authorities criticized the proliferation of armed groups supported some by the American forces, and others by the government parties [that would be American allies Badr and Dawa], while meanwhile members of AlQaeda carried out a big military parade in northeastern Diyala.

Sheikh Azzam Mohamed Naji Al-Dulaimi, a leader of the Dulaim tribe in Khan Bani Saad, criticized "the proliferation of armed formations, and the creation of new ones on the argument they are for stabilizing the security situation in Diyala". He thinks "the behavior of the American forces is an affront to the wishes of the people of Diyala and its legal institutions, which [wishes] are for and end to the creation of armed groups".

A security authority who asked to remain anonymous attributed this creation of additional armed groups to "an attempt to keep [control of] the security portfolio, but this policy is leading, in the final analysis, to the cantonization [tajzi'a: partition, splitting] of the region and district of Baquba between militias affiliated with the American forces, and those affiliated with the [government] parties, and with the Awakenings, and with the police, and with the army. This has led to an uncertain security situation, given the fact that most of these groups include members of various different political groups, not to mention the infiltration of AlQaeda agents into their ranks". The security authority warned of "a steep escalation in violence that will include all entities in Diyala without exception, and particularly the Sunni tribes that have declared war on AlQaeda".

So the complaint of the Dulaim tribal leader and the security authority is that the Americans, instead of backing up local authority, have adopted a policy of creating new and additional armed formations, loyal to themselves, in order to try and keep control of the security situation, a policy that is having the effect of splitting the region into militia-based sub-regions, and in particular activates AQ thugs on whom the Sunni tribes have declared war.

The journalist then quotes the preacher of the Imam Ali Husseiniya in Baquba, Husein Musawi.

[He] accused the American forces of "stirring up sectarian differences between Sunni and Shiite residents in the area". He told AlHayat: "The campaign of arrests against members of the Sadrist trend, and the receipt by armed formations [composed of people] that were until recently in the ranks of AlQaeda and responsible for killings and kidnappings of persons innocent of sectarianism--the receipt by these armed formations of the security portfolio in a number of regions and districts--are measures that will work in the direction of aggravating relationships and re-introducing sectarian violence into Diyala.

Musawi warned of the bad outcome that will result from the activities of these forces against various sects and denominations. And he accused the "government parties of taking advantage of the government's decision to go to war against outlaw groups, to liquidate political competitors in the [coming] elections."

To summarize:

(1) AlDulaimi says the formation of new armed groups by the Americans is an affront to the population and the institutions of Diyala, who think the policy is destabilizing.

(2) The security source says (a) the Americans' aim is to keep control of the security portfolio; (b) one result is to cantonize the area depending on geographical reach of the variously-affiliated militias; (c) since the new groups include ex-AlQaeda people, this will result in particular escalation in violence between then and the Sunni tribes that have declared war on them.

(3) The preacher Musawi says the handing over by the Americans of security responsibilities to these new AQ-infiltrated groups is linked to the American campaign of arrests against members of the Sadr trend. And more generally he says the Maliki government's war on "outlaw groups" is creating a free-for-all atmosphere for political violence.

These warnings and accusations are in line with what this reporter wrote earlier, in the piece linked-to above.

They should be taken seriously because at worst they mean the Americans are using AQ people and sectarian policies to re-ignite Sunni-Shia violence; and at best they mean that the American forces' policy of hiring militias is out of control, because as far as the policy people in Washington seem to know, the issue now is whether and when to stop paying the Awakenings so as to force their integration into the government forces and extricate America from this responsibility, not whether it is a good idea to go on creating more American-sponsored militias.

Dhari: Sadr City atrocities should help us cure Sunni-Shia animosity

A commenter yesterday wanted to know, really and truly, what could be the US motive in damaging a hospital and taking out ambulances and other vehicles, and so on. I did the best I could, referring him to the statement of the Baghdad health director who said it was an effort to degrade the facility, making in hard for doctors to get to work, and so on. Had I been more alert, I could have referred him to this statement made yesterday by Harith al-Dhari, head of the Association of Muslim Scholars of Iraq (AMSI). Dhari is the leading public spokesman for the nationalist/Islamist wing of the Sunni resistance movement. Here's the concluding part of what he said, according to a summary on the AMSI website:

[Dhari] also stressed that what the occupation forces and the Iraqi forces are doing in this city [Sadr City] is what they do in other cities like Falluja, Samarra, Haditha, and Hit, and in parts of Mosul, Baghdad and other places: They use armed persons as pretexts for pitiless attacks on the people and the infliction of damage on them, with the aim of degrading them [idhlaal: degradation, debasement, humiliation] and causing them by force to cooperate with the notorious projects of the occupation and its collaborators.

