Informed Comment

*Well, we found out why the ground troops moved in without a preceding air campaign. The air campaign had been planned for Friday, and was not moved up because the US was waiting for assessment from its attempt to kill Saddam by Tomahawk Cruise missiles. Apparently he was wounded but is not dead, though his younger son Qusay may be dead. I watched the bombs raining down on key Baath ministry buildings and Saddam palaces in Baghdad with a mixture of horror, unease, and yet hope for the future. I hope relatively few people died. It was night, and the ministry buildings would not have had a lot of ordinary employees. If the strikes were precise enough, they damage should not have spilled over much from the buildings, which anyway were not near a major residential district. But the hope for the future bit is also important. Those ministries were like vampire nests, sucking the blood of ordinary Iraqis. They were the places where the chemical attacks on Kurdish civilians were planned out. I still remember seeing pictures of dead Kurdish children with their lunch pails in the aftermath of Halabja. They were the places where the deaths of 60,000 protesters against the regime in spring of 1991 were planned out. The draining of the marsh Arabs’ swamps and the forcing of them into Basra slums were planned out in those buildings. A great center of iniquity has ceased to exist. War is a terrible thing, and since I lived through the first years of the Lebanese civil war, when I was near shelling, I know the fear and bewilderment and damage it does. But it is not a bad thing that those ministries of evil have been reduced to rubble.

*So far 6 Americans have died, 2 in combat, along with British troops killed in a helicopter. My heart goes out to their loved ones, and to the loved ones of the innocent Iraqis so far killed in the bombing. Human life is precious. We have a heavy burden to redeem it by working for a more peaceful and more democratic world in the aftermath of this war.

*There are varying interpretations of the war as it unfolded Friday and Saturday. The 3rd Infantry Division columns heading north for Baghdad ran into no significant opposition, apparently because there are few Iraqi troops left in the south. On the other hand, the Marines who approached the port of Umm Qasr were pinned down just inside the Iraqi border by unexpectedly heavy resistance when Iraqi troops fired sagger anti-tank missiles at them. They had to call for British artillery support. After two hours of bombardment, the Iraqi positions fell quiet. About 15,000 British-led forces then took Umm Qasr, where 30 Iraqi troops surrendered to them. It is hard to know whether the saggers were being fired by a large Iraqi force or a small but determined one. The US Marines in the force over-zealously raised US and Marine flags for a little bit, but were told to run the Iraqi one back up the flagpole by their superiors. The Bush administration wants to retain the symbology of national liberation, not foreign occupation. They also started tearing down all those kitschy huge portraits of Saddam that bedeck the billboards of Iraq like a bad advertising campaign.

Al-Hayat newspaper suggests that Umm Qasr is important because the US can unload there the substantial military equipment it still has in the Persian Gulf. I doubt this is true. Kuwait City is perfectly good for that purpose, and Umm Qasr is from all accounts a dinky little place. Basra would be more important, but both lack deepwater docks. I suspect Kuwait city will continue to be important as the US port of entry. The resistance the US and British got at Umm Qasr may have slowed the largely British advance on Basra, on which they are advancing as I write. They are now on the outskirts of the city and probing its defenses, saying they are in no hurry. They will want to be sure not to run into a lot of unexpected sagger strikes there. Having the British take Basra is eery to a historian, given their invasion of Iraq twice during WW I. And there British forces are around Basra again, almost a century later.

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*Iraq’s 51st mechanized division, which guarded the approaches to Basra, surrendered or went home (although a US Division is 15,000 – 20,000 strong, the 51st was just 8000 men and 200 tanks). Obviously, this is the sort of scenario the US was hoping for, but it had not happened on a large scale on Friday. Hundreds of Iraqi troops did surrender, some to traffic control MPs. Others tried to flag down a journalist to surrender to him. US forces approaching al-Nasiriya took some fire and had to halt. From all accounts, not much of the Iraqi army was left in the south, with most good fighting forces drawn up around the capital. Even if those wanted to surrender, they would have to wait until the US forces get near Baghdad. And, there may be some fight in some of them yet. For their sakes, given how badly they are outgunned, one hopes they will have the sense to throw down their weapons, change into civvies, and go home.

