Informed Comment

Thoughts on the Middle East, History, and Religion

Juan Cole is President of the Global Americana Institute

Friday, February 29, 2008

Fact Check on McCain and Political Progress in Iraq

John McCain has been running mainly against Barack Obama in recent days, and has been running on the successes he says that the Iraqi government has racked up.

McCain (and the US corporate media) manages to avoid noticing that Turkey has staged a major incursion into Iraq and still has ground troops there and is refusing US requests to withdraw! Ironically, Gen. Yasar Buyukanit, the Turkish chief of staff used McCain's own language against the Bush administration, rejecting the idea of any timetable for withdrawal. He said Turkey could be in Iraq for as long as a year! Turkey claims to have killed 230 guerrillas of the Kurdish Workers Party inside Iraq in the past week. I mean, how great can the situation in Iraq be when our NATO ally has invaded the country we militarily occupy in order to kill guerrillas harbored by our Iraqi Kurdish allies, who have been slipping across the border for which we are responsible in order to kill dozens of NATO troops in eastern Anatolia?

Aljazeera English has video:



McCain is completely uninterested in the cost of the Iraq War. He hasn't seemed to notice that oil has surged to $103 a barrel, in part on fears of the effect of the Turkish incursion into Iraq.

McCain, who voted to go into Iraq and said it was "important" to do so, does not seem to have noticed that the price tag for it and Afghanistan is rapidly rising to $3 trillion to $5 trillion over the long term, or $10,000 for each man, woman and child in America. For a family of four, that is $40,000 or a whole year's salary that George W. Bush has stolen from us and given to his friends at Halliburton, Hunt Oil, Exxon Mobile, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Electric, etc., etc., etc. (See Tom Engelhardt on this and other morsels in Bush's Mulligatawny Soup of a war). Not to mention the nearly 4,000 killed in action and the thousands seriously wounded, with brain trauma, spinal injuries, confined to wheel chairs or forever impaired, who will need to be taken care of the rest of their lives (and guess to which address the bill will come-- not Crawford, Texas.) Is the war really unrelated to the growing bad times in the US economy?

Bush's loathsome toadies actually come out and say that all this spending of our blood and treasure is the price of security. But Iraq did not attack the US and was no danger to the US, and the Iraq War is actually actively producing a terrorist danger to our security, according to veteran CIA official and now security analyst Marc Sageman. All this is not to mention the invidious way the Bush administration has framed the terrorism issue, as Noam Chomsky points out at Tomdispatch.

Back to McCain: Running on the efficiency and effectiveness of the failed state in Baghdad would be an extremely risky strategy if in fact the US corporate media were telling the American people the truth (or even just anything) about what is actually going on in Iraq and Iraqi politics. So here is a fact check on two of the claims McCain is making about supposed political progress in Iraq. He has been touting a new law on the treatment of ex-Baathists (who are mostly Sunni and have been treated harshly, contributing to the violence). And he has been ecstatic about the passing of a law on the provinces and some other measures, like the budget. But is any of these laws really likely to lead to ethnic reconciliation?

In his recent response to a measure introduced by Senator Russ Feingold aimed at ending the Iraq War, John McCain ridiculed Iraq War critics who doubted the surge and doubted provincial reconciliation (as at al-Anbar):

"In the face of these new facts, supporters of withdrawal changed their argument yet again. Maybe the surge had brought about greater security, they said . . . But this was irrelevant, they said, so long as national level political reconciliation is lacking – and since we can never expect that, the troops must leave. Yet they were wrong again. In January, the Iraqi parliament passed the long-awaited de-Baathification law that restores the eligibility of thousands of former party members for government jobs lost because of their Baathist affiliation."


In fact, the so-called "debaathification law" passed in January was ruined by the followers of Muqtada al-Sadr in the Iraqi parliament. Far from promoting reconciliation between Shiites, Kurds and ex-Baathists, it was roundly denounced by ex-Baathist parliamentarians such as Iyad Allawi and Salih Mutlak. The law may forcibly retire another 20,000 to 30,000 largely Sunni ex-Baathists from their jobs, and it excludes them from many important ministries. Allawi and others are afraid that its language aims at excluding them from politics altogether. The International Center for Transitional Justice warned (pdf) that the law would actually make for less reconciliation!

Sam Dagher reports from Baghdad,

' Iraq's parliament passed a new law on Jan. 12 amending de-Baathification legislation . . but critics say it is even stricter than the first and offers even fewer chances for thousands of embittered, high-ranking Baathists to return to the fold . . .

Izzat Shabender, a secular Shiite parliamentarian from the party of ex-prime minister Iyad Allawi, who was on the committee that dealt with the law, says senior Baathists that he's in contact with, mainly in Jordan and Syria, have rejected the law. "It did not solve the problem politically, which is the core of the matter." '


Now back to starry-eyed McCain (same link as above) on all that political reconciliation:

McCain: "Earlier this month, a provincial powers law passed that devolves a significant amount of power to the provinces and mandates new provincial elections by October 1 of this year. The parliament passed a partial amnesty for detainees that can facilitate reconciliation among the sects, and it completed a landmark 2008 budget."

Oooops. As usual, McCain is too optimistic too soon. The LA Times reports that:

' Iraq's presidential council Wednesday rejected a law on the powers of local government that was approved by parliament and touted by the Bush administration as a sign of reconciliation between the country's ethnic and religious groups. The three-man council asked that parliament reexamine the complicated and multifaceted law when it reconvenes March 18. '


The LAT notes that the rejection of this law could place in jeopardy the package of laws passed in February, which McCain boasts about, including the budget and the prisoner amnesty.

At the time, the way the laws were passed, without an individual voice vote of the members of parliament, was decried as unconstitutional, in any case. Now the most important of the three has been rejected by the presidency council.

The law on the provinces allowed the prime minister to dismiss provincial governors. Since the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq controls the provincial governments of much of the Shiite south, it doesn't want the federal government to be able to remove them and so weaken ISCI's power base. Likewise, the Kurds are very suspicious of any move to strengthen the central government, because of their memory of Saddam Hussein's brutal interventions against them from Baghdad.

But the law also had set provincial elections for October 1, and this was something the Sunni Arabs very much wanted, since they boycotted the first round of provincial elections and so their provinces don't have representative governments.

The Islamic Supreme Council, in contrast, is afraid that if new provincial elections are held, it might be swept from power in Baghdad and much of the south by the followers of Muqtada al-Sadr, who are Iraqi nativists and see ISCI as an Iranian cat's paw.

So, the political progress of which McCain boasted, and which he threw in the face of Senator Feingold and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, has largely been a chimera. Even where parliament has passed laws, there is no evidence that they have contributed or will contribute to actually reducing ethnic and sectarian hatred in Iraq.

McCain argues that violence is down in 17 of 18 provinces. That argument itself suggests the irrelevancy of the US to Iraq. There are no US troops to speak of in the 3 northern Kurdish provinces, or in the southern 4 provinces from which the British have largely withdrawn. There are few US troops in most of the 8 provinces where Shiites predominate. There was no troop escalation or "surge" in the Sunni al-Anbar province. So if violence has declined in 17 of 18 provinces, US policy cannot possibly have anything to do with most of that. General Petraeus has had significant successes in Baghdad, though at the unfortunate (an unintentional) cost of further turning it into a Shiite city from which most Sunnis have been ethnically cleansed. But Petraeus is doing the practical work of trying to make a bad situation better, and makes no claims for success in the political realm in Iraq. McCain is, in contrast, just doing US domestic politics with those hard won achievements of our suffering troops, and is mostly just running on pie in the sky.

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Thursday, February 28, 2008

Burke's Peerage:
Queen Elizabeth II Descended from the Prophet Muhammad

I was surprised that the writers of comments over at Salon.com did not know the below. It is common knowledge to anyone interested in genealogy.

I know that it is hard for people invested in a hard East/ West dichotomy to imagine that the icon of Western civilization, the British royal family, has Arab Muslim antecedents (along with a host of other nationalities of course.) But it does.

The Greater Mediterranean got all mixed up over millennia. Most Sicilians (i.e. most Italian-Americans) also have Arab Muslim ancestors. It works the other way around, too. It is obvious that a lot of Egyptians, Lebanese and Jordanians have descent from the Christian European Crusaders.

This is connected to just pointing out that having ancestors named Hussein is more common among Europeans and Americans than is usually realized. Elizabeth II can't be descended from the Prophet Muhammad without also being descended from his grandson, the original Husayn / Hussein, since that is the line of descent of the Sayyids.



'United Press International
October 10, 1986
MOSLEMS IN BUCKINGHAM PALACE


Mixed in with Queen Elizabeth's blue blood is the blood of the Moslem prophet Mohammed, according to Burke's Peerage, the geneological guide to royalty. The relation came out when Harold B. Brooks-Baker, publishing director of Burke's, wrote Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher to ask for better security for the royal family. ''The royal family's direct descent from the prophet Mohammed cannot be relied upon to protect the royal family forever from Moslem terrorists,'' he said. Probably realizing the connection would be a surprise to many, he added, ''It is little known by the British people that the blood of Mohammed flows in the veins of the queen. However, all Moslem religious leaders are proud of this fact.''

Brooks-Baker said the British royal family is descended from Mohammed through the Arab kings of Seville, who once ruled Spain. By marriage, their blood passed to the European kings of Portugal and Castille, and through them to England's 15th century King Edward IV. '

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Obama Scores against McCain

So first came the question posed by Tim Russert and Barack Obama's answer in Tuesday evening's debate in Cleveland, which went like this according to the official transcript:

' MR. RUSSERT: . . . do you reserve a right as American president to go back into Iraq, once you have withdrawn, with sizable troops in order to quell any kind of insurrection or civil war?

