Informed Comment

Thoughts on the Middle East, History, and Religion

Juan Cole is President of the Global Americana Institute

Tuesday, January 31, 2006

Top Ten things Bush won't Tell you About the State of the Nation

1. US economic growth during the last quarter was an anemic 1.1%, the worst in 3 years.

2. The US inflation rate has jumped to 3.4 percent, the highest rate in 5 years.

3. The number of daily attacks in Iraq rose from 52 in December, 2004 to 77 in December, 2005.

4. A third of US veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, some 40,000 persons, exhibit at least some signs of mental health disorders. Some 14,000 were treated for drug dependencies, and 11,000 for depression.

5. Increases in American consumer spending come from borrowing.


6. The $320 - $400 bilion deficits run by the Bush administration may push up the cost of mortgages and loans.


7. 58% of Americans think Bush is painting Iraq as rosier than it is. A majority thinks we should never have invaded the country.

8. The US military is at a breaking point.

9. In fact, The US and Iran are tacit allies in Iraq.

10. Mor e money would be needed to finish the US reconstruction projects begun in Iraq.
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Monday, January 30, 2006

Bombings of Churches
Bush and Blair Plotted to Ignore Security Council


Who woulda thunk it? Bush and Blair plotted to go to war against Iraq even if the UN Security Council declined to authorize it. The Scotsman summarizes findings of Phillipe Sands: "Prof Sands' book, entitled Lawless World, claims that president Bush had earlier displayed open contempt for the UN during the summit, made wild threats against Iraq dictator Saddam Hussein and displayed astounding ignorance of the likely post-war problems." Now Bush will come out on television Tuesday night and lie about the situation in Iraq to his gullible followers.

Guerrillas set off car bombs outside churches in Baghdad and Kirkuk on Sunday, and also targeted a Vatican office. The 8 bombs killed 3 and wounded 17. Many of Iraq's originally 750,000 Christians have already fled, mainly to Syria or Detroit, and some observers fear the community will dwindle to virtually nothing if these attacks continue. Although Iraq's Christians are among the oldest such communities in the world, and are indigenous, radical Muslim guerrillas often code them as "foreign" or allied to the largely Christian American occupiers. There was also other guerrilla violence in Iraq on Sunday, which left altogether at least 25 dead.

Some 1500 Shiites demonstrated in the southern port city of Basra (pop. 1.3 mn.) against the British authorities. They were upset about British arrests of policemen that London believes were connected to puritan militias that sometimes acted as death squads. The elected governor of Basra province last Friday threatened to cease cooperating with the British over the arrests.

Al-Zaman reports that [Ar.] Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani and Shiite leader Abdul Aziz al-Hakim began their deliberations, in a meeting characterized by much formal protocol, on Sunday evening. The negotiations, to be continued on Monday, are expected to take weeks to conclude.

Hadi al-Amiri, secretary general of the paramilitary [Shiite fundamentalist] Badr Corps, announced that "The United Iraqi Alliance considers [its possession of] the ministry of the interior a red line that cannot be crossed." [The Iraqi Interior is like the US FBI.] He told al-Zaman that the UIA "Gives the utmost importance to security in Iraq. Prominent personalities in the UIA had been victims during the extinct regime of the former security apparatus. For this reason, we cannot consider stepping down from the ministry of the interior."

Amiri revealed that he had been visited by Sunni Arab secular leader Salih al-Mutlak in connection with discussions on forming the new government, but said that he did not know if al-Mutlak had asked the UIA to join them in a national unity government.

Young Shiite nationalist cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's bloc in parliament will give him increased clout in the new government, the CSM points out. Amatzia Baram points out that he will push for puritanism and anti-Americanism, and will also reach out to fundamentalist Sunni Arabs.

Iraq's oil ministry is again leaderless and in turmoil, at a time when the industry can afford neither. Despite engineering feats accomplished by American teams, the Iraqi petroleum industry is a mess.

Number of US military personnel just forced to serve extended duty: 50,000.

Number by which junior enlisted soldiers have declined in the US military since 2001: 19,000.

New cap on interest rate on government student loans, which Republicans are raising in order to pay for the Iraq War and Hurricane Katrina: 6.9%.

The US military's practice of taking suspected guerrilla leaders' wives hostage will backfire, according to expert observers.

The complexities of Iraq are underlined by the increasingly flourishing condition of the holy Shiite city of Najaf south of Baghdad, which is fairly secure and peaceful. Its pharmacies have medicines, it has 20 hours of electricity a day, and US troops withdrew last September to a base well away from the city, reducing the chance of provocations. Plans are going forward for an airport. Some 3 million pilgrims a year are already coming, mostly from Iran but also from Lebanon, Kuwait, Pakistan and elsewhere, to visit the shrine of Imam Ali. The combination of resources from Iran and from the wealthy merchants and shopkeepers of the city, the calming influence of Grand Ayatollah Sistani, who resides there, the loyalty of the tribal levies to Sistani, the induction of members of the Badr Corps paramilitary into the provincial police and government military, and the defeat of the radical Mahdi Army of Muqtada al-Sadr in August 2004 by the joint efforts of Sistani, the other grand ayatollahs and the US Marines, have all contributed to this current flourishing situation. Ironically, Najaf's success is a rebuke to Paul Bremer, who once cancelled an election there because he feared Iranian influence in the city. In the end, Iran wins this one.

AP explains the long relationship between the Iraqi Shiites and their Iranian co-religionists.

Here's hoping Bob Woodruff and Doug Vogt pull through. We talk about people getting blown up every day in Iraq, but when it is someone you feel you know and admire through television, it is personal.
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Beeman Guest Editorial: US to Blame for Iranian Nuclear Program

United States Instigated Iran's Nuclear Program 30 Years Ago

William O. Beeman
Brown University



' The White House staffers, who are trying to deny Iran the right to develop its own nuclear energy capacity have conveniently forgotten that the United States was the midwife to the Iranian nuclear program 30 years ago. Every aspect of Iran's current nuclear development was approved and encouraged by Washington in the 1970s. President Gerald Ford offered Iran a full nuclear cycle in 1976, and the only reactor currently about to become operative, the reactor in Bushire, was started before the Iranian revolution with U.S. approval.

Kenneth Timmerman, in Countdown to Crisis: The Coming Nuclear Showdown with Iran presents a misleading description of this plant, claiming again and again that the facility might be used to produce nuclear fuel.

As the late Tom Stauffer and I wrote in June, 2003, the Bushire (Bushehr) reactor--a "light water" reactor--does not produce weapons grade Plutonium. It produces Pu 240, Pu241 and Pu242. Although these isotopes could theoretically be weaponized, the process is extremely long and complicated, and also untried. To date no nuclear weapon has ever been produced with plutonium produced with the kind of reactor at Bushire. Moreover, the plant would have to be completely shut down to extract the fuel rods, making the process immediately open to detection and inspection. (The plant IS shut down to change the fuel rods, but only every 30-40 months to provide longer and better energy generation)

By contract, the Dimona reactor in Israel--a "heavy water" reactor--is an example of a reactor that is ideal for producing weapons fuel. It produces Pu239 and the fuel rods can be extracted "on the fly." without any need to shut down the plant or alter its operation. The fuel rods are exchanged every few weeks.

The full original article with much more detailed analysis and reader commentary can be found at this URL.

It is paired with a companion piece explaining why nuclear power makes perfect sense for the Iranian economic situation. This article can be found here.

A number of former officials have questioned the proposition that the United States fostered Iran's nuclear development. Certainly it is inconvenient for their present course of action to have to admit that an American hand was present in the gestation of the program.

Professor Ahmad Sadri, Chair of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Lake Forest College in Illinois was a young man in Iran when the United States was touting nuclear power facilities to the government of the Shah. He reminisces:

The image that came to me was the late sixties' lavish exhibit of the United States in Tehran's annual International Exhibit that was fashioned as a nuclear reactor complete with a white dome. Easily the most popular exhibit in the entire international gala, the American exhibit sported by far the longest snaking lines of eager visitors. It was dedicated to the single theme of extolling the virtues of atomic energy and the feasibility of its transfer to Iran. White clad attendants offered inspiring tours to small flocks of the overawed visitors and encouraged them to emulate atomic researchers by lifting small cubes and pyramids laying behind thick Plexiglas walls with the use of mechanical hands. That image found its companion a few days ago as I soaked in the hot tub of my local gym in one of the northern burbs of Chicago with a gentleman that turned out to be Octave J. Du Temple, executive director emeritus of the American Nuclear Society. He fondly reminisced about half a dozen trips in early seventies to Tehran and Shiraz in order to participate in conferences and summits on "transfer of nuclear technology." For whatever it's worth, this native's account is
awash in images that confirm a fair amount of enthusiasm on behalf of the United States for Iran's nuclear program in the 1970's.

