Informed Comment

Thoughts on the Middle East, History, and Religion

Juan Cole is President of the Global Americana Institute

Monday, August 31, 2009

Are the Taliban Surrounding NATO Armies and Cutting them Off?
Why Washington Needs Iran and Russia

There is an old saying in military affairs, that everyone wants to do strategy and tactics, but real men do logistics. That is, moving persons and materiel around and managing supplies seems tedious, but they are crucial to success. The Obama administration has substituted the Logistics of War for the War on Terror. It is moving troops and equipment and assets around in the millions, on a vast scale, and therefore its enemies--whether the Sunni radicals in Iraq or the neo-Taliban, are also concentrating on logistics. The staccato, desultory news items of bombings here and air strikes there, make sense if the individual incidents are viewed as struggles over supply lines-- whether supply lines for military purposes, or supplies of intangibles such as international legitimacy. And in this context, the gingerness with which Washington is now approaching Russia and Iran makes perfect sense.

The logistics war in AfPak were on full view Sunday, with the long fingers of blazing conflagrations jabbing the sky amidst billowing waves of jet black smoke both in Chaman in Pakistan near the Afghan border, and in Kunar Province. The bombing of supply trucks is to this war what u-boat attacks on supply ships were to the two world wars.

In Chaman, Dawn reports, "At least 15 oil tankers, trailers and containers caught fire in Chaman on Sunday night after a blast in a vehicle carrying supplies for Nato forces in Afghanistan." The NATO supply vehicle became a sitting duck because the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan has been closed for the last few days over a dispute about whether Pakistani border guards may search Afghan fruit trucks.



Meanwhile, a different sort of supply line was hit in Mingora in the Swat valley, when a Taliban suicide bomber killed 16 recent police recruits and wounded 5 others. The Pakistani Army had attacked the 4,000 Taliban fighters that were dominating Swat this spring, much to the annoyance of the people of Swat, and had largely expelled them. But obviously furtive Taliban terrorist cells are still able to operate there, even against police stations. The point of these special operations police recruits was to make the expulsion of the Taliban permanent.

On the Afghan side of the border, militants from the Hizb-i Islami or "Islamic Party" of Gulbadin Hikmatyar "stormed a NATO supply convoy and torched at least 10 vehicles in the troubled eastern province of Kunar," according to Pajhwok News Service.

Meanwhile, the Taliban have used pockets of Pashtun populations in the north of the country as a base to take over three districts that allow them to block supplies coming in from Tajikistan, according to McClatchy.

These setbacks are taking place even as US missiles slammed into a base of the militant Haqqani group in eastern Afghanistan, allegedly killing 35 guerrillas. The Haqqani group is cooperating with the Hizb-i Islami and with the 'old Taliban' of Mulla Omar in attempting to undermine the Kabul government and its NATO backers.

Both Hikmatyar and Jalal al-Din Haqqani were assets of the Reagan administration in the 1980s fight against the Soviets and they received large amounts of monetary aid from Washington, but have now turned on it.

In any case, the Taliban are obviously attempting to cut the supply routes that allow the US and NATO to keep their troops supplied with ammunition, fuel and food.

The hundreds of ballot fraud complaints now flooding into the offices of election monitors in Afghanistan threaten to deny legitimacy to the presidential election and thence to the Kabul government itself. In essence, the Obama administration and NATO intended those elections to form a supply line of international and domestic legitimacy, which has now been disrupted, apparently in some large part by partisans of President Karzai.

At the same time that NATO and the US are trying to move troops and materiel into Afghanistan, the US is attempting to move 1.5 million pieces of equipment out of Iraq, according to AP. Moreover, all but 40,000 US troops out of 130,000 now in country should be out by next year this time. Just as the supply trails into Afghanistan are vulnerable, so too are those out of Iraq. Much of the materiel is being put on trucks and taken south through Mahdi Army and Badr Corps (Shiite militia) territory to Kuwait in the south. Other trucks ply the once-perilous road between Baghdad and Aqaba in Jordan, going through sometimes hostile Sunni Arab territories. As the US forces and military equipment in Iraq dwindle, the remaining troops become more vulnerable.

As for the southern route, the major forces that can convince the armed Shiites to let the US leave in peace via Kuwait are the government of PM Nuri al-Maliki, which has been positioning the new Iraqi Army in the south and cultivating tribal levies there, and the Iranian government of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Should relations take a very bad turn for the worse between the US and Iran, the danger of Shiite militia attacks on the US convoys would spike.

Also in Afghanistan, the US increasingly depends on Russian good will, and Iran is influential in Herat, Mazar, the Hazarah regions and Kabul. Iran can play a positive role in its two neighboring countries, de facto acting as an ally of the US. Or it could play spoiler.

The United States has been made a hostage to Iran and Russia by George W. Bush's fooling miring of the US military in the midst of 300 million hostile, anti-imperialist Middle Easterners,

Obama's presidency may succeed or flounder on his success in the recondite art of logistics, both in the strict military sense and in a wider metaphorical sense, of putting the right personnel and "assets" in place for political victories.

In that regard, Iraq could well be a big win.

AfPak, so far no so much.


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Sunday, August 30, 2009

Abdullah Will not Accept Karzai Victory;
Ethnic Conflict could Flare;
Pentagon using Rendon to Vet Journalists

Things to worry about on a lazy August Sunday:

Abdullah Abdullah, the leading rival to incumbent Hamid Karzai in the Afghanistan presidential elections, told a gathering of hundreds of his campaign workers from the southern provinces that he would not accept an outright victory by Karzai as legitimate. With 35% of the votes counted, Karzai has a little over 46%, with Abdullah trailing at 31%. Karzai needs 50% to avoid a run-off, though the Afghan press thinks that outcome is increasingly unlikely. But if his luck turns up in the remaining ballots, Karzai could find himself facing a major rebellion. Abdullah is favored by the Tajik ethnic group that predominates in the north of the country, which speaks Persian and is largely Sunni. Karzai is most popular among the Pashtuns whence his own small tribe, the Popolzai, derives. Afghanistan is a tinderbox, and a major Iran-style post-election struggle between Tajiks and Pashtuns could completely destabilize the country.

Any such conflagration would embroil US and NATO troops in a new round of fierce fighting.

The US is denying a report that it is pressing Karzai to create a coalition government. The Iranian news agency Farsnews said that the US had pressured Karzai to hold a run-off election (even if he gets 50%?) and also to then form a national unity government by offering cabinet posts to rivals Abdullah Abdullah and Ashraf Ghani. (Presumably a Dari Persian-speaking member of Karzai's staff leaked this report to the Iranian press). Given the dangers facing the country of ethnic divisions, maybe a government of national unity wouldn't be such a bad idea, whether the US is pressing for it or not.

Meanwhile, British PM Gordon Brown was in Afghanistan Saturday, where he pledged more troops and more support, according to ITN:



Nearly two-thirds of Britons want UK troops to return from Afghanistan.

Wondering why you don't hear much genuine news from Afghanistan despite the fact that the US military is fighting a war there? Russia Today covers the Stars and Stripes report that it is having the Rendon Group (a civilian contractor propaganda firm) to vet embedded journalists for how positive they might be in their coverage of Afghanistan. The Rendon group was used by the CIA in the early 1990s to run asset Ahmad Chalabi, who helped fabricate the case for a war on Iraq.



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Saturday, August 29, 2009

Is Karzai trying to Steal the Afghanistan Election, taking a Leaf from Ahmadinejad's Book?

The BBC is reporting that Obama's special envoy to AfPak, Richard Holbrooke, has had a shouting match with President Hamid Karzai over the desirability of a second round in the presidential election. At the moment, with 17% of ballots counted, Karzai is ahead of his nearest rival, Abdullah Abdullah, by 45% to 35%. That tally would not allow the incumbent to avoid a run-off (he needs 50% for that outcome).

So I ask myself, why is Holbrooke in Karzai's office insisting that there be a run-off? Wouldn't whether there is a second round depend on the outcome of the election? Why try to persuade Karzai?

The only way this scenario makes sense to me is if US/NATO intelligence is reporting from the field that Karzai is rigging the election returns so as to ensure he gets to 50%.

The presidential election, which had been intended by Obama and his NATO allies as a political victory over the Taliban, is swiftly turning into a major debacle.

Voter turnout fell from some 70 percent in the last presidential election, likely to only 30-something percent this time (not the 50% initially estimated, presumably by someone with an interest in hyping the event for propaganda purposes). In some southern provinces such as Helmand, turnout was only 10 percent, a datum that demonstrates that the people of Helmand simply had no voice in this election and it does not meet international standards of legitimacy. (Voters must be held harmless from threats and violence).

