Informed Comment

Migrating Blog: Offline Temporarily

2010-04-09T15:38:00.003-04:00

Sorry, folks, I have to migrate my blog to a different server and publishing software this weekend. As a result, the site will be offline temporarily.

You could bookmark the feedburner feed for access while it is offline.

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Israel's Netanyahu Blows Off Obama's Nuclear Summit

2010-04-09T11:00:00.003-04:00

The audience at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference is said to have gone wild with applause when Liz Cheney announced the decision of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu not to attend next week's nuclear summit, called by President Barack Obama.

A person gets a little tired of pointing to the hypocrisy of the American right wing, which would have been up in arms if Democrats had sided with a foreign head of state against the American president, and, indeed, would have charged treason. The thing to remember is that to right wingers, only Republican presidents are really presidents. Democratic Presidents are always coded as usurpers. The politically immature are like 5 year olds who pick up their marbles and go home when they aren't winning.

Netanyahu's staff said he decided not to come because reports had reached the prime minister that Arab states attending the summit would attempt to "embarrass" Israel over its defiance of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and its construction hundreds of nuclear warheads. Instead, deputy PM Dan Meridor will attend. Israel's nuclear arsenal was a primary impetus to the Iraqi nuclear research program in the 1980s, which in turn alarmed Iran and sparked Tehran's interest in acquiring at least the knowledge of how to enrich uranium. That is, Israel (and its enablers, France and Britain) kicked off the present nuclear crisis in the region, and Arab and Muslim states in attendance would be unlikely to allow Netanyahu to forget it.

Netanyahu's government recently humiliated Vice President Joe Biden when he was on a state visit to that country recently by announcing the building of 1600 new household units on Palestinian West Bank territory that Israel had unilaterally annexed to its district of Jerusalem. The announcement scuttled the talks with the Palestine Authority, the beginning of which Biden had come to celebrate. The Palestinians, have sensibly decided that they will refuse to negotiate with people who are actively stealing from them the very territory that is at stake in the negotiations. The Israeli slap in the face to Biden caused a subsequent Netanyahu visit to Washington to turn into a fiasco, with President Obama making forceful demands on the wily Netanyahu, and then leaving him on his own devices for dinner.

Thus, some observers believe that Netanyahu is playing hooky largely to avoid more pressure to take steps to restart peace negotiations. There are even rumors that Washington might put forward its own peace plan and then attempt to twist the arms of the Israelis and Palestinians to agree to it, and some observers suspect that Netanyahu was trying to avoid being cornered in that way.

But there is another possible explanation for Netanyahu staying away from a summit on nuclear security issues in Washington. It is that the Israeli prime minister is protesting a new White House policy of refusing visas to Israeli scientists, engineers and technicians who work at the Dimona Reactor/ nuclear bomb factory. Up until recently they had been free to attend technical and scientific conferences and pursue advanced classes at US universities. The visa denials were reported in the Israeli newspaper Maariv by Uri Binder on Wednesday April 7: "Nuclear Reactor Workers Not Wanted in United States." It was translated by the USG Open Source Center. The article reports that Israeli workers at the Nuclear Research Center Negev (NRCN) in Dimona are complaining bitterly at the humiliation of being excluded from the US, saying the turn-downs are an "offense" against them "and their families." (???) Moreover, the Dimona bomb plant is suddenly finding it difficult to import technical components and equipment from the United States. The restrictions, they say, are unprecedented. They also claim a double standard, alleging that the Obama administration is being "lenient" toward Iran.

In fact, Iran is a signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, is at the moment largely in compliance with it, has no nuclear arsenal, and does not even have a nuclear weapons program. (The treaty allows countries to enrich uranium for fuel, which is all that Iran is known to be doing). Yet the US has an extensive regime of economic sanctions on Iran, along with UN Security Council sanctions, both of which Obama is attempting to ratchet up. In contrast, Israel is actively constructing more and more nuclear warheads, which it is stockpiling, and which its leaders occasionally brandish at other Middle Eastern states. The Israeli arsenal, in turn, spurs a Middle East arms race.

Obama has just signed a new START treaty with Russia in Prague aiming to reduce the nuclear arsenals of each country by a third, to 1550. Obama appears to believe that by taking such a step, he can shore up the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, whereby signatories pledge not to develop nuclear weapons. He will have more moral authority to go to the UNSC and ask for more severe sanctions against Iran.

Obama's attempt to reduce warhead stockpiles in the US (he will need the Senate's ratification of the treaty) has been met with a campaign of ridicule and misinformation among Republican politicians and their television channel, Fox Cable "News." As usual in these matter, Jon Stewart at the Daily Show presents the best take-down of completely false RNC talking points:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

The Big Bang Treaty

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show Full Episodes

Political Humor

Tea Party

(Note that the usually perspicacious Jon Stewart gets one fact wrong-- Iran is a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and is nowadays largely in conformity with it.)

In fact, nuclear warheads are extremely dangerous to all of us, and the fewer there are in the world, the better. How many do you really need for deterrence? Pakistan's 14 little bombs are alleged to have deterred an Indian attack on that country in the summer of 2002. If only one of the 14 was dropped on Delhi, after all, the devastation would have been enormous. With the big nuclear powers, the size of the arsenal itself should be a form of deterrence. It is not impossible that an extensive nuclear exchange could blow away the ozone layer, which keeps us from being sunburned to death. It could throw up so much dust into the atmosphere that two years of night would ensue, which would kill all life on earth (i.e., the dreaded 'nuclear winter.') As Stewart noted, Ronald Reagan's own negotiations with the Soviet Union aimed at reducing warheads by a third, in his own day.

Obama appears to have a nuclear strategy that deploys arsenal reduction among the great powers as a platform on which to pursue non-proliferation and perhaps even the roll-back of some existing nuclear stockpiles. As with Israel's stubborn insistence on continuing to steal Palestinian land and to blockade the Gazans-- which ensures continued violence-- so its rogue nuclear operation is ultimately a threat to the international security of the United States.

The Israeli scientists at Dimona have it backwards. It is they who are providing a justification to Iran and giving it a motivation to close the fuel cycle and have at least nuclear latency or the 'Japan option,' as a way of countering Israel's policy in the region.

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Air Farce: Qatari Diplomat Cuffed on Plane for Smoking, & Bad Joke

2010-04-08T01:13:00.002-04:00

Karl Marx once remarked that every historical event occurs twice, first as tragedy and then as farce.

On Wednesday evening we got the farcical version of the shoe bomber when the third secretary of the Qatari Embassy appears to have sneaked a smoke in the lavatory of a plane headed for Denver. The flight attendants noticed the smoke, and confronted Mohammad Yagoub al-Madadi, 27. When asked what he had been doing in there, he appears to have made a sarcastic remark about setting his shoes on fire. Big mistake.

The alarmed flight attendants called on air marshalls, who firmly marched al-Madadi back to his first class seat and sat on either side of him. The pilot kept the plane low, and two F-16s scrambled to escort the plane (and no doubt prevent it from being misused if taken over). The whole scenario reminds me of a Monty Python skit.

Al-Madadi is destined to enter the annals of persons who joked around about serious security matters on planes or at airports, and who came to rue the day. There was the pilot who as a practical joke paraded around in front of passengers conspicuously reading a book, "How to Fly a Plane." He was fired. And then there are all the passengers who earned themselves an extra long interview at security checks in airports by making jokes with the TSA inspectors that included the word "bomb." Some things you don't make light of.

There are only about 200,000 native, citizen Qataris. They are among the richest populations in the world per capita, since their small Gulf country sits atop an ocean of natural gas. Their emir gives the US an airbase, al-Udeid, and has been instrumental in capturing key al-Qaeda fugitives. Qataris are often pro-American, and Qatari pilots flew missions against Saddam Hussein in the Gulf War alongside US pilots.

Al-Madadi might have diplomatic immunity. But he doesn't have Late Night immunity, and should get ready to be the butt of many jokes. Although it is true that the incident might not have been taken quite o seriously by the authorities of it had not involved an Arab, lots of Euro-Americans have run into trouble, as I noted, for inappropriate and lame attempts at comedy at airports or on planes. This story is one of undue arrogance on al-Madadi's part. Likely a Swede who behaved and spoke the same way would also have been frog-marched off the plane.

Also al-Madadi should recognize that he has a bad nicotine addiction and give up smoking, which will give him lung cancer and tragically shorten his life (not to mention put him in compromising positions like sneaking a few puffs in an airplane bathroom). I've often thought that Arabs are always worrying about nefarious plots against them by Americans, but then they voluntarily smoke American cigarettes like chimneys and put themselves in early graves. Many more of them have died in this way than from direct American military or covert action.

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Sadrist Straw Poll selects Ibrahim Jaafari as candidate for Prime Minister

2010-04-08T00:41:00.001-04:00

The straw poll conducted by the Sadr Movement, led by Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, produced the following results:

Ibrahim Jaafari, (National Reform Trend): 24%
Jaafar al-Sadr (State of Law), 23%
Qusay al-Suhail (Sadr Movement) 17%
Nuri al-Maliki (State of Law/ Da'wa): 10%
Iyad Allawi (Iraqi National Movement): 9%
Baha' al-A'raji (Sadr Movement): 5%
Ahmad Chalabi (Iraqi National Alliance): 3%
Adil Abdul Mahdi (Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq), 2%
Rafi al-Isawi (Iraqi Islamic Party [Sunni]): 2%

Although there is not really a clear winner, the Sadrists seem to be coalescing around Jaafari.

Jaafari leads a splinter of the Islamic Mission Party or Da'wa, and served as elected prime minister from spring 2005 through spring 2006. He was widely seen as ineffectual, and managed to anger all the major political players, especially the Kurds. He was accused of seeking Turkish help to forestall the absorption by the Kurdistan Regional Government of the oil province of Kirkuk.

The Sadrists only got 39 seats in the parliamentary election of March 7, in a parliament of 325. They are far too small to impose Jaafari on the other parties, many of which have a critique of him. In order to form a government, several parties will have to join together to get 163 seats. Moreover, al-Hayat quotes other members of the Iraqi National Alliance of Shiite fundamentalist parties as saying that they do not consider the referendum relevant to their choice for prime minister. Thus, the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, led by young cleric Ammar al-Hakim, will not back Jaafari.

The two largest blocs garnered 91 and 89 seats in parliament respectively. Were the Iraqi National Alliance, which groups Shiite fundamentalist parties, including that of Sadr, to swing behind either of the frontrunners, it could put them in striking distance of forming a government. But the Sadrists deeply dislike incumbent PM Nuri al-Maliki of the Islamic Mission Party, and they likely aren't wild about Iyad Allawi, a strong secularist, either.)

The main effect of the straw poll and the announced result is to make it harder for the Sadrists to rush into a coalition. The move also gives them a bargaining chip in negotiating with the parties of Iyad Allawi and Nuri al-Maliki. For instance the Sadrists may be attracted to the State of Law list as a partner, but not want prime minister al-Maliki to lead the resulting coalition. They could now offer to give up Jaafari if their prospective partner would likewise give up its favored leader, so that a less well-known compromise candidate might emerge.

The negotiations over forming a new government probably just got lengthened, and they could well go into August.

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Tomgram: Engelhardt, Numbers to Die For | TomDispatch

2010-04-07T12:01:00.000-04:00

Tomgram: Engelhardt, Numbers to Die For | TomDispatch:

"* Believe it or not, the Defense Logistics Agency shipped 1.1 million hamburger patties to Afghanistan in the month of March 2010 (nearly doubling the March 2009 figure). Almost any number you might care to consider related to the Afghan War is similarly on the rise. By the fall, the number of American troops there will have nearly tripled since President Obama took office; American deaths in Afghanistan have doubled in the first months of 2010, while the number of wounded has tripled; insurgent roadside bomb (IED) attacks more than doubled in 2009 and are still rising; U.S. drone strikes almost doubled in 2009 and are on track to triple this year; and fuel deliveries to Afghanistan have nearly doubled, rising from 15 million gallons a month in March 2009 to 27 million this March. (Keep in mind that, by the time a gallon of gas has made it to U.S. troops in the field, its cost is estimated at up to $100.)"

To be read in conjunction with my posting below.

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Karzai called Erratic, even Druggie; In fact, he is posing as liberator in shadow of Empire

2010-04-07T01:14:00.004-04:00

Here is the reason it is so important that President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan has begun behaving so erratically. It is because the path President Obama chose in Afghanistan requires a strong, upright, and relatively efficient local partner. Moreover, the US needs to gain hearts and minds, but a series of costly errors of judgment have scandalized the Afghan public. Put the two developments together, and you get a 'surge' that so far is not going well and in which the loyalty of America's partners cannot be taken for granted.

President Obama had two choices in fall of 2009 in regard to Afghanistan. He could have pursued a limited counter-terrorism strategy, involving targeting of armed extremists but gradually extricating US troops from that country. Instead, he signed on to a major counter-insurgency project that implies a certain amount of state-building. US and Afghanistan National Army [ANA] troops would take territory, clear it of insurgents, hold it in the medium term so they would not return, and build services and infrastructure.

This strategy of counter-insurgency is far more dependent on expanded military and governmental capacity than the course of counter-terrorism would have been. The army and police are to be much expanded and given basic training. The civil bureaucracy is to be encouraged to provide more services.

But at the head of the security forces and the civil bureaucracy is Hamid Karzai. The president stirred controversy last week by asserting that the problem of ballot fraud in last summer's presidential election was actually caused by foreign troops. Both the US and the UK have vigorously denounced Karzai's comments. (In fact, the ballot fraud appears to be the work of Karzai's own supporters).

Then last weekend, according to the Wall Street Journal, Karzai met with a handful of US congressmen and senators. During the meetings, Karzai is said to have warned the US that if it went on acting so heavy-handedly in his country, it would create the Taliban as national liberators and make them popular.

But then he went further and warned that he himself might join the Taliban if he were subjected to too much American pressure. The US legislators who leaked these details did not think they should be taken seriously.

But the remarks underline that Karzai is a loose cannon. They provided an opening for former deputy UN envoy to Afghanistan, Peter Galbraith, to accuse Karzai of being unbalanced. Galbraith, a former US ambassador to Croatia and a representative of Kurdish interests in Iraq (along with being an investor in Kurdistan petroleum development), was at loggerheads with Karzai last fall because of the way the Afghan politician stole the presidential election. Galbraith was fired over his stance.

In an interview with AFP, Galbraith said that Karzai is given to extreme temper tantrums and suddenly becomes very emotional. He added that there are rumors that Karzai uses heroin, and that that drug use helps explain his outbursts. I fear Mr. Galbraith undercut his credibility by retailing this unsubstantiated rumor, which does not actually fit with the facts he is reporting. Heroin users are notoriously laid back and emotionally detached even on occasions when emotion is called for.

Karzai's problems do not derive from being crazed or a drug addict. Rather, he is in an impossible situation. He knows that the Obama administration came into office last year determined to remove him as indecisive and more of a problem than a solution. He responded by rigging the presidential election to ensure his hold on power. He presented the Americans with a fait accompli, which they reluctantly acknowledged and even embraced.

At the same time, Karzai faces an ongoing insurgency (some of it Taliban, some of it other groups less seldom studied). The insurgents have a rhetorical advantage over Karzai, insofar as they can freely paint themselves as guardians of the national heritage and freedom fighters determined to expel the foreigners. This stance is leant plausibility by some US actions, a recent mistaken raid that left women dead and which was covered up. The impact of such actions on Afghan and especially Pashtun nationalism and male self-image cannot be over-estimated.

Karzai has responded to this difficult situation by blaming the US for some of his troubles, by reaching out to negotiate with figures such as Gulbadin Hikmatyar (not Taliban but mujahid or 'freedom fighter' in Ronald Reagan's terms)-- with whom the US would probably prefer he not be talking-- and then by adopting the rhetoric of mujahid or freedom fighter himself. There is a little resemblance between Karzai's current strategy and that in 2008 of Iraq's PM Nuri al-Maliki. Al-Maliki sent troops to Basra against US advice, and then negotiated a US troop withdrawal that Bush-Cheney did not want but which they had no choice but to accept if foreign troops were to remain in the area.

Karzai would very much like to likewise position himself as having brought greater security to his country and as having forced the US to set a withdrawal timetable for its exit. Karzai's outbursts and his apparently erratic statements actually just mark off his peculiar, almost DeGaulle-like situation (in being in his own mind a national liberator who in fact is deeply dependent on foreign allies. That humiliation and contradiction once led DeGaulle to warn that missiles could be aimed as easily at the US from France as toward the Soviet Union.

Karzai's jejune threat thus bespoke his own internal contradictions.

But if Gen. Stanley McChrystal's counter-insurgency campaign depends on Karzai's support and on the latter supplying a 'government in a box' for the provinces, then it may well be in trouble.

Karzai seems to have forgotten to ask the Taliban whether they would have him, but the answer appears to be 'no.' Here is an article translated by the USG Open Source Center on the state of play in Afghanistan politics:

Taleban dismiss Afghan leader's alleged joining the Taleban remarks
Afghan Islamic Press
Tuesday, April 6, 2010 ...
Document Type: OSC Translated Text...

Taleban dismiss Afghan leader's alleged joining the Taleban ...

Text of report by private Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press news agency:

Kandahar: "We neither have information about Karzai's remarks, nor can we say anything about them."

A Taleban spokesman has denied reports that the Taleban has said that Karzai will be the Taleban's brother if he separates himself from foreigners.

In a telephone interview with Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) Taleban spokesman Qari Yusof Ahmadi said: "We neither know what Karzai has said nor have we reacted to anything like that."

He added: "Some media take opinions about such sensitive issues from people who identify themselves as Taleban and we consider such reports as an irresponsible action. The Islamic Emirate has specific spokespeople and we hope that the official position of the Islamic Emirate will be taken from these spokespeople."

AIP asked what would be the Taleban's position if President Karzai had really said, or if he says, that if foreigners do not stop meddling in Afghanistan he will join the Taleban. Ahmadi replied: "This is drama. Karzai wants to draw people's attention away from bigger issues, such as the invasion of the country, the killing of people and other big facts. Such remarks have no importance for the Taleban."

Some media reported that the Taleban's regional spokesman had said: "If President Hamed Karzai separates himself from foreigners, then he is our brother."

(Description of Source: Peshawar Afghan Islamic Press in Pashto -- Peshawar Afghan Islamic Press in Pashto -- Peshawar-based agency, staffed by Afghans, that describes itself as an independent "news agency" but whose history and reporting pattern reveal a perceptible pro-Taliban bias; the AIP's founder-director, Mohammad Yaqub Sharafat, has long been associated with a mujahidin faction that merged with the Taliban's "Islamic Emirate" led by Mullah Omar; subscription required to access content; http://www. afghanislamicpress. com)

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Wikileaks Video Shows US Killing of 2 Reuters Newsmen

2010-04-06T00:42:00.005-04:00

Wikileaks on Monday released a 17 minute video of a US helicopter gunship attack on a group of Iraqi men in New Baghdad in 2007. The pilots mistakenly identified the camera of a Reuters photographer who was with the men as a rocket propelled grenade launcher, and the US attack killed two civilian Reuters news personnel. Two children were also wounded in the firing. A US military man dismissed the children's death as the fault of those who had been killed, saying , "well it's their fault for bringing their kids into a battle."

Reddit.com has a good discussion of the video, in which the main conclusions appear to be these:

1. The cover-up of the pilots' mistake in killing the Reuters cameramen and mistaking their cameras for an RPG is the worst thing about this episode

2. While the pilots who fired at apparently armed men (and at least 3 were actually armed) thought they were saving US ground troops who had been pinned down from men with small arms, they had less justification for firing on the van. Indeed, the latter action may have been a war crime since the van was trying to pick up the wounded and it is illegal to fire on the wounded and those hors de combat.

3. While many actions of the pilots may not have been completely wrong under their rules of engagement, nevertheless they often acted inexcusably, and their attitude is inhuman and deplorable.

See Glenn Greenwald on why the USG attempt to suppress wikileaks matters.

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Pakistani Taliban kill 51 in strikes at Heart of US Presence, and at Secular Party

2010-04-06T00:36:00.000-04:00

Although in the US the big news out of Pakistan on Monday, understandably, was a Taliban attack on the american consulate in Peshawar that killed 5 persons, including two Pakistani policemen guarding the consulate, in Pakistan itself the subsequent bombing of a political rally that left around 45 persons dead and 100 others wounded was equally a source of anxiety.

Five well-armed and well-trained guerrillas of the Tehrik-i Taliban Pakistan (TTP or Taliban Movement of Pakistan) launched the attack on the consulate with rocket propelled grenades. It appears that three of them were killed prematurely when one accidentally detonated the bomb in his vehicle. Two of the dead were found with sophisticated suicide bomb vests that they had not had the opportunity to set off at the consulate. It is chilling that only the bombers' own mistakes prevented the attack from being much more devastating.

Azam Tariq, a spokesman for the Movement of Pakistani Taliban in the city of Miranshah, announced to reporters that the attack on the consulate was intended to be revenge for US drone attacks in the tribal regions and for the role the US played in pushing the Pakistani military to mount military campaigns against the TTP in Swat and South Waziristan. Dawn quotes him as saying "“We will continue attacks on the Americans in Pakistan and Afghanistan."

AP has video:

In Timergara, 171 km from Peshawar, a Taliban suicide bomber killed 45 and wounded 100 at a rally. The secular Pashtun party, the Awami National Party, held a big celebration to commemorate the renaming of the North-West Frontier Province as 'Khyber-Pukhtunkhwa.' The new name combines a famous place name (the Khyber Pass) with the ethnic name of most of the people of the province, Pukhtuns or Pashtuns. The other Pakistan provinces were already named for their major ethno-linguistic group. The renaming was a victory for Pashtun subnationalism and therefore poses a threat to the Taliban, who seek their support from the Pashtuns, as well. Most Pashtuns reject the extreme religious and political ideas of the Pakistani Taliban, and the ANP, which controls the state legislature, is promoting a form of Pashtun ethnic pride. This is not the first time the Pakistani Taliban have lashed out at their secular rivals. That there is a powerful anti-Taliban political tendency in Khyber-Pukhtunkhwa is often overlooked by outsiders.

GEO satellite television said in its broadcast of "Today With Kamran Khan" on Tuesday, April 6, 2010:

'Kamran Khan establishes telephonic contact with Mian Iftikhar Hussain, NWFP senior minister, and asks him whether the local leadership of Awami National Party (ANP) did not take a risk while arranging a public meeting in Lower Dir because two or three major terrorist attacks have taken place there in recent weeks. Sidestepping the question, Hussain says: the ANP is in "forefront" of war against terror and it is supporting and siding with the security agencies at all cost and, so, the terrorists are naturally targeting the ANP. Hussain adds that the ANP has, however, accepted the challenge of terrorists and it will neither be "frightened" nor "surrender" in fight against terror. Hussain says: "there may be many more martyrdoms, but we have made a resolve, a firm resolve, that our jihad would continue until the elimination of terrorists." When asked why Dir is being particularly targeted by terrorists, Hussain says Dir borders Bajaur and Mohmand Agency which had been strongholds of terrorists and as their strongholds are being gradally dismantled (in military operations), terrorists want to have their presence felt through some isolated attacks. When asked whether attackers of US consulate have been identified, Hussain says: faces of five of the attackers are beyond recognition and only the face of one remaining attacker is slightly recognizable and he appears to be "foreigner," but this would be confirmed only after the completion of investigation. Hussain pays tributes to the security agencies for foiling the "well prepared" terror attack.'

The outbreak of Taliban guerrilla attacks in the northwest did not forestall the Pakistani government's major political move. President Asaf Ali Zardari is attempting to speed up the passage of legislation that would strip the president of the right arbitrarily to fire the prime minister and dismiss parliament. Zardari, oddly enough, addressed parliament in English, speaking for the last time as a political figure-- before being reduced to a political symbol. This movement by the Pakistani government does return it to a parliamentary model that is more democratic than the high-handed president's rule fostered by military dictatorships since the early 1980s, though from the point of
view of the Pakistan public, the deterioration in the country's security is probably the more pressing issue.

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Bombings in Iraq kill 41, Wound 237; Attempt to tarnish al-Maliki's reputation for improving Security;

2010-04-05T01:31:00.006-04:00

The LAT says that at least 41 persons were killed and 237 were wounded by three suicide bomb attacks targeting the Iranian and German embassies and the Egyptian consulate. Most of those killed or injured were civilians who happened to be in those areas.

The bombings likely are aimed at hurting the chances of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki for a second term. His claim to fame had been that he restored some security to Basra and Baghdad. His rival, the Iraqi National Movement of Iyad Allawi, immediately took advantage of the bombings to complain about poor security measures. But an official quoted in the al-Hayat article below pointed out that the bombers had hoped to drive their vehicles into the embassies, and had been prevented from doing so by Iraqi security, thus foiling what would have been a major blow against the Iraqi government's standing with the outside world. Another Iraqi observer is quoted by Sawt al-Iraq as saying that the bombers were sending a message to the outside world that Iraq is still too dangerous to open an embassy there.

The pan-Arab London daily Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that actually the third bomb was set off between a residence used by the German embassy and the Syrian embassy. Correspondent Jawdat Kadhim in Baghdad says that the Egyptian government confirmed that four consulate employees were injured in the blast, which it roundly condemned. He says that an off-duty guard for the German establishment is also reported killed.

An eyewitness to the attack on the Egyptian consulate in the western district of al-Mansur said, "The suicide bomber was alone, driving a small Kia truck. He headed toward the building housing the Egyptian consulate. When the guards requested that he stop, he continued even faster. When they opened fire on him, he immediately detonated his vehicle.

The Iranian ambassador to Iraq, Hasan Kazemi Qomi, condemned the attack in Karrada near his embassy as an act of terrorism. He added, "We are not positive that our embassy was the target." He said that none of his employees had been injured.

The attacks are the most deadly since January 25, when bombers killed 36 and wounded around 70. Two one-day bombing campaigns in August and October 2009 were also similar, though they demolished government buildings attached to ministries.

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Bombings Target Foreign Embassies, Kill Dozens; 25 Iraqis Killed by Sunni Extremists; Sadrists close referendum vote

2010-04-04T01:38:00.002-04:00

The headlines out of Iraq Sunday are mainly owing to the consequences of the US troop withdrawal from that country.

Update Three suicide bombs rocked the capital Sunday morning, in different districts, but each appearing to target foreign embassies, killing dozens. The Iranian and German embassies were among the targets. The Times of London correspondent also heard a report that a security firm may have been another target.

In a pre-dawn Saturday raid, Sunni Arab militants dressed as Iraqi army troops or US soldiers attacked families of the Jubur tribe. As long as the US military was actively patrolling Iraqi cities, and while it was paying the Awakening Council fighters directly, they were relatively safe. But as US troops have pulled back and as the government of PM Nuri al-Maliki has reduced the pay of these fighters and most often declined to induct them into the security forces, they have become increasingly vulnerable to such attacks. And this attack could well be the beginning of a vaster trend toward reprisals as the US departs and those who cooperated with it are coded as collaborators. (And as the US withdraws, foreign embassies and other institutions will require special protection by the Iraqi security forces or insurgents will try to force them out.)

Aljazeera English has video:

In other news, the Sadr Movement closed their two-day referendum on which prime ministerial candidate their party should support. The vote has been criticized for having insufficient safeguards to prevent multiple voting by a single individual and other forms of fraud. The referendum is in a sense non-binding, since it was held at the bidding of Muqtada al-Sadr and is not mandated in the constitution.

That Muqtada al-Sadr should have emerged as the kingmaker in Baghdad is also an artifact of the US withdrawal from Iraq. As the US fades, those movements that are able to mobilize the masses will no longer be curbed by the US military, and so can assert themselves politically.

Welcome to the glimmers of a post-American Iraq . . .

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Pakistan Moves Further Toward Democracy; Could become a Role Model for Other Muslim states

2010-04-03T01:50:00.004-04:00

The Pakistani government on Friday tabled a proposed 18th amendment to the constitution, which if enacted will be an enormous advance toward democratization in the country.

I was watching Bill Maher last week and Christopher Hitchens remarked on the Iraqi elections that they "didn't used to happen" under Saddam Hussein. Likewise, free elections did not happen under Gen. Zia ul-Haq in 1980s Pakistan, or in 1999-2007 under Gen. Pervez Musharraf. And in the 1990s, presidents kept using the martial law amendments to the constitution of Gen. Zia to arbitrarily dismiss elected prime ministers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif.

But US hawks and Neoconservatives are not celebrating this epochal bill in Pakistan. I ask myself why.

I think it is because Neoconservatism and the arguments of all those who favor democratization at the barrel of a gun are fundamentally Orientalist in character. In some ways they go back to Karl Marx, who in his journalism on India argued that the capitalist British Empire was necessary to shake Indian villages out of their millennia-long sluggishness, from which they could never escape on their own.

During the past 3 years, the Pakistani public has demonstrated repeatedly and on a large scale in favor of the rule of law and the reinstatement of the Supreme Court justices dismissed by dictator Gen. Musharraf. Mind you, they are making a case for civil law and the civil supreme court, not for sharia or Islamic law. They voted in the center-left Pakistan People's Party in February 2008, and the return to parliamentary rule ultimately, in August 2008, allowed the political parties to unite to toss out of office Gen. Musharraf, who had had himself declared a civilian 'president' and was in danger of being impeached for alleged corruption.

That is, the Pakistani public has conducted a 'color revolution' of its own, in the teeth of opposition or skittishness in Washington, and managed to overturn a military dictatorship that had been backed to the hilt by Bush-Cheney, restoring parliamentary governance.

This bill will take that process even further. The president will lose the power, so abused in the 1990s, to dismiss the prime minister at will. Presidents will not be able to prorogue or cancel parliament. They won't be able to unilaterally appoint the Chief of Staff. The legislative reforms in Pakistan will also give more autonomy to the provinces within the Pakistani federal system. The long-suffering Pashtun people (unfairly branded as all 'Taliban' by some observers) will finally get a provincial name recognizing them, as Punjab, Sindh and Baluchistan recognize their majority ethnicities.

But none of these achievements is being praised by the right of center US press or the liberal imperialists.

That is because the United States did not spur these developments. The Pakistani public (including humble street crowds) did it themselves, and if anything the US was nervous about losing its favorite military dictator and terrified that democracy would bring instability or provide an opening for the Taliban to take over the country. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton preposterously called Pakistan the 'most dangerous country in the world.' Australian gadfly and security consultant David Kilcullen said rather bizarrely in a WaPo interview last year this time that the Pakistani government could fall to the Taliban and al-Qaeda within six months. Pakistan, by democratizing from within and challenging the paradigm of liberal imperialism, either falls off the US radar (it isn't our project, so why even pay attention?) or is actively disparaged as a form of 'instability.' It all has to be about us.

In contrast, the March 7 parliamentary elections in Iraq have been widely lauded by the US right as vindication of George W. Bush's illegal invasion and occupation of that country. Iraq is a basket case, full of smoldering rubble and an army of displaced people, as well as masses of widows and orphans created by the violence that broke out when Bush created a power vacuum. The party most likely to play kingmaker is the Sadrists, followers of fundamentalist Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. Iraqi politics are far less secular than Pakistan's. For all the recent violence in Pakistan, it is a much more secure country than Iraq, possessing a large and professional army. Iraq is being lauded as a role model not because it is a success but because it is an American project, in which the little brown irrational people have allegedly once again have had the precious tutelage of white Europeans (and Euro-Americans) generously bestowed upon them.

Pakistan, which at the moment has had a much better political outcome, is ignored or disparaged because the hand of the West is hard to discern in its achievements. The move to weaken the president is not, of course, being taken purely out of altruism. The Muslim League-N wants the PPP president taken down a notch. President Asaf Ali Zardari's own alleged corruption weakens him and makes it hard for him to resist the demand that the president's powers be curbed.

What the Pakistani public is doing has much more lasting implications for democratization in the Muslim world than anything Bush did. Pakistan is a Sunni Muslim-majority country, so it has more hope of being seen as exemplary by the 90% of Muslims in the world who are Sunnis, than does Shiite-dominated Iraq. That Pakistan's politicians are themselves implementing these reforms gives them an authenticity that the US-authored procedures in Iraq largely lack.

Pakistan has a host of daunting problems, including high levels of corruption, the continued undue power of the military and of Inter-Services Intelligence, Taliban-driven political violence, and a legacy of support for terrorism in Kashmir and Afghanistan-- neither as yet entirely abandoned. High population growth rates, lack of land reform, and relatively low literacy and internet use all threaten to erode the impressive political achievements of the past 3 years. Even the new bill does not provide any parliamentary checks and balances on the power of the prime minister to appoint persons to high-level positions, and so is deeply flawed.

But there is some good news to be found in Pakistan's political development from time to time, and this weekend is one of those moments. Americans and Europeans should try a little humility, and find it in themselves to praise these positive accomplishments even if no Western troops set them in motion.

The long arm of the military dictators is losing some of its grasp on Pakistani political institutions, and the country is moving toward a strong parliamentary system. It is something to be happy about, even if the next round of reforms may have to rein in the prime minister himself.

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Obama Phones Hu over Iran Sanctions; China Stresses Peaceful Resolution; India Reviving Iran Pipeline Plan

2010-04-02T00:42:00.003-04:00

As part of his press for increased sanctions on Iran over its civilian nuclear enrichment program, President Barack Obama called Chinese President Hu Jintao on Thursday. The US has few bargaining chips to induce China to play ball on Iran, which supplies 8% of China's imported petroleum. (For the importance of Iran to the Chinese economy see this Reuters article.) For China's energy needs in general, see Michael Klare at Tomdispatch.

One issue that has caused tensions between Washington and Beijing is US pressure on Beijing to revalue its currency, which economists consider undervalued. Artificially keeping the yuan low helps China's manufacturers to export their goods more readily, and hurts the manufactures of other countries (such as the US itself) that let their currencies float and be assigned a value by the market.

It may be that Obama will let the Chinese revaluation issue slide in order to get better cooperation on increased sanctions. If so, it would be a bad deal. Reviving US industries through more competitive exports is light years more important than ratcheting up sanctions on Iran, especially since the kind of sanctions that can likely get through the Security Council will be powerless to deter Iran's nuclear enrichment program.

