Informed Comment

Mosul Leaders Threaten to Join Guerrilla Movement
Protest Firing of Police Commissioner

Al-Zaman: Cabinet member Adil Abdul Mahdi’s brother was assassinated on Sunday. A government oil company official in Kirkuk was assassinated. There were about a dozen announced deaths in guerrilla violence on Sunday. Guerrillas detonated a bomb in Fallujah, killing two Iraqi soldiers; a woman and a child died when police fired indiscriminately after the bomb went off.

The US air force dropped a 500-pound bomb on guerrillas near Taji who fired on a US helicopter, killing at least six, and later capturing another 5.

Al-Hayat: Northern Iraq is a sectarian tinderbox after Saturday’s massive car bombing of a Shiite village near Baqubah in the mixed Diyalah province. The Iraqi Islamic Party (Sunni) called for calm and avoidance of reprisal killings, seeing the bombing of the Shiites and the killing of 25 Mahdi Army militiamen in an ambush in Baghdad on Friday by Sunni Arabs as steps toward sectarian civil war. Al-Sharq al-Awsat reports that the Shiite Badr Corps militia is denying any link to the assassination last week of Saadoun al-Janabi, a defense lawyer for one of Saddam’s relatives.

Some 51 clan elders from the Sunni Arab and Kurdish families of Mosul agreed with policemen in the city that they will return it to the control of armed guerrillas if the Interior Ministry implemented its decision to fire Ninevah’s police chief, Ahmad Muhammad al-Juburi, who is accused of corruption. Hundreds of armed men surrounded the provincial headquarters on Saturday evening to protest al-Juburi’s firing. US troops stopped the protesters from storming the building. The armed protesters, including police and civilians, surrounded a number of government buildings. They shouted through megaphones, complaining of Kurdish domination of provincial offices.

The clan leaders complained in a letter to Jaafari that no official investigation of al-Juburi had been carried out. They threatened to turn the city into a hotbed of insurgency.

Al-Juburi himself charged on Saturday that Kurds and Shiite Arabs had connived at his dismissal because they hoped to roil the province and therefore keep its 1.7 million inhabitants, a majority of them Sunni Arabs, from voting in large numbers in the December 15 parliamentary elections. He warned that they would follow the same tactics in Salahuddin and Anbar Provinces (other Sunni Arab strongholds).

Mosul exploded with violence in November of 2004 when 4,000 policemen suddenly resigned and masked gunmen emerged to police the city of over a million (Iraq’s third-largest). The current situation seems so tense that there is a danger of the repetition of that scenario, which helped prevent Sunni Arabs from being properly represented in parliament, since it threw Ninevah into chaos.

Reuters reports on Mosul here.

Al-Sharq al-Awsat reports that many Sunni Arabs in Ninevah are convinced that their province actually defeated the constitution by a 2/3s margin in the Oct. 15 referendum, and that the constitution was therefore in reality shot down and is illegitimate.

The Boston Globe reports on the evolution of Marine tactics in turbulent Anbar province.

Shibley Telhami makes the point that the Bush administration’s rushed attempts to stabilize Iraq with cosmetic measures like passing a constitution seem in fact to be exacerbating Sunni Arab resentments and destabilizing the country further.

Al-Zaman: Iyad al-Ta’i, a member of the Virtue Party’s political office, affirmed Sunday that his party would join the United Iraqi Alliance under the leadership of Abdul Aziz al-Hakim. He emphasized that the Virtue Party [a puritanical Shiite fundamentalist party especially popular in the southern port city of Basra that follows the teachings of Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr] is dedicated to upholding Iraq’s national unity. He said national unity was the best path to security and stability in Iraq. He said there would be no change in the top officers, which include secretary-general Nadim al-Jabiri; his deputy is Muhammad Abd Nasir al-Sa`idi, a member of the Baghdad provincial council; Ammar Tu’mah, member of parliament; and of course Shaikh Muhammad Yaqubi is the group’s spiritual guide. He said the Virtue Party sought dialogue with three groups– 1) [secular] national leaders, 2) Muslim leaders of various denominations, and then 3) specifically with Shiite leaders.

Al-Ta’i's list is a welcome acknowledgment of Iraq’s pluralism from a party that is often rather narrow in its program, though the reality of militias in Basra that close video stores and harass unveiled women is hard to reconcile with the call for dialogue.

His emphasis on national unity seems intended to defend the party’s choice of allying with al-Hakim, who last summer seemed to back a Shiite autonomous zone in the South.