Washington International Lawyer Donald Weadon points out that after 1972, and the oil crisis, the United States was rabidly pursuing investment opportunities in Iran, including selling nuclear power plants. He writes:

' . . . utilizing the good offices of the Hoover Institution and the
self-interest of Bechtel and other U.S. A&E contractors who found
significant profit in Nuclear Power Plants at home and overseas (e.g, Taiwan), the Iranians were wooed hard with the prospect of nuclear power from trusted, U.S.-backed suppliers, with the prospect of the reservation of significant revenues from oil exports for foreign and domestic investment (this was not solely and Iranian pipe dream, as the Kuwaitis had targeted by 1980 to be obtaining half of their GNP from investment income, not sales of wasting assets like oil). Obviously, the principal benefit from the U.S. perspective was the significant absorption of petrodollars, NOT Iran's fiscal and national best interest. '


Despite current White House denials of U.S. instigation of the program, there is absolutely no question that the United States did not oppose Iran's nuclear development in the 1970's--even to the point of facilitating training for Iran's senior engineers at MIT, CalTech and other U.S. institutions. Nor is it in question that the Bushire plant was started before the revolution with the United States' blessing.

American dissimulation on this point reveals some interesting motives on Washington's part. Iran under the Shah was as much of a threat to its neighbors (including Iraq) as it might be said to be today. Its nuclear ambitions then could have been inflated and denigrated in exactly the same way they are being inflated and denigrated today, but the U.S. was blissfully unconcerned. The big, big difference is that Iran is now perceived to be a threat to Israel, and that is why we see retired military as consultants to the news media bandying about plans to bomb multiple sites over an area the size of California, Arizona and Nevada (Good luck!) .

Even those who admit that the United States helped start Iran's current nuclear development claim that two factors make a difference in how Iran should be treated today as opposed to the 1970's: Iran's concealment of nuclear energy development activities in the past and President Ahmadinejad's remarks on Israel.

What White House officials never tell the American public is that President Ahmadinejad's remarks have little or no connection with any probable action on Iran's part regarding Israel (or "the Zionist regime" to be strictly accurate regarding his reference). President Ahmadinejad has no effective power in this area, and his remarks aren't even embraced by Iran's clerical leaders. His remarks are widely understood as a clumsy attempt to pander to his own right-wing base in an attempt to shore up his faltering power within the Iranian government.

However, the second proposition is equally specious. It is fruitful to examine the now conventional wisdom that Iran had "regularly hidden information about its nuclear program" etc. as if this in and of itself was proof of a nuclear weapons program. Of course, it is not, although many breathlessly cite it as the principal smoking gun.

First of all, much of what the United States has called "concealment" was never concealed at all when the reports of the United Nations inspection team are examined. Many of the charges about removing topsoil and bulldozing material at some of the research sites never took place. However, even if one concedes that Iran did conceal some processes, whatever concealment of whatever activity started 18-20 years ago when the Revolution was still young and Ayatollah Khomeini was still alive.

There was, of course, a different Iranian administration than is in power today, or that was in power when the nuclear question became an issue. If George W. Bush were to be held responsible for things that happened 18 years ago, or even 8 years ago, there would be howling in the Capitol. The myth of a monolithic unchanging government in Iran is indeed very powerful, overwhelming all common sense and reason.

Second, whatever Iran did or didn't do in the past, they are in compliance with the NNPT at present. Indeed, there would be no way to accuse them of anything if they were not so compliant.

Third, it is essential to emphasize that there are many countries who have concealed their nuclear activities (Israel, India, Pakistan, Brazil, North Korea), and some who still do--it is an open secret. Mohammad Elbaradei gave a half-dozen plausible reasons why Iran might have felt it prudent to conceal its activities (the U.S. embargo, the ran-Iraq war, the U.S. actions in Gulf War I and II right next door, the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, India and Pakistan's possession of nuclear weapons-again right next door, the hidden weapons program in Israel, etc. etc. ). This didn't excuse the concealment, but neither is it proof that Iran has a weapons' program at present. In fact, no one has shown that such a weapons program exists.

The mantra "Iran must not get nuclear weapons" has been repeated so often now that most people have come to believe that Iran has them or is getting them. Has anyone stopped to think that this only became an issue when the neoconservative agenda to "remake" the Middle East--including Iran-became actualized? The Iran nuclear crisis is truly a manufactured crisis, based on the flimsiest of evidence and reasoning. I can only hope that soberer minds rethink this position.

The tragedy would be that in the end, the U.S. may goad Iran in to a real nuclear weapons program. The Iranians may reason that since they are being punished for the crime anyway, they might as well commit it. '


William O. Beeman
Brown University
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Sunday, January 29, 2006

Over 30 Killed in Guerrilla Violence
Sadrists Demand any Prime Minister Call for US Troop Withdrawal


AP reports on the ambitions of the Shiite religious parties to retain control of the Ministry of the Interior security forces (analogous to the US FBI and Secret Service.) AP also reports that some 22 died in Iraq as a result of guerrilla violence, including the macabre bombing of a candy store in a Shiite area of Iskandariyah that killed 11 and wounded 5. The only problem is that an earlier report from Reuters detailed 21 deaths even before the candy store bombing. That would take it to over 30 dead, at least.

A third of US veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, some 40,000 persons, exhibit at least some signs of mental health disorders. Some 14,000 were treated for drug dependencies, and 11,000 for depression. Societies that think that aggressive war is some macho game and that the price is well worth it just have a lot of homeless and limbless people after a while.

The LA Times reports cautiously on the stories of conflicts among Sunni Arab guerrilla groups, especially between Iraqis and foreigners. The article notes that guerrilla attacks are averaging 75 a day, as opposed to 52 a day last year this time, so whatever is going on is not impeding the guerrillas' ability and motivation to strike. In fact, I suspect that to the extent there is fighting among Sunni guerrillas, it is for control of the guerrilla movement, i.e. for the right to decide which targets are hit. It isn't a matter of not wanting to hit targets.

The deteriorating security situation in Iraq is driving the country's physicians, lawyers and businessmen out of the country. There's a metric for Mr. Rumsfeld-- when the white collar professionals flee, it isn't a good situation.

Michael Slackman reports for the NYT from Iran that Iran's clerical leaders are cocky about the way the US is bogged down in the Iraq quagmire. Far from moderating the Iranians, the US predicament in Iraq has made them confident it is helpless against them and that they may proceed with their nuclear energy program despite US objections.

Krishna Guha reports from Davos for the FT, with the following points on Iraq:

1. Deputy Sec. of State Robert Zoellick wants the Gulf states to play a positive role in Iraq. (Yes, those experienced democrats can teach the Iraqis a lot about avoiding authoritarianism-- I except Kuwait from the sarcasm.)

2. Amr Moussa of the Arab League is still hoping to have the Baghdad Conference, a successor to the Cairo Conference, in February or March.

3. Barham Salih says that the Kurds will insist on a government of national unity that includes a major Sunni and a secular party.

4. Salih also says that the US must not use Iraq as a springboard to attack Iran.

5. Humam Hammoudi of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, who chaired the committee that wrote the constitution, agreed that the Sunni Arabs must be included in the government.

The Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) is still pushing for Adil Abdul Mahdi to be prime minister. The issue will be decided by an internal vote of the United Iraqi Alliance.

Al-Sharq al-Awsat [The Middle East] reports [Ar.] that Abbas al-Ruba'i, a Baghdad representative of young Shiite nationalist cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, says that the Sadrist bloc has forwarded its platform to the major internal candidates for prime minister in the United Iraqi Alliance. He said that the Sadrists will swing their support to the candidate who most fully commits to implement their platform.

Two planks of the Sadrist platform are the withdrawal of foreign troops from the country and opposition to loose federalism and provincial confederations that might break up the country. The Sadrists also want more attention to providing Iraqis with services and security. It will be interesting to see if any of the major candidates for PM signs on to these first two principles in order to win the Sadrist vote. Al-Ruba'i said that so far the candidate who is closes to Sadrist principles is Ibrahim Jaafari of the Dawa Party, the current PM.

The same article says that behind the scenes, UIA candidates for prime minister have been seeking the support of Allawi and his National Iraqi list. [Cole: I can't see what sense this makes except if they are using the Iraqiyah Party as a channel to the Americans. Otherwise, the prime minister will be chosen inside the UIA by an up and down vote of party parliamentarians, and I should think that being in contact with Allawi would actually hurt a candidate with the other UIA representatives, who code him as a dusted off Baathist and CIA agent. The Sadrists have said they won't permit Allawi to have a government post.]

Al-Hayat reports [Ar.] that Bayan Jabr, the minister of the interior in the outgoing Iraqi government and a member of SCIRI is saying that the United Iraqi Alliance (Shiite fundamentalists) will seek 19 of the expected 36 cabinet posts, just over half.

Al-Hayat has more on the alliance of the Iraqi Accord Front, the national Dialogue Council, and Allawi's Iraqi National list, which together will have a bloc of 80 members in parliament.

The problem is that 80 members gets you nothing. It isn't a third, and so cannot block anything. And if enough Kurds vote with the Shiites on things like loose federalism, the 80 can just be outvoted every time.