That was one point: the use of degradation, debasement, humiliation in an attempt demoralize people and force compliance. It is a point that has been made many times before.

But the Dhari statement also contained an important message respecting the specific problem of Sunni-Shia solidarity. The statement is introduced this way:

The Association [AMSI] urged the people of Sadr City to learn from these events and to have patience, because the government and its leaders and its political blocs who have done this to them, and have called down upon them the forces of the occupation--these are the same people who earlier exploited many of the people of this city to help them execute their vile aims, under false slogans, whose basis is the defense of sectarianism.

As readers can see, Dhari is talking about the post-Feb 06 "ethnic cleansing" period. He is saying to the Sadrists of Sadr City: Hopefully now you will be able to better understand that those who were manipulated into participating in that, were being exploited by the same people who are now sponsoring these American air-strikes and other atrocities against you. Hopefully this will serve as an education for you, on the path to abandonment of sectarianism and an better understanding of the need to throw out the occupiers who are at the root of all of these problems, from which we have been suffering sequentially.

His remarks on this theme are summarized by the AMSI site as follows:

The Association criticized these atrocities as terror, and it blamed them entirely on the American occupation and the current government. It urges the people of this city--as it earlier urged the people of other cities who have undergone what they are now undergoing--to maintain their determination, and their solidarity and their patience, because that is what will break the enemy's arrogance, and force it to retreat and abandon all of its destructive projects.

It is true that the theme of the American occupation as the single root cause of all of the different manifestations of sectarianism from which Iraq has suffered, one after the other, since the invasion--that this theme has been stressed in all of Dhari's political/strategic statements, so its repetition here isn't new as far as that goes. What is new is his addressing this message to the Shiite population of Sadr City, in the light of the history of animosity dating from the post-Feb 06 period: In the final analysis, he is saying, this was not one group against another group. Rather this was just another case of instigation of sectarianism directly or indirectly by the American occupation. Now that the current stage of that cycle of instigated sectarianism is upon us, the conclusion should be inescapable: The same (Badr Corp and their American masters, although he doesn't put it that way) who were using Sadrists to attack Sunnis, are now bombing and attacking you. The simple answer is the return to Iraqi solidarity and the expulsion of the occupier.

Nahrainnet: Iran move aimed at countering the American attempt to exterminate the Sadrist trend

Nahrainnet.net, another Sadrist news-site, underlines the significance of the Iranian decision to refuse resumption of security talks with the United States until the US stops its "brutal attacks" on Sadr City and elsewhere in Iraq.

In a move that demonstrates the extent of Iranian anxiety about the danger of the alliance between the Iraqi government and the American forces turning to operations of extermination [ibada: extermination, annihilation] against the Sadrist trend, and which has already left over 3000 martyrs and wounded since [March 25]...Iran stipulated that a halt to the attacks by the American army in Sadr City is a condition for resumption of its talks with the US regarding Iraq. This is the first clear statement by Iran about the attack by the American forces, with participation by the Iraqi forces, on the Mahdi Army.

The writer adds it can be expected that this will have a positive effect on the Sadrist trend and on the popular forces that support it.

He also says it is significant that the Iranian authorities saw fit to direct this accusation to the Americans and not directly to the Iraqi government, because it indicates their correct understanding about which of the two is the actual decision-maker.

[Addressing this to the Americans, he writes] shows that they understand that the [Iraqi] government does not possess the power to decide whether to attack or to desist. Rather, this power is first and last in the hands of the American forces, which hold in their hands the security portfolio in all of its details. Maliki is nothing but the Iraqi tool that the occupation is using to liquidate the Mahdi Army and end the power of the Sadrist trend.

Mystery delegation backfires

It appears the SupremeCouncil/Dawa delegation to Tehran backfired, if its purpose was to put pressure on the Mahdi Army. In the first place, Maliki chum Sami al-Askari denied, on the American radio station Radio Sawa, that Maliki had anything to do with the idea of sending the delegation in the first place. And he added that the delegation has had to assure the Iranian authorities that what is going on in Iraq is "not targeting the Shia...as it was apparently indicated in a report that reached Tehran", but rather merely trying to rein in criminal groups. (Summary of his remarks in Azzaman of Saturday May 3). Moreover, he said, the delegation has no purpose other than to inform the Iranian authorities of information the Iraqi government has about Iranian arming and training of Iraqi militias.

