President al-Yawir Decries "Collective Punishment"

13 Killed in Continued Battles

Iraqi President Ghazi al-Yawir strongly protested US air strikes against Iraqi cities, comparing them to Israeli tactics in Gaza and branding them a form of "collective punishment." Collective punishment was a Nazi tactic during World War II, and was forbidden as a tool to occupying powers in the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949. Al-Yawir's condemnation of the US use of the tactic is the strongest to date from a high-level Iraqi politician. The comments seem likely to create a diplomatic crisis, and bode ill for Bush administration plans to pursue a scorched earth campaign against Fallujah and other cities in al-Anbar province in November. Al-Yawir is from a Sunni tribal background.

Wire services report that

' Thirteen people have been killed since Tuesday night in drive-by shootings, ambushes and grenade attacks south of the capital and elsewhere. '

In one incident, guerrillas attempted but failed to assassinate a local leader of the Shiite Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq.

The US used a howitzer to kill three guerrillas who had been firing mortars in Baghdad.


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Is Justice Being Delayed by Bush Administration Politics?

Several high-profile FBI investigations, in which substantial progress have been made, may well have been put on hold by the Bush administration for political reasons. That is, it has been alleged to me that the White House may have leaned on the FBI-- not to drop the investigations but to postpone some key arrests until after the November elections.

The first such case is the investigation into the leaking of Valerie Plame's identity as a covert CIA agent to the press as way to undermine the credibility of her husband, Joe Wilson, who had gone public about his warnings to the administration that the story about the Iraqi purchase of uranium from Niger was bogus.

Warning: The text below will use the word "Neoconservative." In my lexicon, a Neoconservative is a person from a social group that typically voted Democrat before 1968 but now votes Republican. Neoconservatives include all the white southern Christian denominations, such as the Southern Baptists, that emigrated from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party as a result of the Nixon strategy, as well as the Reagan Democrats (largely working-class Catholics) and Jewish Americans who trod the same path. Neoconservatives tend to be far-right Zionists in the Jabotinsky tradition, whether they are Jews or Christian Zionists, and they are associated with a desire to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians from the West Bank or at least to so circumscribe their existence there as to render them nonentities. The latest Neoconservative to enlist in the cause is Zell Miller, and he typifies the anger, recklessness and disregard for open, democratic values that characterize the movement.

Neoconservatives have gained allies for themselves from some rightwing Realists, such as Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, to the extent that it may well be that the latter two have been converted to the Neoconservative ideology, which is distinctive because of its historical origins on the right of the old Democratic Party and in some cases in the far left (Christopher Hitchens is another example). Some have attempted to argue that the very term "Neoconservative" is a code word for derogatory attitudes toward Jews. This argument is mere special pleading and a playing of the race card, however, insofar as only a tiny percentage of American Jews are Neoconservatives, and only a tiny percentage of Neoconservatives are Jews. The Neoconservative movement is an example of what social scientists call cross-cutting cleavages, which are multiple loyalties and identities typical of complex urban political societies.

We now know that the Niger story involved the forgery of documents by a man with ties to Italian military intelligence, and that moreover Italian military intelligence has ties to Michael Ledeen, Harold Rhode and Lawrence Franklin, pro-Likud Neoconservatives, two of whom had high-level positions in the Pentagon and all three of whom were tightly networked with the American Enterprise Institute. Franklin (a Neoconservative Catholic) is being investigated for spying on the US for Israel. The nexus of Italian military intelligence, the office of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, and the Neoconservatives in the Pentagon suggests a network of conspiracy aimed at dragging the US into wars against Iraq and Iran. The Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq after the war was in some significant part staffed by young people who had initially applied to work at the American Enterprise Institute as interns.

Joe Wilson was sent to Niger by the CIA in response to a request by Dick Cheney that they investigate the story of the Iraq uranium purchases, and he came to the (correct) conclusion that the whole idea was implausible given the structure of the industry in Niger, which was heavily under the control of European companies. The Neoconservatives around Dick Cheney, including Scooter Libby and John Hannah, were highly commited to the Niger uranium story as a casus belli against Iraq, and were furious when Wilson revealed that he had shown it false in spring of 2002. They were convinced that the CIA was behind this strike at their credibility, and that Valerie Plame had been the one who managed to get Wilson sent. That is, in their paranoid world, Wilson's honest reportage of the facts was a CIA plot against the Iraq War and perhaps against the Neoconservatives around Cheney and in the Pentagon.

It has been being leaked for many months now that the FBI believes the leak came from persons in Cheney's circle, possibly John Hannah and/or Scooter Libby. The FBI could well be ready to move in the case. But I have been told that it has orders from the White House to back off until later this fall.

There has likewise been no arrest of Franklin, though one was expected by now. This is not, as the Neoconservatives and their supporters in the press are beginning to allege, because the case against Franklin is weak. Rumors are flying in Washington that the FBI found a whole cache of classified documents in his house. If this is true, it was illegal for him to keep them there. We know that the evidence against Franklin was so air tight that Franklin was turned by the FBI, and was attempting to gather incriminating evidence against other Neoconservatives on their behalf. At some point the FBI as a courtesy let Franklin's boss, Douglas Feith, know of their investigation, and apparently soon after the story was leaked to the press.

Is it possible that Franklin hasn't been charged yet not because the case is weak, but because the White House does not want to anger the powerful AIPAC lobbying organization just before an election, and does not want to risk alienating Neoconservative voters in swing states like Florida? Indeed, isn't it likely that the Franklin investigation was leaked to the press by persons in the Pentagon who feared they were under investigation, and who knew very well that such a story leaked in late August before the election would get the investigation squelched or much delayed?

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

On the Virtues of Changing the Mind

It is depressing for me to see George W. Bush on the stump doing a stand-up comedy routine about John Kerry, parroting the predictable line that Kerry has had more than one opinion about Iraq. Serious news reporters who have gone back over the record find that Bush's charge is without merit, and that Kerry has been consistent on his Iraq position.

The thing that most worries me is not when a politician's thinking evolves on a subject and he changes his mind. It is when a politician refuses even to consider changing his mind. Such inflexibility is almost always a sign of rigidity, which can be catastrophic in the most powerful man in the world.

So Bush vowed not to retreat in Iraq.

Bush has been refusing to retreat, or even to reconsider, for a long time now. At a news conference in the spring, Bush was asked if he had made any errors, and he replied that he could not think of any. Yesterday he said he did not regret his "mission accomplished" speech aboard an aircraft carrier on May 1, 2003, in which he declared the Iraq war over. Bush keeps saying that there are 100,000 fully trained Iraqi security personnel, and seems to think that there are hundreds of UN election workers on the ground in Iraq.

This kind of single-mindedness and refusal to even think about altering course reminds me of Lyndon Johnson in the Vietnam War.

It is indisputable that the Iraq situation is Fouled Up Beyond Repair, or FUBAR. The number of daily attacks has gone above 80. The Green Zone where the government offices are is taking mortar fire. Little of the country is actually under control, and it goes further out of control at the drop of a hat. Amarah was in full rebellion against the British in late August, forcing them to fire 100,000 rounds of ammunition in a major battle of which most Americans remain completely unaware. The country is witnessing a guerrilla war that is vast in geographical reach, such that the guerrillas struck British troops and National Guardsmen in the far southern city of Basra on Tuesday. Americans have little appreciation of geography, and still less of foreign geography, but let's put it this way. The guerrillas were battling in Fallujah and Basra on the same day. They are over 300 miles apart. This is like being able to strike in both Youngstown, Ohio and Baltimore, Md. on the same day. The guerrilla resistance is not small, or localized, or confined to only 3 provinces.

Many in the CIA have concluded that "There's no obvious way to fix it. The best we can hope for is a semi-failed state hobbling along with terrorists and a succession of weak governments."

When you are deep in a hole, the first rule is to stop digging. Whatever Bush has been doing in Iraq for the past 18 months demonstrably has not worked. He desperately needs a change of mind on these policies. He needs to try something else.

The image of him giggling about Kerry changing his mind on Iraq takes on a chilling aspect when you think of him as Captain Joseph Hazelwood of the Exxon Valdez. Hazelwood told the helsman to steer right and then went to bed. The helsman didn't steer far enough right, and plowed into the Bligh Reef and disaster. Part of the reason was that corporate cost cutting had left the ship without radar. If you think about it, in fact, a wrecked oil tanker is a good image of Bush administration Iraq policy.

Bush should stop slapping his thigh and guffawing about that flipflopper Kerry and being to think seriously about changing his mind on some key policies himself. Otherwise, an Iraq as failed state could pose a supreme danger to the United States, the kind of danger that the Bligh Reef posed to the Exxon Valdez.



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Demolition of Old City in Najaf?

I got two interesting messages about Najaf today. The first was from Dr. Kamil Mahdi, who has lectured in economics at Exeter University in the UK and is an Iraqi expatriate and former political exile:

From: Kamil Mahdi

Did you realise they are demolishing the old city of Najaf, just like that?! This is an act of unbelievable vandalism and ignorance, and it is in the style of Saddam.

We all know the arguments about increasing visitor numbers etc, but this is not the time nor the way. There has been no investigation of alternatives nor are there any mechanisms for consultation of the population at large, let alone any structures of democratic decision-making. There appears to be money from Kuwait for an extensive development, and one can legitimately ask why the Kuwaitis are being so generous with this project at this very time, when they continue to demand a pound of Iraqi flesh in UN compensation and in Saddam's debts.

The destruction of Najaf which is now under way is drastic and irreversible. Read the statement by Hussain Al-Shami, the Shi'i waqf [Pious Endowments] head. Clearly, the whole thing was a mere idea two weeks ago, and already demolition has begun.