Moreover, the likelihood is that the Sunni/secular alliance will split on issues of Islamic law, with the Iraqi Accord Front voting with the Shiite religious parties for shariah or Islamic law. The United Iraqi Alliance could count on its own 128, then 2 from the Message Party (Sadrists), plus 5 from the Kurdish Islamists, plus 44 from the Sunni IAF for any Islamist law or policy, i.e. 179. Since laws are passed by simple majority, the result is a strong Islamist majority in the new parliament for any measure that is not specifically Sunni or Shiite (there are few of those in Islamic law.)

The only thing that the Sunni/secular bloc can agree on is opposition to loose federalism, and on that they could gain some allies from the United Iraqi Alliance, whose Sadrists and Dawa Party members are nervous about it. But can they gain the 58 Shiite defectors necessary to legislate anything on the issue?
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Saturday, January 28, 2006

Achcar on Hamas: Guest Editorial



'First Reflections On The Electoral Victory Of Hamas

by Gilbert Achcar; January 27, 2006

1. The sweeping electoral victory of Hamas is but one of the products of the intensive use made by the United States in the Muslim world, since the 1950's, of Islamic fundamentalism as an ideological weapon against both progressive nationalism and communism. This was done in close collaboration with the Saudi kingdom -- a de facto U.S. protectorate almost from its foundation in 1932. The promotion of the most reactionary interpretation of the Islamic religion, exploiting deeply-rooted popular religious beliefs, led to this ideology filling the vacuum left by the exhaustion by the 1970's of the two ideological currents it served to fight. The road was thus paved in the entire Muslim world for the transformation of Islamic fundamentalism into the dominant expression of mass national and social resentment, to the great dismay of the U.S. and its Saudi protectorate. The story of Washington's relation with Islamic fundamentalism is the most striking modern illustration of the sorcerer's apprenticeship. (I have described this at length in my Clash of Barbarisms.)

2. The Palestinian scene was no exception to this general regional pattern, albeit it followed suit with a time warp. Although the Palestinian guerilla movement came to the fore initially as a result of the exhaustion of more traditional Arab nationalism and as an expression of radicalization, the movement underwent a very rapid bureaucratization, fostered by an impressive influx of petrodollars and reaching levels of corruption that have no equivalent in the history of national liberation movements. Still, as long as it remained -- in the guise of the PLO -- what could be described as a "stateless state apparatus seeking a territory" (see my Eastern Cauldron), the Palestinian national movement could still embody the aspirations of the vast majority of the Palestinian masses, despite the numerous twists, turns, and betrayals of commitments with which its history is littered. However, when a new generation of Palestinians took up the struggle in the late 1980's, with the Intifada that started in December 1987, their radicalization began in turn to take increasingly the path of Islamic fundamentalism. This was facilitated by the fact that the Palestinian left, the leading force within the Intifada in the first months, squandered this last historic opportunity by eventually aligning itself one more time behind the PLO leadership, thus completing its own bankruptcy. On a smaller scale, Israel had played its own version of the sorcerer's apprentice by favoring the Islamic fundamentalist movement as a rival to the PLO prior to the Intifada.

3. The 1993 Oslo agreement inaugurated the final phase of the PLO's degeneration, as its leadership -- or rather the leading nucleus of this leadership, bypassing the official leading bodies -- was granted guardianship over the Palestinian population of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. This came in exchange for what amounted to a capitulation: the PLO leadership abandoned the minimal conditions that were demanded by the Palestinian negotiators from the 1967 occupied territories, above all an Israeli pledge to freeze and reverse the construction of settlements which were colonizing their land. The very conditions of this capitulation -- which doomed the Oslo agreements to tragic failure as critics very rightly predicted from the start -- made certain that the shift in the popular political mood would speed up. The Zionist state took advantage of the lull brought to the 1967 territories by the Palestinian Authority's fulfillment of the role of police force by proxy ascribed to it, by drastically intensifying the colonization and building an infrastructure designed to facilitate its military control over these territories. Accordingly, the discredit of the PA increased inexorably. This loss in public support hampered more and more its ability to crack down on the Palestinian Islamic fundamentalist movement -- as was required from it and as it began attempting as early as 1994 -- let alone its ability to marginalize the Islamic movement politically and ideologically. Moreover, the transfer of the PLO bureaucracy from exile into the 1967 territories, as a ruling apparatus entrusted with the task of surveillance over the population that waged the Intifada, quickly led to its corruption reaching abysmal levels -- something that the population of the territories hadn't seen first-hand before. At the same time, Hamas, like most sections of the Islamic fundamentalist mass movement -- in contrast with "substitutionist" strictly terrorist organizations of which al-Qaeda has become the most spectacular example -- was keen on paying attention to popular basic needs, organizing social services, and cultivating a reputation of austerity and incorruptibility.

4. The irresistible rise of Ariel Sharon to the helm of the Israeli state resulted from his September 2000 provocation that ignited the "Second Intifada" -- an uprising that because of its militarization lacked the most positive features of the popular dynamics of the first Intifada. A PA that, by its very nature, could definitely not rely on mass self-organization and chose the only way of struggle it was familiar with, fostered this militarization. Sharon's rise was also a product of the dead-end reached by the Oslo process: the clash between the Zionist interpretation of the Oslo frame -- an updated version of the 1967 "Alon Plan" by which Israel would relinquish the populated areas of the 1967 occupied territories to an Arab administration, while keeping colonized and militarized strategic chunks -- and the PA's minimal requirements of recovering all, or nearly all the territories occupied in 1967, without which it knew it would lose its remaining clout with the Palestinian population. The electoral victory of war criminal Ariel Sharon in February 2001 -- an event as much "shocking" as the electoral victory of Hamas, at the very least -- inevitably reinforced the Islamic fundamentalist movement, his counterpart in terms of radicalization of stance against the backdrop of a still-born historic compromise. All of this was greatly propelled, of course, by the (very resistible, but unresisted) accession to power of George W. Bush, and the unleashing of his wildest imperial ambitions thanks to the attacks on September 11, 2001.

5. Ariel Sharon played skillfully on the dialectics between himself and his Palestinian true opposite number, Hamas. His calculation was simple: in order to be able to carry through unilaterally his own hard-line version of the Zionist interpretation of a "settlement" with the Palestinians, he needed two conditions: a) to minimize international pressure upon him -- or rather U.S. pressure, the only one that really matters to Israel; and b) to demonstrate that there is no Palestinian leadership with which Israel could "do business." For this, he needed to emphasize the weakness and unreliability of the PA by fanning the expansion of the Islamic fundamentalist movement, knowing that the latter was anathema to the Western states. Thus every time there was some kind of truce, negotiated by the PA with the Islamic organizations, Sharon's government would resort to an "extrajudicial execution" -- in plain language, an assassination -- in order to provoke these organizations into retaliation by the means they specialized in: suicide attacks, their "F-16s" as they say. This had the double advantage of stressing the PA inability to control the Palestinian population, and enhancing Sharon's own popularity in Israel. The truth of the matter is that the electoral victory of Hamas is the outcome that Sharon's strategy was very obviously seeking, as many astute observers did not fail to point out.

6. As long as Yasir Arafat was alive, he could still use the remnant of his own historical prestige. Contrary to what many commentators have said, the seclusion of Arafat in his last months by Sharon did not "discredit" the Palestinian leader: as a matter of fact, Arafat's popularity was at an all-time low before his seclusion, and regained in strength after it started. Actually, Arafat's leadership has always been directly nurtured by his demonization by Israel and his popularity rose again when he became Sharon's prisoner. This is why the U.S. and Israel's nominee for Palestinian leadership, Mahmud Abbas, was not able to really take over as long as Arafat was alive. This is also why both the Bush administration and Sharon would not let the Palestinians organize the new elections that Arafat kept demanding as his representativeness was challenged very hypocritically in the name of "democratic reform." The very nature of the "democrats" supported by Washington and Israel under this heading is best epitomized by Muhammad Dahlan, the most corrupt chief of one of the rival repressive "security" apparatuses that Arafat kept under his control on a pattern familiar to autocratic Arab regimes.

7. The electoral victory of Hamas is a resounding slap in the face of the Bush administration. As the latest illustration of the sorcerer's apprenticeship that U.S. policy in the Middle East has so spectacularly displayed, it is the final nail in the coffin of its neocon-inspired, demagogic and deceitful rhetoric about bringing "democracy" to the "Greater Middle East." It is, of course, too early to make any safe prediction at this point regarding what will happen on the ground. It is possible, however, to make a few observations and prognoses:

Hamas does not have a social incentive for collaboration with the Israeli occupation, at least not in any way resembling that of the PLO-originated PA apparatuses: it has actually been thrown into disarray by its own victory, as it would certainly have preferred the much more comfortable posture of being a major parliamentary opposition force to the PA. Therefore, it takes a lot of self-deception and wishful thinking to believe that Hamas will adapt to the conditions laid out by the U.S. and Israel. Collaboration is all the less likely given that the Israeli government, under the leadership of the new Kadima party founded by Sharon, will continue his policy, taking full advantage of the election result that suits its plans so well, and making impossible any accommodation with Hamas. Moreover, Hamas faces an outbidding rival represented by "Islamic Jihad," which boycotted the election.