Even then, China will not want measures that hurt Iran's ability to export oil and gas. China is now the world's second largest importer of petroleum, at about 4 to 4.8 mn. barrels a day. (The US is importing about 11 million b/d, though its appetite has decreased in the past 18 months because of the deep recession.) China desperately needs energy from Iran if it is to go on growing, and Beijing is highly unlikely to anything to harm that supply.

Meanwhile, a key player with regard to Iran will be missing at the UN Security Council talks, i.e. India. New Delhi just yesterday broached reviving a plan to bring natural gas from Iran through Pakistan and thence to India. The $8 billion plan has been in limbo for two or three years. First, the US pressured the Asian Development Bank not to underwrite the project, raising the question of where the $8 bn. will come from. Then, there were ethnic disturbances by Baluch tribesmen in the area through which the pipeline would run, raising questions about how secure it would be (a question you would want answered before sinking $8 bn. into it) Finally, Iran asked for an unrealistically high price for the natural gas.

But Pakistan is pledging to ensure security for the pipeline. The Pakistani military has shown in Swat and South Waziristan that it can do counter-insurgency if it is willing to invest enough manpower and equipment, which may make its pledge about Baluchistan more credible to India. As for prices, the coming on line in the past five years of shale gas in the US works to keep them relatively low. Shale gas is profitable to extract at about $4 per million British Thermal Units, ensuring that when the price rises sufficiently, the increased US production from shale will force it right back down, for the foreseeable future. The US has now reemerged as the world's largest producer of natural gas, ahead of Russia. This introduction of new shale production will have disciplined Iran's expectations, perhaps making it more likely that Tehran will offer India a realistic price. (Natural gas has the advantage of producing far less carbon dioxide than coal. It has the disadvantage of being extracted through methods that use a lot of water and potentially disturb the environment; also, the extraction process could release methane gas, which is several times worse as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.)

The United States immediately urged Pakistan to shelve the project, saying it is "not the right time" for it. Neither Pakistan nor India is likely to yield to Washington on this issue. India cannot directly intervene in the UNSC discussions of tightened sanctions on Iran, but it can work through friendly countries such as the Russian Federation to make its concerns known. And, if the choice is being energy-starved, it may at some point just break the US sanctions regime and take the consequences.

The USG Open Source Center translated the following report from Chinese; it underlines that China still hopes for a negotiated settlement and certainly disapproves of the use of force. Are we getting to a point where China might over-rule Israel in the Middle East?

PRC FM spokesman: China 'Remains Committed' to Peaceful Solution of Iran Nuke
By reporters Tan Jingjing and Hou Lijun: "Qin Gang Says China Continues To Remain Committed to a Peaceful Settlement of the Iran Nuclear Issue"
Xinhua Domestic Service
Thursday, April 1, 2010 . . .
Document Type: OSC Translated Text . . .

Beijing, 1 Apr (Xinhua) -- Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang reiterated at a regular news conference on 1 April that the Chinese side will continue to remain committed to finding a peaceful solution to the Iran nuclear issue.

In response to a question on the Iran nuclear issue, Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang confirmed that Iranian Supreme National Security Council Secretary Jalili arrived in China on 1 April for a visit, during which State Councilor Dai Bingguo and Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi will separately meet and hold talks with him.

Qin Gang said: On the night of 31 March Beijing time, the general directors of the foreign ministries' political departments of China, Russia, the United States, Britain, France, and Germany held a teleconference to exchange views on the Iran nuclear issue. They agreed to continue to maintain contacts through various channels.

Qin Gang said: The Chinese side is highly concerned about the situation currently facing the Iran nuclear issue and is stepping up efforts to conduct communications with the relevant parties to push for an appropriate solution to the nuclear issue and strive for results. The Chinese side will continue to make constructive efforts for a diplomatic settlement of the Iran nuclear issue.

He reiterated: On the Iran nuclear issue, the Chinese side stands for safeguarding the international nuclear nonproliferation system and also safeguarding regional peace, security, and stability. When discussing this issue, the Chinese side always proceeds from these two points.

(Description of Source: Beijing Xinhua Domestic Service in Chinese -- China's official news service (New China News Agency))

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Sadrists are Holding Referendum on PM; Allawi says Would go to Iran, form Gov't of National Unity

2010-04-01T00:32:00.003-04:00

The party of Muqtada al-Sadr in the Iraqi parliament, with 39 seats, intends to hold a referendum on which prime ministerial candidate to support on this Friday and Saturday, according to al-Hayat writing in Arabic. Sadrist party offices and other party-affiliated buildings will be used for the polling stations. Iraq's Independent High Electoral Commission refused to oversee the referendum, saying that their charge from the constitution is to simply ensure that parliamentary elections are upright. Spokesman Qusay Abdul Wahhab said that anyone would be allowed to vote in the referendum, not just known members of the Sadr Movement. Voters will be allowed to vote for one of five prominent candidates for prime minister: Iyad Allawi, Nuri al-Maliki, Jaafar Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr, Adil Abdul Mahdi, and Ibrahim Jaafari. Allawi is an ex-Baathist secular Arab nationalist of Shiite heritage. Nuri al-Maliki, the current prime minister, heads up the State of Law coalition. Jaafar Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr ran on the State of Law slate (which has the Da'wa or Islamic Mission Party at its core), but as the son of the "First Martyr," Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr, he has a natural charisma should the State of Law decide to dump incumbent al-Maliki so as to stay in power. Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr, a major Iraqi cleric, was killed at Saddam's hands in 1980. The list also includes Adil Abdul Mahdi, currently one of 2 vice presidents, who represents the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq. Finally, Ibrahim Jaafari, the first post-Saddam prime minister, who broke off from al-Maliki's Islamic Mission Party, is a possibility for voters.

Al-Hayat also reports that the Iraqiya list of Iyad Allawi is miffed that it was not invited to Iran this past weekend. He offered to go to Iran to work for a coalition, he said. Allawi expressed a willingness to go to Tehran if that is where the government is being formed. Both al-Maliki and Allawi are now showing flexibility and the willingness for the first time to form a government of national unity.

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Obama to Seek Further Iran Sanctions; Amiri Defected to US, seems to deny active nuclear weapons program

2010-03-31T01:13:00.001-04:00

President Obama is pressing for new United Nations Security Council sanctions within weeks. Although Russia and China oppose 'crippling' sanctions such as cutting off Iran's access to imported gasoline, they may agree to the watered-down US plan of imposing restrictions on companies owned by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (a major economic force in Iran). China is said by Reuters to be weakening in its opposition to new Iran sanctions, but perhaps this is only because it would not be affected by Western measures narrowly targeting the Revolutionary Guards.

On the other hand, the Reuters piece, which appears to be based on interviews with US officials, may be overly optimistic. Russian President Medvedev said just a few days ago that increased sanctions on Iran are "not optimal." I.e. he does not rule them out but they aren't his first choice. And China is even more opposed than Russia. Obama still has a hard path ahead.

Iran sanctions are in any case merely symbolic. The regime cannot be forced to change course in this way. Indeed, this regime likes being isolated.

This Reuters article also misinterprets the stance of the International Atomic Energy Agency of the UN, which continues to certify that none of Iran's nuclear material, being enriched for civilian purposes, has been diverted to military uses. The IAEA has all along said it cannot give 100% assurance that Iran has no weapons program, because it is not being given complete access. But nagging doubt is not the same as an affirmation. We should learn a lesson from the Iraq debacle.

Meanwhile, ABC News's Brian Ross got the scoop on the defection to the US of Iranian nuclear scientist Shahram Amiri. US intelligence continues to maintain that Iran has not committed to having a nuclear weapons program. Presumably this information came from Amiri and is fresh and solid, since he is a consummate insider.

Yet you get headlines like, "Iran moves closer to nukes."

Somehow American hawks can't seem to get their minds around the obvious conclusion from the CIA diction, which is that Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program at the moment. It can't move closer to nukes if it doesn't have a weapons program! Moreover, that it does not have such a program is no longer a considered opinion or educated guess, but is based on the best kind of intelligence. It is the conclusion that the 16 US intelligence agencies came to in 2007, and there is apparently still no evidence that Iran has changed its mind about the undesirability and even evil of nuclear warheads (though there are no doubt hard liners who disagree with Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's fatwas against nukes as un-Islamic.)

As long as the US does not object to the actual nuclear weapons of Israel, India and Pakistan (none of which signed the NPT), its obsession with Iran's civilian energy program will strike people in the region as unfair.

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Singer: The pro-Israel lobby’s curious defense of an alleged Somali war criminal.

2010-03-31T00:08:00.000-04:00

Sam Singer writes in a guest editorial for Informed Comment entitled: 'A strange alliance at the Supreme Court: The pro-Israel lobby’s curious defense of an alleged Somali war criminal: A Shared Interest in Sovereign Immunity' :

Mohammed Ali Samantar is the only living vestige of the Barre regime, the last government in two decades to exercise central control over Somalia and, not coincidentally, the last that was impudent enough to try. When Siad Barre was finally overthrown in 1991, Samantar, who had served as defense minister and prime minister, fled, in a storm of bullets, to Italy. He eventually made his way to Fairfax, Virginia, where he lived in suburban obscurity until a group of Somali nationals discovered him, hired a lawyer, and sued for damages. According to his accusers, the Barre regime committed unforgivable acts of violence against them and their families, offenses spanning a range of brutality from arbitrary detention, to torture, rape and extrajudicial killing. Samantar was allegedly aware of the crimes being perpetrated against civilians and yet failed to stop them. The suit was dismissed by a federal district court and then reinstated by the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. It is now pending before the Supreme Court, where a peculiar coalition of defenders is urging reversal. Among them, to the confusion of some observers, are five prominent pro-Israel organizations, each with a professed interest in keeping Samantar out of court. In joint amicus briefs, the groups insist that as a former government official, Samantar should be immune from suit. To hold otherwise, they warn, would violate international law and set an inviting precedent for Israel’s enemies and their supporters in the human rights community.

The arrival of the Israel lobby adds geopolitical intrigue to a case that already read like a Ludlum thriller. And because it speaks to real and immediate consequences, it lends concreteness to a discussion that would have otherwise carried on in the abstract. It is one thing for a lawyer to appeal to legal authority for the proposition that the courts of one nation ought not sit in judgment of the acts of another; it is quite another for five groups purporting to represent the interests of the Israeli government to advise that doing so in this case would be to declare open season on Israeli officials in US courts.

It is not without some irony that organizations claiming to represent Israel, a state conceived in the wake of unprecedented state-sponsored violence, find their wagon hitched to the cause of an alleged war criminal. Nor does the position square, at least not at first glance, with less expansive interpretations of sovereign immunity advanced by the lobby’s constituents in the past. Just this year, Israeli victims of rocket fire on the Lebanese border sued the Iranian government, by way of its central banks, on the theory that it provided material support to Hezbollah, the source of the rockets. Last December, a pro-Israel group in Europe sued leaders of Hamas in a Belgium court, invoking what it described as the court’s “universal” jurisdiction over cases arising from war crimes. In both cases, sovereign immunity was an obstacle standing between Israeli interests and a favorable judgment; here, in Samantar’s case, supporters of Israel invoke it as a shield.

In fact, Israel is far more likely to find itself on the receiving end of a human rights suit. According to one report, nearly 1,000 suits have been filed globally against Israeli officials and military personnel alleging war crimes and other abuses. The defense ministry expects some 1,500 more will follow, many stemming from military operations in the coastal territories, but also some taking aim at the less violent aspects of Israeli anti-terror strategy, including one suit describing the security fence as a “crime against humanity.” An Israeli newspaper published a “wanted” list of current and former officials who are among the common named defendants. The list, which was republished in briefs to the Court, reads like a who’s who in Israeli political and military history. The forums for these suits vary, but they commonly feature developed Western countries that have lowered the drawbridge for human rights litigants. Steering many of the cases are nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), some based in the Middle East with ties to the Palestinian government, others based in the West and backed by the likes of the Center for Constitutional Rights and George Soros’s Open Society Institute.

In these suits supporters of Israel see pretext. They describe a more sinister objective, a coordinated effort to bring Israeli officials into federal courtrooms. The idea is to delegitimize Israel, but not before dragging officials through an invasive and costly discovery process. Do it enough and Israeli officials will start thinking twice before traveling to the United States, or, worse yet, before assuming roles that could expose them to suit. Defense experts believe the strategy fits the definition of “lawfare,” think-tank speak for the use of legal methods to achieve military goals.

In the immediate term, the briefs warn, relations between the US and Israel will suffer. Like any partnership, the US/Israeli alliance benefits from a rich and ongoing exchange of people and ideas. For the exchange to thrive, current and former Israeli officials must be able to travel to and within the United States without fear of being served with a lawsuit. By way of illustration, the American Jewish Congress recounts the story of Moshe Ya’alon, a retired Israeli general who was recently summoned to court upon arriving in Washington, D.C. for a think tank forum. The complaint, which sought damages for civilian deaths resulting from a battle on the Lebanese border between Israel and Hezbollah, was perfunctory. With respect to Ya’alon, it alleged only that he served in the army chain-of-command during the relevant period. The district court dismissed the case on jurisdictional grounds and the D.C. Circuit affirmed, concluding that the immunity of a foreign state extends to its former officials. Ya’alon never had to step foot in a courtroom. Now suppose that instead of Washington, he had been served with the suit 15 minutes away, in Arlington, Virginia. In that event the dismissal of his suit would have been appealed to the Fourth Circuit, which, as we learned in Samantar’s case, does not share the D.C. Circuit’s view on official immunity. In other words, had Ya’alon booked a hotel across the river, he might well still be there today.

A Statutory Nightmare

Naturally, US-Israeli relations didn’t figure into the Supreme Court’s questioning at oral arguments. The justices had assembled to resolve a disagreement among the federal circuit courts over whether sovereign immunity extends to officials. Accordingly, they trained their focus on Samantar and his theory of the case, which rests on the off-stated maxim that one equal has no dominion over another equal. That this saying, which encapsulates the principle of sovereign immunity, is most commonly recited in Latin suggests something about its vintage. It is as close to a truism as a proposition can come in a foggy discipline like international law, and it is an animating principle of the Foreign Sovereign Immunity Act (FSIA). That law changed the way US courts process suits against foreign governments. Before 1976, a court needed the go-ahead from the State Department before docketing such cases. When this approach proved unwieldy, Congress vested gate-keeping authority in the federal courts and then cabined it by stripping them of jurisdiction over suits against foreign states that don’t fit within a narrow set of exceptions.

Until recently it was generally accepted that these same protections applied to foreign officials. After all, a suit against a foreign official acting on behalf of a state is effectively a suit against the state. True, the caption may list the Minister of Defense rather than the Ministry of Defense, and the plaintiff may have his sights set on a personal bank account rather than the national treasury, but in either case the court is sitting in judgment of the state’s actions. It has intuitive appeal, this idea. It also has the support of the majority of the federal circuits.

But as the Fourth Circuit pointed out below, the argument is without support in the one place it needs it most--the text of the FSIA. FSIA extends sovereign immunity to “foreign states” as well as their “agencies and instrumentalities”, but it remains conspicuously silent on the matter of foreign officials. For supporters of broad immunity, this omission is proof that the identity of interests between a foreign sovereign and its officials is self-evident. Congress, they argue, had no reason to split hairs, to try to distinguish the indistinguishable. Opponents, who harbor a less attenuated view, insist that if Congress wanted to extend immunity to foreign officials, it would have said so.

The theory that foreign officials are immune from suit encounters an more mystifying problem in the Torture Victim Protection Act (TVPA), a federal law that permits victims of state-sponsored torture to bring suit in the United States against culpable foreign officials. The TVPA is one of the statutes supplying the cause of action in the suit against Samantar, but that’s not why it’s important. Rather, as Justice Kennedy pointed out during oral arguments, the text of the TVPA appears to make a mockery of the proposition that foreign officials are never amenable to suit in U.S courts. To read the law any other way would be to watch it evaporate, an entire congressional enactment rendered useless, leaving torture victims a right without a remedy. The Court, Justice Kennedy reminds, is not in the business of reading entire statutes out of existence.

Supporters of immunity for foreign officials counter that allowing the case to proceed against Samantar would be just as devastating for FSIA. As a preoccupation of Justice Breyer’s, this argument soaked up a fair amount of the Court’s time. The consensus is that opening officials to suit would allow litigants to undermine the intent of the FSIA without actually violating it. In Ya’alon’s case, instead of suing the Ministry of Defense, a lawyer with his wits about him would simply name Ya’alon, the former head of army intelligence, and the suit would survive. “What you are saying,” Breyer concluded, “is that FSIA is only good against a bad lawyer.”

Hedging, counsel for the plaintiffs reminded the Court that jurisdiction is not the only hurdle between a foreign official and liability. Once a plaintiff establishes jurisdiction, there are other age-old immunity doctrines that shield foreign officials from suit. There is the head of state doctrine, for instance, which protects current and former leaders from prosecution and civil liability, or the doctrine of diplomatic immunity, a similar, if more controversial, safeguard for diplomats and their staff. But there is no small difference between immunity from suit and immunity from liability. To have the former without the latter is to have comfort without convenience; it is, so to speak, the difference between putting up and showing up.

The Supreme Court is thus left to choose between two seemingly impossible outcomes. Extend sovereign immunity to foreign officials and the Torture Victim Protection Act is gutted, along with U.S. credibility in the human rights community. Expose them to suit and make hash of one of the core objectives of the Foreign Sovereign Immunity Act—saving key allies the expense and embarrassment of defending national security decisions in US courts. To the extent possible, courts generally try to read conflicting statutes in a way that gives effect to both. But even with so much hanging in the balance, coexistence between the TVPA and the FSIA appears impossible. Unimpressed and evidently undecided, the justices took the case under advisement.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Sam Singer is a 2009 graduate of Emory Law School and a Staff Law Clerk for the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. His commentaries on law and politics have appeared in various publications, including The Beachwood Reporter and Culturekiosque.com. He has also reported and written articles for The Chicago Tribune and Market News International.

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Chalabi Moves to Disqualify 6 Elected MPs, Demote Allawi's Party to Runner-Up

2010-03-30T00:05:00.007-04:00

The Justice and Accountability Commission (formerly the Debaathification Commission), headed by Ahmad Chalabi, is moving to disqualify 6 elected candidates in the March 7 election for their ties to the banned Baath Party of Saddam Hussein. Three of those to be banned are from the Iraqiya list of Iyad Allawi, which would reduce his seat total from 91 to 88, making his list second in number of seats after Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's State of Law coalition, which has 89 seats. The move, by commission head Ahmad Chalabi (himself an elected MP on the fundamentalist Shiite list, the Iraqi National Alliance), will cause a lot of anger among Sunni Arabs, the main backers of Allawi's list, along with secular middle class urban Shiites.

Were the Iraqiya list to be altogether excluded from the government as a result of this move, I would worry about a resort to violence on the part of the list's voters, even though I do not think a revival of a full-scale Sunni-Shiite civil war is very likely.

This further wrinkle in the Iraqi election outcome underlines how unwise is the rush among American pundits, mainly on the political Right, to declare the election a vindication of George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq. Hey, warmongers: get it through your heads. You went to war on the grounds that Iraq was a grave danger to the US and might even nuke us. That was untrue and ridiculous. You don't get any mulligans in the invasion game. Nothing would vindicate Bush save proof that Saddam Hussein's regime was really dangerous to the US. It wasn't. It had bupkes in the way of WMD. Iraqis will eventually live normal lives and get rich. That won't vindicate Bush either. He lied to us repeatedly and illegally invaded another country, contravening the UN charter and a whole slew of international and even domestic US laws. There is no vindication. But the unseemly backstabbing and maneuvering of fundamentalists, ex-Baathists, Iranian double agents and CIA assets in Iraq now is certainly not it.

Al-Hayat writing in Arabic reports that commission official Ali al-Lami let it slip that one of those to be disqualified is Hamdi Najm, leader of the National Dialogue Front in Diyala Province, who is currently in prison on terrorism charges. His party forms part of the Iraqiya list of Iyad Allawi. The disqualifications will be taken to court. But the courts sided with the Justice and Accountability Commission when it excluded candidates on these grounds in the lead-up to the election, so that avenue does not appear very promising.

But the move is not decisive in deciding the next prime minister, because who can form a government depends not on who has a plurality but on who can put together a governing coalition. It is true that the constitution requires the president to ask the leader of the single largest bloc to form a government. But if that person cannot, then another party leader would get the chance. The best analogy for Iraqi politics at the moment is Israel or Lebanon. In the 2009 parliamentary elections in Israel, Tzipi Livni's Kadima gained 28 seats and Binyamin Netanyahu's Likud only got 27. But you will note that Netanyahu is prime minister, because Shas, Yisrael Beitenu and others preferred to ally with him rather than with Ms. Livni. (There is no accounting for tastes.)

I admit to a good deal of frustration with the corporate media in the United States that keeps talking about Iyad Allawi having "won" the Iraqi parliamentary elections. It just is not true. Apparently even some well informed and intelligent Americans can't understand the difference between achieving a slight plurality and winning a parliamentary election. And, it is dangerous to say these things because the US press is read in Iraq and expectations are being created among Iraqis that are likely to be disappointed.

You need 163 seats to have a majority in the 325-member Iraqi parliament, so neither 91 nor 89 is a "win." Rather, 163 is a win. Allawi did not win and has not won and probably won't win.

The reason is that it is difficult to see how he gets to 163. He needs 72 more seats (or maybe 75 if the disqualifications go through). It is easier for al-Maliki's list, if not al-Maliki himself, to get to 163 seats than it is for Allawi, since the fundamentalist Shiites have 70 seats and they under normal circumstances will find it easier to ally with Maliki's Islamic Mission Party (Da'wa) than with the secular Arab nationalists and Sunnis that back Allawi.

Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that 'informed sources' told its reporters that Ali al-Adib, a leader of al-Maliki's State of Law coalition, recently met Muqtada al-Sadr in Qom, Iran, though they have not yet closed a deal. Al-Sadr has 38 seats in parliament and his bloc is the largest single group of seats in the Shiite fundamentalist Iraqi National Alliance, which has 70 seats. Then, al-Maliki is said to have returned to Baghdad from Tehran, accompanied by al-Adib and Abdul Hamid al-Zuhairi (both from the State of Law list) and Jalal al-Din al-Saghir and Hadi al-Amiri of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq.

Al-Maliki is said to have been among a big party of Iraqi officials in Tehran the day before yesterday. They went there, al-Hayat said, because there was too much danger of being listened in on in Iraq. Presumably what is actually being asserted here is that the US has sophisticated signals intelligence and has widely tapped phones, so that in Baghdad any attempt at coalition-formation would be immediately picked up by US intelligence. Since the US is widely thought to be backing Allawi's secular Iraqiya list, it would be undesirable from al-Maliki's point of view for them to overhear his negotiations with other lists. Thus, they went off to Iran.

Al-Hayat's source says that Muqtada al-Sadr demonstrated flexibility, and demanded in return for dropping his objection to al-Maliki the release of all prisoners from his movement, and undertakings that al-Maliki would not attempt to rule single-handedly. He also wanted an agreement that al-Maliki would be fired if he attempted to overstep the decided-upon course of action of the party. A Sadrist leader, Qusay Suhail, refused to comment on the Iran story, but did allow as how the Sadrists had met with representatives of al-Maliki's State of Law. The source said that so far in the negotiations the Kurdistan Alliance and the Sadr Movement have declined to put forward an alternative candidate for prime minister. So far al-Maliki is the only candidate from the Shiite parties, "and we did not sense any opposition to him." In contrast, cleric Jalal al-Din Saghir of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq insisted that ISCI would definitely put forward a prime ministerial candidate. (ISCI is actually too small to follow through on Saghir's bluster.)

Al-Sharq al-Awsat reports that Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi, a Sunni, is expressing anxiety and concern over the meetings in Tehran, denouncing them as naked interference by a neighbor in Iraq's internal affairs. He is also arguing that the next president of Iraq should be an Arab and not a Kurd. Al-Hashimi is a member of Allawi's Iraqiya list, and his denunciation of the Shiites as cat's paws of Iran and his urging that the Kurds be marginalized will have the unintended effect of making it much more difficult for Allawi to form a government, since he would need pro-Iran Shiites as well as Kurds to do so.

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Alleged Christian Terrorists said to Target Moderate American Muslims

2010-03-29T01:42:00.004-04:00

FBI raids on the Hutaree Christian militia brought to light this formerly little-known group based in Adrian, Michigan.

Unlike the generally secular white supremacist organizations, Hutaree are explicitly Christians. Many seem to be millenarians, expecting the end of time to come soon. Like the so-called Patriot Movement, they are gun nuts. They are said to be organized to kill the Antichrist, and some reports say that they planned violence against American Muslims.

Polling shows that about 1/4 of members of the Republican Party believe that President Obama is the Antichrist, and one fears that Hutaree may agree.

Irregular times has a good overview of their beliefs, which include secession from the US and return to colonial times, perhaps in preparation for another revolution. (Will they have to register in South Carolina?). Some are antinomians, rejecting US laws. They fear a liberal 'new world order.'

Fox Cable News and Rupert Murdoch bear some responsibility for such groups. When Glenn Beck tosses around a charge like 'anti-Christ' at a prominent liberal, he knows that term is an incitement for militant Christians. And the years of rabid Fox promotion of hatred of US Muslims is bound to get someone among them killed-- and is therefore murder by television.

I am struck that Hutaree has a great deal in common with the Mahdi Army of Muqtada al-Sadr in Iraq. The Hutaree militia seems to recruit from the poor or lower middle class. Michigan's real unemployment rate is said to be 17%, and for many Michigan workers there have been years of hopelessness and joblessness, inducing despair and anger. The Mahdi Army likewise drew on Iraqi unemployed and angry youth. Many Sadrists believe that the Mahdi or Muslim messiah will soon come, perhaps accompanied by the return of Christ. The Mahdi Army has sometimes targeted Christian video or liquor shops, as a symbol of the oppressive other (yes, that is unfair to Iraqi Christians but they had the misfortune to be W.'s co-religionists.). The Hutaree, a mirror image, target Muslims. The Mahdi Army considered Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld the Dajjal or anti-Christ. Both have an unhealthy interest in firearms for political intimidation of others. The Hutaree fear the United Nations, as the Mahdi Army fears the US occupation. (Muslim radical groups often also hate the UN.)

Both groups are victims of a neoliberal world order that uses and discards working people, while protecting and cushioning the super-wealthy. Instead of a rational analysis of exploitatation, however, they are responding with emotion and symbol, projecting their economic and political alienation on other religious or ethnic groups (the Mahdi Army ethnically cleansed tens of thousands of Sunni Muslims from Baghdad in the name of anti-imperialism. They resort to irrational conspiracy theories, to religion and guns. Admitedly, the Mahdi Army is somewhat more rational, since they really do face foreign occupation, though their targeting of Sunnis instead of forming a nationalist front was highly dysfunctional.

The US press is saying the Hutaree people are a Christian "militia" but is avoiding calling them 'alleged Christian terrorists." Apparently only organized Muslim radicals can now be called terrorists.

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The Continuing Decline of a Self-styled Jihadi State

2010-03-29T00:03:00.000-04:00

Christopher Anzalone writes in a guest editorial for Informed Comment entitled, "The Islamic State of Iraq’s Positions on Iraqi National Elections: The Continuing Decline of a Self-styled Jihadi State:"

On February 12, the self-styled Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) released an audio message from its shadowy amir (leader), Abu ‘Umar al-Baghdadi, lambasting the country’s then yet-to-be-held national elections. Al-Baghdadi, who has never appeared on film, has released numerous audio messages via the ISI’s media outlet, the Al-Furqan Media Foundation. The ISI is an umbrella organization for several of the most violent jihadi-takfiri insurgent groups operating in the country, the largest of them being Al-Qa ‘ida in the Land of the Two Rivers/Iraq (AQI), which was founded by the late Abu Mus‘ab al-Zarqawi. Founded in October 2006 as the successor to the Mujahideen Shura Council, the ISI has seen its fortunes decline since late 2007, following the United States military’s “surge” and the emergence of the so-called “Awakening Councils” from among many of Iraq’s Sunni Arab tribes. The ISI’s response to the recently-held Iraqi national elections is a further sign of its decline since the “golden age” of the Iraqi insurgency from 2003 to 2007.

In his audio message, “The Political and Religious Crime of ‘Elections’ and Our Duty Towards It,” al-Baghdadi alleges that because they are predicated on the sovereignty of the people, elections are in contradiction to Islamic law (Shari‘a). He says, “The ideology of democratic elections cannot be separated from the idea that sovereignty is for the people, while the fundamental principle of our creed and religion is that supremacy is for Islam. The sovereignty of the people in the parliamentary electorate system means that the people, each in their own respective region, are given authority every four years to delegate or choose a person who then becomes a member of the parliament…he legislates laws which pleases the people, even if they oppose Allah’s ruling in the matter.”

The ISI amir also repeats his usual litany of polemics against Shi‘i Muslims, which is characteristic of many of his messages. Al-Baghdadi says that the Iraqi national elections are only a ploy by “Crusaders” (primarily the U.S.) to empower Iraqi Shi‘is, whom he refers to as “Rafida” (Rejectionists), a popular derogatory term used by some Sunni Muslims, particularly Salafis, for Shi‘is, who they claim have rejected “true Islam.” His main target, however, are Iraqi Sunni political parties and politicians, whom he accuses of treachery because of their participation in the national government: “As for the traitors of Muslim Brotherhood, they are still as we know them. Their religion is a mix of self-benefit, lying and forgery. Here we see their leaders and figures, Tariq Al-Hashimi, Rafi Al-Isawi, Dhahir Al-Aani, Abdul-Kareem Al-Samarra’i, Salam Al-Zawbai, their tribes far distant from them!”…” The strange thing is that they all humiliatingly submitted themselves, and joined alliances led by the Rafidites! How strange that they claim to want to defend the Sunnis and their rights!”

Al-Baghdadi’s criticisms of Iraq’s elections are two-fold. First, as mentioned earlier, elections contradict Shari‘a, at least as the ISI interprets it. Second, he says that since Iraq’s Sunnis cannot possibly benefit from the elections, there is no point in participating in them. Despite the seeming absoluteness of the first, the ISI amir felt the need to also mention the more practical reason for non-participation, perhaps because he knew that a blanket rejection had less chance of succeeding.

The ISI, perhaps worrying that al-Baghdadi’s dire warning against participation was not enough to keep Iraqi Sunnis from voting, released a “very important statement” on March 5, the Friday before the March 7 elections. In it, the ISI’s “ministry of information” announced the imposition of a “curfew over all Sunni provinces” during election day, March 7, warning that those who did not abide by the curfew would bear the consequences. True to its word, the ISI carried out sporadic attacks on March 7, many of them targeting Iraqi Sunnis.

Although it remains a dangerous force, as evidenced by multiple massive attacks on government ministries and other buildings in Baghdad, the ISI is no longer able to carry out widespread insurgency. Between 2004 and the first half of 2007, AQI and its allies were able to carry out numerous attacks on a daily basis, from relatively small-scale ambushes and sniper attacks to massive car bombings and other kamikaze operations. Today, the ISI is no longer capable of carrying out attacks nearly as frequently as it could two and three years ago. Instead, it has forgone frequency for potency, focusing its efforts on planning large-scale attacks such as the ones in Baghdad during the past eight months, which the ISI has dubbed the “Expedition/Raid of the Prisoner.”

Al-Baghdadi also repeats his call for all Sunni insurgent groups to unite under the ISI’s banner. Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, the chief ideologue and deputy leader of Al-Qa‘ida Central (AQC) has made similar calls, including one in a 2007 video interview, produced by AQC’s media outlet, the Al-Sahab (The Clouds) Media Foundation, to Ansar al-Islam, one of the country’s largest and most potent insurgent groups. Both al-Baghdadi and al-Zawahiri have been ignored by the majority of Iraq’s insurgent groups, including Ansar al-Islam, the 1920 Revolution Brigades, and the religious-nationalist Islamic Army in Iraq. Al-Baghdadi continues to be the “commander of the believers”, the caliph, for only a very small group of insurgents, despite the ISI’s illusions of grandeur.

Despite its rhetoric, the ISI’s handling of Iraq’s national elections is yet another sign of the group’s decreased power. Al-Baghdadi’s call for Sunnis to boycott was largely ignored. Decreased voter turnout during the March 7 elections was noticeable across central and southern Iraq, not only in Sunni Arab-majority provinces. Similarly, the ISI’s “curfew” was also largely ignored and the group carried out attacks on its own supposed support base. This clearly shows that the “golden age” of the self-styled “Islamic State” of Iraq has passed and, although it remains capable of carrying out lethal attacks, that it no longer poses a mortal threat to the Iraqi central government.

Christopher Anzalone
Graduate Program
Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures
Indiana University
Bloomington, IN

End/ (Not Continued)

Sadrists Pivotal Party, Vows Liberation of Iraq from Foreigners; Tehran attempts to Broker Alliance

2010-03-28T01:07:00.002-04:00

Al-Hayat reports in Arabic on the emergence of the Sadr Movement as the largest Shiite party within the Shiite fundamentalist coalition, the Iraqi National Alliance. The Free Independent (al-Ahrar) party that represented the Sadrists won 38 seats out of the 70 that the INA garnered, making the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, the Islamic Virtue Party and other Shiite religious components of the list much smaller and less weighty in the coalition's deliberations.

No sooner, the article says, than the election tallies began coming in did the government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki begin gradually releasing Sadrist prisoners who had been in Iraqi penitentiaries for years. Al-Hayat's sources say that in Babil Province, orders were received from the government to release members of the Sadr Movement, in an attempt to mollify that group.

Sadrist leader Liqa' Al-Yasin said that the Sadrists have now become the spinal column of the Iraqi National Alliance. He said that the movement had demonstrated that it had a large public base, and asserted that that base is cultured, aware, and abiding by the principles both of Islamic Law and the Nation. Al-Yasin said that the Sadrists would work for the liberation of Iraq and the realization of national sovereignty. [Translation: they want US troops out of their country tout de suite.] He adds that other goals are to gain the release of prisoners and to take some of the burdens off the shoulders of ordinary citizens. Sadrist leaders said that "the next phase will concentrate on political action to end the Occupation altogether."

Another Sadrist leader said that the movement has foresworn violence and that they would not take up arms again save in situation of dire necessity.