Another presidential candidate, Sarwar Ahmadzai, has called for a do-over of the election in 12 provinces where there were "irregularities":

' Sarwar Ahmadzai told a press conference in Kabul most of the rigging took place in Kandahar, Helmand, Uruzgan, Zabul, Nangarhar, Laghman, Kunar, Nuristan, Logar, Paktia, Paktika and Khost provinces. He accused supporters of Hamid Karzai and Dr. Abdullah Abdullah of involvement in irregularities. He said the rigging ranged from ballot box stuffing to voting by minors.'


Abdullah Abdullah has also alleged ballot fraud.

If Karzai is so widely suspected of stealing this election, why is there not the same global reaction against him as there was against Ahmadinejad in Iran? Is there an unwritten rule that allies of the West get cut some slack?

Moreover, it is clear that one of Karzai's less savory campaign techniques was to enlist the old sanguinary warlords on his side. The US has lodged a complaint with Karzai about his choice of Northern Alliance general Mohammad Fahim as his vice president. The Afghan Pajhwok News Service remarked dryly, "Asked why the Obama administration did not want Fahim to be in the government, the official replied it could be for a number of reasons narcotics, drug trade and human rights violations."

Many officials from NATO countries with troops in Afghanistan are fed up with Karzai, who, they say, says all the right things and makes promises but never delivers on them.

Pepe Escobar is scathing on the failure of the elections as a justification for NATO's Afghan mission.


More at The Real News



Aljazeera English has video on the Karzai government's attempt to address the poor security situation in Qandahar (where on Tuesday the Taliban deployed an enormous truck bomb to kill dozens.





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Friday, August 28, 2009

Khamenei Backs off on Charge of Western Plots;
Ayatollahs Sani'i and Montazeri Attack Khamenei.

Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei said on Wednesday that he did not believe the leaders of Iran's protesters against the official presidential election results were instigated by the West. He added, however, that the protesters had planned out their campaign even before the elections were held. (Since they could not have even known whether their candidate might have won, it is unlikely that they plotted out a whole social movement based on that contingency).

The supreme leader also cautioned that trials of dissidents should not be based on hearsay evidence but rather on solid evidence.

Khamenei was signalling to hard liners such as Ayatollah Misbah-Yazdi that he would not permit treason trials against the defeated presidential candidates or their supporters. Such actions have the potential to tear the country apart, and could well backfire on the regime as the show trials it is conducting against arrested protesters have already done.

In contrast, regime critics have not also backed down but rather have become if anything more vocal than ever.
Grand Ayatollah Hosain Ali Montazeri more or less called Khamenei a dictator on Thursday. Montazeri has been marginalized and it may not matter so much what he says in a direct sort of way. But Montazeri was once Khomeini's heir apparent, and that he is openly defying the supreme leader in thisway offers a powerful model to the dissidents.

Ayatollah Yusuf Sanei has made some extremely intemperate comments about the regime. He indicated disgust with the idea that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was sworn in according to Shiite formulas in a Shiite ceremony, and yet the whole thing was a fraud. He was disturbed. At one gathering he is said to have called Ahmadinejad a "bastard" (haramzadeh). He denies that the president was the referent.

A parliamentarian admitted that the regime had tortured arrestees who had supported Mir Hosain Mousavi in steet demonstrations.

The dissident politicians are still technically extremely weak. But it surely is significant that the one backpedaling on the severity of the charges was Khamenei, while his critics have grown more vociferous.

Meanwhile, the political turmoil in Iran, or perhaps a lack of the requisite raw materials, has thrown a wrench into Iran's civilian nuclear energy research program. (Despite what the US and Israel keep alleging, there is no evidence that Iran has a weapons development project. At the moment, it is only able to enrich to about 4%, not good enough to run a reactor.

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Thursday, August 27, 2009

Al-Hakim's Death Unsettles Iraqi Politics

The big news in Iraq was the death from cancer in Tehran of Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the clerical leader of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq.

He had been born in the Iraqi holy city of Najaf in 1950, into the household of Grand Ayatollah Muhsin al-Hakim, who served as the spiritual leader of Iraqi and most other non-Iranian Shiites in the 1960s. From 1968, when the secular Arab nationalist (and strongly Sunni-tinged) Baath Party made a coup and took over Iraq, it began persecuting Shiite activists. Many members of the al-Hakim clan were killed (over 60 by some counts), and others, including Abdul Aziz, were forced into exile in Iran.

In 1982, Ayatollah Khomeini formed the Iraqi expatriates into the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq. In 1984, Muhammad Baqir al-Hakim became the leader of it, with a goal of overthrowing Saddam and making Iraq into an Islamic republic. The younger brother, Abdul Aziz Al-Hakim, was put in charge of the Badr Corps, a guerrilla group based in Tehran that used to attack Iraqi government officials and facilities when the Baath Party was in power. (It was trained by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, to which al-Hakim had a close relationship till his death).

He returned to Iraq in April of 2003, along with many Badr fighters. His older brother, Muhammad Baqir, was killed in a massive truck bombing in late August of 2003. Abdul Aziz became leader of the Supreme Council and Hadi al-Ameri took over the Badr Corps. Along with Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani and nuclear scientist Hussein Shahristani, he was an architect of the United Iraqi Alliance, a vast coalition of major and minor Shiite fundamentalist religious parties (along with some secular notables). The UIA went on to win the January 2005 parliamentary elections, and repeated that performance in December of that year. For some odd reason, conservative Republicans in the United States went wild with joy that Abdul Aziz al-Hakim and his Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq had become Iraq's power broker. The Badr Corps, which he had headed, took over the special police commandos units of the Ministry of the Interior and gained a reputation for brutality against Sunni Arabs.

As Reidar Visser explains, Abdul Aziz maintained a close relationship with both Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and George W. Bush, showing the ways in which removing the Saddam Hussein regime and ensuring Shiite Arab dominance of Iraq were common goals of both Tehran and Washington. Al-Hakim repeatedly supported a long-term presence in Iraq of US troops, despite opposition to them on the part of most Iraqi and Iranian Shiites, because he feared that otherwise the Baathists would return. Sunni Arab guerrillas attempted to assassinate him on more than one occasion. He returned the favor, seeking to chase militant Sunnis out of the capital. He was frequently criticized by the Sunni Arab nationalist newspaper, al-Zaman, which he once threatened to muzzle. On the other hand, he did reach out to Sunnis, and Sunni parties expressed their condolences today.

Abdul Aziz al-Hakim pushed for a Shiite provincial confederacy on the model of the Kurdistan Regional Government in the Shiite south, but voters there rebuffed him in January of 2009, rejecting any such plan. The plan was also opposed by the Islamic Mission Party of al-Maliki and that Sadr Movement led by Muqtada al-Sadr.

After al-Hakim fell ill with cancer and began spending most of his time in Iran undergoing treatment, the UIA coalition fell apart. A rival of the Supreme Council, the Islamic Mission Party or Da'wa, grew in strength, benefiting from the vigorous leadership of Prime Minister Nuri al- Maliki (from spring 2006). Elements of the old Shiite coalition were put together again by other players this summer, with a new Iraqi National Alliance being announced just days ago. ISCI cleric and parliamentarian, Humam al-Hamudi, will chair the UIA coalition, succeeding al-Hakim. Al-Hamudi is known as a committed Shiite activist who played a major role in crafting Iraq's constitution.

Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that the eldest son of Abdul Aziz, Ammar al-Hakim, will lead the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI) for the time being. Eventually the Consultative Council of ISCI will formally choose a successor. (It will probably be Ammar, though ISCI leader Jalal al-Din al-Saghir maintains that the choice could fall on someone else).

Ash-Sharq al-Awsat (The Middle East) reports in Arabic that the future of the new Shiite coalition, the Iraqi National Alliance, is shaky now that its leader is dead. Other observers doubted that things would change much on the ground, since Abdul Aziz was already on extended medical leave and all the arrangements were undertaken by his office.

The death of Abdul Aziz al-Hakim emblazons a question mark over Iraqi politics going forward. Important parliamentary elections are scheduled for January, and al-Hakim is not there to lead his own coalition to the polls. His son Ammar is still inexperienced and relatively young. The foremost figure in ISCI outside the al-Hakim family is probably Iraqi vice president Adil Abdul Mahdi, who is widely viewed as a pragmatist rather than a party activist.

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Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Palestinians Plan State, but Will Netanyahu Block it?