In order to try to rescue the very sensitive Palestinian component of overall U.S. Middle East policy that it managed to steer into dire straits, the Bush administration will very likely consider three possibilities. One would be a major shift in the policies of Hamas, bought by and mediated by the Saudis; this is, however, unlikely for the reason stated above and would be long and uncertain. Another would be fomenting tension and political opposition to Hamas in order to provoke new elections in the near future, taking advantage of the vast presidential powers that Arafat had granted himself and that Mahmud Abbas inherited, or just by having the latter resign, thus forcing a presidential election. For such a move to be successful, or meaningful at all, there is a need for a credible figure that could regain a majority for the traditional Palestinian leadership; but the only figure having the minimum of prestige required for this role is presently Marwan Barghouti, who -- from his Israeli jail cell -- made an alliance with Dahlan prior to the election. It is therefore likely that Washington will exert pressure on Israel for his release. A third possibility would be the "Algerian scenario" -- referring to the interruption of the electoral process in Algeria by a military junta in January 1992 -- which is already envisaged, according to reports in the Arab press: the repressive apparatuses of the PA would crack down on Hamas, impose a state of siege and establish a military-police dictatorship. Of course, a combination of the last two scenarios is also possible, postponing the crackdown until political conditions are created, that are more suitable for it.

Any attempt by the U.S. and the European Union to starve the Palestinians into submission by interrupting the economic aid that they grant them would be disastrous for both humanitarian and political reasons and should be opposed most vigorously.

The catastrophic management of U.S. policy in the Middle East by the Bush administration, on top of decades of clumsy and shortsighted U.S. imperial policies in this part of the world, has not yet born all its bitter fruit.


January 27, 2006

Gilbert Achcar is author of Eastern Cauldron (New York : Monthly Review Press, 2004) and The Clash of Barbarisms, new expanded edition coming out soon from Saqi Books (London) and Paradigm Publishers (Boulder, CO). The author thanks Steve Shalom for his editing and very useful suggestions. '


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Iraq Round-Up

Al-Zaman/ AFP report that [Ar.] the fundamentalist Shiite United Iraqi Alliance is awaiting the arrival in Baghdad of Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani at the beginning of the coming week for discussions concerning the formation of a new government. A source within the UIA told al-Zaman [the Baghdad Times] that the party had formed two delegations, which will negotiate simultaneously, one with the Kurdistan Alliance and the other with the Iraqi Accord Front [Sunni fundamentalist] over how to form a national unity government. The source was vague on the likelihood that the UIA might accept members of Iyad Allawi's National Iraqi Party in the government. (Earlier reports said that the Sadrist faction had ruled it out.) Other party members said that Allawi and his faction would not be welcome.

Al-Sharq al-Awsat reports [Ar.] that US troops have formally turned over security duties to the Iraqi army in Ninevah province, which is dominated demograpically by its capital of Mosul. US troops had 100 bases in Iraq, and have been turning them over to Iraqi troops. They typically continue to be garrisoned near major cities so as to retain the capability of intervening where trouble gets out of hand.

According to documents sprung by the ACLU, the US military in Iraq sometimes kidnaps the wives of suspected guerrillas as a way of pressuring them to turn in their husbands or of getting the husbands to turn themselves in. Informed Comment is one of the few places where Iraqi allegations to this effect, and street demonstrations over the issue, have been covered. The kidnapping of journalist Jill Carroll appears to be an attempt by guerrillas to free wives of key fighters, so as to reduce the likelihood they will be broken and inform on their husbands' whereabouts. The US claims to have only a handful of women in custody, and to have just released 5 of them.

-------

A kind reader writes:


' It may interest you to know that the taking of hostages is a "grave breach" of the Fourth Geveva Convention.

Following are relevant extracts from the ICRC web site.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Convention (IV) relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War. Geneva, 12 August 1949.

Part III : ARTICLE 34
The taking of hostages is prohibited.


ARTICLE 34. -- HOSTAGES (1)
1. ' Definition and historical survey '

The word "hostage" has stood for rather different conceptions. It is not, therefore, easy to give a definition of it valid for every case. Generally speaking, hostages are nationals of a belligerent State who of their own free will or through compulsion are in the hands of the enemy and are answerable with their freedom or their life for the execution of his orders and the security of his armed forces.
In the beginning, the hostage constituted a guarantee by the adversary that a treaty would be carried out; hostages were given [p.230] as a pledge or a safeguard; this practice, which is very ancient, has now disappeared. The modern form, with which this Article is concerned, is the taking of hostages as a means of intimidating the population in order to weaken its spirit of resistance and to prevent breaches of the law and sabotage in order to ensure the security of the Detaining Power.

(a) The most frequent case is that of an Occupying Power taking as hostages persons generally selected from among prominent persons in a city or a district in order to prevent disorders or attacks on occupation troops.

(b) Another form of the taking of hostages which is very close to (a) consists of arresting after an attack a certain number of inhabitants of the occupied territory and announcing that they will be kept captive or executed if the guilty are not given up.
...
ICRC Document.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Part IV : ARTICLE 147
Grave breaches to which the preceding Article relates shall be those involving any of the following acts, if committed against persons or property protected by the present Convention: wilful killing, torture or inhuman treatment, including biological experiments, wilfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health, unlawful deportation or transfer or unlawful confinement of a protected person, compelling a protected person to serve in the forces of a hostile Power, or wilfully depriving a protected person of the rights of fair and regular trial prescribed in the present Convention, taking of hostages and extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly.

Open Document.


ARTICLE 147. -- GRAVE BREACHES

[p.597] The idea of defining grave breaches in the Convention itself must be laid to the credit of the experts convened in 1948 by the International Committee of the Red Cross. If repression of grave breaches was to be universal, it was necessary to determine what constituted them. However, there are violations of certain detailed provisions of the Geneva Convention which would constitute minor offences or mere disciplinary faults which as such could not be punished to the same degree.
It was also thought advisable to draw up as a warning to possible offenders a clear list of crimes whose authors would be sought for in all countries. The idea had been stated in the draft of Article 40, which defined in a rather general way what was meant by grave breaches. A joint amendment submitted to the Diplomatic Conference by a number of delegations led to the inclusion in each Convention of a list of offences defined more exactly. It was that text which was finally adopted by the Conference with slight alterations (1).
...
The taking of hostages. ' -- Hostages might be considered as persons illegally deprived of their liberty, a crime which most penal codes take cognizance of and punish. However, there is an additional feature, i.e. the threat either to prolong the hostage's detention or to put him to death. The taking of hostages should therefore be treated as a special offence. Certainly, the most serious crime would be to execute hostages which, as we have seen, constitutes wilful killing. However, the fact of taking hostages, by its arbitrary character, especially when accompanied by a threat of death, is in itself [p.601] a very serious crime; it causes in the hostage and among his family a mortal anguish which nothing can justify.

...
The text is here.

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Sistani Calls on Iraqis to Turn in Terrorists
Sadrists Call for Sunnis to Fight Zarqawi


Al-Zaman/ AFP report that Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the Shiite spiritual leader, called Friday on his supporters to aid the authorities in combatting the perpetrators of violence, according to the members of a delegation that met with him. According to their statements, Sistani said, "Most Iraqis, and in particular the Shiites, face great hardships and numerous problems. It is necessary that they consult experts, and especially the learned. They must beware of enemies. Our enemies have multiplied, even though the Shiites, who follow the family of the Prophet, do not attack others. But their enemies, because of their political weakness, wreak murder and destruction." He added, "Here, we bear the responsibility to direct the people to help the state and prevent terrorism, and curb them and eliminate them, even if only by informing on them." He continued, "The Shiites, from the political and social point of view--even in the West--have come to be characterized by an absence of violence and refraining from infringing against the rights of others. The clerics of Najaf play a role in this excellent molding of character."

Sistani said, "It is a shame for Iraqi blood to be shed by other Iraqis." He concluded that ignorant inciters to violence attempt to spread anarchy [by promoting sectarian hatred] "even though it is useless to them and to the Iraqis, given that they believe in a single religious belief, pray toward a single point of adoration [Mecca], and share in common much among them."

Meanwhile, al-Hayat reports [Ar.] that Shaikh Hazim al-A'raji praised the people of Ramadi in his Friday prayers sermon at the mosque attached to the shrine of Imam Musa al-Kadhim . Al-A`raji, a follower of Muqtada al-Sadr, said that "our people" were standing against terrorism and the Zarqawi group. (For a Shiite preacher to refer to Sunni Arabs of Ramadi as "our people" is a deliberate appeal to pan-Islam, similar to that of Sistani.) He said, "The tribes in those regions have formed popular committes to struggle against Zarqawi and al-Qaeda in the area." On 19 January, the US military had announced fighting between Iraqi rebels in Ramadi and foreign fighters. Al-Hayat says that the Iraqi government hopes to make what happened in Ramadi a model for other provinces.

