Killing anti-occupation Shiites seems to be good for Baghdad-Saudi relations, and also for Petraeus' career

It was back in December 2006 that Mamoun Fandy (formerly of Georgetown, USIP and the [James] Baker Institute, among other things, and also a person close to the Saudi king) predicted in an op-ed in a Saudi newspaper that John Abizaid would be fired as Centcom chief and be replaced by David Petraeus. Shortly thereafter Abizaid was fired and Petraeus was appointed, not Centcom chief, but head of Iraq operations. Now he is being appointed Centcom chief. So Fandy was a little off on the timing, but he had the concept right. Let's go back and see why he thought this would happen.

(The following two chunks of text are from a missing-links post dated January 5, 2007, after the firing of Abizaid and the announcement of the Fallon/Petraeus appointments, looking back and quoting from Mamoun Fandy's prediction). Fandy had written:

David Petraeus, or whatever other general takes the place of Abizaid, will have to be a part of the new strategy of the US administration, and will have to be more proactive, and perhaps less diplomatic, in explaining conditions in the field to Washington and to the neighboring states [neighboring Iraq]. We read the leaked Hadley memo that was printed in the New York Times, and that implied changing the head of the Iraqi government. The fact is that stability in Iraq and the region requires change not only in Iraq, but on both sides, that of the government of Iraq and the American administration. Change in Centcom leadership in Qatar is part of the overall change that is required by the new strategic balance.

And what exactly is the strategic change that Fandy was predicting?

The first thing this change will mean is a change in the operating strategy, in the way CentCom deals with the terrorist groups in the region, and there will be two parts to this, military and political. Perhaps we will be seeing more visits [to CentCom] from countries that border Iraq, and from other important countries in the region, looking for the application of security measures to limit entry of terrorists into Iraq, along with a request for an increase in US forces in the region in keeping with the size of the danger. (The italics are mine). And perhaps the new general will see the need for confrontation, and not for discussions, with Iran! (The exclamation point is Fandy's)

(Both of the above chunks of text are my Jan 5 07 rendition of Fandy's Dec 06 predictions)

Why go to the trouble of showing that this Saudi-regime person was right?

For one thing, consider the recent interview remarks of Maliki's national-security adviser Muwaffaq al-Rubaie, (in Asharq alAwsat, as it happens, the same place Fandy's op-eds appear). Rubaie indicated all was not failure at the Kuwait Iraq-neighbors meeting. Rubaie criticized Syria because he said 110 suicide fighters were entering Iraq each month via Syria, and "if the Syrian security apparatus was working seriously on this, they would be able to stop these suicide-fighters from getting to Iraq". He repeated more than once that these people are all coming into Iraq from Syria. And he said the reason Syria wasn't stopping this is political: "They think of stability in Iraq as a victory for democracy and freedoms, and they read that as a victory for the Americans and for the American project in the region."

Rubaie also criticized Iran, but not as an ideological and anti-American, anti-democracy enemy like Syria. He described Iran as having a "complex" strategy, supporting both the Mahdi Army and AlQaeda, with the ultimate aim of seeing a sectarian Shiite regime amenable to Iran, "which isn't going to happen".

By contrast, Rubaie described the relationship with the Saudi regime as "ideal".

[Baghdad and Riyadh] have a hotline, and we will have Iraqi officers stationed in Saudi Arabia, and there will be Saudi officers stationed in Iraq.

So here we have the Saudi-favorite Petraeus finally being promoted to overall regional command, and at the same time a strong and "ideal" (according to Rubaie) security-cooperation relationship between the GreenZone and the Saudi regime.

What held up the development of this relationship, no doubt, was the fact that Maliki had yet to show his "impartiality", and earn Saudi respect, via willingness to kill anti-regime, anti-American Shiites. So to that extent you could say that the post-Hadley-memo process has been productive. Not, of course, in any of the ways that the corporate media or the food-chain people would have had you believe.

Military escalation? Mamoun Fandy vs Juan Cole

Mamoun Fandy wrote a column in Asharq al-Awsat on Sunday December 4 (text here)in which he predicted the imminent departure of Abizaid as the CentCom chief (which in fact happened soon thereafter), and also the appointment of David Petraeus to replace him. ABC reported yesterday that Petraus is in fact going to get a senior appointment, (not as CentCom chief, admittedly, but as head of ground forces in Iraq).