The Palestinian prime minister, Salam Fayyad, has put forward a plan for a Palestinian state to be attained within 2 years. This is the first time such a blueprint with a timeline has been offered and it is a very big deal. The reason it can be taken more seriously than most talking points generated by the Israeli-Palestinian 'negotiations' (the longest-running ugly divorce in contemporary history) is that President Obama is dedicated to a two-state solution. If he is going to get one, something like Fayyad's plan is crucial, and so is a timetable of some sort (it has to be before the presidential campaign season in 2012).

Of course, the Likud government of Israel is all about preying on the Palestinians' land and resources and is die-hard opposed to a two-state solution. Israel is strangling the Palestinian economy.

The Israelis are restricting Palestinians' water supply and essentially using their water at a rate 4 times that of the Palestinians.

Dozens of Palestinians in East Jerusalem have been pushed out of their property by Israeli squatters and are now forced to sleep in the streets.

Israeli illegal immigrants into the Palestinian West Bank routinely act like thugs, beating up on Palestinians and stealing from them.

Israel has 11,000 Palestinians behind bars, and has repeatedly blocked family visits to prisoners, which the Red Cross has called a violation of the Geneva Conventions and international law more generally.

The Israeli military justified the attack on an unarmed American peace protester as a 'justifiable act of war.' (He is in a perhaps permanent coma).

Much of the US press, as usual, is ignoring the belligerent statements of Likudniks in the Israeli government and misrepresenting the Palestinians, whose statelessness (and consequent lack of human and legal rights) is imposed on them by a brutal Israeli military occupation and/or perpetual siege and blockade.

If there is going to be a two-state solution, as Obama insists and toward which the Fatah government in the West Bank is now moving quickly, it will depend on level-headed Israelis who recognize that the occupation of the Palestinians is actually a threat to Israel. I'm not optimistic that the rumored turn to a harder line against Iran by Obama in return for a Likud acquiescence in a Palestinian state will actually work. A gasoline boycott on Iran won't be effective, and the Likud will likely drag its feet so that in the end it will get everything its leaders want-- no real Palestinian state, continued subjection and exploitation of the Palestinians, and plus bad US-Iran relations and sanctions on Iran.

Now may be a time for Avi Shaked, the multi-billionaire internet entrepreneur, to make another offer.

On April 4, 2009, Haaretz revealed that Avi Shaked had been an extremely influential figure in the Geneva Accord Track II negotiations between liberal Israelis and the Palestinians.

In 2006, Shaked made headlines by offering then Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas a billion dollars. (H/t to this poker site for preserving this news item) if only they would just make peace already. Given how corrupt both governments are, it is amazing that no one took Shaked up on his offer.

I'm being a little tongue in cheek, of course. But influential and prominent pro-peace Israelis like Shaked do exist, and even the right of center Kadima Party has accepted the need for two states. I keep hoping that Netanyahu's government will fall and that those Israelis who want to do the right thing, for themselves and for the Palestinians, will get in in time for Obama to finally settle this dispute, which has poisoned the Middle East against the United States and generates enormous violence and tragedy on both sides.

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41 Killed in Qandahar Bombing;
Karzai & Abdullah Neck and Neck;
Taliban Threaten Western Capitals;
4 US Soldiers Killed

A massive truck bomb was set off near a Japanese construction company in the southwestern city of Qandahar in Afghanistan on Tuesday, killing about 41 and wounding some 65 persons. All the wounded were innocent civilians. It was set off at 7 pm as Afghans were breaking their Ramadan fast, about two hours after the electoral commission had announced limited initial results from the presidential campaign. The Afghan Avaz news service quotes Ghulam Ali Vahdat, a police officer, as saying that all the buildings within 100 yards of the bomb were destroyed, and windows were broken in buildings as far as a kilometer away. The Telegraph reports that the Japanese construction company had recently taken over the building of a road that was being opposed by the Taliban.

There was other violence on Tuesday, including the killing of a top police official in Kunduz in the north, and and the killing of 4 US soldiers in the Pashtun south by a roadside bomb. The deaths bring the August total to 40 Americans dead, and likely August will be more deadly for them than July, when 45 were killed. July's total was the biggest in the history of the war from fall, 2001, forward.

Australian troops killed Mulla Karim, a Taliban commander, in Oruzgan province. Meanwhile, the Pakistani Taliban acknowledged the death of their leader, Baitullah Mahsud. The US maintains that he was killed by an American drone attack in Waziristan. In retaliation, a new leader of the Pakistan Taliban Movement has threatened to strike at Washington, London and Paris.

The Afghanistan Electoral Commission, having counted 10 percent of the ballots from last Thursday's presidential election, has announced that the two leading candidates are nearly neck and neck. Incumbent Hamid Karzai has 40.6 percent so far, and Abdullah Abdullah is just behind at 38.7. Initial indications are that the turnout was lower than at first thought, perhaps as low as 30%, which is unprecedented in recent years, and which will affect the perceived legitimacy of the outcome. If the spread between the two candidates continues to be so close, Karzai will be denied the 50 percent of votes that would allow him to avoid a run-off election. Since Karzai is heavily supported by the Pashtun population (44%?), while Abdullah draws his votes disproportionately from the Tajiks (Dari Persian-speaking settled Sunnis), there are fears that a run-off election between these two will inflame ethnic tensions. These fears have been further excited by charges by Abdullah and some of the other candidates that massive ballot fraud occurred.

ITN has video on the issue of fraud in the election:




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Ted Kennedy on How America Got Mired in Iraq

Senator Ted Kennedy's death Tuesday night has deprived the nation of one of the most insightful and committed progressive politicians the country had. Kennedy all along had opposed Bush's Iraq War, and saw clearly before most of the country the various scams used to get it up. It is worth remembering that the narrative most of us now share on the catastrophes of Bush-Cheney foreign policy derives in important part from Kennedy's speeches. Note, too, that Kennedy got virtually no time on network or cable television for his critiques of Bush while the Democrats were in the minority. But CNN devoted half the day to covering John McCain's criticisms of Obama today. A millionaire senator from Boston was too far left for the corporate media. RIP. He has left a heavy burden on the rest of us, to see that the US does get out of Iraq and also that 47 million uninsured are finally covered and not just left to die when they fall ill. Kennedy is in some sense a martyr to the latter cause, and those who care deeply about the issue should carry on in his memory.


Here is a speech, delivered less than 9 months after the invasion of Iraq, in which Kennedy correctly lays out the ways in which Bush conned the country into it:


Senator Ted Kennedy, Speech on Iraq Policy, C-Span: Broadcast 01/14/04

". . . In these uncertain times, it is imperative that our leaders hold true to those founding ideals and protect the fundamental trust between the government and the people. Nowhere is this trust more important than between the people and the President of the United States. As the leader of our country and the voice of America to the world, our President has the obligation to lead and speak with truth and integrity if this nation is to continue to reap the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity.

The citizens of our democracy have a fundamental right to debate and even doubt the wisdom of a president's policies. And the citizens of our democracy have a sacred obligation to sound the alarm and shed light on the policies of an Administration that is leading this country to a perilous place.

I believe that this Administration is indeed leading this country to a perilous place. It has broken faith with the American people, aided and abetted by a Congressional majority willing to pursue ideology at any price, even the price of distorting the truth. On issue after issue, they have moved brazenly to impose their agenda on America and on the world. They have pursued their goals at the expense of urgent national and human needs and at the expense of the truth. America deserves better.

The Administration and the majority in Congress have put the state of our union at risk, and they do not deserve another term in the White House or in control of Congress.

I do not make these statements lightly. I make them as an American deeply concerned about the future of the Republic if the extremist policies of this Administration continue.

By far the most extreme and most dire example of this Administration's reckless pursuit of its single-minded ideology is in foreign policy. In its arrogant disrespect for the United Nations and for other peoples in other lands, this Administration and this Congress have squandered the immense goodwill that other nations extended to our country after the terrorist attacks of September 11th. And in the process, they made America a lesser and a less respected land.

Nowhere is the danger to our country and to our founding ideals more evident than in the decision to go to war in Iraq. Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill has now revealed what many of us have long suspected. Despite protestations to the contrary, the President and his senior aides began the march to war in Iraq in the earliest days of the Administration, long before the terrorists struck this nation on 9/11.

The examination of the public record and of the statements of President Bush and his aides reveals that the debate about overthrowing Saddam began long before the beginning of this Administration. Its roots began thirteen years ago, during the first Gulf War, when the first President Bush decided not to push on to Baghdad and oust Saddam.

President Bush and his National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft explained the reason for that decision in their 1997 book, A World Transformed. They wrote the following: "Trying to eliminate Saddam, extending the ground war into an occupation of Iraq, would have violated our guideline about not changing objectives in midstream. . .and would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. . . We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq. The coalition would instantly have collapsed, the Arabs deserting it in anger and other allies pulling out as well. Under those circumstances, there was no viable exit strategy we could see, violating another of our principles. . . Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land." Those words are eerily descriptive of our current situation in Iraq.