[Cole: Baghdad is surrounded and much of it is in the hands of the guerrillas, and they are starving it effectively of fuel and electricity, which doesn't sound to me like all this amazing progress is being made, as trumpeted by al-Hayat. Guerrillas launched a significat attack at Ramadi only a few days ago,which was repelled with US help.]
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Friday, January 27, 2006

The Victory of Hamas and the Miseries of Bush's Policies

My article about the victory of Hamas in the Palestinian elections is out at Salon.com.

Excerpt:


' Hamas, or the Islamic Resistance Movement, a branch of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, has come to power in Palestine. In his press conference on Thursday, Bush portrayed the Palestinian elections in the same way he depicts Republican Party victories over Democrats in the United States: "The people are demanding honest government. The people want services. They want to be able to raise their children in an environment in which they can get a decent education and they can find healthcare." He sounds like a spokesman for Hamas, underlining the irony that Bush and his party have given Americans the least honest government in a generation, have drastically cut services, and have actively opposed extension of healthcare to the uninsured in the United States.

But the president's attempt to dismiss the old ruling Fatah Party as corrupt and inefficient, however true, is also a way of taking the spotlight off his own responsibility for the stagnation in Palestine. Bush allowed then Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to sideline the ruling Fatah Party of Yasser Arafat, to fire missiles at its police stations, and to reduce its leader to a besieged nonentity. Sharon arrogantly ordered the murder of civilian Hamas leaders in Gaza, making them martyrs. Meanwhile, Israeli settlements continued to grow, the fatally flawed Oslo agreements delivered nothing to the Palestinians, and Bush and Sharon ignored new peace plans -- whether the so-called Geneva accord put forward by Palestinian and Israeli moderates or the Saudi peace plan -- that could have resolved the underlying issues. The Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, which should have been a big step forward for peace, was marred by the refusal of the Israelis to cooperate with the Palestinians in ensuring that it did not produce a power vacuum and further insecurity. '


The rest is here at Salon.com
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Minister of Industry Almost Killed
US Tilting to Sunni Arabs?


Assassinations in Kirkuk, a near-death of the minister of industry (and actual deaths of his bodyguards), the death of a GI and wounding of another in a roadside bombing, were among the violent incidents in Iraq on Thursday. Guerrillas also attacked a convoy of oil tankers, in their continued quest to starve Baghdad of energy, and they killed two clerics in the capital.

Another important labor union leader has been assassinated.

Iraq the Model: Iraqi journalists face jail time for writing critically about their society. This NYT piece implies that a Kurdish dissident journalist has been released after having been sentenced to 30 years for criticizing Kurdish warlord Massoud Barzani; as I understand it, he is to be retried.

Reuters reports that some Iraqi Shiites and other observers believe that the Bush administration is shifting away from its earlier alliance with the Iraqi Shiites, preferring the Iraqi Sunni Arabs. The rationale is said to be a dawning realization in Washington that the Iraqi Shiites would not react positively to a US attack on Iran. Given the increasing focus on Iran's nuclear energy program by Bush, his allies in the Iraqi South are becoming increasing liabilities, given their own warm relations with Tehran.

Al-Hayat [Ar.] reports that the military adviser to Jalal Talabani reported that there had been contacts with the Iraqi guerrillas for the purpose of increasing Iraqi security in all regions of Iraq. The newspaper alleged that Iraqi clans of Anbar Province for the second day continued a campaign against foreign fighters styling themselves al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia, capturing 270 of them. The clans around Ramadi are also said to have helped the Iraqi army capture 200 "terrorists." (See Gilbert Achcar's translation from yesterday, below). The article says that the clan leaders have also been talking to Sunni clerics, preparing the way for talks between the Iraqi government, the US led coalition, and guerrilla leaders as early as next week.

[Cole: I think Talabani's office is vastly exaggerating these developments, and don't trust al-Hayat's editorial line on these alleged conflicts within the guerrilla movement. Their articles on it read to me as though they are attempting to convince themselves, and perhaps the guerrillas, of this story. On the other hand, the story that the US military will meet next week with guerrilla leaders is entirely plausible. Such contacts are not new, and the question is whether they will produce anything of value.]

Gen. Casey has admitted that the US army is stretched in Iraq.

Further pipeline sabotage and bad weather at Basra will keep Iraqi exports to only about 1 million barrels a day for at least the next month.

A new report says that the US will not be able to use the $18 bn voted by Congress to complete water, sanitation and electricy projects related to rebuilding Iraq. Reuters says, "Only 49 of 136 planned water- and sanitation-related projects will be completed and only about 300 of 425 planned electricity-related projects." The article blames Saddam for having run down Iraq but does not mention the role of stringent US-backed international sanctions in degrading Iraqi society in the 1990s.
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Split in Sunni Guerrilla Movement

Gilbert Achcar kindly shares this translation of an article from al-Hayat on splits in the Sunni Arab guerrilla movement.



' The AMS: We Are Now Waging Two Battles: Against 'the Occupation' and Against 'the Terrorists'

Sunni Clans Take the Initiative of Launching a Campaign to Expel Zarqawi's Followers and 'Foreigners and Intruders'

From Al-Hayat Newspaper, London; January 26, 2006

Baghdad-London -- There are still more consequences to the wave of assassinations targeting Sunni political and religious figures participating in the political process, and the killing of 42 police recruits in Ramadi by extremist Islamist followers of Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of "al-Qaeda's Organization in the Land of the Two Rivers." A new escalation took the form of additional Arab Sunni tribal clans joining the campaign aimed at liquidating this organization.

The "Popular Clan Committees" launched a large campaign chasing Zarqawi's group in Ramadi "in order to expel them to Syria beyond Iraqi borders." Sheikh Osama al-Jedaan, the head of the al-Karabila clan in Qa'im, on the Syrian border, said that the "Clan Committees" have started a military campaign against the "terrorists," asserting that security formations composed of Ramadi inhabitants are searching for people wanted by the Iraqi government and by their own "government." He emphasized that this operation aims at expelling from Iraqi borders "foreigners and intruders" coming from other states of the region. Six armed groups belonging to "the Iraqi resistance" recently declared war on Zarqawi's "terrorist" organization.

A Sunni religious figure from the province of al-Anbar told Al-Hayat that the groups that destroyed the Sunni provinces belong to the "terrorists and takfiris" [a label attached to the most fanatical Islamic fundamentalists]. He added that the best measure to be taken in order to stabilize the situation is that the inhabitants of the province (the clans) expel these groups. He expressed his regret that some Sunni families gave refuge to "the terrorist elements" although they constitute no more than 50 per cent [certainly a typographic error for a much lesser percentage] of the armed men, attributing this to several reasons among which are "wrong understanding, material need, fear from them, or the desire to take revenge on foreign troops." He asserted that this support and the silence kept with regard to terrorist groups have ended after Sunni families suffered from "the assassinations targeting Sunni figures and the killing of police recruits, the responsibility of which was claimed by al-Qaeda's organization." He said that the resistance fractions acting within the "popular committees" to cleanse Ramadi have ceased their operations against US troops (a truce), but that this does not mean that they trust the Americans or disregard the necessity that they get out of Iraq.

This Sunni sheikh asserted that the mediation of the Ramadi notables between the resistance and US troops "have succeeded in convincing the resistance elements of the necessity of expelling the terrorists, and anyone who excommunicates [takfir] a Muslim Iraqi and kills Shias on the basis of their religious identity, but they did not succeed in increasing their confidence in US authorities."

One of the sheikhs of the Sunni al-Dulaim clan in Ramadi said that the city inhabitants have started to understand the true nature of the armed groups that kill in the name of religion and resistance. He told Al-Hayat that many Ramadi inhabitants have given material and logistical support to the Arab fighters, but understand nowadays the goal of these armed groups, which is to sow the seeds of "a sectarian conflict by killing Shias on the basis of their religious identity and excommunicating the people working in the police or in the government in general."

Moreover, a member of the al-Bubaz Sunni clan, the largest clan in Samarra, stated that his city was quiet and had gotten rid of the terrorists by the action of its seven major clans (Bu-Nisan, Bu-Abbas, Bu-Badr, and others), adding that "the inhabitants of Samarra are ready to support the clan committee in Ramadi, and that they stand by waiting for any sign in order to join them in fighting the terrorists."

In the same context, Issam al-Rawi, a member of the Association of Muslim Scholars, said that Arab Sunnis are now waging two battles, one against government apparatuses and the other against "terrorist gangs." Al-Rawi added that the AMS praises the efforts of the inhabitants of Ramadi to oppose terrorism, especially Zarqawi who "once excommunicates the Shias and their religious authorities, and another time excommunicates the Sunnis and the AMS, allowing Iraqi blood to be spilled." He explained that the AMS believes in resistance, but calls the terrorists to stop attacking Iraqis.

In the same way, a leader of the "Brigades of the 1920 Revolution" in al-Anbar told Al-Hayat that most "fractions of the patriotic Iraqi resistance" disapprove the way Zarqawi's organization deals with Iraqi civilians as well as his overdoing in targeting the police and army "in all regions of Iraq." [This last precision put between quote marks by the reporter hints at the very unfortunate sectarian twist -- now corrected apparently -- of many Iraqi armed groups who supported bloody attacks against gatherings of Iraqi police and army recruits as long as they were in Shia areas and changed their mind when the same turned to Sunni areas as happened recently in Ramadi.]

