Informed Comment

*The US Army has launched Operation Sidewinder, storming 20 towns in the Sunni Arab center of Iraq and making dozens of arrests, in a quest to stop sabotage and attacks on US troops. The problem with this sort of operation is that it assumes that resistance to occupation is a zero sum game. There is a pie; it is a particular size; there is only one pie. So if you cut the pie in two and eat half of it, there will be half as much pie. But resistance is not a zero sum game, as Gaza and the West Bank show. Given Sharon’s brutal tactics (which have included deliberately firing rockets into civilian apartment buildings), the pie of resistance should be completely gone by now. But some attempts to stamp out resistance can increase it, by enlarging the recruitment pool of resisters. The Sunni Arabs north, east and west of Baghdad from all accounts hate the US and hate US troops being there. This hatred is the key recruiting tool for the resistance, and it is not lessened by US troops storming towns. I wish Operation Sidewinder well; maybe it will work, militarily. Politically, I don’t think it addresses the real problems, of winning hearts and minds.

*The Najaf religious authority, headed by Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, has condemned body searches of Iraqi women carried out by male Coalition troops. The fatwa says that this frisking of women does “not respect the Sharia (Islamic religious law) nor Iraqi traditions and social values.” Such sentiments in part lay behind the conflict in Majar al-Kabir last week between outraged townspeople and British troops, leading to the deaths of six British soldier and at least three of the town’s young men.

*The Sadr Movement continues to be a real contender for political and religious authority among pious Shiites in Iraq, and is getting monetary contributions in large numbers, according to Anthony Shadid of the Washington Post. He discusses in some detail its organization in populous East Baghdad. Shadid is among the best of the Western reporters now in Iraq, in part because he is an Arabist. This simple fact brings into stark question the American journalistic conviction that good reporters should be ignorant of local culture lest they become biased. Of course, this principle applies only to the global South. No major American newspaper would employ a reporter in Paris who did not know French.

*Sometimes you see a news report and it just looks odd, tipping you that something important is going on. Asharq al-Awsat has an item today that Paul Bremer, US Proconsul of Iraq, has dissolved the Pharmacists’ Union and the Veterinarians’ Union, writing letters to their presidents telling them they have no further authority because their organizations are no longer needed. The deputy head of the Arab Pharmacists’ Union, Tahir al-Shakhshir, rejected the decree and said the American civil administration of Iraq had no authority to issue it because the union is an Arab League institution. The deputy head of the Arab Veterinarians’ Union, As’ad Abu Raghib, expressed similar sentiments and said that the union might pick up and move to Amman, Jordan, to continue its work among Iraqi veterinarians. What is going on here? Is the notoriously anti-union philosophy of the US Republican party being imposed on Iraq? Or is this an assault on pan-Arabist, Arab League institutions, aimed at removing any possible source of opposition to the Americanization of Iraq? Or is this move part of de-Baathification? (If the latter, why not just remove the high officers of the unions? Or just make union membership voluntary?)

Note that the organizations may be correct that the US administration has no right to issue such decrees. The Fourth Geneva Convention governing the actions of occupation authorities in militarily occupied territories generally discourages any actions that alter the character or legal status of the occupied territories. International lawyers should be asked to comment on the import of these dissolutions for an article like Section III, Art. 53: “Any destruction by the Occupying Power of real or personal property belonging individually or collectively to private persons, or to the State, or to other public authorities, or to social or cooperative organizations, is prohibited, except where such destruction is rendered absolutely necessary by military operations.” Would dissolving a union fall under this rubric? Tony Blair’s counsel is said to have expressed worries to him back last March that a bilateral Anglo-American administration of Iraq with no UN sanction would necessarily entail violations of the Fourth Geneva convention. I don’t personally have any answers here. I’m raising the questions. The news item struck me as odd.

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*The civil administration of Iraq under Paul Bremer plans to create a ministry of religious affairs that would promote dialogue among Iraq’s religious leaders, according to az-Zaman. It would also attempt to ensure that any legislation passed does not withdraw from them their religious rights.

*Large fires burned at three Baghdad sites on Saturday, at a money-printing factory, at a schoolbook repository, and at a warehouse of the electricity service. A conflagration also continued at a sulphur plant near Mosul. Sabotage is suspected. Duh. Baathist remnants (a.k.a. Iraqi nationalists) appear to have planned for guerrilla war and sabotage as a way to getting the US back out of Iraq, and continue to network successfully to carry it out. The kidnapping and brutal execution of Sgt. 1st Class Gladimir Philippe, 37, of Roselle, N.J., and Pfc. Kevin Ott, 27, of Columbus, Ohio, who were taken from their checkpoint at Balad by persons unknown, brings the death toll of US soldiers to over 200 since the war began. Post-April 9 casualties continue to mount for the Anglo-American troops, with many killed in the past week. I don’t think this kind of sabotage and occasional killing of troops can force the coalition out of Iraq, though. What will eventually do that, if it happens at all, will be massive crowd actions. Militaries can put down large numbers of civilian protesters, as Syria did at Hamas in 1982 and as China did at Tiananmen in 1989, but only if the government directing the troops is a dictatorship that does not care about bad PR. If the British and Americans overstay their welcome, the Iraqi populace will be able to force them out, giving them a choice between that and being portrayed back home as soulless monsters. The Jallianwalla Bagh sort of incident was the downfall of many an empire in a modern communications context.