During the first Gulf War, Paul Wolfowitz was a top advisor to then Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney, and he disagreed strongly with the decision by the first President Bush to stop the war after driving Saddam out of Kuwait.

After that war ended, Wolfowitz convened a Pentagon working group to make the case that regime change in Iraq could easily be achieved by military force. The Wolfowitz group concluded that "U.S. forces could win unilaterally or with the aid of a small group of a coalition of forces within 54 days of mid to very high intensity combat."

Saddam's attempted assassination of President Bush during a visit to Kuwait in 1993 added fuel to the debate.

After his tenure at the Pentagon, Wolfowitz became Dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and continued to criticize the decision not to end the reign of Saddam. In 1994 he wrote: "With hindsight, it does seem like a mistake to have announced, even before the war was over, that we would not go to Baghdad..."

Wolfowitz's resolve to oust Saddam was unwavering. In 1997, he wrote, "We will have to confront him sooner or later-and sooner would be better...Unfortunately, at this point, only the substantial use of military force could prove that the U.S. is serious and reverse the slow collapse of the international coalition."

The following year, Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld and 16 others-10 of whom are now serving in or officially advising the current Bush Administration-wrote President Clinton, urging him to use military force to remove Saddam. They said, "The only acceptable strategy is one that eliminates the possibility that Iraq will be able to use or threaten to use weapons of mass destruction. In the near term, this means a willingness to undertake military action, as diplomacy is clearly failing. In the long term, it means removing Saddam Hussein and his regime from power. That now needs to become the aim of American foreign policy."

That was 1998. President Clinton was in office, and regime change in Iraq did become the policy of the Clinton Administration-but not by war.

As soon as the current President Bush took office in 2001, he brought a group of conservatives with him, including Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, and others, who had been outspoken advocates for most of the previous decade for the forcible removal of Saddam Hussein.

At first, President Bush was publicly silent on the issue. But as Paul O'Neill has told us, the debate was alive and well.

I happen to know Paul O'Neill, and I have great respect for him. I worked with him on key issues of job safety and health care when he was at ALCOA in the 1990's. He's a person of great integrity, intelligence, and vision, and he had impressive ideas for improving the quality of health care in the Pittsburgh area. It is easy to understand why he was so concerned by what he heard about Iraq in the Bush Administration.

In his "60 Minutes" interview last Sunday, O'Neill said that overthrowing Saddam was on the agenda from Day 1 of the new Administration. O'Neill said, "From the very beginning there was a conviction that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go...It was all about finding a way to do it. That was the tone of it. The President was saying, "Go find me a way to do this."

The agenda was clear: find a rationale to end Saddam's regime.

But there was resistance to military intervention by those who felt that the existing sanctions on Iraq should be strengthened. Saddam had been contained and his military capabilities had been degraded by the Gulf War and years of U.N. sanctions and inspections. At a press conference a month after the inauguration, Secretary of State Colin Powell said: "We have kept him contained, kept him in his box." The next day, Secretary Powell very clearly stated that Saddam "has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction..."

Then, on September 11th, 2001, terrorists attacked us and everything changed. Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld immediately began to link Saddam Hussein to Al Qaeda and the attacks. According to notes taken by an aide to Rumsfeld on September 11th, the very day of the attacks, the Secretary ordered the military to prepare a response to the attacks. The notes quote Rumsfeld as saying that he wanted the best information fast, to judge whether the information was good enough to hit Saddam and not just Osama bin Laden. "Go massive," the notes quote him as saying. "Sweep it all up. Things related and not."

The advocates of war in Iraq desperately sought to make the case that Saddam was linked to 9/11 and Al Qaeda, and that he was on the verge of acquiring a nuclear capability. They created an Office of Special Projects in the Pentagon to analyze the intelligence for war. They bypassed the traditional screening process and put pressure on intelligence officers to produce the desired intelligence and analysis.

As the world now knows, Saddam's connection to 9/11 was false. Saddam was an evil dictator. But he was never close to having a nuclear capability. The Administration has found no arsenals of chemical or biological weapons. It has found no persuasive connection to al-Qaeda. All this should have been clear. The Administration should not have looked at the facts with ideological blinders and with a mindless dedication to the results they wanted.

A recent report by the Carnegie Endowment concluded that Administration officials systematically misrepresented the threat from Iraq's nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons programs. They also concluded that the intelligence community was unduly influenced by the policymakers' views and intimidating actions, such as Vice President Cheney's repeated visits to CIA headquarters and demands by officials for access to the raw intelligence from which the analysts were working. The report also noted the unusual speed with which the National Intelligence Estimate was written and the high number of dissents in what is designed to be a consensus document.

In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, President Bush himself made clear that his highest priority was finding Osama bin Laden. At a press conference on September 17th, 2001, he said that he wanted bin Laden "dead or alive." Three days later, in an address to a Joint Session of Congress, President Bush demanded of the Taliban: "Deliver to the United States authorities all the leaders of al-Qaeda who hide in your land." And Congress cheered. On November 8th, the President told the country, "I have called our military into action to hunt down the members of the al-Qaeda organization who murdered innocent Americans." In doing that, he had the full support of Congress and the nation-and rightly so.

Soon after the war began in Afghanistan, however, the President started laying the groundwork in public to shift attention to Iraq. In the Rose Garden on November 26th, he said: "Afghanistan is still just the beginning."

Three days later, even before Hamid Karzai had been approved as interim Afghan President, Vice President Cheney publicly began to send signals about attacking Iraq. On November 29th, he said "I don't think it takes a genius to figure out that this guy [Saddam Hussein] is clearly ... a significant potential problem for the region, for the United States, for everybody with interests in the area."

On December 12th, the Vice President elaborated further: "If I were Saddam Hussein, I'd be thinking very carefully about the future, and I'd be looking very closely to see what happened to the Taliban in Afghanistan."

Prior to the terrorist attacks on September 11th, President Bush's approval rating was only 50%. But with his necessary and swift action in Afghanistan against the Taliban for harboring bin Laden and al-Qaeda, his approval soared to 86%.

Soon, Karl Rove joined the public debate, and war with Iraq became all but certain. At a meeting of the Republican National Committee in Los Angeles on January 19th, 2002, Rove made clear that the war on terrorism could be used politically, and that Republicans, as he put it, could "go to the country on this issue."

Ten days later, the deal was all but sealed. In his State of the Union Address, President Bush broadened his policy on Afghanistan to other terrorist regimes. He unveiled the "Axis of Evil"-Iraq, Iran, and North Korea. Those three words forged the lock-step linkage between the Bush Administration's top political advisers and the Big Three of Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz. We lost our previous clear focus on the most imminent threat to our national security-Osama bin Laden and the al-Qaeda terrorist network.

What did President Bush say about bin Laden in the State of the Union Address that day? Nothing.

What did he say about the Taliban? Nothing.

Nothing about bin Laden. One fleeting reference about Al Qaeda. Nothing about the Taliban in that State of the Union Address.

Barely four months had passed since the worst terrorist atrocity in American history. Five bin Laden videotapes had been broadcast since September 11th, including one that was aired after bin Laden escaped at the battle of Tora Bora. President Bush devoted 12 paragraphs in his State of the Union Address to Afghanistan, and 29 paragraphs to the global war on terrorism. But he had nothing to say about Bin Laden or al-Qaeda.

Why not? Because of an extraordinary policy coup. Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz-the Axis of War-had prevailed. The President was changing the subject to Iraq.

In the months that followed, Administration officials began to draw up the war plan and develop a plausible rationale for the war. Richard Haass, Director of Policy Planning at the Department State during this period, said recently that "the agenda was not whether Iraq, but how." Haass said the actual decision to go to war had been made in July 2002. He had questioned the wisdom of war with Iraq at that time, but National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice told him, "Essentially...that decision's been made. Don't waste your breath."

It was Vice President Cheney who outlined to the country the case against Iraq that he had undoubtedly been making to President Bush all along. On August 26, 2002, in an address to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the Vice President argued against UN inspections in Iraq and announced that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, meaning chemical and biological weapons. He also said: "We now know that Saddam has resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons. Among other sources, we've gotten this from the firsthand testimony of defectors, including Saddam's own son-in-law, who was subsequently murdered at Saddam's direction. Many of us are convinced that Saddam will acquire nuclear weapons fairly soon." Those were Cheney's words.

It is now plain what was happening: The drumbeat for war was sounding, and it drowned out those who believed that Iraq posed no imminent threat. On August 29th, just two days after Cheney's speech, President Bush signed off on the war plan.

