Informed Comment

Thoughts on the Middle East, History, and Religion

Juan Cole is President of the Global Americana Institute

Wednesday, May 31, 2006

Deteriorating Security in Diyala

From Reuters: reports on major violence in the ongoing Iraqi Civil War on Tuesday:


' BAGHDAD - A car bomb killed at least 25 people and wounded 65 in the northern Baghdad district of Husa[y]niya, police said.

HILLA - A suicide bomber in a car killed at least 12 people and wounded 36 near a car dealership . . .

BAGHDAD - A bomb killed nine people and wounded 10 others in a bakery in eastern Baghdad . . .

BAGHDAD - Two women employees of the Ministry of Interior were killed and four policemen were wounded by a rocket which landed near the ministry, police said.'


The Ministry of Interior is in charge of domestic security.

It was revealed that a GI had been killed on Monday, Memorial Day.


From the USG Open Source Center:


' Diyala Governor Warns of Deteriorating Security Situation
Report by Samah al-Makhzumi: "Letter Urges Government To Deal With Deteriorating Security Situation in Ba'qubah; Diyala Governor Threatens To Declare State of Emergency and Expose Collaborating Officials"

Al-Zaman

Wednesday, May 31, 2006 T19:22:37Z


Diyala Governor Ra'd al-Mullah Jawad has urged the government to take precautions against the deteriorating security situation in the governorate quickly in order to avoid the situation deteriorating further, as it is getting worse day by day. Jawad has also called on the Advisory Council to suspend its work in order to attract the central government's attention to the grave danger engulfing the governorate. He confirmed that he will declare a state of emergency in the governorate based on a security plan.

At a press conference attended by Al-Zaman yesterday, 28 May, Jawad confirmed that he had sent a letter to Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and the parliament warning them of the dangerous security situation in the governorate and urging them to "defy the large-scale sectarian campaign that the governorate, which has become a cradle for terrorism, is currently witnessing."

In his letter, Jawad confirmed: "The situation in Diyala Governorate is very difficult. We lack capabilities and authority." He urged officials, parliament members, clerics, and tribal chiefs "to shoulder responsibility and take into consideration the best interests of the governorate."

Jawad explained that "uncontrolled violence is extending like a crescent from Salah al-Din Governorate towards Al-Jizani, Hibhib, Al-Hadid, and Khan Bani Sa'd Districts and then to Southern Buhriz District towards Baladruz and finally Al-Muqdadiyah District." He confirmed the discovery a few days ago of weapons caches in Al-Muqdadiyah that contained enough weapons to supply a complete army brigade.

Jawad accused administrative officials of involvement in acts of violence and added: "We will speak to them frankly and if they do not stop their involvement, we will not keep silent." Jawad demanded that "the wider and larger authorities confront and expose these officials." He confirmed the displacement of 40 families and the killing of over 70 people in Ba'qubah last week alone.

Jawad revealed that several officials, including Al-Wajihiyah administrator Isma'il Alwan and the director of public relations and complaints, have requested to be transferred from the governorate due to the escalation in violence.

Jawad threatened that he will declare a state of emergency if the government does not take action. He attributed the delay in imposing curfew in the districts witnessing turmoil in the governorate to the final examinations.

Meanwhile, Diyala Advisory Council Chairman Ibrahim Bajilan and Deputy Governor for Technical Affairs Imad Jalil escaped an assassination attempt when a roadside bomb explosion targeted their convoy on its way from Khanaqin to Ba'qubah. An official source in the governorate administration confirmed that a bodyguard was killed and six others were injured in the incident. The source confirmed that unidentified gunmen attacked the convoy after the explosion.

Unidentified gunmen assassinated a peddler selling children's clothing in the middle of Ba'qubah's market. Two civilians were injured in a bomb explosion in Al-Khalis District. Yesterday morning, a police patrol discovered three heads separated from the bodies, including one of an old man, near a highway in Abd-al-Hamid Village in Had Miksir District. Gunmen broke into a house in Al-Gatun District in Ba'qubah yesterday. The tenant and his two boys were killed and his wife was injured in the attack.

In related news, US forces raided a house in Al-Mafraq District in Ba'qubah and arrested five family members, including an eighty year old man, according to the district's inhabitants. They confirmed that US troops destroyed the furniture and other facilities in the house during the raid, in which US helicopters took part.

(Description of Source: Baghdad Al-Zaman in Arabic -- Baghdad-based independent Iraqi daily providing coverage of Iraqi, Arab, and international issues, headed by Iraqi journalist Sa'd al-Bazzaz; Internet version available at: http://www.azzaman.com)

Compiled and distributed by NTIS, US Dept. of Commerce. All rights reserved.

City/Source: Baghdad
DIALOG Update Date: 20060531; 16:32:21 EST '

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Submit to RedditSubmit to SlashdotStumble Upon Toolbar
Email to a Friend:

Tuesday, May 30, 2006

Kabul under Curfew after Anti-US, anti-Karzai Riots
14 Dead, over 100 Wounded
50 Killed in US Airstrike


"We have conducted a thorough assessment of our military and reconstruction needs in Iraq, and also in Afghanistan. I will soon submit to Congress a request for $87 billion. The request will cover ongoing military and intelligence operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, which we expect will cost $66 billion over the next year. This budget request will also support our commitment to helping the Iraqi and Afghan people rebuild their own nations, after decades of oppression and mismanagement. We will provide funds to help them improve security. And we will help them to restore basic services, such as electricity and water, and to build new schools, roads, and medical clinics. This effort is essential to the stability of those nations, and therefore, to our own security. Now and in the future, we will support our troops and we will keep our word to the more than 50 million people of Afghanistan and Iraq."
- George W. Bush


The Bush administration is in the midst of "imperial overstretch" on a grand scale. Taking on al-Qaeda and the Taliban, convincing Pakistan to change its policies, and reconstructing Afghanistan would have been a tough enough job. It might not have been possible even with the investment of enormous resources and personnel. Afghanistan is large and rugged and desperately poor. Bad characters are still hiding out in the region, who have proved that they can reach into the United States and hit the Pentagon itself.

Instead of doing the job, Bush ran off to Iraq almost immediately. Even as our brave troops were being killed at Operation Anaconda in Afghanistan in spring of 2002, Centcom commander Tommy Franks was telling a visiting Senator Bob Graham that the US "was no longer engaged in a war in Afghanistan" or words to that effect, and that military and intelligence personnel were being deployed to Iraq. The US troops in Afghanistan would have been shocked and disturbed to discover that in the Centcom commander's mind, they were no longer his priority and no longer even at war! As for money, Iraq has hogged the lion's share. What has been spent on reconstruction in Afghanistan is piddling.

Bush's Iraq imbroglio, or "Bush's Furnace," as history might well call his trillion-dollar purchase, has sucked up money and resources on a vast scale and left US personnel in Central and South Asia to struggle along on the cheap. Afghanistan defeated the British Empire in its heyday twice, and is not an enterprise that can be accomplished without significant resources. Now the chickens are coming home to roost.

Monday's riots in Kabul, in which altogether 14 died and over 100 were wounded and during which thousands thronged the streets chanting "Death to America", also produced violent attacks and gunfire throughout the city, with hotel windows being sprayed with machine gun fire. The protests were sparked by a traffic accident. But they have other roots.

The US military presence in Afghanistan has quietly been pumped up from 19,000 to 23,000 troops.

A fresh US airstrike in Helmand killed some 50 Afghans on Monday Over 400 Afghans have been killed by US bombing and military actions in only the past two weeks. While most of these are Pushtun nativist guerrillas (coded by the US as "Taliban"), some have demonstrably been innocent civilians. (Taliban are, properly speaking, mostly Afghan orphans and displaced youths who got their education in neo-Deobandi seminaries in Pakistan and were backed by the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence. It is not clear that those now fighting the US in southern Afghanistan are actually in the main Taliban in this technical sense.)

Whoever they are, the Pushtun guerrillas have been waging a very effective terror campaign in the countryside around Qandahar, and have launched a fierce series of spring offensives. They wounded 5 Canadian troops on Monday, something US mass media anchors somehow have trouble getting past their lips. (Another 5 had been wounded last week, and several Canadian and French troops have been killed, not to mention US troops.)

A recent US airstrike that killed 16 children, women and noncombatant men provoked an enormous outcry in Afghanistan, and sparked President Hamid Karzai to begin a presidential inquiry into it.

While most anti-US actions in Afghanistan come from the Pushtun ethnic group, these Kabul protests, which paralyzed the capital and resulted in the imposition of a curfew, heavily involved Tajiks. Kabul is a largely Tajik city, and the Tajiks mostly hated the Taliban with a passion, and many high officials in the Karzai government have been Tajik. So they haven't been as upset with the US invasion and presence as have been many Pushtuns, especially those Pushtuns who either supported the Taliban or just can't abide foreign troops in their country (who have moreover installed the Tajiks in power . . .) The demonstrators Monday carried posters of Ahmad Shah Massoud, the Tajik leader of the Northern Alliance who had played a major role in expelling Soviet troops in the late 1980s and then fought the Taliban tenaciously before being assassinated shortly before September 11, 2001. Significant numbers of Tajiks are clearly now turning against the US, and that is a very bad sign indeed. Al-Hayat's Jamal Ismail in Islamabad suggests that some of the Tajik discontent derives from the way Karzai has eased out Northern Alliance Tajik leaders such as Marshal Muhammad Fahim and former cabinet minister Yunus Qanuni, reducing Tajik dominance of the government in the name of ethnic diversity (and of mitigating Pushtun anger over the imbalance). There have also been attempts to limit the Tajik presence in the new Afghan Army, which is some 60,000 strong (some sources say 80,000). The CIA factbook says that Pushtuns are 42 % of the population and Tajiks 27 %. Pushtuns have usually supplied the top rulers.