People should at least discuss the rights and wrongs of such decisions. There is no such discussion. Is this the so-called democracy all these people have died and are dying for? If this is carried out without an open and meaningful public consultation that takes place in a rational atmosphere and in total transparency, it will be nothing short of a criminal assault on Iraq's heritage and on its history. All over the civilised world, historic cities are protected, preserved and developed in ways that retain the character and identity of the city and the integrity of its physical and social fabric.

We should ask the ministers of this Interim Government, many of whom have travelled or lived outside Iraq for decades. Have they not seen how the rest of the world tries to protect its heritage, and succeeds? Have they not seen services provided in old cities and extended to old houses, and have they not seen historic cities regenerated with modern amenities? Other countries cherish their historic cities for their great cultural roles and also for the high economic value of their tourism. Such cities are a repository of the nation's memory and are symbols of the shared experiences of the people of the land. Even after wars, people try to rebuild them with painstaking attention to historic detail. With all the manifestations of civil conflict we witness in Iraq today, we Iraqis should be the first to realise the importance of national symbols that bring us together. The old city of Najaf is not the cause of the conflict that took place there. On the contrary, destroying it will encourage more extemism among the young who will lose cultural reference points.

Major "redevelopment" must not be allowed to go ahead Saddam-style. The action appears to be motivated by security concerns and by highly questionable financial considerations. Economically, it is not in the interest of the people of Najaf to destroy the old city. All of the old city can be attractive to visitors, not just the holy shrine, and there is plenty of space for commercial and industrial development elsewhere in Najaf. Rushed "development" of the kind being undertaken is frequently accompanied by greed and financial corruption. It will benefit big contractors and absentee landowners, and the losers are usually the people who live in the city and those who value it, that is all of us Iraqis.

Where are those ministers who have allegedly been selected for their professionalism? It is not acceptable to allow this to go ahead under the pretext that there is a need to expand the shrine. The timing suggests that this is a dishonest pretext. In any case, most visitors will want to be close to the tomb itself, so the crowd will always be at the centre. Expanding the outer perimeter would not necessarily solve any problem. Besides, the expansion means that the space will only be used in a few major religious occasions each year, instead of being used all the year round if the old city is developed. What is needed are measures that might include regualtion of visits, and that are based upon careful study, long-term planning and gradual implementation. There has to be a clear rationale for any action, and development must be to the highest professional standards with plans that must be publicised beforehand and that must be open to the scrutiny of other professionals, with the involvement of UNESCO, ISESCO, ALESCO and all those who are concerned with world heritage and with Islamic culture.

We Iraqis are engaged in a terrible internecine conflict. Outsiders have divided us and are increasingly waging their campaigns through Iraqis. In these circumstances, we can at least unite to defend our heritage? We cannot pretend that the destruction of Najaf is being done by the local Najaf administration alone, without outside interference.

Sayyid Sistani and the other ulema must speak up against this vandalism. We all condemned Saddam for destroying the centre of Karbala. How can we keep quite about the same being one to Najaf? The people who are destroying the old city of Najaf are destroying the livelihoods of thousands of families in the area, and future generations will never forgive this barbarism.

. . . there is no time to lose. It is the responsibility of those of us outside Iraq to expose what is happening and to demand an immediate halt to the demolition. What is needed is help to the people of Najaf who have suffered so much, not wholesale destruction.

Dr Kamil Mahdi
Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies
University of Exeter
Exeter EX4 4ND
Fax: (44 1392) 264035

Secretary of IAIS tel.: -44-(0)1392-264036
Visit the IAIS website at
http://www.ex.ac.uk/iais

Then a European correspondent who is in contact with Najafis sent me the following:

H. called from Najaf today.

Europeans don´t get the al Arabiya info on whats going on. There´s not much of a thorough description of the overall destruction, the kharaba [destruction] loss, the job loss, the water situation and the US "social welfare benevolence" system in Iraq delivering bread, flour, oil, kerosene.... whatever.

Al Arabiya have problems themselves describing the mess. They´re not allowed into
the Najaf city core, the mosque area.

There are three shields. Three thousand Hawza [Seminary] guards serve and attend to downtown, the City of Nejef. The Hawza guys are local people respected and fairly cooperative to anyone.

But Al Arabiya crew (nor any crew) are allowed to pass the middle shield of Iraqi National Guardsmen, who are not locals, maybe Kurds, maybe Baghdadis. Whatever, they don´t respect locals, being rude and violent.

As outer shield the Americans, controlling their middle men. There won´t be
much of info ecology around that place, would there?

Once the Sadrists left, the Americans tried to enter the city. Just as had happened roughly a year ago, during the invasion, they got driven out by civilian crowds, stoning them, hurling whatever they could find onto the "infidels". They quickly left the city to the Hawza boys

Did you ever imagine . . . the big entrance door to the mosque is blocked. Bricks are laid covering all of it. The Ali mosque has been looted. Valuable
gems, golden things disappeared.

After the sadrists left, some weeks after, I don´t know, robbers broke inside and ripped the place. Hawza had the door all bricked over. People are devastated by the
heresy - the theft.

The Najaf mosqe quarter is like a big cross with the mosque in the centre. The 4 beams in this cross form a covered bazaars system. Two parallell beams are totally destroyed by American air pounding, possibly blowing up Sadrist munition caches too, making things worse.

Bulldozers work their way through the antique bricks, the black ash layers, mud and dirt, having months and months ahead of work just for disposal. How long then the rebuilding?

Finally, I would like to underline, there is not a shred . . . to confirm this info.
Just H´s words to his exiled Najafi friend for now living in my house.

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Pelosi Derails CIA Plan to Buy Iraq Elections

Time Magazine reports that the Bush administration had had a plan to use the Central Intelligence Agency to funnel money to candidates it favored in the forthcoming Iraqi elections. The rationale given was that Iran was bankrolling its own candidates.

This plan was apparently derailed in part by the intervention of Democratic Minority Leader in the House, Nancy Pelosi, who remonstrated with National Security Adviser Condaleeza Rice about it.

I'd like to make three comments on this story. The first is to point out that this sort of behavior by the Bush administration fatally undermines the ideal of democracy in the Middle East. If Muslims think that "democracy" is a stalking horse for CIA control of their country, then they will flee the system and prefer independent-minded strongmen that denounce the US. The constitutional monarchies established in the Middle East by the British were similarly undermined in the popular imagination by the impression they gave of being mere British puppets. This was true of the Wafd Party in Egypt in the 1940s and early 1950s, which the Free Officers overthrew in 1952 in the name of national indepencence. It was also true in Iraq, where in 1958 popular mobs dragged the corpse of the pro-British Prime Minister Nuri al-Said through the streets and finished off the British-installed monarchy.

Second, I found the Time magazine diction about Pelosi sexist. The article described her as having "come unglued" on hearing of the plan. "Coming unglued" is the wrong image here. She didn't go hysterical and fall apart. If you were going to be glib, you could have described her as "livid" or "going ballistic." But such journalistic buzzwords for alarm and anger are reserved for men (no doubt the phallic connotations of intercontinental ballistic missiles help gender the image). Pelosi did not become "unglued." Rather, she intervened forcefully and effectively. She appears to have mobilized a bipartisan "powerful women" network with Rice, whom she strong-armed (another simile not usually used of women). Of course, she also was in a position to mobilize the Democrats in Congress across gender boundaries.

The ultimate Congressional check on presidential abuse is not mentioned in the Constitution. It is the Leak to the Press, with Time cooperating. Although the story suggests that the battle was fought and won by Pelosi months ago, in fact the leak at this point in time is designed to forestall the Bush administration from reverting to plan A if it wins the November election.

The other corner of the story is Iran. The scheme to influence the elections is justified with reference to Iranian funding of candidates.

But is this charge plausible? The pre-picked slates of candidates for the January elections will run on a handful of party tickets-- including the 2 Kurdish ones, Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress, Allawi's Iraqi National Accord, the Shiite al-Da`wa and the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq. I don't know for whom the Sunni Arabs are supposed to vote if these are the choices.

So to whom might Iran give money? It has a tight alliance with Jalal Talabani, the leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. But then so does the US, and has had for two decades.

Iran might give money to the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, which was based in Tehran for over 20 years. But SCIRI has complained bitterly in recent months that Iran's Arabic-language satellite television channel declined to criticize Muqtada al-Sadr and the Mahdi Army for their thuggish behavior in Najaf. Iran and SCIRI no longer seem on very good terms. In 2003, the Iranian hardliners had warned the al-Hakim family that leads SCIRI not to ally with the Americans in overthrowing Saddam. It was Rumsfeld who negotiated with SCIRI and brought them to Iraq and gave them a seat on the Interim Governing Council, and then gave them the Finance Ministry in the current caretaker government. This is a party that the CIA needs to counteract? The Bush Administration practically installed it in Iraq!

The Iranians might give money to al-Da`wa, another Shiite party. But al-Da`wa cooperated with the US invasion and rule of Iraq, and members or ex-members were given several seats on the Interim Governing Council. Iraqi Vice President Ibrahim Jaafari is a leader of al-Da`wa. He was appointed by the UN in consultation with the United States. So, now, the US has to give money to other people to keep Jaafari out of office? What sense does that make? Nor is the London branch of al-Da`wa, from which Jaafari comes, very close to the hardliners in Iran. It is more lay than clerical, and rejects the Khomeinist theory of clerical rule.

As for the Iraqi National Congress, Rumsfeld practically turned Iraq over to it in summer of 2003, and would have completely done so if Colin Powell and Tony Blair hadn't stopped him. So now CIA black money has to be used to block it because of its ties to Tehran--ties that Rumsfeld knew all about all along?