Meanwhile,
al-Hayat is also reporting that a couple of days ago representatives of the Sadr Movement and of al-Maliki's State of Law met in Tehran in an Iranian-backed attempt quickly to form a new Shiite-dominated government. In Iran for the talks were President Jalal Talibani and his Shiite vice president, Adil Abdel Mahdi of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq.

This move underlines the way in which Iraq's election has geopolitical as well as local significance. Also that Iran is sitting pretty while the US prepares to withdraw.

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Iraq: National Unity Government or Return to Sectarianism? 53 Killed in Diyala Bombing

2010-03-27T01:56:00.007-04:00

Patrick Martin of the Toronto Globe and Mail gets the diction right when he says that Iyad Allawi's list won a thin plurality. The official results of the March 7 Iraqi parliamentary elections have been announced by the Independent High Electoral Commission. Of 325 seats, 91 went to the National Iraqi List ("Iraqiya") of former interim prime minister Iyad Allawi. The State of Law grouping of incumbent Nuri al-Maliki came in at 89. The Shiite fundamentalist coalition, the Iraqi National Alliance, which includes the followers of clerics Ammar al-Hakim and Muqtada al-Sadr, garnered 70 seats. The Kurdistan Alliance won only 43 seats.

That leaves 33 seats in the hands of smaller parties, many of them wild cards.

Shortly before the results were announced, two large bomb blasts in Khalis, in Diyala Province northeast of Baghdad, killed 53 persons. Diyala is still the site of violent struggle between Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds.

Most Sunni Arabs in Iraq have moved on from the violence and fundamentalism of groups such as the 'Islamic State of Iraq,' and most voted for the Allawi list as a way of reentering national politics.

Despite some breathless headlines, the outcome of the elections is not very different from previous elections. Allawi put together a coalition of Sunni Arabs and secular Shiites. In the December, 2005, parliamentary elections, those two groups received about 80 seats, only 11 less than Allawi's just list won. If the two major Shiite religious lists (State of Law and Iraqi National Alliance) had run on the same ticket, they would have nearly a majority, about what they won in December, 2005. The Kurdistan Alliance only has 43 seats, down from 54 in the last parliamentary election, but the overall number of Kurdish Members of Parliament is not so different from that in the last polls.

In spring-summer of 2006, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki put together a government of national unity, with the help of the US ambassador. It included Sadrists and Allawi's Iraqiya. But it gradually fell apart. This election is an opportunity for al-Maliki to attempt to repeat that feat. Indeed, a national unity government may be the first preference of the Iraqi National Alliance, which has, according to al-Sharq al-Awsat, swung into action to convince the other major lists that such a path is the only right one for Iraq at this juncture.

Although Allawi's list won the most seats, he is very unlikely to be the next prime minister. Al-Maliki's State of Law list is anti-Baathist and hasn't gotten on well with Sunni Arabs, while ex-Baathists and Sunnis are the backbone of Allawi's constituency. Likewise, the Shiite religious party, made up of Sadrists and members of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI), among others, are unlikely to ally with secularist ex-Baathists. Allawi says that he is dialoguing with the parties led by Hakim and Sadr, as well as with the Kurds. But Allawi rejects a role in politics for Shiite clerics, which would make for an uneasy alliance with lists headed by clerics. Without the two big Shiite blocs, Allawi could only become prime minister by attracting the Kurdistan Alliance and all of the smaller parties and independents. Keeping such a disparate coalition together would be difficult in the extreme. Allawi is supported by Sunni Arabs who have sharp differences with the Kurds over the future of the mixed province of Kirkuk, which the Kurds covet. Allawi may therefore have a plurality that is incapable of growing into a majority.

It is also true that al-Maliki is deeply disliked by Muqtada al-Sadr and the Sadrists because he used the Iraqi Army to crush their Mahdi Army militia in Basra and East Baghdad in spring-summer of 2008. His party, however, the 'State of Law,' groups Shiite religious parties such as his own Islamic Mission Party (Da'wa), and the natural ally of Da'wa is the Sadrists and ISCI. Still, as Sadrist and ISCI officials admitted on Wednesday, their parties are natural allies with the State of Law. The easiest way to form a new government would be to dump al-Maliki and choose another leader of Da`wa as prime minister. The State of Law and the Iraqi National Alliance can form a coalition of 159 at a time when only 163 is needed for a majority. By picking up just 4 independents, these two could form a strong, stable government. Al-Maliki has gathered a lot of power into his hands, however, and unseating him may prove difficult and time-consuming. In the end, the Iraqi National Alliance may decide that he is their best bet for dominating Iraq in the near to medium term.

Al-Maliki said Friday that he rejects the announced outcome and demands a manual recount of the ballots. He had earlier warned of "violence" if the votes were not recounted. The reason for his adamant stance is that if he could nose ahead of Allawi by even a single vote, he seems to feel that he would have more of a mandate to remain prime minister. The Iraqi constitution stipulates that the president ask the head of the largest single party or coalition to attempt to form the government. As it now stands, al-Maliki will not be asked, while Allawi could be.

One possibility is for his State of Law to form a coalition with the Iraqi National Alliance [Hakim and Sadr] while easing al-Maliki out in favor of some candidate more acceptable to both. Iraqi courts have ruled that post-election coalitions will be counted as legitimate for the purpose of installing a government. The Shiites are thus still in a position to remain dominant, though if they remain divided then Allawi could pick up the pieces. A Shiite electoral alliance accompanied by the elegance of the numbers would detract from the quality of life.

It seems unlikely that anyone can become prime minister without the Sadr Bloc, now the majority component inside the Iraqi National Alliance. Sadr may well demand as a quid pro quo for joining any Iraqi government that the new PM pledge to accelerate the timetable for US troop withdrawal from Iraq, and also promise to end that troop presence altogether.

The difficult road ahead is indicated by the recent denunciation of al-Maliki by both Muqtada al-Sadr and Ammar al-Hakim for his initial warning that "violence" might break out if the ballots are not recounted. Muqtada called the implied threat of violence "political terrorism," thus ironically turning the tables on al-Maliki, who had hunted down Sadr-linked Mahdi Army commanders on the grounds that they were terrorists.

The big question now in Iraqi politics is whether the new government will look like the sectarian Shiite coalition with the Kurds in 2005, or more like the national unity government forged in summer, 2006. Each proved unstable in its own way, it should be remembered, so neither is a guarantor of a good outcome for these elections. The other question is how many concessions smaller parties can wring from the majority in order to form a government. It seems to me that if the Sadrists demand with sufficient vigor, they should be able to get a faster US troop withdrawal. Their platform since 2003 has been the removal of the American military from Iraq. They may finally be in a position to effect via the ballot box what they could not by their armed paramilitary, the Mahdi Army.

--

Don't miss Tom Engelhardt's powerful meditation on how Americans see Iraq through rose-colored glasses.

End/ (Not Continued)

Israel-US Row to Iran's benefit; Sanctions Regime Watered Down

2010-03-26T01:40:00.004-04:00

The far rightwing government of Israeli PM Binyamin Netanyahu may have a choice between expanding settlements in the West Bank or achieving a global consensus on the need to sanction and coerce Iran into giving up its nuclear enrichment program. Netanyahu is so dedicated to the settler project that he cannot see the ways in which it forestalls other, broader Israeli objectives.

The serious policy differences between Binyamin Netanyahu and the Obama administration are helping Iran,and reducing pressure on that country.

The Times of London reports that Netanyahu was put firmly in his place by President Obama during his visit to Washington earlier this week. At one point Obama is said to have left Netanyahu for dinner with Michele and the girls after urging the prime minister to contact him if anything changed.

Obama is said to have still been bristling at the slight of VP Joe Biden when the latter was in Israel (Netanyahu insisted on supporting continued colonial settlements on theWest Bank.the form of an announcement of the building of more homes on occupied Palestinian land. The Palestine Authority leadership, including President Mahmoud Abbas, refuses to restart peace negotiations as long as Netanyahu refuses to commit to a freeze of Israeli colonization efforts. Abbas had been about to set aside his objections and begin proximity talks when Netanyahu's government announced a substantial settlement expansion. And they made the announcement on the very day of Joe Biden's arrival to kick off the talks with the Palestinians. Predictably, the Palestinians pulled out of the talks.

There may have been more to the policy differences than just the lack of a state dinner. A report at the Herald Scotland site that the US was moving bunker busting bombs to the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia set off a flurry of speculation that the US was getting ready to move against Iran.

But in reality, the US may well have been sequestering the bunker busters and denying them to Israel. Netanyahu came to Washington in part to ask for jets and other materiel, including the bunker busters.

Netanyahu has called for "crippling" sanctions to be applied to Iran if it does not dismantle its civilian nuclear enrichment program. Among the sanctions Netanyahu sought was probably a gasoline embargo.

The call was immediately rejected by the Russian Federation(and probably by China behind the scenes).

The sanctions resolution being prepared by the US on behalf of the United Nations was abruptly watered down to meet Russian and Chinese objections. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad responded to the news, saying sanctions had no ability to harm or influence Iran. (He might have added, 'especially watered down ones'!)

That China and Russia know how tense US-Israeli ties are at the moment may also incline them to avoid the sanctions route.

Netanyahu is convinced that Iran is committed to acquiring a nuclear weapon (a proposition for which there is no firm evidence), and is further convinced that such a development would pose an existential threat to Israel. It is unclear why he reaches that conclusion, since Mutual Assured Destruction would operate to deter Iran from attacking Israel (which has 200 nuclear warheads), lest it be devastated itself. It is a ludicrous idea that the shrewd and pragmatic leadership in Tehran, which has launched no wars since coming to power and has dealt cannily with a multitude of challenges, consists of erratic madmen who would risk seeing their capital annihilated. Not to mention that there is no good evidence that they have a weapons program, and every reason to think that they are a decade or more away from a nuclear warhead even if they did. Some of the more hysterical pronouncements attributed to Netanyahu and to his foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, if true, would also raise questions about the safety of the nukes in Israel's arsenal.

The long and the short of it is that Israel and the US have poor relations for the moment, and that the rest of the world is aware of it, making it harder for the two of them to pressure the UNSC.

End/ (Not Continued)

Sadr Emerging as Kingmaker in Iraqi Election; Will Muqtada demand Quicker US Withdrawal

2010-03-25T01:03:00.002-04:00

The London pan-Arab daily al-Hayat [Life] reports in Arabic that that the Shiite State of Law coalition and the Shiite Iraqi National Alliance say they are prepared to make an alliance before they enter the new parliament. This move reduces the chance that current prime minister Nuri al-Maliki will get a second term.

The State of Law said it had negotiated without preconditions, considering that who fills the post of prime minister is less important that for the two parties to arrive at a common plan. The fundamentalist Iraqi National Alliance groups Muqtada al-Sadr's Free Independents with Ammar al-Hakim's Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq and other religious Shiite parties. The paper's contacts in that movement likewise affirmed that the National Iraqi Alliance is eager to form some sort of united front with the State of Law coalition, in accordance with 'countless political calculations.'

Sadiq al-Rikabi of the Islamic Mission Party, the core component of the State of Law List, told al-Hayat that it was important for his party to reach a common vision with the National Iraqi Alliance. He said that the two had a common notion of confronting challenges. He said it is not important at this point to name a prime minister, and that other details can be worked out first.

The Sadrists, the leading bloc within the National Iraqi Alliance, deeply dislike al-Maliki because he sent the army in after their paramilitary, the Mahdi Army, in both Basra and Sadr City in spring-summer of 2008. The State of Law may well have to sacrifice him to get an alliance with the more religious Shiite parties.

Abdul Hadi al-Hassani of the State of Law also announced talks toward merging the two blocs. He said that the two 'agree on most issues,' aside from the question of who should be prime minister and how to distribute cabinet posts by party, as well as how to run the executive branch. He said he expected the two to merge, given that they were most compatible in their platforms. He downplayed Sadrist dislike of al-Maliki and said what was important is that the two have a similar governing structure and could settle issues by a vote. He envisaged a further partnership, with the Kurdistan Alliance and with the Accord Front (Sunni fundamentalists).

It sounds as though the State of Law leadership is entirely prepared to throw al-Maliki under the bus to get the votes required to form a government.

The State of Law could end up with over 90 seats, and the National Iraqi Alliance may well get over 70. An alliance would take them very close to the 163 seats needed to govern Iraq. State of Law says it is also working on an partnership with the Kurdistan Alliance, which would be needed to elect a president on the first ballot.

A Shiite alliance plus the Kurds recalls the governing coalition of 2005 and after, which cannot be good news for the US. Al-Sadr may well make his joining the coalition conditional on al-Maliki stepping down and an acceleration of the timetable for US troop withdrawal.

Al-Sadr, whose movement may get as many as 40 seats, will be pivotal to forming a government. He is a supporter of Iran, Hizbullah and Hamas, and once called himself the right hand of Hamas. If he becomes a kingmaker, the Middle East will lurch to the Right.

End/ (Not Continued)

Netanyahu Humiliates Obama with another E. Jerusalem Housing Expansion; Israeli Troops allegedly used live Ammo; UK expels Mossad Chief

2010-03-24T00:36:00.004-04:00

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu sets the tone for Israeli policy-- one that is earning him few friends in the West. Three embarrassments broke for him on Tuesday. First, yet another housing expansion in East Jerusalem was announced while he was meeting President Obama. Then, the cover story of Israeli troops accused of firing live ammunition at Palestinian protesters began to unravel. Then British Foreign Minister David Miliband unceremoniously tossed the Mossad London station chief out of the country for counterfeiting British passports, to be used in an Israeli assassination of a Palestinian in Dubai recently. Netanyahu personally ordered that hit, and is responsible for the forging of real peoples' passports and their use to commit a murder. Netanyahu is the one behind these acts of arrogance, and they are emblematic of his mean brand of politics.

The far rightwing government of Binyamin Netanyahu humiliates American officials every time it meets with them. Netanyahu met Obama in Washington on Tuesday, and like clockwork Israel embarrassed Obama by announcing that same day it was going ahead with a building project (funded by an American millionaire) in East Jerusalem that the Obama administration had strictly told the Israelis to halt. What I don't understand is why the Palestinians cannot sue over this issue in American courts. If the administration's stance is that East Jerusalem does not belong to Israel, and the US is signatory to the Fourth Geneva Convention, then why couldn't Palestinians with standing sue in the US when their property is usurped by an American millionaire?

Israel will investigate the shooting deaths of two Palestinian youth who were protesting (not rioting as AP puts it) against Israeli theft of water from the village well. Israeli troops claimed they were using rubber bullets, but Palestinians charge it was actually live ammunition.

Aljazeera English has the scoop, with live video of Israeli troops firing on the Palestinian youths, with what certainly sounds like live ammunition.

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British Foreign Minister David Miliband said he had compelling evidence that Israel was responsible for forging British passports with respect to the recent assassination of an alleged Hamas figure in Dubai. Miliband expelled from London a senior Israeli 'diplomat' who was likely actually a Mossad or Israeli intelligence operative. In Israel, some parliamentarians responded by calling Miliband an 'anti-Semitic dog.' The Israeli use of passports of actual persons in the assassination put at risk not only those individuals but all persons from those countries in the Middle East. Miliband complained that the forgeries represented a profound disregard for the sovereignty of Britain. He might now commiserate a little with the Palestinians, whose sovereignty was robbed by the British with their Balfour Declaration and by the Israelis, to the point where they have been demoted from a Class A League of Nations Mandate declared almost ready for nationhood to stateless refugees.

ITN has video of Miliband's decision:

Tony Karon argues that Israel will not end its expansion of settlements in the West Bank until it has to pay a cost for maintaining the status quo.

Israel is in danger of using up its previous stock of good will in the West by these acts of hubris, initiated by the petulant policies of Netanyahu.
End/ (Not Continued)

Empires Come and Gone in the Middle East

2010-03-23T20:46:00.003-04:00

A propos this morning's posting, a good visual representation of all the empires coming and going in the Mideast:

[This map follows the biblical narrative, showing a united kingdom of Israel in the tenth century BC, which, as I said Tuesday morning, has been shown to be mythical by archeology; it is very odd that standard Western references haven't caught up with science here and shows that even in supposedly secular societies narratives considered scripture still have enormous sway.

End/ (Not Continued)

Top Ten Reasons East Jerusalem does not belong to Jewish-Israelis

2010-03-23T02:01:00.004-04:00

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu told the American Israel Public Affairs Council on Monday that "Jerusalem is not a settlement." He continued that the historical connection between the Jewish people and the land of Israel cannot be denied. He added that neither could the historical connection between the Jewish people and Jerusalem. He insisted, "The Jewish people were building Jerusalem 3,000 years ago and the Jewish people are building Jerusalem today." He said, "Jerusalem is not a settlement. It is our capital." He told his applauding audience of 7500 that he was simply following the policies of all Israeli governments since the 1967 conquest of Jerusalem in the Six Day War.

Netanyahu mixed together Romantic-nationalist cliches with a series of historically false assertions. But even more important was everything he left out of the history, and his citation of his warped and inaccurate history instead of considering laws, rights or common human decency toward others not of his ethnic group.

So here are the reasons that Netanyahu is profoundly wrong, and East Jerusalem does not belong to him.

1. In international law, East Jerusalem is occupied territory, as are the parts of the West Bank that Israel unilaterally annexed to its district of Jerusalem. The Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 and the Hague Regulations of 1907 forbid occupying powers to alter the lifeways of civilians who are occupied, and forbid the settling of people from the occupiers' country in the occupied territory. Israel's expulsion of Palestinians from their homes in East Jerusalem, its usurpation of Palestinian property there, and its settling of Israelis on Palestinian land are all gross violations of international law. Israeli claims that they are not occupying Palestinians because the Palestinians have no state are cruel and tautological. Israeli claims that they are building on empty territory are laughable. My back yard is empty, but that does not give Netanyahu the right to put up an apartment complex on it.

2. Israeli governments have not in fact been united or consistent about what to do with East Jerusalem and the West Bank, contrary to what Netanyahu says. The Galili Plan for settlements in the West Bank was adopted only in 1973. Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin gave undertakings as part of the Oslo Peace Process to withdraw from Palestinian territory and grant Palestinians a state, promises for which he was assassinated by the Israeli far right (elements of which are now supporting Netanyahu's government). As late as 2000, then Prime Minister Ehud Barak claims that he gave oral assurances that Palestinians could have almost all of the West Bank and could have some arrangement by which East Jerusalem could be its capital. Netanyahu tried to give the impression that far rightwing Likud policy on East Jerusalem and the West Bank has been shared by all previous Israeli governments, but this is simply not true.

3. Romantic nationalism imagines a "people" as eternal and as having an eternal connection with a specific piece of land. This way of thinking is fantastic and mythological. Peoples are formed and change and sometimes cease to be, though they might have descendants who abandoned that religion or ethnicity or language. Human beings have moved all around and are not directly tied to any territory in an exclusive way, since many groups have lived on most pieces of land. Jerusalem was not founded by Jews, i.e. adherents of the Jewish religion. It was founded between 3000 BCE and 2600 BCE by a West Semitic people or possibly the Canaanites, the common ancestors of Palestinians, Lebanese, many Syrians and Jordanians, and many Jews. But when it was founded Jews did not exist.

4. Jerusalem was founded in honor of the ancient god Shalem. It does not mean City of Peace but rather 'built-up place of Shalem."

5. The "Jewish people" were not building Jerusalem 3000 years ago, i.e. 1000 BCE. First of all, it is not clear when exactly Judaism as a religion centered on the worship of the one God took firm form. It appears to have been a late development since no evidence of worship of anything but ordinary Canaanite deities has been found in archeological sites through 1000 BCE. There was no invasion of geographical Palestine from Egypt by former slaves in the 1200s BCE. The pyramids had been built much earlier and had not used slave labor. The chronicle of the events of the reign of Ramses II on the wall in Luxor does not know about any major slave revolts or flights by same into the Sinai peninsula. Egyptian sources never heard of Moses or the 12 plagues & etc. Jews and Judaism emerged from a certain social class of Canaanites over a period of centuries inside Palestine.

6. Jerusalem not only was not being built by the likely then non-existent "Jewish people" in 1000 BCE, but Jerusalem probably was not even inhabited at that point in history. Jerusalem appears to have been abandoned between 1000 BCE and 900 BCE, the traditional dates for the united kingdom under David and Solomon. So Jerusalem was not 'the city of David,' since there was no city when he is said to have lived. No sign of magnificent palaces or great states has been found in the archeology of this period, and the Assyrian tablets, which recorded even minor events throughout the Middle East, such as the actions of Arab queens, don't know about any great kingdom of David and Solomon in geographical Palestine.

7. Since archeology does not show the existence of a Jewish kingdom or kingdoms in the so-called First Temple Period, it is not clear when exactly the Jewish people would have ruled Jerusalem except for the Hasmonean Kingdom. The Assyrians conquered Jerusalem in 722. The Babylonians took it in 597 and ruled it until they were themselves conquered in 539 BCE by the Achaemenids of ancient Iran, who ruled Jerusalem until Alexander the Great took the Levant in the 330s BCE. Alexander's descendants, the Ptolemies ruled Jerusalem until 198 when Alexander's other descendants, the Seleucids, took the city. With the Maccabean Revolt in 168 BCE, the Jewish Hasmonean kingdom did rule Jerusalem until 37 BCE, though Antigonus II Mattathias, the last Hasmonean, only took over Jerusalem with the help of the Parthian dynasty in 40 BCE. Herod ruled 37 BCE until the Romans conquered what they called Palestine in 6 CE (CE= 'Common Era' or what Christians call AD). The Romans and then the Eastern Roman Empire of Byzantium ruled Jerusalem from 6 CE until 614 CE when the Iranian Sasanian Empire Conquered it, ruling until 629 CE when the Byzantines took it back.

The Muslims conquered Jerusalem in 638 and ruled it until 1099 when the Crusaders conquered it. The Crusaders killed or expelled Jews and Muslims from the city. The Muslims under Saladin took it back in 1187 CE and allowed Jews to return, and Muslims ruled it until the end of World War I, or altogether for about 1192 years.

Adherents of Judaism did not found Jerusalem. It existed for perhaps 2700 years before anything we might recognize as Judaism arose. Jewish rule may have been no longer than 170 years or so, i.e., the kingdom of the Hasmoneans.

8. Therefore if historical building of Jerusalem and historical connection with Jerusalem establishes sovereignty over it as Netanyahu claims, here are the groups that have the greatest claim to the city:

A. The Muslims, who ruled it and built it over 1191 years.

B. The Egyptians, who ruled it as a vassal state for several hundred years in the second millennium BCE.

C. The Italians, who ruled it about 444 years until the fall of the Roman Empire in 450 CE.

D. The Iranians, who ruled it for 205 years under the Achaemenids, for three years under the Parthians (insofar as the last Hasmonean was actually their vassal), and for 15 years under the Sasanids.

E. The Greeks, who ruled it for over 160 years if we count the Ptolemys and Seleucids as Greek. If we count them as Egyptians and Syrians, that would increase the Egyptian claim and introduce a Syrian one.

F. The successor states to the Byzantines, which could be either Greece or Turkey, who ruled it 188 years, though if we consider the heir to be Greece and add in the time the Hellenistic Greek dynasties ruled it, that would give Greece nearly 350 years as ruler of Jerusalem.

G. There is an Iraqi claim to Jerusalem based on the Assyrian and Babylonian conquests, as well as perhaps the rule of the Ayyubids (Saladin's dynasty), who were Kurds from Iraq.

9. Of course, Jews are historically connected to Jerusalem by the Temple, whenever that connection is dated to. But that link mostly was pursued when Jews were not in political control of the city, under Iranian, Greek and Roman rule. It cannot therefore be deployed to make a demand for political control of the whole city.

10. The Jews of Jerusalem and the rest of Palestine did not for the most part leave after the failure of the Bar Kochba revolt against the Romans in 136 CE. They continued to live there and to farm in Palestine under Roman rule and then Byzantine. They gradually converted to Christianity. After 638 CE all but 10 percent gradually converted to Islam. The present-day Palestinians are the descendants of the ancient Jews and have every right to live where their ancestors have lived for centuries.

---
PS: The sources are in the hyperlinks, especially the Thompson edited volume. See also Shlomo Sands recent book.

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Maliki calls for Recount, warns of renewed bloodshed; Is Iraq slipping into Semi-Authoritarianism?

2010-03-22T00:53:00.004-04:00

I'm all for holding elections. But the US right wing misunderstands elections as equalling democracy, which they do not. In fact, what we have seen since George W. Bush began backing neoconservative talking points is that elections in the Middle East have most often been subverted by authoritarianism and have contributed to social divisiveness.

The holding of elections in Iraq gave rise to a spate of articles on how may George W. Bush really did change the Middle East and maybe Iraq is turning out all right after all. These arguments derive not from analysis but from a desire to bolster the Republican Party and its ideology (which combines militarism abroad with Marie Antoinette-style lack of empathy with the woes of the common person domestically.)

The demand Sunday by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and President Jalal Talabani of Iraq that a recount of ballots in the March 7 parliamentary election be conducted points to a different possible conclusion.

That is that pressure from Washington, combined with the ambitions of local elites, and the increasing ability of Middle Eastern publics to mobilize and express their discontents, have produced not democratization but a move to what Marina Ottaway calls semi-authoritarian regimes in the Middle East. In fact, the most marked movement from authoritarianism to multiparty democracy in the past decade in the region, that of Pakistan, took place through popular mobilization and long-established political parties in the teeth of heavy support by Washington (i.e. Dick Cheney) for military dictator Pervez Musharraf.

Ottaway argues that during the Cold War, the opposition between authoritarian regimes and democratic ones was more stark and that hybrid forms falling in neither camp were rare. "Semi-Authoritarian regimes" have political parties and NGOs, hold elections, and look on paper as though they at least have some democratic attributes. But behind the scenes the power elite makes sure it remains in power and reduces the 'democratic' activities to a shadow play for the benefit of a restless domestic public and for that of international bureaucrats.

We have seen a string of farcical or stolen elections in the Middle East in the past decade, which have been used by often Washington-backed regional elites to reinforce their power rather than to allow the peaceful succession of one government by another.

Not only are the prime minister and president of Iraq strongly implying massive ballot fraud in Iraq (an allegation that al-Maliki admits could spark a return to ethnic violence), but recent elections in the region have more often been seen as fraudulent than as fair.

Afghanistan's presidential election of August, 2009, was repeatedly denounced as having been marred by electoral fraud to the benefit of incumbent Hamid Karzai. Karzai remained in power, but at the cost of losing legitimacy in the eyes of some Afghans, especially Tajik supporters of his rival, Abdullah Abdullah. The US response has been to back Karzai unreservedly and to attempt to bestow on him hundreds of thousands of new troops and police so that he can exercise stronger control in the country.

Iran's presidential election of June, 2009, provoked massive demonstrations in summer of that year on the part of those who believed that incumbent president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had stolen it, leading to the establishment of the dissident Green Movement around presidential challengers Mir Hosain Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi. In the aftermath, the regime became more authoritarian and the military and security forces came to wield more power than before.

The January 2006 election in the Palestine Authority produced a Hamas-led government, much to the dismay of Israel and the US. Those two worked to undermine the Hamas government and ultimately backed a successful coup against it in the West Bank, but failed to dislodge the elected government from Gaza. President Mahmoud Abbas is now acting extra-judically and extra-constitutionally, since further elections have not been held and there has been no judgment rendered by any competent legal authority as to the legitimacy of his government vis-a-vis that of Hamas.

In Egypt, President Hosni Mubarak reacted to pressure from then secretary of state Condi Rice to open up the presidential elections by allowing his main rival to leave prison and run. After Mubarak trounced him, he was sent back to jail. And, some 88 Muslim Brothers (a group the US abhors) gained seats in the lower house of parliament. Some thought that for the Mubarak regime to allow the Muslim Brotherhood to do so well was itself a warning to Washington. It said that pressure for democratization will backfire and lead to Muslim Brotherhood regimes.

Even Israel elected its most rightwing government ever in February, 2009, and persons that might formerly have been shunned because of their extreme political views, such as Avigdor Lieberman, were allowed to serve in the government. Lieberman wants to administer loyalty tests to Palestinian-Israelis and would very much like to strip the latter of their Israeli citizenship and expel all 1.5 million of them from the country. For a man of Lieberman's views to become Israeli foreign minister is a step toward semi-authoritarianism in that country. Likewise, the Israeli state has been cracking down on peace groups such as B'tselem and other NGOs, with methods more familiar in Egypt or Syria than in the freewheeling Israel of earlier decades.

So some authoritarian regimes are moving to put up democratic facades and so becoming semi-authoritarian. And the few regimes that seemed earlier to make a place for more democratic governance--Israel, post-2001 Afghanistan, Iran, Palestine, post-2003 Iraq-- seem to be moving toward semi-authoritarianism and slipping back from democracy.

Ironically, the most genuine steps toward democratization have taken place in Turkey and in Pakistan. But Bush and the neoconservatives had backed the Turkish and Pakistani militaries, so this heroic story of the little people attaining their rights was never celebrated by the US mass media. Democracies are unpredictable and hard to control (as Bush found out when US allies like France and Turkey declined to line up behind the invasion of Iraq), and so Turkey and Pakistan are disturbing the world status quo. That is the real reason for which some Obama administration officials have talked about Pakistan as the most dangerous country in the world. They did not speak that way when Gen. Pervez Musharraf was in control of the country. You have to wonder how committed most Washington elites really are to democratization, and have to wonder whether semi-authoritarianism in Middle Eastern allies might not be perceived as holding benefits for the US.

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Khamenei Blames Obama for post-election Disturbances Demands non-intervention as prerequisite to improved ties

2010-03-22T00:15:00.001-04:00

The USG Open Source Center summarizes the address of Leader Ali Khamenei of Iran on the occasion of the Persian New Year, in which he replies to President Barack Obama's offer of direct negotiations and an opportunity for Iran to end its diplomatic isolation. Khamenei blamed Obama for the protests that shook the regime last summer and fall, and said that such subversion made improved relations with the US a non-starter. Actually, the Green Movement is indigenous and took Washington by surprise. Khamenei, in rejecting its legitimacy and sincerity and turning it into an American plot, not only injures a significant group in the Iranian body politic but also stupidly pushes away the first sincere overtures from Washington in decades. Sometimes good policy making falters because potential diplomatic partners are paranoid and unable to escape their own mental cramp.

FYI -- Iran: Khamene'i Says 'Fate of the Enemy is Failure' in New Year Address
Islamic Republic of Iran News Network Television (IRINN)
Sunday, March 21, 2010 ...
Document Type: OSC Summary

Tehran Islamic Republic of Iran News Network Television (IRINN) in Persian

at 1300 GMT on 21 March carried live an address by Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamene'i's to pilgrims and the people of Mashhad at the Shrine of the eighth Shiite imam, Reza, in Mashhad, Khorasan Razavi Province. . .

He then referred to President Obama's hand of friendship message and said: "In my last year's message on the first day of the new year at a huge gathering here I talked to you about the new American President's message where he said 'we stretch a hand of friendship.' I said that we will follow up the issue with vigilance. We will watch out to see if it really is a hand of friendship and whether intentions are friendly or they are hostile intentions in the form of deceiving words. This is very important to us. I said last year that if underneath your velvet gloves lie iron fists we will not stretch out our hands and will not accept your friendship. We are careful to make sure that a dagger is not hiding behind your smiles.

"Unfortunately, what happened was exactly what was expected. The American Government and the new establishment and president with their interest in just and appropriate relations -- about which they wrote a letter and sent a message and announced over loudspeakers and repeated at private parties -- said that we want to normalize our relations with the Islamic Republic. Unfortunately they did the opposite. In the eight months after the elections they adopted the worst possible stance. The American President introduced the street rioters as a civil movement."

He said: "You cannot talk about friendship but at the same time hatch plots and try to harm the Islamic Republic."
Khamene'i said the action of the enemy should not be hidden from the eyes of the Iranian officials. He concluded that Iran will continue its path and is sure that will succeed as it has done in the past. He said the fate of Iran is success and the fate of the enemy is failure.

Khamene'i concluded his speech with prayers.

The broadcast ended at 1412 GMT.. .

(Description of Source: Tehran Islamic Republic of Iran News Network Television (IRINN) in Persian -- 24-hour news channel of state-run television, officially controlled by the office of the supreme leader)

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Can US catch up to Iran in Providing Health Care to Least Privileged?

2010-03-21T00:48:00.001-04:00

Proponents of unregulated capitalism, or if you will, the 'free market,' maintain that it provides a better life for all than do other systems. This allegation is demonstrably untrue if the question is public health across the board. In Iran, under the hyper-capitalist Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlevi, infant mortality was 122 per 1,000 in 1970. Today, in the Islamic Republic of Iran, it is 28.6 per 1,000, an incredible decrease. Some 94% of the population has access to health services, and around the same percentage have access to affordable medicine. The state is authoritarian and controlling, but it cares about the welfare of even the poor among its citizens in a way that the US-backed, capitalist Pahlevis clearly did not. In the last year of George W. Bush's presidency, at a time when he had drastically limited Federal support for stem cell research, Iran committed $2.8 billion to such high-powered medical research.

It is to the point where Mississippi, which has among the worst health statistics in the US, and where 20% of the population lacks health insurance, is looking to Iran for a model of how techniques pioneered in a third-world society could improve health care for Americans living in third-world conditions.

So maybe the urgency of Americans resorting to Iranian help will decline today if the US Congress does the right thing and enacts health care reform. It won't be perfect, but it will extend coverage to some 30 million who now have none, and will stop outrageous abuses like the dropping of sick patients and exclusions for pre-existing conditions.

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Jenkins: Bible Far More Violent than Qur'an

2010-03-21T00:43:00.004-04:00

Philip Jenkins studied violence in the Bible and in the Qur'an, and found that the Bible is 'far more violent.'

This conclusion is obvious to anyone who seriously studies the two scriptures. The NPR article quotes someone named Bostom who claims that violence in the Bible has a context but in Qur'an is commanded to be ongoing. This is an extremely ignorant comment and completely untrue.

