Informed Comment

*Guerrillas killed at least one US soldier at Diraa Dijla, west of Baghdad, and wounded others, on Weds. according to Reuters/via al-Hayat. Other guerrillas launched a rocket propelled grenade attack on US troops near Samarra, wounding two. The Washington Post reports that such attacks are frequent throughout Iraq, but most fail because the troops are out of range or because the ammunition is a dud. One soldier talked about a grenade bouncing off his helmet that turned out to be a dud. Now, that’s what I call a lucky man. The attacks that wreak no damage tend never to be reported in the press.

I think our troops are under a lot more stress and plain anxiety than anyone in the US can imagine. I lived in Beirut during the first years of the civil war, and that was when I learned the meaning of the Arabic phrase, “white fear.” It’s when the mortar shell or sniper fire could come from anywhere, any time, with total unpredictability. I remember volunteering at the AUB hospital and a physician told me about operating that day on a little boy with a bullet wound in his stomach. His parents had sent him out to buy bread, assuming that a sniper would not shoot a child. He died on the operating table. The US should swallow some pride, get a UN resolution authorizing the rebuilding of Iraq, and transfer a lot of our guys out of there, replacing them with troops more acceptable to the locals or with Iraqi troops. In his testimony yesterday, Wolfowitz all but admitted that we are looking at troop levels of about what we have (nearly 150,000) in Iraq for the next year. Wolfowitz also argued against “the wrong kind” of UN resolution, presumably one that would lessen the US role in reshaping Iraq. It was easier to listen to anti-UN rants before it turned out that the Security Council’s skepticism on WMD was entirely justified . . .

*The rotating chairmanship of the Interim Governing Council among nine members is a sad commentary but entirely predictable. You couldn’t have Kurdish leader Talabani serve as president without also having his rival Barzani do it. (Barzani is an example of how anything can be forgiven; he collaborated with Saddam as recently as 1995-1996 to take Irbil for his Kurdistan Democratic Party with the help of Baath tanks from Talabani’s Patriotic Union of Kurdistan.) So that’s two. Then, you couldn’t have the Shiite revolutionary al-Da`wa Party (Ibrahim Jaafari) do it without also having the rival Shiite Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (Abdul Aziz al-Hakim) do it. That’s four. Then you have to balance secular Shiite Ahmad Chalabi with former Shiite former Baathist officer Iyad Allawi. And, of course, the two Shiites have to be balanced by Sunnis Adnan Pachachi (secular) and Muhsin Abdul Hamid (religious) of the Iraqi Islamic Party. And I guess Muhammad Bahr al-`Ulum gets on because he is respected by the others. So with all the balancing of rivals, you end up with nine presidents. Each serves for a month in turn, guaranteeing that little is likely to be accomplished.

They are going in alphabetical order, like divas in a Hollywood blockbuster. (The order is by the Arabic alphabet and by first names. Ibrahim Jaafari in Arabic begins with an alif for Ibrahim, the first letter of the alphabet (alif supports the glottal stop, hamza, which can serve as a chair for any of the three vowels, the equivalents of a, i or u). By my reckoning, next month it should be Ahmad Chalabi, and then Iyad Allawi, then maybe Jalal Talabani. They don’t say whether they are going by straight alphabetical order or by the abjad system, which is the letters ordered according to their numerical value, as in the Kabbalah’s gematria. Either way, the jim of Jalal follows closely on the alif. Of course, it may taken them a while to decide whether to use the ordinary or abjad order, so Jaafari may get a proper term while they work it out. They kept saying they would appoint a cabinet of ministers to run the government ministries within two weeks, but now it looks like it is slipping to more like six weeks. Since the US can hardly extricate itself until these politicians manage to write a constitution, I am depressed about the pace of accomplishment so far. If they can’t decide on a chairman that would serve for, say, 6 months, how are they going to make timely decisions about a constitutional convention? And will it be able to frame a constitution in six months, so that elections can happen in 2004 or early 2005?

*Adnan Pachachi, leader of the Independent Democratic Bloc and member of the Interim Governing Council, denied rumors that he had met with Israeli Labor leader Shimon Peres. He said they were lies and calumnies. He reaffirmed that Iraq would not recognize Israel until there was a Palestinian state.