I confess to not being able to understand the US-inspired scheme for the elections, with a limited number of party slates, or how independent candidates could run in such a system. It appears to me that the Sadrists are effectively excluded under this system (which may suit them-- see below). If this exclusion is already built into the system, then Iran could hardly change anything by giving the Sadrists money. The evidence is that anyway to top leaders of Iran are nervous about Muqtada al-Sadr being a loose cannon, and it is not at all sure that they would fund him even if he were running, which he is not. He complains bitterly about Iranian influence on Iraqi Shiism, for his part.

So, the "cover story" of forestalling "Iranian influence" doesn't hold water. Bush just wanted to buy himself an election, in the Bush tradition. (Bush's grandfather Prescott, a US senator, probably made much of the pile on which he ran by investing in Nazi companies).

Pelosi did not come unglued. It was this tawdry plot against democracy, which undermines the very ideal of it in the region, that came unglued.

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Sadrists to Boycott Elections: Daraji

Shaikh Abdul Hadi al-Daraji, a lieutenant of the young Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr, said Monday that Muqtada would not contest elections while Iraq was suffering American occupation. He said he expected the Sadr Movement to boycott the elections.
Darraji said, according to AFP,

“We believe that the elections under occupation will not be a fair and free one, we believe this election will be a forged one . . . When we, the religious authorities, reject the elections then those who follow us should not take part in it and they will not . . . What we want and our number one priority is a free Iraq so when Iraq is free and occupation is out then Sadr’s movement will take part in the political life in Iraq.”

The reports of the CIA buying the election give enormous credibility to statements by rejectionists like al-Daraji. I just heard the report on al-Arabiyah, but haven't heard commentary yet.

Al-Hayat carries an exclusive story via Ali al-Rubai`i, an aide to Grand Ayatollah Ishaq Fayyad. Fayyad is an Afghan Hazara. He expressed anxiety and concern about talk of postponing the elections scheduled for January. He said that the concern is shared by Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, and that they plan to issue a joint statement on the issue. Fayyad insisted that elections are feasible, and that Iraqi government forces and "the Occupation forces" (i.e. the Americans) are sufficient to ensure an atmosphere of security in which the elections can go forward.

I was struck in this report by the talk of a joint Fayyad-Sistani communique. It makes me wonder if the two other Grand Ayatollahs, Muhammad Said al-Hakim and Bashir Najafi, have doubts about the feasibility and/or desirability of early elections. It is also rare that Fayyad speaks to the press-- one almost never sees any statement by him, in contrast to Bashir Najafi. I wonder if Fayyad's Afghan context, which is admittedly pretty weak by now, since he came to Iraq when he was 10, affects his view of the desirability of elections. The Afghanistan presidential elections are now in train, and the Shiite Hizb-i Vahdat Party is preparing for parliamentary elections this coming spring in Afghanistan.

Ash-Sharq al-Awsat reports from Kuwaiti sources that the destruction visted on Najaf by the US assault on the Sadrists in August is far more extensive than usually realized. Ali al-Mu'min, who is with a humanitarian organization, said that ordinary activities were still at a standstill in Najaf, which seemed substantially depopulated, and that vast swathes of its buildings and homes had been destroyed.

The report is supported by the following email I received from Europe:

. . The Najafi guy living at my house got a phone call from Najaf on Saturday.
Hotel Nejef and Hotel "Imam Ali" (newly built in 2002) were flattened by American
cruise missiles during these last Sadrist months. Sadrist snipers were said to be the reason . . . Rajul Street, B's childhood "hood" is rubble. Old, culturally, historically valuable buildings and surroundings like bazaar environment areas, several hundred years old, are rubble and dust.

The Valley of Peace, this huge churchyard is littered with cluster bomb cans - unexploded. Someone should dig in to that fact.

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Violence Kills 23
US Soldiers Wounded at Karama

Al-Arabiyah is reporting that guerrillas detonated a car bomb near a national guard facility in Mosul, killing or wounding several persons on Monday morning. Also, US war planes attacked Sadr City on Monday, killing 5 and wounding 48. Al-Arabiyah showed wounded children in the hospital. A rocket slammed into Karrada in Baghdad, killing one person and wounding several others.

On Sunday, wire Services report that guerrillas detonated two car bombs at Karama, east of Fallujah, outside an Iraqi national guard base. The bombs wounded "several" US and Iraqi soldiers.

In the Tamim district of Ramadi, fighting between US Marines and Sunni Arab nationalists left 4 Iraqis dead and 10 wounded.

In Baghdad, a rocket landed in a busy shopping street in the city centre, killing one person and wounding several others.

US military forces engaged guerrillas near Baquba in the east, and in the course of the fighting a farmer was killed in the crossfire.

US warplanes bombed Fallujah again on Sunday, more than once, attempting to strike at a meeting of Monotheism and Holy War downtown. The US struck three times in 24 hours. Hospital officials said they received 8 dead and 22 wounded, including women and children. Residents asserted that many victims remained buried under the rubble.

Guerrillas at Latifiyah just south of Baghdad launched an attack on a group of gasoline tankers, in which they killed 10 persons and wounded 26 on Saturday. They sprayed machine gun fire at the tanker trucks, setting all five ablaze, after which they engaged in a running gun battle with members of the National Guard who were accompanying the convoy.

In Baqubah, the US military arrested a high officer in the Iraqi National Guard whom they suspect was actually working for the Sunni Arab nationalist forces. Talib al-Lahibi was a former officer in the Baath army. Most close observers believe that the Iraqi national guards, police and bureaucracy are riddled with double agents working for the cause of expelling the US rather than for the caretaker goverment.


For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Bush Falsehoods about Iraq

Adam Entous of Reuters is too polite to put it this way, but the conclusion is easily extracted from his article that Bush played fast and loose with the facts on Iraq last week.

Bush said that the UN electoral advisers are on the ground. In fact, there are only a handful there because it is so dangerous. Voter registration hasn't been conducted. Almost no preparations have been made, and the poor security situation may prevent them from being accomplished.

Bush spoke of 100,000 "fully trained and equipped" Iraqi soldiers & police.

In fact, only 22,700 Iraqi troops and police have received even minimal training, and only a few thousand are fully trained. The article is worth reading in full, and by the time you get to the end it is clear that Bush was either lying or ignorant, neither of these being a good posture for a president.


For "cont'd" postings, click here.

5 US Troops, at least 9 Iraqis Dead
Violence up 36 Percent in Iraq

The incidents of violence on Friday and Saturday in Iraq that appeared in the newspapers were a very small proportion of the whole. The press did tell us that guerrillas killed 5 US troops in separate incidents on Friday and Saturday. The US continued to bomb Fallujah, killing 9 and wounding 16.

Rajiv Chandrasekaran of the Washington Post has gotten hold of some daily violence reports on Iraq done for the US Agency for International Development by Kroll Security International. They demonstrate that my point on Friday about most of Iraq being dangerous was correct, but apparently I should have colored in more of the map red than I did. There are continuing acts of violence in Amarah and Samarra. Muthanna province should not have been white. Attacks are occurring everywhere but the three majority-Kurdish provinces in the far north, on a regular basis, some 70 a day nation-wide. These include car bombings, rocket propelled grenade attacks, machine gun attacks, etc. In June there had been 40 to 50 such attacks per day, so the situation is getting worse. He writes:
"

' After his speech to a joint meeting of Congress on Thursday, Allawi described Baghdad as "very good and safe." In fact, during the period for which security reports were available, the number of attacks in the capital averaged 22 a day.

On Wednesday, there were 28 separate hostile incidents in Baghdad, including five rocket-propelled grenade attacks, six roadside bombings and a suicide bombing in which a car exploded at a National Guard recruiting station, killing at least 11 people and wounding more than 50. '

For the original of the poll results (from June and July, a long time ago) cited by President Bush recently see see the International Republican Reserch powerpoint slides.

Some of the results don't favor Bush policies.

Crime, unemployment and infrastructure are the biggest concerns people have. (This is because they are the biggest problems people actually face daily).

70% want Islam and Shariah as the basis of the state, and 73% want to ensure the Islamic identity of the state. (I had misremembered this as 80% but anyway wasn't far off).

64% of the population think security is the number 1 issue. (As we have seen, it is getting worse).

Slide 23: 3/4s of Iraqis feel government is there to take care of people, and are basically socialists in outlook.

On a different subject, a report on the treatment of the Turkmen minority in northern Iraq is in this report.



For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Two Faces of Bush




This graphic is part of a new Democratic Party initiative to focus on the "two-facedness" of George W. Bush, which is apparently conceived broadly.

The thing the graphic most reminded me of was Bush's angry performance at the Cabinet meeting that discussed Fallujah in early April of 2004, where Newsweek says he commanded, "Heads must roll!" His temper and recklessness in such key moments contrast vividly with the folksy image he projects on the campaign trail. Over 600 Iraqis died, many of them women and children, from aerial bombardments and tank assaults on residential areas that had not previously been directly involved in the insurgency.

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

US Assault on Ramadi
Rockets in Baghdad Kill 4
Sadrists, AMS threaten Fresh Uprisings

President George W. Bush cited a poll done in June and July to argue that Iraqis are more optimistic about their future than Americans are about theirs. First of all, even if this were true, it is not good news for Bush.

Second of all, that poll was done before the US assault on Najaf, and the significant deterioration of the security situation in August and September. Many Iraqis had at that time been willing to give Allawi a chance, hoping security would improve. I am sure those numbers would be much lower now.