He said that "these fractions ["of the patriotic Iraqi resistance"] have called to concentrate the resistance efforts on targeting 'occupation' soldiers, instead of wasting time and effort in confrontations with the army, police and national guard, while occupation soldiers are thus enabled to recover." This does not mean that "Iraqi army and police will be immune from our attacks in case they targeted the 'mujahideen' or treated people badly or assaulted them."

He added that "the mujahideen have resorted to a new kind of operation reducing the risk for civilians, such as putting explosive charges on roads outside the cities and practicing sniping inside the cities." He also said that "the rift between the patriotic resistance and the extremists has worsened progressively, but that "the last straw was the extremists' attack on police recruits in Ramadi, at a time when most resistance fractions in al-Anbar had met and agreed unanimously on not hurting them as there is a need for police, especially in the city of Ramadi."

Published in Al-Hayat, Jan. 26, 2006, translated by Gilbert Achcar. '

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Thursday, January 26, 2006

Pipeline Blasted Again
Sunnis want Federalism postponed until 2009


Guerrillas blew up pipelines again on Wednesday, halting Iraqi petroleum exports through Turkey. There were some other bombings and shootings. Interior Ministry police commandos (usually Shiites) killed a Sunni cleric in Samarra. This looks bad.

A new report says that the Iraq quagmire is causing the US Army to reach the breaking point. The report notes that the army now appears to be meeting its recruiting goals by admitting high school dropouts. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, the worst SecDef in the history of the country, wants the military to move in the direction of high tech. I'd say he needs a high school and a university within the army if the dropouts are eventually going to operate that machinery.

Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa said that Arab peace keeping forces for Iraq would require that 1) a sovereign, Iraq, national-unity government ask for them and 2) that US troops withdraw. He said that Arab troops would decline to serve under a US command. An Arab peace keeping force, led by Syria, was deployed in Lebanon during the civil war there.

Iraq needs $60 billion to revive its industries, according to the Iraqi government.

Paul McLeary reports from Baghdad, ' These days, more American reporters are leaving Iraq than arriving. In large part, for the U.S. press, "The party's pretty much over." ' (A tip of the hat to CBS's Public Eye.

A Kurdish writer sentenced to 30 years in prison for "defaming Kurdistan" (a.k.a. warlord Massoud Barzani) will be retried. In civilized countries, journalists are not tried for criticizing governments.

Iraqi journalists constantly face threats, either from guerrillas or from supporters of government officials, for writing critically about either. Reuters reveals that there really is not any freedom of the press in Iraq, and nor could there be given the poor security situation and the unconventional civil war.

Ghali Hassan argues that the US military is another impediment to a free press in Iraq.

Al-Zaman /AFP report [Ar.] that Sunni Arab politicians renewed their opposition to loose federalism and regional confederacies when they met Wednesday with Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the Shiite cleric who leads the largest bloc in parliament. Salih Mutlak of the National Dialogue Council (11 seats) told Agence France Presse that the delegates insisted that loose federalism be abandoned before they would enter the new government. He said that this matter could be taken up by the next parliament, to be elected in 2009.

On another front, Virtue Party leader Nadim al-Jabiri said that the United Iraqi Alliance had broken pledges it had made to coalition partners about the distribution of compensatory seats. Virtue was given only one of these seats, whereas it had joined the United Iraqi Alliance on the promise that it would be given 15 regular seats and 5 compensatory ones. He said that most of the compensatory seats went to the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq and the Badr organization, while a few went to the Sadrist movement. He said that when he complained, the UIA leadership denied they had pledged him 5 compensatory seats.

Researcher Reidar Vissar analyzes the affiliation of the members of the United Iraqi Alliance. He concludes that they broke down as follows before the compensatory seats are figured in:


Sadrists (Muqtada): 23%
Da`wa: 23%
Independents: 22%
Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq and Badr: 19%
Virtue Party: 13%

Another 19 seats had yet to be apportioned when Vissar made this chart. Jabiri, above, is claiming that most of the 19 went to SCIRI. My own suspicion is that SCIRI and Badr are also much richer than the other factions inside the UIA, in part because of likely Iranian support. Still, an alliance of Sadrists and the Da`wa Party could form a powerful challenge to SCIRI leadership.
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Achcar on Basra & British

Gilbert Achcar kindly writes:



' Dear Friends,

I searched a couple of British newspapers today and could not find any mention of the news item reported in today's Al-Hayat and involving British troops in Basrah.
I decided therefore to translate it for your information.

The behavior of British troops in Southern Iraq, long praised as a model by contrast with the behavior of US troops, is proving as bad from the point of view of colonial-like arrogance.

Juan Cole reported the arrest on "Informed Comment" quoting an AP dispatch, with the following observation:

"The British military raided Iraqi police offices in Basra and arrested a number of police officers whom they suspected of being double agents for sectarian militias. What the Western press seldom notes is that such police were appointed by the elected governing council of Basra, which is dominated by Shiite religious parties that maintain paramilitaries. Actually, since the elected officials had a right to appoint the police under Iraqi law, whereas there is no legal instrument governing the conduct of British troops in Iraq, it is not clear from where the authority comes for the British to arrest Iraqi police officers."

The statement of the Governor of Basrah quoted below is clear enough.

Best,
Gilbert

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

British Forces Arrest 12 Police Officers in Basrah

The Governorate Council Considers Expelling Them from the City

Basrah- Al-Hayat, 2006-01-25


British forces raided yesterday morning the home of Major Jasim Hasan, the deputy director of the Criminal Intelligence Division in Basrah and arrested him with other members of his family, as well as his four guards.

The staff of the Intelligence Directorate, with the support of the Al-Hallaf clan to which the arrested officer belongs, held a demonstration in front of the Governorate offices, demanding the release of the detainees and the firing of General Hasan Sawadi, the commander of Basrah police force. The demonstrators shouted slogans against British troops, threatening anyone who collaborates with them, and affirming that the demonstrations will go on in front of the Governorate offices until their demands are satisfied.

Parents of detainees belonging to the Sadrist Current and held in the jails of the British troops joined the demonstrators, demanding the release of their sons and threatening the occupation forces of more attacks against them.

Mr Abu-Salam al-Khazaali, a member of the Basrah Governorate Council, said that it is high time to put an end to the behavior of the British, who “assaulted officers of the Police directorate and their families,” adding that “these officers are among the best members of the security services.” ... The Governor of Basrah, Muhammad al-Wa’eli, said that the Governorate Council is meeting “to issue important resolutions, including a resolution to expulse British troops from the city, and to refuse to deal with British firms and entrepreneurs operating in the Basrah Governorate.” He added that “British troops arrested 12 intelligence officers of the Ministry of Interior in Basrah yesterday morning without informing the administrative authorities.” He condemned “the irresponsible actions of British troops in the city and the arrest of members of the local authorities, without giving them prior notice and informing them about the measures.”… '


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Wednesday, January 25, 2006

7 Troops killed in 2 Days
Sunni Arabs warn of Paralysis


Guerrillas used roadside bombs to kill 7 US and coalition troops in the past two days in separate incidents.

Sunni Arab politicians in Iraq are complaining that the US has set up the new political system so as to favor sectarian outcomes and to produce gridlock.

The British military raided Iraqi police offices in Basra and arrested a number of police officers whom they suspected of being double agents for sectarian militias. What the Western press seldom notes is that such police were appointed by the elected governing council of Basra, which is dominated by Shiite religious parties that maintain paramilitaries. Actually, since the elected officials had a right to appoint the police under Iraqi law, whereas there is no legal instrument governing the conduct of British troops in Iraq, it is not clear from where the authority comes for the British to arrest Iraqi police officers.

The problem with Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad threatening the Shiite religious parties with a withdrawal of support for training Iraqi troops is that a) the threat is not plausible and b) the US training effort can easily be replaced -- with that of Iran. The US cannot actually afford to let Iraq go down the drain, and is not going to stop training the new Iraqi military, even if the Shiites do insist on retaining the Ministery of the Interior (which they will).

The NYT reports on the massive fraud and misuse by US government personnel of funds supposedly dedicated to rebuilding in Iraq. What with the charges against DeLay and the "Abramoff and his 30 Republicans" scandal, the Republican Party kleptocracy appears to have practiced its graft on both sides of the Atlantic. Alas, when you steal from Americans, they just have less money for their families and they'll gladly vote you back in. When you steal from Iraqi reconstruction, you get thousands of Iraqis killed.

Iraq's ministry of labor announced Tuesday that 20 percent of Iraqis live in dire poverty. In addition, some 171,000 families live on $30 a month.

[Ar.] Sources in the Sadr Movement announced Tuesday that US forces had released from their prison Shaikh Abd al-Jawad al-Isawi, a Sadrist leader of Kut, after having held him for more than a year. Muqtada al-Sadr, the young Shiite nationalist leader, heads a substantial bloc in the new parliament. Several other Sadrist leaders of Kut are still in US custody.