*Hundreds of Iraqi unemployed continued their sit-in at a building opposite Coalition HQ in downtown Baghdad, according to Al-Sharq al-Awsat. They are said to be organized by the Unemployed Workers’ Union. They want jobs or $100 a month in unemployment benefits . . . Al-Jazeera says that hundreds of them protested their economic hardship on Wednesday. Also on Wednesday, 1,000 demonstrators came out in Karbala to protest “increasing drug abuse and distribution of pornographic movies in the governorate.” (Drug use and drug smuggling do seem to be an increasing problem).

*The US has cancelled plans to appoint a female court judge in Najaf because of protests by clerics and by lawyers, including women, according to the NYT. Rachel Roe, who is in charge of rebuilding the Najaf court system, said “I don’t think that government institutions should be controlled by religious organizations. I was under the impression that Iraq was going to have a secular government. I might have been wrong.” Uh, the likelihood that Najaf was going to be secular was rather low. The country, now that’s a different matter. Even at a national level, you’re likely to see a strong influence of fundamentalist interpretations of Islamic law. Interestingly, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani appears to have issued a fatwa that did *not* exclude the possibility of a female court judge (this appointment would have been to the secular system, anyway). See http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/31/international/worldspecial/31JUDG.html?ex=1060228800&en=261960b254fb6160&ei=5062&partner=GOOGLE

*Good news about the partial revival of the southern Iraqi marshlands by good rains and local people’s efforts in destroying dams is reported by Richard Hottelet for CSM. Saddam’s destruction of those marshes and of the Marsh Arabs or Madan tribes as a people is among his more horrific acts, classed by some international lawyers as a form of genocide. It is unlikely that they can be revived to more than 45% of their original extent, and it is unclear that the scattered Madan will return in any large numbers. Hottelet reports of one fisherman that when he saw the water running again, he said it was like looking on the face of God. See http://www.modbee.com/24hour/opinions/story/956597p-6696672c.html

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*Here’s my post from Gulf2000 today:

What happened in Karbala this past weekend still seems a little murky. I

am amazed that some enterprising reporter hasn’t gotten the story out (I

haven’t seen a really good account in the Arabic press or the Western).

Although it is murky, it is potentially much more significant than the

deaths of Saddam’s sons.

There was a demonstration on Saturday against Marine patrols coming too

close to the shrine of Imam Husayn, among the holiest sites of Shiite

Islam. The demonstration turned ugly. The Marines fired tear gas, and

one cannister hit the shrine itself. Iraqi demonstrators maintained that

the Marines killed one demonstrator. On Sunday the crowd assembled again,

for another demonstration. It also turned ugly. About nine Shiites were

wounded by US gunfire in front of the Imam Husayn Shrine. Another man may

or may not have been killed, depending on which wire service you follow.

The demonstrations were probably provoked by followers of Muqtada al-Sadr.

The Marines maintain that the man who was killed was armed and had fired

on them. I think it likely that someone did fire on them, to provoke them

into injuring protesters. They fell for it.

Syed Saleem Shahzad, writing for the Asia Times, sees the

events in Karbala as part of a pattern of anti-US forces learning ways of

provoking them and encourages popular discontent. He thinks its emergence

in the South is an ominous sign, given the emergence of well coordinated

guerrilla networks in the north. He maintains that the Pakistani jihadi

organization Ansar al-Islam has infiltrated Kurdish regions and is

preparing attacks.

(See

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/EG30Ak02.html.

He adds of the Shiites:

“According to US authorities the emerging personality of firebrand Moqtada

Sadr, a Shi’ite imam, is widely seen as a new threat in southern Iraq. The

new administration is skeptical about his real designs as he does not seem

to be interested in politics but to be motivated by extreme religious

obsessions. His followers consider him a mehdi (a promised messiah before

the arrival of Christ, according to Islamic faith) and he seems to

encourage these trends. There are suspicions that he is stirring up

anti-US sentiment with his vehement speeches to further his religious

ends.”

This is the first report I have seen of Muqtada being considered the

Mahdi, and it is possible, though I suspect it is a minority view. If

true, it confirms the sectarian character of his movement.

Ned Parker of AFP reports today that some of the problems derive from

misbehaving US troops, who are beating up suspects and over-reacting.