Moreover, the same poll found that more than 80 percent of Iraqis want an Islamic Republic with Islamic canon law or shariah as the law of the land. So if they are optimistic, it is because they think they can achieve such a goal over US objections. Again, this is not actually good news for Bush.

Nancy Youssef of Knight Ridder has an exclusive from Baghdad reporting that US air strikes on Iraqi cities and other actions have killed twice as many Iraqis (many of them civilian bystanders) since early April as have the actions of the nationalist guerrillas.

Al-Zawra Newspaper gives a useful overview of the specific guerrilla groups fighting in Iraq.

Ramadi

AP reports that the US military launched a major assault on the city of Ramadi on Friday. Warplanes and helicopter gunships flew above as US ground forces engaged in battles near the government buildings. Al-Zaman says that the fighting began when US froces surrounded the city on all sides and called for civilian inhabitants to evacuate, and then went in. Some 7 Iraqis, probably civilian by-standers, were wounded and sought treatment at the hospital. Typically wounded guerrillas do not go to the hospitals for fear of capture.

Fallujah

US war planes bombed Fallujah's industrial district on Friday, killing 8 and wounding 15.

Baghdad

Guerrillas trying to bombard a police recruitment station in Baghdad missed and hit Palestine Street, killing 4 persons and wounding 14.

A series of explosions could be heard in the capital Friday evening, probably at Haifa Street, which has become a stonghold of the militant Monotheism and Holy War organization that came to Iraq from Jordan.

Late Thursday, the Italian Embassy took mortar fire.

At a demonstration outside Abu Ghuraib Shaikh Abdul Salam al-Kubaisi of the Association of Muslim Scholars called on National Guardsmen to rebel against the government of Iyad Allawi. AMS has affiliations to some 8000 Sunni mosques in Iraq and has emerged as the most popular Sunni Arab leadership. ArabNews writes that Kubaisi said,

' "It is strange to hear someone announce that Iraq cannot achieve democracy without the Americans," referring to Allawi "who has abandoned Islamic, regional and patriotic principles, forgets that America is the one that slaughtered its native Americans and killed millions of Red Indians. He forgets that America is the first to have made mass graves by bombing Hiroshima." . . . "We live in strange times. As practically everyone is condemning America and its conquering of Iraq, we see a small bit of scum fighting the current, calling America a liberator and friend," referring to Allawis speech praising the US invasion. . . .

"Let it be clear for everyone that the traitors ... cannot give orders. To die for the country, to be a martyr is not death. Death is for those who betray their religion, soil, honour and country." . . .

"Today Iraq is facing the biggest conspiracy, a conspiracy to eliminate its most faithful people, all the faithful whether Muslim or Christian, Arab or Kurd or Turkmen ... That is why the Americans have formed the Iraqi national guard and police". Kubaisi described the nascent Iraqi security forces as "just a cover in order to sabotage Iraq ... Because of this I call for the leaders of the national guard and police not to obey their orders which are meant to make them the first spear, the first arrow as the criminal of the century Bush says." Kubaisi concluded calling on the Iraqis to unite in a peaceful resistance against the fear and terror inflicted upon them by the US-invader and to be confident of victory. '

On Thursday night, guerrillas had fired mortar shells at a Shiite mosque in the Abu Dishar quarter of southern Baghdad, putting a sizeable hole in its dome and damaging the courtyard.


Kufa

A leader of the Sadr movement threatened a new uprising on Friday.

In Kufa, Shaikh Hashim Abu Raghif-- an aide to Muqtada al-Sadr -- denounced recent moves by US Marines and Iraqi police in Najaf to raid Sadrist offices and arrest the movement's leaders. It was widely felt among Shiites in Iraq, even among those who dislike the Sadrists, and the raids and arrests contavened the terms of a peace agreement brokered by Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani. He was among those who complained about the recent raids.

Shaikh Abu Raghif said at the Sadr mosque in Kufa before hundreds of worshipers, "This aggression is a serious precedent in the new Iraq and for the state which has thrown itself in the arms of the occupation.” He maintained that the US and the caretaker Iraqi government "are trying to finish off this movement.” He added, “The pressures on us are great after the signing of the agreement,” Regheef said. “We will be back if the leader orders us to ... We will rise up when we’re ordered to.”

More hostages were taken on Friday in what has become an all too familiar tactic on the part of the guerrillas.


For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Of Iron Fists and Oil Sabotage
Marine Killed in Anbar

Guerrillas in Anbar Province killed a Marine on Thursday.

US forces clashed with guerrillas in Samarra, signalling a breakdown of the truce earlier worked out between city elders and US commanders, which would have provided extensive reconstruction aid in return for the city's acceptance of US patrols. The US forces called in strikes by helicopter gunships on the guerrillas.

Operation Iron Fist 2 against the Mahdi Army in Sadr City continued on Thursday. The US employed tanks, helicopter gunships, and aerial bombardment by warplane in its assault on the militia (except that these are blunt instruments, which must inevitably harm civilians in the teeming East Baghdad slum). The fighting left one Iraqi dead and 12 wounded, many of them children.

Earlier on Thursday, guerrillas in Sadr City detonated a roadside bomb, wounding 3 US troops.


The guerrillas' attempt to sabotage Iraq's oil economy continued on Thursday. The Detroit Free Press notes,

"Oil official killed: Gunmen killed a senior official of Iraq's North Oil Co. in the northeastern city of Mosul on Thursday, less than two weeks after his boss escaped an assassination attempt. Also, saboteurs attacked an oil well near Baghdad and a pipeline in the south, officials said.

An official with the South Oil Co. said on condition of anonymity that the attack on the pipeline in the city of Najaf will not affect oil exports from the south, Iraq's main port for oil shipments."

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Violence, Allawi, Sistani and Elections

Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani continues to be concerned as to whether elections will be held in January in Iraq, and whether the outcome will reflect the Shiite majority in Iraq. He is worried that the system adopted, of nation-wide party lists, favors a small set of parties, mainly expatriate. Since the six major parties listed include the two (Sunni) Kurdish parties and the largely Sunni Iraqi National Accord (primarily ex-Baathists) led by Iyad Allawi, as well as the mixed Iraqi National Congress, I think Sistani is afraid that the al-Da`wa and the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq--the two main Shiite parties-- could end up with a minority in parliament.

Both Bush and Allawi affirmed on Thursday that elections would be held as promised. Donald Rumsfeld, whose uncontrollable mouth is sometimes useful insofar as he lets the truth slip, said that elections might not be possible in all the provinces. Allawi minimized the violence, saying that it was confined to 3 of Iraq's 18 provinces. This assertion is simply untrue, and is anyway misleading because Baghdad is one of the three Allawi had in mind! Could an election that excluded the capital, with at least 5 million inhabitants, be considered valid? Denis D. Gray of AP notes:

"However, at least six provinces - Baghdad, Anbar, Diyala, Salahuddin, Kirkuk and Nineveh - have been the scene of significant attacks on U.S. troops and Iraqi authorities in the past month. The only areas not plagued by bloodshed are the three northern provinces controlled by Kurds. The situation in many areas, however, is unknown since journalists' travel is restricted by security fears."

(Why is it that only print journalists, and increasingly not television ones, challenge such disinformation from politicians any more?)

The situation is even worse than Gray allows. As recently as August, the British expended 100,000 rounds of ammunition in Maysan province at Amara, saying they had the most intense fighting since the Korean War! Likewise there was heavy fighting in Wasit (Kut) and Najaf. In the map below I made the present security-challenged provinces red, and those that saw recent heavy fighting purple. I ask you if this looks like the problems are in "3 of 18 provinces," or whether it looks to you like elections held only in the white areas (as Donald Rumsfeld seems to envision) would produce a legitimate government:



The Allawi/ Rumsfeld logic, moreover, presumes that the guerrilla resistance is only able to disrupt the elections in the Sunni Arab provinces. But they have repeatedly demonstrated an ability to strike all over the country. If a long line of prospective voters were standing in Nasiriyah in the south, do you seriously think the guerrillas couldn't manage to direct some rocket-propelled grenade fire at them? Set off a car bomb?

The real reason for the current plan to raze Fallujah in November or December is the hope that doing so will dramatically reduce the operational capability of the guerrillas, forestalling the Nasiriyah scenario I just mentioned. I don't think that the guerrillas are so geographically limited or concentrated, however, and very much doubt that this Carthaginian strategy in al-Anbar will work.

Moreover, not having elections in al-Anbar and West Baghdad would be a disaster. The red areas are where the Sunni Arab former ruling minority is situated. They are the backbone of the guerrilla war. If they feel unrepresented by the new government, what incentive do they have to cease their warfare?

On the other hand, if the elections are not held or if their results are widely considered illegitimate, there is a danger that that result will radicalize Sistani and cause him to bring the masses into the street.

Odysseus had to steer between the two monsters of Scylla and Charybdis. So to does the US in Iraq.


For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Iraq Violence Kills at Least 24, Wounds over 100
Sistani Criticizes Election Plans

The guerrilla war and American military assertiveness together wrought havoc in several areas of Iraq once again on Wednesday.

Baghdad

In downtown Baghdad, guerrillas used a car bomb to strike at persons in a retail district who were waiting to sign up for service in the Iraqi National Guard. The huge explosion killed 6 individuals and wounded 54.

There were also clashes at Haifa Street, a stronghold of the Iraqi branch of the radical Monotheism and Holy War movement. The number of resulting casualties is unknown as I write.

A US strike on Abu Ghurab west of Baghdad a week ago may have killed a leader of Monotheism and Holy War, Abu Anas al-Shami, a Jordanian Muslim radical and author.