The passages in the Qur'an that command fighting pertain to the early Muslims' struggle with the militant pagans (kafirun, kuffar) of ancient Mecca. The mercantile Meccan elite dominate lower Red Sea trade and worshipped star goddesses; they determined to wipe out the new religion of Islam as it gathered converts through the 610s and set up as a city-state in Yathrib/ Medina in the 620s CE. As I have pointed out before, a careful study of the word kafir or infidel in the Qur'an will show that it never is used in an unadorned way to refer to non-Muslims in general. It implies paganism, or alliance with paganism, and often has overtones of militant hostility to Muslims and Islam. In contrast, the Christians are called 'closest in love' to the Muslims, and the Children of Israel are repeatedly praised. There is a passage referring to those who commit kufr or infidelity from among the people of the book (i.e. Jews and Christians) [2:105]. But this diction demonstrates that the word for infidel does not ordinarily extend to those groups. The ones condemned probably had allied with the pagans who were trying to destroy Islam and kill all Muslims, against whom the Qur'an advises believers to wage defensive war ("kill them wherever you find them" [2:191]-- i.e. defend yourself against the fanatic pagans trying to kill you).

There are fundamentalist Muslims who use the word 'kafir' to refer to all non-Muslims, but the Qur'an does not support this usage. Anti-Muslim bigots in the US use these simplistic ideas of fundamentalists to condemn Islam and all Muslims.

All you have to do is look at the fate of the conquered Canaanites under Joshua (who were to be wiped out in a biblical genocide) and the fate of the Meccans when the Muslims overcame them (almost none were killed and they went on to flourish in the Islamic empire despite their earlier attempt at mass murder aimed at the prophet and his followers), to see the difference between the two.

Jenkins goes on to caution that Jews and Christians are not more violent than Muslims, despite the differences in scripture.

Actually I figure Europeans polished off a good 70 million people in the 20th century, whereas Muslims probably killed no more than 2 million (mainly in the Iran-Iraq War and Afghanistan, the latter of which a European power provoked). But this vast difference is not because Christian-heritage Europeans are such worse human beings than Muslim Middle Easterners. Rather, Europe industrialized warfare first, and also had the political independence to launch wars.

My experience is, people are people. They're all equally capable of the same good and evil, across religions and cultures, and how much of each they commit has to do with both their opportunities and their character at any point in history.

The amazing thing is that the West has managed to convince itself that all its wars and killing were someone else's fault (even though it was mainly elements of the West fighting other elements of the West that produced the charnel houses of the twentieth century).

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Public left Cold by GOP opposition to Health Care Reform

2010-03-20T14:12:00.002-04:00

Daily Kos analyzes a Kaiser poll showing that a majority of Americans does not care one way or another that the Republican Party opposes heath care reform. Among those who in the public have feelings on the matter, the opposition drives more to support it than to reject it.

Public support for the bill is also firming up, though it should be remembered that when pollsters explain to respondents what exactly is in the bill, support skyrockets-- many of its provisions get around two-thirds support.

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Obama Addresses Iran Again on Persian New Year; Mousavi pledges to fight on; Call for Release of Derakhshan, 'Blogfather'

2010-03-20T00:51:00.004-04:00

Today Iranians mark Now Ruz, their ancient New Year's day, celebrated on the vernal equinox (which most often falls on March 21 but sometimes, as today, on the 20th). Now Ruz literally means "New Day." Persian is an Indo-European language ultimately related to English, and "now" (pronounced "no") and "new" are cognates.

As he did last year, President Barack Obama addressed Iran in a Now Ruz message. He renewed his offer of comprehensive diplomatic contacts with Tehran, decrying what he called the Iranian government's determination to isolate itself.

ITN has the video of the speech:

Obama pledged to allow more Iranian students to study in the United States, and noted the recent decision to lift obstacles to US internet firms supplying the Iranian market, including Facebook.

Obama's Iran outreach was stymied by the outbreak of massive protests in Iran after last June's presidential elections, which the opposition maintains were stolen by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. It also ran into difficulties when the apparent deal struck at Geneva on October 1, and tentatively agreed to by the representative of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, was rejected on his return to Iran by hardliners, presumably in the Revolutionary Guards.

Obama's dogged determination to engage Iran and his decisions on exchange students and internet openness are far more likely to bear fruit than his predecessor's dismissive and belligerent policies. The resistance of the White House to a campaign by the Israel lobbies for crippling sanctions and even military action against Iran is one element in the tense relations between Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.

Iranian opposition leader Mir Hosain Mousavi praised the Green protest movement in the past year and pledged to continue to work for a more open press and the right to assemble and protest (pro forma already in the Iranian constitution).

Human rights and internet activists called upon the regime to release Iran's "blogfather," Hosain Derakhshan, from prison. Derakhshan, then living in Canada, pioneered techniques for blogging in Persian and sparked a communications revolution in Iran.

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Cole on Aljazeera English re: Iraq

2010-03-20T00:32:00.000-04:00

For the seventh anniversary of the launching of the Iraq War, Jasim al-Azzawi interviews Juergen Todenhoefer and myself:

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Jon Stewart on Weeping Beck

2010-03-19T14:59:00.002-04:00

Jon Stewart uses satire to point to the real dangers of Glenn Beck's demagoguery (brought to you by the world's most evil billionaire, Rupert Murdoch)

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Intro - Progressivism Is Cancer

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show
Full Episodes

Political Humor

Health Care Reform

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Jund Rocket Kills Thai Farm Worker in Israel; Israeli Jets Retaliate; Lady Ashton of EU calls for Resumption of Talks

2010-03-19T00:28:00.005-04:00

The visit to Gaza of Lady Ashton, the head of foreign policy in the European Union, was marred Thursday when a small fringe militant group calling itself Jund Ansar al-Sunnah fired a homemade rocket at a nearby Israeli farm collective, killing a Thai immigrant farm laborer.

Aljazeera English reports on the rocket attack, the first to produce a fatality in over a year.

Lady Ashton said she was "extremely shocked" by the loss of life. But she said the right thing to do now is to quickly restart peace negotiations.

Israel has the civilian population of Gaza under a blockade, and has increasingly refused admission to foreign dignitaries and human rights workers.

Ashton herself had had to lobby vigorously and for some time to be allowed to enter Gaza. Relations between Israel and and Europe have been strained, inasmuch as the European parliament has pressured Israel to cease its blockade of Gaza, which harms civilians and constitutes a form of collective punishment-- illegal in the international law of occupations. The European parliament has also backed the Goldstone Report on Israeli atrocities and crimes during the Gaza War, and has urged EU member states actively to monitor Israel's treatment of the Palestinians. (This European assertiveness is new, since Europe had in the past deferred to the US and Israel on Mideast Policy. The Gaza War provoked public anger throughout Europe for its obvious use of disproportionate force and targeting of civilian infrastructure, as well as wilful disregard of civilian life).

FT says that since the end of the Gaza War, in which the Israeli military destroyed thousands of buildings, most of them civilian in character, left 1 in 8 families homeless, and killed 1400 Palestinians (14 Israeli troops were killed), there have been few such rocket attacks. Israel holds Hamas responsible for any that are launched, even if it is not responsible for them.

In response, on Friday morning Israeli fighter-jets bombed four targets in Gaza, including a tunnel and a metal foundry.

The violence comes in the wake of a diplomatic crisis between the US and Israel over the colonization of Palestinian territory annexed to East Jerusalem, which is analyzed by U of Chicago political scientist John Mearsheimer in the London Review of Books.

The Thai farmworker's death is, as Lady Ashton said, shocking and most lamentable. That it was a Thai who was killed, however, puts the spotlight on the plight of guest workers in Israel, many of whom are fighting deportation because Israeli policy is to offer permanent residency only to Jews.

Israel's population is about 7.5 million, with 5.6 million Jews. But there are some 800,000 Israelis residing outside Israel if one counts the second generation, and it is not clear whether they are counted in the census. Israel has a million and a half Arabs, and some 300,000 other non-Jewish citizens (many of them Russians).

Jewish-Israeli population growth has fallen to only 1.7 percent a year, while Palestinian-Israeli growth is 2.6 percent a year, suggesting that the latter will be a third of the population by 2030. Since the Rabbinate is resisting allowing conversions among the 300,000 classified as non-Jews, their proportion of the population may also grow.

The irony of Israel importing Thai and Filipino labor on a rotating basis while imposing a 45% unemployment rate on Gaza, is hard to miss.

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Jeffrey Goldberg: The Movie

2010-03-19T00:03:00.000-04:00

Here is the video version of Jeffrey Goldberg's punditry on the Middle East.

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Panetta: Al-Qaeda Effectively Disrupted; Yemeni Killed in Drone Strike; Nearly 6,000 Pakistanis Killed in Terrorist Incidents since 9/11

2010-03-18T00:48:00.006-04:00

CIA director Leon Panetta said Wednesday that US strikes against targets in northern Pakistan have left al-Qaeda in disarray and without the command and control necessary to plan and carry out major operations.

The US is claiming a big success in a precision strike on the town of Miranshah in North Waziristan, saying that it killed Husain Yemeni. Yemeni is said to be a liaison between al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and the Arabs holed up in North Waziristan, north Pakistan. He is also said to have been involved in the bombing of a CIA forward base in Afghanistan in late December, which killed several CIA operatives along with some contractors.

The News reports that: since 9/11 (102 months), Pakistan has suffered a major terrorist bombing roughly once every 10 days. Over these years, there were 332 'terrorism-related incidents,' which killed 5,704 persons (substantially more than died in the September 11 attacks). By city, terrorist bombings clustered this way:

Peshawar: 58 terrorist incidents
Rawalpindi/Islamabad: 46
Karachi: 37
Lahore: 21
Swat Valley: 21
Karachi: 21

In the troubled Northwest of the country, the Taliban of Miranshah in North Waziristan on Wednesday affirmed their commitment to an ongoing truce with the government. The truce is observed by Pakistan as it campaigns in South Waziristan, so as to be able to concentrate on one tribal area at a time. The truce is shaky, and was annulled last summer briefly by the Taliban.

Centcom commander Gen. David Petraeus cautioned Pakistan that another terrorist attack on India such as Lashkar-e Tayyiba carried out on Mumbai could spark severe conflict in South Asia. Radicalism in Punjab of the Lashkar sort is an increasing concern among Pakistanis, as this Dawn editorial shows.

Meanwhile, Pakistan's two big rival parties, the Pakistan People's Party and the Pakistan Muslim League-N (PMLN), have been roiled over comments earlier this week by Shahbaz Sharif, the Chief Minister of Punjab Province, who said that Taliban should not hit the Punjab, since Punjabis had been more or less on the same page in their opposition to military dictator Pervez Musharraf. On Wednesday, the Taliban showed interest in a truce with Sharif. The Pakistani public is outraged at the remarks, seen as cowardly and/or collaborationist.

Female member of parliament Nighat Orakzai (PML-Q) taunted Sharif that if he is so afraid of the Taliban, he can borrow her neck scarf (dupatta), which many Pakistani women wear on their shoulders instead of covering their faces. She dropped hers on the floor of Parliament.

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French Television Demonstrates Cheney Effect

2010-03-18T00:08:00.000-04:00

AP reports on a French reality show where contestants proved willing to administer torture-level shocks to human beings, replicating the findings of the classic Milgram Study at Yale:

The show repeated the classic social psychology experiment of Stanley Milgram of Yale from the early 1960s, which has been successfully demonstrated numerous times around the world. Apparently about 70% of human beings have no independent conscience and will torture others if simply ordered to by a person in authority. The good news is that 30% will resist.

This finding helps explain the "Cheney Effect," whereby he illegally ordered torture but Americans are not eager to put him on trial for breaking the law. A super-majority is willing to go along with Abu Ghraib, and not blanch when the former vice president talks about being a "big supporter of waterboarding."

The only way you even got laws against torture is that they were self-interested-- forbidding one's own troops to torture is a way of trying to prevent their being tortured when captured by the enemy (and ensuring there is punishment, a la Nuremburg, for war crimes. Note that Stalin wanted just to summarily execute 50,000 - 100,000 German officers. Roosevelt demurred, jesting that surely 49,000 would be enough. In the end Henry Stimson's plan for war crimes trial was approved by Truman.

Nowadays, the Liz Cheneys and Bill Kristols prefer Stalin's methods of summary punishment, and are attacking the whole idea of defense attorneys for enemy combatants, as Matthew Yglesias notes. No doubt the attorneys would inconveniently object to the torture Cheney and Kristol want inflicted.

Anyway, most people don't get anti-torture laws. What is really hard to explain scientifically is how the US Republican Party got almost none of the ethical 30%. Shouldn't conscience be roughly equally distributed by party?

--

Update: Glenn Greenwald mischievously points out that Fox Cable News anchors expressed amazement at how horrible the French are because of this story, missing the irony that this news channel has been an unremitting cheerleader for torturing people!

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Lord Curzon on Palestine as a Class A Mandate: League of Nations said 'Homeland for Jews' not a Legal Claim on Territory

2010-03-18T00:02:00.001-04:00

I posted Tuesday on the legal implications of the League of Nations' recognition of Palestine as a "Class A" Mandate, i.e. a former Ottoman territory nearly ready for national independence, to which the mandatory authority (i.e. Britain) was to lend 'administrative assistance' in its attainment of independence. I received some strange mail from fanatics afterward, insisting that the British Mandate of Palestine was not recognized as a Class A Mandate. A scholar also wrote me to point out that unlike the case with Iraq and Syria, the British brought the Balfour Declaration into the Mandate document. The latter is true, but not relevant to my point, since the League of Nations interpreted the language of the declaration differently than did the Zionists. Others complained that the map starts in the mid-1920s after the British had already hived off Transjordan. But so what? If Class A Mandates were almost ready for independence, why couldn't some portion of them be granted independence first? The French also split the Mandate of Syria into two parts, Syria and Lebanon. What has that got to do with anything?

The legal history does not bear out any of these objections to my argument. The following British archival document makes it very clear that the British were forced by France and Italy not to disregard the interests of the over 90% of their mandate that was Palestinian, and that London revised its Mandate document under pressure as a result. The League of Nations created and granted the Mandate, contrary to what Balfour kept sputtering (he was not even in office 1922-1924). What the victorious Powers and the League of Nations wanted has to be part of the interpretation of the Mandate's charge. The League of Nations wanted the British Mandate of Palestine to serve the Palestinians in accordance with their status as "Class A." It envisaged a Palestinian state. Indeed, Sir Herbert Samuel, the first governor of the British Mandate of Palestine, urged that the "future government of Palestine" be required to repay any loans raised during the Mandate for its development. So they envisaged a future government of Palestine, which they assumed would be overwhelmingly Palestinian.

As for the language about a Jewish homeland, by that was not meant a territorial state on Palestinian land. Curzon is clear that although the Powers at the Versailles conferences after WW I recognized a Jewish connection to Palestine and the Balfour Declaration, "this was far from constituting anything in the nature of a legal claim . . ." He also reports that the Powers said that "while Mr. Balfour's Declaration had provided for the establishment of a Jewish National Home in Palestine, this was not the same thing as the reconstitution of Palestine as a Jewish National Home--an extension of the phrase for which there was no justification . . ."

So here is the Memorandum of Lord Curzon, British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, concerning League of Nations "Class A" Mandates in November 30, 1920. British National Archives, Catalogue Reference: CAB/24/115. Crown copyright. (Note that I am not reproducing the entire document, leaving out some discussion of arrangements in Iraq):

MANDATES A.

MEMORANDUM BY THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS. [Lord Curzon].

A FINAL decision about Mandates A is required. The Assembly of the League of Nations is concerned about their submission to the Council, and will probably not allow the gathering at Geneva to come to an end without a decision being taken on the point.

It is understood that the Council of the League is likely to hold a meeting while at Geneva to consider the.se Mandates, and it has been informed that they will be submitted without further delay. The Mandates concerned are those for Syria, Mesopotamia and Palestine.

The French Mandate for Syria is drawn on the same lines as ours for Mesopotamia, though not actually identical with it. There is nothing in it to which we desire to object.

The Mandate for Mesopotamia has passed through several stages, tending in each case to further simplification. It has bemi shown to, and approved by, the French and Italian Governments, to whom we were under a pledge at San Remo to submit it In its last printed form this Mandate was approved by the Cabinet a few weeks ago . . .

As regards the Palestine Mandate, this Mandate also has passed through several revises. When it was first shown to the French Government it at once excited their vehement criticisms on the ground of its almost exclusively Zionist complexion and of the manner in which the interests and rights of the Arab majority (amounting to about nine-tenths of the population) were ignored. The Italian Government expressed similar apprehensions. It was felt that this would constitute a very serious, and possibly a fatal, objection when the Mandate came ultimately before the Council of the League. The Mandate, therefore, was largely rewritten, and finally received their assent. It was also considered by an Inter-Departmental Conference here, in which the Foreign Office, Board of Trade, War Office and India Office were represented, and which passed the final draft.

In the course of these discussions strong objection was taken to a statement which had been inserted in the Preamble of the first draft to the following effect:— " Recognising the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and the claim which this gives them to reconstitute Palestine as their National Home."

367 [4996]

It was pointed out (1) that, while the Powers had unquestionably recognised the historical connection of the Jews with Palestine by their formal acceptance of the Balfour Declaration and their textual incorporation of it in the Turkish Peace Treaty drafted at San Remo, this was far from constituting anything in the nature of a legal claim, and that the use of such words might be, and was, indeed, certain to be, used as the basis of all sorts of political claims by the Zionists for the control of Palestinian administration in the future, and ;2) that, while Mr. Balfour's Declaration had provided for the establishment of a Jewish National Home in Palestine, this was not the same thing as the reconstitution of Palestine as a Jewish National Home--an extension of the phrase for which there was no justification, and which was certain to be employed in the future as the basis for claims of the character to which I have referred. On the other hand, the Zionists pleaded for the insertion of some such phrase in the preamble, on the ground that it would make all the difference to the money that they aspired to raise in foreign, countries for the development of Palestine. Mr. Balfour, who interested himself keenly in their case, admitted, however, the force of the above contentions, and, on the eve of leaving for Geneva, suggested an alternative form of words which I am prepared to recommend.

Paragraph 3 of the Preamble would then conclude as follows (vide the words italicised in the Draft-;

" and whereas recognition lias thereby (i.e., by the Treaty of Sevres) been given to the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine, and to the grounds for reconstituting their National Home in that country."

Simultaneously the Zionists pressed for the concession of preferential rights for themselves in respect of public works, &c, in Article 11.

It was felt unanimously, and was agreed by Mr. Balfour, that there was no ground for making this concession, which ought to be refused. . .

During the last few hours a telegram has been received from Sir H. Samuel, urging that, in order to facilitate the raising of loans by the Palestine Administration, which will otherwise be impossible, words should be added to Article 27, providing that on the termination of the Mandate, the future Government of Palestine shall fully honour the financial obligations incurred by the Palestinian Administration during the period of the Mandate. This appears to be a quite reasonable demand, and I have accordingly added words (italicised at the end of Article 27) in order to meet it. With this explanation, therefore, I hope that the Mandates in the form now submitted may be formally passed and forwarded to the Council of the League.

C. OF K. November 30, 1920.

End/ (Not Continued)

100 Wounded as Israelis Crack Down on Palestinian Protests in Jerusalem

2010-03-17T02:49:00.003-04:00

Palestinian protesters in East Jerusalem were repressed by Israeli security forces on Tuesday, leaving over 100 persons wounded. Recent Israeli moves to claim sites in the Palestinian West Bank, holy to Christians and Muslims as well as Jews, as Israeli heritage sites-- have alarmed Palestinians that the Likud government may have designs on the Aqsa Mosque, among the holier sites in Islamic lore.

Aljazeera is saying that the demonstrations and clashes spread from Jerusalem to Ramallah and Hebron (where the Israelis have inserted a synagogue into the mosque over the alleged tombs of Abraham and the patriarchs).

Aljazeera English has video:

Looks to me like peaceful protesters or stone-throwing youth facing 3000 heavily armored and armed Israeli security forces.

The USG Open Source Center translates an Arabic article about Palestine Liberation Organization leader Saeb Erekat's denunciation of what he calls Israeli attacks on Palestinian holy sites. His warning that Israel and the US are playing with fire to inflame Muslim passions in this way should be heeded. The Israeli occupation of Jerusalem was one of the three reasons given by Usama Bin Laden for his creepy war on the United States. For a billion and a half Muslims, Jerusalem is their third holiest city, and when all Palestinians have been expelled from it, there will be a big bang.

"PA's Erekat Decries 'Attacks' on Holy Sites, Says Israel 'Playing with Fire'
"Erekat Calls on International Community To Rein in Israeli Futile Policy" -- Ma'an headline
Ma'an News Agency
Tuesday, March 16, 2010 . . .
Document Type: OSC Translated Text . . .

Bethlehem, 16 March (Ma'an) -- Dr Saeb Erekat, head of the PLO Negotiations Affairs Department, condemned the Israeli policies of dictating terms, settlement activity, provocations, and attacks on holy sites, similar to the ones that took place on 16 March. Erekat said: No sooner did the Arab world, the Palestinian leadership, and the international community announce to the US Administration their decision to launch proximity talks in a bid to end the conflict, than the Israeli Government disregarded this decision by issuing tenders for the construction of settlements, carrying out raids, dictating, assassinating, laying siege, imposing closures, and taking provocative steps of a religious nature.

Speaking to Ma'an Radio Network, Erekat said: "Not only do we denounce these Israeli acts, but we also hold the Israeli Government solely responsible for the repercussions of the futile and provocative policies of imposing facts on the ground, which seek to torpedo efforts to launch the peace process."

Erekat also noted that he has been mandated by President Mahmud Abbas to travel to Moscow, carrying with him written messages, documents, and maps for Quartet members, which shed light on the inflammatory Israeli practices in Jerusalem. He further argued that the Israeli policies are playing with fire and adding fuel to it. Therefore, the written messages urge the international community to intervene immediately in order to curb the Israeli occupation and force it to halt its practices and unavailing policies.

Erekat went on to say that the Palestinian leadership is relying heavily on the international community and stated: "We are part of the international community and we resort to international law. Treating Israel as a country above the law destroys the international community's peace efforts in the region and has proved that the Israeli Government disparages international law." He also pointed out that the US Administration and the international community are capable of forcing Israel to stop these policies, which he decried as criminal and futile.

(Description of Source: Bethlehem Ma'an News Agency in Arabic -- Website of independent, leading Palestinian news agency; funded by the Dutch and Danish Foreign Ministries; URL: http://www.maannews.net/)"

The violence in Jerusalem comes on the heels of a major spat between the United States and Israel over last week's humiliation of Vice President Joe Biden by the announcement of 1600 new households to be built on a part of the Palestinian West Bank that Israel high-handedly annexed to its district of Jerusalem. Fear that the Israelis will attempt to push the Palestinians altogether out of East Jerusalem lay behind some of the anxieties that provoked Tuesday's demonstrations.

End/ (Not Continued)

Cpl. Jeffrey Goldberg, Guarding the Prison of the Nationalist Mind

2010-03-17T00:01:00.003-04:00

As a Middle East expert who lived in the Muslim world for nearly 10 years, travels widely there, speaks the languages, writes history from archives and manuscripts, and follows current affairs, I found that none of that counted for much when I entered the public arena in the United States. It isn't that I am thin-skinned or can't dish it out as good as I get it. Rather, it is like being a professional baseball player ready for the World Series, who gets in the van and instead of being delivered to Yankee Stadium is blindfolded and taken to a secret fight club where people are betting on whether he can go 12 rounds with a giant James Bond villain. And he says, "But I'm not a boxer, I bat .400." And they sneer, "You will pay for insulting our great aunt."

This is an arena where vehement partisans are honored as "journalists," where ability to speak languages or engage in cultural interaction counts for nothing, and where rich and powerful patrons make reputations rather than any real knowledge. NYT columnist David Brooks slammed me for not having recognized Ariel Sharon's potential as a peace-maker with the Palestinians and for not seeing how positive the Iraq War was for resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian crisis. (???) I was routinely denounced by David Horowitz, who used to be an insufferable leftist in the 60s when he edited Ramparts and now is an insufferable rightwinger, but who knows nothing at all about the Middle East (and what he thinks he knows is wrong). Marty Peretz, who married into the Singer Sewing Machine fortune and then used his wife's money to buy and ruin The New Republic, turning it into pro-Contra, pro-war rag, was annoyed to see me on television because of his vast fund of knowledge about Arabic hollow verbs. Michael Oren, a bad, partisan historian and Israeli army reservist (who fought in the Gaza War); who revived the Gobineau Orientalist tradition in his book on the US and the Middle East; and who is now the Israeli ambassador to Washington-- weighed in against my receiving an appointment to the Yale History Department. Princeton-trained Martin Kramer until recently of Tel Aviv University, who recently advocated using the Gaza blockade to force small families on the half-starving Palestinians, made a cottage industry of snarky and mostly false remarks about Informed Comment; and has a relationship with the so-called "Middle East Forum", which runs the McCarthyite 'campus watch' and which was part of a scheme to have me cyber-stalked and massively spammed.

More recently I have provoked the ire of a burly former Israeli military prison guard at the notorious Ketziot detention camp during the first Intifada, who is among our foremost journalists of the Middle East and given a prominent perch at The Atlantic magazine-- Jeffrey Goldberg.

Horowitz and the others routinely just make up entire passages and attribute them falsely to their victims. You always think you can defend your position in an honest debate. You aren't prepared the first time someone says, "How do you justify your spirited defense of Pol Pot?" Horowitz had some Kahaneist string together a series of statements I never wrote and published them in a book on the supposed 101 most dangerous professors (as if anyone is more dangerous to our Republic than a lying rightwing demagogue). What I really mind is that he never sent me so much as the T-shirt. Also, students still don't seem sufficiently impressed by the title to get their papers in on time. John Fund of the Wall Street Journal, who had supported the fundamentalist Islamic Salvation Front's attempt to take over the Algerian government, accused me of being pro-Islamist and then just made up entire sentences he claimed I had written, which he was forced to retract because I had not.

Likewise, Jeffrey Goldberg just now accused me of wanting "to deny to the Jewish people a state in their ancestral homeland." The fact is that a) I'm generally sympathetic to the states recognized as United Nations members. But b) wounded romantic nationalism of Goldberg's sort is a pathetic remnant of the twentieth century, which polished off tens of millions of human beings over wet dreams about "blood and soil." There isn't any "blood" or "pure" "races," and human groups have no special relationship to territory. My complaint about the treatment of the Palestinians is that they have been left stateless and without citizenship or rights. I'm not a Palestinian nationalist who insists that they return to what is now Israel (though they should receive compensation for lost property if they don't). The Germans weren't always in Germany (in fact they are relative newcomers), and they aren't of 'pure' 'blood,' and the 200,000 Jews in contemporary Germany--some of them Israelis-- have as much right to be there as anyone else. Most Germans and most Ashkenazi Jews have a relatively recent female common ancestor. As a species and subspecies, we are from southern Africa, and that only about 100,000 years ago. If someone is nostalgic for the Old Country, they should try Gabarone, Botswana. And say hello to Mma Ramotswe for me.

Israeli Army Cpl. Jeffrey Goldberg then corrects my assertion that he has no vision of the future of the Palestinians by saying that he has advocated for a Palestinian state in all of the West Bank and Gaza with East Jerusalem as its capital.

So let me say up front that I did not in fact think Goldberg would go quite that far, and that I apologize for getting him wrong.

But here are some problems with Goldberg's position, nevertheless:

He doesn't seem to understand that simply having a vague notion that maybe a two-state solution is desirable (for the good of his vision of an ethno-nationalist state in Israel) is different from actively working for it and being willing to criticize publicly those leaders attempting to forestall it. It isn't a talisman you can use to justify warmongering or bigotry. George W. Bush, after all, took the same position. In. One. Speech. I don't see the sense of urgency and passion about this issue in Goldberg that was visible in his wretched so-called 'journalism' about Saddam Hussein's Iraq, which was riddled with ridiculous assertions about Saddam sleeping nude every night with Usama Bin Laden while playing with his miniature atomic bombs, and which Dick Cheney used to get up the horrific invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Goldberg has not only not exactly been at the forefront of the peace movement, he has argued and agitated against doing anything practical to achieve this increasingly unlikely goal. He is the Rottweiler of ideologues when it comes to making sure that no Israeli policy is ever criticized by anyone without his branding the critics bigots and even genocidal. Since, as noted, Goldberg is possibly still an Israeli army reservist and actively served in the Israeli Army as a prison guard during the first Intifada or Palestinian uprising, I can't understand why anyone takes him seriously when he lashes out at critics of Israeli policy. I mean, what would you expect? If an Arab-American had served in the Palestine Authority police, would anyone give him a perch at The Atlantic and routinely bring him on CNN to denounce critics of Mahmoud Abbas?

Holding the leadership of a country harmless from civil society criticism guarantees that the leadership will not change its policies. Goldberg actually instructed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton not to pressure the Netanyahu government to move in the two-state direction, on the grounds that pressure only sends Israeli leaders to their bunkers. Well, if you can't pressure them, then I suppose you are waiting for the Likud Party and Yisrael Beitenu to volunteer to cease colonizing the West Bank and cease blockading Gaza. The United States routinely pressures other countries, including allies, over issues on which there is a US interest. The US pressured Turkey to let the 4th Infantry Division march through that country to Iraq. The US pressured France to vote for a UNSC resolution authorizing the Iraq War. The US is currently pressuring Japan not to close the bases on Okinawa. Why does Goldberg think the US should treat the Israeli leadership with kid gloves?

Me, I see Likudniks and Avigdor Liebermans at the head of a country with one of the world's most powerful militaries and intending to implement policies likely to get Americans killed, and I intend to scream bloody murder.

Does Goldberg have a plan "B"? Because his two-state solution is so 1993. The problem is, it is almost certainly past the point where any such thing is possible, given the size and extent of Israeli colonies in the Palestinian West Bank. Goldberg admits that the only two likely outcomes of the current policies of Binyamin Netanyahu and Avigdor Lieberman are Apartheid or a one-state solution.

Would Cpl. Goldberg like to specify which he would prefer, in case it comes to that (as it likely already has)?

End/ (Not Continued)

The Map: The Story of Palestinian Nationhood Thwarted After the League of Nations Recognized It

2010-03-16T00:05:00.007-04:00

On March 10, I posted on the humiliation heaped on Vice President Joe Biden by the Israeli government of far-right Likud leader Binyamin Netanyahu. Biden went to Israel intending to help kick off indirect negotiations between Netanyahu and Palestine Authority president Mahmoud Abbas. Biden had no sooner arrived than the Israelis announced that they would build 1600 new households on Palestinian territory that they had unilaterally annexed to Jerusalem. Since expanding Israeli colonization of Palestinian land had been the sticking point causing Abbas to refuse to engage in negotiations, and, indeed, to threaten to resign, this step was sure to scuttle the very talks Biden had come to inaugurate. And it did.

The tiff between the US and Israel is less important than the worrisome growth of tension between Palestinians and Israelis as the Israelis have claimed more and more sites sacred to the Palestinians as well. There is talk of a third Intifada or Palestinian uprising.

As part of my original posting, I mirrored a map of modern Palestinian history that has the virtue of showing graphically what has happened to the Palestinians politically and territorially in the past century.

Andrew Sullivan then mirrored the map from my site, which set off a lot of thunder and noise among anti-Palestinian writers like Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic, but shed very little light. (PS, the map as a hard copy mapcard is available from Sabeel.)

The map is useful and accurate. It begins by showing the British Mandate of Palestine as of the mid-1920s. The British conquered the Ottoman districts that came to be the Mandate during World War I (the Ottoman sultan threw in with Austria and Germany against Britain, France and Russia, mainly out of fear of Russia).

But because of the rise of the League of Nations and the influence of President Woodrow Wilson's ideas about self-determination, Britain and France could not decently simply make their new, previously Ottoman territories into mere colonies. The League of Nations awarded them "Mandates." Britain got Palestine, France got Syria (which it made into Syria and Lebanon), Britain got Iraq.

The League of Nations Covenant spelled out what a Class A Mandate (i.e. territory that had been Ottoman) was:

"Article 22. Certain communities formerly belonging to the Turkish Empire have reached a stage of development where their existence as independent nations can be provisionally recognised subject to the rendering of administrative advice and assistance by a Mandatory [i.e., a Western power] until such time as they are able to stand alone. The wishes of these communities must be a principal consideration in the selection of the Mandatory."

That is, the purpose of the later British Mandate of Palestine, of the French Mandate of Syria, of the British Mandate of Iraq, was to 'render administrative advice and assistance" to these peoples in preparation for their becoming independent states, an achievement that they were recognized as not far from attaining. The Covenant was written before the actual Mandates were established, but Palestine was a Class A Mandate and so the language of the Covenant was applicable to it. The territory that formed the British Mandate of Iraq was the same territory that became independent Iraq, and the same could have been expected of the British Mandate of Palestine. (Even class B Mandates like Togo have become nation-states, but the poor Palestinians are just stateless prisoners in colonial cantons).

The first map thus shows what the League of Nations imagined would become the state of Palestine. The economist published an odd assertion that the Negev Desert was 'empty' and should not have been shown in the first map. But it wasn't and isn't empty; Palestinian Bedouin live there, and they and the desert were recognized by the League of Nations as belonging to the Mandate of Palestine, a state-in-training. The Mandate of Palestine also had a charge to allow for the establishment of a 'homeland' in Palestine for Jews (because of the 1917 Balfour Declaration), but nobody among League of Nations officialdom at that time imagined it would be a whole and competing territorial state. There was no prospect of more than a few tens of thousands of Jews settling in Palestine, as of the mid-1920s. (They are shown in white on the first map, refuting those who mysteriously complained that the maps alternated between showing sovereignty and showing population). As late as the 1939 British White Paper, British officials imagined that the Mandate would emerge as an independent Palestinian state within 10 years.

In 1851, there had been 327,000 Palestinians (yes, the word 'Filistin' was current then) and other non-Jews, and only 13,000 Jews. In 1925, after decades of determined Jewish immigration, there were a little over 100,000 Jews, and there were 765,000 mostly Palestinian non-Jews in the British Mandate of Palestine. For historical demography of this area, see Justin McCarthy's painstaking calculations; it is not true, as sometimes is claimed, that we cannot know anything about population figures in this region. See also his journal article, reprinted at this site. The Palestinian population grew because of rapid population growth, not in-migration, which was minor. The common allegation that Jerusalem had a Jewish majority at some point in the 19th century is meaningless. Jerusalem was a small town in 1851, and many pious or indigent elderly Jews from Eastern Europe and elsewhere retired there because of charities that would support them. In 1851, Jews were only about 4% of the population of the territory that became the British Mandate of Palestine some 70 years later. And, there had been few adherents of Judaism, just a few thousand, from the time most Jews in Palestine adopted Christianity and Islam in the first millennium CE all the way until the 20th century. In the British Mandate of Palestine, the district of Jerusalem was largely Palestinian.

