Guerrillas Kill 25
Sistani supports Gradual US Withdrawal
Bombings and assassinations left some 25 persons dead in Iraq on Saturday, including 17 who just showed up in the street dead, with some showing signs of torture.
70 GIs have been killed in Iraq in the past month, and over 2400 have been killed since the war began.
Turkish military action against the Kurdish Workers' Party along the border with Iraq has heated up, with Turkish mortars falling on the Iraqi city of Zakho, according to this report. That's what we needed, more mortars falling on an Iraqi city from yet another quarter.
The curfew has been lifted in Baqubah, allowing the city to slump back toward semi-normalcy (Baqubah is a dangerous place). It was the site of an unusually large attack on checkpoints by 100 guerrillas.
Trudy Rubin, who knows a thing or two about Shi'ite politics from firsthand interviews, profiles the new PM-designate, Nouri al-Maliki.
The Iraqi Accord Front [Ar.], according to al-Hayat, has suggested the creation of a new ministerial position, the ministry of state for Arab foreign affairs. The sggestion comes as an attempt to end the deadlock over apportioning cabinet posts. The Sunni Arabs want the foreign ministry, held in the outgoing government by the Kurds, who won't give it up. The Sunni Arabs say you should have a Sunni Arab to deal with the Arab League states.
Adil Abdul Mahdi, one of two vice presidents, went to see Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani,and he says that the ayatollah said that he agreed with the idea of ending the US troop presence in Iraq gradually.
The Bush administration used to boast that Iraqis were more optimistic about their future than Americans. I'm afraid his policies have led to a surge in pessimism in both places. A new poll in Iraq shows that a majority of Iraqis thinks their economy is bad and getting worse. 3/4s say that security is bad.
For a wounded soldier with brain damage to later get a bill from the Bush administration for the cost of the weapon he left in Iraq's sands is just about the worse thing I have ever heard.
The LA Times reports that "An American initiative to use private security companies to protect Iraq's oil and power infrastructure collapsed amid reports of possible fraud, missing weapons and destroyed documents . . ."
Nearly half of the Japanese are afraid that events are moving toward a war with North Korea or China. I hope they are wrong. The US would get involved i such a thing, but doessn't currently have an army available for it.
posted by Juan Cole @ 4/30/2006 12:30:00 AM
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4 Comments:
Concerning this paragraph of your last blog entry :
"Adil Abdul Mahdi, one of two vice presidents, went to see Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani,and he says that the ayatollah said that he agreed with the idea of ending the US troop presence in Iraq gradually"
Both Reidar Visser and Helena Cobban have recetnly written interesting comments about this meeting and more generally about how Sistani's attitude recently changed (aka he seems more willing to intervene in Iraqi politic than he ever did since november 2004).
Any ideas about this:
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - American troops will probably be gone from Iraq by mid-2008 as the Iraqi forces they are training take over from them, Iraq's National Security Adviser Mowaffak al-Rubaie said on Friday.
He said he expected the roughly 133,000 U.S. troops to be cut to less than 100,000 by year's end and an "overwhelming majority" of them to have left by the end of 2007 under a U.S.-Iraqi plan for progressively handing over security.
"We have a roadmap, a condition-based agreement where, by the end of this year, the number of coalition forces will probably be less than 100,000," he told Reuters in an interview.
"By the end of next year the overwhelming majority of coalition forces would have left the country and probably by the middle of 2008 there will be no foreign soldiers in the country."
I don't perceive there even being the slightest chance that it is true that the US agrees to a voluntary full withdrawal by a certain date under any circumstances.
I am very confused by the report, by the relative lack of coverage and by the fact that Rubaie, Iraq's National Security Advisor seems to believe it.
BBC had nothing about Turkish attacks on Kurds but was featuring this story: "Iraq accused Iranian forces of entering Iraqi territory and shelling Kurdish 'rebel' positions in the north."
(emphasis on 'rebel' mine).
It seems that when Turks are involved the PKK are "terrorists" but if Iran moves against them they're "rebels".
This accusation against Iran has pretext written all over it.
IMHO the analysis of Professor John Ikenberry 'America's Security Trap' has a minor flaw by taking a hegemonial US role in a post-Bush world for granted. US dependence on foreign purchases of US treasuries and the implications of peak-oil are rather the symptoms of a multipolar world.
As to the 'merits of allowing civil war' argument I tip my hat to the 03 Nov 2005 bar conversation of legendary blogger Billmon with Professor Juan Cole: http://billmon.org/archives/002331.html
For those short on time (or whiskey) I'll happy to quote this argument for sanity in a mad hatter's world:
"Both the insurgency and the government are signaling that their objectives are political, not existential. They each want to rule Iraq, not exterminate the other side -- although both sides have their eliminationist wings.
This creates the hope that in Iraq, as in Clausewitz's doctrine, civil war is the continuation of politics by other means, not the opening salvo of the war of the all against the all. And this at least holds out the possibility (hope would be too strong a word) that the various sides will eventually realize they have to compromise -- just as the warring factions in Lebanon brokered a workable peace once the leaders of the major factions decided it was no longer in their interests to keep fighting."
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