On September 12th, the President addressed the United Nations and said: "Iraq likely maintains stockpiles of VX, mustard, and other chemical agents and has made several attempts to buy high-strength aluminum tubes used to enrich uranium for a nuclear weapon." He told the United Nations that Iraq would be able to build a nuclear weapon "within a year," if Saddam acquired nuclear material.

President Bush was focusing on Iraq and Saddam, even though one year after the attack on our country, bin Laden was still nowhere to be found. A sixth bin Laden tape had been aired, and news reports of the time revealed new military threats in Afghanistan. U.S. and Afghan military and intelligence officials were quoted as saying that al-Qaeda had established two main bases inside Pakistan. An Afghan military intelligence chief said: "al-Qaeda has regrouped, together with the Taliban, Kashmiri militants, and other radical Islamic parties, and they are just waiting for the command to start operations."

Despite the obvious al-Qaeda threat in Afghanistan, the White House had now made Iraq our highest national security priority. The steamroller of war was moving into high gear. The politics of the timing is obvious. September 2002. The hotly contested 2002 election campaigns were entering the home stretch. Control of Congress was clearly at stake. Republicans were still furious over the conversion of Senator Jim Jeffords that had cost them control of the Senate in 2001. Election politics prevailed, but they should not have prevailed over foreign policy and national security.

The decision on Iraq could have been announced earlier. Why time it for September? As White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card explained on September 7th, "From a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August."

That was the bottom line. War in Iraq was a war of choice, not a war of necessity. It was a product they were methodically rolling out. There was no imminent threat, no immediate national security imperative, and no compelling reason for war.

In public, the Administration continued to deny that the President had made the decision to actually go to war. But the election timetable was clearly driving the marketing of the product. The Administration insisted that Congress vote to authorize the war before it adjourned for the November elections. Why? Because the debate in Congress would distract attention from the troubled economy and the troubled effort to capture bin Laden. The strategy was to focus on Iraq, and do so in a way that would divide the Congress. And it worked.

To keep the pressure on, President Bush spoke in Cincinnati on Iraq's nuclear weapons program, just three days before the Congressional vote. He emphasized the ties between Iraq and al-Qaeda. He emphasized Saddam's access to weapons of mass destruction, especially nuclear weapons. He said, "If the Iraqi regime is able to produce or steal an amount of highly enriched uranium a little larger than a single softball, it could have a nuclear weapon in less than a year. And if we allow that to happen, a terrible line would be crossed...Saddam Hussein would be in a position to pass nuclear technology to terrorists."

The scare tactics worked. Congress voted to authorize the use of force in October 2002. Republicans voted almost unanimously for war, and kept control of the House in the election in November. Democrats were deeply divided and lost their majority in the Senate. The Iraq card had been played successfully. The White House now had control of both houses of Congress as well.

As 2003 began, many in the military and foreign policy communities urged against a rush to war. United Nations weapons inspectors were in Iraq, searching for weapons of mass destruction. Saddam appeared to be contained. There was no evidence that Iraq had been involved in the attacks on September 11th. Many insisted that bin Laden and Al Qaeda and North Korea were greater threats, but their concerns were dismissed out of hand.

Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz insisted that Iraq was the issue and that war against Iraq was the only option, with or without international support. They convinced the President that the war would be brief, that American forces would be welcomed as liberators, not occupiers, and that ample intelligence was available to justify going to war.

The gross abuse of intelligence was on full display in the President's State of Union address last January, when he spoke the now infamous 16 words-"The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." The President did not say that U.S. intelligence agencies agreed with this assessment. He simply and deviously said, "the British government has learned."

As we all now know, that allegation was false. It had already been debunked a year earlier by the U.S. intelligence community. Yet it was included in the President's State of the Union Address. Has any other State of the Union Address ever been so disgraced by such blatant falsehood?

In March 2003, on the basis, of a grossly exaggerated threat and grossly inadequate post-war planning, and with little international support, the United States invaded Iraq when we clearly should not have done so. . ."


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Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Congress Needs to Pass some Laws on controversial issues

The thing that concerns me most about the investigation of Central Intelligence Agency interrogators is that US law served as such a poor guide to them for what was permitted.

Although administrations do break laws, I think if Congress had had the courage and the energy to actually enact clear statutes on torture, the CIA interrogators would have been much better served. The 2005 McCain amendment was so watered down and so easily interpreted away as to produce the opposite of the effect intended; and then McCain himself went on to defend torture in order to curry favor with the far right in his presidential bid. Bush vetoed the last attempt at better anti-torture legislation in spring of 2008. The Democrats may only have a brief window through November of 2010 to get effective and unambiguous legislation on the books, and now we have a president who won't veto it.

Note that one of the interrogators is said to have feared prosecution before the World Court in the Hague. But why weren't they afraid of prosecution in US courts? When did the US go from having,in the Bill of Rights, among the most advanced human rights laws in the world to being a gulag backwater where it is only a trip to Holland that American torturers fear?

It is the ambiguity of US law on these matters that allowed John Yoo to offer those bizarre opinions, as White House counsel, as to what interrogators could do. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is toothless and largely ineffectual except as a vague set of ideals. It needn't be that way.

The Obama administration has forbidden waterboarding. But as long as these things are done by administrative fiat, they can easily be undone. There should be a law.

A law would help the courts hold high-up politicians to account. Dick Cheney has been vocal about torture saving lives precisely because he wants to affect the climate of public opinion before he goes up on charges. As things now stand, it is only some schmucks at the very bottom of the system that get punished, not the people actually giving the orders (even if by a wink and a handshake).

Even the old principle that Congress declares the wars has been made antiquated by the rise of modern police actions and guerrilla campaigns, which are not viewed by Congress as wars. As a result, the executive can single-handedly insert us into foreign wars, something the founding fathers wanted to forbid in the constitution. The war powers of presidents need to be more carefully revised and crafted.

Likewise, the kind of US-sponsored coups in other countries that Steve Kinzer has chronicled in his Overthrow take place in a legal limbo. Can the president order the Directorate of Operations to just get rid of the government of a foreign country? I repeat that it is not only the sheer act (and who would not have applauded a US-backed successful coup against Adolph Hitler if it could have been arranged?), but the extra-legal context in which the agency is made to operate.

If more of the covert side of the US government is not encompassed by legislation, then every time a right wing government gets in, it will just go back to Bushism. Or worse.


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Shiite Fundamentalist Coalition Announced
Al-Maliki Might Not win Second Term

Al-Zaman reports in Arabic that five major Shiite fundamentalist parties along with some other personalities and small parties have announced the National Iraqi Alliance, the successor to the United Iraqi Alliance that had grouped the same parties plus the Islamic Mission (Da'wa) Party of current prime minister Nuri al-Maliki.

This move could keep Nuri al-Maliki from winning another term-- and could therefore affect the relations of the Iraqi government with American military commanders.

The electoral alliance includes the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, the Badr Organization (the political arm of ISCI's paramilitary), the Sadr Movement, the Islamic Virtue Party (Fadila), and the National Reform Party (Islah) of former prime minister Ibrahim Jaafari (a splinter of the Da'wa). There are also a couple of small Sunni factions (but this is not new-- the original UIA ran some Sunnis and three Sunnis were seated in parliament under that rubric after the elections held in late January, 2005).

Al-Maliki's Da'wa Party declined to join the renewed coalition. It is rumored that al-Maliki wants the distribution of seats in parliament for Da'wa to be increased if it joins the NIA. Da'wa was awarded only 24 seats after the last election, in which the United Iraqi Alliance had won 132 out of the 275 in parliament. Its rival, the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI), received 30. The leaders of the NIA apparently are inflexible with regard to the matter of proportion among the parties.

An extended and excellent analysis of the new/old coalition has been posted by Reidar Vissar to his site, Historiae.

Depending on the precise language of the as yet stalled electoral law, when parliament passes it, this development could be a matter of political life and death.

Let's just imagine some scenarios for next January's parliamentary election:

In the provincial elections held last January in Dhi Qar, ISCI, the Sadrists and the Islamic Virtue Party got altogether about 40 percent of the vote. The Da'wa got only about 23%. Other provincial tallies are given here. In most provinces, with the exception of Baghdad and Basra, the old United Iraqi Alliance did just about twice as well as Da'wa.

If the NIA does as well in provincial elections as the old UIA did in provincial elections, it will again be the biggest party/coalition in the national legislature. By the constitution, it would therefore form the next government, and al-Maliki may at that point regret not having joined.

Otherwise, in parliamentary systems often the coalitions are formed after the election rather than before.