SEN. OBAMA: . . . Now, I always reserve the right for the president -- as commander in chief, I will always reserve the right to make sure that we are looking out for American interests. And if al Qaeda is forming a base in Iraq, then we will have to act in a way that secures the American homeland and our interests abroad. So that is true, I think, not just in Iraq, but that's true in other places. That's part of my argument with respect to Pakistan. . .'


Note that Obama was simply responding to Russert's hypothetical, which assumed that the US was already out of Iraq but that in the aftermath, there was "insurrection" or "civil war." The world that Russert imagined was presumably one in which Iraq had firmed up enough for the US to get out, but then at some later time it developed substantial civil unrest. Russert was presumably attempting to find out if the Democratic candidates were adopting an isolationist position, of getting out and staying out. Obama implied that no, if al-Qaeda came back to Iraq and formed a new base years from now, he would "act" in such a way as to "secure American interests." He is not an isolationist. Note that he was not specific about how exactly he would act.

So then, according to MSNBC, McCain tried to make some hay, admitting he had not actually heard Obama's exact statement.

' “…I am told that Senator Obama made the statement that if Al Qaeda came back to Iraq after he withdraws -- after the American troops are withdrawn -- then he would send military troops back, if Al Qaeda established a military base in Iraq. I have some news: Al Qaeda is in Iraq. Al Qaeda, it's called Al Qaeda in Iraq, and my friends if we left they wouldn't be establishing a base, they wouldn't be establishing a base, they'd be taking a country. And I'm not going to allow that to happen my friends. I will not surrender. I will not surrender to Al Qaeda.” '


But Obama had not said anything of the sort. He was answering a journalist's question about the future. That McCain cannot be bothered to get the exact quote before he puts words in his opponent's mouth and makes a lot of wild, inaccurate charges, doesn't suggest he could be trusted with sensitive diplomacy or other presidential tasks.

Moreover, the allegation that he makes about there being 'al-Qaeda in Iraq' that could well take over the country is part lie and part insanity. The Sunni Arabs are no more than 20% of the Iraqi population. How could a tiny minority from within them take over the whole?

The technical definition of al-Qaeda is operatives who have sworn fealty to Usama bin Laden. There were only a few hundred of them. I doubt whether more than a handful of such individuals are in Iraq.

So there isn't any "al-Qaeda" in Iraq in the technical sense. There are "Excommunicating Holy Warriors" (Takfiri Jihadis), i.e. devotees of political Islam who are violent and willing to deploy terror for political purposes. They declare other Muslims who disagree with them "not Muslims,"-- thus the "excommunicating" bit. But there are only a few hundred foreign fighters. A small minority of Iraqis has associated with them. They don't call themselves 'al-Qaeda in Iraq.' The major such group is "The Islamic State of Iraq." And to say that they have "bases" in Iraq is pretty grandiose. They have some safe houses and try to take and hold neighborhoods, so far with indifferent success.

The idea that this small minority of violent Muslim fundamentalists could take over Iraq is completely crazy. They haven't even been able to keep their toehold in Baghdad-- the Sunnis have been largely ethnically cleansed from the capital by Shiite militias.

So the Shiites would not allow an "al-Qaeda" takeover of Iraq. Neither would the Kurds. Nor would most Sunni Arabs (as in al-Anbar Province, where the Dulaim tribe is at daggers drawn with the Excommunicating Holy Warriors).

Moreover, the neighbors would not allow the radical Sunnis to take over. Iran would sit on its hands while Shiites were massacred in Baghdad? Secular Turkey would allow this development? Baathist Syria? Hashemite Jordan (which played a major role in tracking down and killing Abu Musab al-Zarqawi)?

McCain's assertions that "al-Qaeda" has a strong position in Iraq or has any chance of taking over the country if the US leaves are both inaccurate. One is an error, the other is a dark but insubstantial fantasy.

Obama replied:
'“I've got some news for John McCain, that is there was no such thing Al Qaeda in Iraq until George Bush and John McCain decided to invade.

“I've got some news for John McCain. I've got some news for John McCain. He took us into a war, along with George Bush that should have never been authorized, never been waged. They took their eye off the people who were responsible for 9/11 and that would be Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, that is stronger now than at any time since 2001. I've been paying attention John McCain!

“John McCain may like to say that he wants to follow Osama bin Laden to the gates of Hell. But so far all he's done is follow George Bush into a misguided war in Iraq that's cost us thousands of lives and billions of dollars and that I intend to bring to an end so that we can actually start going after Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and in the hills of Pakistan, like we should have been doing in the first place. That's the news John McCain! '


Obama is correct that there was no al-Qaeda in Iraq before Bush overthrew the Iraqi government. I haven't been able to get anyone interested in it, but there is proof positive that the Baath authorities were very scared of al-Qaeda and that when Abu Musab al-Zarqawi showed up in Iraq, they put out an APB on him and branded him dangerous. (Dick Cheney told fairy tales about how Zarqawi was put up in fancy hotels by a solicitous Saddam.)

So to sum up, McCain shot from the hip. He grossly mischaracterized Obama's stance. He hadn't bothered to get the exact quote. Then he made wild and implausible statements about "al-Qaeda" in Iraq, alleging that they are capable of taking over the country. Then Obama let him have it with both barrels.
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Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Barack Hussein Obama, Omar Bradley, Benjamin Franklin and other Semitically Named American Heroes

At Cincinnati, Bill Cunningham, according to the LAT, who "introduced presidential candidate John McCain at a rally here today accused Barack Obama of sympathizing with 'world leaders who want to kill us' and invoked Obama's middle name -- three times calling him 'Barack Hussein Obama.' " John McCain repudiated Cunningham's low tactics and said that using the middle name like that three times was "inappropriate" and would never happen again at one of his rallies.

I want to say something about Barack Hussein Obama's name. It is a name to be proud of. It is an American name. It is a blessed name. It is a heroic name, as heroic and American in its own way as the name of General Omar Nelson Bradley or the name of Benjamin Franklin. And denigrating that name is a form of racial and religious bigotry of the most vile and debased sort. It is a prejudice against names deriving from Semitic languages!



Christian, Western heroes have often been bequeathed Middle Eastern names. Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar, the medieval Spanish hero, carried the name El Cid, from the Arabic al-Sayyid, "the lord."

Barack and Hussein are Semitic words. Americans have been named with Semitic names since the founding of the Republic. Fourteen of our 43 presidents have had Semitic names (see below). And, American English contains many Arabic-derived words that we use every day and without which we would be much impoverished. America is a world civilization with a world heritage, something Cunninghamism will never understand.

Barack is a Semitic word meaning "to bless" as a verb or "blessing" as a noun. In its Hebrew form, barak, it is found all through the Bible. It first occurs in Genesis 1:22: "And God blessed (ḇāreḵə ) them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth."

Here is a list of how many times barak appears in each book of the Bible.

Now let us take the name "Hussein." It is from the Semitic word, hasan, meaning "good" or "handsome." Husayn is the diminutive, affectionate form.

Barack Obama's middle name is in honor of his grandfather, Hussein, a secular resident of Nairobi. Americans may think of Saddam Hussein when they hear the name, but that is like thinking of Stalin when you hear the name Joseph. There have been lots of Husseins in history, from the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, a hero who touched the historian Gibbon, to King Hussein of Jordan, one of America's most steadfast allies in the 20th century. The author of the beloved American novel, The Kite Runner, is Khaled Hosseini.

But in Obama's case, it is just a reference to his grandfather.

It is worth pointing out that John McCain's adopted daughter, Bridget, is originally from Bangladesh. Since Hussein is a very common name in Bangladesh, it is entirely possible that her birth father or grandfather was named Hussein. McCain certainly has Muslim relatives via adoption in his family. If Muslim relatives are a disqualification from high office in the United States, then McCain himself is in trouble. In fact, since Bridget is upset that George W. Bush doesn't like her "because she is black," and used her to stop the McCain campaign in South Carolina in 2000, you understand why McCain would be especially sensitive to race-baiting of Cunningham's sort. The question is how vigorously he will combat it; he hasn't been above Muslim-taunting in the campaign so far. (And, the McCains really should let Bridget know that she is Asian, not "black." The poor girl; Bush and Rove have done a number on her, and Cindy's confusion can't help.)

The other thing to say about grandfathers named Hussein is that very large numbers of African-Americans probably have an ancestor ten or eleven generations ago with that name, in what is now Mali or Senegal or Nigeria. And, since so many thousands of Arab Muslims were made to convert to Catholicism in Spain after 1501, many Latinos have distant ancestors named Hussein, too. In fact, since there was a lot of Arab-Spanish intermarriage, and since there was subsequent Spanish intermarriage with other European Catholics, more European Americans are descended from a Hussein than they realize. The British royal family is quite forthright about the Arab line in their ancestry going back to Andalusia.

Obama, being a cousin of Dick Cheney on one side and having relatives in Kenya on the other, is just more and more typical of the 21st century United States.

So, anyway, Obama's first two names mean "Blessing, the Good." If we are lucky enough to get him for president, we can only hope that his names are prophetic for us.