Despite Bush administration pledges to reconstruct the country, only six percent of Afghans have access to electricity. Less than 20 percent have access to clean water. Although the gross domestic product has grown by 80 percent since the nadir of 2001, and may be $7 billion next year, most of that increase comes from the drug trade or from foreign assistance. (Some of the increase also comes from the end of a decade-long drought in the late 90s and early 00s, which had reduced the country's arable land by 50 percent. The coming of the rains again is good luck but nothing to do with policy). About half the economy of Afghanistan is generated by the poppy crop, which becomes opium and then heroin in Europe. Afghanistan produces 87 percent of the world's opium and heroin, and no other country comes close in its dedication of agricultural land to drug production (over 200,000 hectares).

The government lives on international welfare. Some 92 percent of Afghan government expenditures come from foreign assistance. The Afghan government is worse at collecting taxes than fourth world countries in subsaharan Africa. Unemployment remains at 35 percent. Unemployment is estimated to have been 25 percent in the US during the Great Depression.

The great danger is renewed Muslim radicalism and the reemergence of al-Qaeda, combined with a narco-terrorism that could make Colombia's FARC look like minor players.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Submit to RedditSubmit to SlashdotStumble Upon Toolbar
Email to a Friend:

60 Dead, including US Major, 2 British Soldiers, CBS Crew
Parliamentary Delegation Planned to Basra


The FCC will investigate the placing by the Bush administration of "video news releases" full of "good news" about Iraq on US television channels, passing them off as real news. Having defeated the Soviet Union, the US government seems increasingly intent on emulating its domestic security policies.

Wire services are reporting between 50 and 60 deaths from guerrilla violence in Iraq on Monday. The dead including two British members of a CBS camera crew embedded with the 4th ID in Baghdad along with a US army captain and an interpreter, and two British soldiers in Basra (another two British soldiers were injured).

Three massive bombs shook the area of Adhamiyah and Kadhimiyah [Kazimiyah] in northern Baghdad.

Adhamiyah, still from all accounts a Baath Party stronghold in the capital It was hit by an enormous car bomb, killing 12 and wounding 24. Then just a moment later, guerrillas detonated another car bomb, killing 5 and wounding 7.

Then guerrillas blew up a bus in neighboring Kadhimiyah, across the Tigris, killing 7 and wounding 9. Kadhimiyah has a major Shiite shrine.

The Iraqi parliament is concerned about the rising tensions in Basra. Conflicts among the Badr Corps of SCIRI, the Mahdi Army of Muqtada al-Sadr, and the Fadhila or Virtue Party, threaten to break apart what is left of the United Iraqi Alliance, the biggest bloc in parliament, consisting of religious Shiite parties. Likewise, Sunnis in Basra, some of whom have received Saudi funding for militant activities, face increased ethnic cleansing at the hands of Shiites. Hundreds have fled to West Baghdad in recent weeks. Prime Minsiter Nuri al-Maliki may lead a delegation to the country's second city, including representatives of major Shiite parties and also of the Sunni Arabs, in hopes of calming the fighting and assassinations.

Some of the fighting seems to me to be between Marsh Arab tribes loyal to Muqtada al-Sadr and the Badr Corps of the Supreme Council. An Iraqi from Basra told me that the rumors were that the Marsh Arabs were fighting "Iranian influence" in Basra. Badr is probably being coded as Iranian agents by the nativist Marsh Arabs.

Al-Zaman reports that the Fadhila or Virtue Party has expressed doubt that the new oil minister, Husain Shahristani, can resolve the fuel and electricity problems in Iraq, given that he is a technocrat with no popular base, and no particular experience in the petroleum sector. The Virtue Party, which is mainly based in Basra, had coveted the ministry of petroleum, and had had it in the previous, Jaafari government. It has withdrawn from the government coalition in disappointment and is conducting a work slow-down in the Basra petroleum industry in protest. Iraqi electricity supply has also faced substantial problems recently because of concerted guerrilla sabotage.

Al-Zaman reports from Riyadh that George W. Bush called Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah on Monday to discuss regional affairs, including The Palestinian question, Iraq, and Iran's nuclear energy program.

Iraqi widows struggle to survive.

Al-Sharq al-Awsat says that the British military attempted to hold a press conference on Monday, but that the local press refused to come in protest for an earlier incident, in which British troops fired on a Reuters cameraman.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Submit to RedditSubmit to SlashdotStumble Upon Toolbar
Email to a Friend:

Monday, May 29, 2006

55 Dead in Civil War
Member of Parliament wounded in Attack


al-Zaman/ DPA: An aide of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani called [Ar.] Sunday for the Iraqi tribesmen to convene a wide conference in order to find aways of stopping the shedding of blood in Iraq.

US firms bidding on contracts to provide foodstuffs to Iraq might have expected to have an edge. But in fact, Vietnam has won a contract to supply rice to Iraq.

Guerrillas placed a bomb on a bus full of laborers near Baquba, killing 11 and wounding 16 on Monday morning. Aljazeera is saying that the workers were constructing something for the Mojahedin-e Khalq anti-Iranian terrorist group based in northeastern Iraq.

On Sunday, 17 persons were killed in various incidents of the ongoing civil war.

In addition a battle between the Iraqi army and guerrillas or tribesmen at Dulu'iyah north of the capital left 20 Iraqi soldiers and 18 guerrillas dead. (I'd say the guerrillas won that one by two corpses). In total, I count that as 55 dead in political violence.

Guerrillas assassinated the head of the a Sunni tribe at Karabila for cooperating with the Americans against them.

The ministers of defense and interior have still not been appointed.

The parliament decided its members all need armored cars. The press seems to be taking an attitude of ridicule toward this measure, but I see it as a good sign. The parliament should spend $50 million on enabling its members to come to work without fear of being shot dead by guerrillas.

Or maybe they missed this Reuters item today:

'BAGHDAD - A Shi'ite woman member of parliament, Gufran al- Saidi, was wounded in a shooting incident near Baghdad's Green Zone, police sources said. They had no further details. Saidi is a supporter of radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. ''


Apparently the reporters have forgotten that parliamentarians and candidates for parliament really have been killed by the guerrillas. The sum mentioned is peanuts compared to what private security guards of the sort Westerners in Iraq use would cost. (Maybe only Western lives are important?) And if the parliamentarians wouldn't even act to save their own lives, how could you hope they would ever accomplish anything at all (wouldn't that, at least, presumably be important to them?) So much money has been wasted in Iraq, both American and Iraqi, since the fall of the Baath. The defense minister appointed by Iyad Allawi (who was in turn more or less appointed by the Americans) is thought to have embezzled very big bucks, for which there is nothing to show. Armored cars that really exist and help the Iraqi government function? That would be a bargain.

Shiite and Kurdish politicians are trying to reduce the power of the Sunni Arab speaker of the House. The Sunni Arabs only have a vice president, a vice premier, four cabinet seats, and the speaker of the house among high government posts. They are outraged that one of the few nodes of power they have left should now be removed.

AP discusses the pain of Iraq War widows.

Baghdad is broken, with little electricity, water or garbage collection. This according to the SF Chronicle.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Submit to RedditSubmit to SlashdotStumble Upon Toolbar
Email to a Friend:

Sunday, May 28, 2006

Iran Cleans up in Iraq

Iran is perhaps the only unambiguous winner in the new situation in Iraq, and its foreign minister was basking in the glow on Saturday. On Friday, Iraqi foreign minister Hoshyar Zebari defended Iran's right to have a civilian nuclear energy program. That can't be what Washington was going for in backing the new Iraqi government.

Al-Hayat reports that Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki wrapped up his visit to Iraq by meeting in Najaf with Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani and with the junior cleric and nationalist leader Muqtada al-Sadr, along with numerous other clerics in Najaf and Karbala. He also met in Baghdad with Sunni fundamentalist leader Adnan Dulaimi in an attempt to "reassure" him about Iran's intentions in Iraq. The representative of Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, Labid Abawi, said that Mottaki's visit was "extremely positive." He added, "One of our objectives was to underline that Iran is close to Iraq and that it is impossible to bypass it in looking for a resolution of the Iraq question."

Mottaki reaffirmed that Iran had committed $1 billion in aid to Iraq, and would cooperate in the area of energy production. Mottaki also sent a letter to the tribunal judging Saddam Hussein with a list of charges against him.

Issues the Iraqis brought up with the Iranian official included the need for better border control to stop unauthorized entry of Iranians, as well as combatting weapons smuggling and drug smuggling. The Iranians in turn complained about the infiltration of Iran from Iraq of terrorists from the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK) guerrilla movement. Saddam had allowed this terrorist group to establish a base in Iraq, in order to use it to harass the Iranian regime. Although the State Department considers the MEK a terrorist organization, the Department of Defense appears to be giving it free rein in Iraq.

