Informed Comment

Ashcroft Appoints Special Prosecutor in Plame Identity-Disclosure Scandal

Attorney-General John Ashcroft recused himself Wednesday in the investigation of the Valerie Plame case, saying he will appoint a special prosecutor. High Bush administration officials broke US law in July of 2003 by revealing to reporter Bob Novak that Valerie Plame, wife of Ambassador Joe Wilson, was an undercover CIA operative. These Bush appointees did untold damage to US intelligence efforts, since they unmasked and put in danger all the contacts and agents overseas who had been known associates of Ms. Plame, an expert in preventing the spread of weapons of mass destruction. The officials outed Plame in order to punish her husband, Wilson, for blowing the whistle on the Bush administration, revealing that he had reported to the US government as early as 2002 that the allegations of Iraqi uranium purchases from Niger were false.

Bush knows who did this dastardly deed, or could easily find it out. He has declined to demand that these persons resign and turn themselves in. This incident shows how vindictive and petty the Bush administration is, and how utterly unconcerned it is with real national security and weapons proliferation.

Ashcroft initially resisted the appointment of a special prosecutor. That he now has given in and recused himself raises a large question. Does he himself now have a strong inkling of who leaked Plame’s identity? If the person was close enough to Ashcroft such that the attorney general felt he had to recuse, the person was probably high indeed. (Karl Rove, “Bush’s [campaign] Brain”, is one suspect.)

The Democratic candidates generally brushed off Ashcroft’s gesture, promising that the Plame scandal would be an issue in the forthcoming presidential campaign.

By the way, although Bob Novak broke no law in revealing Plame’s identity, it is a shame on CNN that they did not make him resign over the issue. Newscasters have had to resign over ambiguous comments taken as racial slurs. Surely outing an undercover CIA operative is just as serious an offense?

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Basra: Massive Drug, Petroleum smuggling; Christians, Musicians Harassed

Because the southern Iraqi city of Basra (1.3 million) is under British military occupation rather than American, it is little covered in the US press (does anybody else think this is odd?) There have been several British and Arab reports about the situation there recently. They indicate that although security has improved, property values are up, and people are again holding weddings and smiling, many serious problems remain. The rise of radical Shiite vigilanteism is among the grave new challenges to the development of Iraqi democracy.

Reuters reports (via ash-Sharq al-Awsat 12/31) that 400 shops owned by Christians, whom Saddam had permitted to sell liquor, have been forced to close since April, as the Shiites have come to power politically (see below). [An informed observer in Basra reports that this number is hugely exaggerated, but that many shops have been closed.] Stores have been firebombed, and some Christian shopkeepers have been shot, it is said by radical Shiite groups with names like “The Revenge of God, Hizbullah, and the Organization of Islamic Rules.” Their members appoint themselves vigilantes, patrolling the streets armed in search of criminals and drug dealers, and executing them on the spot. These Shiite militias have supporters on the local councils Christians complain that they have been forced out of the liquor market, but that in many cases Muslim merchants have stepped into the breach, making inroads into what had been a Christian monopoly.

Steven Farrell reports in the London Times (12/30) of Basra: “Many of the theatres and music halls where [musicians] used to play have been shut, or converted for use by the many new Islamic parties that claim to represent Iraq’s Shia Muslims, the overwhelming majority in Basra. While ice-cream and electronics stores thrive, the fundamentalists have shut down all alcohol shops, aided by rocket-propelled grenades and the summary killing of liquorsellers. Video and CD stores have been closed or had their wares heavily censored. In one CD shop in central Basra, posters of Britney Spears have been taken down. In their place are speeches of ayatollahs, to appease the self-appointed moral guardians.” He says that Shiite Islamist gangs have beaten up musicians returning from weddings, e.g.

The London daily ash-Sharq al-Awsat has run a three-part series on Basra the past few days, by journalist Ahmad Jawdah. In his piece of Dec. 29, he speaks of the problems of drug smuggling and high inflation (BBC trans.):

Mu’taz Salih of Basra’s Police Directorate, told Jawdah that open borders with Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Iran allowed drug smuggling. “ Traffickers smuggle marijuana from Iran where one kilogram of hashish is worth 600 dollars and then they seek to smuggle and sell it for around 1,700 dollars.” He said that in some cases Iraq was just a transit route for trans-border smuggling, a new phenomenon.

