Thoughts on the Middle East, History, and Religion
Juan Cole is President of the Global Americana Institute
Iraq Update
Bulgaria and the Ukraine began their pull-out of troops from Iraq.
For real news, go to the San Francisco Chronicle.
Robert Scheer points out that Iran yet again won the Iraqi elections. (It should be remembered that Jalal Talabani, the Kurdish leader, is also a close ally of Tehran.)
Private militias continue to threaten stability in Iraq.
posted by Juan Cole @ 12/22/2005 12:40:00 AM
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Winner, October 5, 2007, Scott Nearing Award for Courageous Scholarship (Awarded by the Graduate Students of the Political Science Department, University of Pennsylvania).
Winner, 2005 James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism, Hunter College.
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7 Comments:
For real news, go to the San Francisco Chronicle.
Passed that along to a reporter at the Chron.
Not sure they hear that too often
Reading the article concerning the withdrawal of the Bulgarians, that paragraph left me thinking :
Defence Minister Veselin Bliznakov said Bulgaria would "most likely" continue its military involvement in Iraq by contributing a 120-strong non-combat unit to guard a refugee camp.
How many refugees are there in Iraq actually, that so many troops are needed to keep them ? Why don't we read anything about them in the mainstream medias ? Is it right to have troops managing refugees ? who else help them ?
I think these refugees are the result of the aerial attacks on cities like Falludjah, Tal Afar and god knows which other places. Their number is probably escalating, since the US military recently declared they were using the airforce more often.
Replacing ground troops with aerial forces is a bad solution, it would only create more refugees. The only exit strategy is a complete and fast withdrawal IMO.
Well, Iraq is back in the Axis of Evil and Chalabi and his gang are out of work. What can W do?
I know. Iraq Freedom Act Mark II giving Chalabi $90M to arrange for another Regime Change, helped by another invasion, which will be friendly to Israel and the neo-cons
from the SF article:
"the clear winners were .....religious parties not the least bit interested in Western-style democracy or individual freedom."
hey! they are just like us!
The core Neocons had no illusions about what a protracted occupation or quick elections might yield.
Richard Perle, in Congressional testimony some months ago, completely disowned the course of the Iraq occupation. His plan was to turn full authority over to Chalabi and redeploy US forces elsewhere ASAP. Chalabi would then rule as an "enlightened despot," perhaps like an Ataturk or Suharto, until the society was ready for secular democracy.
It's hard to say whether this would have worked, since Chalabi's faction had few real roots in Iraq, but at least there are precedents for such transformations (Taiwan, Mexico, S. Korea, Indonesia). Nowadays, the difusion of means of communication (cell phones, Internet, tapes, DVDs, etc) make it harder to have a centralized dirigiste rule and easier for sectarian zealots to agitate. It may be that the world will never see another secularist, authoritarian modernization.
The more pertinent question may be whether Iraq's elections don't simply guarantee ungovernability. Neither is it clear that open elections anywhere in the ME region would yield leaders friendly to the US or Israel or even tolerant of local minorities or civil liberties.
AEI and Weekly Standard writers continue to see all kinds of silver linings in the Iraq election outcome. Some insist that Iraqi Shia will definitely not be puppets of Teheran. One can suppose that the US will be able to constrain the Iran connection until the day that oil revenues enable Iraq to manage without US aid. But could Iraq and Iran really become "kissing cousins"?
It should be also noted that Talibani greeted Cheney last week as the "liberator of Iraq" or words to that effect. So if Talibani is a close ally of Iran AND Cheney, what gives? What with the Iranian president providing Washington with "just cause", via his anti-Israel and anti-Semitic remarks, to launch an attack on Iran in the near future, one would almost think that they were all on the same side - Israel's that is.
In addition to Iraq, the Iranians also have a consolidation of influence and support in Afghhanistan, where much of the Western one-third of the country is controlled by warlords friendly to Iran...
Ismail Khan tops the list - he is the warlord that started the Afghan insurgency against the Soviets. The U.S. has worked hard to marginialize the Iranian influence, and many officials boast of Ismail Khan's appointment as Energy Minister in Kabul as a successful operation to weaken him, but the Afghan Shia (especially the Hazara) have ties with Iran going back two decades...
Given Iran's influence in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon and reinforced security partnership with Syria, and its ties to Palestinian militias, it seems like any standoff between the U.S.-Israeli alliance against Iran is going to be quite a problem.
If either the U.S. or Israel attack Iran now they can create a backlash in the entire region... And President Ahmadinejad's verbal pin pricks against Israel are only making him even more popular with those Arabs and Islamists who have always questioned the validity Israeli state... And yes, there are many of them...
It will be interesting to see if the neoconmen in the Bushite and Netanyahu camps can sit back and leave Iran be.
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