Since Fandy was pretty much right in these predictions, it's worth taking another look at what else he said, remembering of course that he is a former senior fellow at the Baker Institute, and currently regarded as one of the Arab writers closest to the Saudi king. First about the political context of the change:

David Petraeus, or whatever other general takes the place of Abizaid, will have to be a part of the new strategy of the US administration, and will have to be more proactive, and perhaps less diplomatic, in explaining conditions in the field to Washington and to the neighboring states [neighboring Iraq]. We read the leaked Hadley memo that was printed in the New York Times, and that implied changing the head of the Iraqi government. The fact is that stability in Iraq and the region requires change not only in Iraq, but on both sides, that of the government of Iraq and the American administration. Change in Centcom leadership in Qatar is part of the overall change that is required by the new strategic balance.

And what exactly is the strategic change that Fandy was predicting?

The first thing this change will mean is a change in the operating strategy, in the way CentCom deals with the terrorist groups in the region, and there will be two parts to this, military and political. Perhaps we will be seeing more visits [to CentCom] from countries that border Iraq, and from other important countries in the region, looking for the application of security measures to limit entry of terrorists into Iraq, along with a request for an increase in US forces in the region in keeping with the size of the danger. (The italics are mine). And perhaps the new general will see the need for confrontation, and not for discussions, with Iran! (The exclamation point is Fandy's)

In other words, increased troop-levels, a more confrontational approach to Iran, as part of a change in the military leadership that will likely be coordinated with a change in the Baghdad government. Fandy seems to have got the military-personnel part of this right.

There is another early indicator of increased troop-levels and a more-confrontational approach to Iran, and it is the fact that Juan Cole is telling us the opposite. This morning he makes this prediction: "Despite all the talk of resurgence of the Neoconservatives with their 'surge'...this team [Petraeus and newly-appointed ambassador Ryan Crocker] is the farthest from Neoconservative desires that you could possibly get". Informed comment, or flim-flam?

UIA described as wary of coup-possibilities if a leading candidate is named new Defence Minister

Elaph, citing unnamed Iraqi sources, says a former governor of Al-Anbar province and a tribal leader, Faisal al-Kaoud, is the leading candidate to become Minister of Defence in the cabinet shuffle Prime Minister has promised. This is not necessarily to be taken at face value, but it is interesting as the first specific prediction. The Elaph reporter reminds us that the whole Iraqi-military issue was the top item in the recent Bush-Maliki talks in Amman so naturally this will be closely watched.

Elaph says Faisal al-Kaoud, 60, a Sunni Iraqi, fled Iraq in 1971 after a relative was executed by Saddam for allegedly plotting a coup, and returned to Iraq following the US invasion. Elaph's first comment is that al-Kaoud is accepted by many Iraqi groups, "and by the multinational forces, which he has criticized for their handling of [Iraqi] security, and the criticism included a promise that he [al-Kaoud] would be able to restore security to Anbar province in the space of six months if he were to assume the Ministry of Defence, and if he were permitted weaponry superior or at least equal to what Al-Qaeda has, and what is in the possession of the armed organizations that oppose the political process in Iraq, (meaning the resistance).

Just to make sure you know where Elaph stands, the reporter adds that its sources said al-Kaoud is possessed of a bold personality that isn't sectarian, and that his political group, something called Council of Iraqi Solidarity, is a group that includes Sunnis and Shiites too, adding that al-Kaoud was a founding member of the Anbar Rebirth Council, which gave rise recently to the Anbar Salvation Council. The reporter says the latter group has participated in the killing and arrest of a large number of AlQaeda fighters in Anbar, and controls a lot of territory in Anbar, hoping to eventually control the whole province. The group has the support of the Iraqi government, but as far as weaponry is concerned, this reporter says the following: Sheikh Sattar Bazigh abu-Rashia says the US forces have barred the group from using anything but light weapons in its operations.

Al-Kaoud, who is 60, served as governor of Anbar until summer of 2005 (no information on when or how his term started), and in late 2005 he presented his name as a candidate for presidency of the republic (a post that doesn't necessarily require status as a member of parliament), but this was quixotic. He had also been a candidate for Minister of Defence in the prior Jaafari administration, before this post went to Saadoun Dulaimi.

Getting down to the politics of any eventual appointment, the Elaph reporter says this: People in the governing United Iraqi Alliance would prefer that the Ministry of Defence not go to "someone with ambitions or who has popular or tribal bases of support, fearing later use of this in overthrowing the government". On the other side of the aisle, people in the Iraqi National Accord, the biggest Sunni political coalition, would prefer (this reporter says) someone whose views are closer to their own. In any event, says this reporter, both sides (UIA and INA) want the two ministries of Defence and Interior to be alloted according to the sectarian division.