Some are frustrated, others just bullies. But it seems to me

that in Karbala the Marines were just tricked, with someone deliberately

firing on them from the crowd or just beyond them, to produce this result.

http://www.haveeru.com.mv/english/news_show.phtml?id=1916

Shahzad says, “”A US official says: “The Islamic groups in Karbala and

other southern cities have been advised to keep their demonsrations

peaceful and restricted. If these demonstrations continue to be violent

and to be held every day, US forces would consider them as a threat for

them and would be justified in taking action.”

If the US military does not know better than to fire on civilian

protesters in front of the Shrine of Imam Husayn, it is a very, very bad

sign for the future. Those nine wounded and one (or two) killed at that

particular site have enormous anti-US propaganda value for the Sadrists,

Hizbullah in Lebanon, and the hardliners in Iran. So far, urban Shiites

have not proved willing to come out in a big way for the repeated Sadrist

demonstrations, which have been 10,000 strong at most and more often have

peaked at 2,500, in Baghdad, Najaf and Basra. But Shiites killed at the

shrine of Husayn, that has the potential to get people out. It would be

as though foreign occupying troops in New York shot down protesters in

front the the Statue of Liberty.

I do not think the reaction will come in the short term. But people are

going to start keeping accounts of grudges against the US if this sort of

thing continues.

*Helena Cobban remonstrates gently with me at her Weblog over my comment, “Look, I want the US to succeed in Iraq, just as I think all responsible Americans do.” She asks what I mean by “success” and whether I think it is unpatriotic to hope for failure. Her comments are at: http://justworldnews.org/

The bottom line is that I was very conflicted over the war in the first place. I don’t like wars, on principle, and think they should be a last resort. The only wars I’ve wholeheartedly supported were the US interventions against Milosevic in the Balkans (to stop a genocide against Muslims and Croats), and the Afghanistan campaign, to get rid of those horrific al-Qaeda training camps. Helena accuses me of a bit of American triumphalism. I fear I am far too cynical and critical for that. But I freely admit that September 11 had a big impact on me, and I am a hawk in the war on terror. If I had been a younger man, I would probably have joined the military on September 12. I know all about blowback and the Reagan administration policies that helped set that stage, but the practical task of keeping more buildings from being blown up is in my view a noble and heroic one and I a make no apologies for that much patriotism.

I don’t think this Iraq war was a last resort, and I became increasingly uncomfortable with the way the war fever was whipped up with very dubious claims by powerful Iraqi expatriates and the right in Washington. However, and this is the big “H,” I have lived with Baathist Iraq since I got into the Middle East field, and being a specialist in Shiism and a friend to Iraqi Shiites meant that I knew exactly what the Saddam regime had done to them. So, I refused to come out against the war. I was against the way the war was pursued–the innuendo, the exaggerations, the arrogant unilateralism. But I could not bring myself to be against the removal of that genocidal regime from power.

Now that the war has taken place and Iraq is under Anglo-American occupation (that is the legal situation according to the UN and even according to US officials), it is important that Iraqis aren’t double-crossed yet again by the US. Americans, having caused the old order to collapse, have a responsibility to nurture a new one before they decamp. The new order should be a parliamentary democracy with an independent judiciary and press. (Actually, both of the latter are already showing signs of vigor). It would be unfortunate if Iraq were just delivered to nouveau riche robber barons, as happened in post-Soviet Russia. I am therefore heartened to hear that Bremer is taking seriously the idea of an Alaska-style dividend for ordinary Iraqis from the country’s petroleum.

It would be highly irresponsible for the US military simply to suddenly withdraw from the country at this juncture. I have called (on national television, some months ago!) for the US to get a UN mandate for its reconstruction efforts and to conduct them multilaterally. I don’t think this way of proceeding would in any way represent a US failure in Iraq, quite the opposite. But internationalizing the effort is different from leaving the Iraqis high and dry and at the mercy of budding militias. Helena and I were both in Beirut, and I can’t imagine she wants that fate for the Iraqis. That is the sort of outcome that I called “irresponsible.” I didn’t bring up anything about patriotism one way or another.

