Informed Comment

Bam Earthquake Kills 20,000

The enormity of 20,000 persons being suddenly wiped out by an earthquake is just hard for me to fathom. There is an old custom in the Middle East and South Asia of seeing such incidents as a sign of God’s displeasure. That way of thinking strikes me as sick (even though Gandhi, Abdul Baha and other very moral men adopted it).

In fact, the earthquake was caused by the Indian subcontinent, which detached itself from Africa millions of years ago, careened into Asia and threw up the Himalayas (relatively young mountains), and is still pressing up against Eurasia. Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Northern India are seismically active because of this major set of faults.

It had nothing to do with God’s moral judgment on Bamians. Indeed, this sort of incident seems to me to prove that the universe has not been set up for human beings particularly. If they get in the way of the laws of nature, and they do nothing to protect themselves, they get crushed. The earthquake killed so many people because provincial Iranian towns are built of adobe and lack any sort of eathquake proofing. When earthquakes hit during the day, they aren’t so bad. But this one hit at 5 am, collapsing buildings onto sleeping families.

The Iranian regime is already unpopular, and a disaster of this magnitude could become political. The government will be judged by how quickly and how well it does relief work for the survivors (the desert is cold at night). It may also be blamed for not having pushed earthquake-proofing of buildings.

Another disaster is that the quake destroyed the famous citadel of Bam, the more prominent features of which were built by Nadir Shah in the 18th century, and which was a big tourist attraction and potential future source of wealth. It probably can’t be rebuilt, and any way UNESCO discourages that sort of phony restoration for touristic purposes.

The US and Iran have had bad political relations for decades now, and there is much demonizing of Iranians in America. This moment is auspicious for Americans to show generosity to the Iranian people. The survivors need our help, even if we can only give a little each. For things like this I personally give to the Red Cross/ Red Crescent.

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Bremer to Blair: No Weapons Labs

The cover story of the Bush administration about the reasons for the Iraq war has become so full of holes that it is even confusing major officials and allies now. The Bushies started out saying that the war was about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. When it turned out that Iraq had virtually no such weapons, and hardly any programs, they started muttering darkly about Saddam’s mass graves and killing fields (even though past Republican administrations were in various ways complicit in all that).

In his Christmas message to the UK troops, PM Tony Blair said that the Iraq Survey Group had found “massive evidence of a huge system of clandestine laboratories.”

On ITV1′s Jonathan Dimbleby program, Bremer was asked about the quote but not told the source. Bremer replied, “I don’t know where those words come from but that is not what (ISG chief) David Kay has said. I have read his reports so I don’t know who said that. It sounds like a bit of a red herring to me. It sounds like someone who doesn’t agree with the policy sets up a red herring then knocks it down.”

Bremer later found out the statement he contradicted was Blair’s, and he backtracked, saying “There is actually a lot of evidence that had been made public . . . clear evidence of biological and chemical programs.” He added “Weapons of mass destruction or no weapons of mass destruction, it’s important to step back a little bit here, to see what we have done historically.”

It seems clear that Bremer knew no ‘huge system of clandestine laboratories’ had still been active in 2002, and he smelled a trap. If someone was saying such a thing, which was clearly false, then probably it was an enemy of the Bush administration trying to set up a trap that would be sprung later. He hadn’t counted on Tony’s earnest hyperbole (though the incident makes it clear that Tony is now doing Bush more harm than good by sticking with the cover story long after US officials had ceased trying to defend it.) When Bremer realized that he had been tricked by Fleet Street into calling Tony Blair a liar, he quickly backed down and tried to give the PM some cover. Well, there used to be laboratories back in the 1980s (we should know, we authorized US companies to supply them) . . .

What in the world Bremer meant by “Weapons of mass destruction or no weapons of mass destruction, it’s important to step back a little bit here, to see what we have done historically.” is obscure to me. But presumably it is yet another, somewhat maladroit attempt to liken intervention in Iraq to World War II.

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Al-Hakim Calls for UN Involvement

In a news conference in Baghdad, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, temporary president of the Interim Governing Council, said that when in Europe he had lobbied heads of state for more United Nations involvement in the transfer of sovereignty to an Iraqi government this summer. He said he pressed this request on France, the UK and Russia, all permanent members of the United Nations Security Council. He asked them “to move in order to ensure an important and fundamental role for the United Nations in Iraq.” He said all the members of the IGC agree on the desirability of this step.

Meanwhile, Syrian Foreign Minister Farouq Sharaa advised the Iraqis “not to draft a constitution under occupation,” because it would be “a time bomb.” He warned of “the dangers of the partition of Iraq,” saying that for the country to break up “would not be beneficial to the countries of the region, especially the neighbors.”

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The Gang that Couldn’t Shoot Straight

Although Baghdad was shaken by a series of six rocket attacks on Thursday, the guerrillas managed to do very little damage. They targeted the HQ of the Coalition Provisional Authority, two major hotels favored by Western journalist, and the German, Iranian and Turkish embassies. Although the explosions appear to have caused no casualties, one can only imagine that a coordinated set of attacks like this must have produced a psychological effect in the capital. I can’t imagine why they targeted the German embassy, either, though I suppose it was a warning that Germany should not help the new transitional government to be established this summer rebuild Iraq. The only group that would want to send such a message, it seems to me, is Baathists.