Sadr City

In east Baghdad, according to Naim al-Qaabi, spokesman for the Sadr movement, a US push into that part of the capital resulted in clashes that left 15 dead and 52 wounded.

Samarra

Some 40 guerrillas fought US forces near Samarra on Wednesday. The US forces called in an air strike on a house, killing 2 Iraqis and wounding 2. Although a supposed ceasefire had recently been called by city leaders of Samarra, allowing US troops back into the city, it seems clear that Samarran guerrillas are still operating in the area and that the situation remains dicey.

Tikrit

Guerrillas used a roadside bomb to attack US troops near Tikrit, killing 1 US soldier.

Nasiriyah

Three American crew members of a Black Hawk helicopter were wounded when it crashed soon after take-off on Wednesday near Nasiriyah. The cause of the crash was not announced, but US helicopters frequently take rocket-propelled grenade fire in Iraq.

Najaf

On Monday and Tuesday, US Marines and Iraqi national guards raided offices of the Muqtada al-Sadr movement near the shrine of Ali, arresting several officials close to the radical young cleric. The American-appointed governor, Adnan al-Zurfi, maintained that they had found weapons caches in the sweep.

The action appears to contravene the terms of the cease-fire earlier reached with the Sadrists, and the raid was condemned by Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani. Sistani deeply dislikes the Mahdi Army, but he no doubt feels that if the various parties cannot trust that a settlement under his auspices can be trusted, it will weaken his authority to help settle future disputes.

Dexter Filkins of the New York Times reports that Sistani is increasingly worried about the form of the elections scheduled for January. The current plan to have nation-wide pre-selected party lists will unfairly favor the expatriate political parties, he fears, and he is threatening to withdraw his support from the process.

I personally would be shocked and amazed if elections are actually held in January. If they are, it would not be surprising if the expatriate parties managed to set things up so as to dominate them. They are the ones who have been organizing abroad for the past twenty years and have experience in politicking. But if a lot of local Iraqis feel disenfranchised by the results, then the elections won't produce a stable government. Moreover, Sistani's approval would be key to such a government's hopes for success.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon is burning up money and ammunition so fast in Iraq that it has prematurely had to dip into a $25 billion emergency fund: "If the additional money were not available this month, armed services either would have to cut other programs to shift money to the war or face the prospect of new troops going to battle without sufficient body armor, armored Humvees and other protective gear." The war is costing about $1 billion a week.


For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Cat Stevens Deported

I know that it is faintly ridiculous that Cat Stevens a.k.a. Yusuf Islam was deported on Wednesday from the US after the airplane he was on was diverted to Maine, on the grounds that he is a dire security threat to the country. David Letterman in his monologue allowed darkly as how the Feds were no doubt gunning for Gordon Lightfoot next. He also wickedly observed that despite Osama Bin Laden being at large, what with Cat Stevens deported and Martha Stewart in jail, he felt a lot safer.

But I have a hard time rushing to Yusuf Islam's defense because I never forgave him for advocating the execution of Salman Rushdie in 1989. He endorsed Khomeini's "fatwa" or death edict against Rushdie for the novel, Satanic Verses. He later explained this position away by saying that he did not endorse vigilante action against Rushdie, but would rather want the verdict to be carried out by a proper court. These are weasel words, since he was saying that if Khomeini had been able to field some Revolutionary Guards in London to kidnap Rushdie and take him to Tehran, it would have been just dandy if he were then taken out and shot for having written his novel. In my view, that entire episode of the Khomeini fatwa showed how sick some forms of Muslim activism had become, and served as a foretaste of al-Qaeda's own death warrant served on a lot of other innocent people.

And, the disavowal wasn't even consistent. AP reported on March 8, 1989, that "Cat Stevens Endorses Rushdie Death Sentence Again," writing:

' Former pop singer Cat Stevens reiterated his support for the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's death sentence against Salman Rushdie, saying the author's treatment of Islam was "as good as stabbing Moslems in the heart." . . . "It's got to be seen as a deterrent, so that other people should not commit the same mistake again," Stevens said in an interview with the television show "World Monitor," produced by The Christian Science Monitor . . Stevens, who said the novel's treatment of Islam was "as good as stabbing Moslems in the heart," suggested that Rushdie should repent writing the book. "If he manages to escape (the death sentence) he still has to face God on the day of judgment," he said. "So I would recommend to him to sincerely change his ways right now." '

At the time, Rushdie's life was in imminent danger, and Cat Stevens was skating pretty close to inciting to murder. (What else is the "deterrent" he is talking about?)

So, to steal from Bill Maher:

NEW RULES: If you advocate the execution of novelists for writing novels, you and John Ashcroft deserve one another.

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

If America were Iraq, What would it be Like?

President Bush said Tuesday that the Iraqis are refuting the pessimists and implied that things are improving in that country.

What would America look like if it were in Iraq's current situation? The population of the US is over 11 times that of Iraq, so a lot of statistics would have to be multiplied by that number.

Thus, violence killed 300 Iraqis last week, the equivalent proportionately of 3,300 Americans. What if 3,300 Americans had died in car bombings, grenade and rocket attacks, machine gun spray, and aerial bombardment in the last week? That is a number greater than the deaths on September 11, and if America were Iraq, it would be an ongoing, weekly or monthly toll.

And what if those deaths occurred all over the country, including in the capital of Washington, DC, but mainly above the Mason Dixon line, in Boston, Minneapolis, Salt Lake City, and San Francisco?

What if the grounds of the White House and the government buildings near the Mall were constantly taking mortar fire? What if almost nobody in the State Department at Foggy Bottom, the White House, or the Pentagon dared venture out of their buildings, and considered it dangerous to go over to Crystal City or Alexandria?

What if all the reporters for all the major television and print media were trapped in five-star hotels in Washington, DC and New York, unable to move more than a few blocks safely, and dependent on stringers to know what was happening in Oklahoma City and St. Louis? What if the only time they ventured into the Midwest was if they could be embedded in Army or National Guard units?

There are estimated to be some 25,000 guerrillas in Iraq engaged in concerted acts of violence. What if there were private armies totalling 275,000 men, armed with machine guns, assault rifles (legal again!), rocket-propelled grenades, and mortar launchers, hiding out in dangerous urban areas of cities all over the country? What if they completely controlled Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Salt Lake City, Las Vegas, Denver and Omaha, such that local police and Federal troops could not go into those cities?

What if, during the past year, the Secretary of State (Aqilah Hashemi), the President (Izzedine Salim), and the Attorney General (Muhammad Baqir al-Hakim) had all been assassinated?

What if all the cities in the US were wracked by a crime wave, with thousands of murders, kidnappings, burglaries, and carjackings in every major city every year?

What if the Air Force routinely (I mean daily or weekly) bombed Billings, Montana, Flint, Michigan, Watts in Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Anacostia in Washington, DC, and other urban areas, attempting to target "safe houses" of "criminal gangs", but inevitably killing a lot of children and little old ladies?

What if, from time to time, the US Army besieged Virginia Beach, killing hundreds of armed members of the Christian Soldiers? What if entire platoons of the Christian Soldiers militia holed up in Arlington National Cemetery, and were bombarded by US Air Force warplanes daily, destroying thousands of graves and even pulverizing the Vietnam Memorial over on the Mall? What if the National Council of Churches had to call for a popular march of thousands of believers to converge on the National Cathedral to stop the US Army from demolishing it to get at a rogue band of the Timothy McVeigh Memorial Brigades?

What if there were virtually no commercial air traffic in the country? What if many roads were highly dangerous, especially Interstate 95 from Richmond to Washington, DC, and I-95 and I-91 up to Boston? If you got on I-95 anywhere along that over 500-mile stretch, you would risk being carjacked, kidnapped, or having your car sprayed with machine gun fire.

What if no one had electricity for much more than 10 hours a day, and often less? What if it went off at unpredictable times, causing factories to grind to a halt and air conditioning to fail in the middle of the summer in Houston and Miami? What if the Alaska pipeline were bombed and disabled at least monthly? What if unemployment hovered around 40%?

What if veterans of militia actions at Ruby Ridge and the Oklahoma City bombing were brought in to run the government on the theory that you need a tough guy in these times of crisis?

What if municipal elections were cancelled and cliques close to the new "president" quietly installed in the statehouses as "governors?" What if several of these governors (especially of Montana and Wyoming) were assassinated soon after taking office or resigned when their children were taken hostage by guerrillas?

What if the leader of the European Union maintained that the citizens of the United States are, under these conditions, refuting pessimism and that freedom and democracy are just around the corner?


For "cont'd" postings, click here.

The Western Press on Religious Violence in Iraq

Howard LaFranchi of the Christian Science Monitor gives further, searching consideration to the mysterious murder of clerics on Sunday and Monday and sees dangers of sectarian violence increasing in Iraq.

Paul Wood of the BBC reports on the situation in the British-dominated South. It is not a pretty picture, and it should be remembered that this part of Iraq is generally less problematic than areas to its north.

Wood describes the fighting in Amara during the recent US attack on Sadrists in Najaf. Amara and Kut were virtually ignored in the US press. Wood writes:

' British officers characterise the August fighting as merely a "spike" in the violence. Some spike. Last month, British troops fired 100,000 rounds of ammunition in southern Iraq. . . The base in Amara sustained more than 400 direct mortar hits. The British battalion there counted some 853 separate attacks of different kinds: mortars, roadside bombs, rockets and machine-gun fire. They say that no British regiment has had such intense "contact" since Korea. '

Wood implicitly explains why the British military has generally done a much better job in Iraq than the US forces. Speaking of the occupation of some intersections in Basra by small Mahdi Army units during the assault on fighters at the holy shrine in Najaf, he says:

'There are lots of moderates here who support you. But if the shrines are touched, I'll kill you myself." That was the warning given to a British brigadier by a leading Shia figure in Basra, during the long hot month of August . . . Since the shrines were not touched, it's thought that only 400 hard-core gunmen joined the fight against the multi-national forces in Basra. Still, in an area which is 99% Shia, the great danger for the British is of a general Shia uprising . . . The British - with tanks, air support and thousands of soldiers - say they could have destroyed the small militia force attacking them. But they were asked by local people not to turn Basra into a war zone. And because they didn't, the majority still welcome them here . . . But perhaps the most worrying development of the August fighting was that none of Basra's 25,000 police officers came to the aid of the British soldiers. Some even helped the gunmen.