Which brings me to Omar Bradley. Omar is an alternative spelling of Umar, i.e. Umar ibn al-Khattab, the second caliph of Sunni Islam. Presumably General Bradley was named for the poet Omar Khayyam, who bore the caliph's name. Omar Khayyam's Rubaiyat, in the "translation" of Edward FitzGerald, became enormously popular in Victorian America.

Gen. Omar Bradley, who bore a Semitic, Muslim first name, and shared it with the second Caliph of Sunni Islam, was the hero of D-Day and Normandy, of the Battle of the Bulge and the Ruhr.



Would Mr. Cunningham see Omar Bradley as un-American, as an enemy because of his name?

What about other American heroes, such as Gen. George Joulwan, former NATO Supreme Allied Commander of Europe? "Joulwan" is an Arabic name. Or there is Gen. John Abizaid, former CENTCOM commander. Abizaid is an Arabic name. Abi means Abu or "father of," and Zaid is a common Arab first name. Is Cunningham good enough to wipe their shoes? Is he going to call them traitors because they have Arabic names?



What about Congressman Darrell Issa of California? ("`Isa" means Jesus in Arabic). Former cabinet secretary Donna Shalala? (Shalala means "waterfall" in Arabic).

I won't go into all the great Americans with Arabic names in sports, entertainment and business, against whom Cunningham would apparently discriminate on that basis. Does he want to take citizenship away from Kareem Abdul Jabbar [meaning "noble the servant of the Mighty"] and Ahmad Jamal [meaning "the most praised, beauty"]? What about Rihanna ["sweet basil," "aromatic"]? Tony Shalhoub [i.e. Mr. Monk]?

Let us take Benjamin Franklin. His first name is from the Hebrew Bin Yamin, the son of the Right (hand), or son of strength, or the son of the South (yamin or right has lots of connotations). The "Bin" means "son of," just as in modern colloquial Arabic. Bin Yamin Franklin is not a dishonorable name because of its Semitic root. By the way, there are lots of Muslims named Bin Yamin.

As for an American president bearing a name derived from a Semitic language, that is hardly unprecedented.

John Adams really only had Semitic names. His first name is from the Hebrew Yochanan, or gift of God, which became Johan and then John. (In German and in medieval English, "y" is represented by "j" but was originally pronounced "y".) Adams is from the biblical Adam, which also just means "human being." In Arabic, one way of saying "human being" is "Bani Adam," the children of men.

Thomas Jefferson's first name is from the Aramaic Tuma, meaning "twin." Aramaic is a Semitic language spoken by Jesus, which is related to Hebrew and Arabic. In Arabic twin is tau'am, so you can see the similarity.

James Madison, James Monroe and James Polk all had a Semitic first name, derived from the Hebrew Ya'aqov or Jacob, which is Ya`qub in Arabic. It became Iacobus in Latin, then was corrupted to Iacomus, and from there became James in English.

Zachary Taylor's first name is from the Hebrew Zachariah, which means "the Lord has remembered."

Abraham Lincoln, of course is, named for the patriarch Abraham, from the Semitic word for father, Ab, and the word for "multitude," raham,. Abu, "father of," is a common element in Arab names today.

So, Mr. Cunningham, Barack Hussein Obama fits right in this list of presidents with Semitic names. In fact, we haven't had one for a while. We are due for another one.

A blessed and good one.
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Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Turkish Army Kills 41 Kurdish Fighters;
4 Shiite Pilgrims Killed in Bombing;
8 Iraqi Soldiers Killed in Diyala

The Turkish military announced on Monday that it had killed another 41 Kurdish guerrillas inside Iraq. It claims to have killed 151 fighters of the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) during the present operation. It admitted the deaths of 2 more Turkish troops, bringing the total loss for Ankara in this operation to 17 dead.

The Turkish ambassador in Washington said Monday that the goal of the incursion was the destruction of the 4,000 PKK guerrillas holed up in the Kandil mountains of Iraq. The Bush administration appeared to give that goal its support. Iraq, in the meantime, complains that Turkey has violated its sovereignty. Even the Sadrists, who have a lot of tensions with the Kurds over the issue of decentralization, demanded that Turkish troops withdraw from Iraq.

Al-Sharq al-Awsat reports in Arabic that national security adviser Muwaffaq al-Rubaie expressed concern that if the Turkish forces prolong their presence inside Iraq, eventually they would come into direct conflict with the Peshmerga, the paramililtary of the Kurdistan Regional Authority.

Turkey released new video of its aerial bombardment of Iraq on Monday. The voice over is Turkish, but it is worth watching at least some of it to gain a sense of the violence:



AFP reports that "Up to 10,000 protestors gathered in Diyarbakir, the main city in Turkey's mainly Kurdish southeast, condemning the government for ordering the incursion. 'Terrorist Erdogan, hypocrite Erdogan,' they chanted."

Opinion polling had been showing that the PKK was extremely unpopular among Turkish Kurds. (The PKK had often killed Turkish Kurds that it considered "collaborators" with the Turkish government; moreover, 99% of Turkish Kurds are not separatists.) But Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erfogan is polarizing Turks and Turkish Kurds over this frontal attack on Iraqi Kurdistan.

It is easy to forget what precipitated this Turkish operation, but it was headlines this past summer and fall like this: "13 Turkish Soldiers Killed by Rebels."

This article in Today's Zaman suggests that one of Turkey's motivations for the operation was to divide Washington from its close alliance with Iraqi Kurdistan leader Massoud Barzani, and to begin repairing the frayed Turkish-US alliance. Since the Bush administration had no choice but to tacitly approve and cooperate with a Turkish strike against a terrorist organization that has been killing NATO troops, it has inevitably angered the Kurds.

The Guardian presents video of the Turkish military operation in Iraq, as well as of a riot in Istanbul between pro-invasion crowds and pro-Kurdish demonstrators:



Unlike corporate US media, Aljazeera English is actually covering the Turkish-Kurdish issue and this clip includes interviews with politicians in Ankara and Irbil at the same time. Since it is all in English, you can't argue that the US news networks could not do the same thing if they cared to. It is sort of a racist practice in much of US corporate media that foreigners are almost never allowed to speak to an American audience with their own voices.



Political violence killed at least 16 persons in Iraq on Monday. Another band of Shiite pilgrims was targeted with a roadside bomb in Baghdad, which killed 4 and wounded 15.

Reuters video on the Arba'in processions of the Shiites in Iraq:



AFP also says that Sunni Arab guerrillas ambushed an Iraqi army patrol near Buhriz in Diyala province, killing all 8 of them, including their comanding officer, a major. The Iraqi army is largely Shiite, but Diyala is majority Sunni, so this violence had a sectarian cast.

McClatchy reports other political violence on Monday:


' Baghdad
. . . - Around 7:30 a.m., a roadside bomb exploded at Zafaraniyah neighborhood (east Baghdad) near Al-Noor mosque. No casualties recorded.

- Around 12:30 p.m., two roadside bombs exploded at the Qasim highway near the Shaab stadium (east Baghdad). Two people were injured in that incident.

- Around 2p.m., a roadside bomb exploded near Al-Dayer church. No casualties or damage reported.

- Around 4 p.m., mortars hit Qadisiyah neighborhood. No casualties recorded.

- Around 5:30 p.m., gunmen using Toyota sedan car opened fire on an army check point near the Um Al-Tibul mosque and ran away. No casualties recorded.

- Police found three dead bodies in Baghdad today. Two of them in Risafa bank : 1 in Ubaidi and 1 in Zafaraniyah while the third was found in Amil in Karkh bank.

Diyala

- Around 9 a.m., gunmen killed two civilians at the downtown Baquba bus station.

- Early morning, gunmen disguised in the Iraqi army uniform killed a woman at Dowasir village of Bhrz, six km south of Baquba.

- Diyala police found a mass grave for eight dead women at Salam village of Khalis, 16 km north of Baquba.

- Around noon, a roadside bomb targeted a civilian car on the way between Qara taba and Khanaqeen in the north east of Baquba. Both passengers of the vehicle were killed in that incident. . .

Salahuddin

- In the morning, a suicide bomber in a wheelchair targeted Brig. Gen. Abdul Jabar Rabiaa Salih, the assistant commander of Samarra operations. Salih was killed and an officer was injured.

Kirkuk

- Early morning, a roadside bomb targeted the patrol of Brig. Gen. Sarhad Qadir, the chief of police of districts and towns, near al-Jamhouri hospital in downtown Kirkuk. No casualties were reported, but there some damage to one of the vehicles.

Mosul

- Mortars hit a house at Tal Al-Ruman neighborhood in the city today. Three people were killed and four women were injured. All were from the same family.

Basra

- This morning, gunmen opened fire on three oil company guards at Bahadriya of Abu Al-Khaseeb, southeast of Basra. One guard was killed and the other two were seriously injured.

- Police found the body of the engineer Ali Mahmoud at Hamdan neighborhood in south Basra. Ali was kidnapped a month ago from his house at a residential compound by gunmen who were wearing police uniforms. '

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Sartorial Politics

With reference to this story about Barack Obama dressing traditionally on a good will trip abroad:

Here is Bill Clinton doing the same thing:



And here is Hillary Clinton in Palestinian dress with Suha Arafat back in her even-handed, fair days:


and here is George W. Bush in Chinese robes with Hu Jintao and Vladimir Putin (I can't decide whether this is evidence that Bush is a Manchurian candidate or if it is finally the explanation for his faux macho swagger-- surely this is the gayest picture of a president ever taken):



And here is John McCain wearing stole of Bush, the only costume mentioned here that should be embarrassing (and I take back what I said about the last picture):


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Monday, February 25, 2008

60 Dead in Attack on Shiite Pilgrims;
Turkish invaders Kill 33 PKK Guerrillas;
2 US Soldiers Killed;
Stewart Skewers McCain

Between 40 and 60 Shiites were killed and 105 wounded on Sunday by a suicide bomber at Iskandariya in northern Babil province as they made their way south to the holy city of Karbala. Entire families were on the move together, so that the bombing killed or wounded many women and children. Many of the killed or wounded were struck by ball bearings from the makeshift bomb.

