Informed Comment

*From the BBC: “Text of report by Iraqi Shi’i group’s Iran-based radio station Voice of the Mujahidin on 21 June: “His Eminence Ayatollah Muhammad Baqir al-Hakim, leader of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq SCIRI , said in the Friday prayers sermon in Al-Najaf al-Ashraf city that the United States has proved that it is the great Satan. He added that the United States neither protects Iraq from disorder and chaos, nor allows the holding of elections so that the Iraqi people can express themselves.” Al-Hakim has been bitterly disappointed that Paul Bremer cancelled municipal elections in Najaf. The al-Da`wa web page has a an item posted Monday 6/23 on the continuing US crackdown on SCIRI, saying that its office in the town of Wasit has been closed and that Dr. Ahmad al-Hakim, the SCIRI leader there, has been arrested. Likewise, US Marines took over the SCIRI office in Kut. On Saturday, the SCIRI office in al-Jadiriya in Baghdad was closed and three arrests were made by the US Army. The source given is the Arabic service of the BBC. Apparently relations between the US and SCIRI are souring fast, and the US is moving against the organization because it more or less declined to disarm its Badr Corps fighters (Badr only offered to give up heavy weaponry). This story strikes me as a big one, but I haven’t seen it covered in the Western press.

*Sayyid Muhammad Bahr al-Ulum gave a talk in Baghdad calling for a pluralistic democracy, according to az-Zaman. He said that only through the ballot box could a democratic Iraq be achieved, in which all sectarian and ethnic groups, and women, would have a place. He urged reason, and warned against adopting approaches that were doomed to fail. (I read this as a warning against trying to throw the Americans out this minute or trying to impose a pure Shiite state on Iraq’s Sunnis). He said Iraqis should be patient, and should use this time to give thought to how to build a pluralistic, democratic state. A Shiite cleric from a very prominent family, Bahr al-Ulum was a spokesman for the Khoei Foundation in London and was associated with the Free Iraqi Council, an expatriate group planning for a post-Saddam Iraq. He probably does not have that much standing among Shiite clerics or the public in Iraq, where the religious Shiites tend to follow Muqtada al-Sadr, who is far more radical. But he may be able to reach out to the so far voiceless secular Shiite middle and working classes and find a power base. On the other hand, Muqtada is just back from Iran, where he apparently won pledges from Hashemi Rafsanjani and other of Iranian aid for his Sadr Movement.

*The International Committee of the Red Cross in Geneva warned that Iraqi hospitals lack natural gas, oxygen, and electricity, and that there are no signs of any improvement in the situation in the near future. It also complained that the armed religious militias that often provide security for these hospitals interfere with their administration. (The reference is probably to the Sadr Movement militias at hospitals in East Baghdad).

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*US civil administrator of Iraq Paul Bremer said Sunday that he may distribute profit dividends from the Iraqi petroleum industry directly to Iraqi citizens, along the model used by Alaska ( – Roula Khalaf, Financial Times). It is really good news that he is thinking along these lines, since one feared that the rightwing Bush administration would be unlikely to set up an Iraq where resources were shared. But note that Bremer brought up this possibility as a way of offsetting the pain and discontent likely to be caused by a program of determined privatization of Iraq’s extensive public sector. He also may be overestimating how much money Iraq has to play with in the short term, given the instability and the blowing up of a pipeline yesterday. Too extreme a privatization in Iraq might well produce the kind of robber baron capitalism we’ve seen in Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union. In any case, the Alaska model would be a potentially revolutionary one for the Middle East, and that bit of Bremer’s policy would much add to his stature and local popularity if implemented.

*Bremer also announced that a recruitment drive for soldiers for the new Iraqi army will begin within two weeks. He said that he will establish an appointed government council of 30 Iraqis in July, as well. While at the World Economic Forum in Jordan, Bremer was pressed to allow Arab League member nation troops to help reestablish order in Iraq, and to accelerate the timetable for Iraqi elections. He seems highly unlikely to do either. Meanwhile, US Secretary of State Colin Powell pledged at the same venue that the US would leave Iraq as soon as an Iraqi government was formed. The problem with this pledge is that it is vague. Will the US maintain military bases in Iraq after it “leaves”? Will the US embassy continue to pull strings behind the scenes? The British “left” Iraq in 1932, but continued to intervene forcefully in its affairs until the revolution in 1958. Indeed, continued imperial hegemony was one reason the revolution succeeded. The US must be careful not to set up a similar dynamic.