The rise of the Nazis in the 1930s impelled massive Jewish emigration to Palestine, so by 1940 there were over 400,000 Jews there amid over a million Palestinians.

The second map shows the United Nations partition plan of 1947, which awarded Jews (who only then owned about 6% of Palestinian land) a substantial state alongside a much reduced Palestine. Although apologists for the Zionist movement say that the Zionists accepted this partition plan and the Arabs rejected it, that is not entirely true. Zionist leader David Ben Gurion noted in his diary when Israel was established that when the US had been formed, no document set out its territorial extent, implying that the same was true of Israel. We know that Ben Gurion was an Israeli expansionist who fully intended to annex more land to Israel, and by 1956 he attempted to add the Sinai and would have liked southern Lebanon. So the Zionist "acceptance" of the UN partition plan did not mean very much beyond a happiness that their initial starting point was much better than their actual land ownership had given them any right to expect.

The third map shows the status quo after the Israeli-Palestinian civil war of 1947-1948. It is not true that the entire Arab League attacked the Jewish community in Palestine or later Israel on behalf of the Palestinians. As Avi Shlaim has shown, Jordan had made an understanding with the Zionist leadership that it would grab the West Bank, and its troops did not mount a campaign in the territory awarded to Israel by the UN. Egypt grabbed Gaza and then tried to grab the Negev Desert, with a few thousand badly trained and equipped troops, but was defeated by the nascent Israeli army. Few other Arab states sent any significant number of troops. The total number of troops on the Arab side actually on the ground was about equal to those of the Zionist forces, and the Zionists had more esprit de corps and better weaponry.

The final map shows the situation today, which springs from the Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank in 1967 and then the decision of the Israelis to colonize the West Bank intensively (a process that is illegal in the law of war concerning occupied populations).

There is nothing inaccurate about the maps at all, historically. Goldberg maintained that the Palestinians' 'original sin' was rejecting the 1947 UN partition plan. But since Ben Gurion and other expansionists went on to grab more territory later in history, it is not clear that the Palestinians could have avoided being occupied even if they had given away willingly so much of their country in 1947. The first original sin was the contradictory and feckless pledge by the British to sponsor Jewish immigration into their Mandate in Palestine, which they wickedly and fantastically promised would never inconvenience the Palestinians in any way. It was the same kind of original sin as the French policy of sponsoring a million colons in French Algeria, or the French attempt to create a Christian-dominated Lebanon where the Christians would be privileged by French policy. The second original sin was the refusal of the United States to allow Jews to immigrate in the 1930s and early 1940s, which forced them to go to Palestine to escape the monstrous, mass-murdering Nazis.

The map attracted so much ire and controversy not because it is inaccurate but because it clearly shows what has been done to the Palestinians, which the League of Nations had recognized as not far from achieving statehood in its Covenant. Their statehood and their territory has been taken from them, and they have been left stateless, without citizenship and therefore without basic civil and human rights. The map makes it easy to see this process. The map had to be stigmatized and made taboo. But even if that marginalization of an image could be accomplished, the squalid reality of Palestinian statelessness would remain, and the children of Gaza would still be being malnourished by the deliberate Israeli policy of blockading civilians. The map just points to a powerful reality; banishing the map does not change that reality.

Goldberg, according to Spencer Ackerman, says that he will stop replying to Andrew Sullivan, for which Ackerman is grateful, since, he implies, Goldberg is a propagandistic hack who loves to promote wars on flimsy pretenses. Matthew Yglesias also has some fun at Goldberg's expense.

People like Goldberg never tell us what they expect to happen to the Palestinians in the near and medium future. They don't seem to understand that the status quo is untenable. They are like militant ostriches, hiding their heads in the sand while lashing out with their hind talons at anyone who stares clear-eyed at the problem, characterizing us as bigots. As if that old calumny has any purchase for anyone who knows something serious about the actual views of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu or Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, more bigoted persons than whom would be difficult to find. Indeed, some of Israel's current problems with Brazil come out of Lieberman's visit there last summer; I was in Rio then and remember the distaste with which the multi-cultural, multi-racial Brazilians viewed Lieberman, whom some openly called a racist.

End/ (Not Continued)

Jacoby: US Withdrawal on Schedule; Al-Maliki's party has strong showing in Basra; Al-Maliki said Convinced he can retain Prime Ministership

2010-03-15T01:09:00.005-04:00

Al-Hayat [Life] is reporting in Arabic that Lt. Gen. Charles Jacoby now says that the US military withdrawal from Iraq is on schedule and that only 50,000 US troops will be in the country by the end of August. He also affirmed that the Iraqi military and police are now capable of keeping order in Iraq, saying that the role they played in providing security during the March 7 elections shows that they have made a big advance in their capabilities.

The Obama administration is eager to get out of Iraq militarily, and so far is experiencing good luck insofar as security has improved, and the civil war has subsided.

The parliamentary election has also not developed into an obstacle to withdrawal. Indeed, it is likely to produce a government that looks somewhat like that of summer, 2006, with Nuri al-Maliki again prime minister and a national unity cabinet with representation for the Shiite fundamentalist parties and for the secular Sunni-Shiite coalition of Iyad Allawi. It will take weeks or months to cobble this 'alliance of rivals' together, since government ministries are given out as inducements, and there is wrangling over who gets what. (Iraq operates by the 'spoils system' common in the 19th century US, whereby victorious parties get to hire their party workers to staff government jobs in the ministries they control).

That al-Maliki is likely to get a second term has pros and cons for Washington. The pros are that there will be continuity in Iraqi politics, that al-Maliki has gotten control of the armed forces and will remain in control, and that while he has good relations with Iran, he is not as close to Tehran as some of the fundamentalist Shiite parties in the Iraqi National Alliance. The cons are that al-Maliki has shown little interest in reconciliation with secular, Arab nationalist Sunnis, that he has cultivated tribal militias loyal to himself, and that he has not shown very much interest in or capacity for starting and speeding along projects key to Iraq's economic infrastructure. Washington would no doubt prefer to have an anti-Iran prime minister like Allawi, and one less hostile to Israel.

Al-Hayat also says that the Independent High Electoral Commission in Iraq has released further partial results from the March 7 parliamentary election, showing that the State of Law coalition of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki is substantially ahead in Basra, with the fundamentalist religious parties of the Iraqi National Alliance coming in second in the southern Shiite oil port. (See also the numbers below).

Al-Maliki's coalition is also said to be leading by a good margin in Baghdad province (where it had won 38% in last year's provincial elections). This assertion is contested, however, by political commentator Hazim al-Na'imi, who expects Baghdad in the end to divide its vote in almost equal thirds among al-Maliki's coalition and its two major allies. Al-Hayat says that with 60% of the vote counted, Baghdad has returned 158,763 votes for al-Maliki's party, 108,126 for the Shiite Iraqi National Alliance, and 104,810 for Allawi's secular Iraqiya.

Al-Hayat says its sources close to al-Maliki report that he has become convinced that he will remain prime minister, insofar as his coalition defeated the Iraqi National Alliance, Shiite parties close to Iran, among the 60% of the population that is Shiite Muslim.

The National Iraqi List of former interim prime minister Iyad Allawi, which has attracted a lot of Sunni Arab votes along with those of secular-minded Shiites, is coming in third after the Shiite fundamentalists, but only by a small margin.

Although Allawi's secular party has largely supplanted the Sunni fundamentalist party, the Iraqi National Accord (Tawafuq), the members of the cabinet will likely be somewhat similar to those of past Iraqi governments.

Reader Harmis4 helpfully writes in:

"Results as Sunday 7PM EST

The IHEC has released election PDF files of 10 provinces on it's website. Perhaps 10% of the national vote is listed. The combined totals and the estimated seat distribution based on Iraqi Electoral Law and the partial totals are as follows.

State of Law - 345,005 57 Seats

Iraqi National Movement - 290,724 58 seats

Iraqi National Alliance - 276,403 48 seats

Kurdistan Alliance - 130,409 14 seats

Iraq Unity Coalition 31,150 4 seats

Iraq Accordance - 30,360 9 seats

Change - 22,948 2 seats

Kurdistan Islamic Group - 12,511 1 seat

Islamic Union of Kurdistan - 11,173 1 seat

Others 70,085 0 seats

Total: 1,220,768 194 of 310 regular seats.

More of the mainly Sunni Provinces are in in than the Shia or Kurd.

Based on these results the final seat totals may look something like this.

Rule of Law - Maliki - 90 to 95 Seats

National Movement - Allawi/Hashimi 80 Seats

Iraq National Alliance - Hakim/Sadr
75 to 80 seats

Kurdistan Alliance - Talabani/Barzani 40 seats

Small Parties - 75 Seats including 8 religious minority seats"

End/ (Not Continued)

35 Killed, 56 Wounded in Qandahar Bombings

2010-03-14T01:38:00.001-05:00

The Old Taliban of Mullah Omar hit Qandahar late Saturday with the largest coordinated bombing campaign since 2001, killing at least 35 persons and wounding 56. A spokesman said that the movement had targeted Qandahar on hearing the plans of Gen. Stanley McChrystal pledge that the US will mount a major campaign to clear Qandahar of the Taliban. He said they had showed that they could strike at will anywhere.

The governor of the province, Ahmad Wali Karzai (the brother of President Hamid Karzai), said that the attacks had targeted the prison, which houses many captured Taliban.

Aljazeera English reports on the Afghan Talibans' plans for expansion:

Some observers in Pakistan believe that as most Taliban cells disassociate themselves from al-Qaeda, those that remain militant are bombing Lahore (and now Qandahar) as their ambitions turn local.

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Bombings in Swat, Punjab likely to backfire on Taliban

2010-03-13T01:04:00.002-05:00

The run-up to the Ides of March in Pakistan has been characterized by numerous horrific bombings, credit for which has been claimed by the Tehrik-i Taliban Pakistan (TTP) or Taliban Movement of Pakistan. After a string of bombings in Lahore on Friday, on Saturday morning, a suicide bomber detonated his payload at a checkpoint station outside the city of Mingora in Swat, killing 10 persons, including two members of the security forces. Last summer, the Pakistani military expelled the Pakistani Taliban from Swat, before moving on to attack their bases and safe houses (or safe caves) in South Waziristan.

On Friday, bombing attacks on a military cantonment and on Iqbal Town and Samnabad in Lahore left 50-60 persons dead and 120 wounded. Some of the attacks targeted the Pakistani military, but the deadly bombing of a market inflicted severe damage on innocent civilians.

Aljazeera English reports on the Lahore bombings:

The Pakistani Taliban mostly hail from the Pashtun ethnic group in Pakistan's northwest, though they do have some tiny fringe Punjabi associates, such as the Lashkar-i Tayyiba. Their attempt to impress on the Pakistani military and public that they are still capable of fighting back through such bombings of soft targets will likely backfire in a major way. As long as the TTP was primarily attacking NATO and US troops or the Afghan National Army across the border in Afghanistan, the Pakistani military and public could largely ignore them, or even configure them as a generally anti-imperialist force that admittedly was a little extreme.

But if they are going to blow up Lahore, the capital of Punjab Province, the TTP is going to have to be finished off. Punjabis are 55 percent of Pakistan, and the wealthiest and most powerful part. They are 80% of the army. Now, editorials are widely and bitterly complaining that the government has not dismantled the 'infrastructure of hate.' Some Karachi observers are calling on Punjabis to wake up to the threat. The subtext here is that Punjabi officers and politicians in the 1980s and 1990s fostered the Mujahidin and then the Taliban and small terrorist groups in hopes of using them to push the Soviets out of Afghanistan and the Indians out of Kashmir. But relationships change, and Punjabis are in fact likely to wake up.

I would make an analogy to al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which launched a massive bombing campaign inside Saudi Arabia 2003-2006, causing the Saudi security and intelligence forces to take them seriously as an internal threat and to institute a thoroughgoing crackdown on them that largely succeeded inside the kingdom. Before it was Riyadh and Jidda that were being bombed, the Saudis seemed to see radical terrorism as someone else's problem, however regrettable. After that the kingdom suddenly became much more integrated into the war on terrorism.

In the same way, this week's bombings in Pakistan are likely to stiffen the resolve of the Pakistani elite to wipe out the TTP and the Afghan Old Taliban of Mulla Omar. It has already captured about half of the Quetta Shura or the Old Taliban shadow government based formerly in Quetta but increasingly now in Karachi (where they appear lately to have been assassinating rival Sunni clerics)

Guerrilla movements win by winning hearts and minds over time and successfully positioning themselves as the true champions of national or communal interests. The Pakistani Taliban are just flailing around making themselves more and more hated, and that by the most powerful ethnic group in the country.

If I am right, the Obama administration is continuing to benefit in its own attack on the Taliban and al-Qaeda from the stupidity of the latter two, insofar as they are alienating the Pakistani public, which had earlier been somewhat sympathetic to them.

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Maliki ahead in Key Shiite Privinces

2010-03-12T00:41:00.000-05:00

Al-Sharq al-Awsat [The Middle East] reports in Arabic that the Independent High Electoral Commission in Iraq has released some information on the performance of the major political coalitions in two southern Shiite provinces, based on a count so far of about a third of the vote.

The big news is that prime minister Nuri al-Maliki's coalition defeated the alliance of other Shiite religious parties even in the pious provinces of Najaf and Babil. Since Shiites are 60% of the population, if this showing is repeated in Baghdad and in the South, Maliki would be in a good position to remain prime minister. He would likely have the biggest bloc in parliament, and would be asked to form the government.

The other possibility raised by the initial results is that Iyad Allawi's Iraqiya list is turning into a party for secular Sunnis, the majority in that community. But since Sunni Arabs are perhaps 18% of the population, that base will not carry Allawi into the prime minister's mansion. Based on these partial results from five provinces, some press reports are putting al-Maliki at 22% of seats and Allawi at 20%. But this closeness is illusory. At the moment, al-Maliki is way ahead if you extrapolate out the Shiite vote.

But al-Sharq al-Awsat says that there are reports that Ahmad Chalabi, the leader of the Iraqi Naitonal Congress and a candidate in the National Iraqi Alliance (which groups the Shiite religious parties) attempted to enter a hall where the electoral commission was counting the votes and was turned away. Likewise, there was allegedly an attempt by a member of the State of Law coalition of al-Maliki to enter false data. The combination of Chalabi's presence in the building and the continued postponement of the announcement of results based on partial counts of the votes has raised questions in the minds of some as to whether the election results are being tampered with.

WaPo reports some of the preliminary results announced Thursday, based on counts of from 17% to 30% of the votes in 5 provinces. In two southern Shiite provinces, this was the leading party:

Babil: State of Law (Nuri al-Maliki) 42%
Najaf: State of Law 47%

In contrast, the State of Law received 16% in Najaf in the provincial elections of early 2009, and 12.5% in Babil. These religious Shiite populations seem to be forsaking the National Iraqi Alliance of fundamentalist, generally pro-Iran parties.

The Iraqi National Alliance (Shiite fundamentalist parties) came in second in both provinces, with Iyad Allawi's secular-leaning National Iraqi List coming in third.

In Diyala and Salahuddin, Sunni-majority provinces, Alawi's National Iraqi List came in first, with al-Maliki trailing.

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Fathollah-Nejad: "Why 'Smart Sanctions' on Iran are Actually Stupid

2010-03-12T00:10:00.001-05:00

Ali Fathollah-Nejad writes in a guest editorial for Informed Comment:

Collateral Damages of Smart Sanctions on Iran
The prospects for democracy, socio-economic development and conflict resolution will suffer if the West continues to rely on punitive measures

By Ali Fathollah-Nejad*

This time, the war-mongers' silly season found its apogee in U.S. neo-conservative Daniel Pipes’ advice to Obama to "bomb Iran", which appeared shortly after Tony Blair, having outlined why he helped invade Iraq, remarked ominously, “We face the same problem about Iran today”.

The Chilcot Inquiry in the United Kingdom on how the Iraq War was launched, ironically coincided with a considerable military build-up in the Persian Gulf region. All this occurred amidst the continued struggle of Iran’s civil rights movement and proclamations of Western leaders to be in support of the latter’s efforts. But is there any evidence for this?
In contradistinction to war, sanctions are widely portrayed as necessary, almost healthy medicine to bring about change in the opponent’s policies. However, as the history of the West–Iran conflict proves, sanctions have rather the state of crisis alive than contributed to its resolution. Nonetheless, Western governments do not seem to have lost their dubious fascination for them.

As the call for “crippling sanctions” became morally questionable when last summer the impressive Green wave shook the streets of Tehran for fear of wrecking the same, today the benign sounding “smart” or “targeted” sanctions are on the tip of everyone’s tongue. Yet, a close look reveals a great deal of wishful thinking as to the effects of such sanctions.

Gigantic dimensions of “smart sanctions”

“Smart sanctions”, it is claimed, are a magic wand with which to decapitate evil. In the Iranian case, evil is being identified with the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. Originally a defense organization erected to counter Iraqi aggression in the 1980s, the Guardians have developed into an expansive socio-politico-economic conglomerate which is believed to possess unrivalled economic and political power in today’s Islamic Republic.

As we are told, “smart sanctions” shall target the Guardians’ grip on the Iranian power structure. The much neglected difficulty here is while it is widely acknowledged that the bulk of Iranian economy is now in the hands of the Guardians, in the end millions of civilians connected to these wide-ranging sectors will be affected. In this view, the gigantic dimension of these alleged “smart sanctions” comes to the fore.
So-called “crippling sanctions” that target petrol supply to Iran are en route. In anticipation of those U.S. unilateral sanctions, the world’s largest insurance companies have announced their retreat from Iran

. This concerns both the financial and shipping sectors, and affects petrol supplies to Iran which imports 40 percent of its needs. Also three giant oil traders ended supplies to Iran, which amounted to half of Tehran’s imports. Needless to say, such sanctions ultimately harm the population. To add, a complete implementation thereof – i.e. preventing Asian competitors to step in – would require a naval blockade which amounts to an act of war.

Crippling the ordinary population
As stressed by civil society figures and economists, the price of sanctions is being paid by the Iranian population at large. The Iranian economy – manufacturing, agriculture, bank and financial sectors etc. – has been hurt from almost three decades of sanctions. Even today, businesses cannot easily obtain much needed goods on the international market to continue production and must often pay above-standard prices. Moreover, the scientific community has faced discrimination in areas of research as has Iran’s technological advances been slowed down. Also, reflecting the dangers sanctions pose to the Green Movement, last fall Mir-Hossein Mousavi stated: “We are opposed to any types of sanctions against our nation.” The same was recently uttered by his fellow opposition leader Mehdi Karroubi in an interview with Corriere della Serra.

Meanwhile a more fundamental problem remains – hardly acknowledged by many proponents who succumb to the adventurous illusion of having a say in the design and implementation of sanctions: They are mainly designed by the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), introduced to the U.S. Congress and finally implemented by the Treasury Department’s Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Stuart Levey – an AIPAC confidant. Along this process, the potential suffering by Iran’s civil society is hardly playing a role.
Sanctions – either “crippling” or “smart” – ultimately harm ordinary citizens. “Smart sanctions” are as an oxymoron as “smart weapons” which supposedly by “surgical strikes” only take out evil components. Indeed, much like its militaristic brother-in-sprit, at the end the “collateral damages” of “smart sanctions” remain dominant.

A futile political instrument in today’s world
More generally, in an increasingly multipolar globalized world and imposed upon energy-rich countries, sanctions as an effective policy tool are basically futile. Too numerous are business-driven actors that are only too happy to jump in. Thus, Chinese, Russian, and even U.S. companies (acting via Dubai) have hugely benefitted from the European, U.S.-pressured withdrawal from the Iranian market.
Thus, sanctions – a medicine with which Western policy-circles are so obsessed with – is not a cure but a slow poison applied to the civil society and thus the civil rights movement. Sanctions as prototype of economic warfare in concert with the seasonal flaring-up of war-mongering are a dangerous mix. The deafening “drums of war” continue to bang upon the beating heart of Iran’s civil society.
Sanctions and threats of war: A poisonous for democratic development

All this suggests that sanctions are perhaps a fig leaf for other agendas. For, in contrast to Western proclamations, sanctions do harm the civil society while cementing the position of hardliners. Iran’s middle class as a result will be affected by this further isolation of the country as sanctions punish honest traders and reward corrupt ones. The Guardians with their assumed 60 harbors at the Persian Gulf control the bulk of imports and sanctions will only bolster the trend of flourishing “black channels”.

One might indeed argue that the not-so-unconscious “collateral damage” of never-ending sanctions is a de facto undermining of any meaningful transition to more democracy in Iran – a prospect which would set an uncomfortable precedent for the West’s authoritarian friends in the region.

What next: “Surgical strikes” or serious diplomacy?
At the very least, the unending story of sanctions bears testimony to Western leaders’ commitment to uphold “credibility” in the face of adverse conditions as to coercing their will on Iran. A futile exercise – even a dangerous one – if one begins to contemplate about the aftermath of “smart sanctions” being imposed: Will the next desperate move entail “surgical strikes”?

Instead of go on believing that sanctions will one day develop their desired effects, it is high time to put the brakes. Hence, the only way forward would be to adopt a set of policies that would disarm hardliners of all sides whose business flourishes in the vicious cycle of enmity. It is only by détente that grist to the mills of radicalism can be halted – and a sustainable de-militarization of Iranian politics attained. Revoking existing sanctions on goods for civilian use could work wonders that would shake the very fundaments of confrontational postures.

Despite all frivolous claims, the diplomatic route has not been exhausted. Indeed, we are far from it. Since the core problem remains the “security dilemma” in the region, it would be wise for the West to call upon Israel to join the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The transatlantic “coercive strategy” vis-à-vis Iran – as it is accurately described in Diplomatic Studies – must be suspended for it undermines prospects for peace and development towards democracy.
* * *

11 March 2010

*Ali Fathollah-Nejad is a German–Iranian political scientist; Ph.D. researcher in International Relations at the universities of Münster (Germany) and London (School of Oriental and African Studies); currently a Visiting Lecturer in globalization and development at the University of Westminster, London; author of The Iran Conflict and the Obama Administration: Old Wine in New Skins? (in German, Potsdam University Press, 2010); homepage: fathollah-nejad.com.

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The Mahmoud and Robert Show comes to Afghanistan

2010-03-11T01:31:00.004-05:00

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates traded insults on Wednesday in Kabul. Gates accused Iran of claiming to support the Karzai government in Kabul but of playing a 'double game' and secretly giving aid to the Taliban. Ahmadinejad complained that the US fostered Sunni radicalism in the 1980s as part of its struggle to expel the Soviets from Afghanistan, and now had no right to complain about radicalism and terrorism in the region.

In this exchange, Ahmadinejad surely won on points. Gates's allegation of substantial Iranian support for the hyper-Sunni Shiite-killing Taliban is implausible on the face of it, and makes Gates look silly in regional eyes.

Russia Today reports on the tiff:

The dispute is particularly unfortunate, since the US and Iran largely have the same goals and friends in Afghanistan, and the Obama administration should have been talking to Iran all along about their overlapping interests in that country.

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Abbas Reported to have Withdrawn from Israeli-Palestinian talks; Obama Mideast Policy Sabotaged by Netanyahu

2010-03-11T00:02:00.000-05:00

Obama's Mideast policy lies in tatters this morning and US credibility as a broker of any future settlement was deeply wounded.

Amr Moussa, the secretary-general of the Arab League, announced Wednesday that he had been informed by Palestine Authority president Mahmoud Abbas that the latter has pulled out of indirect talks with Israel. Late Wednesday, the Arab League itself reversed its earlier cautious endorsement of the proximity talks, recommending that that support be dropped.

Israeli colonization of Palestinian territory lies at the heart of the Mideast conflict. It isn't a complicated issue in the law, since Israel's actions are clearly illegal and unethical to boot. But might makes right and Israel is the most powerful country in the Middle East, so all the protests on legal and humanitarian grounds have amounted to nothing.

The talks were likely deliberately sabotaged by Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who had his Interior Minister announce the construction of 1600 new households in Occupied East Jerusalem the day before they were scheduled to begin. In fact, Israel is actively planning 50,000 further housing units on occupied Palestinian territory. US Vice President Joe Biden had come to kick off the process with visits to Netanyahu and Abbas, but he has now been sent home empty-handed by Netanyahu's sheer effrontery.

Netanyahu's far rightwing coalition includes many members of the Knesset or Israeli parliament who are bound and determined to colonize every last inch of the Palestinian West Bank and to reduce the Palestinians to landless beggars. Were the prime minister to make too many concessions to the Obama administration, some of them might well pull out of his government, and it could easily fall. Netanyahu is convinced that the Clinton administration undermined him the last time he was prime minister, and he is determined not to allow that to happen again. So acted as though he was complying with US demands for a settlement freeze, but exempted part of Palestinian territory from the freeze. Then shortly before proximity talks were to begin he had his Interior Ministry announce further colonization, knowing that it would complicate or (better) nix the talks. Netanyahu knew that if he was pressed on the announcement, he could get himself off the hook by apologizing for his flat-footed minister's poor timing. Biden did not buy this lame shadow play and neither will anyone else with any common sense.

Since 1949, the US has given Israel over $100 billion in direct aid, and the indirect forms of aid are orders of magnitude greater. That the vice president of the United States (and therefore the president himself) were ambushed by the prime minister in this arrogant and nearly sadistic manner raises the severest questions about why US taxpayer money should flow in such enormous amounts to a country that is actively and on a massive scale violating the Hague Agreement of 1907 and the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 on the treatment of populations by occupiers. And this at a time when the US budget deficit is ballooning and there is not enough government money to take care of the needs of US citizens. The argument that Israel is a security asset for the United States is undermined if the Israelis are provoking enmity toward the United States among 1.5 billion Muslims by their inexorable annexation of Palestinian land and daily oppression of the Palestinian people.

Biden took small bits of revenge on Netanyahu, such as going on Aljazeera English from the Occupied West Bank and denouncing the Netanyahu government's plans to expand its colonies on Palestinian territory as "destabilizing."

Obama is in real danger of seeing his allies lose respect for the United States once they see that Israel can treat him in this humiliating way with impunity. The security implications for the US are enormous. Many European allies feel strongly that Israel is an aggressor state in the region, and when Obama asks them for help in the fight against al-Qaeda, they may feel that Washington's coddling of Israeli colonialism produced much of the radicalism that they are now asked to spend blood and treasure combating. Moreover, many leaders may be emboldened to treat Obama and Biden just as Netanyahu did, if the latter faces no consequences for his impudence.

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Israel Humiliates Biden, Announces Further Colonization on Eve of US-Brokered Talks

2010-03-10T00:20:00.007-05:00

The far rightwing government of Binyamin Netanyahu in Israel majorly sandbagged Vice President Joe Biden on Tuesday, demonstrating once again that it has not the slightest interest in pursuing a just peace with the Palestinian people or in trading a cessation of its colonization of the Palestinian West Bank for a comprehensive peace with the Arab world.

Biden went to the Mideast to kick off negotiations between the Palestinians and the Israelis, and reassured the latter of undying US support for them. On Chris Matthews' Hardball, Biden explained that when you marry someone, you tell them you love them, but that does not remove the obligation to keep saying it years later. Apparently, however, Washington is henpecked by Tel Aviv to the point almost of being a battered spouse. In response to Biden's loyal support for Israel over decades, the Likud-led government kicked him in the teeth. Israeli Interior Minister Eli Yishai abruptly announced that he would build 1600 new households (for 8,000 people?) in a part of the Occupied West Bank that the Israeli government had annexed to Jerusalem District. It was precisely such new and increasing Israeli building on Palestinian territory that had led Palestine Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to reject negotiations and to threaten to resign. The announcement put in doubt whether the negotiations would go forward, and made Biden and the United States government look like fools.

Joe Biden should have turned around and left the country. Instead, he showed up 90 minutes late to a state dinner hosted by Netanyahu and dared actually directly complain about the way he was treated, "I condemn the decision," he said, calling it "precisely the kind of step that undermines the trust we need right now and runs counter to the constructive discussions that I've had here in Israel."

Aljazeera English reports on Biden's visit and the Israeli announcement of new colonization measures:

The Netanyahu government had announced a settlement freeze in much of the West Bank for 8 months, but does not include the areas it unilaterally annexed to the district of Jerusalem as West Bank territory. Nor is the 'settlement freeze' really any such thing, since there are plans to expand housing in existing colonies on the West Bank.

This controversy comes on the heels of demonstrations in al-Khalil/ Hebron and Jerusalem by Palestinians outraged by the unilateral Israeli designation of the Tombs of the Patriarchs and the tomb of Rachel, in Palestinian West Bank territory, as Israeli heritage sites. In Palestinian experience, such Israeli claims often precede Israeli annexation. While US mass media did not cover the demonstrations in any detail (much reporting from Israel in US media is by dual citizens or by reporters who have served or have children serving in the Israeli army), they are a big story in the Middle East, and the creeping Israeli expulsion of Palestinians from East Jerusalem is guaranteed to enrage the world's 1.5 billion Muslims and result in violence.

The Obama administration came into office determined to restart the negotiations between Abbas and the Israelis, with the aim of achieving a two-state solution. After over a year of meetings and carrying messages and cajoling, the patient-as-Job special envoy George Mitchell finally convinced Mahmoud Abbas to agree to indirect negotiations with Israel. For the past year, Abbas had refused to talk, on the grounds that the Israelis were actively colonizing the West Bank and so taking away the very territory that was subject to negotiation. How do you parlay with someone who is stealing from you at that very moment?

The Oslo process of the 1990s, initiated by Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, had aimed at establishing two states side by side, Israel and Palestine. Neither the Likud Party of Netanyahu nor Hamas among the Palestinians wanted to see that process succeed. Likud wanted all of the former British Mandate of Palestine to be permanently under Israeli control, including the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, which Israel occupied in 1967 and which have a stateless, rights-less Palestinian population of over 4 million persons. The Israelis have steadily and determinedly usurped Palestinian territory throughout the last nearly a century, and by now it is highly unlikely that what is left of the Palestinian West Bank and the besieged, half-starving Gaza Strip can plausibly be cobbled together into a 'state.'

In my view, it doesn't really matter if Netanyahu's slap in the face to Biden derails the proposed indirect talks. The Likud-led government has no intention of allowing a Palestinian state, and there is now no place to put one. Israel-Palestine has unalterably entered the era of Apartheid (actually something worse), and it will spell both the end of dreams of peace in our generation, and probably over time the end of Israel as Netanyahu's generation knew it. The Palestinians cannot be left stateless (the legal estate of slaves as well as of Jews under Nazi rule, i.e. people with no legal rights) forever. If they can't have Palestinian citizenship, then they'll have to have Israeli citizenship. The future of Israel-Palestine is likely to become a multi-ethnic, multi-religious state like Lebanon. Ironically, it is Netanyahu who is in no small measure responsible for this likely outcome, the opposite of the one he aspires to.

Israelis claim a 'birthright' to do things like colonize Palestinian territory, based on romantic-nationalist reworkings of biblical narratives. But Canaan was populated for millenia before some Canaanite tribes adopted the new religion of Judaism, and it was also ruled, as Palestine, for centuries by Romans and Greeks, and for 1400 years by Muslims. The Palestinian Jews converted to Christianity and then to Islam, so they are cousins of the European Jews (who appear to have gone to Europe voluntarily as male merchants around 800 CE,, where they took local wives). European Jews are about half European by parentage and all European by cultural heritage, and it is no more natural that they be in geographical Palestine than that they be in Europe (where nearly two-thirds of their mothers were from and about a third of their fathers). From a Middle Eastern point of view, European Jews planted in British Mandate Palestine by the British Empire were no different from the million colons or European colonists brought to Algeria while it was under French rule from 1830-1962. (Algeria had been ruled in antiquity by Rome, and the French considered themselves heirs of the Roman Empire, so it was natural that people from Marseilles should return to 'their' territory. Romantic nationalism, whether French or Zionist, always has the same shape). I don't predict the same fate for Jewish Israelis as befell the French colons. Rather, I think they are likely to more and more resemble in their position the Maronite Catholics of Lebanon-- i.e. powerful and formerly dominant population-wise, but increasingly challenged by other rising communities.

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Ahmadinejad Calls 9/11 a 'Big Lie'; Says Collapse of Zionist Regime will Herald Return of Christ, Mahdi

2010-03-09T00:01:00.004-05:00

As I reported in January, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has begun taking the line that the September 11, 2001, attacks by al-Qaeda on New York and Washington were actually stage-managed by US "Intelligence," to create a pretext for American invasions and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. This view is not widely shared among Iranians or Iranian politicians. Iran itself lost nationals in Afghanistan and Pakistan to assassination by al-Qaeda or the Taliban, and Shiite Hazaras in Afghanistan were massacred by the same forces. Then-president Mohammad Khatami expressed warm condolences to the US after the attacks, noting that Iran had suffered from terrorism as well. Iranian young people held candle light vigils for the victims.

Ahmadinejad's recent speech to the Iranian Intelligence Ministry reiterates this 'truther' crackpot conspiracy theory about 9/11. The speech also demonstrates a Manichaean vision of history, in which the virtuous Islamic Republic is ranged against the forces of capitalism, which he says was invented by Zionists and which is intrinsically belligerent, war-like, exploitative and genocidal. (This analysis of the capitalist system as fomenting aggression and war comes not from Shiite theology but from Lenin's analysis of the outbreak of World War I, as a capitalist war over control of markets.) Ahmadinejad's looney assertion that capitalism was invented by 'Zionists' is ridiculous, since capitalism developed in early modern and modern Europe and Zionism as a movement did not amount to anything until the late nineteenth century at the earliest. But the trope of an essentialist connection between Jews, capitalism and exploitation is a commonplace in the literature of anti-Semitism, and is probably the origin of this bizarre allegation.