As for the “white man’s burden,” the fact is that tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, have died trying to overthrow the Baath, and the war was spearheaded by the Iraqi expatriate community (4 million strong). My Iraqi neighbors in Dearborn staged a celebratory march of 100,000 persons when Saddam fell. There is a real sense in which Iraqis convinced the US to wage this war and rebuild their country, at significant expense to the US. So I don’t think 19th century binary oppositions of a racial sort are really very helpful to analyzing the situation, and they hold a real potential of depriving Iraqis of their own agency. And, if you listen to Iraqis like Muhammad Bahr al-`Ulum, they don’t think that the UN or the 96% were terribly helpful in stopping Saddam’s genocide.

The evidence I have been able to gather suggests to me that the Iraqi health system is back to functioning at a basic level, and that the hospitals have been resupplied with medicines and equipment on the whole. No one I know is suggesting that there is a medical health emergency in Iraq. The sanctions regime had been manipulated by the Baath so as to cause enormous harm to the health of Iraqi children, and this harm is now ceasing. Iraq is now pumping over a million barrels of oil a day, and there is reason to hope that it will be back up to pre-war levels in the near future, providing income that can be used to ensure public health, schooling, and so forth.

Helena asks three questions:

*1. He seems to be arguing that a state of affairs in which Iraqis can replicate India’s success” would, for him, constitute a US “success” in Iraq. Does he have any reason to believe that that goal is the one that this US administration is actually pursuing there? In particular, does he have any reason to believe that the political empowerment of the Iraqis themselves is what the Bushites are aiming at?

I see camps in the Bush administration. Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz seemed to want to just turn Iraq over to corrupt financier Ahmad Chalabi, making him the Karzai of Iraq, without very much evident concern for whether Chalabi would ever conduct free and fair elections. The State Department and the CIA, in contrast, don’t like Chalabi at all, and have tried to sideline him. Bremer, who is closer to State, diluted Chalabi’s power. The Governing Council Bremer appointed would not even let Chalabi address the UN, giving that privilege to Pachachi and Bahr al-`Ulum instead. Bremer at first was going to try to be proconsul of Iraq for two years, but the outbreak of guerrilla war in the Baathist/ Islamist triangle forced him to give up some power in favor of an Iraqi transitional governing council.

The upshot is that the Bushies are divided as to what they want in Iraq, and that they probably can’t have what they want, anyway. The best exit strategy for Bush is now just to hold elections in 2004 before the US elections, and turn power over to an elected Iraqi government. So, yes, I think it now looks as though Bremer, Powell and Bush all favor Iraq having a parliamentary democracy in the short term. I have no illusions as to why they have ultimately tilted in this direction, but I think they have. And if they don’t, every evidence is that the main Iraqi political forces will demand it in ways that the Americans will find difficult to resist.

* 2. How does he assess the considerable weight of counter-evidence that there is out there, regarding this administration’s policies in Iraq, elsewhere in the Middle East (where “empowerment” of local pro-democracy forces seems nowhere to be on the effective agenda), or at home here in the US (ditto)?

Things are changing, and Iraq policy represents a break with the past efforts to shore up regimes like that of Mubarak in Egypt or the royal family in Saudia. The Washington elite has decided that those regimes are breeding Islamist terrorism that targets the US, and that they have to be reformed in the direction of parliamentary democracy. Thus, it seems to me clear that Musharraf held the Pakistani elections of October, 2002, in large part under pressure from the US, and the recent election in Bahrain was also supported by the US.

Of course, parliamentary governance can be more or less democratic. Domestically, the Bushies favor a form of it that melds it with plutocracy. (This is only possible, however, because the non-rich don’t bother to vote in sufficient numbers and so allow themselves to be screwed over). I am not sure an Iraqi haute bourgeoisie unconnected to the Baath even exists, and so it will be difficult for them to play the plutocrat card in Iraq. Bremer had it explained to him that Iraq is a welfare state, and if you just charge in and abolish all that, it will make for trouble. Bremer is said to have been convinced. As I said, I don’t think the outcome is entirely his to decide, anyway (it is not clear that Gen. MacArthur was trying to produce a corporatist state in Japan, either).

All I would say is that parliamentary governance is a good start, and it is a system that has the potential to become more democratic if the people become exercised enough about it, whereas the Baath Party was just going to go on producing its mass graves and destroying the Marsh Arabs, etc. If the no-fly zone had been dropped by the US, the Kurds would have been massacred in an instant.