*Major General Raymond Odierno, commander of the 4th Infantry, announced that his troops had intercepted Iranian attempts to infiltrate Iraq, according to az-Zaman. He also spoke about US army efforts to stop Arab volunteers from coming into Iraq from Syria to fight the US and conduct sabotage operations.

*Iranian students demonstrated Sunday evening in front of the parliament building against the arrest of dozens of the leaders of the student protests that began June 10. Meanwhile, some hard line clerics have called for the execution of those arrested. (The hard liners see the students as US mercenaries).

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*Radical Shiite clerics in East Baghdad tried to get up a big demonstration against the American occupation on Saturday (they began organizing it after Friday prayers on Friday). But they were only able to get about 2000 demonstrators out in front of the US HQ in downtown Baghdad. They tried to organize a similar protest a couple of weeks ago, and only produced 10,000 demonstrators. But this particular demonstration was not called for by the more important Shiite leaders in Iraq–it seems to have been a local thing, out of one or two of the East Baghdad mosques. They were demanding that the Shiite clerics have the power of judicial review over any decisions or laws decided on by Iraq’s civil government. This is not the same as the sytem in Iran, exactly, though it parallels a clause in the 1907 Iranian constitution. If this is the best they can do in getting out a crowd, the American administration may decide they can safely ignore the clericalist Shiites in Iraq. A recent poll found that only about a quarter of Iraqis want a religious state.

*The head of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Mamoun al-Hudaybi, has reaffirmed his organization’s commitment to jihad or holy war, as the only way to attain basic goals. He seemed to be referring to the question of whether Hamas (the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood) should stop its attacks on Israelis. He referred to the evil attacks by Islam’s enemies (America in Iraq, Israel in the Occupied Territories?) The leaders of the more radical splinter group of the Muslim Brotherhood, the al-Gamaa al-Islamiyya, has renounced violence from prison. Al-Hudaybi may be attempting to position his organization as at the forefront of direct action against non-Muslim powers.

*Dozens of students involved in the recent democracy demonstrations in Iran have been arrested, according to Reuters and the LA Times. The regime appears to be going after those they consider ringleaders. Since the student movement is relatively isolated, there is no countervailing force in Iran to protect them in any practical manner. It is difficult to see how the Bush administration rhetoric in support of the students does those in jail much good.

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*Richard Perle, member of the Pentagon Advisory Board and unnoficial adviser to the Bush administration, has admitted that the regime of Saddam Hussein posed no direct threat to the US, according to al-Hayat. I was not able to verify the report at Lexis Nexis. Al-Hayat says that Perle, who is speaking in Europe these days, also admitted that weapons of mass destruction was not the issue that mainly drove the US war on Iraq. He said he thought US troops would be in the country for an unlimited period of time. Some in the Bush administration are arguing that the Iraq war will make North Korea and Iran more cautious. But I can’t personally see that it has had any such impact on other countries on the neocon hit list.

*Lebanese Shiite Grand Ayatollah Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah deplored the pressure he said was being applied to the Palestinians at the international level. He also expressed his astonishment that the US should be pressing Iran so hard over what were in actuality peaceful nuclear reactors, while, he said, ignoring the massive Israeli nuclear weapons program. – asharq al-awsat

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*The attacks on US troops in Iraq continue. On Thursday there were three such incidents. In Samawah, a largely Shiite town with some Sunni presence, a rocket propelled grenade hit a military ambulance and killed a US soldier. In the Shiite holy city of Samarra north of Baghdad, a mortar was fired at a US-run humanitarian aid center, killing one Iraqi and wounding 12 others. An rpg was also fired at an American tank, but the crew was unharmed (that’s my definition of a good tank). My guess is that Baath remnants were behind these attacks. It is suspicious to me that they mounted them in Shiite towns, and I suspect they are trying to find ways to stir the Shiites up against the US. So far the US military has been very canny about not playing into the Baathists’ hands on that score, and I hope they keep it up.

*Hundreds of Iraqis gathered in front of the Public Security (Secret Police) building in downtown Baghdad to protest its reopening. They want the ministry to be abolished. Saddam at some points employed more domestic spies through such ministries than the country had factory workers. It was responsible for tailing potential dissidents and having them picked up and tortured. The US would do well to listen to their concerns, if it is serious about democratization in the Arab world. The secret police are ubiquitous there, and they do not coexist with democracy.