Ancient Iran developed the first monotheistic religion, Zoroastrianism, which holds that history is the unfolding of a battle between Ahura Mazda, God, and the evil Ahriman, a satan figure. The prophet of the new religion was Zarathustra, whom the Greeks called Zoroaster. The archaic language of the Old Persian (which is close to Sanskrit) of Gathas, his scripture, probably places him in the 1200s BC, though there are disputes and some date him hundreds of years later. Although some speak of Zoroastrianism as dualistic, Ahura Mazda is more powerful than Ahriman and will defeat him in the fullness of time. Human beings, the creation of Ahura Mazda, play a role in determining how soon the victory comes. When they lie or commit immoral acts, they aid and abet Ahriman. When they tell the truth and are virtuous, they aid Ahura Mazda and hasten the advent of the Saoshyant or promised future messiah. Zoroastrianism invented concepts such as the Last Days, the resurrection of the dead, and an eternal afterlife.

Although Iran converted to Islam gradually (and mostly willingly) after the seventh century CE, cultural influences of Zoroastrianism are visible in Iranian Shiite Islam. Indeed, Zoroastrian ideas probably influenced Judaism and the writing of the Bible during the Babylonian exile, as Iran came to rule Babylonia. And since the Parthian dynasty of Iran had a presence in Palestine shortly before the advent of Christianity, it is not impossible that Iranian themes influenced that religion, as well.

Ahmadinejad's speech not only presents a dualistic war between good Iran and an evil, Ahriman-like United States (champion of oppressive capitalism), but also refers to the Iranian president's emphasis on the Shiite Promised One or Imam Mahdi. He refers to Iran's intelligence operatives as the 'unknown soldiers' of the 'Lord of the Age' (i.e. the Mahdi), and praises them for capturing Abdul Malik Rigi, the leader of the Sunni Baluch terrorist group Jundullah (Army of God), which has attacked mosques and other sites in the Iranian province of Baluchistan and Sistan in the southeast. Baluch are Sunnis and many feel oppressed under Persian, Shiite rule; the province is the poorest in Iran. Rigi's televised confession alleged that he was recruited by high-level CIA and other US intelligence officials and did not strike me as credible as to its details, but it appears to have been widely believed by the Iranian public and to have hurt the image among them of the Obama administration, according to Flynt and Hillary Mann Leverett.

Not only is Ahmadinejad the Iranian equivalent of a truther, he is also the mirror image of the Christian Zionists. That brand of evangelicals in the US believes that the establishment of Israel throughout geographical Palestine, i.e. the complete annexation of the West Bank and perhaps the expulsion of its Palestinian residents, will hasten the return of Christ.

Ahmadinejad holds the opposite. It is in his view the collapse of what he calls the Zionist regime and the emergence of a state for all Palestinians, whether Jewish, Christian or Muslim, that will provoke the Promised One to come. In Shiite Islam, the promised one is the return of the 12th Imam, Muhammad al-Mahdi, the lineal descendant of the Prophet Muhammad. In Muslim folk belief it is sometimes alleged that when the Mahdi comes, Jesus will also return, and they will join forces to prepare the world for the Judgment Day. When he was in Damascus on 25 February, Ahmadinejad spoke thusly when meeting with Syrian Muslim clergymen, as broadcast on the official Vision of the Islamic Republic of Iran Network 1 radio channel that day, and translated by the USG Open Source Center:

'The day on which the Lord of the Age (REFERENCE to the 12th Shiite imam) and Jesus (peace be upon him) will come and spread monotheism and justice in the whole world, is close. Understand this. The final move has begun. God willing, with the destruction of the Zionist regime, the prophets' mission will be fulfilled. Today, the settings of the stage for the resurrection of Jesus and endeavors to prepare the ground for the re-appearance of Imam Mahdi, are factors which make up the axis of unity of all those who have faith in the holy prophets.'

Because there will be a lot of propaganda around all this, I want to underline that Ahmadinejad did not then and has never called for the violent destruction of Israelis or Israel. He rather expects the 'Zionist regime' peacefully to collapse, as the Soviet regime in Moscow did. It is that peaceful collapse that will apparently in his view herald the return of the 12th Imam, the Mahdi, and of Jesus Christ.

Here is the USG Open Source Center translation of Ahmadinejad's speech of March 6, in which he again says that September 11 was a plot of US intelligence services:

Iran: President Ahmadinezhad Says 11 September Attacks 'Big Lie'
IRNA
Saturday, March 6, 2010
Document Type: OSC Translated Text . . .

Tehran, 6 March: President Mahmud Ahmadinezhad had said: The arrest of

Abdolmalek Rigi (the leader of rebel Sunni group Jondollah) has humiliated the intelligence services of the US, Britain, and the Zionist regime [by his televised confession that he was working in tandem with the CIA to blow up mosques and other sites in Iranian Baluchistan -JC].

Ahmadinezhad, who was speaking at a meeting with the minister, deputy ministers, managers, and personnel of the Intelligence Ministry, congratulated the auspicious birthday anniversary of the prophet of light and compassion, His Holiness Muhammad al-Mustafa (peace be upon him) and the birthday anniversary of Imam Sadeq (Sixth Shi'i imam) (peace be upon him), IRNA reported on Saturday (6 March), quoting the presidential website. He said that the Intelligence Ministry's personnel are the best collection of Hezbollahi (members of Party of God; meaning pious) forces and added: Today, the Islamic Republic of Iran's intelligence system is the most virtuous intelligence system in the world.

The President said that the Lord of the Age's Unknown Soldiers (intelligence forces) have a divine and sacred mission. He said: The Intelligence Ministry should be the most coordinated, organized, powerful, and flowing (Persian -- Ravantarin) organization in the country.

The President said that the purpose of man's creation was to establish a world government based on monotheism and justice. He added: Throughout history, devils fought against prophets and pious people. The climax of man's fight against devils is taking place in our time. Today, the devils show that they are gathered at the forefront of the world arrogance.

He added: Man's nature is a divine and heavenly one. When man's thought and nature are limited to worldly affairs, then he will have no option but to fall.

The President said that capitalist thoughts have resulted in plundering, bullying, and the killing of mankind's essence. He said: Liberal democracy is the result of a fight between power and wealth. The US-led world arrogance's front against the Islamic Republic is the climax of the fight between the monotheism front and devils.
The head of the Supreme National Security Council said that all vices in history have gathered in the arrogance front. He said: The crimes committed by the world arrogant are unprecedented in history. Today, the heaviest massacre and terrorist actions in the world are carried out by their (the arrogant of the world) accomplices by raising the flag of human rights.

Ahmadinezhad said that the materialist thoughts were challenged and Marxism was destroyed after the emergence of the Islamic Republic. He said: Thanks to the grace of God, the capitalist system founded by the Zionists has reached the end of its path.

The president added: US invasions and NATO's military expedition in the region are merely aimed at saving liberal democracy and the capitalist school of thought.

He said that the September 11 attacks and the demolition of the Twin Towers in the US were a complex scenario carried out by the intelligence (Persian -- Eqdam-e Ettela'ati). He said: The 11 September event was a big lie. It paved the way for the military expedition to Afghanistan under the pretext of fighting with terrorism.

Ahmadinezhad referred to the arrest of Abodlmalek Rigi by the Soldiers of the Lord of the Age (the Iranian intelligence forces) and said: The arrest of this terrorist bandit has humiliated the intelligence services of the US, Britain, and the Zionist regime. . .

(Description of Source: Tehran IRNA in Persian -- Official state-run online news agency, headed as of January 2010 by Ali Akbar Javanfekr, former media adviser to President Ahmadinezhad. URL:http://www.irna.ir)

End/ (Not Continued)

Petition to Save Palestinians' Mamilla Cemetery from the Simon Wiesenthal Center's plans to Build over It

2010-03-08T15:21:00.002-05:00

Received from the Mamilla Campaign, which notes:

THE SIMON WIESENTHAL CENTER AND THE GOVERNMENT OF ISRAEL ARE BUILDING A “MUSEUM OF TOLERANCE” ON CENTURIES-OLD MUSLIM GRAVES.

History - Since the Seventh Century, the Ma’man Allah (Mamilla) cemetery has been the most important Moslem burial site in Jerusalem. It contains the remains of leaders of Saladin’s army, Muslim scholars, and important Jerusalem families going back at least one thousand years. It is a well delineated 33 acre site that was in use until 1948 and was fastidiously respected by the Ottoman rulers and the British Mandate. It contains tens of thousands of graves in several layers as well as gravestones, monuments and the two-thousand year old “Mamilla pool.”

and proposes:

PUBLIC PETITION TO STOP DESECRATION OF MAMILLA MUSLIM CEMETERY IN JERUSALEM BY ISRAELI AUTHORITIES AND THE SIMON WIESENTHAL CENTER

(Sign the petition here).

We demand that the competent Israeli authorities act:

1.To immediately halt further construction of the Simon Wiesenthal Center "Museum of Tolerance" on part of the Mamilla Cemetery site in Jerusalem;

2.To declare the entire historic site of the Mamilla Cemetery an antiquity, to be preserved and protected henceforth by its rightful and appropriate custodians, the Muslim Waqf (public endowment) authorities in Jerusalem;

3.To recover and rebury where they were originally found all human remains removed from Mamilla Cemetery, in coordination with the competent Muslim authorities in Jerusalem; and,

4.To document and reveal to families who claim their ancestors are buried in Mamilla, or to their representatives, the whereabouts of human remains and artifacts, as well as archaeological fragments and monuments exhumed in the construction.
-----------------------------------------------------

Here is a summary of the Basic Facts regarding Mamilla Cemetery.

THE SIMON WIESENTHAL CENTER AND THE GOVERNMENT OF ISRAEL ARE BUILDING A “MUSEUM OF TOLERANCE” ON CENTURIES-OLD MUSLIM GRAVES.
History - Since the Seventh Century, the Ma’man Allah (Mamilla) cemetery has been the most important Moslem burial site in Jerusalem. It contains the remains of leaders of Saladin’s army, Muslim scholars, and important Jerusalem families going back at least one thousand years. It is a well delineated 33 acre site that was in use until 1948 and was fastidiously respected by the Ottoman rulers and the British Mandate. It contains tens of thousands of graves in several layers as well as gravestones, monuments and the two-thousand year old “Mamilla pool.”

SINCE 1948 – After the 1948 War, the site was expropriated by the Israeli Custodian of Absentee Property. The Israeli Religious Affairs Ministry originally recognized the great importance of the site to the Muslim community. However, the traditional caretakers of the cemetery, the Trustees of the Islamic Endowment (the waqf), were not allowed to maintain and protect the cemetery and it was neglected and vandalized. In the 1960’s, half of it was turned into an “Independence Park.” A parking lot was built over another part of the cemetery in 1964. A school, playing field and an underground parking garage were built on it. During the garage excavations, human remains from exposed graves were seen scattered about the construction site. During this time Palestinians protested these desecrations with appeals to the Israeli mayors of Jerusalem, petitions to UNESCO and public demonstrations. At present, only a fraction of the original cemetery is identifiable, with few grave markers remaining visible.

The “Museum of Tolerance” – The Jerusalem Municipality, ignoring public protests, deeded part of the cemetery to the Simon Wiesenthal Center of Los Angeles and in 2002, approved plans for the construction of the “Center for Human Dignity – Museum of Tolerence” on the site. Digging on the site, which began in 2005, has resulted in the exhumation of hundreds of graves and remains, some dating back to the 12th Century. The Chief Excavator for the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), Gideon Suleimani, issued a report and has attested in an affidavit to the fact that there are at least 2000 graves under the project site, in four layers, in addition to hundreds already exposed. He further attested to the intense pressure exerted on the IAA by the SWC and Israeli politicians and developers to approve construction on the site.

The Israeli Courts – Public outcry, including opposition to the location of the project at the Mamilla site by the Mayor of Jerusalem and other prominent Israelis, failed to halt the construction activity. Families whose ancestors lie buried at the site, together with others, sued in Israeli courts to stop the excavations. The complainants lost in the Israeli High Court in 2008. In ruling against the families the High Court relied upon the determination of a low level Muslim judge from Jaffa that the cemetery had been “desanctified” because of disuse. The judge, acting at the behest of the Israeli authorities, was convicted of fraud in the same year, and his ruling has since been overruled by the highest Islamic authorities in Israel.

Petition to the United Nations – A Petition For Urgent Action on Human Rights Violations by Israel: Desecration of the Ma’man Allah (Mamilla) Muslim Cemetery in the Holy City of Jerusalem was filed by the Center for Constitutional Rights with various United Nations agencies on Feb. 10, 2010, on behalf of sixty individual Palestinians whose ancestors are buried at Mamilla, and numerous Palestinian, Israeli and U.S. NGO’s who oppose the SWC project. The Petition cites numerous violations of International Law and requests the U.N.agencies to investigate and, ultimately, ask Israel and the SWC to stop excavations, recover remains, release remains to Islamic authorities for proper reburial and designate the entire Mamilla cemetery as a protected religious site. For the text of the petition and further information, go to: www.mamillacampaign.org.

A Public Petition - A public petition was drafted on behalf of all persons, regardless of ethnic or religious background or nationality, who are outraged by the desecration of the Mamilla burial site. When signed, it will be publicized and presented to the Simon Wiesenthal Center, the U.N., the Israeli authorities, and the U.S. government, demanding the same relief requested in the formal petition to the U.N. bodies.

Thank you for all of your help

Sign the petition here.

End/ (Not Continued)

Secular National Iraqi List of Allawi reported to have surged in Sunni Arab Provinces; Implications for Iran, US

2010-03-08T00:23:00.011-05:00

Sunday's vote for a new parliament in Iraq on Sunday could result in two possible geopolitical futures for that country.

If the Iraqi National List of former interim prime minister Iyad Allawi did well enough to come to power, that would reorient Iraq radically, taking it back in some ways to 2002. Allawi's coalition is largely made up of Arab nationalists who would see Iran as a threat and would ally with Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt. Baghdad would go back to helping contain Iran. Sunni Arab radicalism would likely be tamped down. For Washington, it would be the best of all possible worlds-- a pro-American Iraqi government headed by a former CIA asset that is willing to help pressure Iran for the West. Internally, an Allawi government that depends heavily on Sunni Arab constituencies would find it difficult to compromise with the Kurds on the disputed province of Kirkuk or on Kurdistan's interests in Ninevah and Diyala, setting the stage for a potential civil war.

If, on the other hand, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki manages to hold on to power, Iraq will remain firmly in Shiite hands, and will likely have warm relations with Tehran. Certainly, Baghdad would have no interest in helping contain Iran. Relations with Saudi Arabia will continue to be bad. As the US withdraws, Iranian influence could ramp up and fill the vacuum. Al-Maliki also has his tensions with the Kurds, but his relatively bad relations with the Sunni Arabs of Mosul mean that he could deal with the Kurds without incurring much more enmity from the Sunni Arabs than he already does.

So those are the two possibilities facing Iraq-- roughly, reintegration into the Sunni-dominated Arab League, or an Iran alliance. In a way, the choices replicate those of the 1930s, Iraq's first decade of independence from Britain. The government of PM Hikmat Sulaiman in 1936-1937 rejected Arab nationalism and developed good relations with Iran. Sulaiman was a Turkmen and he served under the military dictatorship of Bakr al-Sidqi, a Kurd. There is a sense in which the al-Maliki-Talibani condominium of the past 4 years revives many geopolitical themes of the Sulaiman-Sidqi period. Their dire enemies were the Arab nationalist officers, who were focused on Palestine and felt more kinship with Egypt than with Iran. Allawi is more in that Arab nationalist tradition, though he is by heritage a Shiite.

Here is why I think the return of Allawi as prime minister is unlikely despite an apparently strong showing for his party in the elections.

The Saudi-owned pan-Arab London daily "The Middle East" [al-Sharq al-Awsat] is reporting that its correspondents are conveying an (unscientific) impression from exit polling that the Iraqi National List of Allawi is doing extremely well in the Sunni Arab provinces, and is running a strong second in the Shiite south (Kurds in the north typically vote only for Kurdish parties.) The report is rather breathless and I think the numbers are almost certainly exaggerated. It also alleges that current prime minister Nuri al-Maliki's State of Law coalition is getting 40% of votes in the Shiite south, which may be true for Baghdad and Basra (it did nearly that well in the provincial elections last year), but it would represent a major change in voting patterns in rural Shiite provinces such as Maysan and Dhi Qar.

Even so, without an unexpected landslide in the south, Allawi is unlikely to become prime minister. He will need 163 seats out of 325 to govern, and there is probably no way for his coalition to deliver them. Even leading lists will likely get less that 100 seats, and so will need post-election coalition partners. That small parties willing to ally with Allawi would have as many as 75 seats to deliver to him seems unlikely. So he'd have to deal with the big three--the State of Law, the National Iraqi Alliance, and the Kurdistan Alliance (or the Kurdistan parties generally). But they might well decline to deal with him, and could seek to exclude him instead.

Al-Maliki's State of Law list campaigned hard against the resurgence of Baathism, and Allawi and many on his list are ex-Baathists, so al-Maliki would have to eat a lot of crow to accept a junior position in an Allawi government. It seems unlikely, even if politics makes for strange bedfellows.

The Shiite religious parties grouped in the National Iraqi Alliance are said by the exit polls (for the little they are worth) to be coming in third. They are also highly unlikely to ally with Allawi, since he is an old-time CIA asset and ex-Baathist whose interim government was hostile to the Shiite religious authorities and to Iran.

Allawi appears to be attracting strong support in Ninevah Province in the north, which returned an Arab nationalist party in the provincial elections of 2009. Ninevah has a Sunni Arab majority and a Kurdish minority, but the Kurds had been dominant in provincial government and the security forces because the Sunnis had sat out the provincial elections of January 2005. There is very bad blood between the Arabs and Kurds in Ninevah.

So Allawi will find it difficult to ally with the Kurds while keeping his Sunni Arab nationalist base. (Update: I incorrectly said earlier that it takes two thirds to elect a president, but this rule was changed so that it is only on the first try; if parliament cannot elect a president by 2/3s, it can do so on the second ballot by 51 percent. That this is so strengthens my argument that the Shiites and Kurds could outmaneuver Allawi.)

Whereas the numbers don't easily add up for Allawi, it seems likely that the State of Law, the Shiite fundamentalist parties of the NIA, and some smaller parties willing to join the two of them, could easily get to over 163, and they have a proven ability to work with the Kurds and independents.

As I suggested Sunday, one price al-Maliki might have to pay to gain the National Iraqi alliance as a partner is to agree to accelerate the US troop withdrawal (a key demand of the Sadr faction in the NIA).

Whatever the outcome of the voting (and a projected result based on one-third of the votes is scheduled to be announced on Wednesday), it may not be easily accepted by the losers. There is tremendous anxiety in Iraq about the possibility of ballot fraud in the wake of Sunday's parliamentary elections. The Iranian Arabic-language satellite station al-Alam reported on Sunday that the Shiite fundamentalist Sadr movement was alarmed to hear that ballot boxes were being transported from the provinces to Baghdad by US troops, and insisted that the US be kept away from those boxes. (They must have heard about Florida in 2000). Allawi is on Aljazeera complaining about irregularities. He didn't say this, but campaigning continued through Sunday although it was supposed to be forbidden after Friday late afternoon. In Basra, al-Hayat reports that anti-Allawi pamphlets were dropped by helicopter on Saturday and Sunday.

Bottom line, another Allawi prime ministership is unlikely even if his list turns in strong performance.

End/ (Not Continued)

Iran Briefing on the Hill Wednesday

2010-03-08T00:03:00.001-05:00

Announcement:

The National Iranian American Council is pleased to present “Iran at a Crossroads: Assessing a Changing Landscape” on Wednesday, March 10, 2010 at 9 AM in Dirksen Senate Office Building Room 106, Capitol Hill, Washington, DC. The conference will feature experts such as Professor Juan Cole, Dr. Scott Lucas of Enduring America and Amb. Robert Hunter of the RAND Corporation. For more information, please visit the event page for this briefing at the NIAC site.

End/ (Not Continued)

Will Muqtada and Ammar force the Next Prime Minister to Demand a US Withdrawal? Turnout Heavy with two Dozen Dead in early Election Violence

2010-03-07T02:15:00.002-05:00

Voting in Iraq began early Sunday, and turnout appeared to be heavy. The BBC analysis is that Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's State of Law coalition will do well enough at the polls to again form the government, partnering with other religious Shiite parties. According to the Iraqi constitution, the party or coalition list with the largest number of seats, even if it is not a majority, will be given the first opportunity to form a government.

Al-Maliki, however, may well have to pay a price for remaining prime minister, if he can manage to do so, since that outcome would certainly require that he make a post-election coalition with the Shiite religious parties of the National Iraqi Alliance. The latter include the Sadr Movement and the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq. Muqtada al-Sadr, leader of the Sadr movement, said Saturday on the Iran-based al-Alam satellite channel that he would only support a prime ministerial candidate who agreed to accelerate the departure of the US from Iraq. Based on its performance in last year's provincial elections, the Sadr Movement could well get half of the seats gained by the National Iraqi Alliance; if Sadrists did that well, they could be essential to putting together the 51 percent al-Maliki (or any other prime minister) would need to govern. Scroll down to see a translation of Sadr's remarks, which are the first entry for Sunday below.

Moreover, it is not just al-Sadr. I detect a change in the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, now led by Ammar al-Hakim after the death from lung cancer of his father, Abd al-Aziz. The father had been sanguine about the presence of US troops in Iraq, and called for them to stay in the country, seeing them as a guarantor against the return of the Baathists (the secular Arab nationalists led by Saddam Hussein before his overthrow in 2003). Ammar al-Hakim was brought up in Iran and is close to Iranian hard liners. The US military once arrested him as he was sneaking across the border from Iran after a secret visit to Tehran that appears not to have involved any visas or border stations. In Ankara last winter, he referred to the US military as "occupation forces" and gave partial credit to ISCI for forcing them to withdraw on a timetable. But as late as January, even he was saying that the US presence in Iraq is not a major issue, since it has departed and the bases are being closed (he probably meant that it has decided to depart). He also, however, praised armed resistance to Israeli occupation and, on a trip to Beirut, laid a wreat at the tomb of Imad Mughniya, a radical Shiite whom the US and Israeli categorized as a terrorist.

Ammar has a say in who serves as the Friday Prayer leader and sermonizer at the mosque of the shrine of Ali in the holy city of Najaf, a position of great influence. It is now held by Sayyid Yasin al-Musawi. Al-Musawi's sermon on last Friday in Najaf contained a number of themes that suggest that ISCI may be returning to its Khomeinist roots. Al-Musawi praised political obedience to the Shiite grand ayatollahs, not just spiritual obedience. That sounded close to the Khomeinist principle of the guardianship of the jurisprudent, or rule of the ayatollahs, which prevails in Iran. And he warned of conspiracies against Iraqi independence, saying that these conspiracies were launched by 'global arrogance and the secularists.'

Now, 'global arrogance' is a technical term in political discourse among hard liners in Iran, and refers to the United States. I never heard an ISCI preacher use this phrase while Abd al-Aziz al-Hakim was leading the movement. Al-Musawi was warning of a US alliance with the secular National Iraqi List of Iyad Allawi aimed at keeping Iraq a colony of Washington.

(In fact, Karen DeYoung of WaPo reports that the Obama administration came to the conclusion that Washington had little chance of influencing the outcome of the election.)

That was the other change in terminology. Al-Musawi urged voters in Najaf to cast their ballots for those who will work for Iraqi independence and against 'colonialism' (al-isti`mar). Again, this term was not publicly foregrounded among leaders of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, since they had a rough alliance of convenience with Washington in overthrowing and marginalizing the Baath Party. But now the Friday prayers preacher of Najaf is denouncing global arrogance and openly calling Iraq a colonized country that must regain its independence. This point of view had more commonly been found among Iraqi Sunni Arabs or in the Sadr Movement, as well as among hard liners across the border in Iran.

So if ISCI has decided that it is now in its interest to push the US out on a shorter timetable, and is allied with Sadrists who think the same way, then they could make that acceleration of the withdrawal a precondition for joining al-Maliki's coalition. Al-Maliki would not have many alternatives. He is unlikely to pair himself with Allawi, whom he sees as a dusted-off Baathist (al-Maliki campaigned against what he warned was resurgent Baathist influence in Iraq, though by that he seems to have meant simple Arab nationalism that threatened the dominance of the Shiite religious parties, including his Islamic Mission (Da`wa) Party). That stance will make it hard for him to get cooperation from the National Iraqi List. Al-Maliki is also too much of an Iraqi nationalist to have really warm and close relations with the Kurdistan Alliance, which wants to add Kirkuk to its holdings, a step that al-Maliki has generally opposed. Moreover, al-Maliki may not need much pressure to call for a quicker US departure. He has for some time insisted that the Iraqi military is perfectly capable of keeping order in the country, and he clearly chafed when Vice President Joe Biden attempted to intervene to reverse the disqualification of over 500 allegedly Baath-linked candidates.

Although some observers are hailing the possibility that ex-Baathist secularist Iyad Allawi could become prime minister, in part based on Sunni support, that scenario seems unlikely to me. In the early 2009 provincial elections, Allawi's list only got 3 percent in the major southern Shiite province of Basra, and in most of the other 8 provinces with heavy Shiite populations it did equally poorly or was almost invisible in the returns; Qadisiya Province was the outlier, where Allawi gained about 8 percent of the vote, as he did in Baghdad. (For the provincial election returns, see my analysis of a little over a year ago.)

While it is true that Allawi has a bigger coalition this time, having been joined by secular Sunni Arabs, that won't help him in the Shiite south. In December, 2005, his list got 9 percent of the vote, in part because of popularity in Basra, which seems to have substantially declined. His list only got 14 percent in the provincial elections in the Sunni province of Salahuddin, and 8 percent in al-Anbar, though admittedly he has more Sunni partners this time. The only way his list will be the largest in parliament is if virtually all the Sunni Arabs swing behind it and there has been a sea change in Basra, Baghdad and Diwaniya so that he does unexpectedly well among the urban Shiite middle classes (his major likely constituents in the Shiite south).

Since there is a ban on driving vehicles, guerrillas will not be able to use car bombs to disrupt the voting. They have therefore fallen back on firing mortar shells, as they did in January 2005. By 10:30 am Iraq time, some 24 dead were being reported in these attacks in north Baghdad and in Salahuddin Province, and the Green Zone that houses the US embassy and the Iraqi parliament had also been targeted.

Journalist Nir Rosen, who has spent a lot of time on the ground in the Red Zone in Iraq talking to real people, warns against the meme that the elections could bring a return of civil war or very major violence. I concur. My interviews with Sunni Arab Iraqis in Jordan suggest to me that that community is dejected and feels defeated, and is not looking foward to more violence.

End/ (Not Continued)

Sadr Calls for Election of MPs Who will Demand immediate US Departure; Forbids Violence, calls for Sunni-Shiite Unity

2010-03-07T00:01:00.000-05:00

The USG Open Source Center translates an interview with Shiite clerical leader Muqtada al-Sadr, broadcast in Arabic into Iraq by the Iranian al-Alam satellite television channel, which is widely watched by Iraqi Shiites. Coming on the eve of the election, the interview seems aimed at helping al-Sadr's National Iraqi Alliance, which groups several Shiite religious parties that have good relations with Iran and several of which are eager to accelerate the US military withdrawal.

Sadr's main points are:

1. Iraqis should vote to put in members of parliament who will support a quicker US withdrawal;

2. Members of parliament should not server Shiite, Sunni or Kurd but rather the Iraqi nation;

3. Regardless of the election outcome, people should not riot or resort to violence, but rather should stage peaceful demonstrations;

4. Sadr does not rule out a coalition with even secular parties as long as they will agree to accelerate the US withdrawal;

5. Sadr declines to condemn Saudi Arabia or Saudi money in Iraqi politics as long as that money helps elect nationalists who will work for a US withdrawal; he points out that he has visit Saudi Arabia, and condemns the friction between Shiites and Sunnis;

6. No Iraqi government will be favorable toward Israel.

Iraqi Shiite Figure Al-Sadr Rejects Violence
Al-Alam Television
Saturday, March 6, 2010 . . .
Document Type: OSC Summary . . .

Tehran Al-Alam Television in Arabic at 1716 GMT on 6 March broadcast a recording of a news conference by Iraqi Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr in Tehran. Al-Sadr said during the news conference that he has rejected violence and any "immoral" acts.

Al-Sadr said: "In the name of God the Most Merciful and Most Compassionate. . . I say that despite the fact that I was, I still am and will continue to reject the American and other occupation of Iraq and the sacred Iraqi territory. However, this does not mean that I reject the current election process.

"In the past, I used to say that the elections or any political process under occupation is null and void and has no meaning or effect. However, in this stage of the elections, we wish that the Iraqi people make this election process a political resistance action, in the hope that we may be able to drive away the occupier through these elections. The occupier holds on to the (pretext) that the Iraqi government is the one that asks it to remain in Iraq.

"In case the believers, sincere and patriotic people obtain parliamentary seats, this will be a door to the liberation of Iraq and to driving out the occupier and to something else which is important and which is to serve the Iraqi people. Serving the Iraqi people is a duty. We see that many members of the previous government, I would say, were not people to serve the Iraqi people in the past four years. It is hoped that the presence of believers and sincere people in large numbers will be a door to serving the Iraqi people and not to serving parties, sectarianism and personal and partisan interests.

"Thus, I pray God Almighty and I hope that the believers from the believer Iraqi people go to the polls and vote for the one who is able to be loyal to the Iraqi people, to be the liberator of the Iraqi people and be a mujahid [struggler for the Faith] and a man of resistance with political resistance of and for the Iraqi people, a servant of the Iraqi people and not serve himself and his faction and party; no.

"I want from all the believers to be Iraqis only and not serve their party or faction. Let us talk frankly: I do not want the Shi'i to serve the Shi'i and the Sunni serve the Sunni and the Kurd serve the Kurd. No. I want the Iraqi to serve the Iraqi, whether he is a Kurd, a Shi'i, a Torkoman or a Sunni or a member of any other Iraqi sect, whether a minority or a majority one. Thee important thing for the believers who obtain seats is to serve the Iraqi people and not their faction or party.

"This is the first thing. The second thing which is also important is that I heard, and perhaps it is true, that acts of rioting will take place after the elections and acts of, let us say, violence and unhealthy acts will take place after the elections. This is completely rejected. Yes, there is a possibility and I have great fears of rigging. The occupier is present and rigging must certainly be a possibility. This does not mean however that you carry out acts of rioting or immoral acts. No. You have peaceful means and peaceful protests you must adopt but anything more than that is not possible and in that there is treason to the Iraqi people, the Iraqi territory and its security. We called for and are still calling for the security, safety and liberation of Iraq and its people. This is our goal and anything which violates this is completely forbidden."
Cont'd (click below or on "comments")

An Al-Alam Television correspondent questions Al-Sadr's statement expecting setting up of an alliance or union for the liberation of Iraq. The second part of the question says that there are moves for the appointment of a prime minister who is not from the Islamic trend.

Al-Sadr responds: "As for the first question, I hope that all the Iraqi people participate in this alliance which is an alliance for the liberation of Iraq and for getting Iraq away from the claws of the invaders. I am ready to cooperate absolutely with any party which wants to liberate Iraq and rid it of the occupier and I agree to cooperate and ally myself with it. Perhaps not everybody agrees with this thinking; however, I am ready (to cooperate with) any party which agrees with me on that project. As for the prime minister, I am not the one who appoints him. He is appointed by the alliances and Iraqi people. The one among people who serves the Iraqi people in the eyes of the latter will be, God willing, the one who will get that seat to serve the people through it."

In response to a question on allegations by the prime minister against other parties, Al-Sadr says: "These are political wranglings which must be avoided by all. I hope that nobody will attack verbally or through the media any other side, either the alliance or others, whether the alliance attacks somebody else or somebody attacks the alliance, this is the same thing. All the parties are Iraqis and can be the servants of the Iraqi people. The effective thing which can be said is: When we see that a person or entity implements the Islamic, Iraqi and patriotic concepts, then it is the person or entity that serves the Iraqi people (?otherwise) he does not serve the Iraqi people."

A correspondent asks: What can you tell us about Saudi Arabia interfering in the Iraqi elections?

Al-Sadr says: "Interferences are from many sources and not just from Saudi Arabia. Perhaps some interferences are positive and others are negative. The main intervention which we do not want is rejected and is forbidden is the American intervention in the Iraqi territory. Yes, we approve the interference of Muslim and Arab brothers in the interest of the Iraqi people. We reject (the interference) in which there is foreign agenda and interests which do not serve the Iraqi people. From here, I say that I reject all types of sectarian escalation taking place in Iraq and outside it. There is a sectarian tendency in general in the Middle East, between the Shi'is and the Sunnis that must end as soon as possible as it is not at all in the interest of Iraq, Islam, Arabs or others."

Responding to a question on the possible return of Ba'thists, Al-Sadr says: "Do you mean that they will return through the elections. Do you mean their return to the government or their entering the elections? If there is a new government, then the Ba'thists will not get in. Look my dear, there is one thing only out of two options. Either, what happened must happen - and I agree on it - the removal of Ba'thists and harmful people from the political process is a necessary thing and I mean either the Ba'thists or others. The second option and solution is to accept that they enter the elections - and I am certain - that the Iraqi people will not vote for them. If this happens, then the Ba'thists will not blame you for removing them. In this case, my dear, they will have entered the elections and nobody will have voted for them or given them any value."

Questioned on attempts by Ba'thists to return to political arena and reports on Al-Sadr's role in uniting all lists in one national coalition, he says: "First, you should not have mentioned some national blocs with the exclusion of others. All blocs may be national. All blocs may be Iraqi. All blocs may want to serve the Iraqi people, but in the way it can do this.

"Yes, I define certain bodies like terrorists, militias, Ba'thists and so forth that do not want to serve the Iraqi people. This is 100 per cent yes. But other parties, blocs and alliances may want to serve the Iraqi people. We are not sinless and they are not sinless. Good! If they not sinless, what will happen then? They try to serve, but they cannot. There may be something wrong with the application, the mechanisms and the lack of application or coordination. All try to serve Iraq and the Iraqi people. But there is something wrong with the mechanisms and the application.

"Yes, if the blocs are united and cooperate among themselves, they could serve the Iraqi people. A few days ago someone asked me, saying: I am in parliament and I want to serve the Iraqi people and want to have a resolution endorsed in the Iraqi parliament. How can I have this resolution passed? In case each one has a different opinion and we cannot (agree) and we remain a minority in parliament, this resolution will never be endorsed. Consequently, the parliament may water down the resolutions that are in favour of the Iraqi people.