Iraqi petroleum production fell to only 1.5 million barrels a day in the last quarter of 2005, only about half what it was in the last years of Saddam Hussein. There is no prospect of earlier improvement, the experts say.

A small demonstration was mounted Tuesday in Samarra to protest the targeting by guerrilla fighters in the city of local young men who sought to be recruited by the police.

Patrick Boylan condemns the wanton destruction of Iraq's cultural heritage at the hands of the United States in 2003 and after. He points out that during the Gulf War and its aftermath, the US was careful on this issue, but that some sort of deliberate decision appears to have been taken to disregard it this time. Why the difference? Let me just whisper two words to Professor Boylan: "Donald Rumsfeld." Or just one word: "Philistine." Oops, now I've gone and been redundant.

Current History has a special issue out on Iraq. I have a piece about the Shiite crescent.

Dilip Hiro looks at the victory of Muslim fundamentalist parties in the various elections recently held in the Middle East.
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Tuesday, January 24, 2006

Rafsanjani Warns against US Policy in Iraq
Muqtada Demands Islamic Rule


Former Iranian president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani said Monday as he met with young Iraqi Shiite nationalist, Muqtada al-Sadr, that the US sought to divide and rule in Iraq. Iran Focus says, ' “The goals of the occupiers are in contradiction to the wishes of the Iraqi people. By influencing the political events in that country they will try to force their imperialist goals on the future government”, Rafsanjani said, adding that Iraqi groups had a responsibility to work together to thwart the U.S.’s aims.'

It reports of Muqtada, ' He went on to say that the U.S.-led forces in Iraq were attempting to decrease the influence of religion in Iraqi society. “The Iraqi people want a country run under Islamic rule”, Sadr said. '

Bombings and a sectarian kidnapping of two dozen Sunni Arabs in north Baghdad, along with the deaths of 4 GIs, marked events on Monday in Iraq. A head of the Sunni pious endowments board was assassinated.

Under Iraqi law, the new parliament must meet to choose a president within 15 days of the certification of the election results, e.g. around Feb. 18. The parliamentarians are, however, putting aside this provision of the law and are making no promises as to when they will be able to form a government.

Iraqi guerrilla groups attacked US and other targets 34,000 times in 2005, up 30% from the year before. The number of roadside bombs deployed nearly doubled to over 10,000, and the number of casualties was up. Any way you measure it, these statistics indicate that the US has failed miserably in counter-insurgency efforts in Iraq.

Iraqi professionals are fleeing the country, which makes the prospect of rebuilding even dimmer.

A preliminary inspector general report on the US reconstruction effort in Iraq finds it plagued by poor planning and poor implementation, according to the NYT.

US contractors are pulling out of Iraq, as the funds for reconstruction dry up.

Iraq is paying Turkish firms $1 billion in arrears for fuel. They had ceased supplying it in protest against the Iraqi failure to pay. In other news, two Turkish banks are planning to open branches in Iraqi Kurdistan.

These recent photos from Iraq, several of them disturbing (be forewarned), are on the web but never picked up by major newspapers or television in the US.
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Top Ten Mistakes of the Bush Administration in Reacting to Al-Qaeda

Usamah Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri murdered 3,000 Americans, and they both issued tapes in the past week, blustering and threatening us with more of the same. Most of us aren't wild about paying for the Bush administration with our taxes, but one thing we have a right to expect is that our government would protect us from mass murderers and would chase them down and arrest them. It has not done that. When asked why he hasn't caught Bin Laden, Bush replies, "Because he's hidin'." Is Bush laughing at us?

On September 11, 2001, the question was whether we had underestimated al-Qaeda. It appeared to be a Muslim version of the radical seventies groups like the Baader Meinhoff gang or the Japanese Red Army. It was small, only a few hundred really committed members who had sworn fealty to Bin Laden and would actually kill themselves in suicide attacks. There were a few thousand close sympathizers, who had passed through the Afghanistan training camps or otherwise been inducted into the world view. But could a small terrorist group commit mayhem on that scale? Might there be something more to it? Was this the beginning of a new political force in the Middle East that could hope to roll in and take over, the way the Taliban had taken over Afghanistan in the 1990s? People asked such questions.

Over four years later, there is no doubt. Al-Qaeda is a small terrorist network that has spawned a few copy-cats and wannabes. Its breakthrough was to recruit some high-powered engineers in Hamburg, which it immediately used up. Most al-Qaeda recruits are marginal people, people like Zacarias Moussawi and Richard Reid, who would be mere cranks if they hadn't been manipulated into trying something dangerous. Muhammad al-Amir (a.k.a Atta) and Ziad Jarrah were highly competent scientists, who could figure the kinetic energy of a jet plane loaded with fuel. There don't seem to be significant numbers of such people in the organization. They are left mostly with cranks, petty thieves, drug smugglers, bored bank tellers, shopkeepers, and so forth, persons who could pull off a bombing of trains in Madrid or London, but who could not for the life of them do a really big operation.

The Bush administration and the American Right generally has refused to acknowledge what we now know. Al-Qaeda is dangerous. All small terrorist groups can do damage. But it is not an epochal threat to the United States or its allies of the sort the Soviet Union was (and that threat was consistently exaggerated, as well).

In fact, the United States invaded a major Muslim country, occupied it militarily, tortured its citizens, killed tens of thousands, tinkered with the economy-- did all those things that Muslim nationalists had feared and warned against, and there hasn't even been much of a reaction from the Muslim world. Only a few thousand volunteers went to fight. Most people just seem worried that the US will destabilize their region and leave a lot of trouble behind them. People are used to seeing Great Powers do as they will. A Syrian official before the war told a journalist friend of mine that people in the Middle East had been seeing these sorts of invasions since Napoleon took Egypt in 1798. "Well," he shrugged, "usually they leave behind a few good things when they finally leave."

Because they exaggerate the scale of the conflict, and because they use it cynically, Bush and Cheney have grossly mismanaged the struggle against al-Qaeda and Muslim radicalism after September 11. Here are their chief errors:

1. Bush vastly exaggerates al-Qaeda's size, sweep and importance, while failing to invest in genuine counterterrorist measures such as port security or security for US nuclear plants.

2. Bush could have eradicated the core al-Qaeda group by putting resources into the effort in 2002. He did not, leaving al-Zawahiri and Bin Laden to taunt us, inspire our enemies and organize for years after the Taliban were defeated. It would be as though Truman had allowed Hitler to broadcast calls for terrorism against the US from some hiding place as late as 1949.

3. Bush opened a second front against Iraq before he had put Afghanistan on a sound footing.

4. Bush gutted the US constitution, tossing out the Fourth Amendment, by assiduously spying on Americans without warrants. None of those spying efforts has been shown to have resulted in any security benefits for the United States. Bush says that he wants to watch anyone who calls the phone numbers associated with al-Qaeda. But some of those phone numbers were for food delivery or laundry. We want a judge to sign off on a wire tap so that innocent Americans are not spied on by the government.

5. Bush attempted to associate the threat from al-Qaeda with Iran and Syria. Iran is a fundamentalist Shiite country that hates al-Qaeda. Syria is a secular Arab nationalist country that hates al-Qaeda. Indeed, Syria tortured al-Qaeda operatives for Bush, until Bush decided to get Syria itself. Bush and Cheney have cynically used a national tragedy to further their aggressive policies of Great Power domination.

6. Bush by invading Iraq pushed the Iraqi Sunni Arabs to desert secular Arab nationalism. Four fifths of the Sunni Arab vote in the recent election went to hard line Sunni fundamentalist parties. This development is unprecedented in Iraqi history. Iraqi Sunni Arabs are nationalists, whether secular or religious, and there is no real danger of most of them joining al-Qaeda. But Bush has spread political Islam and has strengthened its influence.

7. Bush diverted at least one trillion dollars in US security spending from the counter-terrorism struggle against al-Qaeda to the Iraq debacle, at the same time that he has run up half a trillion dollar annual deficits, contributing to a spike in inflation, harming the US economy, and making the US less effective in counterterrorism.

8. Counterterrorism requires friendly allies and close cooperation. The Bush administration alienated France, Germany and Spain, along with many Middle Eastern nations that had long waged struggles of their own against terrorist groups. Bush is widely despised and has left America isolated in the world. Virtually all the publics of all major nations hate US policy. One poll showed that in secular Turkey where Muslim extremism is widely reviled and Bin Laden is generally disliked, the public preferred Bin Laden to Bush. Bush is widely seen as more dangerous than al-Qaeda. This image is bad for US counterterrorism efforts.

9. Bush transported detainees to torture sites in Eastern Europe. Under European Union laws, both torture and involvement in torture are illegal,and European officials can be tried for these crimes. HOw many European counterterrorism officials will want to work closely with the Americans if, for all they know, this association could end in jail time? Indeed, in Washington it is said that a lot of our best CIA officers are leaving, afraid that they are being ordered to do things that are illegal, and for which they could be tried once another administration comes to power in Washington.