*The student demonstrations continued for an eighth night in Tehran, though only 200 or so appear to have come out, along with the usual compliment of automobile drivers from North Tehran, driving around and honking in support. Yesterday there were incidents in Mashhad and other provincial cities. The movement may pick back up, but for now it seems to be fading a bit, at least in Tehran. The big demonstrations may be on the 4-year anniversary of the last really huge student demonstrations (though the ones last November against the death sentence against Aghajari are said to have brought 5000 into the streets). A lot of informed observers believe that, whatever its importance for intellectual and student life, this movement is a little unlikely to shake the foundations of the regime in Iran.

*When asked recently about the possibility of Pakistan’s recognizing Israel, President General Pervez Musharraf did not rule it out. There are rumors that the US is attempting to tie forgiveness of $1.8 bn in loans to such a step (as though Pakistan’s capture of 500 of the most dangerous al-Qaeda operatives were not already worth that). In response, the United Action Council (MMA), a coalition of religious parties, has threatened to hold rallies and demonstrations throughout Pakistan and to attempt to unseat the government if it recognizes Israel. The MMA sees such a step as a betrayal of the Palestinian cause and an acceptance of Israeli annexation of much of the West Bank and Gaza. The Jamaat-i Islami leader Qazi Husain Ahmad also said he would oppose any effort to freeze the Pakistani nuclear program. Pakistan’s parliament, elected last October after years of martial law, continues to be paralyzed by disputes over Musharraf’s martial law amendments to the constitution and his insistence on remaining military chief of staff even while sitting as a civilian president. The paralysis has been worsened by Center-Province feuding over the Northwest Frontier Province Assembly’s passage of a bill implementing a strict version of Islamic law as the provincial law. The Federal government sees this move as unconstitutional and as a dangerous talibanization of a key Pakistani province, but has undertaken not to simply dissolve the NWFP assembly.

*The US Justice Department seems to have finally apprehended a bona fide American al-Qaeda member, after hundreds of false arrests that sometimes ruined lives. Iyman Faris, an Indian-born naturalized US citizen originally from Kashmir, planned to sabotage the Brooklyn Bridge among other things. He had spent time with Usama Bin Laden in the Afghanistan camps. It is not irrelevant that Faris is from Kashmir, where Indian troops have killed thousands in an attempt to repress popular yearnings for sovereignty as a Muslim state. Faris and his associates (of unknown number) are dangerous, but what is striking is how few of such persons there are among the three million American Muslims. So far I think the FBI has found about 10 such radicals for sure, and I suspect that the active ones don’t come to more than 100 or so. There are almost certainly not 5000 al-Qaeda supporters in the US, as the FBI once maintained. There are problems in the American Muslim community, but the Steve Emerson/Daniel Pipes line about terrorists among us is way overblown. And the successful arrests of the few such terrorists that are among us came about because of good police work focusing on leads and networks, not from massive fishing expeditions or racial profiling (how many *Indians* was the FBI even looking at?)

*US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld suggested Thursday that Baghdad was no more unsafe than Washington DC, which had 262 murders last year. Many have already pointed out that the US soldiers in Iraq are more like the police than civilians, and 42 policemen have not been killed in DC in the past 2 months. But Rumsfeld’s statement is suggestive in many other ways. Does he expect the US to lose over 200 troops a year in Iraq for the next few years, and is he preparing the US public to accept that loss rate? Another way to come at the statement is through the politics of race and colonialism. Washington, DC, is a largely African-American southern city, with a small bastion of white power in DC Northwest. Anacostia and other areas are desperately poor and lack real security for the residents. Astonishingly, the Federal government has never undertaken any significant economic development efforts in its own capital, allowing the city’s slums to fester. Many of the whites are politicos from elsewhere in the country, and they often feel under siege from the poverty-induced crime that spreads into Northwest from elsewhere. Is Rumsfeld making an analogy from the white power elite in its marble bunkers in Washington DC to the US occupation authority in Baghdad? Is he saying, “We elite persons manage to live in DC with all this crime and poverty, and it is not so different for us to insert ourselves into power in a poverty-stricken and violent Iraq” ? Race analogies would make sense of the often very patronizing language used by the Americans of Iraqis. And, I am afraid that if the powerful in Washington are thinking of treating Iraq the way they treat Washington, DC, then this is about the worst news the Iraqis have had since the Persians marched on Babylonia.

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*According to Islam Online, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani has issued a religious ruling or fatwa calling upon Iraqis to wage “civil” (i.e. nonviolent) “jihad” on the US occupation, by simply continually asking rather pointedly when the Americans are planning to leave. Sistani’s secretary and spokesman compared this period of psychological preparation for resistance to the year the Hizbullah in Lebanon took to prepare the Lebanese for resistance against Israeli occupation beginning in 1984. That analogy is not a good sign, especially coming from someone in the circle of Sistani, who has been a relative quietist. I’d say that if the US is still in Iraq in force next year this time, they may start to see trouble from the Shiites, not just the Sunnis as at present.