Alexandra Zavis of the LAT Times reports that the Iskandariya bombing was preceded by clashes between Sunnis and Shiites in the southwestern Dora district of Baghdad. On Saturday, Shiite crowds had taunted the Sunnis left in Dora that the highway through the neighborhood now belonged to them. Since many Sunnis have been ethnically cleansed from that area during the past year, the taunts stung.

Members of the Sunni Awakening Council (on the American payroll) went to the Iraqi army units in the neighborhood to complain about the Shiite pilgrims' taunting, and the army--mostly Shiite--attacked the Sunnis! A Sunni charged that on Saturday, "Army forces started shooting randomly at locals."

So then on Sunday morning more Shiite pilgrims come through on their way to Karbala, with Mahdi Army militiamen escorting them. First, Sunni guerrillas set off a roadside bomb. Then others threw grenades from a bridge on the pilgrims below. About 3 pilgrims were killed, and 43 were injured.

That is, the violence in Dora began as a conflict between the supposedly quiescent Mahdi Army and the US-backed Sunni Awakening Council! I suspect it is a microcosm of what will happen when the Sunnis come back to Baghdad from Damascus. (For the dynamics in Dora, see Nir Rosen's Rolling Stone piece, linked below).

Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that a curfew has been imposed on Baghdad, as millions of pilgrims head for Karbala for the holy day later this week.

Guerrillas killed 2 US soldiers on Sunday. One was killed by a roadside bomb that also injured three other US GIs. Another died from small arms fire.

Turkey continued its ground and air operations against the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) bases in northern Iraq on Sunday, operations inside Iraq that left 33 PKK guerrillas dead and cost the lives of 8 Turkish soldiers.

Nir Rosen has been on the ground recently in Baghdad, not embedded, and he reports on the downsides of the troop escalation the Bush administration calls the "surge," which include the ethnic cleansing of the Sunnis of Baghdad and the US paying millions to gunmen who were al-Qaeda a couple of months ago.

Aswat al-Iraq reports in Arabic that the sheikh of the powerful Dulaim tribe in al-Anbar Province, Ali Hatim al-Sulayman,--a leader of its Awakening Council-- has demanded the dissolution of the al-Anbar Governing Council and new provincial elections in April. He maintains that the Governing Council runs a spoils system, giving out jobs in the provincial bureaucracy only to members of the Iraqi Islamic Party, which he says has been disastrous for the economy. I fear there is a budding conflict between the armed Awakening Councils and the elected Sunni officials in places like al-Anbar. Provincial elections are actually scheduled for Oct. 1.

John McCain is now not just saying that the US will be victorious in Iraq, he is saying flat out that "the U.S. has succeeded in its war in Iraq." McCain must have a special antonyms dictionary where words mean the opposite of what they mean. Or maybe he's depending on the US mass media not to tell the American public what is going on over there. He'd be making a pretty good bet; I watched a lot of news on Sunday and I barely saw Iraq mentioned. And this on a particularly violent day with a hot civil war and a Turkish invasion force on the ground. They spent hours on the cattier parts of the US presidential campaign.

But at least Jon Stewart made fun of McCain's over-optimism at the Oscars:



As if all this violence were not enough, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki had to fly off to London later Sunday for medical treatment. Apparently the diagnosis done there a couple of months ago, of exhaustion, was incorrect and that the symptoms have recurred. For Iraq to be without an effective prime minister in the midst of several major, violent conflicts is not good.

The Turkish invasion of Iraq (I can't believe I'm writing those words) sent oil up to nearly $100 a barrel on Monday in Asia. The speculation effect here seems to analysts out of proportion to reality. Iraq has only been exporting 300,000 barrels a day from Kirkuk by pipeline to the Turkish port of Ceyhan on the Mediterranean. (And that is when the pipeline is not disabled by sabotage, as it frequently has been.) The Turks say that their operation will not interrupt that flow. But even if it did, 300,000 barrels a day isn't that much given the 87 mn. barrels a day global oil production.

McClatchy reports other political violence in Iraq on Sunday


' Baghdad
. . . An IED exploded targeting a US convoy near Salahuddin square in Kadhemiyah neighborhood north Baghdad around 10:00 a.m. The U.S. military said that the attack killed one US soldier and wounded three others. It also wounded an Iraqi civilian.

Around 12:30 p.m. an IED exploded targeting a US army convoy near the entrance of Hurriyah city northwest Baghdad. The US military said that three Iraqi civilians were injured. The Iraqi police said that five Iraqis were injured.

Around 12:00 p.m. Two civilians were injured when an IED exploded targeting civilians near al Kubaisi market in Zafaraniyah neighborhood southeast Baghdad.

Police found four bodies in Baghdad. Two bodies were found in Doura, one body was found in Waziriyah neighborhood and one body in Ur neighborhood Kirkuk

A civilian was killed and nine people were wounded (6 of them are Sahwa members including the leader of Sahwa Colonel Hussein Khalaf Ali and a commander of battalion in Sahwa) when a car bomb exploded targeting Sahwa members in Hawija town south of Kirkuk on Monday morning. . .

Basra

The police of Abo Al Khaseeb released a kidnapped young man (a student in the college of engineering) in Abo al Khaseeb town south of Basra city. The tribal police released two kidnapped civilian after chasing the kidnappers in al Abbasiyah neighborhood downtown Basra city '


Barney Rubin on the crucial political changes in the North-West Frontier Province, which is predominantly Pushtun, and what they mean for understanding the Pakistani Taliban and their activities across the border in Afghanistan. This piece is a must-read by someone at the cutting edge of this subject.

And, a warm congratulations to Josh Marshall of TPM on winning the Polk Award. Bloggers rock!

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Osama Bin Laden's "Second Life"

My column for Salon.com on "Osama bin Laden's "Second Life": In virtual worlds, does it take two terrorists to tango? And how much should we worry about those secret stockpiles of cartoon weapons?" Is now available.

By the way, Save the Internet.
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Sunday, February 24, 2008

Serbs Try to Attack US Embassy in Vienna;
Munter Warns Serbia

Frances Trix of Indiana University and a long-time researcher in Kosovo gives the historical and cultural context of the Balkan crisis at our collective Global Affairs blog.

Kosovo independence from Serbia continues to provoke Serbian protests, including a rally of 6,000 in Vienna on Sunday that turned violent when 600 hooligans tried to move toward the US embassy, found that Austrian police had sealed it off, and then vented their rage on local shops and restaurants.

Isn't that actually a form of terrorism?

Angry protesters had attacked the US embassy in Belgrade on Thursday, setting fires and forcing an evacuation. US ambassador to Serbia Cameron Munter demanded better security for embassies in Belgrade on Sunday, saying, "I'm very angry at what happened . . . It had better not happen again."

For anyone who can't quite get the nuance here, I think Munter is saying that the Serbian government will be held accountable for any further attacks on the United States embassy in Belgrade. And, indeed, Sunday's events raise the question of why Austria can protect its US embassy but Serbia can't protect its.

Kosovo's emergence as a country in its own right raises the question of why Palestine should not also just declare its own independence.

On another crisis, don't miss Farideh Farhi's essay on the implications of the latest International Atomic Energy Agency report on Iran.

At the Napoleon's Egypt blog, a new letter from Gen. Berthier about the siege of Acre in Palestine.
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37 Killed in Turkish-Kurdish Fighting inside Iraq;
Basra Instability Forces British to Postpone Departure

Turkish military land and air operations inside northern Iraq left 35 PKK guerrillas dead on Saturday, and two Turkish soldiers.

The PKK warned that it would blow up people in Turkish cities if the Turkish army did not withdraw. This threat would be more impressive if they hadn't already been blowing up people in Turkish cities.

Iraqi foreign minister Hoshyar Zebari, himself an Iraqi Kurd, said of the operation, "if it goes on, I think it could destabilise the region, because really one mistake could lead to further escalation."

As if to prove Zebari's point, the leader of Iraqi Kurdistan, Massoud Barzani, warned the Turks of large-scale resistance if they advanced toward populated areas.

Aljazeera English has video:



Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that the governor of Basra, Muhammad Misbah al-Wa'ili, has charged the Iranian deputy consul in that city of plotting his, al-Wa'ili's, assassination. He demanded that the central government look into the charges. He said that the Iranian consulate gave a large sum of money to one of his body guards to discover his exact itinerary.

Al-Wa'ili is from the Islamic Virtue Party (Fadhila), and is at loggerheads with a majority of members of his own provincial council, including members of the Basra Islamic List and the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq. He claims he has been the target of numerous assassination attempts and hints that Iran was behind them.

The Islamic Virtue Party is a splinter of the Sadr Movement of Ayatollah Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr (d. 1999), which does not recognized Muqtada al-Sadr. The Islamic Virtue Party is a Muslim fundamentalist party but is Iraqi nativist, i.e. it does not like Iranian infulence in Iraq.