3. Equally or even more importantly: How about the precedent set for Iraqis, for that 96 percent of the world’s people who are not US citizens–and for the four percent of us who are US citizens– if the US administration is seen as “successful” in imposing its will on the actions of a large and distant sovereign nation purely through the force of arms and the waging of a war that was quite unjustified by any criteria of “just war” or international law?

If the US acted illegally in international law, then the international community should punish it. (In fact, the refusal of India, Egypt, France and Germany to send troops despite US pleading is already a form of punishment). But the Iraqi people do not deserve to be punished, and the rebuilding of the country so that it ends up being a parliamentary democracy with a free press and an independent judiciary would be a good thing for Iraqis, the world, and even for the US.

My main concern is that a success in Iraq not encourage further adventurism. I think, however, that the furor over the missing WMD, the outbreak of the guerrilla war, and the unexpectedly high costs of the Iraqi occupation have made it rather unlikely that Congress will give out any carte blanches for going on to Damascus and Tehran. I don’t think it is very likely that the neocons are actually going to get what they wanted in Iraq. Pachachi has already said that Baghdad won’t recognize Israel until the Arab League does. The forthcoming Iraqi parliament is going to have lots of Sunni and Shiite Islamists in it. The Lebanese Hizbullah is likely to pick up parliamentary allies. This looming failure of the project may disillusion the architects of it, themselves.

I suppose I just think the world is complex, and even wrong-headed actions can sometimes have beneficial outcomes. I don’t deny that it is entirely possible that the Iraq adventure will go very badly wrong, and then you get Lebanon 1975-1989 or Iran 1978-79. I just personally hope that doesn’t happen.

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*One US soldier was killed and three others severely wounded on Monday when a guerrilla dropped a grenade on their vehicle as it went under a bridge in the Sunni center of Baghdad.

*The claimant to the Iraqi throne, Sharif `Ali b. al-Husain, visited the Shiite holy city of Najaf on Monday, receiving a mixed reaction there according to AP. He was admitted to an audience with Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani. The two of them issued a statement calling for an elected Interim Governing Council, rather than the appointed one that is now in place. According to AFP, he statement spoke of the “need for the restoration of national sovereignty in Iraq through free elections” and insisted, “legitimacy comes from the wish of the people and not by designation.” (It is actually quite a spectacle–a would-be king and an ayatollah insisting on popular sovereignty! The American and French revolutions are still alive in the world.) Al-Zaman says they also called upon the US to address expeditiously the pressing security and economic problems facing the country.

It is interesting to me that Sistani agreed to see Sharif Ali at all. I don’t think most Shiites want a Sunni monarchy. (The enthusiasts in the Najaf crowd were actually tribesmen from the countryside who see the monarchy as an element of their traditionalism). The Shiites did not do very well during the last monarchy, imposed by the British in 1922 and lasting until 1958, when it was overthrown. But Sistani is looking for a Middle Path between the two extremes of Western domination and Khomeinist radicalism. He wants Islamic law or shariah to be the law of the land, but does not want the Shiite clerics to be government officials. He wants the Anglo-American presence ended as soon as possible but does not want it replaced by Sadrist vigilantes. He wants an elected government and an elected constitutional convention. He has been willing to meet with Iraqi politicians who share those goals, but has declined to see American figures such as Paul Bremer and Paul Wolfowitz. It is significant that he joined with Sharif Ali in calling for the Americans to improve the economy. That is quite a different message than the Sadrist one that the US should leave yesterday.

*”I am an enemy to the Americans as long as they remain in Iraq,” Muqtada al-Sadr told the al-Arabiyyah satellite television channel on Monday, according to al-Hayat. He characterized the “Mahdi Army” he wants to create as an “unarmed” force that would protect the religious institutions. He continued to reject the idea of cooperating with the appointed Interim Governing Council, calling for a referendum in which the Iraqi people could decide whether or not they want an Islamic government. (Well, if a California governor can be deposed and elected by referundum . . . ). Asked if he would run for Iraqi president, he said it would be up to the Iraqi people to make him president or not.