BBC World Monitoring of the Iraqi Press for October 30, excerpts:

Al-Bayan carries on the front page a 250-word report on the press conference by Unified Iraqi Coalition yesterday, 29 October, during which Abd-al-Aziz al-Hakim predicted the coalition’s majority in the next National Assembly . . .

Tariq al-Sha’b publishes on the front page a 600-word report citing Iraqi Communist Party Chairman Hamid Majid Musa as saying that the party’s representation in the Iraqi National Bloc’s candidate lists [led by Iyad Allawi] for the governorates is satisfactory . . .

Al-Bayyinah publishes on page 1 a 200-word report that former Ba’thists are behind Amr Musa’s recent visit to Iraq.

Al-Bayyinah runs on page 2 a 200-word report on the negotiations between Adil Abd-al-Mahdi and Hasan al-Sari, Hezbollah Movement in Iraq’s secretary general, to discuss the unfair representation of the movement in the Unified Iraqi Alliance.

Al-Bayyinah publishes on page 3 a 2,500-word report revealing the injustice in the distribution of seats in the Unified Iraqi Alliance, accusing senior members of favouring politicians who either lived abroad or in specific places in Iraq, and excluding members from southern Iraq . . .

Al-Mu’tamar carries on the front page and on page 6 a 600-word article by Muwaffaq al-Rifa’i criticizing the US policy in Iraq and the democracy “imposed by occupation”. . .

Al-Mada publishes on the front page a270-word report citing the Iraqi Council for Peace and Solidarity calling on the Iraqi government to join Rome Law for International Criminal Court.

Al-Mada publishes on page 2 a 50-word report on the resignation of the head of Babil Governorate Council . . .

Al-Furat runs on the front page a 100-word report saying that former Iraqi Army General Ahmad al-Musili, who was in charge of the rocket attack on Israel in 1991, his wife, and their daughter, were assassinated in Mosul. No dates were given . . .

Al-Zaman carries on the front page a 230-word report citing a security source saying that three Iraqi soldiers were killed and seven others were injured in an attack by gunmen in Ba’qubah. The report cites an official source at Diyala Police Command saying that unidentified gunmen assassinated a member from Al-Sadr Bureau in Ba’qubah.

Al-Zaman carries on page 2 a 200-word report on a statement by Al-’Ilm University of Imam Al-Khalisi that US forces arrested a companion of Shaykh Jawad al-Khalisi in Al-Kazimiyah yesterday, 29 October. . .

Al-Mu’tamar carries on page 8 a 700-word report on drug addiction and trafficking in Iraq. . .

Al-Manarah carries on the front page a 50-word report citing sources at the Iraqi Police saying that secretary general of Iraqi Islamic Movement in Maysan was assassinated. . .

Al-Mashriq publishes on the front page a 30-word report citing police forces saying that seven bodies were found in Al-Latifiyah.

Al-Mada publishes on page 3 a 1,000-word report on the sit-in announced by lawyers in Mosul to protest against the assassination of Iraqi lawyer Sa’dun al-Janabi. [Al-Janabi was defending a relative of Saddam; Sunni Arabs accused the Shiite Badr Corps in the assassination.]

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Top Five Resignations the American People Should Demand
In the Wake of Libby’s Indictment

Apologize? Apologize? Is that all the US Democratic leadership can demand from George W. Bush after it was confirmed that his key aides and those of Vice President Cheney planned a petty campaign of retribution against a distinguished foreign service officer by outing his wife, undercover CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson? I should think not. I should think some high-profile resignations are in order. Although Senator Reid did ask for one resignation, I have a better idea.

1. Vice President Richard Bruce Cheney. Dick Cheney told Irving Lewis Libby about Plame working for the CIA. Although both Cheney and Libby had security clearances, it is not the case that any two persons with such clearances may properly share any information at will. Classified information is disseminated on a need to know basis and for specific security-related purposes. For Cheney to bandy about classified information merely as a form of office gossip or for partisan political purposes, even with other government officials, is unethical and poor tradecraft at the very least, and would get any junior CIA case officer fired. So surely the same should apply to the vice president of the United States at a time of war.