Among Fadhila's major rivals is the Islamic Supreme Council in Iraq (ISCI), with its own paramilitary, the Badr Corps. So al-Wa'ili's charges have something to do with his rivalry with ISCI.

The instability in Basra is so bad that a planned drawdown of British troops from 4700 to 2500 by March seems likely to be postponed. The Guardian Observer writes,


'In an unusually frank analysis, Colonel Richard Iron, military mentor to the Iraqi commander General Mohan al-Furayji, said 'There's an uneasy peace between the Iraqi Security Forces [ISF] on the one hand and the militias on the other. There is a sense in the ISF that confrontation is inevitable. They are training and preparing for the battle ahead. General Mohan says that the US won the battle for Baghdad, the US is going win the battle for Mosul, but Iraqis will have to win the battle for Basra.' '


Gen. Mohan wants to have the back-up of British helicopter gunships and armor when the big anti-militia campaign is launched.

The article also says that "there is no one in charge" in Basra and that the militias actually exclude the army from some parts of the city!

' Asked who runs the city now, Iron, who has been in Basra since December, said: 'There's no one in charge. The unwritten rules of the game are there are areas where the army can and can't go and areas where JAM [Jaysh al-Mahdi or the Mahdi Army of Muqtada al-Sadr] can and can't take weapons.' '


The problem for Iraq is that whereas Baghdad or even Mosul can be subjected to a vigorous military campaign without that causing the country to collapse, I am not sanguine that Basra can survive a frontal assault and still remain Iraq's import-export entrepot. And, if Basra is depopulated or sent into a spiral of violence similar to the Sunni Arab areas of the north, it will not hold Iraq harmless.

McClatchy reports political violence in Iraq for Saturday:

'Baghdad

- Around 7 a.m. mortar shells slammed into the Green Zone. A U.S. State Department spokesman in Baghdad confirmed the attack and said there were no deaths, injuries or significant damage due to the attack.

- Gunmen shot Shihab Al Timimi, the Iraqi journalists syndicate chief. He was injured in an area close to the syndicate's headquarters in Al Waziriyah.

- Around 2 p.m. a roadside bomb targeted civilians in Beirut square, killing one civilian and injuring two others.

- Iraqi police found three bodies, one in Shaab, one in Al Qanat area and one in Saidiyah.

Al Anbar

- Around 11 a.m. three suicide bombers wearing vest bombs targeted Ibraheem Teeri, a tribal sheikh, in Al Shiha town north of Fallujah, killing Teeri and two policemen. . . [The attack was on a training center for Awakening Council members.]

Salahuddin

- Around 9 a.m. a roadside bomb exploded in front of Nouri Khalil's house, a member of Beiji city local council. It killed Khalil's wife and son.

- Around 2 p.m. a roadside bomb targeted Iraqi police vehicle on a highway south of Samarra, killing two police officers and injuring three others.

- Iraqi police today on the Tigris River near Samarra chased a suicide bomber in a boat. The bomber was wearing a vest bomb and he detonated himself before the police could arrest him.'

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Saturday, February 23, 2008

1987: Biblical Checklist includes Support for Muslim Radicals in Afghanistan

The Associated Press

June 12, 1987, Friday, PM cycle

Religious Lobbyist Sees ''Christian-Bashing'' In GOP

A religious lobbyist says some Republicans, including Vice President George Bush, are engaging in "Christian-bashing" and may drive the religious right to form its own party.

Robert Grant, chairman of Christian Voice, criticized Bush for telling a joke about evangelist Oral Roberts. . .

Christian Voice is a lobbying group that issues a "Biblical Scorecard" on what it calls "the family-moral-freedom issues." They include not only abortion and school prayer, but also support for increased defense spending, "Star Wars," and aid to anti-communist insurgents in Nicaragua, Afghanistan, Angola and elsewhere. . .
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Turkey Invades Iraq;
Sadr Renews Freeze;
Bombings in Baghdad, Green Zone


I review the news below and don't somehow conclude that the US occupation of Iraq is a success story. I know we are paying a lot for our presence in Iraq. I can't figure out what the average American is receiving for the money. It isn't increased security, since Iraq is a training ground for terrorists who will likely hit the US or US interests in future. It isn't extra petroleum, at least not for us ordinary folks. Maybe the US oil majors will do well out of it. But even they say they can't do business in Iraq without oil legislations. And petroleum prices held above $98 a barrel on Friday. The Turkish invasion of Iraq was cited as one reason for the price increase. Instead of asking "are things hopeful in Iraq?" or "is there progress in Iraq?", the American media and public should be asking, "What are we getting out of all this?" That is the question the US Right fears most of all, which is why they ask the 'progress' question all the time. They only have two settings, "slow progress" and "progress." A burned out hulk of a city like Falluja? A sign of "slow progress."

Turkey, the NATO ally of the US, invaded Iraqi Kurdistan with between 3,000 and 10,000 troops and is facing heavy opposition from Kurdistan Peshmerga forces and from the Kurdish Workers Party paramilitaries. The Turkish military said in a statement 24 PKK rebels and five soldiers were killed in clashes in Iraq. It also said at least 20 rebels were killed in separate aerial attacks.'

The PKK has killed scores of Turkish soldiers in the past six months, and the Turks consider them a terrorist organization.

Muqtada al-Sadr extended his freeze on militia activities of the Mahdi Army through August.

Since the US is finishing off his hard line Sunni Arab enemies for him, and is restoring discipline to the Sadr Movement by arresting rogue elements not loyal to Muqtada, it is hard to see what the down side is for him in accepting to renew the Mahdi Army freeze.

A rocket barrage struck the Green Zone where the US embassy and other American offices are located.

As Solomon Moore of the NYT explains, Basra is a security mess rife with Shiite militias, assassinations, murders, kidnappings for ransom and gasoline smuggling on a vast scale.

Reuters reports political violence in Iraq on Friday:

'BAGHDAD - A car bomb blew up in Baghdad's central Karrada district, killing one person and wounding four.

NEAR BAQUBA - Three mortars landed in a village of Buhriz, 60 km (36 miles) north of Baghdad, killing one child and wounding eight people. . .

NEAR FALLUJA - A suicide bomber killed at least six policemen and wounded nine others when he detonated a vest packed with explosives outside a mosque near Falluja in western Anbar province, police said.

GARMA - A suicide bomber on foot attacked an Iraqi security checkpoint, killing two people and wounding three in Garma, near Falluja, 50 km (32 miles) west of Baghdad, police said.

TIKRIT - A suicide car bomber killed three policemen and wounded eight others at a police station in Tikrit, 175 km (110 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.

ISKANDARIYA - Two bodies with gunshot wounds and signs of torture were found in Iskandariya, 40 km (25 miles) south of Baghdad, police said.

ANBAR PROVINCE - One U.S. Marine was killed in a battle with gunmen in Anbar province on Thursday, the U.S. military said.

NEAR FALLUJA - A roadside bomb killed Brigadier-General Abdul Jabbar al-Juboury, head of the Iraqi army's Falluja Brigade, and his driver on Thursday south of Falluja, police said.

BAGHDAD - A bomb killed at least one person and wounded four others in Karrada district, central Baghdad, police said.

BAGHDAD - Five bodies were found in different districts across Baghdad on Thursday, police said.

NEAR FALLUJA - A parked car bomb killed one man and wounded two others on Thursday near a market in Falluja, police said.'

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Friday, February 22, 2008

Three Events that changed the World

Three things happened on Thursday that changed the world.

The victorious Pakistan People's Party, now the largest in the Pakistani lower house of parliament, has reached a deal for a coalition with two other parties. One is the Muslim League-N, loyal to former PM Nawaz Sharif, which has a quarter of seats in the federal legislature. The other is the Awami National Party, a Pushtun (Pathan) secular nationalist party. The coalition is explicitly an alliance against Pervez Musharraf, the longtime military dictator of the country, who is backed by Bush and Cheney. It is hard to see how this coalition will cohabit with Musharraf, now the civilian president.

Meanwhile the White House and the State Department appear to be confusing the Pakistani public by taking opposite stances on what needs to be done.

Nawaz Sharif, a junior partner in the emergent coalition, again called Thursday for Pervez Musharraf to step down. I think it will be hard for Sharif to let go of that aspiration. The danger is that it may bring the army in.

Second, angry Serbs attacked the US embassy in Belgrade.

Note that Neoconservative pundits kept telling us that there was something deeply wrong with Muslims for protesting when they were kicked or expelled, saying that look, the Serbs have been harmed by US policies but they don't go around attacking US embassies. I guess they'll have to find a new argument.

And given that the Serbs are Eastern Orthodox Christians, will the Republican Party and Fox Cable News now start fulminating against "Christofascism?"

Third, Clinton " only managed only a draw" in the debate with Obama She needed to fluster him into saying something that he should not. She failed. He looked strong, confident and presidential. It seems unlikely now that she can overcome his lead in pledged delegates.

It is a whole new world, but there are great dangers lurking out there--for the Balkans, for South Asia. And, the stability of Iraq is extremely shaky (see below).
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Turkish-Kurd Military Confrontation;
Gunbattles Roil Basra;
A Dozen Police Found Dead Near Baquba

While US troops keep a tenuous grip on Baghdad in the center, Iraq's two extremities-- Kurdistan in the north and Basra in the deep south-- are coming apart at the seams. Neither area has many US troops to fall back on.