The guerrillas still can blow up passing vehicles. A US soldier was killed by a roadside bomb in Baghdad on Wednesday.

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Sunni Religious Groups form Council

The NYT is reporting that Sunni Arab religious groupings met on Thursday and are seeking to establish a Sunni Arab leadership that could match that of the Kurds and the Shiites. The Sunni religious groups involved included Sufis, Salafis, and the Muslim Brotherhood.

I’m not sure such a grouping has much in the way of staying power. Salafis are fundamentalists (sometimes inaccurately refered to as “Wahhabis” by the Western press and by Iraqi Shiites) who despise mystical Sufism (which is about saints and shrines and visions). The Muslim Brotherhood has never been good about sharing power, and in Iraq is tiny. And, many Sunni Arabs are nationalists and not particularly religious. If they are religious, they are not necessarily Salafis, Sufis or Muslim Brotherhood. This group seems to me therefore to represent only a narrow sliver of the Sunni Arabs and to be unlikely to avoid squabbling among themselves very long.

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Sistani Stands Ground on Demand for General Elections

AFP reports that six members of the Interim Governing Council met with Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani in Najaf on Thursday to discuss his demand that general elections be held this spring. The IGC agreed with US civil administrator Paul Bremer on November 15 that caucus-type elections, by hand- picked pro-American local councils, would be held by the end of May. Sistani objected that such an election would not adequately reflect the will of the Iraqi people, and insists on one-person, one-vote general elections. He also wanted an up-front guarantee that the Iraqi legislature would not pass laws at variance with Islam. The IGC has ever since been negotiating with him in an attempt to find a compromise. AFP said, ‘ “Despite obstacles that have been raised, he would only renounce elections if a UN technical team reaches the conclusion that it is impossible to hold them and proposes another solution that would guarantee a better representation of the Iraqi people,” Sistani’s spokesman said. ‘ Sistani therefore stood his ground about the need for general elections.

Sistani’s refusal to budge poses a severe problem for the US, which wants now to move quickly to an “Afghanistan” model, hold an American-invented Iraqi “Loya Jirga” or council of hand-picked notables, “elect” a transitional government, and turn over sovereignty to it, as they did to Karzai in Afghanistan. This plan appears to derive from despair that the US will actually be able to administer Iraq for very much longer, given Iraqi sullenness about the occupation, and from a desire of the Bush administration to bring home the reporters, if not the troops, well before the November 2004 elections. Karl Rove probably figures that the US press simply won’t cover Iraq as intensively if the US isn’t running it, just as they don’t cover Afghanistan any more now that Karzai is in charge (even though the US has 10,000 troops in harm’s way in Afghanistan). US journalism is dedicated to the principle that the American public doesn’t want to read about anything that is in the least bit distant, foreign, or hard to understand. The existence of the Coalition Provisional Authority creates the illusion that Iraq is part of the US beat for journalists; renaming it “the US embassy in Iraq,” Bush hopes, will dissolve that illusion. Sistani is therefore standing in the way of a smooth political progression that has enormous import for the next US election.

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Some Mujahidin-i Khalq Terrorists to be Tried in Iraq

The Mujahidin-i Khalq terrorist organization, which has committed mass murder in Iran, was given refuge in Iraq by Saddam Hussein, who used the group’s guerrillas to harass Iran. Iraqis claim that at key points the MKO helped Saddam stay in power by military action. The Coalition Provisional Authority has decided to deport MKO members for Iraq to “three countries,” but will not say to which. But AFP reports that Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, head of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq and December’s president of the Interim Governing Council has said that some MKO members guilty of terrorism will be tried in Iraq. Al-Hakim was given refuge in Tehran from Saddam in the early 1980s and was close to the hard line ayatollahs in Tehran, who view the Mujahidin-i Khalq rather as the US views al-Qaeda. Al-Hakim also reiterated that the new Iraqi government would not deal with Israel (an Arab League stance). Although the State Department has long listed the MKO on its list of terrorist organizations, the guerrilla group has been very successful in lobbying the US congress and has been supported by powerful Neoconservatives in the Defense Department (raising questions as to whether the MKO has an Israeli connection).

One of the more prominent supporters of this terrorist organization allied to Saddam Hussein is Daniel Pipes, head of the so-called “Middle East Forum” (it isn’t a forum, it is just a way for his sugar daddies to fund Pipes); and he is also a supporter of the extremist Israeli settler movement on the West Bank and in Gaza. In one of a long series of lapses of judgment, President Bush appointed this supporter of Middle East terrorist organizations to the US Institute for Peace! Pipes also heads the so-called “Campus Watch,” which engages in sleazy McCarthyite tactics, apparently as a cover for Pipes’s own warm embrace of terrorist organizations like the MKO and the Israeli settler extremists.

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