At that point Da'wa may join the NAI. But I think al-Maliki will get more steet credit for having waited, and he might think he will be able to extract a price for giving the NIA its parliamentary majority, i.e., the prime minister position.

As I read the constitution, if the National Iraqi Alliance is the single biggest party/coalition in parliament after the election, it will be offered the task of forming the government (it will need partners to bring it to 138 seats).

That is, al-Maliki is taking a real risk in not joining the NAI, because if it can strike a deal to get to 138 without Da'wa, its leadership may decide to dump al-Maliki. The tough stance he is taking could well cost him the prime ministership.

If the Shiites go into the elections split, moreover, they will end up giving enormous power to the Sunni and Kurdish factions that take one of the two party-coalitions to a majority in parliament. You could imagine the Kurds trying to extract a price for helping form the government-- maybe Kirkuk province?

Aljazeera English has video on al-Maliki's fight for political survival:




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Monday, August 24, 2009

Regime Broadcasts Baathist Confession re: Bombings;

Wissam Ali Kadhem Ibrahim was put on television in Iraq confessing his role in last Wednesday's bombings. The former Baathist official described an operation that drew on old-time Baathist assets in Diyala province to Iraq's northeast. The official spoke with cold, clinical precision. He showed no signs of torture. I found the confession at least plausible. In fact, I argued that something like this scenario lay behind the bombings last Wednesday. That, as Ibrahim says,the Baathist cells were operating in Diyala, that makes a lot of sense. Sunnis demonstrating in favor of Saddam Hussein came out in large numbers in Baqubah in fall of 2006, and were put down brutally by the Iraqi security forces.

The Financial Times argues that the US should prepare a realistic withdrawal timetable from Iraq, and perhaps a shorter one than envisaged in the Status of Forces Agreement between Washington and Baghdad.

Renewed violence in al-Anbar province, once al-Qaeda-in-Iraq Central, is threatening Obama's withdrawal timetable.

When the Iranian government decided to campaign against the spread of the swine flu by cutting back on pilgrims going to Iraq, it plunged the economies of shrine cities Najaf and Karbala into economic stagnation. Iran has also been disturbed by the decline in security in Iraq and by the tendency of Iraqi politicians to blame Iran for violence there.

Iraq faces immense challenges such as the clearing of 25 million land mines laid in the course of the wars the country has faced in the past 40 years.

Arwa Damon reports for CNN on the investigation of the bombings:




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Silverman: Religion and Politics in Iraq: What Type of Sectarianism Really Exists?

Adam L. Silverman writes in a guest op-ed for IC

The recent increase in political violence in Iraq has once again led to renewed discussions of the potential religious component. Violence has recently been directed against the heterodox Kurdish population and a recent NY Times article also addressed the question of sectarian issues. One key issue is that what looks like religious or sectarian conflict in Iraq is most often about some other kind of rivalry. Many Americans and other outsiders understand this phenomenon, but it bears emphasizing again here. My teammates and I conducted a four month long tribal study and history in our Operating Environment (OE) and our empirical findings are quite illuminating of the issue of Iraqi sectarianism.

The real heart of the Iraqi sectarian question is the frame of reference. Western disputes between religious sects or branches have often centered on doctrinal differences. The Iraqi frame is different. For the most part the results of our study indicated that Islamic theology and dogma, whether Sunni or Shia, are not really at the heart of the Iraqi sectarian dispute. When we began interviewing tribal leaders about their history and the history of the areas they lived in, several volunteered that they belonged either to the Sunni or Shiite branch of Islam. They would then go on to talk about their relations with the other clans in the area, describing these clans' sect, as well as whether they were related, or had struck inter-tribal agreements. We also asked the internally displaced Iraqis whom we interviewed about their sectarian orientation in order to try to better understand why they had left their homes and moved around. What we found was quite interesting.

Virtually all the individuals we interviewed, whether sheikhs, internally displaced Iraqis, or average Iraqis, told us that tribes tended to be mixed religiously. Even if a tribe in Mada'in where we were conducting interviews was completely Sunni, it typically had a branch elsewhere in Iraq that was Shiite. Likewise, the Shiite tribes had Sunni branches. Moreover, all the sheikhs indicated that their tribe’s people intermarry with members of other local tribes regardless of sectarian orientation. When asked, about 2/3rds of tribal leaders insisted that “sectarian” conflict was really about resources. The remainder asserted that outside religious extremist influences (whether deriving from the Wahhabi form of Islam or from hard line Shiism) are to blame and that often that influence is used to manipulate Iraqis in order to usurp their resources. We are confident in our finding that the inter-communal disputes are resource-driven, not the result of religion. Theology and dogma are used as a cover for negative actions taken. Respondents expressed concerns that, as a result of this dynamic, ordinary Sunnis might be targeted for retribution because they were assumed all to be radical fundamentalists, and that all Iraqi Shiites might likewise be lumped together with extremists from that branch of Islam.

A great example of how this resource war, disguised as sectarian conflict, operates is the dispute over the Salman al Farsi Mosque. This mosque named for a Persian companion of the Prophet Muhammed, located in Salman Pak – the Markaz Mada’in – has historically been a Sunni mosque. In fact Salman Pak, like the mosque itself, is named after him. Depending on which version of the mosque’s history you prefer, either all of Salman al Farsi is interred beneath it, or just a portion of him – like a reliquary. The Salman Pak municipality and the surrounding areas are overwhelmingly Sunni while the rest of Mada’in District is predominantly Shia – the farther one moves away from the Tigris River, the more Shia the district becomes. The Salman al Farsi Mosque, or rather its waqf (endowment) is one of the largest landowners in the area – both inside and outside the city. As a result many of the residents are actually renting their homes, shops, and farms from the mosque. Whoever controls the mosque controls its endowment and whoever controls the endowment controls a lot of money and power. While the mosque has traditionally been under Sunni control, and we were told that a string of historical documents proves this assertion, under the new Iraqi government it was somehow moved from the Sunni Mosque Ministry into the Shia Mosque Ministry.

As a result of this change, the issues of who controls the mosque has become a central preoccupation for the people of the Salman Pak area. Many of our interviewees expressed great concern over being evicted from their homes, businesses, or farms should the mosque be ultimately placed in Shia control. Additionally, the dispute over the mosque has had a major impact on the economy in Salman Pak. A not insignificant portion of the Salman Pak commercial districts of shops and stores are actually an arcade built into the walls surrounding the mosque. As long as the mosque remains shuttered and locked, so do the stores and shops.

Finally, the dispute over the Salman al Farsi Mosque has stoked fear of Iranian intentions in the area. The mosque is only a few blocks from the Arch of Kesra on the Steya Peninsula. Interviewees told us they were worried that through economic dominaton the Iranians were coming to retake possession of the area, and would rule it just as they did when the Persian capital was at the Taq-i Kesra Palace (Palace of Chosroes at Ctesiphon).

This anti-Iranian sentiment was also expressed in a number of interviews we conducted with Iraqi Shia. It was made clear to us over and over that no one was really fighting over whether one should pray like a Sunni or a Shia or whether one was better than the other, but that, rather, the dispute was over control of land, water, and money. Our study found that that the conflicts about resources are mediated by political groupings, which are divided into two main groups. One was the Shiite fundamentalist parties that had been in exile during the Saddam period but which came back in 2003 to become powerful political actors (including the Islamic Mission Party (Da'wa) and the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI). The other was the groupings that remained behind, (the [Sunni] Awakening Council members and the Sadrists). The situation in Mada'in is unlikely to be sui generis.


Adam L. Silverman, PhD is a Social Science Advisor with the US Army’s Human Terrain System and was previously deployed in Iraq from April through October 2008 as the Field Social Scientist and Socio-Cultural Advisor for the 2nd Brigade Combat Team/1st Armored Division assigned to Human Terrain Team Iraq 6 (HTT IZ6). The views expressed here are his alone and do not necessarily reflect those of the US Army’s Human Terrain System, the US Army’s Training and Doctrine Command, the 2BCT/1AD, and/or the US Army.

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Sunday, August 23, 2009

Top Ten Differences Between Bush & Obama First 7 Months

Obama, unlike Bush:

1. Has no plans to invade any new oil countries.
2. Knows who president of Pakistan is
3. Knows how to safely consume pretzels
4. Does not take orders from his veep
5. Not on vacation 40% of time
6. Clears away Bush's harm, rather than clearing brush on farm
7. Worried about 47 million uninsured, not about 47 thousand idle rich multi-millionaires
8. Not removing oversight from bankers on theory that financiers would never steal from own bank!
9. does not believe US menaced by Gog and Magog
10. Not ignoring threat of al-Qaeda


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Saturday, August 22, 2009

Obama's Fate as much in the Balance as Afghan Presidential Candidates

The Financial Times argues that the final judgment on how upright the Afghan elections were matters enormously to the Obama administration. If the US public decides these election results were phonied up, it will turn, FT argues, even more against the war than it already is (51 percent oppose the Afghanistan war in the US).

