Informed Comment

Bush Sneaks in and Out of Baghdad

W. must have envisaged his triumphal first trip to Baghdad very differently. Last spring, before the war, he was told by Ahmad Chalabi via Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and Doug Feith, that the Iraqi people would welcome him this November with garlands and dancing in the street. They would regard him as the great liberator, a second Roosevelt or Truman. The US military, having easily defeated the Baath army and wiped up its remnants, would have departed. Only a US division, about 20,000 men, would remain, at a former Baath army base and out of sight of most Iraqis. Engineers and decontamination units, Feith told him, would be busy destroying chemical and biological stockpiles, and dismantling the advanced nuclear weapons program, carefully securing the stockpiles of Niger yellowcake uranium. Ahmad Chalabi and his Iraqi National Congress would be ensconced, running the country and dictating policy to the Baath military (minus its senior officers) and the Baath ministries (minus their ministers and deputy ministers). The educated, secular Iraqi Shiites would be busy stamping out priest-ridden superstition and covertly helping to undermine both the Iranian hardline ayatollahs and the radical Hizbullah militia in South Lebanon. The captured Baath generals would have given up Bin Laden and al-Zawahiri, identifying the caves they were hiding in with Iraqi help, in Waziristan. Chalabi would already have recognized Israel and bullied the Palestinians into acquiescing in the loss of the rest of their land, so that Arafat’s followers had been reduced to shuffling with their eyes fixed on the ground before their White betters. Air Force One would land in full daylight at Baghdad International Airport. W. would emerge from the plane, waving and smiling, his cowboy boots glinting in the desert sun. He would pass in review of the Iraqi military with its new generals, which might do some goose stepping for him just for show, the now reformed lads smiling warmly under their freshly waxed moustaches. A grateful and obedient country, pacified and acquiescent in Chalabi’s presidency for life (“a clear move toward democracy after the brutal dicatatorship of Saddam”), would shout out “Bi’r-ruh, bi’l-dunya, nufdika ya Dubya” (With our spirits and our world, we sacrifice ourselves for you, O W.!).*

Instead, the President had to sneak in and out of Iraq for a quick and dirty photo op, clearly in fear of his life if the news of his visit had leaked. He did not even get time to eat a meal with the troops. He was there for two hours. He did not dare meet with ordinary Iraqis, with the people he had conquered (liberated).

Offstage, the real Iraq carried on. Guerrillas attacked a military convoy on the main highway to the west of Baghdad, near Abu Ghraib. The wire services said, that an AP cameraman filmed “two abandoned military trucks with their cabs burning fiercely as dozens of townspeople looted tires and other vehicle parts.” Guerrillas in Mosul shot an Iraqi police sergeant to death.

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Sistani’s Fatwa to the Americans

In the meantime, Bush’s team at the Coalition Provisional Authority were scrambling to respond to Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani’s critique of their plans for Iraq. Sistani dislikes the plan to base voting on caucuses hand-picked by Iraqis who were in turn hand-picked by the US. Why, the ayatollah wants to know, can’t you just let the Iraqi people vote for a government? There are rolls of all Iraqis who received food aid from the UN, and all Iraqis did. You could use them as voter rolls, as well. Why can’t you specify beforehand that the new Iraqi government will not do anything contrary to Islam?

Jalal Talabani, the Sunni Kurdish president of the Interim Governing Council, met with Sistani. He had just ratified Bremer’s plan last week, but now had gone over to the Shiite ayatollah’s. “The agreement can evolve. … I will take his views to the council and we, God willing, hope to ratify them.” Al-Hayat reported him saying that “The Ayatollah expressed one reservation . . . he wants to take into account the opinion of the Iraqi people. He therefore holds it important to hold [general] elections for both the national assembly and the municipal councils.”

Shiites on the IGC waxed lyrical. Mouwafak al-Rabii [al-Rubaie] told the Associated Press, “Al-Sistani is our safety valve, and a compass that directs our march. The remarks attributed to him are very important and vital. They serve the interests of the Iraqi people, and I agree with them.” Muhammad Bahr al-Ulum, a “moderate” Shiite cleric on the IGC, told the Financial Times, “We will not accept a secular state,” and he added that “Mr Sistani also believed sovereignty should be vested in a transitional assembly rather than a transitional government.”

In contrast, the NYT reported that the Sunni Arabs and the Kurds on the IGC are petrified at Sistani’s plan, because it will establish a tyranny of the Shiite majority.

Al-Hayat says tthat key CPA officials have been thrown into bewilderment and have admitted that the whole plan may have to be rethought. The Washington Post suggested that Bremer’s team is so desperate to get out of Iraq and turn running the country over to someone that they might just take dictation from the Grand Ayatollah. ‘”Elections are now a possibility,” said a senior U.S. official close to Iraq’s political transition. “We’re scrambling to find a solution.” ‘

Presumably the thinking of this official is that the US already has a lot of the Sunni Arabs against it, and if the Shiites turn anti-American because the US disrespected the Grand Ayatollah’s fatwa, the situation will be irretrievable. Sistani is expected to issue a written ruling momentarily. Mr. Bremer is no doubt waiting for it with bated breath.

