Informed Comment

Iraqi Oil Exports delayed from both North and South

AFP reports delays in Iraq oil exports in both the north and the south of the country.

Although exports are up to pre-war levels, it should be remembered that the 2.8 million barrels a day typical of the pre-war period were very low in comparison to Iraq’s capacity, and that they don’t generate enough for the government to run the country properly.

Meanwhile, Jubilee Iraq reckons that the country is saddled with $300 bn. in debt and reparations from the Saddam period, a crushing burden that could delay the country’s re-development if there is not substantial debt forgiveness.

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Death Toll from Two days of Attacks in Iraq is 21

AP reports that guerrillas fired rockets into the municipal building in Mosul on Saturday, killing two civilians and wounding 14, including 2 policement. In central Baghdad, guerrillas set off a roadside bomb, which wounded 5 Iraqis. In the south, a brigand shot the driver of a truck supplying Japanese troops; the motive was to steal the truck and its cargo.

Early Sunday, guerrillas detonated a bomb near Baqubah that wounded 5 persons.

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US Marine, 13 Iraqis, Killed in Fighting on Friday

AFP reports that 13 Iraqis and a US Marine were killed in separate incidents on Friday. Marines engaged in an extensive firefight with guerrillas in Fallujah, in which 4 Iraqis were killed and 7 wounded, and in which guerrillas killed one US Marine. One of the Iraqis killed was a cameraman for ABC News.

An Iraqi cameraman working for the US television network ABC was killed on Friday by a bullet to the forehead when US troops fired in the direction of journalists during clashes in the flashpoint town of Fallujah, doctors and witnesses said. ‘ Also on Friday, four Iraqi Civil Defence Corps (ICDC) personnel were killed and four wounded in heavy fighting with insurgents in Tikrit, north of Baghdad, a US military spokesperson said. ‘ Three guerrillas appear to have been killed at Tikrit.

Ash-Sharq al-Awsat reports that most of the Arab population in the northern city of Mosul are still loyal to the Baath Party and Saddam Hussein.

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Shiite, Sunni Clerics in Iraq Condemn Israel, US;

Muqtada: 9/11 Divine Retribution on US

AFP reports that both Shiite and Sunni Muslim preachers on Friday continued to protest against the assassination of Hamas clerical leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, “burning Israeli flags and accusing the United States of remaining silent over the killing.” (On Friday, the US vetoed an attempt by a majority of the UN Security Council nations to condemn Israel for the murder of Yassin.)

In the holy city of Najaf just south of Baghdad, Shiites held a street protest outside the Imam Ali mosque, as called for by Shaikh Sadr al-Din al-Qubanji, the local representative of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq. He said that they should march to honor the martyrdom of Yassin.

They chanted, “Death to Israel, death to America! Your blood, Sheikh Yassin, will liberate Palestine!”

SCIRI is a putative ally of the United States, promoted by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, which has a seat on the US-appointed Interim Governing Council.

The more radical (!) young cleric, Muqtada al-Sadr, also referred to the assassination in his Friday sermon in Kufa, next door to Najaf: “The attack on Sheikh Yassin is an attack on Islam and America is responsible for this aggression by remaining silent.”

WorldNet reports that

al-Sadr railed against the U.S. presence in Iraq, urging the worshippers to “seek the spread of freedom and democracy in the way that satisfies God.” They have planned and paved the ways for a long time, but it is God who is the real planner – and the proof of this is the fall of the American Twin Towers.” Referring to the attacks that killed 3000 innocent Americans, he said, “As we say, ‘The rain starts with a drop.’”

Al-Sadr termed Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon the “biggest terrorist of all” for taking out Yassin, a leader of an organization that has massacred innocent Israeli children, women and students with suicide bombings. He added that Sharon “has committed this dirty crime and killed one of the greatest of Islamic mujahedeen . . . This was once again a dirty crime against Islam.”

He said the US was an accomplice in the assassination, according to CNN. Then he “led worshippers in chants: “No, no Israel! No, no to the Jews! No, no America! No, no to terrorism!”

AFP adds that also in al-Kazimiyah mosque in Baghdad, hundreds of Sadrists demonstrated, “marching out of the shrine while carrying a symbolic coffin for Yassin wrapped with a Palestinian flag.”

‘ “No, no to Israel. No, no to occupation,” shouted the protestors, many carrying portraits of Yassin and Sadr. When they reached Sadr’s nearby offices, a group of youngsters burned two Israeli flags before trampling them, an AFP correspondent said.

‘

Muqtada’s conviction that September 11 was a divine judgment against a godless United States is eerily similar to the views of American evangelist Jerry Falwell.

With regard to the Sunnis, AFP reports ‘ At Baghdad’s conservative Sunni neighborhood of Aadhamiyah, Sheikh Ahmed Hassan Taha al-Samarrai, told worshippers at Abu Haneefa Mosque that Yassin was “the beating heart of the struggle in Palestine.” “Despite the fact that the late Sheikh Yassin was a disabled old man who could not move … he made the Crusaders — the US administration — and its masters (the Jews) feel anxious.” At the Umm al-Tubul mosque in southeast Baghdad, Sunni Sheikh Abdel Sattar al-Janabi, said: “The Jews who killed Sheikh Yassin in Palestine are the same group who are killing the Iraqis.” “We shall not be afraid from them. No faithful can be afraid from his enemy if his heart was filled with faith,” he said. Protests have been held in Iraq on a near-daily basis to denounce Israel’s assassination of the Palestinian Islamic leader Monday. Members of Iraq’s US-appointed interim Governing Council had expressed fears that the killing of Yassin, who was respected around the Arab world, would fuel violence in their own war-torn country. ‘

As I argued on Tuesday, Sharon’s murder of Shaikh Yassin has stirred up Islamist forces against the US in Iraq in a wholly unnecessary way. The fighting in Fallujah that took so many lives Friday appears to have begun with Sunni insurgents doing operations in memory of Yassin. It is incredible to me that Bush is still willing to meet with Sharon in Washington on April 15, and has protected Sharon from a UNSC condemnation.