"We hope this parliamentary grouping will coordinate its activity among (various parties). (Words Indistinct) If they cooperate, all may be nationalists and all may be servants of the Iraqi people, either the two alliances that you mentioned or others."
Asked about Iyad Allawi's recent visit to Saudi Arabia, Al-Sadr says: "Only God knows about it. God is the knower of the unseen things. I do not know the unseen things. I do not know what they discussed. But God willing this would be for the good of Iraq. I am one of the people who wished to visit the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. There is no problem in this. But these visits, as I said before, will be in favour of the Iraqi people.

"I told you this is politics. Anything can happen in political relations, the possible and the impossible."

Responding to a question on the impact of Saudi and Gulf funding of some Iraqi parties on election results in favor of parties loyal to Saudi Arabia, Al-Sadr remarks: "I do not know whether it (the money) will be in favour of or not. The money is sometimes spent in favour of the Iraqi people. In this case, there is no objection. But sometimes it is spent in favour of the Iraqi people's enemy. Certainly this is unacceptable."

Al-Sadr is asked about spending this money for bodies antagonistic to the Iraqi people, to which he remarks: "I do not engage in political wrangling. It may be in favour of the Iraqi people. I hope it (the money) will be in favour of the Iraqi people. But I do not know whether this is really the case or not. I do not know the unseen things."

With regard to a security conference in Israel that hinted that any future Iraqi government will be anti-Israeli, he says: "This is necessary and certain. We reject any Iraqi government that will benefit and support Israel. We will be against it. We hope it will be against (Israel)."

Al-Sadr is asked about his willingness to visit Saudi Arabia and whether the visit will be for pilgrimage or meeting Saudi officials, he says: "Both are okay. It is good to combine both."

On the topics he may discuss during such a visit, he responds: "It will be in favour of Iraqi people and the Muslim Shi'i-Sunni unity. I have anything more than this."

Questioned whether the Al-Sadr movement will support Nuri al-Maliki for the post of prime minister, Al-Sadr says: "I do not intervene in certain issues. There is a political body of Al-Sadr movement. You can ask the political body as it can decide. I prefer not to talk about this."

(Description of Source: Tehran Al-Alam Television in Arabic -- 24-hour Arabic news channel, targetting a pan-Arab audience, of Iranian state-run television, officially controlled by the office of the supreme leader)

Muqtada Calls Voting an Act of Defiance against the US

2010-03-06T01:09:00.000-05:00

In an apparent bid to divide Shiites and Sunnis on the eve of Sunday's parliamentary election, guerrillas on Saturday morning set off a bomb only 900 feet from the shrine of Imam Ali (which has the sort of place in the hearts of Shiite Muslims that the Basilica of St. Peter in Rome has for Catholics).

Iraqi cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, leader of the Sadr Movement within the National Iraqi Alliance, issued a fatwa or religious legal ruling on Friday insisting that believers must vote in Sunday's election and terming going to vote "political resistance," which produces success when a group is united, and ordering his adherents to unite. The WSJ says that the Sadrists are using very canny electoral techniques in a quest to ensure they win as many seats as possible in Sunday's election.

If the Sadrists succeed in rallying the Shiite masses to vote as an act of defiance toward the US military presence and the complaisance of the al-Maliki government, it could change the political landcape.

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Al-Hayat: Main Iraqi Party Alliances in Sunday's Election

2010-03-06T00:23:00.002-05:00

The USG Open Source Center translates a guide to the main party coalitions in the March 7 elections in Iraq

Report Lists Main Iraqi Alliances Contesting Parliamentary Elections
Unattributed report: "List of [Iraqi] Political Alliances Before 2010 Elections"
Al-Hayah Online
Friday, March 5, 2010
Document Type: OSC Translated Text

Baghdad, Al-Hayah - . . .

The [Iraqi National Alliance] was announced on 24 August 2009 and includes 11 political entities, among them the most important Shiite parties which are the "...Islamic Supreme Council [of Iraq]" [ISCI}, "Badr Organization" [paramilitary of ISCI, organized to contest for vote], "Al-Sadr Trend", "[Islamic Virtue] Al-Fadilah Party", "Al-Da'wah Party-Iraq Organization", "National Reform Trend" (Ibrahim al-Ja'fari), "Iraqi National Congress" (Ahmad Chalabi), Ibrahim Bahr-al-Ulum, and "Al-Wasat Trend" led by Muwaffaq al-Rubay'i in addition to Sunni forces, among them the "Muslim Ulema Group", "Al-Anbar Salvation Council", and liberal, secular and independent figures.

The [INA] is considered the main rival to the [State of Law] "SOL" which is led by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. The [ISCI] and "Al-Sadr Trend" are hoping to regain some of the Shiite votes they had lost to Al-Maliki in the governorates councils' elections last year. There are also speculations that the [INA] might forge an alliance with Al-Maliki's alliance after the elections in case none of them obtains enough seats that allow it to form a government on its own. The "State of Law Coalition"

The "SOL" whose establishment was announced by Al-Maliki in October 2009 includes 50 political entities and a number of political and tribal figures, the most prominent of which are "Al-Da'wah Party General Headquarters" led by Al-Maliki, the "Islamic Turkoman Union" led by Deputy Abbas al-Bayyati, the "Mustaqillun [Independents'] Bloc" led by Oil Minister Husayn al-Shahrastani, and other groups which include some leaders of Sunni tribes, Christians, and independents. "SOL" was the biggest winner in the governorates councils' elections in January 2009 after raising the slogan of imposing security, providing services, and establishing a strong central government. Al- Maliki considers his victory in the legislative elections "a certainty" with more votes than his rivals but he announced that he would be compelled to conclude alliances with other forces if he did not win a majority (163 seats) to form a government.

The "Iraqi National Movement": This list includes the "National Accord Movement" which was announced on 31 October 2009 under Iyad Allawi, the "Iraqi Front for National Dialogue" led by Salih al-Mutlak (the two movement's merger), Deputy Adnan Pachachi who is the former leader of the "Independent Democrats Grouping", and Salam al-Zawba'i, the deputy prime minister who had resigned. Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister (title as published) Tariq al-Hashimi announced on 28 October 2009 that his "Tajdid" movement joined the "INM" which is seeking to contest the elections on the basis of a nationalist program.

The "INM" came under heavy pressures. The "Accountability and Justice Commission" banned some of its symbolic figures, most notably Salih al-Mutlak and Zafir al-Ani, from participating in the elections and the movement considered this an act of revenge and unconstitutional. Al-Mutlak announced his party would not contest the elections to protest his exclusion but later rescinded the decision and announced it would participate.

The "Iraqi Unity Movement"

It was announced on 21 November 2009 and includes around 26 political entities and various secular and Islamic forces and technocrats. The most prominent of them is Interior Minister Jawad al-Bulani, "Iraqi Al-Sahwah Council" leader Ahmad Abu-Rishah, the "Charter Grouping" led by Sunni Emoluments Council Chairman Shaykh Ahmad Abd-al-Ghafur al-Samarra'i, former Defense Minister Sa'dun al-Dulaymi, and "Iraqi Republican Grouping" led by Sa'd Asim al-Janabi.

Previous leaks pointed to understandings between Al-Bulani, Abu-Rishah, and Samarra'i with "INM" leaders Iyad Allawi, Tariq al-Hashimi, and Salih al-Mutlak in addition to former parliament Speaker Mahmud al-Mashhadani to form a large political front. But the widening of the front and disagreements over its leadership apparently aborted the idea in its cradle.

The Kurds

Four main Kurdish lists are competing in the elections. The two main Kurdish parties which control the Kurdistan Region in northern Iraq dominate the "Kurdish Alliance." These are the "Kurdistan Democratic Party" led by Kurdish Prime Minister Mas'ud Barzani and the "Patriotic Union of Kurdistan" led by President Jalal Talabani. The two parties underline the Kurdish nationality and have strong relations with the West.

The two parties' grip on the Kurdistan Region weakened before the "Change Bloc" led by Nushiran Mustafa who had split from Talabani and which called for reforms. It scored good results in last year's Kurdish parliamentary elections and will contest this one alone. There is a fourth list, which is the "Islamic Kurdish Union" in addition to the "Islamic Group."

Less important forces are contesting the elections, such as the Communist Party and the "National Unity Alliance" which includes a group of entities, most notably the "National Dialogue Council" led by Khalaf al-Alayan, "Asla" led by Fadil al-Maliki, "Ansar al-Risalah" led by Mazin Makkiyah, and the liberal "Al-Ahrar" led by Deputy Iyad Jamal-al-Din. The Tribal Chiefs

Tribal chiefs play an important role in the elections and the main parties are seeking to curry their favor. Some leaders of Sunni tribes became prominent when the US forces started to back the "Awakening Councils" against "Al-Qa'ida" gunmen in 2006. Though the prominent tribal figures were eager to engage in political activity, they did not however establish a united front but joined existing blocs. The minorities

Iraq's smaller minorities in Iraq include the Turkoman, Christians, Yazidis, Sabians, and Al-Shabak. They are allied to larger electoral lists in areas they do not dominate.

(Description of Source: London Al-Hayah Online in Arabic -- Website of influential Saudi-owned London pan-Arab daily...)

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14 Killed in Special Election Day Attacks in Baghdad; Expats begin Voting today; US Withdawal Likely on Course

2010-03-05T01:38:00.007-05:00

Iraq's campaign season will come to an end Friday evening, in preparation for the voting on Sunday. But a special vote was held Thursday for certain groups, such as the military, which was marred by three bombings that left 14 persons dead. Voting begins today, Friday, among Iraqi expatriates in Jordan, Syria and 14 other countries.

Since two important Shiite coalitions are competing against one another in this round, and many Sunnis appear ready to vote for a cross-sectarian secular party, it is unlikely that any party or coalition will get more than 25 percent of seats. There is therefore likely to be a long post-election period of political negotiation and horse trading, during which Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki will effectively have his tenure extended. There might not even be a new government until August, and it may well be a government of national unity. The majority Shiites will need a partner to get to the 66% of votes required to elect a president, and the Kurds are the most likely partner. If so, the 'new' government may look an awfully lot like the national unity government of summer, 2006, with regard to parties represented and politicians in the cabinet, whether or not al-Maliki retains the prime ministership. That the Shiites will need the Kurds may provide an opening for the parties to resolve outstanding conflicts over the future of the northern Kirkuk oil province. The election may therefore reinforce the status quo rather than creating the kind of political instability that foreign investors fear.

It seems to me extremely unlikely that the post-election scene will be so violent or unstable as to call for a revision of the current timetable for US troop withdrawal from Iraq, to which President Obama has committed the US government. Iraq has actually seen much worse violence in recent months than anything it has experienced in the run-up to this election, though it is true that civilian casualties spiked in February. Iraqi authorities have repeatedly said proudly that the Iraqi military and other security forces are capable of keeping basic peace now, and they are in charge of security for the voting stations this time, not the US military. I do not believe the Iraqi parliament that is about to be elected will put up with any foot-dragging on troop withdrawals by the US,and I think the US military officers who speak of slowing down the withdrawal are doing so to discourage radical guerrillas from making trouble during the elections (warning them that attacks will backfire by making it harder to get rid of the Americans).

On to Friday's voting. About 1.4 million Iraqis are thought eligible to vote overseas. (There are about 17 million voters inside Iraq by my calculation). Even abroad, some voters may be deterred by militia threats from going to the polls. Iraqis in Jordan and Syria are sometimes tracked down and threatened by the same militias who chased them out of their homes in the first place. (The estimate given here of 500,000 Iraqis in Jordan is way too high, based on what NGOs in Amman told me 18 months ago, and if 200,000 Iraqis actually vote there, the ballots and voter registration should be closely examined because I doubt there are more than 100,000 eligible voters in Jordan. Most Iraqi expatriates, perhaps a million, are in Syria.)

Aljazeera Arabic reports that parties are attempting to buy votes among the often penniless refugees:

Al-Hayat [Life] reports in Arabic that over a million Iraqis took part in the early voting day on Thursday, including soldiers, hospital patients and others who cannot get to the polls on Sunday.

The occasion was marred by three attacks that killed 14 persons and wounded dozens, two of them suicide bombings, which targeted two voting stations set aside for the security forces in the north and west of Baghdad. Half of those killed were from the security forces.

Al-Hayat says that some parties expressed suspicion that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki of the Islamic Mission Party (Da'wa), which is the core of his State of Law coalition) would use Thursday's vote for fraudulent purposes benefiting his party. Usamah al-Nujaifi of the Iraqi National List called on NGOs and international observers to monitor the voting closely for such fraud, since, he warned, military elements could simply be ordered (by the prime minister) to vote one way or another.

An official in the Independent High Electoral Commission, Hamdiya al-Husaini, confirmed to al-Hayat that soldiers had been pressured to vote for a certain party, which she would not name, and even that some soldiers arrived at the voting station only to find that someone else had already voted on their behalf. She promised an investigation by the High Electoral Commission.

The voting process was chaotic, and many soldiers's names could not be found at their voting stations on the registration rolls. Some soldiers even staged demonstrations over being disenfranchised in this way, in response to which the the High Electoral Commission promised them redress. Nevertheless, thousands are estimated to have been unable to vote. The High Commission says that they will be allowed to vote on Sunday.

Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that authorities in the southern Shiite port city of Basra have arrested a group that is printing up counterfeit rulings or fatwas attributed to Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani of Najaf, urging Shiites to vote for a specific party. Sistani has declared his neutrality in this election, though other grand ayatollahs seem to be plumping for the National Iraqi Alliance of Shiite religious parties led by cleric Ammar al-Hakim.

RFE/RL has video on the use of Arabic music videos and Facebook in the parliamentary campaign. .

Aljazeera English covers the campaigning, which ends Friday evening, and clearly throws its support behind the National Iraqi List, headed by former interim prime minister Iyad Allawi, which has both Shiite and Sunni secular support. This report's assertion that this time no party or coalition can win without cross-sectarian support is not actually true, and polling suggests that Allawi's group will only get a fifth of seats, with nearly half going again to Shiite religious parties.

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Bzzz. That's just wrong, on Health Care Reform

2010-03-05T00:05:00.001-05:00

The invented Republican/ Foxy News talking point du jour is that the Democrats intend to 'ram health care reform down our throats' even though 'the American people don't want it.'

Bzzz. That's just wrong! First of all, when there is a landslide triumph for a party as there was in November, 2008, for the victor to actually govern and legislate is not 'ramming' anything down anyone's 'throat.' It is doing what the people asked you to do. Obama campaigned on this issue, and presumably that fact had not escaped the electorate's notice.

Just so we don't forget, if we sized the lower 48 states according to their population, this is what the Democratic victory looked like, according to cartophilia:

So it is that little tiny red thing that is talking about 'ramming' down 'throats.'

Second, 80 percent of Americans in a recent ABC/Post poll want to prohibit limits on pre-existing conditions, and 72 percent want to impose an employer mandate. Some 63 percent favor some form of public health care reform. The same proportion, 63%, want president Obama to keep trying to pass a reform. A majority, 56%, want everyone to be covered. The allegation that the 'public doesn't want it' is an artificial creation of millions of dollars in disinformation money purveyed by the pharmaceutical companies through the US Chamber of Commerce and their bought-and-paid-for congressmen and senators. If a pollster explains to a member of the public what is actually in the bill, Americans like most of the provisions, as Ezra Klein says.

Besides, all the Democrats want to implement (not ram) is the same thing every other advanced industrial society has, which is health care for all citizens. As it is, we pay more than the Netherlands or Germany or Sweden, but our health statistics are much worse than any of theirs.

As for ramming things down people's throats, here is what the Republicans rammed down our throats during Cheney-Bush:

1. War on Iraq, costing over 4,000 American service lives, 31,000 wounded bad enough to go to hospital, many of them maimed for life, and costing over our lifetimes $3 trillion (which we don't have). All based on outright lies.

2. Torture.

3. Warrantless wiretaps.

4. 'Protest zones' and arbitrary arrest of people peacefully assembled.

5. Further gutting of financial regulation, pushing the country's economy off a cliff

6. Deep tax cuts for the superwealthy and de facto tax increases for the middle classes, passed by reconciliation

7. Unfunded programs, including wars, tax cuts and medicare changes, that created most of the current budget deficit and much of our current public debt, much of it passed by reconciliaton.

8. Virtual abandonment of our troops in Afghanistan for a concentration on Iraq, and slacking off on capturing the top al-Qaeda and Taliban leadership.

9. The gutting of environmental regulation and the surrender of the public to corporate polluters.

10. Bush's 'victory' itself in 2000.

So suck it up, GOP. You really screwed us all over and messed up the country big time. All we want to do is have people's children be able to see a doctor without it bankrupting the family. That's your big complaint?

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Harper's A history of the Iraq war, told entirely in lies

2010-03-04T13:25:00.001-05:00

The revision thing: A history of the Iraq war, told entirely in lies—By Sam Smith (Harper's Magazine)

Or, a preview of the Rove, Bush & Cheney memoirs.

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Chalabi met Iran Quds Brigade commander; Voting begins in Iraq; Sadr's warrant an Error

2010-03-04T01:05:00.004-05:00

Al-Sharq al-Awsat says that it has gotten hold of an American intelligence document detailing undue Iranian influence in Iraq and in the Iraqi elections. The document says that Ahmad Chalabi and Ali al-Lami, influential members of the 'Jusice and Accountability Committee' in charge of purging Baathists from public life, met repeatedly with Iranian officials last fall. Among those they met were Qasim Sulaimani, head of the special forces Jerusalem (Quds) Brigade and the Iranian foreign minister. US Commanding Gen. in iraq, Ray Odierno, charged that Iran was behind the campaign to disqualify over 500 alleged Baathists from running in Iraq's March 7 parliamentary, and this document seems to lend some credence to the allegation.

Anxiety among US officials about Iran's influence, especially via militias such as the Asa'ib Ahl al-Haqq, is underlined by WaPo today.

AP alleges that Iran is responsible behind the scenes for getting the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq and the Sadr Movement form a coalition, the National Iraqi Alliance.

Trudy Rubin of the Philadelphia Inquirer asks if Iraq is really a democracy, and comes up with a resounding 'No!' She gives as evidence the repeated arbitrary arrests of a Sunni Arab young man who served as a whistle-blower on Shiite militia ethnic cleansing of Sunnis in his neighborhood. She also quotes Ali Allawi on the lack of effective checks and balances.

Early voting begins today in Iraq for members of the armed services, hospital patients, and others who are prevented from getting to the polls on Sunday. Nearly a million persons are expected to cast a ballot on Thursday.

Some newspapers are asking whether the Sunni Arabs will flex their muscles in this election.. They may, but only if they do not vote on a sectarian basis. If Sunnis can make themselves an indispensable constituent of secular parties supported by Shiite urban middle classes, they can get some leverage. Otherwise, Iraq's parliament at the moment has only one chamber, and electing explicitly Sunni Arab slates dooms them to insignificance, since they will only have a fifth of seats in parliament. Sunni Arabs in Iraq's parliament will always be outvoted on an issue of national significance.

In something less than a resounding vote of confidence in the electoral progress, the Shiite grand ayatollahs said Tuesday that they are genuinely afraid of ballot fraud in the March 7 parliamentary elections.

The Iraqi government is now saying that the appearance of the name of Muqtada al-Sadr on an arrest list was an error, and that no attempt will in fact be make to take him into custody. (Sadr is now studing in seminary in Qom, Iran.]

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3 Bombings in Baquba kill 16; Arrest Warrant for Sadr

2010-03-03T01:23:00.004-05:00

On Wednesday morning, three suicide bombers attacked the HQ of the provincial government, a police station, and a hospital in Baquba, the capital of Diyala Province east of Baghdad, killing at least 16 persons and wounding over 40. (The report of the explosion at the government building comes via Aljazeera Arabic.) The attack was probably undertaken by militant Sunni Arabs intent on creating an atmosphere of fear intended to keep voters home on the coming Sunday.

Diyala is a mixed province with a slight Sunni Arab majority. The Shiite minority, however, dominated its politics from 2003-2008, possibly with help from neighboring Iran. In response, Sunni Arabs launched a determined insurgency, making Diyala one of the more dangerous provinces in the country.

In January 2009, a Sunni Arab-dominated provincial council came to power. In the aftermath, however, arrest warrants were issued by the Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad for several provincial council members, who were suspected of links to insurgent guerrilla groups, and who had to go into hiding. The police and military in Baquba are disproportionately Shiite, which is one of the reasons the Sunni Arab guerrillas would have attacked them.

On February 26, a forum participant had posted a statement attributed to an Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi of the radical Sunni Arab 'Islamic State of Iraq,' which ridiculed Iraq's elections. Translated by the USG Open Source Center, it said,

'" The Islamic State in Iraq Will Participate in the Iraqi Elections, using their own methods. They (the Islamic State in Iraq) have picked several apostate figures that its soldiers will vote for, either with an explosive device or an explosive belt, God willing.

"The Initial Results of Elections According to Jihadist Sources

"The Ministry of War of the Islamic State of Iraq has won first place in the jihadist elections in the Land of the Two Rivers, and destroyed most of the election posts.

" The Electoral Program of the Al-Qa'ida Organization

"1- Purifying and liberating the land of the caliphate (governing system) from the Crusaders and applying God's Shari'ah [religious law] in the Land of the Two Rivers.

"2- Establishing an Islamic state and getting rid of the legislators and legislative councils based on infidel democracy.

"3- Expanding the field of jihadist work to liberate Muslim countries from occupation, especially the Al-Aqsa Mosque[in Israeli-ruled Jerusalem], the cradle of prophets and messengers, and purifying it of the cowardly Zionists, following in the steps of Salah al-Din [Saladin].

"4- Applying God's Shari'ah on Earth, establishing an Islamic caliphate, and unifying the Muslim point of view under the banner of monotheism and jihad.'

Opinion polling shows that only a tiny minority of Iraqi Sunni Arabs find these ideas attractive, and support for them has fallen dramatically in recent years.

As though a resurgence of Sunni Arab radicalism were not enough, the Associated Press has gotten hold of a warrant issued by Iraq's Supreme Court for the arrest of Shiite clerical leader Muqtada al-Sadr, dated February 7 of this year. The surprise renewal of the warrant, originally issued under the American administration of Paul Bremer in 2004, threatens to roil Iraq. Sadr stands accused of ordering the killing of Majid al-Khoei on April 10, 2003, on the latter's return to the holy city of Najaf from exile in London. Al-Khoei was killed by enraged mobs of nativist Sadr followers in part because his return seemed to have been sponsored by London and Washington, D.C. That the death was an assassination ordered by al-Sadr as opposed to the spiralling out of control of an urban mob has not been proven.

The American-inspired arrest warrant was allowed to lapse as part of the Bush administration's truce with the Shiite leader. His Sadr Movement came to be a significant player in parliament, with over 10% of the seats, and his Mahdi Army militia was at one point in control of significant swathes of southern Iraqi cities as well as the capital. The Sadr Movement is part of the National Iraqi Alliance, which groups several important Shiite religious parties, and which seems set to gain between a sixth and a fifth of seats in the parliamentary elections scheduled for the coming Sunday.

The al-Maliki government denied that it had engineered the reemergence of the arrest warrant, and indeed denied that the warrant existed.

Al-Sharq al-Awsat reports in Arabic that the Sadr Movement blamed al-Maliki for the issuance of the warrant and called it 'psychological warfare' against the Sadr Movement.

There is now certainly a suspicious pattern whereby the major challengers to al-Maliki's State of Law coalition have run into sudden and unexpected legal problems in the run-up to the election. Salih Mutlak, a Sunni Arab ally of Iyad Allawi's National Iraqi List, was disqualified from running on grounds that he was too close to the banned Baath Party that had been led by Saddam Hussein. The move potentially weakened the Iraqiya List.

Now the National Iraqi Alliance is being targeted for demoralization, with one of its chief leaders indicted anew on a 6-year-old charge that had seemed to lapse. Ironically, the Sadr Movement's support had catapulted PM al-Maliki into power in spring of 2006, before the two broke with one another in summer 2007 over al-Maliki's unwillingness to set a timetable for US withdrawal and to cease teleconferencing with President George W. Bush.

Iraqis point out that few major Iraqi politicians have clean hands, as McClatchy reports.

The greatest danger of these political maneuverings is that they may reignite guerrilla and militia violence in Iraq, and possibly impede the scheduled withdrawal of the US military. Both Sunni Arab guerrillas and Mahdi Army militiamen have been major sources of instability in Iraq at some points in the past six years. Some Sunni Arabs are worried about a resurgence of sectarian violence.

On the other hand, experienced Iraq hand Nir Rosen believes that all the talk about the reemergence of sectarian conflict is completely overblown. One reason Rosen may be right is that the Sunni Arabs decisively lost the civil war and were largely ethnically cleansed from Baghdad, so it is not clear that they have the social base to put up a further fight.

Aljazeera English reports on the campaign techniques being used in Iraq:

End/ (Not Continued)

Al-Maliki in BBC Interview: No need for US Combat Troops after Election, Would require renegotiating SOFA

2010-03-03T00:29:00.002-05:00

The public affairs office of the US Embassy in London put out this Spot Report via its Media Outreach Center -London Hub March 2, 2010. The interview with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, now campaigning for his political survival, challenges the assertion of US military commander Ray Odierno that US combat troops could or would remain in iraq past the deadlines set in the Status of Forces Agreement. Odierno's assertion produced outrage in Iraq, according to Raed Jarrar.

BBC Arabic TV interview with Iraqi PM Nouri al-Maliki

BBC Arabic broadcast a 15-minute edited on-camera interview with Nouri al-Maliki at 9.45g. The main points he made were:

Relations with Kurds over Kirkuk

[Al-Maliki:] We have no alliance with the Kurds; Kirkuk is important to us as well as the Kurds; we agree on legal settlement on Kirkuk based on constitution.

Would you enter alliance with Iyad Allawi?

[Al-Maliki:] That would be difficult, because of differences in history, directions, etc.

Why did you object to Allawi's visits to other Arab countries?

[Al-Maliki:] Iraqis are sensitive about foreign interference in their political system

On Allawi's visit to Saudi Arabia

[Al-Maliki:] Against idea of visiting any country with the purpose of winning support for becoming prime minister of Iraq

Relations with Saudi Arabia

[Al-Maliki:] I made one visit to Saudi Arabia for purpose of good relations, as with any other neighbor; I didn't ask for any other meeting with Saudi official; we want good relations, but if they want to maintain this estrangement it's up to them.

[U.S. Ambassador Christopher] Hill's warning of possible political chaos after elections

[Al-Maliki:] That's a wrong reading; Iraq will be stable after the elections; those raising quarrels and spreading lies are doing so for future political advantage;

Hill's accusation that Iran playing "hateful" role in Iraq

[Al-Maliki:] They are his words; "hateful" is a big word; maybe they are interfering as Arab countries do; someone who is hateful is only intent on destroying - Iran not only intent on destruction; we seek open friendship, not political or military interference.

Accountability and Justice Commission working to Iranian agenda?

[Al-Maliki:] That's an American view; symptom of US-Iran quarrel which we do not want to see played out in Iraq; I explained to VP Biden and Amb Hill that it was the AJC that was responsible for deciding on the election candidates, not the committee controlled by Ahmed Chalabi.

On decision to reintegrate 20,000 officers from Saddam's army

[Al-Maliki:] Part of national reconciliation to integrate them; not Ba'athists; this had nothing to do with election campaign; matter been considered for last three years;

Odierno's warning of security problems meaning US troops might stay on

[Al-Maliki:] That's his view; but we think the Iraqi security infrastructure is effective even without US help; they said Basra operation (against militias [in spring of 2008]) would take us six months - we did it in nine days.

Defence minister said he wanted US troops to stay till 2020

[Al-Maliki:] I think it's unlikely he really said that; any such change would need a new security agreement that would need to be vote on by parliament.

Reaction to Ahmadinejad's call in Syria for Iraq to be a third regional ally

[Al-Maliki:] We welcome close relations with Iran as we do with Syria, Saudi Arabia, Turkey.. but not on the basis of alliances or treaties; in the past these led the region into confrontations between axes.

Foreign funding of political parties

[Al-Maliki:] Parties funded from abroad, which is a problem; it's because parliament has not yet passed law we tabled on political parties; our State of Law party is not funded from abroad; has an account in the Rafidayn Bank that citizens can contribute to; so far it contains about eight million (dinars?)

Your greatest achievement?

[Al-Maliki:] Security; other achievements in education, jobs etc would not have been possible without security.

End/ (Not Continued)

Tensions between Kurds and Arabs in Northern Iraq; US Killing sparks protest in Diyala; Al-Maliki will Seek Coalition Partners in Parliament

2010-03-02T01:17:00.002-05:00

Political violence spiked in Iraq during February ahead of the March 7 elections, with an 80% increase in deaths and casualties over January of this year. Some 352 civilians, policemen and troops were killed, along with about 50 anti-government guerrillas. Over 600 persons were wounded.

Tensions between the Kurdistan leadership and the governor of nearby Ninevah province, Athil al-Nujayfi, are near to boiling over, according to the CSM. Kurdistan President Massoud Barzani has threatened to issue an arrest warrant against Nujayfi. Ninevah is mostly Arab, but has a Kurdish minority. Nujayfi, who leads the al-Hadba Party that gained 50 percent of the seats on the provincial council in Jan. 2009, is a secular Arab nationalist and has feuded with the minority Kurds on the provincial council. Because Sunni Arabs boycotted the provincial elections of 2005 and because the US installed Kurds in the police and security forces, Kurds had been disproportionately powerful in Ninevah, parts of which the Kurdistan Regional Government would like to annex to its Kurdish super-province. As a leader of resurgent Sunni Arab nationalism, Nujayfi forms a direct challenge to that Kurdish project.

Al-Hayat writing in Arabic says that tribal chieftains in Diyala Province east of Baghdad are complaining that the al-Maliki government has not condemned what they termed US military attacks on Diyala towns and villages. The most egregious of these was an incident in Miqdadiya where US military personnel, presumably trainers accompanying Iraqi units, came under small arms fire and returned it. The son of the leader of the Zuhayri clan was killed in the crossfire. It is not clear when this happened, but al-Hayat says that the US military admitted and error and apologized. Joint US-Iraqi security operations are on-going in Diyala province. The Diyala notables said that they wanted the US military man responsible for the death to be turned over to Iraq for trial.

After having earlier condemned the idea of a government of national unity, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has abruptly begun speaking of just that. He said that when next Sunday's parliamentary elections are over, his State of Law coalition may well seek talks about a parliamentary alliance with the Shiite religious parties of the National Iraqi Alliance, led by Ammar al-Hakim, and with the Kurds in parliament. (To elect a president in the Iraqi parliament requires a two-thirds majority, whereas to elect a prime minister and to keep his cabinet in power requires only 51 percent. Al-Maliki will therefore have a strong motivation to ally with fellow religious Shiites. In order to get to two-thirds to elect a president, the Shiite religious parties will need allies, and the Kurds are a less controversial choice for them than the secular or Sunni parties. Although some Shiite leaders in the Iraqi National Alliance are reluctant to ally with al-Maliki,in the end they may have no choice if they are not to sit in the opposition.

To form a government and remain prime minister, al-Maliki needs an alliance of 163 seats that will consistently vote with him. The Kurdistan parties will probably have 50 or so, and the Shiite State of Law and National Iraqi Alliance coalitions should have 110 between them. In fact, al-Maliki's polling suggests that his State of Law may gain as many as 100 seats all by itself, making it easy to form a government. But for reasons I gave last Thursday, I don't think it is likely that the State of Law will in fact have a third of seats in parliament, and I see it as far more plausible that al-Maliki and al-Hakim will reunite the religious Shiites after the election. In the US, the two major parties create coalitions before the public votes, whereas in parliamentary systems such as Iraq, the coalition-building is done after the election.

Meanwhile, Iraqi vice president Tariq al-Hashimi campaigned among the some 200,000 Iraqi refugees in Jordan on Sunday, the majority of whom is Sunni Arabs. He urged them to vote for change and an end to sectarianism. (He is a member of the secular-leaning Iraqi National List led by Iyad Allawi, though he had previously been active in the Iraqi Islamic Party, an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood).

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Al-Khalil/ Hebron and Jerusalem Protests Point to the Dangers of Nationalizing Sacred Space

2010-03-01T01:14:00.008-05:00

Abraham has been an important figure for theologians, philosophers, chroniclers and religious poets and lyricists among Jews, Christians and Muslims. All three monotheistic religions honor him and claim him as a patriarch or in Islam's case as a prophet of the one God. All tell the story of his willingness to sacrifice his son for God. Jews and Arabs see him as an ancestor, Jews claiming descent through his implausibly aged first wife Sarah and Arabs through his second wife (held in some Jewish and Muslim traditions to have been a Pharaonic princess), Hagar. They hold him to be buried in the Cave of the Patriarchs in al-Khalil in the Palestinian West Bank, which the Israelis call "Hebron," where Muslims erected the Mosque of the Abraham, which is split, with part of it used by Jews and the other part by Muslims.

(Update: Francis Boyle writes in to say: "The Muslims and the Jews do not “share” the Ibrahimi Mosque. In fact, Israel confiscated the chamber of the Mosque where Ibrahim, Isaac, Jacob and their wives are buried, then built a synagogue in there. In other words, the Israelis desecrated the Mosque by building a synagogue within it. I have seen it myself, truly disgusting. This regime is enforced by armed Israeli soldiers within the Mosque—further desecrating it. This was clearly a war crime in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, inter alia.")

Abraham is frequently cited as a figure who should unite Jews, Christians and Muslims, since all view him as the first monotheist and a founder figure for their traditions. But last week the Israeli government designated the Cave of the Patriarchs an Israeli heritage site. Since it is on the Palestinian West Bank, it cannot be an Israeli heritage site, though it certainly is a Jewish one.

Palestinians are afraid that Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's action is a prelude to an Israeli claim on the annexation of al-Khalil to Israel. The town of 150,000 is completely made up of Palestinian Christians and Muslims, though 400 Israeli settlers, some of them armed and all under the protection of the Israeli military, reside there. There have been constant frictions between the small Israeli colony and the Palestinian townspeople.

The move provoked protests in al-Khalil, with youths throwing stones at Israeli soldiers and threatening a third popular uprising or Intifada. As a result of this atmosphere of tension, the Israeli military locked down the Palestinian West Bank on Sunday as Israeli colonists there celebrated the festival of Purim.