*Paul Wolfowitz was quoted in the Washington Post insisting that the Iraq campaign is “central” to the “war on terror.” He also admitted on Sunday that intelligence about terrorism is “intrinsically murky,” as a way of replying to the charge that he hyped a non-existent link between Saddam’s Iraq and al-Qaeda before 9/11. My advice to Dr. Wolfowitz would be to give up on this whole line of argument. It will just end up discrediting him and the administration altogether. Saddam and Bin Laden were not in bed with one another, and everyone knows they were not. If anything, the lid that Saddam had kept on Sunni radicalism in Iraq has now been blown off, and US military spokesmen like Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez are openly admitting that Iraq is becoming a magnet for terrorists. The US has given al-Qaeda and its analogs a new arena in which to play.

Look, I want the US to succeed in Iraq, just as I think all responsible Americans do. The war was not justifiable on grounds of an immediate threat to US security. But it still may have been a worthwhile enterprise if it really can break the logjam in the region created by authoritarianism, patrimonial cronyism, creaky national socialism in the economy, and political censorship and massive repression. [Not to mention just ending the US economic sanctions, which were hurting ordinary Iraqis and killing children.] If Iraqis can just do so much as replicate India’s success in holding regular elections and in maintaining a relatively independent judiciary and press, they would pioneer a new way of being Arab and modern. (The earlier experiments with parliamentary governance of the 1920s, 30s and 40s were marred by the dominance of very large landlords, a class now largely gone, who did not permit genuine democracy). The US needed to redeem itself from earlier complicity in genocide against the Kurds and the Shiites (first against the Kurds in 1988 when the US was allied with Saddam, and then against both groups in spring of 1991 when the US stood aside and watched it happen even though they could have interdicted Saddam’s helicopter gunships).

A little humility, a little seeking of redemption, a little doing good for others. Those things could make a convincing rationale for the current project. But not a war on terrorism.

*The Bush administration nominated Daniel Pipes to the US Institute for Peace, but the nomination has with good justification been put on hold by the Senate and the Jerusalem Post is complaining that the administration is not figting for Pipes. In other words, they are cutting their losses. A lot of Arab Americans vote Republican, and this misstep of Bush had deeply angered them. To see why, look at the entry on the affair at TomPaine.com, which reports that Pipes says there are no differences between radical terrorists and the Islamic people: “It would be like saying there were good Nazis and bad Nazis.” My suspicion is that the reporter got him wrong, and he spoke of “Islamists,” not “the Islamic people.” He has said before that he thinks 15% of Muslims are Islamists, and that the body of ideas borne by Islamists produces terror. This would be like saying that the Southern Baptists are directly responsible for the Branch Dravidians and the killing of abortion doctors, or that Orthodox Judaism is responsible for the terrorist actions of Gush Emunim and other Settler militants on the West Bank. When challenged, Pipes just says you can’t compare Muslim fundamentalism to its Jewish and Christian counterparts. He doesn’t say why. And, his refusal of comparison contradicts the findings of the Fundamentalism Project done at the University of Chicago, which found broadly similar elements in fundamentalisms in various religions. Pipes is not exactly interested in social science, however. A lot of the Senate opposition to his nomination came from his McCarthyite Campus Watch project. It’s a good lesson: if you want to mainstream yourself, you can’t do things that make you look like a raving maniac. (Truth in advertising: I was one of the academics Pipes wanted to have everyone spy on.) For the Tom Paine link see Losing Hearts and Minds.

*An excellent profile of the US struggle with Muqtada al-Sadr in Najaf has been written by UPI correspondent Pamela Hess. She, like Anthony Shadid of the WP, refers to the interesting cooperation between Muqtada and Sunni fundamentalist Ahmad Kubeisi, who told his followers to attent Muqtada’s sermon last Friday in Kufa. But, I think she has too uncritically accepted some of the things alleged to her about Muqtada by his enemies. For instance, she says he fled to Iran after his father’s murder in the late ’90s and only came back in April of 2003. All the reporting I’ve seen, including in Arabic sources, says that he went underground inside Iraq; and, he certainly was there in March of this year. In fact, he taunts Ayatollah Muhammad Baqir al-Hakim for having left, which he couldn’t do if he himself had also fled abroad. I also don’t think Muqtada is 22. Even just looking at his photos, you can see he is at least in his late 20s. See http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20030728-011659-8800r.