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*Jews who buy land in Iraq should be killed, according to a fatwa or legal ruling issued by Sayyid Kadhim al-Haeri ( -Reuters). Al-Haeri is still in Qom, Iran, but he is said to be contemplating a return home to Najaf, in Iraq. He has been adopted as the elder statesman of the al-Sadr Movement, since that movement’s leader, Muqtada al-Sadr, is not yet a jurisprudent in his own right. Al-Haeri also forbade Muslims to sell land to Jews, saying he had gotten numerous inquiries from followers about how licit it would be, after they were contacted by Jewish businessmen. A lot of countries do have certain restrictions on ownership of national assets by foreigners, and Iraq is vulnerable in this regard right now because there is no Iraqi government that would implement the will of the people. Still, al-Haeri’s sentiments are obviously extremely ugly. To any extent that he is given a platform in the Sadr Movement, it is guaranteed to go in a radical rightwing direction that will contribut to a failure of democracy.

*In his Friday Prayer sermon in Najaf, Muhammad Baqir al- Hakim, head of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, condemned attacks on Coaltion forces in Iraq. He said that violence should be a last resort, and that for now Shiites should employ peaceful means to protest the American occupation. This was a a less hotheaded sermon than lastweek’s, in which he called the Americans the great Satan. It still should not give any of us much comfort, since he still seems to be thinking in terms of a popular movement that would kick the Americans out of Iraq.

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*Someone sent me a link to a fascinating piece on battle fatigue among US soldiers by journalist Bob Graham that appeared back last June 19 in the Evening Standard. I thought I’d share it here. It is very chilling, does not bode well for US peace keeping efforts in Iraq.

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*Muqtada al-Sadr, 30, the leader of the popular Sadr Movement in Iraqi Shiism, gave an interview today to al-Hayat’s Hazim al-Amin in Najaf. He said that in the religious establishment of Najaf, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, Sayyid Muhammad Sa`id al-Hakim, Shaykh Bashir al-Najafi, and Shaykh Muhammad al-Fayyad all supported one another and recognized that each was a legitimate object of emulation (marja` al-taqlid) for lay Shiites. He said they were all determined to stay out of secular politics, and that since all were ultimately of Iranian extraction, they had little reason to be concerned with broader Iraqi society. Muqtada insists that the leadership of the Iraqi Shiites should be invested in native Iraqis, not in Iranians living in Najaf.

In contrast to Najaf quietism, it was supporters of Muqtada who organized the protest in Baghdad last Tuesday that demanded clerical oversight over any new Iraqi government. Muqtada said he believed in the general guardianship of the cleric, but said that the supreme jurisprudent would be different in Iraq than in Iran. (That is, he is saying that he accepts Khomeini’s theory of the guardianship of the jurisprudent or theocracy, but does not accept the authority in Iraq of Iranian supreme jurisprudent Ali Khamenei). Muqtada also rejected the idea of cooperating with the Americans in establishing a new government, saying he and the Sadr Movement would have nothing to do with such a process until the Americans left the country. On the other hand, he denounced attacks on American troops as the work of Baathists and as a form of sabotage of the country, and said no permission had been given to engage in them by the [Shiite] religious authority.

Al-Sadr’s spokesman, Adnan al-Shahmani, was even more open and vehement about the need for an Iraqi object of emulation. He said there has been rapid turnover in the Najaf leadership in the recent period, and most objects of emulation have been Iranians. Iraqis, he said, need a leadership attuned to their specific circumstances. He also admitted that the Sadr Movement in Baghdad and elsewhere had been involved in forcibly shutting down video stores, liquor stores and other establishments (which offended the puritan moralism of the movement). But he said that such actions had been spontaneous and local, and were not being directed from the Sadr office in Najaf.

The Sadr Movement is by far the most widespread and popular among religious Iraqi Shiites. The reporter, al-Amin, contends that Sistani and Ayatollah Muhammad Baqir al-Hakim, the spiritual leader of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), have moved closer to one another. Both are Iranians, and both wish to oppose the Sadr Tendency in Iraq. Al-Amin’s analysis seems to me to take ethnicity too seriously and at too much of a face value. Lots of Iraqi Shiites have deep respect for Sistani and al-Hakim. Sistani and al-Hakim don’t appear to me to agree on much, given that Sistani is a political quietist and al-Hakim is a political activist. It may be that they have talked about how to rein in the Sadr Movement, which limits the power of both.

*The NYT is alleging that the militia in Majar al-Kabir is made up of Badr Corps (the paramilitary of SCIRI). I am not entirely convinced that this is the case. The main pieces of evidence instanced were that they were trained by Revolutionary Guards and that they said they acted under orders from the religious establishment in Najaf. But Iraqi Hizbullah of the Marsh Arabs were also often trained in Iran, and all Iraqi Shiites would at least claim to be under the authority of Najaf. If the Badr Corps really do have this kind of position in Majar, then they are very likely to have been involved in the rpg attacks on British paratroopers on this past Tuesday.

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