Finally, the reporter says his sources admitted there are other candidates too for Defence Minister, and they mentioned Wafiq al-Samarae, security adviser to Talabani and a former head of the Iraqi Intelligence Service [I believe under Saddam]; and Mithal Alousi head of something called the Iraqi Nation Party. But the source said al-Kaoud is the most likely of the three.

The reporter says Maliki hasn't yet indicated which ministries will be involved in the changes, and there is still the question whether or not this will continue to be on a sectarian-allocation basis. In terms of timing, the reporter observers expect the changes to be announced after the National Reconciliation meeting, now scheduled for December 17. This meeting, the reporter notes, is expected to include some of the "opponents of the political process that have been invited by government delegations [in meetings with them] in Jordan, Syria, and the United Arab Emirates".

Plugged-in Saudi writer: The Baker-Gates program will reflect the Saudi wish-list

Mamoun Fandy, a writer who is close to the Saudi king, and who used to be a senior fellow at James Baker's research institute, has some remarkable things to say in his regular Monday column in Asharq al-Awsat, something Abu Aardvark alerts us to in the thumbnail sketches on the lefthand side of his website.

Fandy says in his amusing way that he got this information from the bright lights in the sky over Doha at the opening of the Asian Games, and for some reason he feels it necssary to remind us how right he has been in some of his prior predictions. Let's skip that part. Here's his prediction:

John Abizaid needs to be replaced as head of the US Central Command (CentCom), headquartered in Qatar and covering the Mideast from Egypt to Afghanistan, and probably he will be replaced at least in a few months time, because his views on strategy no longer reflect the realities in the field. This is embellished in several ways. Maliki is said to have complained about this to Bush; other Arab foreign ministers to Rice in Jordan. Abizaid's recent congressional testimony and a speech at Harvard all reflect the same disconnect between realities and strategy. Fandy tells us all of this without explaining specifically what the problem is, except that the security situation in Iraq is intolerable, and elsewhere in the region, for instance you can sometimes hear the chanting of A-Qaeda groups even within earshot of US bases. In other words, things are generally spinning out of control, and Fandy says Abizaid isn't on top of this.

Moreover, says Fandy, the Baker Report is going to recommend New Strategic Directions, and the new Defence Secretary Gates is going to be on the same page with this, so there will be a need for a CentCom chief who is too. Abizaid will be too Rumsfeldian for the new strategy. Again, all of this without explaining what specifically is involved.

Best man for the job will be David Petraeus, who has been successful in earlier assignments, and who could easily be promoted from three- to four-star general and given the job. What would it mean?

Finally, in the last two paragraphs of this, Fandy tells us one specific thing this change would involve. Here's the way he puts it:

The first thing this change will mean is a change in the operating strategy, in the way CentCom deals with the terrorist groups in the region, and there will be two parts to this, military and political. Perhaps we will be seeing more visits [to CentCom] from countries that border Iraq, and from other important countries in the region, looking for the application of security measures to limit entry of terrorists into Iraq, along with a request for an increase in US forces in the region in keeping with the size of the danger. And perhaps the new general will see the need for controntation, and not for discussions, with Iran!

More US troops; better Iraq-border security and a more confrontational attitude to Iran. Less talk of negotiating with Iran. Given who is writing this we can assume this is what the Saudi regime wants; and given his line about having seen this written in the night sky over Doha, we can also assume that they think they are going to be successful.

There's more:

David Petraeus, or whatever other general takes the place of Abizaid, will have to be a part of the new strategy of the US administration, and will have to be more proactive, and perhaps less diplomatic, in explaining conditions in the field to Washington and to the neighboring states [neighboring Iraq]. We read the leaked Hadley memo that was printed in the New York Times, and that implied changing the head of the Iraqi government. The fact is that stability in Iraq and the region requires change not only in Iraq, but on both sides, that of the government of Iraq and the American administration. Change in Centcom leadership in Qatar is part of the overall change that is required by the new strategic balance.

So: A more aggressive military strategy, particularly vis-a-vis Iran, less talk of discussions with Iran, as part of an overall change that includes among other things toppling the Maliki government. This is the Saudi wish-list, and it is also where the Baker-Gates program is heading. Nice to know where the decisions are being made.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Iraqi federalism vote: Behind the contradictory numbers

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

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

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

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

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

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

And he describes the proponents of the bill as follows:

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

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

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

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

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