I don't think the US public cares so much about these elections. I think support for the Afghanistan war depends on the administration effectively tying it to concerns about Americans' safety and security. And since that argument is so hard to make convincingly, I can't see how public support for the war is going to come back. With dozens of US troops killed in July, moreover, people are hearing more bad news than good.

What I think is true is that a poorly executed Afghanistan policy could turn Obama into a one-term president. It is too early to judge exactly what Obama's policy will be in Afghanistan, but it should become clear within a few months. So far, Obama has not made the case and hasn't explained what the end game is.

CNN International's Atia Abawi reports from Kabul on the election process. She says the electoral commission says it won't have preliminary results until August 25. She also suggests based on personal observation that voter turnout was lighter than announced, and that ballot-stuffing took place last Thursday.



Aljazeera English interviews Afghan presidential candidate Abdullah Abdullah on the election process. He says he thinks the process went well despite a relatively low turnout, and says he won in areas where the votes have been counted. His rival Hamed Karzai also claims to have won.



France24 English service on drug money corruption high in the Afghan government:




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Friday, August 21, 2009

Bush Admin. worse than our Nightmares

It was worse.

Back in the bad old days of Bush's corrupt gang, we on the left were pilloried for suggesting that the administration was manipulating terrorism-related news in order to win the 2004 elections. But when Tom Ridge says it . . .

In fact, I argued in summer, 2004, that when Ridge did raise the terrorism alert, it had the unfortunate effect of outing an al-Qaeda double agent who had been turned by the Pakistani government and was helping set a trap for al-Qaeda in the UK. In turn, that caused the British government to have to move against the people it had under surveillance prematurely, harming the case.

Ridge is alleging he was pressured on the eve of the election. But I still wonder about the circumstances of the summer announcement. He might have been being used then, too, and not known it.

And if any of us had said that Dick Cheney was setting up civilian mercenary assassination squads (at least 007 works for the British government), and set things up so that perhaps neither the CIA director nor the president even knew about it, we would have been branded moonbats. But well, that is today's story

You shudder to think what hasn't come out yet.

If Bush and his gang falsely put up the terror alert or even tried to, for partisan political gain, that is a sort of treason. If they thereby ruined a British surveillance operation, they recklessly endangered US and NATO security. If they were arranging for civilian mercenaries to murder people . . . well you'd have to say that they were at least planning to be murderers. (The wingnuts will say that Xe was only being contracted to kill al-Qaeda types; but the wingnuts wouldn't be able to tell a Barelvi from an al-Qaeda supporter if their lives depended on it, and I wouldn't exactly trust Mr. Prince to be fair to Muslims.)

The horrible thing is that Wolf Blitzer on CNN assembled David Frum and Frances Townsend, former members of the Bush administration, to sit around on his afternoon news and analysis program on Thursday afternoon and more or less either call Ridge a liar or pooh-pooh the significance of what he is saying. There wasn't a single centrist or left of center voice to show any outrage. I mean, I know that Time Warner is not made up of people who necessarily care about the little person or social justice or anything. But a little bit of shame?

It isn't enough that the corporate media lied to us for Bush for 8 years, they are continuing to do it. Give money to Amy Goodman.

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Afghanistan: 50 Dead on Election Day, with Low turnout in Some Districts

Violence that left some 50 dead, and a relatively low turnout in some provinces marred Afghanistan's presidential election on Thursday. McClatchy reports that the largest election monitoring organization refused to sign off on the polls' legitimacy until more information had come in. Some 95% of polling stations were said to have opened. But the southwestern city of Qandahar took rocket and mortar fire about every half hour through the day, and there was a significant battle in Baghlan to the north. Rivals Hamid Karzai and Abdullah Abdullah both claimed victory, but the electoral commission refused to accept either claim on Friday morning.

Global Post's correspondent spoke of "empty" polling stations throughout the capital of Kabul. Other reports say that voting was light in the morning because of attacks and fear, but that more voters came out in the afternoon.

Some analysts are predicting that the election will proceed to a run-off two weeks fron now between Karzai and Abdullah. Rahimullah Yousafzai, a Peshawar-based analyst on Pakistan's Urdu-language GeoTv, pointed out that a run-off will risk dividing Afghanistan ethnically in a very stark way. Karzai can only will on the first round by getting at least some votes from the Tajik, Persian-speaking group that mainly supports Abdullah. But in a run-off, the Pashtuns would go solidly for Karzai, whil Tajiks and some other northerners would likely swing behind Abdullah. The winner will thus be seen as an ethnic president, not an Afghan one.

The violence on Thursday could have been worse. Amrullah Saleh, head of Afghanistan's Security Directorate, claimed that several bombing plots against Kabul have been broken up by Afghan authorities, and he went on to blame Pakistan for the suicide bombings on voting day. The level of dislike between some high Afghan government authorities and Pakistan does not bode well for the future. If the Abdullah Abdullah wins, expect Afghanistan relations with Pakistan to plummet to a nadir, since Islamabad tends to see him as an agent of Indian intelligence (the Research and Analysis Wing or RAW).

Pajhwok Afghan News says that Karzai and Abdullah were running neck and neck as of early morning Friday. Karza did well in the south and east (Pashtun areas), while Abdullah was favored by the Tajiks of the areas north of Kabul. Herat province results won't be released until Friday.

This Persian report says that in the conservative eastern province of Paktia, men voted on behalf of the women of their families, who were said to be unable to come to the polling station because of poor security and Taliban threats. It reports that one Paktia man came to the polling station with a list of 36 female family members for whom he intended to cast the vote.


Aljazeera English reports on the violence in Qandahar on election day:



Aljazeera English reports on charges by some candidates that the supposedly indelible ink used to dye the finger of voters could in fact be washed off, raising questions of voter fraud.



NATO wants to build the Afghan army and police forces up to a total of 400,000, including as many as 270,000 army soldiers. While organizing such a huge force and trying to make it disciplined, willing to stand and fight, and loyal to the Kabul government seems like an almost impossible task, it is the only way I can see for the situation to end at all well.


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Thursday, August 20, 2009

6 US Troops Killed in Afghanistan;
War Loses Majority Support

The US military announced on Wednesday that 6 US troops had been killed in Afghanistan.

As Afghans go to the polls in what is being widely decried as a flawed presidential election, a new Washington Post- ABC News opinion poll shows that American support for the Afghanistan War is collapsing. For the first time in two years, the percentage of Americans who said that the war was worth fighting fell below 50, all the way down to 47. Only 31 percent felt strongly about it being worth fighting.

The bad news for Obama is that liberals and Democrats are far more hostile to the Afghanistan War than are Republicans. The Democratic majority in the House and the Senate could, if these numbers keep going south, become sufficiently afraid of their constituents that they vote to stop funding the war. Some close observers of Washington think the president only has a year or two before that confrontation with Congress takes place.

Afghans began voting for president Thursday morning. AFP reports that in the Pashtun south, many fewer people went to the polling station to vote than in the more secure north. The Taliban and other anti-government forces have threatened Afghans who try to vote with violence. (Some have said they will cut off fingers dyed with purple ink-- dying the finger is a way for the authorities to make sure people don't vote twice.) A light turnout in the south might well allow Abdullah Abdullah, whose base is in the center and the north, to force incumbent president Hamed Karzai into a run-off election.

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Whodunnit in Baghdad

Speculation has been flying around in the news media and on the internet about who was behind Wednesday's gory bombings in Baghdad. Let me lay out the various theories behing put forward, and then I'll come back and give my view. If my conclusion is correct, it also helps answer the question of whether a return to some US patrolling in Baghdad and Mosul would be helpful.

Al-Hayat, writing in Arabic, says that the bombing attacks on Wednesday in Baghdad targeted the Ministries of Foreign Affairs, Finance and Education.

MP Ammar Tu'mah, deputy chair of the Security Committee in parliament, blamed the failure of the government to forestall these attacks on the lack of coordination among various security forces and the failure of various units to share intelligence, according to al-Hayat. He has a point. The Ministries of Defense and the Interior have different political colorations, and who the various domestic intelligence agencies really report to is not clear.

But the real question is who carried out these bombings and why.