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*5 more US troops were killed over the past weekend in Iraq, bringing the July total to 27. On Sunday, a guerrilla launched a grenade attack on 3 US soldiers guarding a children’s hospital in Baquba, killing them. Another US military man was ambushed by a sniper south of Baghdad. Baquba is the capital of Diyala, an ethnically mixed region in the east near Iran. There has been trouble between US troops and the Badr Corps there, and one hopes this grenade attack is not a sign of increased Shiite militancy toward the US. The attacker(s) could well have been Sunni.

*One man was killed and nine people were wounded by US Marines on Sunday at Karbala, a Shiite shrine city and the site of the mausoleum of Imam Husayn (martyred grandson of the Prophet Muhammad). The incident began on Saturday, when crowds gathered to protest a rumor that US troops were encroaching on the Shrine. The Marines at some point fired tear gas at the crowd, and a cannister hit the shrine. The demonstration on Sunday was held to protest this perceived affront to the shrine. It, too, turned violent. The Marines tried firing into the air, but ultimately shot into the crowd. This news is very, very bad. It may be that the rumor of the encroachments was planted by the Sadr Movement, which is trying to whip up opposition to the US among Shiites. The technique of provoking a violent demonstration that results in deaths, and then having that death be the occasion for another demonstration the next day or the next week, with its own potential for casualties, was used in 1978 by Shiite opponents of the Shah in Iran. Ultimately the demonstrations got so big they turned into a revolution. While it is early days for such a movement against the Bremer administration, the US is certainly vulnerable to this technique. And, all Shiites throughout Iraq and throughout Lebanon, Iran, Bahran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, etc., are going to be deeply angered at the US when they hear of the deaths of nine protesters in front of the shine of Imam Husayn. This particular set of incidents may or may not build toward a movement, but they are windows into the worst case scenario that could face a US military force in Iraq that was widely perceived to have overstayed its welcome.

*The tribal leaders of Hilla, Najaf and al-Diwaniya, according to al-Zaman, have asked Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani to issue a fatwa forbidding the carrying of arms in the shrine of Imam Husayn and in the shrine of Imam Ali. This call is a criticism of Muqtada al-Sadr, whose often armed followers have been jockeying for control of the two shrines.

Muqtada denounced Sistani and the other major ayatollahs in Najaf in his sermon on Friday for declining to call for an end to what he calls the US occupation of Iraq, and for maintaining political neutrality. The Friday Prayer leaders at the al-Ahmadi and al-Muhammadiya mosques, and that of al-Kazimiya (a suburb of Baghdad) rejected Muqtada’s call for opposition on the grounds that it is a duty to preserve the lives of the believers.

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*Iraqi guerillas killed another three US soldiers near Mosul on Thursday in an ambush on an armored convoy. This brings to five the number killed in the past two days in that area, in the wake of the deaths of Qusay and Uday. It seems likely that Baath loyalists have redoubled their efforts, either seeking revenge or seeking to bolster their own morale.

*Cabinet ministers of the new Iraqi transitional government will be appointed within two weeks, according to Interim Governing Council member Muhammad Bahr al-`Ulum. Some ministries may be reconfigured, and some from the Baath era may be abolished. US civil administrator Paul Bremer also pledged that electricity would be completely restored and a new army would be in the process of formation within two months. (Note that Iraq can only produce 2/3s of the electricity it needs without the building of more electrical plants; this is a heritage of the neglect of infrastructure by Saddam).

*Meanwhile, Adnan Pachachi (another prominent IGC member) says that Iraq will recover its sovereignty within 12 to 18 months, according to Asharq al-Awsat. This was at a press conference of 3 IGC members in London, with UK Foreign Minister Jack Straw. Aqila al-Hashimi, another member, confirmed that all the IGC appointees agreed that the most urgent consideration was an early end to foreign occupation. I saw Christopher Hitchens on television objecting to calling it an occupation, and I know US military personnel in Iraq don’t like the word. I agree that it is more complicated than a simple occupation. But if that is what the IGC is calling it, and they are the major Iraqi politicians actively cooperating with the British and Americans, then imagine what ordinary Iraqis are calling it. I think the sense of urgency in transitioning to a new Iraqi government felt by the IGC should be taken very seriously. It doesn’t seem to me that the US and Britain have very much time to make the transition. Apparently the IGC fear a social explosion if the process is too long and drawn out.

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