If the Askari remarks foreshadowed trouble, the evolution of the meetings confirmed it. First of all, the Iranians brushed off the charges of intervention, "rejecting the proofs" of their involvement with Iraqi militias, and issued a statement that said their interest in the talks was to assist in ending the fighting. And on Saturday, the Fars News Agency reported that "a senior member of Iran's negotiating team with the US demanded a halt to US attacks in Iraq before any new round of talks with Washington" on Iraqi security. The official referred to "the savage attacks against the Iraqi people". So if the purpose of the delegation was to exert pressure on Sadr via Iran, it clearly appears to have backfired, and resulted in Iranian pressure on the US to stop the Sadr City campaign, if it wants talks with Iran.

That's a lot of "ifs", but the one clear point here is that if the idea was to pressure Sadr, it didn't work. (For cosmetic purposes in English, there was a recycling of earlier pro forma remarks by the Iranian ambassador in Baghdad to the effect his government supports the Maliki government in its law-enforcement operations--Tehran Times on Saturday May 3 summarizing remarks by the ambassador published in Asharq alAwsat three days earlier, prior to the delegation to Tehran).

Saturday's escalation in Sadr City comes in that context.

AlQabas, a Kuwaiti paper with independent Iraqi coverage, is one of the more methodical of the Arab-language papers when it comes to organizing complex stories. It leads its account of all of this as follows:

The intensity of fighting and air-strikes on Sadr City escalated on Saturday, and the parliamentary delegation visiting Tehran denied that it ever had any intention of meeting Moqtada al-Sadr. This came about as the Iranian leadership stipulated that what it called halting "the brutal American attacks on Iraq" was a condition for resumption of Iranian-American meetings on the situation in Iraq.

But if the delegation's result was Iranian pressure on the US (rather than on Sadr), that leaves unanswered the other set of questions about this whole episode. If the idea came, as appears likely, from Bush to Hakim to the UIA group, and if Maliki's chum Sami alAskari denied Maliki had anything to do with it, what was going on there? Could this have been part of a new Bush scheme to drive a wedge somewhere in the UIA-Maliki-Iran alliance? Recall that as recently as early 07, it was considered unthinkable that Maliki and Sadr could ever come to a parting of the ways, and yet it was done. As things look now, wouldn't a government headed by Adel AbdulMahdi of the Supreme council look a look a lot nicer to Washington than the current one?

Strategic silence (Updated)

Here are the opening sentences of the three latest news-items on Alkufanews.com, a major Sadrist online news outlet.

(1) Dateline Saturday May 3: An American convoy supported by aircraft and Iraqi forces attempted to force its way into Shaala City at 3:00 in the morning today, on orders of the Maliki government, and this led to renewed fighting. Smoke rose as a result of airstrikes on the City using weapons prohibited internationally, which led to the martyrdom of some citizens...

(2) Dateline Saturday May 3: Members and leaders of tribes in Sadr City issued a statement in reply to the statements of the head of the Maliki government, and the statement, of which AlKufa News obtained a copy, said: "First we greet the members and leaders of the genuine Iraqi tribes of the South and Center, and of the Mid-Euphrates, and of the Western sector, and all of the zealous tribes : We the leaders of the fighting [mujaahid: one dictionary translation is "freedom-fighters"] tribes of Sadr City...

(3) Dateline Friday May 2: Friday prayers at the Great Kufa Mosque led by Imam Sheikh Asad al-Nasari: [Prayers to Mohammed] ...for the victory of the oppressed throughout the whole world...for the demand for the acceleration of the judgment for the execution of Ali Hasan al-Majid and the gang that was with him...for the demand for the prompt trial of the accused person Nuri Kamal al-Maliki for what he has undertaken by way of crimes against humanity...

That's the news: Continued American bombing of residential areas with prohibited weapons; solidarity with nationalist tribes elsewhere in Iraq in the fight against oppression; "the accused person Maliki" lined up with the criminals of the prior regime on the path leading from major crimes to eventual execution. This is the current news for a very large part of the Iraqi population.

I could quote more, you could discuss whether these weapons are really "prohibited internationally" and in what sense; what is he depth of the solidarity with tribes elsewhere; the sectarian implications of the prayers against accused Sadaamists; and so on. Will this be fitna or a national uprising? And so on. But what's the use? The Americans along with Maliki have driven a stake through the heart of peaceful national reconciliation, and the policy-groupies who are lining up to advise the incoming Democratic administration are saying absolutely nothing about it. That's the only point worth making.