(Purim, based on the Book of Esther, commemorates the deliverance of the Jews of the Achaemenid Empire in ancient Iran and Iraq from a hostile minister to the Persian king, Khsayarsha II, called by the Greeks Artaxerxes II and in the Bible Ahasuerus [r. circa 405 to 358 BC]. He was married to a Jewish woman, Esther, though he was unaware of her religion, and his life had been saved by her cousin, Mordecai. His gratitude causes him to turn against his minister, Haman, who wanted to kill all the Jews, and to have him hanged. The shah then gave permission to the Jews to defend themselves from attacks by Haman's supporters, which they apparently did with rather excessive zeal, polishing off 75,000 Iranians. Ancient numbers are not reliable and one historian suggested we always subtract at least one zero. You have a sinking feeling that some hawkish Israelis see President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as a contemporary Haman.)

But Purim in al-Khalil has other connotations, since it was the day on which Dr. Baruch Goldstein opened fire on innocent worshipers at the Mosque of Abraham, shooting 179 in cold blood, and killing 29 of those. This site gives you an idea of how Palestinians remember the incident. Israeli apologists often refer to Goldstein as deranged, but people who met him before his attack deny this charge. He is more likely to have simply been the Israeli equivalent of a suicide bomber, i.e. acting out of ideological conviction.

Anyway, the coincidence of the anniversary of the Goldstein massacre with the designation of the tomb complex an Israeli heritage site was enough to inspire fear, outrage and anger in the Palestinian residents of the city. The cabinet of the Palestine Authority is meeting in al-Kahlil/ Hebron on Monday, just to reaffirm its sovereignty or at least future sovereignty over the town.

On Sunday, the tensions in al-Khalil/ Hebron spilled over onto Jerusalem, where Muslims and Jews uneasily share the area around the Wailing Wall and the Haram Sharif above it. Muslims venerate the Aqsa Mosque on what Israelis maintain is the site of the ancient Temple as sacred soil, associating it with a miracle of the Prophet Muhammad. Some Israeli extremists wish to destroy the mosque so that the Temple can be rebuilt, and in 1969 a fanatic set fire to it. Muhammad Bin Laden, the Saudi developer and father of Usamah, got the contract to repair it. Palestinians gathered in the mosque, having apparently heard rumors (which circulate frequently) that it would be attacked by militant Israelis. They pelted visitors to the site with stones. Some 17 persons were wounded in the clashes, including two Israeli policemen. The Israeli security forces went into the mosque and arrested the protesters.

Israeli soldiers in the Aqsa Mosque is a provocation, since it is the third holiest site in the Muslim world. King Abdullah II of Jordan and Palestine Authority President Mahmoud Abbas called for international protections for Muslim holy places in Jerusalem, several of which they said were threatened by unilateral Israeli measures. A recent controversy, which is probably related to Sunday's violence, has centered on a bizarre Israeli decision to build a 'Museum of Tolerance' on top of a Muslim cemetery in Jerusalem. For a fact sheet On the Mamilla Cemetery, see this site.

The events should alarm Americans. The Israeli occupation of Jerusalem and therefore of the Aqsa Mosque complex, was one of the grievances that drove Bin Laden to declare war on the United States, and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's provocative demarche on the mosque complex in 2000 caused Bin Laden to try to move up the date of the planned attacks on New York and Washington, D.C., as 'punishment' for Sharon's implicit threat.

One obstacle to American understanding of the events of the past week is a lack of understanding of the position of Abraham and of Jerusalem in Muslim scripture and in Muslim religious and folk practice. The Qur'an sees Abraham as an early monotheist who came into conflict with his own father on behalf of the one God. Abraham starts being mentioned in the early, Meccan, chapters of the Qur'an (contrary to some Orientalist assertions). Muslim belief even holds that Abraham resided in Mecca and built the Kaaba, the cube-shaped shrine around which Muslims circumambulate during the pilgrimage. When Muslims first conquered Palestine in the seventh century, sources say that Jews showed them the Cave of the Patriarchs, and that Jews and Muslims both worshiped there and made pilgrimage to it. (Jews in Palestine are said to have welcomed the Muslim conquest, preferring them to the Byzantine Eastern Orthodox empire).

The Jews of the Roman province of Palestine were not for the most part expelled in the second century CE, as popular history sometimes has it, but went on farming there and gradually converted to Christianity. The majority then later gradually converted to Islam and became what we now call the Palestinians. Most Palestinian and Jewish men share the same distinctive haplotypes or genetic patterns in their Y chromosomes, showing common descent. If promises were made to Abraham's putative descendants, then they share in the promise. The promise could not possibly be to adherents of Judaism, since that religion did not exist until many centuries later.

The authoritative Encyclopedia of Islam notes that al-Khalil/ Hebron is at a high elevation and traditionally lacked water save for some nearby springs, saying: "Since during the later Middle Ages and the Ottoman period, large numbers of pilgrims came to the city [Hebron] and passed through it on the Hajj route to Mecca, the need for greater reserves of water necessitated the construction of two large reservoirs in the Hebron valley."

That is, historians are aware that the Tomb of the Patriarchs has been sacred to Muslims for 1400 years and they have been going on pilgrimage to it for much of that period, combining visits to Jerusalem and Hebron with their pilgrimage to Mecca. (If you were living in Turkey, Northern Iran or coastal Syria, Jerusalem and Hebron are on the way to Mecca by a popular route.)

It is worth noting that the figure of Abraham as described in the Bible is in any case not historical. Abraham is said to have been the forebear of the twelve tribes of Israel, including that of Benjamin or Bin Yamin. But the Banu Yamin are mentioned in clay tablets in the area dated to 2000 BC, so they precede Abraham's alleged advent. The kings he is said to have met don't correspond to any known historical figures. He is said to have bought the Caves which allegedly became his tomb from a Hittite, but the Hittites did not then exist and they didn't come to geographical Palestine until the 1400s BC. He is said to have been a monotheist, but there is no evidence in the archeology of anything but polytheists in Palestine (then Egyptian-ruled Canaan or Retenu) for many centuries after he supposedly lived.

Moreover, if Abraham were from south Iraq (Ur in what is now Dhi Qar) he would have likely been ethnically Sumerian, whereas the genetic signature of a majority of Jewish men most resembles that of Palestinians and Lebanese, not of southern Iraqis. For the same reason, he is not the direct male ancestor of the Hijazi Arabs. (If he existed at all and lived 4000 years ago and if his descendants flourished, he would likely be an ancestor of most people in the greater Mediterranean by now, I.e. Arabs and Europeans and Jews from both worlds; note that only uninterrupted descent in the male line would show up in the Y chromosome.)

But the Abraham stories are no more historical than those of Gilgamesh and Utnapishtim, other ancient Middle Eastern mythical figures. The jumbled stories about him were written down in the Babylonian exile, when scribes made an attempt to establish a historical timeline into which he could be asserted. Ur was a classy place to be from, as Shlomo Sands points out, and so the Babylonian Jewish authors of the written Bible endowed themselves with a distinquished Iraqi parentage.

It is modern nationalism that lies behind the current tensions over Abraham's tomb and the Haram Sharif. Jews and Muslims shared pilgrimage sites all through history, most often amicably. Israeli, Arab and Palestinian nationalisms are reconfiguring sacred space as sites of national authenticity and as exclusive.

The Palestine Authority should declare itself a state and offer citizenship to the 400 or so Jews in al-Khalil/ Hebron. And there are lots of Palestinian heritage sites it could then designate inside Israel. And ideally the two would share them, and allow free circulation and pilgrimage, including for international religious tourism, which would be good for the economy. I predict that eventually all these things will come to pass. It may however be decades.

In the meantime, the danger to the Aqsa Mosque complex is a danger to world and American security.

End/ (Not Continued)

Major Iraqi Parties Anxious over Possible Massive Ballot Fraud

2010-02-28T01:03:00.002-05:00

Iraqis go to the voting booth a week from today, on Sunday, March 7, to elect the second full-term parliament (4 years) since the fall of the one-party Baath regime in 2003. Given the turmoil surrounding last summer's elections in Iran and Afghanistan, with massive vote fraud and stolen elections being alleged in both, many Iraqis are worried ballot and other irregularities in their polls, as well.

Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that the Sadr Movement is complaining bitterly about a rash of arrests by the government of Sadrist activists. The hard line Shiite movement asserted that these arrests were aimed at influencing the course of the election.

Al-Hayat writes in Arabic that the National Iraqi Alliance, a coalition of Shiite religious parties, has alleged that there are 800,000 imaginary voters' names on the election rolls. Member of parliament for the National Iraqi Alliance, Qasim Da'ud, told al-Hayat that his coalition has already detected numerous instances of attempted fraud in the upcoming election. He said that there is evidence that the Independent High Electoral Commission has come under undue pressure in this regard.

Da'ud was speaking in a roundabout way about Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki in making these charges. He went further, asserting that the sitting government had begun acting improperly given the closeness of the election date, with the prime minister misusing his position for electoral purposes. Da'ud said al-Maliki had distributed land and gifts to tribal sheikhs and citizens. He had also decided to purge some military officers and pardon others. Da'ud said that the most brazen such move was the addition of 800,000 imaginary names to the voting rolls just days before the election.

(With regard to the purging and reinstatement of military officers, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki announced late this week that 20,000 Saddam-era officers in the Baath army would be reinstated (most are at the rank of colonel or below). Critics maintain that al-Maliki is trying for the Sunni vote with this move.

Muqtada al-Sadr's website for Friday carried the sermon of Sadrist preacher Shaykh Abd-al-Hadi al-Muhammadawi, who also complained about al-Maliki's gifts in his Friday prayer sermon, referring to an account that al-Maliki gave out pistols to tribal sheikhs who visited him, to curry their favor (USG Open Source Center translation): "His Eminence wondered: Where from did the prime minister bring money to distribute pistols to some chieftains? These are the methods of the destroyer Saddam. Where are the state's fund? What did Operation Knights Assault and the operations of the so-called Law Enforcement Plan achieve? What are the results of investigations on the crime of the Al-Ummah Bridge and the bloody Wednesday, Sunday, and Tuesday? What is the fate of the corrupt ones, particularly the ministers who have stolen the state's funds? Where is the wronged people's share from the ration card's items?"

Back to the al-Hayat article: The Iraqi National List of former interim prime minister Iyad Allawi said it is worried about massive fraud in the election, given that, it alleged, the Independent High Electoral Commission had printed up an extra seven million ballots. The party dismissed the explanation that the Commission had had to print more ballots because the originals did not meet international criteria.

In al-Anbar Province, Ahmad Abu Risha is a leader of the 'Awakening Councils' or 'Sons of Iraq' movement, wherein Sunni Arabs took money from the US to fight radical Muslim extremists such as the 'Islamic State of Iraq.' He is now part of the Unity of Iraq coalition led by Interior Minister Jawad al-Bulani. He said that the Committee of Justice and Accountability's disqualification of some 500 candidates out of over 6000 was itself a reason to suspect that some political parties intend to commit ballot fraud.

The Independent High Electoral Commission issued a statement denying the validity of the charges and calling them "inexcusable" and "detached from reality."

Meanwhile, The Eye Network dedicated to observing the elections has expressed its fears of ballot fraud in the votes cast by Iraqi expatriates. There are about a million Iraqis in Syria, and a couple hundred thousand in Jordan, with perhaps 50,000 each in Egypt and Lebanon, as well as about 40,000 in Sweden and a few thousands in other countries. (These figures are based on my own research and that of specialists who have presented at conferences I've attended; the numbers are much exaggerated in the press for both Jordan and Egypt). The Eye Network says it is precisely the unknown number of voters abroad and the lack of authenticated voter rolls that makes fraud so potentially easy in this regard.

Thre are also fears of undue religious interference. Last week the Pakistani Shiite grand ayatollah in Najaf, Bashir al-Najafi, implicitly denounced several of al-Maliki's cabinet members, some of them running on his State of Law ticket for corruption and incompetence (criticizing the provision of services such as electricity and water).

Apparently as a reaction to this intervention, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, who outranks al-Najafi, reaffirmed the neutrality of the great Shiite clerics in this election. Sistani also announced that he would not meet with any further candidates in the week before the election.

The USG Open Source Center translated the second Friday prayer sermon of Sistani representative Abd al-Mahdi Karbala'i:

' 26 February 2010, His Eminence Shaykh Abd-al-Mahdi al-Karbala'i, representative of the Higher Religious Authority, said: "Higher Religious Authority His Eminence Grand Ayatollah Sayyid Ali al-Sistani, may God maintain his shadow, has warned of the refusal to participate in the coming elections. He said that this is because the citizen's refusal to participate in the elections will give a chance to others who reject the democratic way of transferring power and running the country's affairs and who take violence and illegitimate ways as a means to change the situation, to assume power, and impose their policy on the others. He said that this would involve the country in a whirlpool of chaos and continuous instability.

"He pointed out: So as to foil the plans of these sides and in order to prevent them from taking Iraq back to square one, everyone should participate in the elections. All this is in order to consolidate and entrench the democratic way of the rotation of power and to take the country far from the ghost of violence and military coups. If the citizens refuse to participate in the elections, a day will come when they will regret this strongly, but after it is too late." '

End/ (Not Continued)

Advice to Climate Scientists on how to Avoid being Swift-boated and how to become Public Intellectuals

2010-02-28T00:05:00.001-05:00

Climate Scientists continue to see persuasive evidence of global warming and climate change when they speak at academic conferences, even though, as Andrew Sullivan rightly put it, the science is being 'swift-boated before our eyes.' (See also Bill McKibben at Tomdispatch.com on Climate Change's OJ Simpson moment).

This article at mongabay.com includes some hand-wringing from scientists who say that they should have responded to the attacks earlier and more forcefully in public last fall, or who worry that scientists are not charismatic t.v. personalities who can be persuasive on that medium.

Let me just give my scientific colleagues some advice, since as a Middle East expert I've seen all sorts of falsehoods about the region successfully purveyed by the US mass media and print press, in such a way as to shape public opinion and to affect policy-making in Washington:

1. Every single serious climate scientist should be running a blog. There is enormous thirst among the public for this information, and publishing only in technical refereed journals is guaranteed to quarantine the information away from the general public. A blog allows scientists to summarize new findings in clear language for a wide audience. It makes the scientist and the scientific research 'legible' to the wider society. Educated lay persons will run with interesting new findings and cause them to go viral. You will also find that you give courage to other colleagues who are specialists to speak out in public. You cannot depend on journalists to do this work. You have to do it yourselves.

2. It is not your fault. The falsehoods in the media are not there because you haven't spoken out forcefully or are not good on t.v. They are there for the following reasons:

a. Very, very wealthy and powerful interests are lobbying the big media companies behind the scenes to push climate change skepticism, or in some cases (as with Rupert Murdoch's Newscorp/ Fox Cable News) the powerful and wealthy interests actually own the media.

b. Powerful politicians linked to those wealthy interests are shilling for them, and elected politicians clearly backed by economic elites are given respect in the US corporate media. Big Oil executives e.g. have an excellent rollodex for CEOs, producers, the bookers for the talk shows, etc. in the corporate media. They also behind the scenes fund "think tanks" such as the American Enterprise Institute to produce phony science. Since the AEI generates talking points that aim at helping Republicans get elected and pass right wing legislation, it is paid attention to by the corporate media.

c. Media thrives on controversy, which produces ratings and advertising revenue. As a result, it is structured into an 'on the one hand, on the other hand' binary argument. Any broadcast that pits a climate change skeptic against a serious climate scientist is automatically a win for the skeptic, since a false position is being given equal time and legitimacy. It was the same in the old days when the cigarette manufacturers would pay a 'scientist' to go deny that smoking causes lung cancer. And of course we saw all the instant Middle East experts who knew no Arabic and had never lived in the Arab world or sometimes even been there who were paraded as knowledgeable sources of what would happen if the United States invaded Iraq and occupied it.

d. Journalists for the most part have to do as they are told. Their editors and the owners of the corporate media decide which stories get air time and how they are pitched. Most journalists privately admit that they hate their often venal and ignorant bosses. But what alternative do most of them have?

e. Journalists for the most part do not know how to find academic experts. An enterprising one might call a university and be directed to a particular faculty member, which is way too random a way to proceed. If I were looking for an academic expert, I'd check a citation index of refereed articles, but most people don't even know how to find the relevant database. Moreover, it is not all the journalists' fault. journalism works on short deadlines and academics are often teaching or in committee and away from email. Many academics refuse (shame on them) to make time for media interviews.

f. Many journalists are generalists and do not themselves have the specialized training or background for deciding what the truth is in technical controversies. Some of them are therefore fairly easily fooled on issues that require technical or specialist knowledge. Even a veteran journalist like Judy Miller fell for an allegation that Iraq's importation of thin aluminum tubes in 2002 was for nuclear enrichment centrifuges, even though the tubes were not substantial enough for that purpose. Many journalists (and even Colin Powell) reported with a straight face the Neocon lie that Iraq had 'mobile biological weapons labs,' as though they were something you could put in a winnebago and bounce around on Iraq's pitted roads. No biological weapons lab could possibly be set up without a clean room, which can hardly be mobile. Back in the Iran-Iraq War, I can remember an American wire service story that took seriously Iraq's claim that large numbers of Iranian troops were killed trying to cross a large body of water by fallen electrical wires; that could happen in a puddle but not in a river. They were killed by Iraqi poison gas, of course.

The good journalists are aware of their limitations and develop proxies for figuring out who is credible. But the social climbers and time servers are happy just to host a shouting match that maybe produces 'compelling' television, which is how they get ahead in life.

3. If you just keep plugging away at it, with blogging and print, radio and television interviews, you can have an impact on public discourse over time. I could not quantify it, but I am sure that I have. It is a lifetime commitment and a lot of work and it interferes with academic life to some extent. Going public also makes it likely that you will be personally smeared and horrible lies purveyed about you in public (they don't play fair-- they make up quotes and falsely attribute them to you; it isn't a debate, it is a hatchet job). I certainly have been calumniated, e.g. by poweful voices such as John Fund at the Wall Street Journal or Michael Rubin at the American Enterprise Institute. But if an issue is important to you and the fate of your children and grandchildren, surely having an impact is well worth any price you pay.

End/ (Not Continued)

Ahmadinejad once again fails to call for the annihilation of Israel, despite what you heard on CNN

2010-02-27T00:49:00.005-05:00

I saw Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren interviewed by Wolf Blitzer on CNN Friday afternoon. Oren said that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had called for the annihilation of Israel, and was therefore speaking of genocide.

It is dreary to see this constant drumbeat of dishonest propaganda. Whatever one thinks of Ahmadinejad or the Iranian regime, one should not misrepresent their statements, since that will lead to bad policy-making.

The Washington Post also wrote, "Ahmadinejad, a Holocaust denier, spoke of Israel's eventual "demise and annihilation". In fact, Ahmadinejad never mentioned Israel as a country at all, and spoke only about what he called the 'Zionist regime.' He favors an admittedly odd form of the 'one state solution' in which Palestinians and at least some Jews would all vote for the same government.

So this is what Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Thursday at a press conference in Damascus:

"Iran, Syria, the Palestinian Resistance and Lebanon are ready to meet any conditions, and we hope that the enemies of the nations of the region will change their course and instead walk beside regional states in cooperation. Insofar as the Zionist regime threatens Lebanon and Syria and prominent personalities of these two countries every day, it must accept its end and grant in their entirety the rights of the Palestinian nation."

That is, Ahmadinejad began by offering an olive branch to any former enemies that wanted to make peace. But he characterized the 'Zionist regime,' i.e. the Israeli government with its current ideology, as intrinsically belligerent, and insisted that this 'regime' must 'accept its own end' and grant Palestinians their full rights (presumably, citizenship and property rights, which they now lack).

Ahmadinejad seems to see Zionism as an ideology as essentially unwilling to allow Palestinian human rights, and so calls for it to acquiesce in its obsolescence.

Ahmadinejad did not mention Israel and did not call for any genocides, or anyone to be killed, or war. He asked Zionists to see that their ideology has no future. In the past he has compared his vision of the fall of what he calls the Zionist regime to the fall of the Soviet Union, which happened peacefully and with no annihilation of the population.

Personally, I see Zionism as just a garden variety form of modern romantic nationalism not different in any way from scores of other nationalisms (including Arab nationalism, Serbian nationalism, and Iranian nationalism).

Zionism constructs Palestinian-Israelis as second-class citizens, and attempts to deny Palestinians in the Occupied Territories basic rights. But other nationalisms are also guilty of exclusions, though there are unique aspects to the Zionist project. Shiite-tinged Iranian nationalism insists that the head of state be a Shiite ayatollah and disallows Sunni Iranians, perhaps 10-15% of the population, from serving even as elected president, and Sunni provinces such as Baluchistan are the most deprived of resources and services. Only civic nationalism of the American and French varieties has universalistic aspirations, and even there it is flawed by a latent privileging of some groups within the nation (Protestant whites in the US, secular-minded native-born French of Catholic extraction in France).

Ahmadinejad may be blinkered and hypocritical, but he did not call for the annihilation of or genocide against anyone.

Only committed Zionists would see a one-state solution as the 'annihilation' of Israel.

In any case, now that a two-state solution has been made virtually impossible by Israel's determined colonization of the West Bank, a one-state solution is the most likely outcome of what will probably be a 50-year struggle for basic Palestinian rights to citizenship in a state. The rest of us are going to be mightily inconvenienced by this unnecessary and stupid conflict, and the inconvenience will only be increased by equally stupid propaganda from unreliable narrators like Oren.

End/ (Not Continued)

Taliban Hit 5 Star Hotel, Indian Hostels in Downtown Kabul; 18 Dead, 32 Wounded; Indians Targeted

2010-02-26T01:11:00.003-05:00

The Afghan capital was struck by three suicide bombings early Friday morning, beginning at 6:30 am local time. Radio Azadi reports that there were five attackers, who struck in the area near the entrance of the Hotel Safi Landmark. The first bomb damaged the hotel.

Two of these bombings, Aljazeera Arabic says, targeted guest houses for Indian expatriates in Kabul who work for companies or NGOs. The third blast was huge, and the guesthouse was left in rubble, such that there may be bodies still within. As I write, the death toll is estimated at 18, with 32 wounded, and some of the dead are Indians and many of the wounded are. The Aljazeera correspondent says that Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told him that the mission had been to hit the "enemies of Afghanistan from among the foreign Indians." The Sydney Morning Herald confirms that the Taliban were targeting Indian hostels.

The Taliban have hit the Indian embassy in Kabul twice, once in July 2008, and again in October 2009. Many Taliban have helped train or fought alongside Pakistani militant vigilantes fixated on overthrowing Indian rule of Muslim-majority Kashmir.

India is also a significant provider to Afghanistan of development aid and investment, and so is helping build up the government of Hamid Karzai. Having offered $1.2 billion in reconstruction aid, India is the largest regional donor. There are some 4,000 Indian workers in the country, some of them "security personnel," according to the US Council on Foreign Relations.

Several prominent Tajik (Persian-speaking Sunni) politicians have long-standing ties to New Delhi because India's Research and Analysis Wing (RAW, the equivalent of the CIA) provided aid to the old Northern Alliance at a time when it was under siege in the late 1990s by the Taliban. These Tajiks are die-hard enemies of the Taliban, who had committed massacres against them. The Taliban animus against India thus is multifaceted.

The attack lasted about 4 hours, according to Radio Azadi, with some of the attackers using small arms fire. All five were ultimately killed.

Some observers were surprised that the attack was launched on the commemoration of the birth of the Prophet Muhammad. But many hard line Salafi revivalists, who say they want to go back to the practice of Islam that prevailed among the first generation of the companions of the Prophet, oppose celebration of birthdays in general and of that of the Prophet in particular.

Pollster Matt Dabrowski tweeted from Kabul that he was awakened by the first blast, and could see a smoke column bigger than the downtown indoors market building.

US Navy Lt. Joe Halstead tweeted from Kabul, "Insurgents using Mohammed's Birthday and attempting to counter progress in Marjah with attack in Kabul today."

Friday's attack resembled one in January. Although the Taliban are attempting to project an image of Kabul as having little security and the Karzai government as helpless in the face of their assaults, actually they are just proving that the Afghanistan security forces are pretty good and can fairly easily capture or kill attackers.

The Taliban have lost momentum on two fronts in recent weeks. The CSM estimates that Pakistani authorities have captured 7 of the 15 members of the Quetta Shura, the command council of the Old Taliban of Mullah Omar. American drone strikes killed another major Taliban leader in North Waziristan on Thursday, Muhammad Qari Zafar. He was a mastermind of the attack on the US consulate in the southern Pakistan port of Karachi in 2006.

The other front is Marjah, where Taliban direct attacks are becoming rare as the US military and the Afghanistan National Army establish control of the city of 80,000. Some twenty thousand residents have fled to nearby Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand province. The Taliban are still fighting with roadside bombs, and are likely to go doing so for some time.

In the wake of these two defeats, the Taliban are apparently attempting to destabilize the capital and to punish foreigners working to stand up the new government (in this case India), using the tactics of Sunni radical insurgents in Baghdad. While this tactic can indeed slow state formation, it is just the act of a spoiler and does not lead to any positive political achievements.

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Al-Maliki's Polling Shows His Party Getting Nearly 1/3 of Seats in Parliament, with Allawi's Iraqiya at 1/5

2010-02-25T00:26:00.006-05:00

Al-Hayat [Life] reports via AFP Arabic on the poll just released by the National Media Center, which reports to Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's office. According to this sounding, the major coalitions will perform thusly in the March 7 parliamentary elections (rounding up to the nearest whole number):

State of Law (Nuri al-Maliki): 30%
Iraqi National Movement (Iyad Allawi): 22%
National Iraqi Alliance (Ammar al-Hakim and Muqtada al-Sadr): 17%
Kurdistan Alliance (Jalal Talibani and Massoud Barzani): 10%
Unity of Iraq (Jawad al-Bulani): 5%
Iraqi Accord Front (Iyad al-Samarraie): 3%
No Opinion: 5%

(State of Law: Shiite religious/ nationalist coalition of the current prime minister; Iraqi National Movement: coalition of secular Shiite and Sunni parties led by a former interim prime minister; National Iraqi Alliance: coalition of Shiite religious parties, including Sadrists and the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq; Kurdistan Alliance: The major but not the only Kurdish political force; Unity of Iraq: party of Interior Minister, an independent Shiite; Iraqi Accord Front: Coalition of Sunni fundamentalist parties.)

The other 8% must be for small, probably Sunni Arab or Kurdish, parties not so far detailed by the Arabic press.

There are strange things about this poll. First, it gives the major Kurdish coalition only 10%. The Kurdistan Alliance got 21% in December, 2005, or 53 seats. It is true that the Kurds lost out in the expansion of the number of seats in parliament, insofar as they have only had 43 seats set aside for the Kurdistan superprovince, or 13%. But Kurds in the mixed provinces of Kirkuk, Diyala and Ninevah should return some seats for the Kurdistan Alliance or one of its challengers. Moreover, there is no reason for a weighted poll to reflect seat apportionment. This poll is missing half the Kurds who should have turned up in it, and they can't all be in the 8% that wasn't detailed. That gap is a major flaw.

Second, the Sunni Arab parties have also disappeared. The Iraqi Accord Front gained 44 seats or 15% in December, 2005, and the National Dialogue Front of Salih Mutlak won 11 seats or 4%. So Sunni Arab parties should also have shown up as nearly 20 percent of the poll results. Instead the IAF has been reduced to 2.6%, and no other Sunni Arab parties are mentioned, though some might be in the unannounced 8%. That poor black hole of 8% cannot magically cover both the missing Sunni Arabs and the missing Kurds. Some proportion of the missing Sunni Arabs may be supporters of Allawi's National Iraqi List, but can that possibility really account for this anomaly? A lot of Sunni Arabs have not forgiven Allawi for cheerleading the US military's invasion of and virtual destruction of Fallujah in late fall of 2004.

It is true that Allawi went to visit Saudi Arabia recently in hopes of receiving King Abdullah's backing as the secular alternative to the pro-Iranian Shiite religious parties. And his coalition partner Tariq al-Hashimi is in Cairo, seeking Egypt's backing. Al-Hashimi was constrained to deny that the National Iraqi coalition had sent an envoy to Tehran seeking Iran's acquiescence in Allawi's return as prime minister, because just such a rumor was flying around Iraq. The visits to Riyadh and Cairo are intended to position the Iraqiya as the secular, Sunni-Shiite alternative to rule by religious Shiites linked to the ayatollahs in Tehran. It is a message that will resonate in the Sunni Arab provinces.

I conclude that somehow this poll over-represented the Shiite Arabs at the expense of Kurds and Sunni Arabs. The National Media Center maintains that they polled in a weighted way in all 18 provinces, so its results should be proportional. But they clearly are not.

If we focus on the Shiite parties, the results make some sense in the light of the provincial elections of January, 2009, when Nuri al-Maliki's State of Law coaltion (the core of which is his Islamic Mission (Da'wa) Party) took over a third of seats in the major urban centers of Baghdad and Basra, and did well in the Shiite provinces of the south, though not so overwhelmingly well.

In last year's provincial elections, the Shiite fundamentalist Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, the core of today's National Iraqi Alliance, virtually collapsed after having been dominant since 2005--though it still gained between 8% and 17% of the vote. The party suffered from an anti-incumbent mood, given poor services and bad security, as well as, allegedly, public distaste at how close it is to Iran. On the other hand, the hard line Sadr Movement, another constituent of the National Iraqi Alliance, did respectably in much of the Shiite South, gaining as much as 15-17% in some provinces. So the non-Da'wa Shiite religious parties could well gain as much as a fifth of the national vote if the trends visible in the provincial elections have continued.

Allawi's Iraqi National Movement only got 9% in the December, 2005 elections, but it has been reformulated away from being mainly Shiite secularists to being cross-sectarian, and presumably some of the 20% who said they would vote for it were Sunni Arabs. The INM was joined by Tariq al-Hashemi, a vice president and a Sunni Arab who formerly led the Iraqi Islamic Party, and by Salih Mutlak, the secular, Sunni Arab leader of the National Dialogue Front. Mutlak's disqualification from running because of allegations of links to the banned Baath Party, and his recent call for his supporters to boycott the vote, could hurt Allawi's poll numbers if the poll were taken now.

For this and other reasons, I doubt Allawi's list will actually get 20% of seats in the new parliament. Iraqis have a discourse of national unity to which the list is appealing in its rhetoric. And Iraqis typically are embarrassed by sectarianism and deny its importance. But when they have gone to the polls in the past 5 years, they have almost always voted for ethnic or sectarian parties once in the privacy of the voting booth. There was also buzz for Allawi in fall of 2005 coming from polls done in the provinces by US AID and from the American Enterprise Institute (so I was told by journalists who interviewed us both), and it turned out not to amount to anything; Allawi's contingent in parliament shrank from 14% to 9%.

The poll also gave some provincial estimates for voter support for al-Maliki's State of Law coalition:

Baghdad: 32%
Basra: 41%
Babil: 49%
Dhi Qar: 42%
Karbala: 50%
Qadisiya: 56%
Muthanna: 44%

These numbers, if true, speak of a revolution in affairs since last year's provincial election, since the State of Law only won 9% in Karbala then, and the most it got outside the two big Shiite cities was 23%. Because these results are so divergent from those of only a year ago, I have trouble accepting them as accurate. Services and security aren't better, and unless al-Maliki is buying off constituents with patronage, it is hard for me to understand such a big swing in his favor.

There may also be a fear effect. Al-Maliki has been establishing tribal militias in the Shiite south loyal to him, and has moreover gotten control of a lot of the local police forces as well as the national army, so Iraqis may be reluctant to say to pollsters that they oppose him.

This poll suggests that al-Maliki's party will pull in about 108 seats in the 325-seat parliament, and that Allawi's list will get 72.

But the Shiite religious coalition, the National Iraqi Alliance, has done its own soundings, and thinks it will get 70-80 seats or as much as 25% of seats, not the 17% the National Media Center gives them. And the NIA thinks that 80 would make them the single largest party.

Although not all their leaders agree with such a strategy,it still seems most likely that al-Maliki's State of Law and al-Hakim's National Iraqi Alliance will make a post-election coalition, emerging as the largest bloc in parliament and forming the government again. Assuming al-Maliki's party doesn't actually get 30%, such a coalition might be the only way for him to remain prime minister, assuming he hasn't burned too many bridges with the other Shiite religious parties to be viable.

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Gates wants Europe to beggar itself on War Expenditures the Way the US Has

2010-02-24T01:41:00.001-05:00

US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates decries Europe for general anti-war sentiment, unwillingness to beggar itself with expenditures on war.

But as far as I can tell, Europe is the world's largest economy and got there without any recent substantial wars except those the US dragged it into. Moreover, the fastest-growing economy for the past nearly 30 years has been China, which spends a fraction on their military of what the US spends on its, and, aside from a skirmish with Vietnam in the early 1980s, has been at peace. Apparently massive war expenditures are unrelated to economic growth or prosperity.

In contrast, the US has been at war for 19 of the last 47 years (not counting US-backed insurgencies such as 1980s Afghanistan, on which we spent billions) but has not grown faster than the other two economically. Moreover, the increasingly unwieldy US national debt, deriving from the US government spending more than it took in in recent decades, would not exist if the US military budget had been the same as that of the European Union since 1980. The US overspent on its military because Washington mistakenly thought the Soviet economy was twice as big as it actually was, and vastly over-estimated Soviet military capabilities. The bloated military budgets continue now, apparently because of a couple thousand al-Qaeda operatives hiding out in caves in the Hadhramawt and Waziristan.

Some statistics to ponder:

US Military Budget 2009: $711 billion
European Union Military Budget 2009: $289 billion
China Military Budget 2009: $122 billion.

US GDP 2009: $14.4 trillion
European Union GDP 2009: $16.5 trillion (PPP)
China GDP 2009: $8.8 trillion (PPP)

US economic growth 2009: 0.2%
European Union economic growth 2009: -4%
China economic growth 2009: 8.7 %

The real military-related expenditures of the US are closer to $1 trillion. If the US cut those back to the level of the European Union and spent the money on promoting solar energy and making it inexpensive, America would have a chance of remaining a great power in the 21st century. If it goes on rampaging around the world bankrupting itself by invading and occupying other countries, the Chinese will laugh at us all the way to world dominance.

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