Iranian news of the visit concentrated on the new Iranian consulates that will be established in Iraq.

Al-Sharq al-Awsat reports that Mottaki said Sistani emphasized the necessity of Iraqi national unity, and had avoided using the words "Shiite" and "Sunni."

Tom Lasseter of Knight Ridder looks at the Shiite militias of the south. His interviewees in the British and US military maintain that Iran is running training camps inside Iran for Iraqi militiamen. (Iran for over two decades had trained the Badr Corps, recruiting from Iraqis who fled Saddam, so such training camps, facilities and expertise are nothing new.) On the other hand, since they have such longstanding and tight relations with Badr, it doesn't really make much sense for them to arm, fund and train Badr's potential rivals, such as splinter groups of the Iraqi nationalist Sadr movement. On that, I would have to see more proof. Badr is a no brainer.

Lasseter says that the Sadr movement dominates the city council of Amarah. Then he says that Amarah police are mostly Badr corps. That I don't understand (I'm not challenging it, I just don't understand). Wouldn't the Sadrist councilmen have packed the police with members of the Mahdi Army? [Answer: The central government's Ministry of Interior has enormous influence over the hiring of local police, and under Bayan Jabr it was in the hands of the Supreme Council, which has Badr as its paramilitary arm.]

Lasseter also reports on suspicions that the governor of Basra is using Shiite militias (of various sorts) for extortion and assassination. The governor is from the Virtue Party but is alleged to be using Badr and the Mahdi Army. (Last I knew, the Mahdi Army is not actually very powerful in Basra, but this may have changed).

The NYT profiles the ways in which Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is drawing power into the traditionally weak office of president.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Submit to RedditSubmit to SlashdotStumble Upon Toolbar
Email to a Friend:

3 GIs Dead
So Far, 18,200 US Troops Wounded in Iraq


See Nir Rosen's important article, "Iraq is the Republic of Fear" in WaPo today.

Reuters rounds up the civil war violence in Iraq on Saturday. By my count, at least nineteen were reported dead.

Three GIs were announced dead, two in a helicopter crash on Saturday and one on Friday in clashes in Anbar province.

Up north, guerrillas stopped an army patrol 25 miles south of Kirkuk and shot an Iraqi army major to death, and wounding three soldiers. In Mosul, guerrillas shot two men dead. In Dujail, guerrillas attacked a military checkpoint, killing 2 Iraqi soldiers and wounding 3.

In the northeast near Baquba, guerrillas ambushed a police car, killing a colonel and four of his bodyguards, and wounding other bodyguards. In Baquba itself, guerrillas shot three ironsmiths and then killed two men at a tire repair shop. Sounds like a contract dispute to me.

In Baghdad, guerrillas fired a mortar round into a crowded market to the south of the city, killing 4 and wounding 15.

In the south, in Diwaniyah, guerrillas set off a roadside bomb near the house of a police colonel, seriously wounding him. The previously mentioned incidents were probably carried out by Sunni Arabs, but the hit in Diwaniyah is more likely by local Shiite militiamen.

18,200 GIs have been wounded in Iraq. This article says that half a million Americans bear wounds from warfare, going back to WW II.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Submit to RedditSubmit to SlashdotStumble Upon Toolbar
Email to a Friend:

Saturday, May 27, 2006

Italians to Pull Out nearly Half of Troops in June
Sectarian struggle among Tribes at Suwayra


Congrats to Mariam Karouny for an excellent story on how the Virtue (Fadhila) Party is staging what she calls a "go-slow" in Basra's oil industry to protest the federal government's refusal to appoint a member of Virtue as Minister of Petroleum. Since Basra controls southern petroleum exports, and Virtue controls much of Basra, there is a real disconnect now between on-the-ground power and bureaucratic authority. The governor of Basra is from the Virtue Party, and it occurs to me that part of his annoyance with the local represtentatives of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani is that the latter's great supporter, Husain Shahristani, a nuclear engineer, got the petroleum ministry.

Italy will bring 1100 of its 2600 troops in Iraq out in June according to Foreign Minister Massimo D'Alema. Prime Minister Romano Prodi's complex coalition is divided on how fast to bring all the troops home, and his razor thin majority in the senate makes his position delicate.

Reuters rounds up some of the violence in Iraq on Friday. One bomb in Baghdad killed 9 and wounded 31. Another wounded 20, though several of those may have later died. Another wounded 5. Reuters tends to file these reports on security relatively early in the day, so it left out a lot of incidents. Two were killed in Kirkuk. Bodies showed up dead in Kut in the south. Altogether some 19 were killed, though my experience is that if you count up all the persons killed and those discovered dead, the totals are higher than the wire service reports suggest.

RevisedA tennis coach and two of his players was killed on Thursday. Some suspect radical Sunni fundamentalists, who had put about a pamphlet insisting on moderate dress. Al-Zaman blamed the Mahdi Army. Puritanical dress codes may well be behind the incident, though it is still murky.

This item from Reuters is important: "Suwayra - Police said they found on Friday near Suwayra, south of Baghdad, the body of a member of the Mahdi Army militia which had bullet wounds and showed signs of torture." It turns out that the supposed tribal feud "over land" near Suwayra is actually a political struggle, with one of the sub-tribes having joined the Mahdi Army and acting aggressively in the region.

I have the following account from someone there who has been following this:


' The [sectarian conflict near Suwayra] faded out in November of last year.

It suddenly errupted three days ago. There were actually three days of violence in that area. The first day was an attack on Obaid by members of the Ghuran tribe who were members of the Mahdi army (at least they carried Mhdi army id's). 14 people were killed.

The second saw an attack from Suwaira security forces (although the area administratively belongs to Baghdad).

The third day saw a massive assault by Iraqi and US army accompanied by helicopter gunships and fighter planes. The assault lasted for 10 hours . . .

It is absolutely fascinating for me to see that piece of information being propagated on Iraqi news channels, newspapers and websites as a land dispute. It was originally based on a "police source".

It is now almost certain that the US army was misled into taking action against one of the two parties yesterday.

The whole thing was a 'sectarian' assault that failed miserably the first time. It failed again this time . . .

In yesterday’s ‘American’ raid only one man was killed – young Marwan (!!) 6 were injured and about a dozen detained (exact number unconfirmed).

Today, all tribes in the area (Sunni and Shiite) were in uproar against the Ghurraan. Their 3 acts were seen as treacherous. The Ghurraan shaikh, Saad A. A. al-Bassi sent word to Obaid that he was enlisting support from his tribe to disown the sub-clan that was responsible (known as Rattaan). A few hours ago I received word (unconfirmed) that Saad was arrested by the Iraqi National Guard!
'


Americans arrested the brother of one of the Sunni Arab members of parliament, drawing protests from her about parliamentary immunity being violated. MP Taysir Awwad may be under the impression that Bush honors things like parliamentary immunity at home.

In Basra, a Sunni prayer leader was assassinated. Waves of Sunni refugees have been fleeing largely Shiite Basra for Baghdad in recent weeks.

Al-Zaman reports that tension over security returned to Basra on Friday after 10 corpses were discovered in a Basra district. They were said to be innocent Sunni Arabs not involved in lawless violence.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Submit to RedditSubmit to SlashdotStumble Upon Toolbar
Email to a Friend:

Friday, May 26, 2006

Arguing with Bush and Blair

The news conference of Bush and Blair on Thursday evening was unexpectedly dominated by Iraq.

I'm going to just pull out some passages worthy of comment, not in order.

In fact, the first is from the end:

'Q: Mr. President, you spoke about missteps and mistakes in Iraq. Could I ask both of you which missteps and mistakes of your own you most regret?

PRESIDENT BUSH: It sounds like kind of a familiar refrain here. (Scattered laughter.) Saying "Bring it on." Kind of tough talk, you know, that sent the wrong signal to people. That I learned some lessons about expressing myself maybe in a little more sophisticated manner. You know, "Wanted dead or alive," that kind of talk.

I think in certain parts of the world it was misinterpreted. And so I learned -- I learned from that.

And, you know, I think the biggest mistake that's happened so far, at least from our country's involvement in Iraq, is Abu Ghraib. We've been paying for that for a long period of time. And it's -- unlike Iraq, however, under Saddam, the people who committed those acts were brought to justice; they've been given a fair trial and tried and convicted. '


Well, first of all, it should be pointed out that only the very lowest level of perpetrator at Abu Ghraib has been punished. And not very much punished at that. The soldier who set snarling dogs on detainees got six months. As I remember, Iraqis were outraged. What would you get for selling a dime bag of pot? And Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Stephen Cambone have not in any way been held accountable. Or General "My god is bigger than yours" Boykin, either.

The US media were saying that Bush apologized for his flip rhetoric. But look again. He did not. He said he had been "misinterpreted" in some parts of the world. (Which?) How do you misinterpret "bring it on?" And, why in the world is he apologizing for saying he wanted Bin Laden dead or alive? What has that got to do with Iraq, anyway?

The people who were angriest at Bush over the "bring it on" remark were the military and the families of the military. George Washington, who actually led his troops, might have been entitled to talk like that. Someone who spends most of his time in the White House gym isn't.

But if Bush was going to express any regrets, why is it over his faux cowboy rhetoric? Wouldn't his biggest regret be over 20,000 Americans killed or wounded in Iraq? Wouldn't it be over the 2400 plus fresh caskets in Arlington and other cemeteries around the country, the earth above them still bulging slightly from the newness of their perch, and the young men in wheel chairs or the ones who will eat with a straw from now on?