Update: Here's part of the the AFP report on the US rocket attack on (a shack just outside the) AlSadr Hospital in Sadr City earlier this morning (Saturday May 3):

"I can confirm that we conducted a strike in Sadr City this morning," a US military spokesman told AFP. "The targets were known criminal elements. Battle damage assessment is currently ongoing."

However, witnesses and an AFP reporter at the scene said the main Al-Sadr hospital had been badly damaged and a fleet of ambulances were destroyed.

Just outside the hospital, a shack which appeared to be the target was reduced to a pile of rubble.

The military said it destroyed a "criminal element command and control centre" at approximately 10 am (0700 GMT).

"Intelligence reports indicate the command and control centre was used by criminal elements to plan and coordinate attacks against Iraqi security and coalition forces and innocent Iraqi citizens."

Hospital staff said at least 20 people wounded in the air raid were taken to the same hospital which had its glass windows shattered, and medical and electrical equipment damaged.

Doctors and hospital staff were livid they had been hit.

"They (the Americans) will say it was a weapons cache (they hit)," said the head of Baghdad's health department, Dr Ali Bistan. "But, in fact they want to destroy the infrastructure of the country."

He charged that the attack was aimed at preventing doctors and medicines reaching the hospital which is located inside an area of increased clashes between American troops and militiamen.

And in America, more silence. The silent democracy.

Politics in the War-on-Sadr environment

AlHayat says:

Iraqi politicians stressed that it is the government's crisis with the Sadr trend that is at the core of the parliamentary [actually UIA] delegation to Tehran, and[more particularly] a request for Tehran to put pressure on [Moqtada] to end the activities of the Mahdi Army and to sign a new agreement respecting "dissolution of the militia".

The journalist shows how this takes the form of a demand for Iran to "end support for the militias", backed up with "documents and pictures" purporting to show Iranian support for the Mahdi Army. But the point is that the aim of Maliki's delegation is to pressure their friends the Iranians to take a more anti-Sadr stance.

And Sadrist spokesperson Saleh al-Obeidi re-focused his recent remarks critical of Iran to make it clear that the problem is not strictly speaking Iran, but the attempt by the Maliki machine to use its alliance with Iran to pressure Sadr. (Same link as above). Obeidi said the fact that the delegation is trying to use Iran in this way is a good indication which side is in cahoots with Tehran, and which side is not, his main point being that the Sadrist trend is independent, and the idea that it was or is beholden to Iran has the story backwards.

(It's worth noting that the misleading story that Iran might have already pulled the plug on Sadr took over the food-chain yesterday like an invasive bacterium, and there is a good opportunity here to study how that works: The friendly blogger quoted a remark by Obeidi critical of Iran (IC, Wednesday April 30); Kevin Drum of WashingtonMonthly picked it up (same date), and soon, with or without the "grain of salt" proviso, it was everywhere: "Has Iran become the enemy of Sadr--what does this portend". I can confidently predict that the corrective remarks today, to the effect that the puppet government is trying to make Iran the enemy of Sadr, and the Sadr movement rejects this attempt to use Iran in this way, will not get the same play. Rather, the progressive blogger already has a comment (today May 2) suggesting Sadr's refusal to meet with the Badr-led delegation is another case of the petulant Sadr, in a situation of extreme weakness, brushing aside the outstretched hand).

Meanwhile, AlHayat in a separate article outlines some of the ways this "war on the Sadr trend" is affecting other political parties and movements. The journalist's main focus is the recently-announced "Honor Front", a collection of Awakenings planning to form itself into a political movement to contest the coming provincial elections, and national elections after that. Spokesperson "Abu Azzam" al-Tamimi told the reporter there will be a big political effort by his group starting with the coming provincial elections, in a form "completely separate from that of the sectarian parties", referring particularly, the reporter notes, to the Sunni parties in the Iraqi Accord Front (IAF):

And he pointed out that the coming stage "will see important political changes, following the participation of the Awakening Councils in the process, and the map of political alliances will change as well". And he made reference to the possibility of Sunni-Shia alliances in connection with this.