2. Karl Rove. The president’s adviser clearly told Matt Cooper of Time Magazine, at the very least, about Valerie Plame Wilson working for the CIA. Since this information was classified, Rove learned it from someone with a clearance. If he did not double check as to whether the information was classified before he released it to the press, then he was criminally irresponsible. If he released it with the knowledge that it was classified, then what he did was highly unethical and possibly illegal. Either way, no one who behaves so cavalierly with national security-related information during a time of war has any place in the White House. Rove must resign. If Bush does not request and accept Rove’s resignation, then he becomes an accessory after the fact to a possible crime, and should be impeached as such.

3. John Hannah. Hannah, a key Cheney aide, also mentioned to Libby that Plame worked for the CIA. He should not have been bandying about this information without a serious national security purpose. He should go.

4. John Bolton. Currently Ambassador to the United Nations. He has not been implicated in the outing of Plame yet, but he did visit implicated journalist Judith Miller in prison and is tightly connected to key figures in the crime. He has been a twenty-first century Goebbels of national security disinformation aimed at scaring the American public into pursuing a series of disastrous wars (beyond Iraq, he wants wars against Syria, Iran, and Cuba to start). He was not confirmed by the Senate. He is a serial liar or a serial incompetent. He has expressed himself vehemently against the existence of the United Nations and dismisses US international treaty obligations. He should not be representing the American people at the United Nations.

5. Elliot Abrams. Abrams lied to the Congress assiduously over the Iran-Contra criminal proceedings. During this period, high Reagan administration officials illegally sold off high-poweered weapons like TOWs from Pentagon storehouses to the Ayatollah Khomeini. They then took the Iranian money paid for them and put it in secret bank accounts, using it to fund rightwing death squads in Central America. Abrams was part of this unconstitutional and criminal plot. He should be in jail, but was pardoned. W. appointed him to the National Security Council, where he was in charge of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for a while (he is, like Doug Feith, more ideologically so aligned to the far rightwing Israeli Likud Party as to be virtually a card-carrying member; so that was really a signal of US even-handedness!). Now he is said to be in charge of Iran! He should never have been allowed back in high office after lying to Congress and both houses should be ashamed that they did not block his appointment. No wonder there is all this criminality in the White House– they are allowing criminals to be appointed!

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26 Killed by Car Bomb North of Baquba
3 US GIs Killed

Guerrillas in a Shiite village near Baqubah, northeast of Baghdad, detonated a huge truck bomb on Saturday, killing at least 26 innocent bystanders. In separate violence, 3 US GIs were killed, and US air forces attacked suspected guerrilla strongholds in western Iraq.

The Washington Post profiles the Kurdization of the city of Kirkuk and the villages around it, and tens or hundreds of thousands of Kurds whom Saddam had earlier expelled are brought back and settled, often on private property. Saddam brought Arabs into the city and the area part of an effort to “Arabize” the northern oil-producing region, which he renamed the “nationalized” province (Ta’mim) in commemoration of the nationalization of Iraq’s petroleum industry. Kirkuk is a traditionally Turkmen city, but Kurds became a major force there with the rise of the oil industry and labor migration. Because control of Kirkuk province would give the Kurds an enormous petroleum revenue, enabling their quest for an autonomous state, the Turkish government is very worried about all this. Any violence that targeted Kirkuk’s Turkmen would produce a strong reaction in Ankara and perhaps drawn Turkey into the conflict.

First the government of Italian Prime Minister and wealthy sleazeball Silvio Berlusconi’s got involved in forging the Niger uranium documents that underpinned Bush’s rationale for war. Then Berlusconi strongly backed Bush, and sent Italian troops to Nasiriyah (where o26 of them have been killed). Now, in an obvious sign that the Bush administration is a sinking ship, Berlusconi is abandoning it. He maintains that he tried to talk Bush out of going to war in Iraq before the fact. This allegation looks to some observers like a bare-faced attempt to run away from Bush in Italian domestic politics, where Berlusconi will face an election soon.

Al-Hayat: The United Iraqi Alliance, the mainly religious Shiite coalition, will be made up of 17 parties. They include the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the Sadr Movement, the Dawa Party, the Islamic Dawa Part (Iraq Organization), the Virtue Party, The Centrist Grouping, the Badr Organization, the Justice Grouping, Hizbullah in Iraq [no, not that Hezbollah], the Prince of Martyrs Movement, the Center Grouping, the Faithfulness Movement of the Turkmen, and the Turkmen, etc.