To be fair, it seems increasingly clear that George W. Bush keeps ordering the US military to attack in such situations, against the better judgment of his own officers. So if the US had been in Basra, Bush would have in fact insisted on turning it into a war zone and alienating its 1.3 million Shiites. As it is, Wood interviews caretaker PM Iyad Allawi, who admits that he didn't have the authority with the Basra police to countermand the local commissioner's instruction to his men not to aid the British. When a prime minister can't control the police commissioners of his major cities, he is a helpless giant.

Alistair Ryan of Reuters explains that Iran faces severe constraints in intervening in Iraq. He quotes Columbia University Iran analyst Gary Sick as saying that the last thing the Iranians want is a civil war in Iraq. Sick is right. Still, Iran is giving money to various Iraqi factions, including to the Sadrists in Basra, according to British military intelligence.


For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Bush Taunts Kerry

I just heard President Bush taunt John Kerry for suggesting that the US was not safer because Saddam Hussein was deposed, and for saying that the US was in fact less safe because of the chaos in Iraq.

Bush attempted to turn this statement around and suggest that Kerry was preferring dictatorship to democracy.

Iraq, however, does not have a democracy, and cannot possibly have a democracy any time soon because of events such as those described below (and they are only 24 hours' worth)-- that is, because of a failed state and a hot guerrilla war.

Moreover, if Mr. Bush abhors dictatorships so much, why hasn't he overthrown that in China? North Korea? Zimbabwe? Or, say, Egypt? There are enormous numbers of dictatorships in the world. Is the US to overthrow them all? Putin's decision to appoint provincial governors rather than allowing them to be elected (as though Bush should appoint the governors of US states) is a step toward dictatorship. Shall we have a war with Russia over it?

Surely the conditions under which the Palestinians live in the West Bank are a form of dictatorship (they haven't voted for their Israeli military rulers). Why not invade the West Bank and liberate the Palestinians?

Obviously, what was obnoxious to the American people about Saddam Hussein was not that he was a dictator. Those are a dime a dozen and not usually worth $200 billion and thousands of lives. It is that he was supposedly dangerous to the US because, as Bush alleged, he was trying to develop an atomic bomb. But whatever nuclear program he had was so primitive as not to be worth mentioning, and there is no evidence that Saddam posed any threat at all to the United States' homeland, or would have in his lifetime.

I have a sinking feeling that the American public may like Bush's cynical misuse of Wilsonian idealism precisely because it covers the embarrassment of their having gone to war, killed perhaps 25,000 people, and made a perfect mess of the Persian Gulf region, all out of a kind of paranoia fed by dirty tricks and bad intelligence. And, maybe they have to vote for Bush to cover the embarrassment of having elected him in the first place.

How deep a hole are they going to dig themselves in order to get out of the bright sunlight of so much embarrassment?

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

The Case of the Three Dead Clerics

Al-Zaman and Al-Jazeerah.net say that two important figures in the Sunni fundamentalist Association of Muslim Scholars [Board of Muslim Clerics] were assassinated on Sunday and Monday.

Hazim al-Zaidi was found in front of the Sajjad Mosque in Sadr City, a largely Shiite area. Al-Zaidi had been imam to the small Sunni community in East Baghdad. He was kidnapped Sunday, then released, but then showed up dead. Another AMS cleric, Shaikh Muhammad Jadu', was cut down as he left the al-Kawthar Mosque in al-Bayya', west Baghdad, a Sunni area.

Likewise, on Monday Abu Jihad al-Zamili, a commander in the Badr Corps, the paramilitary of the Shiite Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, was killed by assassins along with his wife as he was driving about 20 km. north of Karbala.

In other news, guerrillas detonated a car bomb in Mosul, killing 3 persons. Monotheism and Holy War (al-Tawhid wa al-Jihad) took credit for beheading an American, and for taking 10 Turkish truck drivers hostage. Also in Mosul, guerrillas fired on a Turkish Red Crescent team heading to help victims of the fighting in Tal Afar, wounding five Turks. Guerrillas killed an American soldier near Sharqat in the Sunni Arab heartland. And, as usual, the US used tanks and warplanes to bomb Fallujah, with the number of resulting casualties under dispute (the US says it killed 2, other sources say 3). al-Hayat says that on Sunday evening 3 officers in the Iraqi National Guard were killed by a rocket propelled grenade. In Beiji, two corpses were discovered, of Iraqis who worked at the nearby American military base.

The Association of Muslim Scholars or AMS, headed by Sheikh Hareth al-Dhari, has in some instances been linked to militants, but usually has maintained enough independence of them to act as a broker between them and the Baghdad government. The AMS has announced that it will boycott the elections scheduled for January. It has emerged as the most respected and influential of the Sunni Muslim religious parties in Iraq, and seems to be the Sunnis' answer to Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani.

The location of the murder of the Sunni cleric Hazim al-Zaidi, in Shiite Sadr City, might cast suspicion on the Sadr Movement of Muqtada al-Sadr, or at least some militant faction within it. There has in fact been friction between Sadrists and Sunnis in the past year and a half. The Sadrists have occupied Sunni mosques in the Shiite south, for instance, and at one point seemed poised to usurp most Sunni endowment property in Basra, provoking a demonstration some 15,000 strong among minority Sunnis in that southern city in summer of 2003. That Zaidi was the leader of the Sunnis in Sadr City may have made his activities provocative to the intensely nativist Sadr movement.

But since the simultaneous siege of Fallujah and Najaf in spring of 2004 by the US, the Sunni fundamentalists or Salafis and the Sadrist Shiites had appeared to make up. They sent each other food aid, and the Sunnis put up posters of Muqtada al-Sadr in Fallujah (ordinarily Sunni fundamentalists look at Shiites as a sort of polytheistic heresy no closer to true Islam than is Hinduism). So it would be strange if the Sadrists, who are still under pressure from the US, should suddenly decide to pick a fight with the Sunnis. Or at least it would be strange if this murder were ordered by the top clerics of the Sadr Movement.

Since the second victim, Shaikih Jadu', was killed in a Sunni area west of Baghdad, moreover, whoever did the deed is not based only in Shiite Sadr City, and so the argument for a Sadrist perpetrator is weakened.

Al-Hayat notes that the Sadr Movement leaders roundly condemned the killing of the clerics. They were buried in Baqubah, and Sadrists accompanied the funeral procession. If they did it, they are certainly brazen.

On the other hand, the Sadrists blame the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq for spying on them for the Americans in Najaf (so the Sadrists say), and the Mahdi Army has serious issues with the Badr Corps.

The Baathists have been behind a lot of assassinations of emerging politicians in Iraq who might benefit from the end of the Baath and the emergence of a new Iraq. I personally believe that the Baath got Muhammad Baqir al-Hakim on Aug. 29, 2003. And that is who I would blame for the assassination of Aqilah al-Hashimi, a woman member of the Interim Governing Council, in fall of the same year. So it is possible that militantly secular, ultra-nationalist Baathists might be attempting to make sure that AMS does not benefit from the destruction of the Baath party and the marginalization of former Baathists.

The Baathists hate the Badr Corps, which used to carry out terrorist actions against them from Iran in the 1990s.

Still, the Baathists and the Sunni fundamentalists seem to have forged at least a tacit alliance in places like Fallujah and Ramadi, so it is a little odd that they should take out after Sunni leaders at this juncture. It is less odd that they should have killed al-Zamili, the Shiite Badr Corps commander.

The other possibility is Monotheism and Holy War, the terrorist organization based in Jordan and Germany that began as a rival to al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. The letter attributed to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi last January by the CIA spoke of attempting to provoke Sunni-Shiite warfare as a way to ensure that American-dominated Iraq was destabilized. I dislike the US official tendency to blame most violence in Iraq on Zarqawi and other outsiders. I think 99% of it is Iraqi in character. But killing Shaikh al-Zaidi right in front of a Shiite mosque, or dumping his body there, does seem to be a deliberate provocation of the sort Tawhid earlier spoke of.

Likewise, it might have been hoped that the Shiites would blame Sunnis for al-Zamili's death, just as it would have been obvious that Sunnis would blame Shiites for al-Zaidi's.

A conspiracy theory might cast suspicion on the Allawi government, which would potentially benefit from driving a wedge between AMS and the Sadrists, and from weakening the Badr Corps. But I don't think Sunni-Shiite riots would help the stability of Iraq, and can't imagine Allawi is so foolish as to risk provoking them.

So, I think the murders were either done by more militant Sadrists or by Monotheism and Holy War. Of course, it is possible that the three murders were not all commited by the same group, but I suspect they were. And I would lean toward blaming Tawhid.

Meanwhile, Borzou Daragahi of AP argues that virtually all Sunni clerics, and not just AMS, preach jihad against the Americans. He notes that they do not always come out and say it, but that they are skillful in weaving pro-jihad statements into their sermons through allusion and intimation. He says:

' They cite a long litany of American missteps: everything from the stalled reconstruction effort, the killing of innocent Iraqis during combat operations and the abuse and sexual humiliation of prisoners to soldiers entering mosques without taking off their boots, entering women's quarters during house raids and patting-down of female detainees.