I was watching Aljazeera in Arabic and they interviewed a Sunni Arab analyst from Baghdad who darkly hinted that the bombings might have been the work of a party unhappy with Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki dropping them from his coalition. Al-Maliki's Islamic Mission (Da'wa) Party is thought to be leaving the United Iraqi Alliance, the Shiite coalition that has in the past grouped fundamentalist parties such as the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, the Sadr Movement, the Islamic Virtue Party, and others. (Several of these parties now have left or have an ambiguous relationship to the UIA, which is attempting to regroup). So the Sunni analyst was implicitly blaming the Islamic Supreme Council or the Sadrists for the bombing. The involvement of ISCI guards in a recent bank robbery in the capital, and of the Sadr splinter group Asa'ib Ahl al-Haqq in anti-Coalition violence in Basra, may have lent such charges some plausibility.

On the opposite side of the spectrum, al-Hayat says that the Iraqi List (a nationalist grouping led by former appointed prime minister Ayad Allawi) accused Iran of having a hand in the bombings. Allawi is desperate, since his political party, which has 25 seats out of 275, is falling apart. Several prominent members had pulled out, and on Wednesday three more announced they were leaving. They complained that he made all the decisions for the party in a high-handed way, ignoring the counsel of MPs and other party leaders. And, they said, he had engaged in talks with Iran without the permission of the party or the Iraqi government. The Iranian newspaper Tabnak reported in Persian on Allawi's contacts with Tehran, speculating that he was attempting to improve his chances of doing well in January's parliamentary elections (Iran is influential with Iraqi Shiites). Allawi's intemperate blaming of Iran could be seen as a hysterical attempt to shore up his nationalist credentials, or perhaps as a sign that his approach to the ayatollahs in Tehran was rudely rebuffed. (During Allawi's term as appointed prime minister in 2004, his cabinet was vociferously anti-Iranian).

Likewise, the Sunni Arab nationalist newspaper al-Zaman blamed the Jerusalem brigade of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, in a shocking lapse of good journalistic practice, since it offers no evidence whatsoever for this serious allegation.

But I have a refutation. Cabinet ministries in Iraq have thus far been vehicles for party patronage. Thus, the Ministry of Finance is headed by long-time ISCI activist Bayan Jabr Sulagh, and its employees are disproportionately drawn from the Supreme Council. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is headed by Hoshyar Zebari, a Kurd from the Kurdistan Democratic Party, and anyone who has dealt with Iraqi diplomats cannot escape the impression that Kurds have special employment opportunities in that ministry. The Ministry of Education is headed by Khudayr al-Khuzai, a former parliamentarian from the Islamic Mission Party (Da'wa) - Iraq Organization, a branch of the same Shiite fundamentalist party to which al-Maliki belongs.

So the guerrillas who hit out at these ministries are very likely to have wanted to punish not only the central government but also the parties that control those ministries.

That ISCI bombed its own ministry of finance is not plausible. Moreover, Iran is closely allied with the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq and with the Kurds. And we know exactly who hates ISCI, the Islamic Mission Party and the Kurdistan Democratic Party-- all three. It is the Sunni Arab guerrilla groups, whether the Baath Party or the radical fundamentalists. So the conspiracy theory put forward by the Sunni Arab analyst just won't hold water, and nor will the one trotted out by Allawi's group and al-Zaman.

Al-Hayat says that the Iraqi government is blaming an "alliance of Baathists and al-Qaeda" for the bombings. But terrorist cells don't work that way. Six coordinated bombings requires tight-knit and cohesive cells along with close command and control. So it was likely one or the other. Given the military discipline and precision of the operation, I suspect former Baath officers of involvement, regardless of their current ideology, whether secular or religious.

Looked at in this way, the attack on the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which was the most massive in firepower, deaths and woundings, was a continuation of the bombings last week of Shabak and Yazidi Kurdish villages outside the northern, largely Sunni Arab city of Mosul. Mosul is a center for Arab nationalism, Baathism, and Sunni fundamentalism.

The Ilaf newspaper agrees with me that these bombings are a sign that elements in the Sunni Arab community are not reconciled to the rise of Shiite and Kurdish rule over Iraq. The problem cannot be solved either by federalism or democracy, the newspaper argues. Iraqi Sunni Arabs would not benefit from any kind of partition, even soft partition, since they don't have any developed hydrocarbon fields in their part of Iraq. And the Iraqi parliament is so far set up with a single chamber where there is a tyranny of the Shiite majority.

So as I have hinted, I have a slight preference for the theory that ex-Baathist or neo-Baathist or generally Sunni Arab nationalists were behind the attacks. A lot of ex-Baathist officers and leaders are hiding out in exile in Damascus.

As Al-Watan [The Nation] points our in Arabic, Iraqi prime minister Nuri al-Maliki visited Syria earlier this week. While he was there, he is said to have given Syrian President Bashar al-Asad a list of Iraqis wanted by Baghdad who were thought to be hiding in Syria (many of these would be Baathist officials or officers of the old Saddam Hussein regime). In return, he offered Syria economic inducements, such as crude Iraqi petroleum at concessionary prices. It was announced that Iraqi security officials would meet in Damascus with Syrian and American counterparts today, to discuss improving border security.

It is possible that elements of the Iraqi Sunni Arab resistance in exile in Syria, who are running terrorist cells inside Iraq, is letting al-Maliki that they will not allow themselves to be extradited and go to the gallows like Saddam Hussein without a fight, and that they can make al-Maliki's life miserable.

After all, al-Maliki has already more or less been running for prime minister in the upcoming January elections on the basis of his ability to get the American troops out of people's hair and to supply security in their stead. It is easy for his Sunni Arab foes in Damascus and Mosul to undermine that claim with bombings like those on Wednesday. Al-Maliki has been adamantly against negotiating with the Baathists or, indeed, any guerrilla group with blood on its hands. A portion of the Sunni Arab community let him know Wednesday that they simply will not accept the new status quo. Al-Maliki has surprised a lot of people by being much more assertive and much more successful in restoring security in places like Basra and Amara in the Shiite south, than many expected. But unless he finds a way to reconcile with the Sunni Arabs, his political future is cloudy.

If, in turn, the main problem is that al-Maliki is pursuing a vendetta with elements of the Sunni Arab nationalist leadership, and they are lashing back out at him, then a return to having US troops patrol Baghdad would not in fact resolve the problem. They might be able to make big bombings harder. But these bombings have been going on since 2003, and many big sanguinary explosions were set off under the nose of US troops all through those 6 years. Especially if this is a political struggle, a short-term US military would not be the right solution. The solution is for the Obama administration to play hard ball with al-Maliki in getting him to pursue national reconciliation.

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Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Nearly 100 Dead, 500 Wounded in 6 Bombings in Baghdad

A series of coordinated truck bombings targeted Iraqi government ministries and other facilities on Wednesday morning, killing nearly 100 persons and wounding some 500. Poorly equipped and staffed emergency rooms in the capital were overwhelmed.

One of the massive explosions targeted the Foreign Ministry building, killing nearly 60 persons and breaking windows in the nearby parliament building. The offices of Baghdad Province were also hit, along with some army buildings. Others hit residential and commercial districts.

The Arabic press is reporting that a bomb went off near the al-Rashid Hotel,, where government officials and the foreign press often stay. Another bombing was reported at al-Kifah Street downtown, Baghdad's traditional Wall Street financial district. A mortar landed near the United Nations HQ.

These bombings targeted government buildings and symbols of opulence and normality-- the al-Rashid area and Kifah St. They were intended to inform the government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki that the guerrilla opposition has not been defeated, and that the prospects of his establishing a stable government that runs roughshod over other groups are low.

The Iraqi government blamed "al-Qaeda" for the bombings, which is to say, radical Sunni Arab fundamentalists. But these attacks look more military to me, targeting as they did government ministries, and I'd be surprised if former Iraqi Baathist military officers were not involved.

The Iraqi military admitted that allowing big truck bombs freely to navigate the streets of central Baghdad was a major security breach. Iraqis had resented the blast walls and check points put in by the US military in 2007-2008 and the al-Maliki government had moved to dismantle them. In some instances the blast walls had protected Sunni neighborhoods from Shiite militias, but only at the cost of devastating their markets and economic life, producing 80% unemployment within the walls. In some ways the reduction of violence in the past year and a half has been achieved by artificial means that had no hope of continuing to be implemented in the long run.

Al-Maliki has been adamant that he will not negotiate with the remnants of the Baath Party or other Sunni Arab groups with blood on their hands. In fact, this intransigence has served as a cover for his failure to proceed with any sort of genuine political reconciliation with the Sunni Arab community. The continued violence in Iraq is a manifestation of those profound political discontents with the new political order, one dominated by the Shiites and the Kurds.

ITN has video:




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