The Guardian had reported Mr. Bremer’s initial vow in Iraq last July 1, “We dominate the scene and we will continue to impose our will on this country.” Many Arab observers found the diction insufferably arrogant at the time.

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Sistani Raises Objections to Latest Coalition Plan

According to al-Hayat, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, leader of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq and a member of the Interim Governing Council, met with Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani on Tuesday, and then held a news conference in Najaf on Wednesday. He revealed that Sistani has substantial reservations about the plan worked out by Paul Bremer and the IGC for moving to some form of elected transitional government. Sistani asked that its provisions be reviewed. Al-Hakim warned of “real difficulties if the reservations are not taken into account.”

Apparently Sistani had earlier not been given the full details of the transition plan, and when he saw the Arabic texts of them, he hit the roof. Al-Hakim said that Grand Ayatollah Muhammad Sa`id al-Hakim, Sistani’s colleague in Najaf, had the same reservations. “The agreement gives no role to the Iraqi people. It must therefore be revisited.”

Sistani is complaining that the caucus elections envisaged by the US will not be democratic. He also complained that there is no guarantee that the Basic Law that will substitute for a constitution until one is hammered out will contain a clause that no legislation can be passed that is contrary to Islamic law. (Such a clause is an Islamist Trojan Horse, since once it is enacted, Sistani would get to decide when to invoke it.) The NYT says he complained in general about the lack of any specified role for Islam in the proposed arrangements. Al-Hakim reported Sistani saying, that “there is no emphasis on the role of Islam and the identity of the Muslim people. There should have been a stipulation which prevents legislating anything that contradicts Islam in the new Iraq.”

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2 US troops wounded in Mosul; Italian Embassy in Baghdad Hit by Rockets

Guerrillas fired a rocket or mortar round into the second floor of the Italian embassy in Baghdad on Wednesday. The attack caused structural damage, but no casualties were reported. Two weeks ago, guerrillas killed 19 Italians in suicide bombings at their police HQ in Nasiriya in the South. The Italian public is deeply opposed to Italian troops remaining in Iraq, and many opposition politicians have pressured PM Silvio Berlusconi to withdraw.

It also turned out that UK Foreign Minister Jack Straw had been secretly in Baghdad Monday night when rockets were fired and exploded near his hotel.

It was also revealed Wednesday that 2 US soldiers in Mosul were wounded when guerrillas threw grenades and fired on their Humvee. US return fire killed one of the assailants. The guerrillas had also managed to kill a boy and wound 4 other Iraqis in a car following the Humvee.

Guerrillas near the Tigris also fired on US troops, but failed to inflict any casualties.

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Iraq War damaging US War on Terror

Warren Strobel of Knight Ridder points out that many counter-terrorism analysts are convinced that the real war on terror is being hurt by the drain of resources to the Iraq war.

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Khamenei: ‘America Sinking into Quagmire” “

Iran’s Supreme Jurisprudent, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said in a radio address that: ‘The American nation should know that Iraq is America’s quagmire and America is sinking deeper into it by staying longer in Iraq . . . The Americans are so desperate that they are bombing an occupied country…this (Middle East) region does not tolerate occupation . . . ‘The Americans should know that any imposed government, constitution and elections would face resistance from the people in Iraq. In free elections the majority of the Iraqi people will choose those who will not allow the Americans to stay one more day in Iraq. The Americans, who entered Iraq in the name of human rights, have oppressed the Iraqis so much that they punched the Americans in the face. The Americans’ claim about bringing democracy to the region is a disgraceful lie.” (Reuters).

I have to admit that the line about the US being reduced to bombing a country it had already militarily occupied was a pretty good zinger. Iranian politics is rough and tumble, and these battle hardened old ayatollahs have the sharp elbow moves choreographed as well as any WWF wrestler. The scarey thing is that Khamenei could turn up the heat on the US in Iraq pretty easily, and it is hard to see what the Bush administration could do about it. It is not as if they have the spare troops to attack and occupy Iran as well (despite Billy Kristol’s disturbed daydreams).

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Norwegian troops in Iraq fear for safety

Norwegian troops appear to be surprised to find that they are not actually in a peacekeeping role in Iraq, but rather are in a combat role. They nevertheless don’t get the combat pay their colleagues receive in Afghanistan.

The Norwegian press reports: “Military Officers’ Association have received several letters from Norwegian soldiers who feel threatened, even on the base. All military camps in the region where the Norwegians are stationed have been attacked. Only the Norwegian camp has been spared, according to Forsvarets Forum.. The Norwegian troops think they may well be targetted, as well.

My guess is that a lot of the little contingents supplied by the Coalition of the Willing may well be withdrawn in March (it will be represented as a normal cycling out after a tour). They did not know they were getting drawn in to a long-term shooting war, and they mostly wouldn’t have wanted to be.

If such withdrawals occur, it will stress the US troops in theater even more.

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