Tamimi didn't elaborate specifically on the theme of Sunni-Shia alliances, but he did address one of the stumbling-blocks in any such process, as follows:

On the question of the accusations of some political sectors to the effect that a lot of the Awakenings include former Baathists, Tamimi said: "The Councils don't represent the Baathists and won't be leading them back to power. The fact is that everyone knows that within the political movement that was announced a few days ago [talking about the Honor Front], there are included members of armed Iraqi factions, but this isn't something that should cause any anxiety about the return of the Baath, because the Iraqi state has witnessed a lot of changes that can't be just ignored. Everyone should acknowledge this [the fact there have been a lot of changes] and they should also acknowledge the impossibility of the return of a uni-polar system.

The reporter also quotes remarks by spokesmen for a couple of groups I am not familiar with, including something called the Constitution Discussion Group: (Secular parties are gaining in grassroots popularity with the evident failure of the religious parties to deliver on their promises); and something called the Adherents of the Call (The government-Sadr fight should be settled, because allowing it to continue will result in cancellation or long-term postponement of the provincial elections). By contrast, a spokesperson for the Islamic Party said this fight is a great way to clean up the situation ahead of the elections.

And a Sadrist person echoed the idea that it is in the nature of this fight--and its continuation-- to have the effect of postponing the provincial elections, currently expected to be held October 1. Sadrist deputy Nasar al-Saaidi said the whole point of the military campaign that was launched in March 25 was to cause a postponement in the provincial elections so as to continue as long as possible the control of the SupremeCouncil/Dawa group of provincial councils in the Center and the South.

A new approach ?

We have it on the excellent authority of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq itself (ISCI, formerly SCIRI, aka just the "Supreme Council") that its leader Abdulaziz al-Hakim took a phone call from President Bush yesterday afternoon, after receiving a visit from ambassador Crocker and special ambassador Satterfield. And following the meeting and the phone call he convened a meeting of United Iraqi Alliance (the Shiite bloc that once included Sadrists and Fadhila, but now includes only the Supreme Council and the Dawa Party), which he also heads. (As RoadstoIraq, which first called attention to these events, noted: "Bush-Hakim are up to something").

Then this morning the New York Times reports that a delegation of senior Dawa and Supreme Council people was sent yesterday to Tehran for talks. The delegation included Hadi al-Ameri, head of the Badr Organization, the military wing of the Supreme council. (Interestingly, the NYT didn't identify Hadi al-Ameri as head of the Badr Organization, merely calling him a "senior member of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, a Shiite party in Mr Maliki's coalition.")

So: Bush calls Hakim; Hakim convenes the Shiite coalition; and a delegation including the Badr Organization head is sent to Tehran. And the NYT this morning, leaving out the Bush phone-call and the resulting UIA meeting, spins the events like this: "American officials supported the trip, but portrayed it as the brainchild of Mr Maliki."

The purpose of this obviously Bush-instigated delegation?

Naturally it would be hard to say, but here's the context. Recall yesterday's stunning press-conference remarks by Maliki (see previous post) about fighting the Mahdi Army until it is exterminated; and threatening the members of the multi-party opposition group--"whether they are members of Parliament or even members of the government"-- with charges of inciting to violence if they don't shut up about this, reported verbatim by AlJazeera and passed over in silence by the NYT this morning. It is as if Maliki had decided he was able to run his government without being too concerned about broad-based political support, relying rather on some other, perhaps more authoritarian, basis.

Then this morning, the pan-Arab paper AlHayat reports:

Informed sources that are not parties to the fight between Maliki and Sadr told AlHayat that "secret units attached to a well-known political party are launching a campaign that is parallel to the campaign of the government. And it [the parallel unit] is carrying out kidnappings and executions of members of the Mahdi Army, and pursues its leaders in Baghdad neighborhoods."

This is sandwiched between reports about the disappearing prospects of any peaceful solution. Later in the piece, the reporter comes back to this "parallel campaign", writing:

Observers expect that the coming stage will witness a broad security escalation, given the removal of the opportunity for a peaceful resolution of the crisis between the Sadr trend and the government. And informed sources referred yesterday to the implementation by a "an unknown armed unit having important capabilities, of a security campaign in parallel with the campaign being carried out by the government and the American forces against the Mahdi Army".

But a high-level security source [in the government] said the government is unaware of any other militia activities against the Mahdi Army.

The government security source reminded the reporter that Maliki is against any extra-legal militias, and if there was such a group as the reporter was asking about, it would be dealt with firmly.

It could be that Sadr spokesperson Saleh al-Obeidi has the overall picture right. He said a couple of days ago that Iran appears to be working hand in glove with the Americans for a "division of influence" in Iraq, and he said one proof of that is that Iran has declined to come out in opposition to the proposed US-Iraq long-term security agreement.