*There were rallies against the Iraq war throughout the world on Friday. In Pakistan, most cities saw at least small gatherings, with the largest in Peshawar. The fundamentalist religious parties called for Muslim countries to sever their diplomatic ties with Washington. But, my impression is that the demonstrations were rather small. They could not really target the elected government of PM Jamali, since he also has condemned the war. The demonstrations in the Arab world were also smaller than I would have expected, though maybe they will grow (though the war seems likely to be too short for much momentum to be achieved by its opponents). The ominous thing was that the children of the Egyptian elite at my alma mater, the American University in Cairo, demonstrated against the war in Liberation Square. This development could be ominous for US diplomatic relations with the Arab world, since those relations have for a very long time been only with elites and not with publics.

*The US 3rd Infantry Division has entered southern Iraq virtually without opposition. The insertion of some 16,000 or 17,000 men into enemy territory before the air campaign has all us observers baffled. Is it because they are assured that the Iraqi command structure has disintegrated and there is no need to soften the Iraqi armor up? The Washington Post reports that many US intelligence officials think Saddam is dead or badly wounded from the Tomahawk strike on his bunker. You may know the answer by the time you read this, but right now the whole thing is a bit mysterious.

*Kurdish groups tell Asharq al-Awsat that the night before yesterday some Iraqi soldiers between Kirkuk and Kurdish-held Irbil surrendered to them. But they say that the death squad enforcers sprinkled by Saddam among the various units make it impossible for most soldiers to defect without risking being shot in the back.

*US forces face a 350,000 man Iraqi army, but most are conscripts who serve for a year and a half to two years (and most are Shiites). The 3rd Infantry Division already passed a camp of 200 soldiers who had put white sheets over their tents to show that they had surrendered, and left them alone. There will be more of that, especially in the south. Iraq has “three armored divisions, three mechanized divisions and at least 15 infantry divisions.” But the tank corps and artillery corps lack spare parts. The Republican Guard, the unit most likely to fight, consists of 26,000 men with attached armor, artillery and air defense units. The 2600 tanks are Soviet T-72s The US tanks typically have greater range and so can kill the Iraqi tanks without exposing themselves to much danger (9 were destroyed Thursday afternoon EST when they attempted to block the US advance from Kuwait). They also have the ZSU-23-4 23mm self-propelled antiaircraft gun and SA-7 hand-held surface to air missiles (similar to stingers). They also have French Milan anti-tank missiles. They also have about 2200 artillery pieces and a similar number of armored vehicles. But it is still possible that the Iraqi high command will collapse and none of this equipment, some of which is deadly and should not be underestimated, may be committed.

*I double-checked and I misspoke when I said the State Department counted Pakistan as a supporter of the war. Karzai in Afghanistan did lend it his reluctant support. But Pakistan declined, and Pakistani Prime Minister Zafarallah Jamali yesterday denounced the war and expressed his hope it would be over quickly. The Islamist opposition parties have called for massive anti-war rallies after Friday prayers today, and may be able to produce impressive crowds. Since Jamali came out against the war, however, these demonstrations may be difficult to turn to the purpose of denouncing the Pakistani government. This conundrum shows the contradiction in the Bush administration’s policies, of pushing democracy in Asia and of unilateral US use of force to attain its goals. The new Asian democrats are objecting to the second goal.

*A group of Israeli rabbis has issued a call for the Sharon government to cease its policy of cavalierly allowing the killing innocent civilians in the Occupied Territories in the course of its military operations against radical groups. They say such actions are inconsistent with the essence of the Jewish religion. Too right! Judaism has given us so much that is noble in ethical religion, and what the Likud is doing is an insult to that long and glorious tradition. Likud’s real roots lie not in the Bible but in Zionist Revisionism of the Jabotinsky sort, which is frankly a kind of fascism.

*Asharq al-Awsat reports that hundreds of “Afghan Arabs” (volunteers, mainly from the Arab world, who had fought the Soviets or with the Taliban in Afghanistan) have gathered in Iraq to carry out suicide missions against US troops there. Sources close to the fundamentalists maintain that other volunteers have come from Lebanon and that remnants of the al-Qaeda leadership have come to Iraq via Iran. They say that the secular Baath party has a ‘gentleman’s agreement’ with them that they can operate against the invading Americans, but not under the banner of the Baath party. I suspect this report is exaggerated, and I would also be very surprised if these groups, assuming they exist, could successfully carry out a terrorist operation against the advancing US forces. Otherwise why not pull it off in Afghanistan itself, where al-Qaeda was well entrenched and knew the terrain? As I mentioned yesterday, similar volunteers who went to fight the Americans in Afghanistan were never heard from again. It is one thing to blow up unsuspecting civilians. It is another to take on fully mobilized Marines. Semper Fie, guys.