In a tense confrontation, Iraqi Kurdish troops nearly surrounded Turkish troops who had made an incursion into northern Iraq on Thursday. McClatchy reveals:


' Iraqi Kurdish troops on Thursday encircled Turkish soldiers in northern Iraq and threatened to open fire in the most serious standoff between the two nation's forces since Turkey threatened late last year to go after guerrillas from the Kurdistan Workers Party sheltering in Iraq. The standoff began when Turkish troops in tanks and armored vehicles left one of five bases they've had in Iraq since 1997 and moved to control two main roads in Dohuk province, Iraqi officials said. '


Ultimately, the Turkish troops beat a retreat back to their base. But this is the stuff of which hot wars are made, folks. Baghdad politicians said they wanted to do something to forestall such an eventuality. What they would have to do is to send Arab troops north to guard the border with Turkey with orders to shoot on sight PKK guerrillas trying to infiltrate into Turkey. The Kurdish peshmerga are too sympathetic to the PKK to do it. But Turkey has a right to expect Iraq to prevent it from being attacked from Iraqi soil.

Four British troops were wounded, one seriously, by two roadside bombs that detonated as they passed through the outskirts of Basra to some other destination. Basra, always fragile, slid into turmoil on Thursday.

Heavy fighting broke out Wednesday evening into Thursday morning in Basra between offshoots of Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army and the Iraqi army. Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that the fighting took place all over the city. It was provoked by the arrest of Mahdi Army cadres in the Safwan border area (70 mi. south of Basra). Gunfire was heard in Basra in the Hayaniya, Qiblah, Tusiya and Jumhuriya districts. Basra police are planning to implement a new security plan to forestall such clashes and to end the almost-daily rocket attacks on Basra airport by militiamen.

The Iraqi army is being ordered to man checkpoints at key intersections in Basra, to reassure the investment companies that are expected to troop into the southern port city soon, to kickstart a wave of construction and development that was announced at a recent convention of the Basra Development Board.

The head of the Sadr Office in Basra, Harith al-`Adhari, denied that his organization hand anything to do with the attackers, describing them as rogue independents.

In Diwaniya to the north, Sadrist leader Abu Zainab al-Kar`awi told al-Hayat by telephone that gunmen driving police cars had set fire on Thursday to 4 houses belonging to Sadrists. He accused the popular committees affiliated with the Islamic Supreme Council in Iraq of Abdul Aziz al-Hakim of responsibility for the arson, saying that ISCI wanted to exclude the Sadrists from the political process. He said several Sadrists had moved away from Diwaniya to Baghdad for fear of arbitrary arrest.

AFP argues that Sadr has benefited from his freeze on Mahdi Army activities for the past 6 months.

The LAT discusses how Iraq's hundreds of thousands of war widows struggle for survival. You kind of wish that the television news would notice this kind of story . . .

McClatchy reports political violence in Iraq for Thursday:

'. . . Diyala

15 bodies were found in an area 15 km to the north of Baquba at 05:30 pm; ten were Iraqi Army, said Baghdad and Diyala Police. They were hand cuffed, blindfolded and shot to death. They were laid side by side, 6 inches apart and a thin cover of dirt was thrown over them. They have been dead for ten days.

An Iraqi police patrol found six male bodies and three female bodies buried in al-Ouhaimar Field in the Baqubah area . . .

Baghdad

Three civilians were wounded when a roadside bomb went off at 10 a.m. in the intersection near al-Shaab Stadium, Zayuna, east Baghdad.

Around noon Thursday, a mortar shell fell in Besateen neighbourhood, Shaab, north Baghdad injuring two civilians.

Around 2 p.m. Thursday afternoon, gunmen opened fire upon a car belonging to the Crimes Department killing First Lieutenant Ahmed Mohammed and injuring Lieutenant Colonel Hazim and one policeman near the Institute of Law in Waziriyah, north Baghdad.

At 2 p.m. Thursday, gunmen opened fire upon a pickup truck in al-Buhaira Square at the entrance of Sadr City, killing its driver, an employee at the Ministry of Transport.

Five bodies were found in Baghdad by Iraqi Police today. 1 in Palestine St, 2 in Waziriyah, 1 in Tobchi and 1 in Amil.

Anbar

Commander of Fallujah Brigade, the Seventh Division, Brigadier General Ahmed al-Juburi was killed when a roadside bomb targeted his motorcade. His driver was also killed and one security personnel seriously injured.

One civilian killed and another injured in car bomb explosion at an open air market, 37 km to the south of Fallujah.

Mosul

Five policemen were injured in a roadside bomb explosion that targeted a police patrol in Faisaliyah neighbourhood, central Mosul.'

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Thursday, February 21, 2008

5 US Troops Killed;
25 Dead, 70 Wounded in Violence;
Turkey Bombs Iraq

DPA estimates that civil war violence killed 25 in Iraq on Wednesday and wounded 70. The dead included 5 US troops.

On Tuesday evening, 3 US troops were killed when their vehicle hit a roadside bomb in northwestern Baghdad (a Sunni Arab area). Another was killed on Wednesday by an RPG attack in Mosul, which left 3 other US troops wounded. Later on Wednesday a fifth US soldier was killed within 24 hours; he appears to have been killed by a roadside bomb somewhere south of Baghdad, but the exact circumstances of his death were not announced.

Turkish jets struck at suspected bases of the Kurdish Workers Party terror organization in northern Iraq on Wednesday. The Turks are also considering a land invasion of northern Iraq in a bid to root out PKK terrorists that have been attacking Turks and retreating to Iraq where they benefit from an American security umbrella.

A suicide bomber detonated his payload in a market in Muqdadiyah, Diyala Province east of Baghdad on Wednesday, killing 10 and wounding 15.

In Mosul, gunmen sprayed police at a checkpoint with machine gun fire, killing four and injuring another 4.

On Tuesday evening, 15 police were killed and 27 wounded when some of them were trying to defuse bombs in eastern Baghdad.

There is some question whether Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr will renew the six-month freeze on the activities of his Mahdi Army paramilitary The Sadrists feel taken advantage of, in the sense that many of their commanders have been arrested by Iraqi police or by the Badr Corps. I suspect Muqtada fears that should he continue the freeze, the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq and its Badr Corps paramilitary will use it to freeze out the Sadrists in the south from political office in the Oct. 1 provincial elections.

So to review, 5 US troops were killed within 24 hours; there was a market bombing in Diyala and a drive by shooting in Mosul; Turkey bombarded Iraq; and now the Mahdi Army may get reactivated.

Earth to McCain: Everything is not in fact hunky dory in Iraq.

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Wednesday, February 20, 2008

McCain's Holiday from History in Pakistan;
Will any Old Military Dictator Do?;
Lies about Obama

Barack Obama's spectacular win in Wisconsin has the GOP frightened. The Democratic turnout was much, much better than the Republican. The Democrats and independents are energized.



Senator John McCain could not get the independents out in Wisconsin, and the Republican turnout was lackluster. In politics, failure always produces bluster. McCain spoke after his primary victory in Wisconsin last night, casting himself as a voice of experience in foreign policy.

He said things like this:


' I will fight every moment of every day in this campaign to make sure Americans are not deceived by an eloquent but empty call for change that promises no more than a holiday from history . . .

Today, political change in Pakistan is occurring that might affect our relationship with a nuclear armed nation that is indispensable to our success in combating al Qaeda in Afghanistan and elsewhere. . .

Will the next President have the experience, the judgment experience informs, and the strength of purpose to respond to each of these developments in ways that strengthen our security and advance the global progress of our ideals? Or will we risk the confused leadership of an inexperienced candidate who once suggested invading our ally, Pakistan, and sitting down without pre-conditions or clear purpose with enemies who support terrorists and are intent on destabilizing the world by acquiring nuclear weapons?'




These remarks were aimed at Barack Obama, and they are lies. McCain has repeatedly made this false charge, warning against sending troops to Waziristan. But Obama never advocated invading Pakistan with US ground troops. He said that the US should strike at al-Qaeda if it had actionable intelligence about its whereabouts in Pakistan, even if the Pakistani authorities refused to give permission.

This stance is US policy. In fact, George W. Bush implemented it with a Predator attack on an al-Qaeda leader in Pakistan just a couple of weeks ago, an attack that the Pakistani government declined to authorize. (Kevin Hayden concurs).



Actually, one of our overly deferential journalists should please get some backbone and just ask McCain what he would do if he had intelligence on Bin Laden's whereabouts in Pakistan and could not get authorization from Islamabad to strike at him.

I personally think that Obama was unwise to make the statement he did, because there are some things better left unsaid. But aside from pure pacifists, what American would not pull the trigger on that old monster Usamah if he or she had the chance? I mind McCain pulling a Rove and making hay with a policy stance of his opponent that he actually agrees with.

And I think there is good reason to ask whether McCain helped create al-Qaeda and the mess in Pakistan to begin with. It is time for someone to start holding the Cold Warriors who deployed a militant Muslim covert army against their leftist enemies accountable for the blow-back they created.

Moreover, does McCain really know much about how the world works? Does he really understand Middle Eastern history?

McCain thinks when "only' 4 US troops are wounded in a single day in Iraq, or when only 15 Iraqi police are killed in mortar strikes in a single day, that is a sign of 'calm' and that the 'surge is working' in Iraq, and it is all right for us to put up with these US casualties for the next 100 years and spend $9 billion a month on this boondoggle for his friends in Houston. He is part of a successful propaganda campaign, as Tom Engelhardt points out that has made Iraq disappear as an issue even though people die there every day and the US is hemorrhaging blood and treasure for goals that remain, to say the least, murky. McCain even manages to celebrate the defeat of al-Qaeda in Iraq at the same time as he insists the US has to stay in Iraq a hundred years to fight al-Qaeda! Which is it? Either the surge has failed in its goals or it has succeeded. If it has succeeded, why do we have to stay? If it has failed, when will it succeed?