10. Bush's failure to capture Bin Laden and al-Zawahiri allows them to continue to grandstand, to continue to frighten the public, to continue to affect financial markets, and to continue to plot. Al-Zawahiri almost certainly plotted the 7/7 London subway bombings himself, and gloated about it when he issued Muhammad Siddique Khan's suicide statement. Misplaced Bush priorities are getting our allies hit. The CIA is reduced to firing predators at villages because our counterterrorism efforts have been starved for funds by the Iraq quagmire. If al-Qaeda does pull off another American operation, it may well give Bush and Cheney an opportunity to destroy the US constitution altogether, finally giving Bin Laden his long-sought revenge on Americans for the way he believes they have forced Palestinians and other Muslims to live under lawless foreign domination or local tyranny.
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Monday, January 23, 2006

Muqtada Pledges Defense of Iran from US attack
Iranian FM calls for US Troop Withdrawal from Iraq


AP reports that guerrilla violence left dozens dead or wounded in Iraq over the weekend. The young men who attempted to volunteer for the Iraqi police force, kidnapped last week, turned up as two dozen corpses on Sunday.

Muqtada al-Sadr, visiting Iran, has pledged the support of his militia, the Mahdi Army, to Iran in case that country were attacked by the United States. The forces of the young Shiite nationalist fought US forces in April-May and again in August of 2004.

Wire services note the remarks of the Iranian foreign minister:


' "The American forces are there to dominate Iraqi interests," Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, who met the firebrand cleric, was quoted as saying by the official news agency IRNA. "The crisis existing in Iraq can be resolved with the departure of the occupying forces," the minister said. IRNA quoted Sadr as saying: "We are happy that ties between the Iranian and the Iraqi nations are developing every day and we always support the strengthening of Iraq's relations with all neighbours, especially the Islamic republic of Iran." '


Of course the Mahdi Army would attack the US if Washington falls upon Iran. But it should be noted that of all the major Shiite foces, the Sadrists are the least close to Iran. Al-Sadr's remarks must be seen as an attempt to gain support inside Iraq. He had earlier tended to cede the position of "Iran's best friend" to his coalition partner and sometimes rival, the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq. Indeed, the Sadr movement activists have often complained about Iranian dominance of Shiism.

SCIRI's Badr Corps militia, it was alleged by Newsweek, is still on the Iranian payroll.

Any attack by the US or Israel on Iran's nuclear energy facilities would certainly bring massive crowds into the streets in protest in neihboring Iraq. The resulting violence and the attacks on US troops are not important demographically, but they could cost the Republican Party its majority in Congress, if the American public becomes alarmed that the US is losing (even more) control.

This Iraqi/Congressional factor is among the reasons I believe that the current hard line taken by the US against Tehran is mere saber rattling.

The LA Times reports on US hopes of convincing the Shiite religious parties to give up control of the ministry of the interior, on the grounds that they are too tied to sectarian militias. I am quoted, saying basically, 'and they would do that why, exactly?" They did win the election.

My interview with journalist Sarah Phelan is now online. I talk about the difficulties the US has had in Iraq.

Some of what I've been up to while I've been traveling is apparent in this article from UCLA on Jihadi recruitment and Zawahiri.
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Sunday, January 22, 2006

2 Marines Killed
UIA picks up some smaller parties


Two US Marines were reported having been killed on Friday.

Newsweek details how the guerrilla movement has denied Iraq the oil income that the Bush administration had depended on for reconstruction. There have been 20 big attacks on the most important parts of the Baiji refinery complex in the past year.

Al-Hayat reports that [Ar.] the fundamentalist Shiite United Iraqi Alliance, with 128 seats in parliament, has picked up several allies. The Risaliyun or Message Party, a Sadrist group with 2 seats, had already announced that it will vote with the UIA. In addition, the Iraqi Nation Party of Mithal Al-Alusi (1 seat) will vote with the UIA, as will the Christian Mesopotamia Party of Yonadim Kana (1 seat). These allies bring the UIA to 132. It needs 138 for a simple majority, so it just needs 6 more allies to have a stable government.

Inside the UIA, al-Hayat says, the fierce competition for the post of next prime minister has led to a smear campaign against Nadim al-Jabiri of the fundamentalist Shiite Virtue Party, whom some are accusing of having been a Baathist. They alleged that he is disqualified by the debaathifcation laws from holding high political office. The Virtue Party denies the accusation and condemned the "coarse game" some in the UIA are playing.

UIA sources said that rather than reviving the Shiite-Kurdish alliance of the last government, they would seek a government of national unity and would attempt to bring in the Sunni Arabs, so as to avoid giving the Kurds a golden opportunity to increase their demands.

He also said that it would be risky for the UIA to depend on an alliance with the small parties, since that would produce an unstable government always in danger of falling.

Abu Musab al-Zaraqawi, the notorious terrorist leader, is seeking new allies in Iraq.

Some 9 persons were killed in guerrilla violence on Saturday. Some were bodyguards of president Jalal Talabani.
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Saturday, January 21, 2006

Iraqi Election Results: Shiites Near Majority in Parliament

Shiite clerical leader Abdul Aziz al-Hakim narrowly avoided being assassinated as the election results were announced in Iraq on Friday.

The Shiite fundamentalist coalition, the United Iraqi Alliance, won 128 of 275 seats in parliament. It needs 138 for a simple majority. The Risaliyun or Message Party won 2 seats; it represents the Sadr movement of young Shiite clerical nationalist Muqtada al-Sadr, and has announced that it will vote with the UIA. So for all practical purposes, the UIA has 130 seats, 8 short of a simple majority.

[Revised]: The Kurdistan Alliance has 53 seats. I am informed by Peter Galbraith that the Kurdish Islamists, who gained 5 seats, will vote with the Kurdistan Alliance. Together the religious Shiites and the Kurds therefore have 188. A 2/3s majority of 275 would be 184. By that calculation, the two have the votes to choose a president, who will certainly ask the UIA to form a government and provide the prime minister.

I'm not sure that the UIA can pick up the 8 from the small parties that would give it a semi-permanent majority across issues. The Yazidis, a heterodox religious group, have one seat, and they are afraid of Muslim fundamentalism. The Christians have a seat and they deeply dislike the Shiite religious parties, as well as the Kurds. The Turkmen have one seat. These are presumably Sunni Turkmen and if so they deeply dislike the Kurds and Shiites. Mithal al-Alusi, a Western-style liberal has a seat, and he will avoid the UIA. A small liberal Sunni party of ex-Baathist Mishaan Juburi has three seats and will not ally with the Shiites. The Kurdish Islamists have 5 seats and, being Sunnis, may or may not vote with the Shiite fundamentalists, depending on the specific issue. These 12 seats are the only "independents" in parliament and would only vote with the UIA if they were heavily bribed with enormous perquisites. The only argument for 8 of these to join the Shiites would be that by doing so they would gain some enormous influence far beyond their small numbers in society.

Still, as the largest cohesive bloc, the Shiite religious coalition will certainly form the government for the next 4 years and will provide the prime minister. Their victory is a major setback for the Bush administration, which had backed the secular list of Iyad Allawi, al-Iraqiyah. The Iraqiyah's representation was substantially cut back, to only 25 seats. The Shiite religious parties have warm relations with Tehran and form a new arena for Iranian influence in the Middle East. The Bush administration hope that Allawi or his list members can be shoe-horned into important posts in the new government strikes me as forlorn unless there is American coercion of some sort. They lost, and the spoils go to winners.

The UIA can govern, as Ariel Sharon used to in Israel, however, by putting together an ad hoc parliamentary coalition on each individual issue. Where implementation of Islamic law is the issue, probably the Sunni fundamentalists of the Iraqi Accord Front (44 seats) will vote with the UIA. Where SCIRI supports loose federalism, it can depend on the Kurds' 58 seats to offset possible defections from the Sadr faction, which favors strong central government.

Al-Hayat [Ar.] argues that this result leads not so much to a national unity government as to a hung parliament or an extremely weak and fragile ruling coalition where the prime minister is always in danger of losing a vote of no confidence.

The same source reports that Ammar al-Hakim, son of Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, objected strongly to the formula used by the electoral commission in the distribution of seats. He said that some small parties which had not actually reached the cut-off for a seat (some 40,000 votes) had been awarded a seat nevertheless, contrary to the practice of the previous election. The UIA clearly feels that its actual majority was stolen from it by the new procedure.

Likewise, the Turkmen argued that they are 11 percent of Kirkuk and have substantial populations in Ninevah province, and it is not possible that they should only have received one seat. (Note that the major Turkmen city of Tal Afar was emptied in the run-up to the elections by an American assault, deeply disadvantaging the Turkmen in this election vis a vis the Kurds). Likewise, the (Sunni) National Accord Front insisted that it had half the votes in Baghdad but that there was election fraud. - al-Zaman.

One question is whether the 58 Sunni Arabs, the 5 Kurdish Islamists and the Sadr faction will combine to pass an early resolution by simple majority demanding an immediate US withdrawal of troops.

Significant Sunni participation in the parliament, with 58 seats altogether, will not affect the guerrilla movement, which rejects the new style of politics. Guerrillas have unleashed grisly bombing campaigns that show no sign of letting up.

(Still traveling. Will try to comment on al-Qaeda developments soon.)
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