*Thousands of Iraqi Kurds have fled cities and villages to the mountains, fearful of a Baath chemical attack like the ones in 1988. Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani issued a statement trying to calm the populace, saying that they faced no real danger from Baghdad.

*The Washington Post reports American intelligence analysis suggesting a very strong possibility that the Iraqi military will collapse after the first big American assaults. Let’s hope they got this one right.

*Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak probably spoke for most Arab leaders when he blamed the Iraq war squarely on Saddam Hussein. But he expressed his hope, implicitly, that the US would be sensitive to the destabilizing potential of this war and its aftermath in the region. On the other hand, according to the Chicago Sun-Times, the more adventurous Arab intellectuals hope this war can break the logjam of Arab political stagnation. Many had expected that the fall of the Soviet Union and the liberalization of Eastern Europe would lead to democratization in the region, but it has not happened. Yet. The Sun Times says, “Saad Eddin Ibrahim, Egypt’s best-known liberal critic, said in an interview the simple fact is “that wars, bad as they are, they break empires, they break dictators, they leave the ground clear for new systems to be created. “They create havoc, they create disorder. But they also create opportunity.” ” The article notes on the other hand that 75% of Jordanians say they are afraid to criticize their government. That is the more common sentiment in the region, which won’t go away, I’m afraid, just because Saddam falls.

*500 Moroccans protested in front of the Moroccan parliament in Rabat against the criminal trial of young goth afficionados of heavy metal in Casablanca on charges of satan worship. They spoke against the interference of the state in Moroccans’ private lives. The whole affair is ridiculous, and my guess is that the government is throwing these 14 young people to the lions to curry favor with the Islamists, who did well in the recent elections and who denounced the Casablanca Goth movement. Not everyone likes Siouxsie, Bauhaus or Marilyn Manson. And very few Goths worship Satan. I mean, the whole thing is so 80s and retro, and one could imagine putting it down; but jail time? As if Morocco doesn’t have more pressing problems.

*My mind and heart are, like those of so many Americans, focused on the Gulf and Iraq tonight. I am thinking about all those brave young men and women in the US and British armed forces whose lives are on the line, and send them my warm support. And I am thinking about all the innocent Iraqis in the line of fire, who fear what awaits them. I remain convinced that, for all the concerns one might have about the aftermath, the removal of Saddam Hussein and the murderous Baath regime from power will be worth the sacrifices that are about to be made on all sides. The rest of us have a responsibility to work to see that the lives lost are redeemed by the building of a genuinely democratic and independent Iraq in the coming years.

*Although Pakistan was on the list provided today by the US State Department of countries supporting the US war on Iraq, Pakistani Prime Minister Zafarallah Khan Jamali said that Pakistan was against the war. The elected parliament wished to discuss the matter, but found the government leaders vague. Apparently the military dictator Pervez Musharraf can tell Colin Powell he supports the war even as the elected PM denies that Pakistan does so. A similar dichotomy is visible in Turkey, where the elected parliament narrowly refused to allow US troops to be stationed on Turkish soil for the invasion of Iraq, but where the Turkish military is eager to cooperate with the US. The Americans are in a difficult position if they represent themselves as trying to spread democracy, but if their methods are repugnant to the few elected governments in the region. Do they have to subvert democracy to save it?

*A house exploded in the Saudi capital of Riyad. Details were scarce but it sounds like a terror cell accidentally blew itself up. Rumors are flying that radical Saudi young men are slipping over the border into Iraq to fight the Americans. This sort of thing happened in the Afghanistan war, when 5000 Pakistanis went to help the Taliban from the tribal areas in the north. Very few appear to have come back alive, having been made short work of by the AC-130s. The phenomenon of such volunteers going off to Iraq to fight the US could be a long-term terrorist problem for the post-Saddam US administration there, though.

*Egyptian human rights activist Saad Eddin Ibrahim has been found innocent by an Egyptian court of the trumped up charges against him. To his credit, George W. Bush had taken up Saad’s case, and the European Union pressured Hosni Mubarak via its loan programs. It is a great day for Egypt, which has taken a small step toward being a more just and open society, one wherein advocating human rights and urging peasants to vote intelligently does not land one in jail! Saad Eddin is a great man and assured of his place in Egyptian history.

*`Abd al-Majid al-Khu’i, head of the Khu’i foundation in London, who is from the most prominent Shiite clerical family of Iraq, has denied that the US has appointed him to administer the Shiites of southern Iraq. (Too bad, in my view, since this would be a smart move.) He said it was a false rumor planted by Iranians to discredit him by associating him with the US. He pointed out in an interview with Asharq al-Awsat that all Iraqi dissident groups have been in contact with Washington about the aftermath of the war, including the pro-Tehran Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, which has attended US-sponsored meetings in D.C.