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Sistani May Call for US Withdrawal
Party Coalitions are Finalized

The intrepid Hamza Hendawi of AP gets the scoop: Aides around Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the chief spiritual leader of Iraqi Shiites, are broadly hinting that after the December 15 elections, he may begin a Gandhi-like campaign to demand a timetable for the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq. A lot of sentiments are attributed to Sistani that he later has to deny, so we should be cautious about whether the aides have their own axe to grind. But if this report is true, it would suggest that Sistani is confident that the Iraqi police and military are strong enough to protect him and the other members of the current Iraqi political class, and that the Americans are not needed.

If Sistani gives The Fatwa for a US withdrawal, the Bush administration will simply have to acquiesce. The situation would be similar to what happened in the Philippines in 1991, when the Philippines senate declined to authorize the extension of the treaty that permitted US naval bases in that country. Given the ongoing Sunni Arab guerrilla movement (which killed another 5 US GI’s in the past couple of days), the US simply cannot keep troops in Iraq if the Shiites also begin vehemently demanding their departure. Any attempt by Bush and Rumsfeld to remain in Iraq in defiance of Sistani would certainly radicalize the Iraqi population and risk pushing it toward anti-American Muslim extremism both on the Shiite and the Sunni Arab fronts. As Hendawi notes, most close observers of Iraq, such as Vali Nasr and Ahmad Hashem (who has experience on the ground as US military officer) believe that any such move by Sistani, should it succeed, risks throwing Iraq into substantial sectarian violence.

A majority of Americans now say that getting the troops out of Iraq as soon as possible is more important than ensuring that the country is a stable democracy.

Sistani seems to be encouraging a new political coalition that is multi-ethnic. Al-Zaman says that some independent Shiite notables close to Sistani have formed the Independent Iraqi Capabilities Bloc. It groups many of the independents who were in the (Shiite religious) United Iraqi Alliance in the January 30 elections, but altogether includes 120 Shiites, Sunni Arabs, Kurds and Turkmen. (If this group was not offered many seats by the UIA this time, it might explain both why it bolted and why Sistani is said not to be as enthusiastic about the UIA this time around.) Husain Shahristani, a former nuclear scientist now close to Sistani, was originally involved in this project but ended up staying in the United Iraqi Alliance (see the NYT) [revised 10/27/05]. Among Western news reports only the Financial Times even alludes to this new list. Unless Sistani directly endorses the new list, something his aides said Friday would not happen, I don’t expect it to do very well, unfortunately.

On Friday, the young nationalist cleric Muqtada al-Sadr called for calm after a major engagement between his Mahdi Army and Sunni Arab guerrillas, who killed 25 of the latter. Sadr called for an investigation and forbade individuals from taking the initiative. Also on the sectarian civil war front, the Washington Post reported Saturday that a family of 10 Shiites was found dead earlier this week in Qamishli in Babil province, killed by Sunni Arab guerrillas. Babil is a mixed province where Saddam stole land from Shiites and settled Sunni Arabs on it.

Al-Zaman/ Deutsche Press Agentur are reporting further breakaways from the United Iraqi Alliance. The UIA groups the Dawa Party, the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the Virtue Party, the Sadrists of Muqtada al-Sadr, and the Islamic Action Party based in Karbala. Aside from the last, these are the big, central Shiite religious parties, and the UIA is likely to have a plurality or even majority in the new parliament elected on Dec. 15, unless there is a voter revolt of some sort.

It is probably therefore not very important that there were some last minute defections from the UIA.

Ahmad Chalabi in the end decided to run his Iraqi National Congress as an independent list. The INC mainly represents the secular-leaning expatriate Shiite business class and seems unlikely to do well in open elections inside Iraq. It has been joined by Sharif Ali bin al-Husain, a Sunni Hashimite who has in the past put himself forward as candidate for king of Iraq (not a likely prospect). Kirk Semple of the New York Times lists some other INC candidates, including ” Iraq’s justice minister, Abdul Hussein Shandal . . . Other members are Salama al-Khafaji, an independent Shiite who also defected from the Shiite coalition.” Khafaji, a Shiite traditionalist who is uncomfortable with the idea of a clerically dominated state, has narrowly escaped assassination; as it is, her 17-year-old son was killed in an ambush. It would be interesting to know more about why she split with the UIA and joined Chalabi. Her advocacy for women’s issues may have played a role.

Chalabi should never be underestimated, and he is perfectly capable of getting up some vote-buying scheme. But if the election is free and fair, I’d be just stunned if the INC got many seats in parliament.