Here is another interesting bit:

BUSH: 'All I can report to you is what General Casey, in whom I have got a lot of confidence, tells me, and that is the Iraqis are becoming better and better fighters. And at some point in time, when he feels like the government is, you know, ready to take on more responsibility and the Iraqi forces are able to help them do so, he will get on the telephone with me and say, "Mr. President, I think we can do this with fewer troops."

We've been up to 165,000 at one point. We're at about 135,000 now.

Actually, he moved -- actually moved some additional troops from Kuwait into Baghdad. Conditions on the ground were such that we needed more support in Baghdad to secure Baghdad, so he informed me, through Donald Rumsfeld, that he wanted to move troops out of Kuwait into Baghdad. So these commanders, they need to have flexibility in order to achieve the objective. '


Bush is admitting that things are so bad militarily in Iraq that US control of the capital itself is in doubt, so that reinforcements have had to be brought quickly from Kuwait. He is telling us this as a reason fro which he won't set a timetable. But what it reveals is how bad the situation in Baghdad really is. And he is saying that no timetable under these circumstances would be worth the paper it was printed on. After all, if the US troops started leaving Baghdad and the guerrillas started taking over even more of it than they already have, could Bush afford to just let the capital fall?

BUSH: ' The prime minister met with key leaders of the new Iraqi government that represents the will of the Iraqi people and reflects their nation's diversity.'


The Sunni Arabs are about 20 percent of the population, more or less. The three self-identified Sunni Arab parties-- the Iraqi Accord Front, the National Dialogue Council, and the small Reform and Reconciliation Party, together have 58 seats in parliament, nearly 21 percent. There are 37 cabinet posts. 4 went to the main Sunni parties in parliament. That is about 11 percent of cabinet posts. And even if the Defense minister ends up being ethnically Sunni Arab, he is likely to be an unrepresentative technocrat, and that still only brings the total up to 13.5 percent.

This new government was supposed to be an opportunity to reach out to the Sunni Arabs. But some Sunni Arabs are so upset about being stiffed in their proportion of cabinet posts that 15 walked out when Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki presented his government to parliament. I saw Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi on Aljazeera this week insisting that the "Resistance" has a right to defend Iraq from foreign occupation or words to that effect, and urging that the US talk directly to the guerrilla leadership. Well, I guess that is a sign that the new Iraqi government is more representative. I'm not sure it is what Bush was going for.

Blair was just as bad, and more dangerous for being smoother. He once again tried to justify the invasion of Iraq with reference to a terrorist threat to Europe. But Iraq was not a significant source of terrorism in Europe before it was, like, invaded and occupied by the UK! And, he tried to argue that the UN is unwieldy and unworkable because it is too slow to deal with a fast-moving terror plot. But Blair's problem with the UN is not that it was slow. The UNSC quickly passed a resolution on Iraq when requested. It was that it would not go along with an illegal war of aggression.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Submit to RedditSubmit to SlashdotStumble Upon Toolbar
Email to a Friend:

Iraq's My Lai


Friday morning, guerrillas used a car bomb to kill at least 9 persons [later reports say 9] at an East Baghdad market, wounding 31.

AP had reported 13 killings on Thursday, including two US troops. Al-Sharq al-Awsat said 20 were wounded.

The neo-Baath Party (well that is most likely who it is) took revenge for the trial of Saddam over the killing of Shiite Dawa Party members for trying to assassinate him in 1982. The guerrillas kidnapped a judge from Dujail, where the massacre took place. Two Iranian truck drivers were also kidnapped.

Al-Sharq al-Awsat/ AFP say [Ar.] that Kurdish women are protesting how poorly they are represented in the Kurdistan regional government.

At Camp LeJeune, soldiers wounded in the Iraq War heal together, in an innovative program thought up by a wounded soldier.

The Haditha incident, in which US Marines are alleged to have killed between 14 and 24 civilians in cold blood, is becoming the My Lai of the Iraq War. Officers have been relieved of command, and murder charges may be brought. Somehow, though, this time the American public doesn't seem very interested in the story. My guess, is that many still have payback for 9/11 in their minds. The Vietnamese had never done anything to us. Of course, the Iraqis hadn't done much to us, either, aside from fighting back when the United Nations pushed them (quite rightly) out of Kuwait. But Dick Cheney has by innuendo and half-lies managed to convince the American public that in fighting the Iraqis, we are fighting the people behind 9/11, or at least people very like that.

I'm told that some green National Guard units in Iraq have responded to bombs going off in the vicinity by indiscriminately laying down fire all around them, which has been rather hard on any civilians in the vicinity. I fear large numbers of Iraqis have been killed in such ways. But at least in this sort of incident, the guardsmen were nervous and felt they might be under attack. Haditha sounds horrid. I have known military people all my life, and I think they are for the most part decent and honorable, and I am sure that Haditha--i.e. cold blooded murder of civilians--was an aberration.

A report from Tarmiyah doesn't hold out much hope that the guerrilla movement is going away soon. In the article, an Iraqi soldier asks for better arms, like rocket propelled grenades. He isn't thinking big enough. He needs to demand some tanks and helicopter gunships. The guerrillas have lots of RPGs to fire back with, but don't have tanks. US troops can't withdraw until the Iraqi army is better equipped, and I mean equipped.

According to secret documents gotten hold of by The Herald, British troops in the South of Iraq:

"have come under bomb, mortar, rocket and sniper attack almost twice a day since January, losing 12 dead to hostile fire . . . Despite government claims that the security situation has improved on the UK's patch to the point where up to 1000 troops can begin withdrawing from July, about 75 of the 269 attacks and four of the fatalities have occurred in provinces judged to be relatively stable."


In withdrawing from Maysan province in particular, the British are just declaring victory and going home. As if hundreds of thousands of displaced and sullen Marsh Arabs, many of whom have gone over to Muqtada al-Sadr, could be controlled by a thousand or two thousand foreign troops. Muthanna is probably quieter, but only because the Badr Corps Shiite paramilitary is powerful there.

If foreign troops are attacked almost twice a day on average in the relatively calm south, to how many daily attacks are US troops subjected in the turbulent Sunni Arab heartland?

The Iraq War was clearly illegal in international law, and this obvious conclusion seemed evident to then British Attorney General Lord Golsmith earlier on, too. If that is the case, why did Goldsmith suddenly change his mind and authorize the war in March, 2003? British generals would not have been willing to fight without such a finding, since they risked war crimes trials (they may still risk them in the European Union someday). At least the British authorities are investigating this matter. The United States has become so corrupt and monarchical that mere international law, even that signed into US law, is not even an issue, and what is important is how the president or the vice president or the secretary of defense "saw things." We have become a country of men and not laws.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Submit to RedditSubmit to SlashdotStumble Upon Toolbar
Email to a Friend:

Iran Offered Recognition of Israel, Nuclear Cooperation
Bush: "How dare you!"


In 2003, Iran offered to come in from the cold in a proposal to George W. Bush. Recognition of Israel within 1967 borders, pressure on Hizbullah and the Palestinians to moderate, signing the additional protocols of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, full cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency, it was all there for Bush's taking.

What did Bush do?

He reprimanded the Swiss embassy, which takes care of US affairs in Iran, for daring to forward this proposal to Crawford on the Potomac.

Why?

Why?

Bush and his various constituencies (the military-industrial complex; the Christian Right; the Likudnik Lobby; and Big Oil) do not want peace with Iran.

How relieved they must have been when they managed to freeze out President Mohammad Khatami, who was trying to bring Iran back into the international community and reduce tensions.

How delighted they must have been when the world class buffoon Mahmoud Ahmadinejad succeeded Khatami and the hard liners strengthened their grasp after the Bush administration had done what it could to sabotage the Iranian reform movement.

Now Bush has Iran right where he wants it, in the sights of an ICBM.

Condi Rice called Iran the "central banker for terrorism" , even though the banks al-Qaeda used were in the UAE and Pakistan and no operational Iranian link to al-Qaeda has ever even been plausibly suggested. Rice hasn't said that again, because everyone pointed out to her that it is not true. Given that so many of the Israeli colonists busy stealing Palestinian land and pushing Palestinian children into thorn bushes are armed and demonstrably violent, and given that the US has designated Kach/ Kahana Chai as a terrorist group, it could as well be argued that the funders of Kach in particular and of the colonists in general are among the central bankers of terrorism in the world.

Then last week the Likudnik Lobby started a black psy-ops campaign to paint Iran as the Fourth Reich. The Khomeinist regime is oppressive and authoritarian, may God hasten its demise. But it hasn't invaded any neighbors, and it hasn't committed genocide (though it has executed dissidents and members of religious minorities who were prisoners of conscience), and you may as well assault Burma or Zimbabwe if you are a Warmongering Wilsonian.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Submit to RedditSubmit to SlashdotStumble Upon Toolbar
Email to a Friend:

Thursday, May 25, 2006

Maliki: Iraqis in Control of Own Security within 18 Months
50 dead in fresh violence


Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said Wednesday that Iraq will be able completely to handle security throughout the country within 18 months. He had earlier suggested that Coalition troops could leave by the end of this year.