He expressed concern about the damage to Iraq and to innocent life likely to be inflicted by the looming war, and called for the organization of expatriate committees dedicated to carrying out charitable and relief works to help the innocent victims of the war. He felt this would be a way of contributing to the building of a free and independent Iraq after the regime change. To have such an important Shiite cleric look forward to a free (hurr) Iraq is an encouraging sign, though his insistence on it being independent is probably a complaint about current US plans to administer it directly for a year or two.

http://hnn.us/articles/1322.html

Most Iraqi Shiites would be overjoyed to see the United States come in and effect regime change. But will the Shiites, brutalized by Saddam’s tyranny, remain happy with the United States in the aftermath of the war? The US is about to take control through conquest of the holiest shrines of Shiite Islam. The sensibilities of Shiites throughout the world could easily be injured if they are damaged in war or later seen to be administered unjustly.

U.S. Undersecretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz was recently quoted as saying of Iraqis, “They are overwhelmingly Shia which is different from the Wahabis of the peninsula, and they don’t bring the sensitivity of having the holy cities of Islam being on their territory.” He could not be more wrong. Shiites from all over the world revere the tombs of Shiite holy figures Ali and Husain in the cities of Najaf and Karbala, and many come there on pilgrimage. If a US bomb goes astray and hits either shrine, Shiites from Lebanon to Afghanistan could become enraged at the US.

It is true that some Iraqi Shiites are secular Arab nationalists. Still, large numbers of them are pious believers. Their alliance with the US is a matter of convenience. Saddam killed thousands of ordinary Shiites during the abortive 1991 uprisings after the Gulf War. Even pro-Iranian groups such as the fundamentalist Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution (SCIRI) in Iraq have been willing to ally themselves with the Bush administration. SCIRI has some 15,000 men under arms in exile in Iran, the Badr Brigade, which could play a supporting military role in the US march to Baghdad. They are already establishing beachheads in northern Iraq.

In the 1980s, in the wake of Khomeini’s 1979 revolution in Shiite Iran, the Shiite branch of Islam threw up many of the more pressing challenges to the United States in the Middle East. That era of hostage-taking and terrorism largely passed after Khomeini’s death in summer, 1989, as more moderate voices came to the fore. Now the major challenge comes from the Sunni radicals of al-Qaeda. Sunnis and Shiites are as different from one another as Protestants and Catholics, and al-Qaeda despises Shiites.

As the US forces leapfrog toward Baghdad from the south, they may try to take control of Najaf and Karbala. They should be careful not to damage the shrines. The US intends to impose a military government and then a US-led civilian administration on Iraq. SCIRI leader Ayatollah Muhammad Baqir al-Hakim has denounced the prospect of even temporary US rule over Iraq: “If the Americans do this, they will discover it is a mistake.” He hinted that the Badr Brigade could turn on its US allies. Should Shiites in Najaf and Karbala become discontented with US policies and riot, and should US soldiers quell them with violence, that also could turn the world’s approximately hundred million Shiites against America.

The British conquered Iraq during World War I, wresting it from the Ottoman Sunnis. But when they gave affront to the feelings of Shiites in the shrine cities, and then imposed a Mandate on the country instead of letting it become independent, they faced a major rebellion. The Shiite clerics of Najaf and Karbala were among the leaders of that failed uprising.

In 661, the Prophet Muhammad’s cousin and son-in-law, having become the leader or Imam of the early Muslim state, was assassinated. His gilded, revered tomb in Najaf, 160 km. south of Baghdad, forms a major site for pilgrims from the Shiite branch of Islam all over west and south Asia. In 681, Ali’s son Husain and many family members and followers were killed when they staged an uprising against the then king of the Islamic realm. Husain’s shrine is at Karbala, 100 km. southwest of Baghdad. Shiites put revering him as a martyr at the center of their spirituality, especially on 10 Muharram, which fell on March 14 this year. In 1998 a US air strike killed 17 civilians in Najaf, handing the Sunni-dominated Baath regime a propaganda tool against the US with the Shiites.

The leader of the Lebanese Hizbullah militia, Sheikh Hasan Nasrallah (who studied in Najaf), told a gathering of 150,000 Shiites honoring the Imam Husayn last Thursday that “Regarding the US war, events and all the US lying and hypocritical slogans about salvaging peoples, establishing democracy and human rights, we here declare our denunciation and rejection of this evil, arrogant and Zionist administration. We tell them, do not expect that the people of this region will receive you with flowers, rice and rose water. The region’s people will receive you with rifles, blood, weapons, martyrdom and martyrdom operations.”