They also say they believe that force is the only language the Americans understand, that Americans refuse to listen to Iraqis' peaceful demands.

Were it not for the resistance throughout the Sunni triangle following last year's war, they say, the now-dissolved 25-member Iraqi Governing Council would not have been established; were it not for the April uprisings in Fallujah and the Shi'ite south, Mr Allawi's interim government would not have been established; and were it not for the ongoing violence in Baghdad and the rest of the country, elections would not be set in January.

'Those who called for political solutions have been repeatedly embarrassed and outdone by those wanting military solutions,' says Prof Bashar. '

Actually, if what the Sunni militants wanted was only elections, they could have had that without blowing so many things up. It seems to me that they were assured when Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani brought over 100,000 protesters into the streets of Baghdad in January.

I don't think they primarily want elections, which would bring the Shiites and Kurds to power. I think they want the Americans gone so as to find a way to regain Sunni Arab supremacy in the country. That actually makes them more dangerous, because if that is their motive then they will likely go on blowing up things for a long time to come. It is highly unlikely that they can put the Shiites back in a box. So, even if the Iraqi public rises up and gets rid of the Americans, thereafter they are likely to turn on one another unless the Sunni Arabs can throw up leaders that can deal with the new situation in which they are a minority. They haven't given good evidence of an ability to do that as yet.


For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Bin Laden Doesn't Care Who Wins

The remark of Speaker of the House Denis Hastert that al-Qaeda would like to manipulate the US election with a terrorist bombing and would be happier with Kerry as president is simply wrong. The Democrats are correct that such comments are a form of fear-mongering aimed at stampeding the American public into voting for Bush out of terror. Indeed, if the US public votes for any candidate because of concern for Bin Laden, then Bin Laden has been handed precisely the victory that Hastert professed to abhor.

But Hastert is just wrong. Al-Qaeda does not care who wins the elections. If the US withdraws from Iraq (which could happen willy-nilly under Bush as easily as under Kerry), that would be seen as a victory by al-Qaeda. If the US remains in Iraq for years, bleeding at the hands of an ongoing guerrilla insurgency, then that is also a victory for al-Qaeda from their point of view. They therefore just don't care which candidate wins. They hate general US policy in the Middle East, which would not change drastically under Kerry. To any extent that al-Qaeda is giving serious thought to the US elections, it would see no significant difference between the candidates. But given its goal of creating more polarization between the US and the Muslim World, it is entirely possible that the al-Qaeda leadership would prefer Bush, since they want to "sharpen the contradictions."

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McCain vs. Iraqi Public

The rather bloodthirsty demand launched by Arizona Senator John McCain that the US military conquer Fallujah and other Sunni Arab cities of al-Anbar Province will not in fact enhance the possibility of free elections in January.

There are bad characters in those al-Anbar cities, without any doubt. There are persons responsible for the massive bombs that killed Kurds last winter and Shiites during Muharram rituals last spring. There are old-time Baath fascists and there are Sunni fundamentalists with a mindset not much different from that of al-Qaeda (even if they are, unlike al-Qaeda, mainly concerned with Iraqi independence of the US). I don't doubt that finding ways to combat them or convince them to turn to civil politics is crucial to the future of Iraq.

But for the US military to frontally invade those cities, inevitably killing large numbers of innocent civilians, and potentially pushing even more of their inhabitants into joining the guerrilla war will not be without a political cost. During the US siege of Fallujah last April, several key Iraqi politicians resigned or threatened to, and even the Shiites of Kazimiyah (who ordinarily despise Sunni fundamentalists) sent them truckloads of aid. Even Coalition Provisional Authority polling that May found that Iraqi politicians who opposed the US action and attempted to negotiate an end to it had become national figures with high favoribility ratings. Hareth al-Dhari of the Association of Muslim Clerics is an example. His influential Association, by the way, has already said it will not contest the elections now set for January because they are being held under the shadow of a foreign Occupation. Razing Fallujah will not earn the US any good will with the Sunni Muslim clerics.

What does McCain think the election would look like, with Ramadi, Fallujah and other Sunni cities reduced to rubble? Does he think the sullen Sunni Arabs will actually just jump on a US bandwagon in the wake of such brutality? Does he have any idea of the sheer number of feuds that will have been incurred with the Sunni tribes?

Some much more subtle and effective form of counter-insurgency strategy is necessary.

It seems almost certain that most candidates for high office in Iraq will run against the US. I.e., their platform will probably include a promise to get US troops out of the country ASAP. Others will boycott the elections. The number of such boycotters, and the number of those running against the US, would be even greater in the wake of a bloody and indiscriminate US campaign against the townspeople of al-Anbar.

At the end of this misadventure, it seems more and more likely that a US soldier will report to his general, "We had to destroy the country to save it, sir!"

Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, visiting London, reaffirmed Sunday that his government will hold elections as scheduled, to the incredulity of Kofi Annan and other UN officials.

In bad news for the Allawi government, which had trumpeted the political settlement it had achieved with clan chieftains of Samarra, guerrillas blew up a roadside bomb there on Sunday, kiling an Iraqi soldier and a civilian, and wounding four American and three Iraqi troops.

Late Saturday and early Sunday, US warplanes and artillery struck Fallujah repeatedly. The bombardments killed four persons and wounded six. Although the US military typically points to the guerrillas it kills in such operations, it makes no accounting of the innocent civilians it kills and injures when bombing residential neighborhoods.

In Suwayrah, the Darwin Prize goes to four guerrillas who accidentally blew themselves up while planting a roadside bomb Saturday night.

Also over the weekend, US talks with the Shiite leaders of East Baghdad broke down over American demands that the Mahdi Army be disbanded in Sadr City and that the militiamen turn in their weapons.

Some 300 Iraqis were killed in violence during the past week.
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Letter to a Marine Reserve Officer

This is a piece of private correspondence with a thoughtful reserve officer who kindly took the time to remonstrate with me about comments he took to be "anti-military" on my web log.

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Dear . . .

I can't thank you enough for your detailed and (under the circumstances) gentlemanly letter, which I read with great attention.

Let me try to clear away what I think is a misconception. I am not anti-US military. My father spent 20 years in Signal Corps and then Sat Com in the army, and I grew up on bases. I have also . . . had interactions with officers here (where they are sometimes detailed to do an MA with us) and elsewhere. I have the greatest respect for the intelligence, culture and initiative of the US officer corps, and I am grateful to the Marines and the other services for defending our country. I thank you for your own service.

There are nevertheless things I don't like about the way the Iraq war is being prosecuted. I don't doubt that much of this is at the behest of "General Rove" and is by no means the fault of the military itself. They after all have to shoot where they are told to. Nevertheless, I do feel a need to speak out when I see things going wrong. That is my function as an analyst of the scene, and not to do it would be a dereliction of duty. And, sometimes the only way to make a strong point is to make it rudely.

One reason for my vehemence is that I think the US is walking a tight rope in Iraq. The Americans seem not to realize it, but it is entirely possible that the Iraqis will mount a nationwide urban revolutionary movement aimed at expelling the US. At that point the US military will be faced with a choice of committing massacres (as the Shah's troops did at Black Friday in 1978) or leaving. Neither eventuality will lead to anything good.

I wasn't on the scene at Haifa street and found the footage confusing, so I just don't know what happened there. But whatever it was doesn't smell right from the eyewitness accounts we have in the European and Arab press. I'd love to have your reaction to the suggestion made to me by one correspondent that the Bradley might have had some sort of intel equipment aboard and that was why it was important that it be completely destroyed before the guerrillas could loot it.

In general, as you can tell, I deeply disagree with using helicopter gunships and warplane bombardment of civilian neighborhoods as key tactics in fighting urban guerrillas. If the LAPD bombed Watts to get at the Cripps and the Bloods, there would be outrage. (In fact, that sort of thing was done in Philly with regard to MOVE and did cause outrage). You can't attack urban areas that way without killing a lot of innocent people. It isn't right, and I suspect it is a violation of the 4th Geneva Convention. It is also politically inadvisable, since the people you are bombing in Kut and elsewhere started out only having a few guerrillas amongst them, but are pushed into vehement anti-Americanism by seeing their relatives killed this way.

My angry comments on Najaf derived from several sources. Mostly I was upset by the fighting in the holy city. It really, really angered all my Shiite friends and had geopolitical repercussions as far abroad as my old stomping grounds in Lucknow, India. After 9/11, surely it should by now be apparent that the US cannot act with impunity in the Muslim world, and right now we don't need Shiite enemies alongside our Sunni and Wahhabi ones.

If it were true, as John Burns alleged, that the most recent round of fighting was set off by local Marine decisions, then that was most unwise. It may be, as you imply, that Burns was wrong, and that the policy was set higher up, and the Marines were only following orders. But it is actually unclear that Washington would have wanted a major fight in a sacred space just before the Republican National Convention, and I am inclined to credit Burns on this.

It seems obvious to me that the US military was perfectly willing to storm the Shrine, and indeed many were itching to do so. The Washington Post quoted one Marine as saying that the shrine "might not be there much longer."

That was the ignoramus, along with his like-minded colleagues, to whom I was mainly refering.

I know very well that the US officer corps knows about the significance of Najaf and Karbala . . . The problem is that they don't know about that significance in their *guts*. It is still intellectual for them, as it obviously is for you. The Shrine of Imam Ali is, by the way, not a mosque, though a mosque is attached to it. It is a mausoleum.