Catherine MacIntosh, an aide to the British commander in southern Iraq, told Jawdah that oil smuggling is a particular problem, with about 3,000 tons smuggled out each week to Kuwait and the UAE, causing a “structural imbalance” in the Iraqi economy. Reproached for leaving the borders so open as to allow this smuggling, she replied with some heat, “We have 10,000 soldiers in a 150,000-square-mile area that consists of five governorates – home to nearly five million people . . . in addition to 1,000-kilometre border with Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Iran. We want to achieve security and help the Iraqis to rebuild the state and establish services and security for the people of the south. It is such a vast area of land and it is difficult to control this kind of crime . . . “

Jawdah says that Basra Deputy Governor Abdul Hafiz al-Ani introduced himself as a businessman, and a political independent. He said he was a representative of a local cleric Sayyid Ali al-Safi [Abd al-Hakim] al-Musawi, who in turn represented Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani in Basra. [The deputy governor of Basra is indirectly a representative of Sistani? Maybe the place is already a theocracy!]

Al-Ani hoped for a constitution and an elected government, but said, “We do not want any more foreign forces in our country. We hope the British forces keep their promises and withdraw next June.” He said personal freedoms were “permissible” but not if they were abused and became an obstacle to consumption. He admitted that liquor stores had been firebombed, and said, “We would never allow the sale or consumption of alcohol in Basra.“

On Baathists: He said they would not be allowed to participate in public life because they were not trusted. He said they were criminals who should be held accountable for their crimes, as the Koran said. He did allow that those forced to join the party would be treated differently.

on Dec. 27, Jawdah had reported a conversation with a policeman in Basra who was from the smaller town of Samawah, also in the Shiite south. He said, “Unemployment in Basra is not less than 60 per cent and 40 per cent of the people are living under the poverty line. I am from the city of Al-Samawah where conditions are worse and life more difficult. The unemployment rate in Al-Samawah is 70 per cent among men and 95 per cent among women and at least 35 per cent of its population are living under the poverty line.”

” . . . the allocation of jobs in Al-Samawah is done on a partisan, tribal and sectarian basis. The council under the total control of Al-Da’wah Party, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, and the “Tha’r Allah” (God’s revenge) group of the Badr forces. The Sunnis who represent around 10 per cent of Al-Samawah’s population are the ones treated most unfairly. They are subjected to discrimination and this discrimination has even reached the point where one of the Shi’i parties seized a Sunni mosque in Al-Samawah, the Imam Ali Bin-Abu-Talib Mosque, two months ago.“

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More Iranians in Karbala than Iraqis?

One finds these little gems in things like theCoalition Provisional Authority Briefing on Dec. 30, already on the Web. (Participating was Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, Deputy Director for Operations and Daniel Senor, Senior Coalition Provisional Authority Adviser.)

The below passage is rich in what it says about how porous Iraq’s borders are and how big the Iranian pilgrimage trade already is. I personally suspect that the Karbala attacks of last Saturday, which killed 19 and wounded dozens, were carried out by Sunni Arab nationalists rather than by Shiites. But it certainly is the case that if the Iraqi Shiites ever did turn against the coalition, they have an extensive source of support and patronage just across the border.

As for population, before the war Karbala was a city of about 300,000, and it is not plausible that has doubled to 600,000, with half being Iranians. But some tens of thousands of Iranian pilgrims (some stay for months) is plausible.

“MR. SENOR: Yes?

MR. SENOR: Well, I think it’s a topographical fact of life that these are very porous borders. Iraq has very porous borders. It’s an issue we have to contend with. But like I said, by ramping the Iraqi security personnel, ramping up the numbers, giving them effective training, giving them the tools they need, and certainly, in the short term, working alongside coalition forces, we believe we can address the security problems that are here.“

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Firefight with Ansar al-Islam in Mosul kills 3

US troops in Mosul fought with the Ansar al-Islam terrorist group in Mosul on Sunday, killing 3 and capturing several other members, according to US military spokesmen. Ansar al-Islam had operated in the American-policed no-fly zone of northern Iraq, and is alleged to have ties to al-Qaeda. The US destroyed the small base maintained by the group when it took northern Iraq.

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Corruption Concerns Delay Pentagon Reconstruction Projects in Iraq

The Boston Globe reports that the Pentagon has canceled the process of giving out bids to reconstruct Iraq until February 1, out of concern for pervasive corruption. It is being alleged that a small group of mercantile clans is manipulating the bidding process through dummy companies, hiding their continued domination of the economy. The Coalition Provisional Authory of Paul Bremer had been counting on the influx of reconstruction monies to win hearts and minds and begin establishing better security in Iraq. This postponement is another obstacle to the smooth transfer of power on June 30 (see the Laith Kubba interview below).

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