The looming US war on Iraq may or may not go well militarily, but the US does have the advantage of overwhelming military superiority. The real question is whether it can successfully wage a war of public opinion during and after the military conflict. Iraq is a minefield of religious sensitivities because of the Shiite shrines. Unless the Bush administration is very careful, the 1920 great rebellion could be repeated, this time against an American Mandate. Worse, we could return to the bad old times of the 1980s when it was Shiite radicals who attacked Marines, blew up our embassy in Beirut, and took US hostages. We should be careful not to create allies for al-Qaeda from among its natural enemies.

It appears to be the case that Iraq simply has no nuclear weapons program.

Al-Baradei of the IAEC has swept the country with geiger counters and

cannot find evidence of such a thing. The program once employed 12,000

scientists, so it could not easily be hidden if it existed.

The evidence given last summer and fall by US officials, including

President Bush, included:

1) satellite photos showing expansion of buildings at a site once used for

the program

2) documents showing Iraqi purchases of uranium from Niger

3) Iraqi purchase of aluminum tubing that might be used in centrifuges for

the enrichment of uranium.

Al-Baradei visited the buildings and found that they were now devoted to

some other use and their expansion had nothing to do with nukes.

The Niger documents were closely examined and found to be forgeries.

The aluminum tubing has the wrong specifications for use in a centrifuge

and was purchased for making conventional missiles.

The case for an Iraqi WMD program in the nuclear area has thus now

completely collapsed. Since it was the nukes that were truly scary

(rightwing commentators kept saying Saddam might give a suitcase bomb to

al-Qaeda, never a likely scenario), not botulism or mustard gas, one

wonders if the Congress would have authorized the President to go to war if

it had known there were no nukes.

The Niger documents turn out to be clumsy forgeries, raising questions about whether Bush, Cheney and others who depended on them were attempting to deceive US public opinion and that of the world.

*An Israeli soldier deliberately ran a bulldozer over an American peace activist attempting to stop the illegal demolition of a Palestinian home. Rachel Corey, 23, died of skull and chest fractures when she was run over and then the driver backed up over her.

*The Muslim Brotherhood representatives in the Egyptian parliament have demanded that Egypt forbid the US to transport war ships to the Gulf via the Suez Canal. They also want the Mubarak regime to refuse to accept the $2 bn. in aid received from the US every year (most of it anyway goes to US firms who supply goods and weapons to Egypt). Next the chickenhawks will be saying we need to occupy the Suez Canal zone. Anthony Eden has been reincarnated as Richard Perle and is taking revenge on the US for his humiliation by maneuvering it into an even greater one.

*Ariel Sharon has again rejected the Bush “road map” for peace, insisting he will not accept an independent, viable Palestinian state. It was not reported if he was brandishing a toy bulldozer during this rant. Seriously, couldn’t he shut his enormous pie hole until the Iraq war is over? The US doesn’t need more Arabs angry at it right about now. Apparently we should pay him $14 bn. for the privilege of being backstabbed this way.

*Pakistani authorities have arrested Yasser al-Jaziri, a North African al-Qaeda leader, in the posh Gulburg district of Lahore. They met no resistance after acting on a tip. The report identified him as a Moroccan or Moroccan-Algerian dual national responsible for al-Qaeda business interests. He was apparently arrested based on information brought in by the apprehension earlier this month of Khalid Shaikh Muhammad, al-Qaeda’s no. 3. The Pakistani family with whom he was staying was not taken into custody. He was one of those whom Pakistani physician Ahmad Javed Khwaja had been accused of being in touch with. The arrest follows the apprehension of 5 al-Qaeda men in Peshawar on Mar. 11.

*Asharq al-Awsat says that Islamist circles in London fear that if Bin Laden is killed or captured, it will deal a death blow to al-Qaeda and its generation of jihadis or radical militants. They say Ayman al-Zawahiri, the number two man, lacks Bin Laden’s charisma and his long months on the run have left him with no control over the network; and Saad Bin Laden is only in his 20s and cannot actually take over his father’s organization. (Saad is thought to be in southwestern Afghanistan near the Pakistan border). On the other hand, they are confident that a new generation of jihadis is now growing up, and that Bin Laden has succeeded in convincing them that their primary target should be the United States.