UpdateNewsday covers the building conflict between al-Maliki and Bush/Blair on this issue. The American and British leaders want to go much slower, fearful of a collapse in Iraq and the Gulf if the withdrawal is too hasty. Newsday says that there are fears that the Mahdi Army would take over the south if the British and US troops leave. But since the British are leaving Maysan Province soon, who do you think will take it over? I suppose the real fear is that The Mahdi Army will take Baghdad. Al-Maliki's Dawa Party has developed a political alliance with Muqtada.

Bush and Blair will do a press conference after 7 pm today, Thursday.

Reuters reports on the ongoing civil war in Iraq. The deadliest incidents:


' YUSUFIYA - Four gunmen and two members of the Iraqi security forces were killed in clashes that erupted during a raid and search operation by army and police . . .

BAGHDAD - Gunmen shot dead General Ahmed Dawod, a deputy chief of Baghdad municipality's protection units . . .

NEAR BAQUBA - Gunmen attacked the convoy of Adil Issa, a member of the provincial council of Diyala province north of Baghdad, killing two of his bodyguards and wounding another, police said.

' BAGHDAD - A U.S. soldier was killed when his patrol was attacked by small arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades south of the town of Balad on Tuesday . . .

'


US forces fought several skirmishes with guerrillas, killing a number.

Al-Hayat put the death toll at 50 on Tuesday, including 16 dead in tribal clashes near Suwayra. If so, it knows about more incidents than Reuters did. By the way, the two tribes that fought were settling a land dispute. Unfortunately, one tribe is Shiite, the other Sunni.

The same source said that Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi and Vice Premier Salam al-Zawbai, the two highest ranking Sunni Arabs in the new government, are asking the US and the Sunni Arab guerrillas to speak to one another. They are pressing the Americans and British for a withdrawal timetable, which has been a longstanding Sunni Arab demand. But al-Hashimi also said that the national resistance groups fighting the Americans had no choice but to negotiate with them.

Zawbai announced that he was ready to dialogue with any group, even Baathist, that renounced violence.

Hadi al-Amiri of the Badr Organization denies [Ar.] that his faction has been involved in death squads.

Al-Zaman says that [Ar.] Najaf police launched an attack on Tuesday evening in the Rahmah quarter of the city, most of the inhabitants of which belong to the Sadr Movement. The district only grew up after the fall of Saddam. The police launched a number of operations there, which al-Zaman did not specify, but presumably they were looking for weapons caches or known criminals.

Police also found 6 launching sites for Katyusha missiles in the vast Najaf cemetery.

Muqtada al-Sadr, the young cleric who leads the Sadr movement begun by his father, called Wednesday for Iraqi parties to avoid politicizing the universities.

Al-Zaman reports that the Governing Council of Karbala Province has dissolved the Security Committee that had been formed to address the security problems in the province. The step came after an escalation in assassinations, and the discovery of unidentified corpses. A spokesman for the council said that a new Security Committee has been formed that includes independent members. Also, a regulation has been enacted that no night-time arrests may be made without notifying the mayor of Karbala city and the municipal council.

National police and Interior Ministry special police commandos will patrol the area around the central shrines of the city, among the holiest in Shiite Islam. Volunteers may also join in.

The governor will discuss the security situation with a representative of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani.

It seems pretty obvious that the first Security Committee is suspected of itself having been engaged in the assassinations and production of unidentified corpses! Throughout Iraq, the fox seems to be guarding the henhouse.

Governor Aqil al-Khaz`ali admitted that the security apparatuses are suffering from shortages of equipment and sophisticated weaponry for their struggle against local terrorists, who, he said, were taking aim at the civilizational monuments of Karbala.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Submit to RedditSubmit to SlashdotStumble Upon Toolbar
Email to a Friend:

Demonstrations on Thursday Face Repression
Egypt's Mubarak Criticizes Washington


HOw will the Mubarak regime deal with the protests planned for today against the lack of judicial independence and the rigging of elections?

My article on the increasing annoyance Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak is showing toward Bush administration policies in the Middle East is out in Salon.com

Excerpt:


' Egypt's alliance with the United States, a cornerstone of both countries' foreign policies since 1978, is under the severest strain it has witnessed in its nearly 30 years. This week at the Davos World Economic Forum, President Hosni Mubarak took a number of obvious swipes at U.S. policy. Mubarak's unusual criticisms reflected both his own uneasiness about the growing opposition to his regime -- for which Washington is partly responsible -- and his anger at Bush's disastrous policies in the region, which have produced an Iraq in flames and under the domination of fundamentalist parties, a deadlocked peace process and a Hamas government in Palestine, and a dangerous escalation of tensions with Iran. It is unclear how much impact on U.S. policies Mubarak will have. But that even America's most reliable Middle East pillars appear to be trembling should cause concern in the White House. '


Read the whole thing.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Submit to RedditSubmit to SlashdotStumble Upon Toolbar
Email to a Friend:

National Post Retracts Minorities Badge Story on Iran

Antonia Zerbisias follows up on the the bogus National Post story about Iran having passed a law requiring Christians and Jews to wear badges identifying them as such. She notes that The National Post has retracted the story, saying:


' Our mistake: Note to readers

Last Friday, the National Post ran a story prominently on the front page alleging that the Iranian parliament had passed a law that, if enacted, would require Jews and other religious minorities in Iran to wear badges that would identify them as such in public. It is now clear the story is not true. Given the seriousness of the error, I felt it necessary to explain to our readers how this happened. '


Ironically, the rest is behind a firewall and does not at the moment seem to show up at google.news!

As for rightwing expatriate Iranian journalist Amir Taheri, the source "> of the story he has declined to retract. He continues to maintain that the law he referred to was "passed,", and says that his sources are "three members of the Iranian Majlis" (parliament). But as many experts, including Israeli-Iranian experts, have pointed out, no such law has been passed. Some have doubted that Taheri is likely to be in close contact with three members of the new hardline parliament.

If Taheri were merely alleging that some hardline members of parliament had discussed among themselves the possibility of marking non-Muslims by badges, that would be one thing. In the 1980s under Khomeini, there actually was a measure requiring non-Muslim shopkeepers to so identify themselves in their shop windows. I understand that this measure backfired and was dropped, when the Muslim Iranians flocked to the minority establishments. (Minorities in Iran are custodians of many of the finer things in life, from liquor cabinets to pepperoni on pizza, and their merchants have often adopted a strategy of being scrupulously honest with customers so as to give a value-added beyond that offered by Muslim establishments.) While the law was something out of 1930s Germany, the reaction of the Iranian public was for the most part definitely not.

And if the allegation was merely that the matter had been discussed by MPs, you could understand him standing by what he says he was told by insiders. But he is alleging that a law has been passed. A law is a public thing. We would know about that. And, Maurice Motamed, the Jewish representative in the Iranian parliament, would certainly know about it. He denies that any such thing was even discussed in parliament.

So here is a case where an embarrassing mistake has been made. The National Post has retracted. So too should Taheri. Or else we have to assume that he is putting something else above journalistic integrity.

Larry Cohler-Esses of The Jewish Week reviews the fiasco.

See also Jan Frel at Alternet.

And Justin Raimondo.

Unqualified Offerings made some intersting points on the affair a couple of days ago.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Submit to RedditSubmit to SlashdotStumble Upon Toolbar
Email to a Friend:

Iran: Revived Persecution of Baha'is
54 Arrested in Shiraz


One unfortunate consequence of the bogus stories about Iran making minorities wear badges is that it could obscure the real human rights violations toward minorities in Ahmadinejad's Iran. There is disturbing evidence that Iranian government institutions are beginning to track and monitor the Baha'i religious minority again, and one doubts that it is with benign intentions.

In the 1980s, Khomeini had some 200 Baha'is executed and thousands were imprisoned for various terms. The violence against them subsided in the 1990s, but they still face disabilities.

Baha'is in Iran are not permitted, for instance to attend university. For more on this issue, see this site.

I recently received the following disturbing news:



' Dear friends,

We just heard the sad news that around twenty odd number of young active believers (male and female) have beem captured and imprisoned in Shiraz yesterday, so their families are asking everyone around the world to hold prayer meetings for them. Please keep them and their families in your thoughts and prayers. '


It turns out it is worse. Actually, some 54 Baha'is have been arrested. It is not clear what the charges are against them. But Khomeinist hard liners hate the Baha'is and refuse to admit that theirs is a legitimate religion.

For more on the history and background of the Iranian Baha'i community of Iran, see my piece in History Today.

The following piece can be ordered on interlibrary loan: Juan Cole, “The Baha’i Minority and Nationalism in Contemporary Iran.” In Maya Shatzmiller, ed., Nationalism and Minority Identities in Islamic Societies. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2005. Pp. 127-163. Despite its title, it deals extensively with the human rights situation of the Baha'is in the post-1979 period in Iran.

I do have to enter a caveat that some people will want to use all this for the wrong purposes. The founder of the Baha'i religion advocated an end to warfare and forbade aggressive war. So it just is not right to use the mistreatment of Baha'is as any sort of pretext for military aggression against Iran. It would be like militarily devastating and occupying Pennsylvania to protect the Quakers and Amish.