*Local US military officials had prepared to hold municipal elections in Najaf, but the polls were canceled by Paul Bremer, according to the NYT as reprinted in the International Herald Tribune. When disgruntled Iraqi politicians said in their newspapers that they supported the attacks on the Americans, they were arrested and jailed for four days for “incitement.” They complained that no such thing would happen in American to Americans (I am not so sure, actually. Incitement to violence is a crime here, and the only question is whether it presents a clear and present danger; one could argue that it might, in contemporary Iraq). Bremer’s team says that early elections in Bosnia allowed nationalists to get in, who proved obstructionist for years. Local US officials say they think Najaf was ready for elections and that the theocrats would have done poorly. A lot of Iraqis want early elections. In an 11 June interview with al-Manar Television, Ayatollah Muhammad Baqir al-Hakim of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq said, “We believe that general elections can be held in Iraq. The Iraqi people are prepared for them and nothing prevents holding elections. Elections were held in some parts of Iraq without any problems. The Security Council resolution stresses the need to expedite the formation of an elected government.”

*Shiite songs mourning the martyrdom of their holy figures, the equivalent of US Gospel music about Christ dying on the cross, have experienced a sudden revival in Iraq. CDs by Hussein al-Karbala’i are flying out of the stalls selling cd’s and audio cassettes. according to Lamia Radi in Baghdad.

*The interesting Weblog Letters from London by an Iranian physician named Mojtaba links today to Iranian sites written by Iranian young women.

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*The Shiite Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq does not support violence against occupying US troops, says Abdul Aziz al-Hakim in al-Hayat. The leader of the Badr Corps denounced the remnants of the followers of Saddam who have been striking at US troops as saboteurs. But he insisted that no Iraqi can accept a Western occupation, and said it would be resisted, though peacefully. He added that he thought the Americans themselves were intending to leave Iraq soon, since they know that in international law resistance to occupation is permissible. Regarding Lebanese Hizbullah leader Hasan Nasrallah’s call for jihad against the Americans, al-Hakim said that he was welcome to his views, but that Iraqis did not necessarily agree with them. Al-Hakim said he had been consulting with Lebanese and Bahraini Shiites.

*Paul Bremer, the US civilian administrator of Iraq, has established a criminal court in Baghdad. It will use the statutes of 1969 and 1971, which broadly accord with international norms. Many Iraqi political forces have been calling for Islamic law as the law of the land, and they will resist using these secular statutes (enacted early in the Baath era). – az-Zaman

*Shaikh Ahmad Kubaisi, the Sunni fundamentalist leader of the Iraqi National Movement, has also denounced the attacks on the US soldiers. Ominously, however, his critique was that they are premature. He said the US administration had pledged to leave within 2 years. If the Americans are still there after that time, he said, a resistance could legitimately be mounted against them. The current individual attacks, he said, do not constitute a resistance. He said the Sunnis in Iraq had been marginalized because the US saw them as hostile, and admitted that the Shiites had won out for the moment. He said it was natural for them to be happy about their victory. Even the call to prayer on US-run Iraqi television is chanted according to the Shiite formula, not the Sunni. – AFP

*The French government staged a massive raid on the Peoples’ Mujahidin terrorist organization in France. They said it was about the commission of terrorist acts on French soil. This group has been trying to overthrow the Khomeinists in Iran, in hopes of instituting a form of Islamic Marxism instead. It had been given bases by Saddam Hussein to harass the Iranian state. The group has recently been defended by Daniel Pipes and Patrick Clawson of the Washington Institute for Near Eastern Policy, which is the think tank supported by the America Israel Political Affairs Committee. Why are hardline Zionists in cahoots with a leftist/Islamist terrorist group that was among those who took US embassy personnel hostage in 1979-80? Apparently they hope the People’s Mujahidin can be useful in destabilizing Iran, and are not choosy with whom they get into bed (politically at least).

*Hundreds of demonstrators came out on the 8th night of student protests in Tehran, though the crowd was smaller than in the past. The protests also, however, spread to Isfahan, Mashhad, Kerman, Hamadan, and Tabriz for the first time. The students and their supporters want more individual liberty. The protesters in the provinces also objected to the attacks on the Tehran students last Friday and Saturday by the thugs of the Ansar Hezbollah.

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