That Muqtada's guys were in the shrine did not necessitate the Marines storming the Shrine of Ali, which was clearly at some points envisaged. First of all, the Mahdi Army did not even control Najaf in March of 2004-- it was mainly in the hands of Badr Corps. It was the stupid American decision to "kill or capture" Muqtada in early April that led to his movement ensconcing itself in Najaf. So having caused the problem in the first place, the American solution to it was to piss all over the most sacred mausoleum in Shiite Islam. That is willful ignorance, I am afraid.

I am sure the local Marine commanders were manipulated by Adnan Zurfi and the Najaf elite, and probably Allawi as well. (A . . . State Department official intimated to me that Allawi was mainly behind it and Negroponte's hands were tied). But, again, if the initiative came as Burns claims from local commanders, then what they did was most unwise (the polite way of putting it).

There are some things that the US should not do, period. Besieging Najaf and bombing the sacred cemetery is one of them. The whole city and its environs are holy, not just the shrine. It is very nice for Zurfi and Allawi if they can get us to do it, but we should resist being used that way.

Not only were all the Shiites in southern Iraq outside Najaf itself angered by the fighting in Najaf, but so were the Lebanese, Bahrainis, Iranians, Pakistanis, and Indians. An operation would have to be really important and urgent to make it worthwhile alienating 120 million people. I didn't see the urgency. Most of the cities in Iraq are not under US control and are patrolled by militias. If you were going to pick a fight, Ramadi or Kut would have been preferable, because they lack the "gut" factor.

And, it is precisely by injuring these religious feelings that the US hastens the day when the Iraqi public comes out into the streets in the hundreds of thousands and begins the revolution for Iraqi independence.

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Sharon Repudiates the Road Map

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in remarks on Wednesday repudiated the American-sponsored "road map" to a peace process between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Sharon insists on acting unilaterally, intends to occupy the Palestinian population indefinitely, and intends to permanently incorporate much of the West Bank, conquered in 1967, into Israel, while leaving the Palestinian population stateless. They lack so much as a passport or a country, many of their children are hungry, unemployment is astronomical, and their lives are ruined by a dense network of Israeli roads and checkpoints that make it difficult even just to go to the hospital.

I am sure that most Americans are not even aware that Palestinians live under Israeli military occupation and that every day Palestinian territory shrinks as it is stolen by fanatical Israeli colonists. These fanatics do not differ in any obvious way from the French colonists in Algeria, which the French also proclaimed "French soil." But colonialism is just another word for grand larceny. (Most Americans would be appalled if the United States suddenly chased all the Iraqis out of Baghdad and brought in Americans to permanently take over their apartments and other property, instead. But that is an exact analogy for how the Israelis are behaving.)

There are several examples in the contemporary world of land-hungry states attempting to incorporate neighbors' territory into their own. You have the Chinese in Tibet, the Moroccans in the Western Sahara . . . and, well it is actually hard to think of a lot of recent such engorgements. But in each of these cases, the conquering state wants the people along with the territory. Tibetans have Chinese passports, and Saharans have Moroccan ones. But Israel isn't giving the Palestinians Israeli passports. It just wants their land, not them, and sets things up to try to force the Palestinians out of their homeland. It is an ongoing injustice, with Israeli colonization creeping forward. Even if Sharon does remove the small number (8000) of Israeli colonists from Gaza, he intends to resettle them in the West Bank, which is nicer real estate.

Charles Smith's Guest Editorial on Sept. 1 is worth revisiting in the light of these recent admissions.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Aladdin's Genie Run over by Humvee

The US military announced that a marine had been killed in Anbar province on Tuesday.

Wire services report that on Wednesday in Iraq

*In Ramadi, running gun battles broke out between local Sunni nationalists and US Marines. Guerrillas set off a bomb, killing 1 person. Altogether the fighting killed 13 and wounded 17.

*In Baquba, northeast of Baghdad, guerrillas detonated a roadside bomb, killing 4 policemen and one civilian.

*In Samarra, due north of the capital, Sunni nationalists fired a rocket-propelled grenade at US and Iraqi troops who were guarding a city council building. The action imperilled that agreement reached between the US and local clan elders, which had allowed US troops back into the city.

*In Suwayra, to the south of the capital, guerrillas detonated a car bomb at the base of the Iraqi National Guard, killing two persons and wounding 10.

*Near the southern Shiite shrine city of Karbala, an unknown assailant assassinated Labib Mohammadi, an employee of Iran's pilgrimage commission in Iraq.

Kim Housego of AP argues that the Iraqi nationalist guerrillas fighting the US presence are becoming more sophisticated and interlinked over time.

Stephen Farrell's piece, reprinted in an Australian paper, contains a clear-eyed summary of the security situation in Iraq. He notes, " In the first two weeks of September alone, 291 Iraqi civilians have been killed. The number of foreigners taken hostage last month soared to 31. The average number of attacks on US soldiers reached 87 a day."

But the saddest thing in his article comes at the end, where he tells us about the Iraqis' loss of faith even in the 1,001 Nights:

". . . this week Iraqis sat down to watch a wicked television satire updating the legend of the genie and the lamp. Summoned to a darkened flat to grant his customary wishes, the hapless blue-bearded genie is asked to repair the electricity supply, but can only attach the wires to the neighbours' generator, which promptly breaks down.

Beseeched to improve the nation's security, he disappears only to reappear bruised and battered, having been run over by US tanks. The message is clear. In the land of the Arabian Nights, even the genie can't fix Iraq. "

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Sistani Insists on Elections

Al-Zaman: Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani called on Wednesday for general elections to be held at the scheduled time (January 2005). He made the statement during a meeting of the Shiite leadership held in his office in Najaf. Present were Muhammad Said al-Hakim, Bashir Najafi, and Ishaq al-Fayyad in adition to Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the leader of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq. Sistani underlined the necessity of "tossing out conflicts and emphasizing a closing of ranks, as well as intensifying efforts to create complete national unity in order to confront the danger that menaces the country." Sistani called on the caretaker Iraqi government to take measures to release prisoners whose guilt has not been established, and to work to rebuild the cities that were damaged by the acts of violence and clashes. He asked for compensation to be given to those harmed, especially in the city of Najaf. He also called on the government to "treat problems with calm and wisdom instead of resorting to violence." (All this according to Deutsche Press Agentur). Al-Hayat says Sistani called on Allawi to "stop the bloodbath." He further insisted on more popular participation and on "filling in the gaps in the laws governing elections and parties" that were enacted by US civil administrator Paul Bremer and his appointed Interim Governing Council.

There are rumors that PM Iyad Allawi had wanted to storm the shrine of Ali in late August, and had been displeased with Sistani's intervention to promote a non-violent end of the crisis.

In fact, the Iraqi government did let 750 prisoners go from Abu Ghuraib Prison as part of a commitment to process the prisoners there one way or another.

Sistani's quite resonable demand for elections is nevertheless among the greatest dangers facing the Allawi government and the Americans. It will be extremely difficult actually to hold the elections on time. But Sistani believes only such elections can produce a legitimate government, and he already accepted a six-month delay. If the elections are not held, and if Sistani begins to fear they won't be held soon, he may well call the masses into the streets. That could lead to an overthrow of Allawi and an expulsion of the Americans. Keep your eye on February and March of 2005.

Incidentally, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan predicted that it would be impossible to hold the elections on time. He also went on record that the Bush administration's war against Iraq had been illegal, contravening the UN charter that forbids the launching of wars without UN Security Council authorization. Annan insists that there should have been a second UNSC vote.

The inclusion of Abdul Aziz al-Hakim in the meeting of the Grand Ayatollahs strikes me as extremely significant. Al-Hakim is probably only a Hujjat al-Islam, the stage below ayatollah, and so would not ordinarily be at a senior meeting. But because he heads a major political party, SCIRI, as well as its paramilitary, the Badr Corps, he seems to be being consulted by his seniors.

Al-Hakim lived in Tehran from the early 1980s until 2003 and has excellent relations with the hardliners in Iran, even though he has been cooperating with the Americans for the past two years. From summer of 2003, Sistani began allying with the al-Hakims and implicitly with SCIRI as a way of combatting the Sadrist movement, which has long had ambiguous feelings toward Sistani. The Sadrists maintain that al-Hakim and SCIRI spied on them for the Americans and encouraged the recent attack on them in Najaf. Although the Badr Corps was trained by the Revolutionary Guards in Iran and had been reputed to be formidable, so far it seems to have come off badly in any fight with the Mahdi Army of Muqtada al-Sadr. It also seems to be the case that the Sadr movement has attracted far more followers in the past year than its rival, SCIRI, which remains a smaller movement. It is therefore not entirely clear how valuable Sistani's tacit alliance with SCIRI is to him.

Al-Hakim has most recently been in the news because he denounced the US operation in Tal Afar (a largely Shiite Turkmen city).

Meanwhile, Sorayya Sarhaddi Nelson reports that the multi-million dollar Najaf reconstruction plan involves a provision to raze buildings considered too near to the Imam Ali Shrine. Among these are the HQ offices of the Sadr Movement, i.e. of Muqtada al-Sadr. These offices had been used by Muqtada's father, revered by almost all Iraqi Shiites, Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr. On these grounds, the Sadrists are voicing strong opposition to the plan, as a desecration of Sadr II's memory. They say only the decree of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani would convince them.

The plan to get rid of those buildings appears to originate with US-appointed Najaf governor, Adnan al-Zurfi, whom the Sadrists view as an American agent.

Al-Hayat reports that Basra police closed a political office of Muqtada al-Sadr in the Shatt al-Arab district and arrested four of his supporters.

For "cont'd" postings, click here.