Protests about the arrests in Shiraz may be addressed to:

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei
Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran
c/o H.E. Javad Zarif
Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary
Permanent Mission of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the United Nations
Fax: 212-867-7086

------------

Update:

' NEW YORK, 26 May 2006 (BWNS) -- After their arrests on 19 May in Shiraz, Iran, three Baha'is remain in jail while 51 others have been released on bail. No indication has been given as to when the three will be released. None of those who had been released, nor the three who are still being detained, have been formally charged. On the day of the arrests, one Baha'i, under the age of 15, was released
without having to post bail. At that same time, several other young people who are not Baha'is and who had been arrested with the Baha'is, were also released without bail. On Wednesday 24 May, five days after their summary arrests, 14 of the Baha'is were released, each having been required to provide deeds of property to the value of ten million tumans (approximately US$11,000) as collateral for release. The following day, Thursday 25 May, 36 Baha'is were released on the strength of either personal guarantees or the deposit of work licenses with the court as surety that they will appear when summoned to court. '

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Submit to RedditSubmit to SlashdotStumble Upon Toolbar
Email to a Friend:

Wednesday, May 24, 2006

Iraqi Currency

My comment that I thought Amir Taheri was wrong to praise the stability of the Iraqi dinar, because the dinar is a managed currency and does not float freely, brought a rebuke from someone more knowledgeable about currency issues than I. Collier Lounsbury maintained that the stability was genuine and owing in some part to Iraq's petroleum. (Exporting a pricey primary commodity does wonders to harden your currency). Now I have another reaction from someone who knows something serious about financial matters. Me, I know about ayatollahs. So I'm posting this interesting response for those to whom it may mean something. And also because it supports my deep-seated suspicion that the argument for "good news" on the Iraqi currency front is problematic.



'[The] statement that “The peg (properly a dirty peg, or trading range) is being run with reference to the market, maintained with regular Dinar and Dollar auctions.” is wrong and misleading, see below. Like many others, your correspondent has a “picture” in mind and assumes that it represents the facts. Would the currency have collapsed if there were no peg? Probably in theory, yes. But there would have been and would be under the circumstances no way to implement a “free market” for the Dinar, see below.

There has certainly been a de facto peg, contrary to Bremer’s original intention and applicable laws he “enacted” (although they are superficial and incomplete). The IMF in its recent report acknowledged the fact. The permitted “trading range” has been 1475-1483, with the target 1475. On Sunday, as a greeting to the new government, for the first time in months, the Central Bank bought a significant amount of Dinars to achieve the target rate of 1475 for one day. The exchange rate has been held firm at 1477 since then. Each day, between 15 and 22 banks participate in the Central Bank auctions. At least fifteen of them are state-owned and one, Rashid, when I last saw figures (six or so months ago) held more than 90% of all bank deposits in Iraq. Needless to say, the Embassy is beavering “fanatically” to privatize the banking system, but there is a long way to go even if the new Government were to decide that it should be privatized, which I doubt that they will.

The peg system can be (and is) maintained because its principal function is to convert the accounts of the Government’s Ministries from Dollars to Dinars. The Government receives 90% or more of its revenues from oil exports, priced and paid for in Dollars. The Central Bank accounts and the transition accounts in the Ministry of Finance are maintained in Dollars. The Ministries, for salaries and much else, make expenditures in Dinars. While I cannot prove it with a documentary citation, my belief and assumption (based upon a knowledgeable reading of the text of the KPMG audit reports) is that Dollar deposits are made on a Ministry-by-Ministry basis in the commercial banks and the banks then buy Dinars for the US Dollars deposited on a daily basis (plus or minus $50 million) to provide the Dinars for next day’s government expenditures. The “purchased” Dinars are used to fund the Ministries’ expenses. If the daily amounts are totaled, the annual total is on the order of the size of the Government’s budget, which you and I have been estimating (recall our earlier exchanges on that subject; at his last press conference, Prime Minister Jafari said that, at the end, his budget was $14 billion). As you can see, it is a closed system (although the banks probably also convert some non-government Dollars). They could maintain the peg, within limits, at any level they liked. The banks cooperate because most of them are state-owned.

In administering the peg, “market conditions” may be taken into account, but the data collection and analysis systems are still far from complete. In any event, “market conditions” are only “taken into account” in respect of the insignificant variations within 1475-1483, which has been the range for nearly three years, during which a lot has happened. Is there a black market? I do not know. If it were substantial, one would have thought that at least one reporter would have noted the fact.

The inflation rate provides an indication as to what the level of a “freely-floating Dinar” might be, although care must be taken because there are surely supply problems in parts of Iraq, including Baghdad, resulting from the security conditions. The most recent report (yesterday; reported in VOI) from the Ministry of Planning shows inflation at 48% (down from 53%), but the data are probably not complete and conditions presumably vary among different parts of Iraq.

The system is “good” (stable) because the money supply is calibrated in effect to oil exports, ie. Gross Domestic “Production” (not “Consumption”). The aggregate money supply is firm, because the Central Bank can count (an audit by Ernst & Young is overdue) the physical Dinars it has issued. There are none of the sophisticated money market equivalents that we and most other advanced nations have. The entire system is “primitive.”

The main point is that, so long as the preponderance of aggregate national macroeconomic income is from oil exports, and so long as the oil industry is state-owned (which it will be for some time longer than the four-year term of the current Government), the system in place is the only and best thing that can be done, which is why the IMF has “endorsed it.” The Central Bank cannot “print money” arbitrarily, because the money supply is calibrated to oil export revenues. That eliminates one source of a currency’s collapse. The system is “artificial” (“conservative”) to an extent, because oil export revenues, and the money supply derived there-from, do not represent all productive economic activity. Pax to your correspondent, the system has little (or nothing) to do with currency market supply and demand. I do not know what determines the insignificant variations within the “trading range.” I have attempted to rationalize specific movements, but they make no theoretical sense. It could be a game played by the handful of people who participate in the Central Bank auctions. (As a footnote, at the time the peg target was established, I recommended that they pick a low number so that the situation in Japan with trillions would be avoided. They did not do that, we the 000,000 will abound for a long time.)

While a “currency board peg” is expressly disallowed by the Central Bank Law, the Bank has been holding substantial amounts in US Dollars, $8 billion the last report I saw, which was months ago. See process above which involves receiving Dollars for oil, selling Dinars to the Ministries for Dollars and then holding the Dollars. The amount should be substantially more than that by now and it is being recommended to some that Dollars in excess of the amounts required to maintain the peg (relatively small, given the closed system) be used for major infrastructure projects such as refineries and electric power plants. It would seem to be a better use for Iraq’s “national savings.” We shall see.

Both the Central Bank and the IAMB-supervised Government audits as of 31 December are long overdue. Among other things, that is because no one knows exactly how much oil is being exported in the south (none has been exported from the north for months) and how much of the proceeds actually arrive at the Central Bank DFI account, which was and probably still is held at the New York Fed. They will have to come out with something soon which will give a more current picture. The picture will not be pretty. Iraq, tragically, is a relatively poor country and will continue to be such for some time.'



Collier Lounsbury replies here.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Submit to RedditSubmit to SlashdotStumble Upon Toolbar
Email to a Friend:

Shiite Mosque Bombed
Weapons from Bosnia flood Iraq
Zarqawi's Emirate of Baghdad


Tribal clashes south of Baghdad at Suwayrah killed 16 on Tuesday.

I presume that these casualties were announced late in the day, and are in addition to the 41 killed in sectarian violence on Tuesday, according to AP. If I am right, that is nearly 60 dead. Again.

Guerrillas killed 11 with a bomb in the courtyard of a Shiite mosque. They are trying to provoke all-out Sunni-Shiite civil war, and are getting what they wished for.

See, this is what is wrong with privatizing the Pentagon. The BBC reports that the US gave a contract to a small private firm to import weapons for the Iraqi security forces. It brought in massive amounts of weapons from Bosnia. But the procurement process was complex and involved-- you guessed it-- subcontractors, and the weapons are hard to trace. It is very likely that a lot ended up in the hands of the guerrillas. What irony. A mania for the private sector has helped turn Iraq into Bosnian using Bosnian weapons. In this Iraq scandal, everywhere you dig you find bodies.

Dexter Filkins reports from Baghdad on militias and death squads, including the Sunni 16th Brigade in Dawra, which became a pro-guerrilla death squad. (This was a legacy of the Allawi government appointed by Paul Bremer and the UN, which had some serious neo-Baathist facsists in the security positions).

Al-Hayat reports that [Ar.] the Salafi Jihadis have established a Taliban-like mini-state in West Baghdad, paralleled by a Shiite militia-ruled region of East Baghdad. The Sunni Arab extremists assassinate young men who walk around clean-shaven, and they pass around leaflets declaring that they will enforce Islamic canon law (sharia) in that neighborhood. They have established the Emirate of Baghdad in Dora and Amiriyah districts, and it is alleged that Zarqawi is there and has appointed viceroys over each. Radical Sunnis fleeing other areas of the Sunni Arab heartland have come to those districts of Baghdad in large numbers. An eyewitness told al-Hayat that in one of these Salafi-Jihadi neighborhoods, an unveiled girl was kidnapped on the street, then later returned to her home with her head shaven. A broadsheet then circulating saying that it was necessary to deal with unveiled girls in this way on the first offense, but later on they should be killed. Men have also been shot down for being clean-shaven or wearing the wrong clothing.