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Muqtada, Sistani’s Rep, Condemn Interim Constitution

Al-Jazeera TV, Doha, in Arabic 1608 gmt 26 Mar 04 via BBC Monitoring, reports that Muqtada al-Sadr also demanded in his sermon that if the Governing Council does not repeal the interim constitution or law of state administration, it should dissolve itself. He called the temporary constitution a “terrorist law.” He also charged the Governing Council with treason because it allowed US Secretary of State Colin Powell to visit recently.

Muqtada al-Sadr said, ‘ The Governing Council should dissolve itself or remain away from the tyrannical US demands. It should also renounce this unjust, terrorist document, or what they refer to as the constitution or the law. They should keep the Iraqi army in Iraqi hands. That would be a move in the interest of the Iraqi people, who suffered a great deal. The United States has called for closing the border. Then, we wonder, from where did this person called Powell come in? What approvals did he get to enter, and what passport did he use? So enough violations against the Iraqi people. O zealous Iraqi people: How do you approve of the entry of such terrorist persons? O council, if he entered the country at your approval, then you have betrayed the Iraqi people. If you were not aware of that in advance of Powell’s visit , then the disaster is bigger. ‘

Meanwhile, an Iraqi expatriate Iran-based radio station, Voice of the Mujahidin, in Arabic 0700 gmt 26 Mar 04 (via BBC world monitoring) reported that a spokesman for Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani had told the German wire service DPA that he ‘ ‘ will boycott the UN team, which is due to visit Iraq soon to help in the formation of an Iraqi interim government if the United Nations does not declare a clear stand concerning the controversial State Administration Law interim constitution . The media spokesman said that the interim constitution will only acquire legitimacy after its ratification in the elected national assembly. He added that this law puts obstacles to reaching and drafting a permanent constitution that would maintain the unity and rights of all the Iraqis in all their different sects. He added that the religious authority, which previously demanded the need for the UN Security Council to issue a resolution to set a date for holding general elections in the country, fears that the occupation authority would add the interim constitution to the expected UN resolution in order that it acquires the international legitimacy and becomes binding on the Iraqi people. ‘

In Karbala, Shaikh Nur al-Din al-Safi said in his Friday sermon from the mosque attached to the shrine of Imam Husayn that the interim constitution is “invalid,” according to AFP/ash-Sharq al-Awsat. Al-Safi is Sistani’s representative in that city. He said that Sistani has not just expressed reservations about the interim constitution, he “has rejected it.”

AFP adds that Safi went on, ‘ “Despite the respect that Seyyed Sistani has for Brahimi, Seyyed Sistani does not wish to be a party to any meeting or consultation with the UN team. We want the United Nations to respect its promises and the will of the Iraqi people who gave their opinion very clearly.” ‘

Firm Shiite opposition to the interim constitution could well derail the current US plans for elections in January of 2005, and could cause a lot of trouble in the coming months. The Kurds like the interim constitution just as it is, and would probably fight to keep it.

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Basra: Women Coerced to Veil, Shops Attacked

David Delanian writes more on the role of Shiite militias in imposing a mini-theocracy in the southern port city of Basra.

‘ Menacing groups of men have been stopping cars at the university gates and haranguing women whose heads are uncovered, accusing them of violating Islamic law. Male students have accosted them as they walked to class. As al Asadi spoke to a reporter in a courtyard, a scruffy-looking man handed out fliers that likened uncovered women to prostitutes and murderers. “I fear them,” she said simply. ‘

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Rosen: The Violence is Relentless; Clerics Speak of Jihad against Infidel Americans

Freelance journalist Nir Rosen, who has been living in the real Iraq unembedded, lets loose with what the Sunni heartland of Iraq is actually like under US occupation. It is, clearly, a hellhole that has all the stability of a pressure cooker with the lid on tight and no release valve.

Excerpts:

“The violence is relentless. Explosions from bombs, rocket propelled grenades and artillery as well as guns firing can be heard all day and night, but their locations are usually impossible to determine, even if you are foolish enough to search for them after dark, when gangs and wild dogs own the streets. There are systematic assassinations of policemen, translators, local officials, and anybody associated with the occupiers. The pace of the violence is normal and mundane, so nobody cares . . .

Meanwhile over ten thousand Iraqi men are being held prisoner, and most of them are innocent. Iraqi security guards as well as American soldiers hate the explosive-sniffing dog in front of the Sheraton and Palestine hotels, because they, like the rest of us who live in the area, are subject to its olfactory whims as it imagines every day that it smells a bomb and they must close off the street for several hours. Two of my friends were arrested for not having a bomb last week, when the dog decided their bag smelled funny. They were jailed for four days though they were not carrying a bomb. Unlike the murderous accuracy of the Israeli security forces, who at least speak Arabic, the American security forces are a blunt instrument. They arrest hundreds at once, hoping somebody will know something. One morning in the village of Albu Hishma, the local US commander decided to bulldoze any house that had pro-Saddam graffiti on it, and gave half a dozen families a few minutes to remove whatever they cared about the most before their homes were flattened.”

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