Semple also reports that Abdul Karim al-Muhammadawi, the Marsh Arab leader from Amara, is running as an independent. Al-Zaman thought he would join Chalabi’s list, but that possibility appears to have fallen through. Since most of the Marsh Arabs appear to have gone over to Muqtada al-Sadr since the fall of Saddam, I don’t expect al-Muhammadawi to do well on his own, though he might get a seat for himself in parliament.

Hamza Hendawi reports that the secular “Iraqi Nationalism” list of Iyad Allawi groups the Iraqi Communist Party, secular Sunni figures such as Ghazi al-Yawir and Adnan Pachachi, and of course the ex-Baathist Shiites that Allawi has long attempted to organize. Allawi’s list only received 14 percent of the vote in the last elections. The communists and al-Yawir could bring him an extra 4 seats or so, but it is also possible that his list will not poll as well this time. He no longer has the advantages of incumbency. He has been critical of Sistani. And several members of his cabinet have been charged with massive embezzlement. Hendawi reports that Allawi is angling to form a government with the Kurds so as to outmaneuver the Shiite United Iraqi Alliance. But I doubt Allawi’s list will get more than 40 seats, and the Kurds are unlikely to do much better than 55. Even if they get some of the 40 seats that will be redistributed after the election by some complex formula, I don’t see how they can get to the 138 needed to form a government. Only if all three– Allawi’s list, the Kurdistan Alliance, and the Sunni coalition unite could they form a government that left out the United Iraqi Alliance, assuming it does not end up with 138 itself. Such a strange-bedfellows government would be highly unstable and I doubt it would last. It is going to be hard to exclude the religious Shiite parties.

Hazem Shaalan, the former defense minister accused massive fraud committed while in office in 2004 and early 2005, maintained that he was the victim of an attempted assassination in his London flat, but which failed, according to al-Sharq al-Awsat. Shaalan, however, is a notorious liar, and has also charged that there are one million Iranian Shiites surreptitiously in Iraq and that Iran is allowing al-Qaeda operatives to freely roam its territory. Both charges are so laughable that you have to wonder whether Shaalan isn’t a good friend of and source of information for Irving Lewis Libby.

The Turks went ballistic when Bush received Massoud Barzani (Mesut in Turkish) at the White House and called him “President Barzani.” They wanted to know what Bush thought Barzani was president of. The Turks are afraid of an independent Kurdistan state in northern Iraq, which might create secessionist sentiments in Turkish Kurds. Bush at least did tell Barzani that Iraq had to remain a united country. Secretary of State Condi Rice pressed Barzani on behalf of the Turks to see that the PKK (a Marxist Kurdish revolutionary party in eastern Turkey) not be allowed to operate freely from or take refuge in Iraqi Kurdistan. The Turks were very upset when the US and the Iraqi government attacked the Turkmen city of Tal Afar in August on the grounds that terrorists operated from it, but seemed unconcerned about what the Turks consider Kurdish terrorists of the PKK establishing themselves in the same region.

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New Word: “To libby”

It seems to me that we may have the makings of a new lexical entry, what with the indictment and resignation of Irving Lewis “Scooter” Libby.

It strikes me that “Libby” is close to “fib.” So “to libby” would have the connotations of “to tell a falsehood.” But it is also close to “lobby.” So the sense would be of lying for the purpose of convincing a large number of persons to adopt some policy that was bad for them. Thus, “the pitchman libbied his audience to buy snake oil as a way to treat their gout.” Or, “the mole libbied the public on behalf of a foreign power.” That could be definition 1 in those numbered entries at Merriam Webster.

The name is also close to “libel.” So it would have an overtone of launching a vindictive smear. “To retaliate for the critical review of the film, the director had the newspaper libbied.” Again, the sense would be that a persuasive falsehood was told, but here with the connotation of ruining someone’s career and reputation. This could be definition 2.

I’m sure there are other dimensions of the verb “to libby” that haven’t yet occurred to me.

The Los Angeles Times argues that the ordeal may not be over for Vice President Richard Bruce Cheney. I agree. A trial of Libby could yet throw up information that would spark further indictments. In fact, I take from Fitzgerald’s language on Friday that he actively envisages such a possibility. Cheney was one of four individuals who told Libby that Valerie Plame Wilson worked for the CIA. And, as Steve Gilliard picks up from Josh Marshall the canny insight that Cheney told Libby specifically that Plame Wilson was in a division in the Directorate of Operations. That is, any knowledgeable government official would immediately conclude that she was not a mere analyst but an undercover field officer.

For more insights:

Beyond Middle East Studies.

Did Bolton out Plame?

Tomdispatch.

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