Al-Zaman says that [Ar.] guerrilla leaders inside and outside Iraq have decided to cease using telephones, including satellite phones, and to stop using the internet.

Oh, great. Now the only people who get successfully monitored by the NSA will be teenaged girls in the San Fernando Valley.

Mrs. Talabani, Iraq's first lady, says that unemployment makes young Iraqi men vulnerable to being recruited by the guerrillas. This is true of a lot of them. But many young men would be guerrillas anyway, because they feel their country is under foreign occupation.

The UN says that human rights are being severely undermined by the political violence in Iraq.

Dr. Rice called for Iran to play a positive role in Iraq on Tuesday. Now that is talking like a diplomat. More of that, please.

New Petroleum Minister Husain Shahristani is taking on the Kurds about their tendency to deal directly with foreign oil companies about prospecting for oil in Kurdistan, without so much as letting Baghdad know. The Kurdistan confederacy is behaving more and more like a sovereign nation, using Baghdad as a mere fig leaf. It has its own army, won't allow federal troops on its soil, reserves the right to reject federal legislation, issues visas, and by-passes Baghdad in its economic dealings abroad.

The Jordanians caught an Iraqi member of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's Salafi Jihadi organization, who confessed to his terrorist activities in Iraq. There is increasing and alarming evidence that the Zarqawi organization is putting down deep grass roots among Sunni Arab Iraqis themselves, rather than remaining or being coded as foreign.

Another dissection of the failures of the Neocons, this time by Harold Meyerson. He writes that Krisol said, '"There's been a certain amount of pop sociology in America," he told National Public Radio listeners in the war's opening weeks, "that the Shia can't get along with the Sunni and the Shia in Iraq want to establish some kind of Islamic fundamentalist regime. There's been almost no evidence of that at all," he continued. "Iraq's always been very secular." ' Oh, yeah, Kristol is a big Iraq expert who can avoid "pop sociology." Bill Kristol should have read my co-edited book of 1986, "Shi'ism and Social Protest," if he thought the Iraqi Shiites were not interested in establishing an Islamic state. Hanna Batatu could have given him some information on the Dawa Party and the Badr Corps, which are now more or less in control of Iraq, thanks to Kristol. Kristol, by the way, once argued that the US should have 1.2 million troops available solely for foreign occupations, and that 400,000 each should be allotted to occupy Iraq, Iran and North Korea. And this looney tunes, smug man has the ear of the wealthy and powerful in our country!

Saudi Arabia is facing the dilemma of whether and how to get involved in the Iraq crisis, according to the intrepid Megan Stack of the LA Times. My advice to them is to find a way to work together with Iran to reduce Sunni-Shiite tensions both in Iraq and in the Gulf. Khomeinism has a strong pan-Islamic streak, and the ayatollahs in Tehran would not slap away an outstretched hand from Riyadh. Make this a proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia in Iraq, and everyone loses.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Submit to RedditSubmit to SlashdotStumble Upon Toolbar
Email to a Friend:

Bin Laden: Moussawi not a 9/11 Hijacker

Anyone who has actually read a transcript of anything Zacarias Moussaoui has said has immediately recognized that he is not a high-powered al-Qaeda operative on the model of Muhammad Atta. In fact, anyone who has half a brain has been able to see that Moussaoui is just mentally disturbed. I.e. he is one bulb short of a chandelier. That doesn't mean he is insane or could not cope with daily life. Mental disturbance exists on a broad spectrum. Moussaoui, if he had not come under the influence of bad characters in a London mosque, might have gone through life as a ranting, odd bird. (You encounter people like that all the time on the streets of a big city. Also increasingly on the pages of our newspapers, but that is a different story).

No professional and highly competent terrorist organization would ever send a man like Moussaoui to do anything important. So it comes as no surprise that Bin Laden now says that he was not part of 9/11. Bin Laden quite plausibly, for a mass murderer and terrorist mastermind, explains that he would have pulled the hijackers out of the United States if he had heard that one of the team had been captured. Moussaoui was arrested two weeks before 9/11.

On the other hand, the old monster is blowing smoke up our posteriors when he says that there are no al-Qaeda in Guantanamo. The Pakistanis captured over 600 fleeing Arab members, and turned most of them over to the US. This part of what Bin Laden says is just manipulative. He is trying to convince Muslims that the US only has innocents in custody, and that it was unsuccessful in capturing the real al-Qaeda operatives. It did have a handful of innocents in custody. But most of these guys (who should be charged and put on proper trial) were on the battleground trying to kill our guys. The late comedian Richard Pryor once made fun of those silly liberals who thought only innocent people are in prison. He said he had visited a penitentiary, and there were Mofos and father molesters in it, or words to that effect.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Submit to RedditSubmit to SlashdotStumble Upon Toolbar
Email to a Friend:

Critique of US Policy in Iraq

Bush Administration policies in Iraq have largely been a failure. It has created a failed state in that country, which is in flames and seething with new religious and ethnic nationalist passions of a sort never before seen on this scale in modern Iraqi history. The severe instability in Iraq threatens the peace and security of the entire region, and could easily ignite a regional guerrilla war that might well affect petroleum exports from the Oil Gulf and hence the health of the world economy.

The relatively small number of US fighting troops that the US has in Iraq, some 60,000 to 70,000, cannot possibly hope to provide security to a country of 26 million under such conditions of ethnic and political civil war. The much smaller British presence in Basra appears not to have been effective in halting that city's spiral down into insecurity, with tribal and militia grudge fights and assassinations having become common.

The inauguration of a new Iraqi government was marred by the enormous amount of time it took to form it (5 months!), by open US imperial intervention in the choice of prime minister and in other negotiations, by the walk-out of over two dozen parliamentarians from both the Shiite (Virtue Party) and Sunni (National Dialogue Front and Iraqi Accord Front) parties, and by the failure of the new prime minister to name three key cabinet ministers central to the country's security-- Defense, Interior, and National Security. The Iraqi government is among the more corrupt in the world, working by bribes and a party spoils system.

The new parliament is virtually hung, and Prime Minister al-Maliki governs as a minority prime minister, being able to count on less than 115 MPs from his own party, in a parliament with 275 members. He is therefore hostage to the Kurds, who want to move Iraq in the direction of having a very weak central government, a degree of provincial autonomy unknown in any other country in the world, and who want to unilaterally annex a fourth province, oil-rich Kirkuk, to their regional confederacy, despite the violent opposition of Kirkuk's Turkmen and Arab populations to being Kurdicized.

The Bush administration reconstruction project in Iraq has largely failed. In part, it was foiled by sophisticated guerrilla sabotage, so that billions have had to be diverted from actual reconstruction to security. And nor has security been achieved. In part, it was foiled by a degree of corruption, cupidity, embezzlement, lawlessness and fraud that is unparalleled in US history since the Gilded Age. And in part is has been foiled by a US insistence on making most often unqualified US corporations the immediate recipient and major beneficiary of funds, so that Iraqi concerns get much less lucrative sub-contracts and relatively little of the money benefitted the Iraqi economy directly.

Military engagements between Sunni Arab guerrillas and US troops of some seriousness have been fought at Ramadi in the past week, though little noticed by the mainstream US press. Fallujah is dangerous again. Neighborhoods of the capital, Baghdad are blown up every day. A nighttime hot civil war produces some number of corpses daily, sometimes dozens, to the extent that morning corpse patrol has become a central duty of Iraqi police. A lot of us suspect that some units of the police themselves are involved in these kidnappings and killings, so that often they know just where to look for the corpses.

The main US military tactic still appears to be search and destroy, a way of proceeding guaranteed to extend the scope and popularity of the Sunni Arab guerrilla movement. The guerrillas appear more well-organized, determined, and effective than ever, and no lasting and effective progress appears to have been made in counter-insurgency anywhere in the Sunni Arab heartland. The human toll of the war has been deeply depressing. The number of Iraqi dead in the war and its aftermath (killed in political violence by any side) cannot be estimated, but certainly is over 100,000 and could easily be more. The 30,000 figure often cited comes from counts of reports of deaths in Western wire services, which are demonstrably a fraction of the true total. None of the nearly 1,000 Iraqis assassinated in Basra during the past month, possibly with police involvement, appears in such statistics.

The US has lost over 2400 troops dead, and the number of wounded in action is over 17,000, some significant proportion of them seriously wounded, with long-term disabilities. Some Iraq War vets are suffering mental problems and were discharged because of them under circumstances that make it difficult for them to get VA care. Some Iraq War vets are showing up homeless in US cities already. Meanwhile, Halliburton is back from the brink of bankruptcy. US troops have fought bravely in unfamiliar terrain, and have often done unheralded community developoment work. Their enemies have included ex-Baathist serial murderers and Salafi Jihadi terrorists. Their sacrifices for the sake of removing Saddam and his regime, and attempting to stabilize Iraq, must be honored. But some of their enemies have been honorable resistance fighters, as recognized by the present Iraqi government itself, and US troops have had the profound misfortune of being ordered into an illegal war and then becoming caught up in a series of guerrilla wars for local autonomy, of a sort that no imperial power has been able to win since about 1960.