And, let's just consider the shaky dictator Pervez Musharraf, who just suffered a sharp rebuke from the Pakistani electorate, as I wrote about today in Salon.com. McCain appears never to have met a rightwing dictator he didn't like. McCain defends the dictator. Here is what McCain said about Musharraf late last December:

"Prior to Musharraf, Pakistan was a failed state," McCain said. "They had corrupt governments and they would rotate back and forth and there was corruption, and Musharraf basically restored order. So you're going to hear a lot of criticism about Musharraf that he hasn't done everything we wanted him to do, but he did agree to step down as head of the military and he did get the elections."

So in the building confrontation between democratic parties and the military dictator who trashed the rule of law, which would McCain support? What kind of relations will a president McCain have with the new prime minister of Pakistan if McCain is on record supporting the dictatorship that preceded?

The potted history McCain offers is wrong, and it points to the deep problems of authoritarianism and admiration for dictatorship in McCain's political philosophy. Pakistan was not a failed state before 1999, and in fact most of its political problems derived from repeated military coups such as the one spearheaded by Musharraf, as well as from the US government giving the Pakistani military gobs of money and enormous stockpiles of weapons, and winking at its nuclear program. In fact by "US government" above, we really could just substitute "Senator John McCain."

Pakistan's constitution prescribes a parliamentary government. When the military has allowed Pakistanis to go to the polls, they have elected moderate, centrist political parties such as the Pakistan People's Party and the Muslim League. Those parties have longstanding grass roots, cadres, canvassers, and loyal constituencies.

Bhutto was elected in 1971 as head of the PPP.


The PPP was overthrown in 1977 by Gen. Zia ul-Haq, a fundamentalist general who had his boss, PM Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto hanged on trumped-up charges in 1979 and who kept promising new elections that never came. Gen. Zia sponsored the Muslim fundamentalist Mujahidin that Ronald Reagan called "freedom fighters," and which included the early al-Qaeda. He also put enormous resources into making an atomic bomb. Nowadays a leader of that description would be part of Bush's axis of evil. But Reagan cozied up to Zia like a cat to catnip.

And McCain went out to cozy up to the military dictator himself, in February of 1984. McCain supported the Reagan jihad, cynically deploying radical Muslim extremists like Gulbuddin Hekmatyar against leftist secularists in Afghanistan.

Here is what McCain was up to when the radical Muslim extremist Gen. Zia was in power in Pakistan, according to UPI, Feb. 17, 1984:

'Senator John Tower, R-Texas, and Rep. John McCain, R-Ariz., arrived in the Pakistani capital Friday evening for the start of a three-day visit.

During their stay, the legislators will meet Pakistan's military president, General Mohammad Zia ul-Haq, and other top officials. . .

While in Pakistan, they will also visit an Afghan refugee tent village on the outskirts of Peshawar, near the border with Soviet-occupied Afghanistan.

On arrival at Islamabad airport, they were received by U.S. Ambassador Deane Hinton and Pakistani Defense Secretary Aftab Ahmad Khan.'


Now McCain is the big expert on problem solving in Pakistan. McCain is the Pied Piper of Hamelin; he'll be glad to get rid of your rat problem, but at the price of making your children disappear.



So lest we take any holidays from history, I have some questions for John McCain. Did you or did you not know about Gen. Zia's nuclear weapons program? Did you wink at it? If so doesn't that make you a proliferator of weapons of mass destruction to a radical Muslim extremist regime?

And what about this AP article from 1985:

' Rep. Tom Loeffler, R-Tex., presented the "Freedom Fighter of the Year" award to Afghan resistance leader Wali Khan on behalf of the U.S. Council for World Freedom on Oct. 3.

Loeffler called on Congress and the American people to "broaden support" for freedom fighters in Afghanistan, reminding listeners of America's own fight for freedom.

Congress has agreed to give $15 million in covert assistance to the Afghan cause, the first time the legislators have "stepped forward" with aid since the beginning of the conflict, according to Loeffler. . .

Accepting the award on behalf of Khan was Pir Syed Ahmed Gailani, head of the National Islamic Front of Afghanistan, for which Khan commands 20,000 resistance fighters.

Other congressmen who joined Loeffler included Rep. Eldon Rudd and Rep. John McCain, both Arizona Republicans. '




So how much support did John McCain give to the precursors of the Taliban in Afghanistan? To the budding al-Qaeda?

Despite what McCain says about military rule bringing stability, the opposite is the case. Never mind the dirty war in Afghanistan that led to the displacement abroad of 5 million Afghans, 3 million of them to Pakistan, and which helped destabilize Pakistan. Never mind the filling of Pakistan with machine guns and drug smuggling to support McCain's al-Qaeda "freedom fighters," which created a million heroin addicts in Pakistan. Karachi spiralled into virtual civil war in the mid to late 1980s under Zia. There were massive Shiite demonstrations against unfair Sunni fundamentalist policies of Zia. A Movement for the Restoration of Democracy began mobilizing political parties. Zia put Benazir Bhutto of the Pakistan People's Party under arbitrary house arrest.

Gen. Zia finally exited the scene in a summer, 1988, airplane crash. But he left behind 16 martial law amendments, among them a provision for the president, who is not popularly elected, to arbitrarily dismiss parliament and the prime minister. It would be as though Bush could fire Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid and hold new elections whenever he liked, timing them so that the Republicans had an advantage.

That power of the president to just sack the prime minister was never legislated by any representative of the Pakistani people. It is a martial law amendment. It was legislated by Gen. Zia, friend of Muslim radicals.

So it was not the fault of the civilian political parties that the governments would "rotate back and forth," in McCain's words. Ghulam Ishaq Khan, who was never popularly elected president but rather got the post by a kind of default, kept dismissing the elected prime ministers.



As for there being corruption, la di da. The Republican Party, home of Tom Delay and Jack Abramoff, should talk about corruption. And as for that crack about civilian governments "rotating back and forth," isn't that a common thing in democracies? But the rotation wasn't anyway natural. It was a product of high-handed, dictatorial presidents exercising martial law powers and sometimes being blackmailed into doing so by powerful covert intelligence officials. The martial law amendment allowed presidents to dismiss three governments in a row.



And then the fourth civilian government, of Nawaz Sharif's second term, was overthrown.



The instrument was an illegal and extra-constitutional coup by Gen. Pervez Musharraf.

Musharraf was a hawk who backed the Taliban (and very likely al-Qaeda) in Afghanistan and who nearly provoked two wars with India. Yes, a pillar of stability, as McCain says. Quite right. Among the reasons alleged for his coup against Sharif was that he feared Sharif would back off from supporting the Taliban under Clinton administration pressure, and that Sharif would make peace with India at Washington's insistence. The very essence of stability.



Sharif had agreed to send in a special operations team to kill or capture Usama Bin Ladin in neighboring Afghanistan in 1999. When Musharraf made his coup, he reneged on the deal. I.e., Musharraf is indirectly implicated in the September 11 attacks insofar as he could have perhaps prevented them by taking out Bin Laden and he refused. Yes, as McCain says, a great pillar of stability.



The Pakistani military had created the political instability with its earlier coups and martial law amendments and creation of arbitrary, dictatorial powers vested in the president, which lightly disregarded the will of the people as expressed at the ballot box. And now in 1999, the military got rid of the civilian government altogether for a while, until in 2002 the US State Department pressured Musharraf to allow elections.

Musharraf did not dare actually run for office against a real opponent. He staged a "referendum," in which he got less that 50% of the vote, but since he had no opponent he could hardly lose. He rigged the parliamentary elections of fall 2002, ensuring that his Pakistan Muslim League-Q had a majority. He interfered with the PPP and the Muslim League-N so much that he let the Muslim fundamentalist parties take over two provinces and get 17% of seats in parliament. Some of these members of the provincial parliament from the fundamentalist parties were actually Taliban. Others had trained the Taliban or actively denied that al-Qaeda existed.

Far from "bringing stability" as McCain suggested, Musharraf has destabilized Pakistan in the past year, arbitrarily sacking the chief justice of the supreme court, provoking massive demonstrations, brutally invading the Red Mosque, and provoking a violent backlash in the northwest. This is stability?

And is this really the kind of government McCain supports? Are these judgments the fruit of his experience? Is this the kind of holiday from history he is going to take? Having backed the radical Muslim extremists in Afghanistan in the 1980s, having winked at Zia's dictatorship and nuclear program, having coddled Musharraf's authoritarianism, is McCain going to bring us more disasters like September 11, done by his good friends, Reagan's Freedom Fighters?

If so, by all means bring on the breath of fresh air instead.
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Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Musharraf's Party Roundly Defeated;
Fundamentalist Coalition Collapses in NWFP;
PPP Likely to Form Next Government

Pakistan held its elections on Monday, which are fateful for the future of the country and also probably for the Bush-Cheney foreign policy. Bush and Cheney put most of their eggs in the basket of a military dictator, Pervez Musharraf, who has been on a self-destructive downward spiral during the past year that makes Amy Winehouse look level-headed.

By 2:20 am on Tuesday, out of 241 districts reporting, The Pakistan People's Party (PPP) was shaping up as the biggest bloc in the federal parliament, with 80 seats (33% of those in districts reporting) so far. The PPP had been led by slain politician Benazir Bhutto, but did not benefit from a sympathy vote to the extent that some observers had expected.

The Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz)--the PMLN--loyal to Nawaz Sharif, the former prime minister, had won 64 seats(26.5%).

The other branch of the Muslim League, named "Q," had to that point done very poorly, winning only 37 seats (15%). Q supported Pervez Musharraf, the general who made a 1999 coup and who recently became a civilian president under irregular circumstances.

The Pakistan People's Party is relatively secular and slightly left of center. The Muslim League-N is right of center but traditionalist rather than fundamentalist (i.e. it is not militant, does not have imposition of Islamic canon law as its primary goal, does not require women to veil, etc. It is just Muslim big landlords and middle classes of Punjab and reflects their conservatism and traditionalism. Think rural Mexican Catholicism).

There are 272 directly-elected seats in the Pakistani National Assembly (the lower house). Once you add in women and minorities, there are 342. But those extra seats not directly elected are filled proportionally from parties in accordance with their proportion of the elected seats. So you can tell who won and who is powerful by looking at the 272.

The Pakistan People's Party may end up the largest party, with a plurality, but may need a coalition partner to form a government. Despite the rivalry between PPP and PMLN, the two could challenge their common enemy, President Pervez Musharraf, by making common cause. If current trends continue, even those two will not have the seats to impeach Musharraf, a move that would also require a majority in the 100-seat appointed senate, where Musharraf retains many PMLQ seats.

At the provincial level, the election showed Pakistan's public fragmented along ethnic and linguistic lines. The Sindh Provincial Assembly will be dominated by the Pakistan People's Party. Sindh's largest city, Karachi, with its Urdu-speaking majority, will likely be dominated by the MQM (Muttahidah Qawmi Movement), a secular mass party representing Urdu-speakers that had been cooperating with Musharraf.

Punjab, Pakistan's most populous province (some 60% of the whole), went heavily for the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) or PMLN. Its leader, former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, is a steel magnate from the echt Punjabi city of Lahore.

The North-West Frontier Province, with its predominately Pushtun population, was captured by the Awami National Party, a secular, Pushtun-nationalist bloc, with the PPP likely a coalition partner there.

The results at the level of the federal parliament are a stunning defeat for Musharraf and track well with recent opinion polling in Pakistan, which showed only a 15% favorability rating for Musharraf and in which 70% of respondents said he should step down. Musharraf destroyed his popularity by dismissing the chief justice of the supreme court last spring and then by frontally invading a militant mosque in Islamabad last summer. He also appears to have been widely blamed for the conditions that allowed Benazir Bhutto (leader of the PPP) to be assassinated Dec. 27 and for the subsequent days of violence.

Another big loser in the election was the religious Right. The violence of the Red Mosque cultists and the bombings by Muslim militants after it was invaded really turned off Pakistanis from all accounts. This fall from favor is summarized by Dawn:

'According to the poll results, only 24 per cent of Pakistanis approved of Osama when the survey was conducted last month [January 2008], compared with 46 per cent during a similar survey in August [2007].

Backing for Al Qaeda fell to 18 per cent from 33 per cent.

Support for the Taliban dropped by half to 19 per cent from 38 per cent, the results said."


(Note that those Pakistanis who say they admire Bin Laden or al-Qaeda typically deny that they were responsible for the 9/11 attacks, so it isn't that they are necessarily militants or pro-terrorism; they are just duped by the religious Right into thinking that al-Qaeda is innocent. In any case, the scales seem to be falling from their eyes big time).

The six-party religious coalition, the Islamic Action Council (Muttahidah Majlis-i `Amal), which had ruled the strategically important Northwest Frontier Province, fell apart late last fall. Among its major components, the Jama'at-i Islami, decided to boycott the elections. Another major element, the Jami'at `Ulama-yi Islam (Fazlur Rahman) won only 12 seats in the provincial assembly of the NWFP yesterday. And so the religious coalition has become a small minority in the NWFP, which it ruled with an iron hand for over 5 years, and where it attempted various ruses to sidestep federal law and declare sharia or Islamic canon law in that province. Obviously, chasing away Peshawar's great singers and coddling extremists has not played well with the NWFP public, which is majority Pushtun (or as they say in Pakistan, Pathan).

The Awami National Party, a secular Pushtun nationalist party, swept to power with 29 seats. The secular, left of center Pakistan People's Party won 14 seats, more than the Muslim fundamentalists. Many independents won, 20 in all, and so they will be an important swing vote.

The turn of the Pathans (Pushtuns) of Pakistan to religious fundamentalist parties in 2002 is thus shown to have been a fluke. I think it had two causes. First, Gen. Musharraf interfered with the PPP and PMLN parties' election campaigns, weakening them. Second, the US had overthrown the Taliban, who were Pushtuns, and a lot of Pushtuns on the Pakistani side of the border interpreted the Afghanistan War as a superpower assault on a Pushtun government on behalf of Tajiks, Hazara Shiites and Uzbeks (the "northern alliance.")

But the fluke is over.

Major figures in the NWFP government of the MMA had denied that al-Qaeda exists. I think it may now be easier to catch the bad guys, though it is also true that the fight against the Pakistani Taliban and their international jihadi allies has been primarily pursued by the federal government, so the ambivalence of NWFP civilian officials may not have much impeded the fight.

Bottom line, the Pakistani public has demonstrated a dislike of extremism, including religious extremism, awarding a plurality of seats in the national legislature to secular parties and the rest to right-of-center parties, but roundly rejecting the fundamentalists.

Even though the PPP and PMLN likely won't have the votes to impeach Musharraf, he is in for a bumpy ride and it would be much better for everyone if he would recognize the writing on the wall and step down.
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Monday, February 18, 2008

Over 80 Dead in Afghan Blast

A massive suicide bomb ripped through crowd in Qandahar on Sunday, killing over 80 and wounding a similar number. The Afghan newspaper Rah-i Sulh took a dim view of the public's activities at that site, which included dog racing. It observed that people who went to get a thrill from seeing dogs mangled unexpectedly saw a true and all too human tragedy.

People often say that Iraq was a diversion and that the US should have done the job in Afghanistan better and quickly. As time goes on, you have to begin to question whether Pushtuns in the country's south are ever going to put up with a foreign military occupation of their territory.
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Sadrist/ Badr Truce Breaks Down;
Parliament Rejects Smaller Cabinet

It is awfully suspicious that as soon as a firm date was set for new provincial elections in Iraq (October 1), the truce broke down between the paramilitary of Muqtada al-Sadr and that of Abdul Aziz al-Hakim. This according to Nassar al-Rubaie, the leader of the Sadrist bloc in parliament. The Sadrists say that the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI), led by al-Hakim, was supposed to form joint councils in the provinces to resolve disputes, but never did. A lot of the fighting in the south, as at Karbala last fall or at Diwaniyah is actually between Mahdi Army militiamen and Iraqi police recruited from the Badr Corps paramilitary of ISCI.

There is a good chance of the Sadrists taking much of the south in the provincial elections if they are fair, and Muqtada may not want to be bound by agreements with a party that he will seek to toss out of office. ISCI now has Diyala, Baghdad, Hilla, Qadisiyah (Diwaniyah), Najaf, Karbala, Dhi Qar, and Muthanna. Maysan with its capital at Amara is controlled by the Sadrists. The southern oil province of Basra is controlled by the Islamic Virtue Party, an offshoot of the Sadr Movement that rejects Muqtada in favor of Ayatollah Muhammad Ya`qubi.

Al-Zaman reports in Arabic that Hadi al-Amiri, the leader of the Badr Corps, affirms that the truce with the Mahdi Army still stands from his point of view. He told al-Zaman, "Those who have the right to announce a collapse of the agreement are al-Hakim and Muqtada al-Sadr, in their capacities as the signers of it." He said that the agreement was signed by two leaders, not by two parties and that therefore al-Rubaie (as a parliamentarian) has no say in it. He concluded, "The problem of the Sadrists is with the law, not with the Supreme Council." He said that the Sadrists are protesting arrests made of Mahdi Army commanders in Karbala and Diwaniyah, but that these were ordered by the Prime Minister, Nuri al-Maliki, for the purpose of restoring security and establishing a rule of law for all. Both the provinces of Karbala and Diwaniyah are ruled by the Supreme Council, so al-Amiri seems to be eager to exonerate them of charges they have moved against the Sadrists. Instead, he said the arrests were ordered by al-Maliki, the head of the Islamic Call (al-Da`wa) Party.

For his part, al-Rubaie said that he was just stating the obvious, which was that the Badr-Sadr agreement was simply not active. Al-Amiri complained that al-Rubaie has made such statements before, only to have to back off them fairly quickly.

Meanwhile, al-Zaman reports in Arabic that a plan by Nuri al-Maliki to give some key ministries to technocrats and to cut his cabinet down to 22 ministers has foundered. Parties who actually won elections and sit in parliament don't want to give up control of important ministries to unelected technocrats.

Leila Fadel of McClatchy reports that the Kurdistan Regional Authority is placing restrictions on where Arab Iraqis can live in the Kurdish-dominated north.

See recent postings at our collective blog on Global Affairs. One of them is by Gershon Shafir and it looks at the Gaza issue. The other is by Farideh Farhi and deals with the uncertainties of Iran's upcoming elections, and the crackdown on candidates by the hardliners.

At the Napoleon's Egypt blog, a new letter by Gen. Berthier on the siege of Acre.

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