There is no evidence of the new Iraqi army and security forces proving themselves effective against the guerrillas. The security forces with the possible exception of the new army are heavily infiltrated by partisan militias. A recent news article quoted an approving US officer as saying that Iraqi troops in Baqubah fought a guerrilla attack right down to the point where the troops ran out of ammunition. These were almost certainly Shiite and/or Kurdish troops fighting Sunni guerrillas, so this was actually another battle in the Civil War. No wonder they fought to the bitter end. But what I take away from this anecdote is that the guerrillas have more ammunition than do the poor s.o.b.'s in the Iraqi army, and I don't see that as a good sign. A unified military is almost impossible to achieve in conditions of civil war, in any case. Lebanon had an army when the civil war broke out there in the mid-1970s, but President Elias Sarkis was unable to commit it, for fear it would split along ethnic lines. The same problems now exist in Iraq, and are unlikely to be resolved for some years, if ever.

Iraq cannot be stabilized without the active help of Iran, Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, the neighboring countries. But the Bush administration has actively attempted to alienate Iran and Syria, threatening them with regime change or military attack, and guaranteeing that they would be hostile to US success and continued presence in Iraq. The US has also alienated Turkey by allowing the violent leftist Kurdish guerrilla movement, the PKK, to base itself in northern Iraq and to attack Turkey and Iran from that safe haven. The US has alienated Saudi Arabia in a whole host of ways, from insinuations that the Wahhabi form of Islam is in an unqualified way a source of terrorism, to US insensitivity to Saudi fears of the rise of a Shiite Crescent.

Bush administration ineptitude, ignorance, and often stupidity is matched by some regional players. Saudi Foreign Minister Saud El Faisal came to the US in fall of 2005 and castigated the US for allowing Iraq to fall into the hands of the Iranians (i.e. pro-Iranian Iraqi Shiites), provoking a severe diplomatic tiff between Baghdad and Riyadh. Instead of being helpful to a fellow Arab country, President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt alienated the Shiite south of Iraq by saying that Arab Shiites are more loyal to Iran than to their own countries. After these incidents, which enraged the Iraqi Shiites, the prospect for a fruitful role in Iraq for the Arab League have receded substantially, since Shiite Iraqis cannot see it as an honest broker.

The Bush Administration trumpets that a defeat of "al-Qaeda" in Iraq would be decisive for defeating terrorism in the world at large. But Bush and his policies led to there being anything like an effective Islamic radical terrorism in Iraq in the first place. The tiny Ansar al-Islam group that operated in the north before 2003 had been hunted by the Baath security and only survived because of the US no-fly zone that prevented Iraqi armor from being deployed against it. Bush has not shown any particular ability to put this genie, which he unleashed, back in the bottle. His war in Iraq has been an enormous boon to the international Salafi Jihadi movement, encouraging angry youths from all over the world to join it to fight to the US. Bush by his aggressive and inept policies is creating the phenomenon he says he is fighting, and so can never defeat it.

The prospect lies before us of years, perhaps decades of instability in the Gulf and eastern reaches of the Middle East. There is a danger of it doubling and tripling our gasoline prices. There is a danger of it forming a matrix and a school for anti-US terrorism for years to come. Are people in Fallujah, Tal Afar and Ramadi really ever going to forgive us? And there is no guarantee of the Shiites remaining US allies for very long, either. Many, of course, already have conceived a new hatred of America as a result of over-reaction of green National Guardsmen, who often have killed innocent civilians in the south, and as a result of iron fist policies when US troops were fighting the Mahdi Army.

The Bush administration has pushed us all out onto a tightrope in Iraq, 60 feet up and without a net.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Submit to RedditSubmit to SlashdotStumble Upon Toolbar
Email to a Friend:

Tuesday, May 23, 2006

Maliki Calls for Most Coalition Troops out by End of Year

Well, there are two versions of Iraq's future. Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki suprised visiting UK PM Tony Blair with an announcement: "Mr Maliki said British troops would hand over responsibility in two provinces to Iraqi security forces by next month and that he expected US, British and other foreign troops out of 16 of the country's 18 provinces by the end of the year, a much speedier and more ambitious schedule than the US and Britain have so far admitted to."

In contrast, the British government is under the impression that it will be in Iraq for another four years. The British are being the more realistic here.

Al-Zaman reports on a wave of assassinations in Baghdad and Mosul.

There was more mayhem in Iraq on Monday, leaving at least 20 persons dead and dozens wounded.

Al-Hayat reports that the representative of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani has sent a message to the governor of Basra province and asked him to resign. From all acounts Basra is in chaos.

But Al-Hayat reports in the same story that the spat between Sistani's representative and the governor, al-Wa'ili, have been smoothed over.

Solomon Moore discovers something that Americans on the ground have been telling me for some time. American Iraq is perhaps the most corrupt administration on earth. Though, I wonder if Mr. Moore poked around in Washington just a bit, say around K Street, he might find a degree of corruption that dwarfs Iraq's by an order of magnitude.

Tom Regan at CSM reviews the evidence for middle class flight from Iraq.

US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad has the right idea in seeking talks with Iran about the positive role it can play in Iraq. But his boss, Condi Rice, should please stop rattling sabres while she is seeking those talks.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Submit to RedditSubmit to SlashdotStumble Upon Toolbar
Email to a Friend:

The Black Psy-Ops Campaign against Iran

The Iranian regime is despicable in its lack of respect for basic human rights and in its regimentation of its citizens into a rigid theocracy. But it is no more of a threat to the United States than Burma or the Congo, both of which are just as oppressive. Iran has a very weak military and just isn't a serious threat to any other country. Its values are not US values. But if we are going to do things like send Marines into Iran to force Iranian women to wear bikinis at the beach, we are going to have a very busy century and Arlington Cemetery is going to run out of room.

The warmongers are undeterred.

Taylor Marsh has more on the bogus story from the National Post that Iran was about to make Jews, Christians and Zoroastrians wear identifying badges.

Marsh says that Iranian journalist Amir Taheri says he is standing by his column, which set off the furor, and that the law has been passed and is awaiting implementation. The laws passed by the Iranian parliament are available on the web and in Iranian newspapers, and certainly a law like this would have been written about and published. Could Mr. Taheri provide us please with a URL to the Persian text? If he does not, we have no reason ever again to believe anything he says.*

So we have now a non-existent Iranian law. Hmmm. How many more non-existents must we believe before breakfast?

Well, here is another. Israel's ambassador to the United Nations, Dan Gillerman, is reported to have warned that 'Iran was "months rather than years away" from acquiring the capability to make nuclear weapons. "Time is running out. . ." '

Months?

I am typing while rolling around on the floor laughing uncontrollably at this blatant falsehood and hypocrisy. The International Atomic Energy Agency just a little over a week ago said it can find no evidence that Iran even has a nuclear weapons program, as opposed to a civilian energy research program. Supreme Jurisprudent Khamenei gave a fatwa in which he forbade nuclear weapons, and the Iranian government denies that it is seeking a bomb. The US National Intelligence Estimate says that if Iran were trying hard to get a bomb and the international circumstances were favorable to all the needed imports, it would still take ten years. And, neither of those "ifs" is in evidence.

Moreover, it is Mr. Gillerman's government that introduced nuclear weapons into the Middle East and that has actually threatened to use them. The Likud government menaced Baghdad with the Bomb in the run-up to the March 2003 War that they helped get up by supplying unreliable intelligence to Washington. It was their way of warning Saddam against trying to hit them with chemical warheads. But, would that have been a proportionate response. Iran doesn't have a bomb, has signed the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, and hasn't invaded another country since the 19th century. Israel has hudnreds of bombs, had refused to sign the NPT, and has threatened first use of nukes.

This is just demagoguery and lying.

Mr. Gillerman is, however, occasionally capable of telling the truth. Reuters reports,



"Ambassador Dan Gillerman, addressing a New York meeting of B'nai B'rith International, a Jewish humanitarian organization, heaped praise on U.S. Ambassador John Bolton, jokingly describing him at one point as 'a secret member of Israel's own team at the United Nations.' Noting that just five diplomats worked in the busy Israeli UN Mission, he told the group: "Today the secret is out. We really are not just five diplomats. We are at least six including John Bolton."


Bolton was put at the UN by Bush to get up a war against Iran, though for whom is not entirely clear. He is a notorious liar, who tried to peddle a ridiculous story about a supposed Cuban biological weapons program. He may well be the source of a flight of Judy Millerism that the Iranians had sent evil biologists to Havana to help with a supposed Cuban biological weapons program. Ooooooh. Those Marxist Ayatollah molecular biologist evil scientists are the absolute worst!

Imaginary laws. Imaginary bombs. Imaginary germs. Lies, lies intended to make a war.

If the Iranians were smart, they would dump that buffoon Ahmadinejad and get themselves a less inflammatory president. Ahmadinejad's antics are giving the warmongers in the West all kinds of pretexts to talk war on Tehran. They should take a lesson from what has been done to the Iraqis.

----

* This posting originally contained a criticism of Taheri for extolling the stability of the Iraqi dinar, which I said was artificial because it is a managed currency. Collier Lounsbury maintains that despite the managed character of the currency, its stability is a genuine phenomenon.

Mr. Lounsbury confirms, however, that in a roundabout way, it is Iraq's petroleum that keeps the currency strong. Currency stability is therefore not actually an achievement of the Iraqi or American governments, and, as long as the government did not work its currency printing presses overtime, would be a feature of Iraqi currency under any regime.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Submit to RedditSubmit to SlashdotStumble Upon Toolbar
Email to a Friend: