New Orleans as a Casualty of Iraq

Bob Harris's take on the story of how resources for levees and floodworks for New Orleans, along with the Louisiana National Guard, were diverted to Iraq, strikes me as balanced and right. The nation made a decision about priorities. Tax cuts and the Iraq War came first. In a world of finite resources, that decision had real-world consequences.

It is so sad to see a city die. Those poor, poor people. I had earlier hoped New Orleans had been spared, but as Billmon explains in the end Lake Pontchartrain was blown into the city and apparently there is no reason to think it will drain back away any time soon. (Last I knew, Bourbon Street was still largely spared, because being the old part of the city it was built on relatively high ground. The water at Bourbon and Canal street was still only knee deep. But the French Quarter without the rest of the city might soon become more of an antiquarian curiosity than a living set of traditions.)

Now there is looting. Maybe Americans can imagine now what Iraqis felt like when US troops stood aside and allowed massive looting, including of precious national heirlooms and the documentary history of the country in modern times. And imagine how mean it was in the midst of such chaos to just dissolve the military and send it home, as though Bush should now dissolve the national guards and send them home.

Events such as the collapse of some Antarctic ice shelves will contribute to a rising of sea levels over the next century.

Spenser Weart explains:

"At least one thing was certain. If temperatures climbed a few degrees, as most climate scientists now considered likely, the sea level would rise simply because water expands when heated. This is almost the only thing about global change that can be calculated directly from basic physics. The additional effects of glacier melting are highly uncertain (scientists were still arguing over how much of the 20th century’s sea level rise was due to heat expansion and how much to ice melting). The rough best guess for the total rise in the 21st century was perhaps half a meter

While such a rise will not be a world disaster, by the late 21st century it will bring significant everyday problems, and occasional storm-surge catastrophes, to populous coastal areas from New Orleans to Bangladesh. More likely than not, low-lying areas where tens of millions of people live will be obliterated. Entire island nations are at risk. Then it will get worse. Even if humanity controls greenhouse emissions enough to halt global warming, the heat already in the air will work its way gradually deeper into the oceans, so the tides will continue to creep higher, century after century."

Global warming is what is causing the seas to rise. Burning carbon-based fuels adds to global warming as surely as smoking leads to lung cancer. Some of your friendly corporations will deny both things to you.

Science fiction is "good to think with" (in the phrase of anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss) on these issues. Look at Kim Stanley Robinson's Forty Signs of Rain, which is reviewed here.

Less elegiac than Robinson's thoughtful novel, and more of an adventure story, John Barnes' Mother of Storms paints a graphic and unforgettable picture of what is likely to happen to the Carribean islands if warming waters produce more and bigger hurricanes.
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Seven Questions: Framing Iraq’s Constitution

My interview on the Iraqi Constitution with Foreign Policy magazine is up at their web site.
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Weblogging Liability

The question of whether Weblog owners are legally liable for comments made by readers could be settled by a current lawsuit.

A lot of forces in US society are very upset about the emergence of an Information Democracy on the Web, and I think the courts will increasingly be invoked to close down free discourse. As regular readers know, rightwing Zionists have tried this tactic with me. The case discussed by the WSJ is complicated by a charge of revealing trade secrets, but that charge may be easy to trump up.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

1000 May be Dead in Kadhimiyah Stampede

The mortar attack by guerrillas on the Shiite worshippers heading for the shrine of Imam Musa al-Kadhim made the crowd nervous and suggestible. Later on, it appears that someone shouted that there was a suicide bomber in the crowd. A stampede ensued that has killed some 800 persons and the death toll is expected to rise to 1000.

The stampede was a highly unfortunate result of nerves, rumor and mob behavior, and this incident is certainly an outcome of the guerrilla strategy of spreading fear and terror in Iraq.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Zalmay Urges Further Revisions of Constitution
Sunnis Accuse Iraqi Government of Massacre
US Bombings Kill 56

The BBC is reporting Wednesday morning that guerrillas fired mortar shells at Shiite worshippers in Kadhimiyah who were going to the shrine of the seventh Imam, Musa al-Kadhim, to commemorate his death. Early reports are that they killed seven and wounded 36.

The guerrillas are attempting to provoke the Shiites to commit violence in turn on Sunni Arabs, in hopes that a civil war will ensue. Such a communal war could make it impossible for the US to remain in Iraq, and impossible for the new government to establish itself, opening the way for a coup by the guerrillas.

The top police officials of the cities of Kirkuk and Baghdad were assassinated on Tuesday. This is not a good sign.

Al-Hayat: U.S. ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad held a news conference Tuesday with Sunni politician Adnan Dulaimi, in which he alleged that it was still possible to introduce amendments into the text of the constitution presented to parliament by the drafting committee, before it is voted on in a national referendum on October 15. He said it was up to the Iraqis to discuss whether amendments could still be made.

Shiite politicians on the drafting committee disagreed vehemently with Khalilzad: "Influential Shiite lawmaker Khaled al-Attiyah, a member of the constitution drafting committee, insisted Tuesday that ``no changes are allowed'' to the draft ``except for minor edits for the language."

Dulaimi himself renewed his rejection of the constitution as presented, saying it did not reflect the aspirations of the Iraqi people. He said the Sunni Arabs would make every effort to see that it went down to defeat in the referendum. He also called for the dismissal of the Minister of the Interior [something like our director of the FBI], Bayan Jabr, because of his political affiliations (he is a member of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq). He alleged that the police commandos of the interior ministry were led by "political parties" (i.e. SCIRI). He also accused these security forces of committing massacres against the Sunni Arabs. Khalilzad stood there at the podium while Dulaimi made these serious accusations against the government to which Khalilzad is an envoy.

This event is truly extraordinary, and I am afraid that it does not reflect well on the job Khalilzad is doing in Baghdad.

What would Americans think about it if the British ambassador in Washington held a joint press conference with an American politician; if the ambassador alleged that the US constitution could be tinkered with by himself, Bush and Hilary Clinton; and stood there while that politician accused Attorney General Alberto Gonzales of having 36 political enemies kidnapped and shot in the head?

Dulaimi had been the head of the Sunni Pious Endowments Board, a governmental body that oversees the religioius properties of Sunnis in Iraq. He became too outspoken for the elected government of Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari, a Shiite, so Jaafari summarily dismissed him in July. In the Saddam period, Sunnis appointed the members of the Shiite pious endowments board, so I suppose it was delicious for Jaafari to put the shoe on the other foot. All this is to say that Dulaimi's objectivity could possibly be compromised.

Al-Jazeera reported pro-constitution demonstrations by Shiite followers of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani on Tuesday. (One big risk of Khalilzad's tampering is that if he does succeed in removing the clause that says that parliament may not pass civil legislation contrary to Islamic law [not "rules" or "standards" as the wire service translations have it, but "Law"]-- then Sistani may turn against the constitution. If he ordered the Shiites to reject it, they would, to a person.

Iraqi Vice President Ghazi al-Yawir, the highest-ranking Sunni politician in Iraq, has criticized the new constitution and warned that it could strengthen ethnic sub-nationalism. He said he has not decided yet whether to ask his own supporters to oppose it in the October 15 referendum.

The official spokesman for the (Sunni) National Dialogue Council, Salih Mutlak, revealed efforts to form a united front to fight the constitution, which would include the nationalist Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. He said, "We are trying to meet with all those who oppose federalism, since the issue cannot be considered solely a Sunni one. It concerns all, including the Shiites who do not want to see Iraq partitioned."

The more secular-leaning politicians in parliament began a new drive to form a secular front, in an attempt to bring down the Shiite religious parties that dominate the government, charging that they had "failed to fulfill the aspirations of the citizens."

Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari criticized the Arab League for having neglected Iraq. (The Arab League consists mainly of Sunni Arab nationalists, many of whom had a soft spot for the Iraqi Baath Party. Behind the scenes, Arab League member governments are extremely disturbed that the new constitution does not specify Iraq as an Arab state any more. Many probably blame this development on Iranian, Shiite influence on Dawa and SCIRI, as well as on US/Israeli pressure [Sunni Arab protesters against the constitution in Iraq are calling it a "Jewish" constitution because they believe it serves the interests of Israel in breaking up and weakening Iraq].

An source in Iraqi security said Tuesday that US bombardment of houses in the Qaim area had left at least 56 persons dead. The US was attempting to target safe houses used by Monotheism and Holy War, the terrorist organization.

Pepe Escobar explores the influence of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani and his Qom context.

Timur Kuran suggests that the theocratic socialist policies of the Shiite Dawa Party are at the root of some of the disputes over the constitution in Iraq.

Al-Sabah: Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr rejected the behavior some of his followers in Najaf, who made inappropriate comments to shopkeepers there. He said that these Shiites were brethren of his followers and should be treated well. He went on to criticize the governor of Najaf for failing properly to provide security to the shrine of Imam Ali, the son-in-law of the Prophet Muhammad. The governor belongs to the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a party that is rival to the Sadrists.

Iraqis are still suffering from severe power shortages.

The general in charge of the US Air Force says that he expects US warplanes to remain in Iraq even after the ground forces are withdrawn.
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New Orleans and Iraq

Nabil Tikriti writes

' This is a posting written by a native New Orleanian and Middle East History professor, Nabil Al-Tikriti:

New Orleans is in awful shape, and it frankly resembles Dhaka, Bangladesh after a cyclone (looting, refugees stranded on highway bridges, air rescues, flooded housing, lack of social order). Much of the damage happened after the hurricane had long passed. The 17th Street Canal levee opened up a 300 ft long breach, and Lake Pontchartrain water is streaming into Lakeview, Mid-City, and points beyond. That breach appears to have been gradually filling the city up with water all day today. The other breach, in the Lower Ninth Ward, appears to have opened up somewhere in the Industrial Canal near Holy Cross, and has completely flooded the Lower Ninth (east of the Industrial Canal) and Arabi. Chalmette was flooded throughout during the hurricane itself, and there were reports that Bywater, Kenner, NO East, Metairie between I-10 and the Lake all got flooded during the storm itself. However, a lot of this flooding news has since been surpassed after the huge breach on the 17th St. Canal. Just in the last hour another report predicted more breaches to come. These are causing flooding up to rooftops, which may mean the end of entire neighborhoods full of old wooden houses.

For those New Orleanian readers, detailed news about various neighborhoods can be obtained at these two websites that I've found most helpful: WWLTV-- and Nola. Each of these has "neighborhood forums" with hundreds of postings about various areas in the region. That's where the real news is, and that's also where the real rumors are flying. Nola.com also has a "breaking news" section which is frequently updated.

Here are some situations, and they are due for change, revision, and correction. Slidell and the MS Gulf Coast (Ocean Springs, Gulfport, Biloxi) seem to have been completely obliterated. Mandeville, St. John's Parish, St. Charles Parish, West Bank, and Grand Isle seem to have been largely spared. Mobile got hit, but not nearly as badly as Mississippi and Louisiana.

I'm personally quite worried about all those wonderful crunchies, service staff, 9th Ward marching band members, drinking buddies, and ragamuffins from Leo's, Mimi's, Frenchman St, the John etc. I'm worried that some of those lovely folks were naive, young, or poor enough to stick it out and get caught in something awful. Time will tell, although I'll always wonder about folks I'll never see again who just happened to move away, or disappeared without anyone knowing why or how.

Other points of interest in New Orleans: Entergy warns that there may be no electricity for some for a month. Local officials don't want evacuees (refugees?) returning for another week. Even if they wanted to come back, it'd be difficult as the only way in or out at the moment seems to be the GNO Mississippi River Bridge. Slidell I-10 twin spans looks like the Florida I-10 bridge last year. No news about I-10 over the spillway, and there was a rumor that the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway was (miraculously) intact.

The Southern Yacht Club has burned down, surreally on an island surrounded completely by water with wrecked boats all around it. The Fair Grounds lost half of its grandstands roof. CBD windows were all blown out, along with building panels. The Superdome roof coating was half peeled off, with a couple of holes opened up in it (that must have been an awful place to wait the storm, without air conditioning and herded into the stands).

The looting has begun. There were crowds swarming over Roberts at Elysian Fields and St. Claude, and legions more at the brand new Wall Mart on Tchoupitoulas (maybe they were all Magazine St. small business owners, but that's a local joke). I remember a couple of years back when righteous folks in the US kept asking me how Iraqis could possibly loot their own facilities. Well, perhaps some might now wonder how Americans can possibly loot their own facilities -- except that somehow it's not surprising at all when order completely breaks down. Even cops are doing it, but then that's a specifically New Orleans touch, if you know what I mean.

It sure is a good thing the Louisiana National Guard is there (in Iraq) to maintain order. A few months back, 6 boys from Houma -- all members of Louisiana's National Guard -- died when their Bradley Armored Vehicle hit a massive IED and flipped over into a canal not unlike the bayous whence they hailed (a nasty corpse recovery detail if ever there was one). Yesterday their own town was nearly crushed by Katrina, and were they around to help? Wouldn't their unit be of use as New Orleans gradually descends into civil chaos? What about strengthening levees? Cutting trees off of the roads? Repairing bridges? We need our guard HERE, NOW -- not killing and getting killed halfway around the world.

Of course, we're all ever proud of our Great Leader's decision to end his precious vacation early to "take command" over relief efforts. That's reassuring, that is. Considering the bankruptcy of the Federal Government (bled dry by -- Iraq and the tax cuts), and the fact that our military response units are away (in Iraq), he's got nothing to play with. Yet play he must. We're a "red" state, and it's put up or shut up time, W.

Since we're on the topic of W and his contributions to local developments, let's ask a couple of further questions. Is global warming really just a figment of liberals' imagination? Are the Kyoto Accords -- designed to slow global warming by slowing emissions -- really such a ridiculous idea? After last year's and this year's (not yet finished!) hurricane seasons, folks from the Gulf Coast had better ask themselves again about the significance of global warming -- that's what they've just lost their houses to. Katrina was not just any hurricane, it set records -- and the warm water temperature of the Gulf fed the monster. The proliferation of hurricanes last year and this year? Same cause. DC policy does matter. Get used to it.

Another policy issue -- locals have heard in recent months that Southern Louisiana is literally sinking into the Gulf, due to the levee system which directs Mississippi river silt further out into the Gulf. Imagine a coastline finger that grow ever longer, but thinner and lower. That's meant to be the buffer region between New Orleans and the Gulf -- and New Orleans is sinking too. Add that to global warming's rising of ocean levels, and you can see where New Orleans is ultimately headed -- underwater. Perhaps that day has arrived. Just before the collapse of the Howard Dean campaign last year, the local contingent was negotiating a statement in support of Louisiana coastal restoration as a campaign plank. Dean's campaign collapsed, and the issue never re-surfaced.

I heard estimates that it would cost something like 16 billion USD to initiate a credible coastal restoration program, as it involves redesigning the whole levee system and river routings throughout Southeast Louisiana. One could rightfully ask whether it's worth so much funding, which would obviously have to be federal-backed due to its scale. It's even more than Boston's "Big Dig", which I think cost just over 10 billion USD when all was said and done (and it leaks!). We've all sat around the past decade and watched Boston suck down all those tax dollars without so much as a peep of complaint. However, it's our turn now America -- quoting the slogan that REALLY built this country, namely "where's mine"? While we're at it, let's compare the figure to another amount -- it costs 4 billion USD every week to keep US troops in Iraq. So, which would you prefer? A month more in Iraq? Or saving New Orleans? For me, the choice is easy -- which would you prefer?

Perhaps the time has come to organize a "Getting Gay With Kids" choirs to "save the swamp" [South Park reference, I recommend it], because Southeastern Louisiana needs its swamps and coastal lands restored. It'll take years, but it needs to be started.

Finally, Mayor Ray Nagin, Senator Mary Landrieu, and Governor Kathleen Blanco all seem to be doing well enough. Nagin's doing his best "every man" imitation, and actually seems to be more worried about the city than his own image. Ditto Blanco -- sensible, sensitive, involved, and quite the grizzled matron. Landrieu seemed like a scared kitten on TV, but she's still young. Meanwhile, Senator David Vitter was quoted saying something to the effect that while he feels pain for everyone's losses, he was relieved to find his own house in Old Metairie is still in good shape. Perhaps that was a bit too honest on his part.

New Orleans is never going to be the same. Are there any bright spots? Well, even they don't seem so bright: contractor jobs as far as the eye can see, jobs for native-born architects, federal funding about to wash over NO's corrupt patronage system, real estate prices to plummet, fewer tourists -- at least in the short term. New Orleans will emerge out of this smaller, poorer, and newer (with awful housing). The party continues, but without the beautiful props. '

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Bourbon Street Unscathed
Christian Terrorists Proved Wrong

Bourbon Street in New Orleans is relatively unscathed. Amid so much death and destruction, that New Orleans did not take the full fury of the storm, and so many lives were spared, is one small consolation.

But let us consider what this means in light of the twisted logic of notorious Christian terrorists Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell (I once saw Falwell advocate assassinating Muammar Qadhafi). Their shameful attack on the United States and its values is below.

In the terms of their logic, and given today's news about Bourbon Street being saved from destruction, only three conclusions are possible.

1. God does not exist.

Or:

2. God does not use natural or man-made catastrophes to punish people for moral failings.

Or:

3. God does not actually object to people having a good time occasionally.

Robertson and Fallwell on 9/11:

" JERRY FALWELL: And I agree totally with you that the Lord has protected us so wonderfully these 225 years. And since 1812, this is the first time that we've been attacked on our soil and by far the worst results. And I fear, as Donald Rumsfeld, the Secretary of Defense, said yesterday, that this is only the beginning. And with biological warfare available to these monsters - the Husseins, the Bin Ladens, the Arafats - what we saw on Tuesday, as terrible as it is, could be miniscule if, in fact - God continues to lift the curtain and allow the enemies of America to give us probably what we deserve.

PAT ROBERTSON: Jerry, that's my feeling. I think we've just seen the antechamber to terror. We haven't even begun to see what they can do to the major population.

JERRY FALWELL: The ACLU's got to take a lot of blame for this.

PAT ROBERTSON: Well, yes.

JERRY FALWELL: And, I know that I'll hear from them for this. But, throwing God out successfully with the help of the federal court system, throwing God out of the public square, out of the schools. The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way - all of them who have tried to secularize America - I point the finger in their face and say "you helped this happen."

PAT ROBERTSON: Well, I totally concur, and the problem is we have adopted that agenda at the highest levels of our government. And so we're responsible as a free society for what the top people do. And, the top people, of course, is the court system.

JERRY FALWELL: Pat, did you notice yesterday the ACLU, and all the Christ-haters, People For the American Way, NOW, etc. were totally disregarded by the Democrats and the Republicans in both houses of Congress as they went out on the steps and called out on to God in prayer and sang "God Bless America" and said "let the ACLU be hanged"? In other words, when the nation is on its knees, the only normal and natural and spiritual thing to do is what we ought to be doing all the time - calling upon God.

PAT ROBERTSON: Amen."

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Nussseibeh: Israel Wall Bars Education in Jerusalem

URGENT APPEAL by Sari Nusseibeh, East Jerusalem

THE "SECURITY" WALL BARS EDUCATION IN JERUSALEM



As Arab schools in East Jerusalem prepare to start the new academic year in early September, nearly seven hundred teachers employed by those schools will be unable to reach their classrooms. With the "security" wall around Jerusalem now reaching its completion, cutting off East Jerusalem from its natural Arab surroundings, and entry restrictions becoming more stringent, teachers who neither have Israeli IDs or special permits will no longer be able to reach their places of work. Many pupils living in those areas will also be prevented from being able to reach their schools.

Privately-run Arab schools in East Jerusalem provide an indispensable venue for the education of Arab pupils, as Israel's government-supported school system in this area hardly covers 20% of education needs. If teachers are not allowed to reach the classrooms, more than eighteen thousand school-aged children will be unable to continue their education in some fifty schools in the area. The social and political implications of such an eventuality speak for themselves.

The Israeli Government has thus far processed and approved the applications of about a hundred teachers, mostly through a "selective" procedure discriminating between some schools and others. This discriminatory policy flies in the face of academic and religious freedom. All schools applying for permits for their teachers should be provided with those permits, without prejudicing real "security" considerations possibly affecting a specific individual.

The present crisis facing education in East Jerusalem is a test for what "the Wall" is about. In opposing the boycott to Israeli academic institutions our principle was that educational institutions should be allowed to flourish and discrimination to learning on political grounds be opposed. Today all those who uphold these principles have the opportunity for positive action. Your support is urgently needed to ensure that this Wall will not cause an education system to collapse. Address your appeal to Israel's Prime Minister and Israel's Minister of Interior to ensure free access to East Jerusalem's schools.

LET THE WALL NOT STAND IN THE FACE OF A CHILD'S EDUCATION.

Jerusalem/25th August 2005


Take a stand. Send your appeal to:

Prime Minister's Office


Ministry of Interior Office '

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Is the US Still Tinkering with the Iraqi Constitution?

A closer observer of the Iraq scene writes in outrage:

Filed at 9:43 a.m. ET

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- The U.S. ambassador suggested Tuesday there may be further changes to the draft constitution to win Sunni Arab approval, saying he believed a final edited draft had not been presented.

' For God’s and our sake, please someone tell them (and yell, if necessary) to leave it alone for now.

The President, for God’s sake, blessed the process to the world and it is over, there being nothing in the TAL, any other law or in common political or jurisprudential sense, which justifies or even remotely supports reopening the document, which, anyway, may already be printed in 5-6 million copies.

They could be on the way to screwing this all up (again), and this time around it WOULD BE VERY CONSEQUENTIAL, if they do. It is they who did not postpone the elections, held under not “free and fair” conditions in parts of several Provinces. It is they who said that The Schedule must be maintained at all costs. So STICK TO YOUR BLOODY SCHEDULE NOW.

What, if anything, is he thinking?

They panicked in the White House in November 2003 and produced the “Agreement on Political Process,” which included the non-starter caucuses and was not an agreement, and the faux sovereignty, which is causing so much of the trouble. They seem to be panicking again. Leaders of “world’s only super-powers” do not panic for all the world to see.

This could now be beyond even nuts. '

COLE: There are indeed rumors flying around of continued changes in the draft of the constitution. All sorts of key issues, from Iraq's Arab identity to human rights are still in flux. Major politicians have left or are leaving the country, which means any tinkering is being done in their absence!

It is the damnedest thing.

Al-Watan (Riyadh) [Arabic link] reports that one Sunni member of the parliamentary drafting committee told it that Washington at one point promised $5 million apiece to tthe Sunnis on the committee if they would sign off on the constitution.

Sy Hersh has also alleged bribery.

It is certainly the case that a lot of money is being spread around for cooperativeness. I was told that one high Iraqi official received one million dollars a month for serving in the interim government of Iyad Allawi, and recently went on a shopping spree at Harrod's in London where he spent $1 million on gifts for his second wife. [We guys object to this sort of thing on two grounds. First, it gives the impression of corruption or at the least overly high living on the part of a public servant. Second, the expectations of wives just shouldn't be raised this way, especially those of second wives.] This politician supports the constitution.
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Sunnis Charge Interior Ministry in Killings
2000 Sunnis Protest
More Corpses Found

Al-Zaman/ AFP: The Iraqi Islamic Party accused elements in the Iraqi ministry of the interior on Monday of having kidnapped 36 citizens from Hurriyah Township in Baghdad and then throwing them in the Tigris after they were bound and shot in the head. The party called on the United Nations, the Arab League and human rights organizations to intervene immediately to protect innocents "in this wounded land." The IIP charges are incendiary and will inflame feelings between Sunnis and Shiites. (The Ministry of Interior is controlled by the Shiite Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq [SCIRI]). The charges echo similar ones made weeks ago by the hard line Sunni Association of Muslim Scholars against the Badr Corps, the paramilitary of SCIRI. That crisis only passed when Muqtada al-Sadr mediated between the two.

2,000 Sunni protesters came out against the Constitution in Tikrit on Monday. On more than one occasion Sunni protesters in recent weeks have chanted their devotion to Saddam Hussein, a step that is probably unwise, but which underlines their rejection of the new, American-installed government.

Iran on the other hand is pleased as punch with the new constitution. Its spokesman hoped for its passage in the October 15 referendum and the formation of a new government in December. In other words, on this issue the Iranians sound eerily like the Bush administration. (The constitution was shepherded through by Grand Ayatollah Sistani, whom the Iranians consider one of their club, despite the friction in the relationship.) Despite a poorly sourced English-language report from an Iraqi newspaper, it is certain that Sistani strongly supports the new constitution, which says that the parliament may pass no civil legislation that contravenes Islamic law.

The police announced Monday that guerrillas had executed 15 Iraqis who were traveling from Samarra to Ramadi. They also found 13 bodies in Fallujah, Saqlawiyah and Karamah in Western Iraq. The US military announced that they had detained 17 persons in sweeps in the troubled northern city of Mosul. There was fierce fighting in one quarter of Mosul on Monday.

Another four were arrested near the largely Sunni Turkmen city of Tel Afar. Tel Afar is now witnessing the most vigorous uprising against the Americans in a year.

Reuters reports further violence on Monday.

"It is to laugh, it is to weep Department": The Iraqi parliament attempted to legislate sanctions against perpetually absent members of parliament on Monday. But they could not legislate on the issue because there were too many absentees.

Apparently the session on Sunday where the drafting committee presented the new constitution to the parliament was only sparsely attended.
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Arab World Concerned about Iraqi Constitution

Arab leaders on Monday expressed consternation that the Iraqi constitution does not identify Iraq as part of the Arab world. Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa echoed these concerns but also said that the present constitution is a "recipe for chaos."

The diction in the constitution is that Iraq is part of the "Muslim world" but then it says that "its Arabs form part of the Arab world." The Kurds objected to Iraq being called part of the Arab world, since they deeply resent the Baath Party's attempt to Arabize them. I figure Iraq is about 74 percent Arab. Given their performance in the Jan. 30 elections, the Kurds must be at least 20 percent of the population. Then Turkmen are about 3 percent, and Chaldean/Assyrian Christians are another 3 percent (many speak Aramaic, the language of Jesus, at home). The rest are Arabs, whether Sunnis or Shiites. You could have called Iraq an Arab country with that profile.

Morocco is probably 33 percent Berber and it identifies itself as an Arab state (I've met Moroccan Berbers who felt like second-class citizens, but I'm not sure they would object to their country's status the way the Kurds do). Algeria is 25 percent Berber.

There are other member states of the Arab League that do not say in their constitutions that they are Arab states. I found an Arabic text for the 1998 Sudanese constitution on the Web, and although it says Arabic is the official language, it doesn't say Sudan is part of the Arab world. Sudan is only 39 percent "Arab" (i.e. Africans who are native Arabic speakers; some Almanacs contrast the "Arabs" with the "Blacks" in Sudan, but I'm damned if I can see any difference. I'm told that the Sudanese make a distinction between the Yellows and the Blues, but I think a lot of it is ascriptive rather than any obvious racial difference).

Iraqi thinkers such as Sati al-Husri helped to invent the whole idea of Arab nationalism. But it has always been in competition with Iraqi nationalism (often favored by Shiites). And, of course, the Kurds have all along had problems with Arab nationalism, since they speak an Indo-European language.

President Jalal Talabani promised Monday that Iraq would continue to play a vital role in the Arab League.

Most educated Arabs have a map in their minds of the Arab world. It has a hole in it at Palestine, and another at Iraq, because-- from the point of view of Arab nationalists-- these bits of the larger homeland have been put under foreign military occupation. I heard a lower-class Lebanese woman say in a "person in the street" interview on al-Jazeera some time ago, "First Palestine went. Now Iraq is gone." What did she mean by Iraq being "gone?" That it is not truly sovereign and is under occupation.

A lot of people in the Arab world believe that the erasure of an Arab identity for the Iraqi state is part of an American (and Israeli) plot to detach Iraq from the Arab world, thereby much weakening the latter.
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Schenkman: If Bush had been President in 1861

After Ft. Sumter: "There is much that we can be grateful for. No lives were lost during the attack. And as our vice president has indicated already, this attack indicates that the rebellion against federal authority is in its final throes." [click the link for more at the History News Network.]
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Constitution born by Caesarian Section

So they had the ceremony, and the drafting committee (minus Sunni Arab members) presented the final draft of the permanent Iraqi constitution to parliament on Sunday. But parliament did not vote on it. The Sunni Arabs did not attend. Parliament has abdicated its responsibilities toward the constitution and put it in the lap of the October 15 national referendum. Al-Hayat aptly said that the Iraqi constitution has been delivered by caesarian section. It was plucked from the womb of the drafting committee before the latter could give birth to it naturally. Sunni negotiator Salih Mutlak called it "a minefield."

Al-Hayat: Another member of the drafting committee, Sunni politician Abd al-Nasir al-Janabi, called for international intervention to prevent its being passed into law. He particularly asked for the Arab League and the United Nations to intervene. The Sunni Arab delegates noted that they were promised that the constitution drafting process would be based on consensus, and that this pledge had been the precondition for their involvement in it last June. On Sunday the Shiites and the Kurds reneged dramatically on that promise. Husain al-Falluji said that this constitution contains the seeds of Iraq's bloody partition, something, he said, that would "serve American interests."

US Ambassador in Baghdad Zalmay Khalilzad got carried away and called the Iraqi constitution the best in the Muslim world. Well, we could exclude Turkey's constitution because it is just a slightly reworked version of the Swiss, and so not very indigenous to the Muslim world. But what about, say, Indonesia? He should look at these powerpoint slides on the Indonesian constitution. The latter also guarantees civil liberties and equality before the law, but the Indonesian government, unlike Khalilzad, resisted demands by adherents of political Islam that Islamic law be recognized in it. The new Iraqi constitution contains a provision that no legislation may be passed that contradicts Islamic law. That provision makes the Iraqi constitution read as self-contradictory (since it also celebrates human rights and democracy), and puts it in contrast with that of Indonesia, which contains no such provision. Since 1998 democracy has flourished in Indonesia.

So why must an indigenous achievement such as the 1998-2002 amendments to the Indonesian Constitution be devalued in favor of a deeply flawed and fatally self-contradictory constitution produced in Iraq under twin Iranian and American auspices? Does everything have to be about George Bush?

Why isn't the Indonesian constitution the most progressive in the Muslim world?

Jim Carroll of the Christian Science monitor points out that the Sadr Movement of nationalist Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr rejects the provisions for federalism in the new constitution, as do the Sunni Arabs. He writes:

' "It's not the time for federalism under occupation. It will draw a lot of troubles," says Abbas Rubaie, the political director of the Sadr movement. This stance puts them at odds with the ruling Islamist Shiite parties like the Dawa Party and the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq . . . '

Al-Zaman also reports that Shaikh Hasan al-Zarkani, an aide of al-Sadr, said on Voice of Beirut radio that the constitution's provisions for federalism, since they were enacted under conditions of foreign occupation, would lead to the partition of the country. Therefore, he said, the Sadr Movement rejects the constitution.

The reemergence of Muqada al-Sadr as a force to reckon with is explored by Salih al-Qaisi and Oliver Poole of the Telegraph. They note that, Hizbullah-style, he has concentrated on having his organization provide aid to the people, especially Shiite refugees from the north who come down to Najaf. They say he has denounced federalism as "an Iranian plot" to divide up Iraq (i.e. he is saying that The Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq is an agent of Iran in the breakup of Iraq for Iranian purposes.)

The Associated Press discusses the last-minute changes in the draft of the Iraqi constitution, which were aimed at mollifying the Sunnis Arabs (they failed.) The Sunni Arab clans that opposed Saddam and were punished were mentioned alongside his Shiite and Kurdish victims. "The Saddamist Baath" is condemned but not "the Baath Party". The issue of provincial confederations other than Kurdistan is postponed, and will be dealt with by a statute passed by a simple majority of parliament. (Since Shiites will probably be able to get a simple majority all on their own, this clause postpones a Shiite issue until a Shiite majority can accomplish its will. The Sunni Arabs, being no fools, had wanted a 2/3s majority required on any law authorizing further provincial confederacies.

Reuters reminds us that the guerrilla war continued apace on Sunday, with a major carbombing in Mosul and shootings elsewhere in the country.

Luciana Bohne takes umbrage at the assertion by Mark Reuel Gerecht that women's rights are not crucial to the evolution of democracy. She wonders if ex-CIA white guys' rights are critical to democracy, either, especially in other peoples' countries. (The only thing I would correct is that the new Iraqi constitution does not abolish secular personal status laws for women. It gives every Iraqi the choice of whether to be under civil law in this regard or religious law. The Iraqi parliament has not yet enacted the civil personal status law, but the old one was not so bad for women.)

Basra's academics face a wave of assassination in the southern city of Basra, probably at the hands of Shiite religious militias. You wonder if David Horowitz is happy that more "balance" is being achieved in Iraq history departments, what with the rubbing out of those secular liberal humanist professors.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Some Sunnis

I just heard Bush's audio on CNN concerning the situation in Iraq. I don't know if all the news programs had the same bad feed, but the poor quality of the transmission made Bush sound like Darth Vader, with a faint electronic echo. Sounding like a science fiction villain did not help the credibility of his typically panglossian screed on Iraq.

The pro-War talking point on the collapse of the negotiations over the constitution is that "some Sunnis" oppose the new constitution.

But Reuters says this:

' A Sunni Arab delegate on the drafting committee said all his colleagues on the panel objected to the draft presented to parliament.

"We have not agreed on this constitution. We have objections which are the same as we had from day one," Hussein al-Falluji, the Sunni Arab delegate, told Reuters. '

All of his colleagues. These "colleagues" are the Sunni Arabs who risked their lives to cooperate with the Americans and the new government by serving on the constitution drafting committee. (Bush can't get a break in Iraq; he drew a delegate from Fallujah as the Sunni spokesman?) They are a small minority of a small minority. Most Sunni Arabs support the guerrilla movement. A minority has doubts about it and is more neutral. Sunni Arabs who are actively involved in negotiating with the Shiite/Kurdish/American government can be counted on the fingers of two hands. And even they reject this constitution.

So I think Sunni opposition to the constitution may be considered more or less unanimous. The division is between those who want to fight it at the ballot box and those who want to fight it with bombs.

It isn't just "some Sunnis" who are opposed.

Bush also trotted out his completely wrong version of American history to suggest a parallel to the dissension over the adoption of the American constitution in 1789. Delegates representing twenty percent of the population did not refuse to sign (a number of the delegates who did not sign had just drifted away for business or other reasons, not because of opposition). And a handful who did explicitly refuse, including Elbridge Gerry and George Mason, did so to protest the lack of a Bill of Rights. Their stance was vindicated when one was added later. (I.e. even they were ultimately brought on board).

A sitting president is a kind of historian for the nation. In this regard Bush has gone from being a "C" student to an "F" one.

[Billmon has more on the idiotic parallels being made to the Philadelphia process. His postings on Iraq in recent days are strewn with pearls of insight (scroll down). And he is the first commentator I have seen to understand my worst case scenario for the war in Iraq spinning out of control and taking 20 percent of the world's petroleum off the market.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Gilliard Shoots Down the Iraq/ Malaya Trope

Steve Gilliard drives a silver stake through the persistent hope of some that Iraq's "insurgency" can be defeated as the communists were defeated by the British in colonial Malaya (Malaysia). This comparison always neglects to note that the British had been the colonial power in Malaya since the nineteenth century, with a brief interregnum. They hadn't just shown up suddenly in 1952. They had enormous logistical and intelligence advantages deriving from this long presence. Moreover, the defeat of the mostly Chinese communists in a largely Malay country came just before the British were forced to give the country independence. I was on a radio show with John Mearsheimer and Max Boot one time, and Boot (inevitably and tritely) brought up the British success in counter-insurgency in Malaya. Mearsheimer witheringly pointed out "The British aren't in Malaysia anymore."

See also Bulloch, who points out that the British achieved a 20 to 1 military superiority over the guerrillas in Malaya!
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Arato Guest Editorial

Andrew Arato writes:

' [Il]Legality and [Il]Legitmacy in Iraqi Constitution Making

The constitution being submitted to the Iraqi people for ratification is a product of illegality. It was in my view legal to amend the Transitional Administrative Law to change the date of “writing” a final text from August 15 to August 22. It was however fully illegal on that latter date neither to adopt a completed text, nor to again amend the TAL, nor to dissolve the National Assembly and call for new elections. It is an absurd idea, and probably a novelty in the history of constitution making (allowed by careless drafting of the TAL) that a constitutional assembly need not vote at all, i.e. adopt a draft that is submitted to a population for confirmation. Who is submitting the text to the population and by what right? We don’t know that the National Assembly is submitting or even writing anything until it agrees to something, i.e. votes. Neither a Commission nor a Committee, not its officers, are the National Assembly.

It will be said that revolutionary constitution making, also in the U.S. in 1787 involves illegality. But the work of the U.S. Federal Convention stayed within the rules that body itself established. Moreover, it worked within a legitimate even if not fully legal process. Neither has happened here. It was decided early that the Constitutional Commission expanded by 15 Sunni members will decide by consensus. There was no consensus, and yet the product was submitted to the Assembly. So much for the processes' own, internal legality. As to legitimacy, that could only be achieved through fair compromise and open, accountable voting of duly elected officials, preceded or followed by genuine public discussion. Here there was only secret, elite bargaining, deformed by the exaggerated role of the American ambassador. Even if both were in fact necessary, they had to be redeemed i.e. made legitimate by the fairness of the result, and the public assent of duly elected officials. As to the latter this was considered entirely unnecessary.

As to the former issue, the result is not fair. The reader should make no mistake here. In the Iraqi story in the long term I am most attracted by the plight and the faith of the Kurds. In the middle term, as several articles testify, I was literally inspired by the struggle of the Grand Ayatollah Sistani for his freely elected constituent assembly, which now his own side dared to reduce to a rubber stamp! But in the short term I find the behavior of the Sunni 15 to have been courageous (3 are already dead!) and principled and defensible on abstract grounds, as well as their own interests of course. First, it is irrelevant that they have sympathies for one or another incarnation of the Ba’ath. You make peace with your enemies, and blanket deBaathification in any case was always a huge mistake feeding the insurrection. Second, it is not true that they have not shown readiness to compromise. Before Hakim’s monkey wrench concerning the 9 province mega veto was thrown in, they were ready to agree to a federalism based on provinces (and not ethnicities), and a second chamber, i.e. federalism as the places where such a thing works tend to understand it. They have come to agree, very reluctantly, to the special quasi-confedral status of the Kurd Region as presently constituted. And, as Juan Cole demonstrated, they have a gradualist and constructive attitude on American withdrawal.

They do however have a bottom line and it is this. No deBaathification mandated by the constitution, and the adoption of “federalism” in the sense of new confederal arrangements must be by consensus. If we think deBaathification based on membership and not on criminal liability was always a huge mistake we should have no problem with the first. The analogy here should be, because of the time and sociological dimensions of the regimes to deCommunization (always a bad idea) and not deNazification. As to the second, a shift among state structures is pre-eminently a constitutional matter, or even the primary constitutional matter. It is thus quite wrong to allow a parliament to determine the rules of federation by simple majority, and not by using its constitutional amendment rule requiring consensus (2/3 in the case of the given draft). The latter is what the Sunni delegates demanded. It would have been better in my view to establish and enshrine provincial rather than ethnic federalism right now. But a fair compromise would have been keeping the term federal republic, and deciding latter among the options using the constitutional amendment rule. In fact, even the Sunnis would have been still running a great risk under such a compromise against a Kurdish – Shi’a alliance that could again perhaps get 2/3 of the parliamentary seats.

So now the Iraqis get a result, with the American imprimatur, that is neither legal nor legitimate. As almost everyone among us (see the last three beautiful editorials by the NY Times), with the exception of a few special pleaders for Kurdish and Sh’a interests realizes, this result is also a disaster for the United States. We have openly and demonstratively intervened in someone else’s constitution making, and that is bad in itself. And we did not get the result we wanted, namely consensus, Sunni approval, splitting the insurgency, and that makes our intervention even worse. Worse than a crime: colossal stupidity. The pathetic phone call of the President could not work, because he has nothing over Hakim, as his advisors should have known. Since he announced that he is staying no matter what, what can he threaten this man who has both a mass movement and Iranian support behind him? On the contrary he could threaten Bush with opening up another front against the occupation, but of course he does not have to go so far. Because the Americans insisted on speed, only Hakim can give it to them with his majority in the Assembly. The others can only delay, so it does not matter that the Sunni ideas would be more suited for the American generals trying to deal with the occupation. The politicians in Washington needed something quick, and the Constitution is it.

The only thing the Iraqi voters can do is to vote it down (two out of three Sunni provinces plus Baghdad should have the 2/3 if the vote is fair), elect a new assembly and hope nationalist parties and that assembly can do better, under guess what, the TAL. It is a terrible, precarious road, but alternative, an exclusionary Constitution, with Khalilzad’s impotent marks on it, product of an illegal and illegitimate procedure, aiming at the break-up of Iraq is even worse. '


Andrew Arato

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Sullivan and Tantalus in Baghdad

Reuters Correspondent Luke Baker draws the curtain back on the horrific circumstances in Iraq. Reporters are clearly demoralized, and Western reporters are depending more and more on local staff, who are losing family members and friends to the bombings and shootings. One reporter recently in Baghdad told me that the local journalists are beginning to talk of fleeing, even ones originally very committed to building a new Iraq. I remember the gleeful email I received in May from Yasser Salihee of Knight Ridder--thanking me for linking to one of his excellent articles--and then he went out to buy gas and a US bullet accidentally killed him. From all accounts he had a great deal of promise (he had begun as an academic). His death stands as symbol for the current debacle. The irony is that the worse things get in Iraq, the less we know about how truly bad they are. With the journalists so devastated and little able to move around, we are reduced to listening to Bush administration propaganda.

Andrew Sullivan, who does not have Luke Baker's experience on the ground in Iraq, bizarrely believes that the carbombings, bodies floating in the river, assassinations, ethnic militias, poisoned watermelons, bomb-scarred ice cream shops, shuttered video and liquor stores, and Swiss cheese architecture of Iraq present a "tantalizing" prospect of "success."

It should be remembered where the word "tantalizing" came from. Odysseus describes a scene in Hades in Homer's Odyssey:

'"I also saw the awful agonies that Tantalus has to bear. The old man was standing in a pool of water which nearly reached his chin, and his thirst drove him to unceasing efforts; but he could never get a drop to drink. For whenever he stooped in his eagerness to lap the water, it disappeared. The pool was swallowed up, and all he saw at his feet was the dark earth, which some mysterious power had parched. Trees spread their foliage high over the pool and dangle fruits above his head—pear-trees and pomegranates, apple-trees with their glossy burden, sweet figs and luxuriant olives. But whenever the old man tried to grasp them in his hands, the wind would toss them up towards the shadowy clouds." '

The American Right playing Tantalus, and Iraq as their punishment in Hades, is a more appropriate comparison than Mr. Sullivan perhaps realized. Tantalus was notorious for ever wanting more, for wanting to be god-like, just as the Bushies think that they are manufacturers of reality and the rest of wretched humanity is clay in their divine hands. It should also be remembered that some say Tantalus was punished by the gods for having invited them to a banquet and having served them food into which the remains of his son, whom he had killed, had been ground up. The warmongers' sacrifice of Americans' children for their aggressive policies is a similar sin.

Sullivan says that given US and British forces on the ground, the "insurgency" "cannot win." The problem is that the "insurgency" doesn't have to win in order to succeed. All it has to do is spoil everyone else's successes.

By sabotaging the oil pipelines and the electricity grid that supports them, the guerrillas have reduced Iraqi government revenue by a third to a half of what it otherwise would be. They can go on doing that a very long time. They have put the lives of every senior member of the new government in danger, and have managed to assassinate a whole roster of high-ranking officials, even two members of the new parliament and two members of the constitution drafting committee.

They have kept the new government, and even the US military, from truly controlling the major Sunni Arab cities, and have even made mixed cities such as Baqubah big security problems.

They have increasingly succeeded in provoking deep hatred between Sunni and Shiite Arabs, contributing to a low-intensity, uncoventional war between the two that seemed unlikely as recently as a year ago.

These tactics are proving successful and can be maintained for a very long time. At present troop levels, to use Sullivan's phrase, there is no prospect of the United States military defeating the Sunni Arab guerrilla movement. From all accounts, as well, the British military cannot hope effectively to curb the Mahdi Army in Maysan Province, a province in which the political arm of the Sadrists came to power in the January 30 elections.

This point is important because the Sunni guerrillas' ability to keep Iraq from moving forward-- their ability to act as spoilers-- is a key political asset. The US and British publics are brave and determined, but they deeply dislike spending blood and treasure when there is no visible progress on the ground. And by "progress" they do not mean putting down some words on paper.

Sullivan's twin convictions that Bush will not draw down US troops during the next 3 years, and that Democrats will be afraid to run against the Republicans on the Iraq War are both likely incorrect.

One way or another there will be another round of elections in Iraq in December. US and British troop levels must be maintained until then, because they are needed to lock down the country and keep the guerrillas from disrupting the polling. But after that, leaked British Ministry of Defense documents suggest that both the US and the UK will begin a significant withdrawal of ground troops, going down perhaps to half their current levels by next summer. Bush will do this to take the edge off the Iraq issue in the 06 elections. Of course, a big outbreak of fighting could derail any such plans. But the plans are demonstrably there.

If Iraq still looks much as it does today in September of 2006, and if there are still tens of thousands of US troops there, then Democrats will run against the Iraq war all over the country. And many of them will likely win. By then the US troop death toll could very well be 3,000 or more, with 20,000 wounded. There will be a proliferation of Cindy Sheehans. The Democrats and Independents have already turned against the war. Bush's ability to keep the Republicans aboard is in severe doubt. The distaste for the war will be even stronger if any series of dramatic bombings or assassinations occurs that deeply affects the new government, or if the guerrillas get lucky and take out (God forbid) a large number of US troops in a single strike.

To sum up: The guerrillas "win" simply by keeping the Anglo-American forces and the new elected government from winning. And, no one in the US or the UK is going to put up with the current situation for 3 more years, and Mr. Sullivan is fooling himself if he thinks they will.

Iraq's future is a question mark. In 15 years it could be a rich country recovering from the violence, having retained basic democratic institutions, with a bright future. But it could also be a basket case like the Sudan (which also has petroleum, but couldn't develop it because of a decades-long civil war). Or it could undergo a painful partition, highly expensive in lives and displaced persons. Or a civil war could draw in neighbors like Iran and Turkey and destabilize the eastern reaches of the Middle East for decades, with disastrous consequences for the world economy because of the potential for disruption of oil supplies.

Sullivan's hope is for the long run. John Maynard Keynes said it best. In the long run, we are all dead. Until then, Iraq will go on tantalizing everyone, in the bad, Hades-bound sense of the term.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Sunni Counter-Proposals Appear to Fail
Parliamentary Vote on Constitution Sunday?

Rory Carroll & colleagues at the Guardian reveal that behind the rosy talk, British and American officials are asking "how do you know when you are on the brink of civil war?" and privately comparing the unfolding catastrophe in Iraq to the Lebanese Civil War.

Al-Hayat: Sunni Arab politicians presented their objections to the submitted draft of the constitution on Saturday, as momentum grew among Shiites and Kurds to simply ram it through parliament over the objections of the Sunnis. The Sunni Arabs asked for a rejection of federalism for any group but the Kurds. The revised draft allows parliament to legislate on the issue of provincial confederations, by a simple majority. Since the Shiites probably can keep a simple majority in parliament, this provision just gives them freedom to do as they please.

The Sunni Arabs wanted the issue to require a 2/3s vote. The Sunni Arabs also asked that Islam be the source of law rather than only "a fundamental" source of law. Not all Sunni Arabs involved in the negotiations take this position (Adnan Pachachi does not, e.g.), but apparently a majority of the 17 members of the constitution drafting committee has. It was the Kurds and the Americans who forced the change to Islam being "a fundamental" source for Iraqi law, and the religious Shiite parties only reluctantly gave in. The Kurds and the Americans would not back down on this one.

The Sunni Arabs want an affirmation in the constitution that Iraq is "part of both the Arab and Muslim worlds." At the moment, the constitution says that Iraq is part of the Islamic world, but that only Iraq's Arab community is part of the Arab world. (The Kurds, some 20 percent of the population, are not native Arabic-speakers, but rather speak an Indo-European language).

The Sunni Arabs also object to Kurdish being one of two official languages (including Arabic) for all of Iraq. They want the official status of Kurdish to be recognized only in the Kurdistan confederacy.

Several Sunni Arab cabinet ministers weighed in Saturday with similar demands.

Speaker of the Parliament Hajim al-Hasani, himself a Sunni, said that the draft constitution would be voted on by parliament on Sunday whether the Sunni Arabs accepted it or not. The Sunnis only have 17 seats in the 275-member parliament, despite being up to a fifth of the population of Iraq, and so in an up and down vote they can be steam-rollered by the Shiites and the Kurds. But the bad feelings engendered by this way of proceeding will probably deepen and prolong the guerrilla war, waged largely by Sunni Arabs.

Abbas al-Bayati, a Shiite member of the constitution drafting committee, said Saturday that the US and British ambassadors had put pressure on the (Shiite) United Iraqi Alliance list tochange its position on several pending issues, in order to accommodate Sunni demands.

The Iraqi Interior Ministry arrested Shaikh Ahmad Salman, a member of the Association for Muslim Scholars, on Saturday. The AMS is among the more popular and influential Sunni Arab parties, but it is suspected of links to the guerrilla movement and several of its members have been arrested, while others have been assassinated. The Ministry of the Interior is controlled by the Shiite Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, which many Sunni Arabs see as a proxy for Iranian influence in Iraq.

Usamah Abdul Aziz (al-Najafi), the Minister of Industry, announced a plan for privatizing Iraq's state-owned industries on Saturday. Is this really the right time to be concentrating on this issue?

The US military released a thousand prisoners from Abu Ghuraib on Saturday, apparently as a good faith gesture to encourage the Sunni Arab politicians to compromise on the issue of the constitution.

Craig Smith of the New York Times confirms what had been obvious to close observers-- that the US is denying the new Iraqi army heavy arms for fear they might be turned eventually on US forces. The way the Iraqi army used to keep order in the fractious country was with tanks and helicopter gunships. But the new Iraqi army just has Toyota trucks and Kalashnikov machine guns (and then is blamed by the Americans for not fighting very well!) The sooner we get US ground troops out of Iraq, the better; and then there will be no reason to stop the Iraqi army from ordering proper tanks.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

A Letter from an Iraqi Reader
An acute Iraqi-American observer writes:

' I agree with much of what you wrote in your latest article in Salon.com. However, I think that your genuine good wishes for the iraqi people are superceded by the selfish interest of different groups in Iraq.

Here are a few selfish interests that will play big:

1) Shiites are probably the majority even in Baghdad, or at minimum 50% of the Baghdad population (especially with sadr city's 2 million shiites, and other prominent shiite districts like Sha'ab, Shu'la, Khadhimiya). Almost certainly Baghdad would NOT be included in the shiite federation of the south as envisioned by Al-Hakim and others because then the concept of a federation really doesnt make much sense when you pretty much include all the major cities except for Anbar and provinces to the north. Shiites in Baghdad will not want to be left to being a minority in a "Sunni" federation, and Sunnis in Baghdad will not want to be part of a "shiite" federation. There is a strong possibility then that most shiites in Baghdad would vote AGAINST the constitution over the federalism issue. That would most certainly seal the constitution's fate when combined with votes from Anbar, Sallahudin, and Mosul.

2) You and I might agree that SCIRI is under the thumbs of the mullahs of Iran, but the bottom line is that they do have huge influence in the south. Ironically, in a way it is like the Christian Coalition's over reaching power in US politics. Here you have whackos like Pat Robertson who may not be representative of American Christians in general, but still has influence with the Bush administration. Al-Hakim does NOT represent all shiites, but he does have that kind of influence because he is very well organized in terms of political, social, and security services. While the Christian coalition does not have a militia, they did exploit their superb organizational skills to help bush win the last election. For al-Hakim's supporters, there is no compelling reason for them to give up their selfish interests in the south. So, with regards to your article, I would like to see what you would propose as an incentive for Shiites like al-Hakim to compromise?

3) Baathists....I am all for allowing former Baathists who did not commit major crimes to work in the new Iraqi government, but I think it is quite unreasonable to be forced into letting the baathist party re-establish itself. Baathism was brutal to most Iraqis. For Saleh al-Mutlak to say that the Baathist party is the "best party we ever had" and expect people like me to be sympathetic to him, he has another think coming. When it comes to the Sunnis, they need to get over their feelings that they should be ruling Iraq. In truth, I think most Sunnis simply do not even respect Shiites or Kurds as being worthy of leading iraq. The Sunni view is that Shiites and Kurds did not achieve power independently and are just holding on to the coat-tails of the americans. Why should the Sunnis then take the Shiites seriously. The Sunnis probably think that when America leaves, they can re-assert themselves and rule iraq once again. That is why they are determined to maintain control over the whole of Iraq through a strong central government. That central government will be the vehicle by which they regain their power over the whole of iraq once america is gone. How do you propose to bring them back to reality where they understand that they cannot rule iraq while being less than 20% and not having tanks and helicopters?

4) Iraqis like me are stuck between all these groups. I am religous, but I don't want religion in the constitution. I think federalism is ok as long as it doesnt lead to the break up of Iraq . . . While my wife does wear hijab, I don't want laws in place that force her to. Baathists can go back to work, but I am sickened by people who are heartless and carry the picture of Saddam with pride and forget the suffering he has caused to millions of people. Unfortunately, people with my types of views tend never to be able to hold the same level of influence as the al-Hakim or Sunni Association of Muslim Scholars types. How do you enable moderates to have a stronger say at the table? '

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Baathists Protest in Baqubah

About 5,000 Sunni Baathists demonstrated in Baqubah on Friday against the new constitution, condemning its provisions for loose federalism as a threat to the unity of the country. They also chanted to Bush that they love Saddam Hussein.

Baqubah is about an hour's drive northeast of Baghdad (in normal circumstances) near the Iranian border. It is in the mixed province of Diyala, which has Sunni Arabs, Kurds and Shiite Arabs. Being near to Iran, it is under the influence of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, which used to be based in Tehran and which infiltrated Iraq from that side. Sunni Arabs in Baqubah are therefore a formerly powerful minority elite that has been reduced to being a powerless and despised minority all of a sudden.

Reuters reports that in Diwaniyah on Friday, supporters of Muqtada al-Sadr who demonstrated, carried posters showing Iraq being violently carved up, as a protest against the constitution.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

100,000 Sadrists March Against Constitution

Reuters reports that Muqtada al-Sadr's supporters rallied in 8 cities on Friday, totaling a hundred thousand demonstrators in all. They chanted against the new constitution, which they characterized as an American-authored document. They also complained about lack of electricity and other services. Al-Sadr's followers rallied in Kufa, Najaf,Baghdad (Sadr City), Nasiriyah, Amarah, Basra and elsewhere.

I saw the demonstrations on al-Jazeera and they were in fact just enormous. I have all along said that I think Muqtada al-Sadr is formidable, that those who underestimate him are making a mistake. But these demonstrations are evidence of a quantum leap in Muqtada's organizational capability. He has never been able to bring out more than 5,000 to 10,000 demonstrators before. It is obvious his group has continued to do underground recruiting and networking while he has been relatively quiet and his Mahdi Army mostly put their guns in the closet. This impressive display suggests that it might well be possible for Muqtada to bring out 2/3s of Maysan Province, where he is very influential, against the constitution.

Al-Zaman/ AFP/ DPA: The situation in Karbala grew tense on Friday after one of the aides of Muqtada al-Sadr was killed and four others were wounded in clashes with the Iraqi police in the Qarshi district of the city, near the shrine of Imam Husain (the martyred grandson of the Prophet).

In the city of Kifl, unknown persons burned down the HQ of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI). SCIRI is a rival to the Sadr movement. Pro-SCIRI crowds in Najaf had recently burned down the office of the Sadr Movement in that city.

In Najaf, the al-Zaman correspondent reports only light movement in the streets, with heavy Iraqi police and army presence. American helicopters circled overhead. The city gates have been completely closed and no one is allowed to enter except funeral processions. The gates of the shrine of Imam Ali (son-in-law of the Prophet) had also been locked.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Constitution's Fate Unclear

Al-Jazeera early Saturday morning is reporting that some sort of deal has been reached with the Sunni Arabs on the constitution, but the situation is so muddled that I cannot be sure it is a firm agreement. [It was just talk, coming from speaker of the parliament, Hajim al-Hasani. The saga goes on.]

Dexter Filkins and James Glanz of the NYT reported that at the close of business, Iraq time, on Friday, the Shiites and the Kurds had effectively given up on trying to reach a consensus with the Sunni Arab members of the constitution drafting committee. The Shiites and the Kurds have reached compromises with one another, but were unwilling to mollify the Sunni Arabs. The big sticking points were a Sunni Arab demand for an end to the placing of disabilities on former Baath Party members, and the Sunni Arab opposition to allowing regional confederations to form that had an a priori claim on national resources. I continue to be disturbed at the big place the NYT coverage gives to Ahmad Chalabi and his perspectives. If anyone has been discredited, it is he.

As I said in my Salon.com article on Friday, I do not accept the narrative of the unreasonable Sunnis who would never compromise under any circumstances, or who are just dusted-off Baathists, as some Shiites charge. The criteria being proposed for sharing the oil wealth are that a) the recipients have oil wells in their territory; b) that the recipient is traditionally poverty-stricken or c) that the recipient was injured by Baath Party policies. Under these criteria, the Sunni Arabs are 0 for 3. So instead of getting, say, 20 percent of the petroleum revenues as redistributed by the central government, they are being offered 10 percent. Who could accept such a deal?

The Telegraph's Oliver Poole reports from Baghdad that Sunni negotiator Salih Mutlak said, "The Iraqi people have to give their word now and reject the constitution because this constitution is the beginning of the division of the country and the beginning of creating disturbance in the country." He called on Iraqis to reject the constitution at the polls.

Poole also reminds us that the squabbling over the constitution is an inside- the- green- zone issue. What are ordinary Iraqis exercised about? The heat, lack of electricity, gasoline so dirty and substandard that it ruins automobiles.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

The Iraqi Constitution and the Sunni Arabs

My article in Salon.com is

"The Iraqi constitution: DOA?" Angry and marginalized, Sunnis are threatening to torpedo Iraq's constitution. Disaster looms, and the Bush administration's blunders are largely to blame.

See also Phillip Robertson's touching article in Salon on the death of culture in Baghdad in the conditions of guerrilla war.

And Joe Conason's "Iraq's Unhealthy Constitution, also at Salon.

It is a 21st century irony that a virtual magazine reflects the realities of Iraq, whereas many "real" magazines and newspapers carry Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld fantasies.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Death Toll of 52 as Constitution Talks Fizzle

The Iraqi Parliament did not actually meet Thursday to vote on the draft constitution.

Edmund Sanders of the LA Times reports

" Thursday's talks at the Green Zone residence of Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani broke down around 10 p.m. when Sunni negotiators walked out, according to participants. The Sunnis had been waiting for the powerful Shiite parliamentary bloc to present a counterproposal on federalism but left when the top Shiite leaders didn't show. "What negotiations? There were no negotiations," said Iyad Samaraie, a senior Sunni negotiator. '

Sunni Arabs object to Shiite plans for a provincial confederation in southern Iraq that would lay special claim to that region's oil resources, reducing the Sunni Arab share (Anbar, Salah al-Din and Ninevah lack developed oil fields).

One of my readers noted that some press reports were saying that the national assembly postponed discussion. But since it never met, that cannot be correct. The further discussion of the constitution was postponed by fiat, by the Iraqi executive, in contradiction to a pledge made Monday. As I argued Tuesday, this high-handed way of proceeding, without parliamentary approval or constitutional sanction, suggests that the Iraqi executive has made a kind of coup and is just making it up as they go along.

The New York Times says that President Bush called Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the Shiite leader. But the call seems to have been to no avail if the Shiites did not come to Barzani's home for negotiations. The Americans are annoyed that the Shiites recently came up with this demand for a southern confederation and are urging them to compromise with the Sunni Arabs, fearful that any other course will prolong and exacerbate the guerrilla war. Poor Bush, who once ordered mighty armies into war and tampered with the US Constitution through his Draconian "PATRIOT" act, now is reduced to pleading with a pro-Iranian cleric to please make nice with the ex-Baathists. And he isn't even succeeding in the plea!

The Los Angeles Times says that the Shiites and Kurds may just send the constitution to a national referendum on October 15 and forego a parliamentary vote on it. The precise language of the Transitional Administrative Law does not technically call for a parliamentary vote on the text, saying only that the parliament "shall write" the constitution by August 15 (amended to August 22). The Iraqi government now considers that the constitution has "been written" and so the parliament has discharged its duty. The next step is the popular referendum. I give the text of the TAL on this issue below.

I cannot imagine that the framers of the TAL intended that there be no parliamentary vote on the constitution. In fact, the full "National Assembly" or "Parliament" has not written the constitution. A committee of parliament wrote it in conjunction with 15 Sunni Arab appointees. Especially given the presence of extra-parliamentary members on the committee, I wouldn't consider that the parliament had "written" the constitution unless it formally adopted it. Moreover, the text submitted on August 22 was incomplete. How does that fulfill the constitutional requirements?

In a bizarre twist, the Kurdistan parliament went ahead and approved the text on Thursday. Was that necessary? How can it be desirable that a regional parliament vote on it but not the federal parliament?

The whole procedure bears no resemblance to the rule of law. But as I have noted, if the prime minister, the president and two vice-presidents, and parliament agree on this interpretation, there is currently no institution that could gainsay them. So the interim constitution means what they say it means.

Guerrillas attacked a convoy of cars belonging to President Jalal Talabani about an hour's drive south of Kirkuk on Thursday, killing 8 bodyguards and wounding 15 others. Talabani of course was safe in the Green Zone far to the south. But aside from the tragedy of the bodyguards' deaths and injuries, this incident is likely a deliberate signal to Talabani that he is not beyond the reach of the Sunni Arab guerrillas. I.e. it is like when the Mafia visits your restaurant and leaves a couple of bullets on the table top.

36 bodies were discovered in a shallow river at Aredo, just west of Kut near the Iranian border. The men had all been shot in the head. Mass executions of this sort have been a feature of the unconventional guerrilla war that grips the country.

Guerrillas killed 6 civilians and wounded 15 others in the small town of Abu Sayda just north of Baghdad, when they burst into a cafe and sprayed the people inside with machine gun fire. It was a popular breakfast spot.

A roadside bomb in Hawija killed an Iraqi soldier and wounded three civilians, including a child.

In Baquba, two cars pulled up next to the automobile of a local Shiite caller to prayer (muezzin) and killed him.

Katsuya Okada, president of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) says that if his party defeats Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi in the upcoming elections, he will pull the 500 Self Defense Forces contingent from Samawah in Iraq. He said, ''The Self-Defense Force is doing nothing in Iraq. The most important mission of the Self-Defense Force, supplying water to local communities, is over . . . They are remaining in Iraq only for the political consideration of the Japan-US relationship.' '

Timothy Phelps at Newsday reports on the insecurities of religious minorities in the southern port city of Basra in the face of the rise of puritanical Shiite parties and militias.

Andrew Hammond and Fuad Seif explore the mystical Kasnazani Sufi order, characterized by social tolerance but a cult of body piercing (don't let California find out about it). Kasnazani members have been targeted by Salafi (fundamentalist) guerrillas because they have supported the overthrow of Saddam, though once the order had a relationship to Izzat Ibrahim al-Duri, a high-ranking Baathist who is probably behind much of the violence in Iraq today.

-----

' Article 61.

(A) The National Assembly shall write the draft of the permanent constitution by no later than 15 August 2005.

(B) The draft permanent constitution shall be presented to the Iraqi people for approval in a general referendum to be held no later than 15 October 2005. In the period leading up to the referendum, the draft constitution shall be published and widely distributed to encourage a public debate about it among the people.

(C) The general referendum will be successful and the draft constitution ratified if a majority of the voters in Iraq approve and if two-thirds of the voters in three or more governorates do not reject it.

(D) If the permanent constitution is approved in the referendum, elections for a permanent government shall be held no later than 15 December 2005 and the new government shall assume office no later than 31 December 2005.

(E) If the referendum rejects the draft permanent constitution, the National Assembly shall be dissolved. Elections for a new National Assembly shall be held no later than 15 December 2005. The new National Assembly and new Iraqi Transitional Government shall then assume office no later than 31 December 2005, and shall continue to operate under this Law, except that the final deadlines for preparing a new draft may be changed to make it possible to draft a permanent constitution within a period not to exceed one year. The new National Assembly shall be entrusted with writing another draft permanent constitution. '

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

At Least 34 Dead, Dozens Wounded
Guerilla Platoon Attacks Police in Baghdad
Bloody Shiite on Shiite Clashes in the South

Forty guerrillas in Baghdad launched a coordinated attack on police that included suicide bombings, killing 15 and wounding 56. It is always worrisome when you see a whole platoon of guerrillas operating openly in daylight in the capital. It appears that the guerrillas were targeting a visiting high level police commando from Samarra, but missed him.

In Samarra, guerrillas blew up the house of a police commando and executed one of his relatives. I'd guess this is the guy who was visiting Baghdad, and who was targeted there. I don't know exactly what a "police commando" is, but I suspect he is actually a member of one of the elite Interior Ministry security forces, which have recruited especially from the Badr Corps, a Shiite militia.

In Baquba, guerrillas attacked three sites and killed 8.

As if the problems with the Sunni guerrilla movement weren't serious enough, fighting broke out in six southern cities on Wednesday between followers of Muqtada al-Sadr and those of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq.

In Najaf, Sadrists attempted to reestablish a political office in the city, from which they were expelled by the US Marines last August. Angry crowds of Najafis gathered and attacked the infiltrating Sadrists. The crowd may have included Badr Corps fighters, the paramilitary of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a rival Shiite party. Sadrists are claiming that 8 persons were killed inside the new offices. Another report said that the building had been burned down. Dozens of persons suffered injuries.

Muqtada is threatening to pull the 20 members of parliament who are loyal to him from the national assembly. He is also threatening violence.

In Nasiriyah to the south, clashes between Sadrists and SCIRI left one person dead and 13 wounded.

In Amara, Sadrists occupied the SCIRI offices. When the police came to expel them, they clashed, and a policeman was killed.

There was also Sadrist/SCIRI violence in Basra, Hilla, Samawa and Diwaniyah.

Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari condemned the violence in Najaf and called for an end to the politics of the gun. He said that the attack on the Sadr offices was "unacceptable" and deplored violence in the holy city of Najaf. Al-Jazeerah says he is sending vice-premier Ahmad Chalabi to Najaf to calm the situation. Chalabi has a good relationship with Sadr and has a long working relationship with SCIRI from expatriate days when they were trying to overthrow Saddam.

Bayan Jabr, the Interior Minister, declared a curfew in Najaf and said he was sending security forces. But he is SCIRI and his intervention will be seen as supporting the Badr Corps against the Sadrists.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Steven Vincent Case

I am reposting here with commentary my comments of 8 August about Colin Freeman's story in the Telegraph concerning the murder of art journalist Stephen Vincent in Basra. Below, I also reprint part of the Freeman article. I am clarifying my remarks because Vincent's widow is circulating a misleading characterization of them. I understand the grief of a bereaved widow, and I am not interested in arguing with her. But Vincent does not get a pass on being criticized simply because he is dead (the entire historical profession would collapse in this case). Most of her beefs seem to me to have to do with Mr. Freeman's article, which I referred to as part of the "news consolidation" aspect of this blog.

A recent, informed discussion of the case by David Enders, who is in Basra, makes many of the same points as I did.

The wingnuts are going crazy over this contretemps, which is what is really interesting. I think it is because Vincent is a symbol for the pro-War American Right. He was inspired to his journalism in Iraq by September 11. That was his first mistake. The poor Iraqis had nothing to do with September 11. He was a defender of the Bush administration policies in Iraq, and he was killed in the course of reporting on Shiite religious parties' and militias' influence in Basra. But that influence was a direct result of Coalition policies! The Bush administration appointed the leader of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI, a pro-Iranian Shiite party) to the Interim Governing Council, in July of 2003. The Bush administration decided to allow the Badr Corps militia (SCIRI's paramilitary) to operate as long as its members did not carry heavy weapons in public. How can the US Right then complain that SCIRI is taking over Basra? They already certified the legitimacy of SCIRI and the Badr Corps (both of which fielded candidates in the Jan. 30 elections, winning 9 of 11 provinces with substantial Shiite populations)! I think Vincent is such a controversial figure because he and his death can be read on the left as symbols for the failures of Bush administration policies in Iraq. For the Right, he is a sort of martyr, now beatified and beyond criticism.

So here is the commentary:

Was American journalist Steve Vincent killed in Basra as part of an honor killing? He was romantically involved with his Iraqi interpreter, who was shot 4 times.

Note that I did not say, as Mrs. Vincent assumes, that he was sleeping with his interpreter, Nur al-Khal. That he was romantically involved with her is obvious from his blog, where he calls her "Leyla". I don't have any interest in their personal lives per se, but this relationship may have had something to do with his death and so is fair game for mention.

'If her clan thought she was shaming them by appearing to be having an affair outside wedlock with an American male, they might well have decided to end it. In Mediterranean culture, a man's honor tends to be wrought up with his ability to protect his womenfolk from seduction by strange men. Where a woman of the family sleeps around, it brings enormous shame on her father, brothers and cousins, and it is not unknown for them to kill her. These sentiments and this sort of behavior tend to be rural and to hold among the uneducated, but are not unknown in urban areas.

Everything I have said here is true. Clueless Americans don't understand the principle of gender segregation for the most part, and if they do understand it they are horrified by it. But in large swathes of the world, it just is not considered right for a male to be in the company of an unrelated female. It isn't just a matter of sleeping around, as my wingnut correspondents assume. It is being alone in the company of an unrelated man or woman, and having that be known publicly. Male honor is invested in the protection of the virginity of female relatives, and a conviction that something improper may have occurred would be enough in some instances to cause a vendetta. It is not just a Muslim thing. Many Orthodox Jews and Middle Eastern and Balkan Christians feel the same way.

Clueless Americans don't understand gender segregation, and they don't understand clan honor as practiced in most Arab societies. We American men aren't dishonored in particular if our sisters sleep around, though I suppose in high school it can't be pleasant for a guy to have everyone taunt him that his sister is a slut. But in Arab culture, a brother can't show his face in public if his sister is known to be a slut. He is enraged by this loss of honor, and sometimes he will kill her to wipe out the shame. And, by the way, her father and male first cousins are also shamed, and might conspire in taking action to restore their honor.

It is in fact an extension of a general Greater Mediterranean (please read Fernand Braudel) ethos of honor and honor killings. Mostly we in the West know about the issue of furious husbands killing their wives for sleeping around. In many Mediterranean and Mediterranean-influenced societies (e.g. Latin America), such a "crime of honor" was not even typically punished by the courts in the past. The reason the husband behaves this way is not just, as many Americans imagine, insane jealousy. It is because he believes his honor has been irretrievably damaged.

There is a large literature on honor killings. Look up the phrase at amazon.com if you want to dip into it. The whole system of clans, clan honor, and the investment of male honor in the protection of the chastity of females may be horrific. But it is the norm in much of the world (it operates to some extent in parts of Africa, in South Asia and in Central Asia, as well). Not understanding and respecting it can get you killed when you are out there.

By the way, the US military in Iraq understands all this perfectly well, and has forbidden troops from fraternizing with Iraqi women, and has punished some who did. That is, if you asked a US officer in Iraq about this issue, he will tell you the same thing I have. So how can I be criticized for articulating it?

Finally, the politics of honor and the body of the woman has been inscribed on nationalist politics in the Middle East for decades. Colonialism and foreign conquest has been spoken of as a kind of rape. Having foreign troops in one's country fooling around with its women is seen as symbolic of the humiliation of imperial subjection. This theme is central to the novel Midaq Alley, by Nobel prize winning novelist Naguib Mahfouz. In the novel, a young Egyptian man kills his girlfriend for consorting with Western troops in Cairo during World War II. The incident is a symbol of Egyptian resentment at having been recolonized by Churchill during the war.

Vincent, as an American male going about in public and private with an unrelated Iraqi woman, put himself in the position of being seen as symbolizing this joint sexual and colonial humiliation. It may well have been part of the reason he was killed.

Some correspondents have said it was odd that Vincent was killed but Ms. al-Khal survived. Uh, you can't shoot someone 4 times without intending to kill the person. Her survival is welcome and piece of good fortune, but the intent of the shooters is obvious.

Vincent did not know anything serious about Middle Eastern culture

There are kinds of knowing. Vincent could not read a book about the Middle East written by a Middle Easterner in Arabic. He did not understand Shiite religious law. He saw the surface of things because he was there. He did not know their depths. How many of us would accept an art critic's claim to be an expert on French politics and culture when he could not read French literature and had only been in France off and on for 18 months? When the person could not read President Chirac's speeches in the original when reprinted in the press, could not read French literature or legal writings, and the extent of his knowledge of Catholicism was that he had attended some masses at the Notre Dame? Of course if he was in Paris when a riot occurred, he could describe what he saw, and could interview English-speaking French or use an interpreter to interview some rioters and politicians. He could write knowledgeably about the riot, and could add to our knowledge. But he wouldn't be a France expert.

and was aggressive about criticizing what he could see of it on the surface,

Read his blog.

' and if he was behaving in the way the Telegraph article describes, he was acting in an extremely dangerous manner. '

I.e. he was egregiously breaking the rules of gender segregation and female honor. He should have had a male interpreter.

His death was most unfortunate, and I felt it. He was a colleague of sorts. But he behaved foolishly and frankly ignorantly.



-------

The Telegraph
* Murder of US reporter in Iraq may be linked to marriage pledge
By Colin Freeman
(Filed: 07/08/2005)

British officials hunting the killers of an American journalist in Basra are investigating the possibility that he may have been targeted over his relationship with his Iraqi translator, whom he had pledged to marry.

Investigators believe that Steven Vincent, a freelance reporter who was abducted and shot last Tuesday, may have angered local religious hardliners with his conduct.

The interpreter, Nour Weidi, who was shot four times in the attack, has told investigators from her hospital bed that Mr Vincent planned to marry her so she could settle in the United States.

The investigation is being led by Iraqi police, with British and US officials playing a strong supervisory role.

Speculation over the murder initially focused on the possibility that Mr Vincent was killed after writing articles alleging that Basra's police had been infiltrated by Shia death squads.

The pair were abducted soon after midnight in central Basra. Mr Vincent's body was later found nearby with multiple bullet wounds.

The murder was unusual in that was no attempt was made by his attackers to hold him hostage or make political capital out of his nationality. No group has claimed responsibility, suggesting that terrorist involvement is unlikely, say investigators.

Staff at the Basra hotel where Mr Vincent had lived for three months say the couple's relationship had drawn disapproval and warnings of retribution. But investigators have not commented publicly on whether they think the relationship was sexual, and believe that the case has hidden complexities.

"There is a straight-line connection that people have drawn between Steven Vincent criticising the Iraq police and therefore being murdered," said one investigator.

"But from the evidence so far, including accounts we have had from the Iraqi interpreter, that is not the immediate conclusion we are drawing. It appears to be quite a complex case.

"There is the possibility that this was an attempted 'honour killing', related in some way to the relationship he had with his interpreter. But it does not fit the pattern of honour killings as it is usually the woman who dies."

Mr Vincent, 49, a former art critic who turned to journalism after witnessing the September 11 attacks, had been married to his American wife for 13 years. She is understood to have been aware of his plans to marry Ms Weidi for visa purposes.

Police are now examining Mr Vincent's articles and weblog to trace people he interviewed and wrote about.

He was not afraid to voice pro-US views or get into rows with locals. In one weblog entry, he describes a heated exchange with an Iraqi who looked disapprovingly at his translator because she was not wearing a headscarf.

He seemed relaxed about his personal security. He had no bodyguards, travelled in taxis and made no secret of his disapproval of local Iran-backed Shia militias.

In an opinion piece published in the New York Times the day before his murder, he alleged the existence of a "death car", a white Toyota full of off-duty police who killed political opponents. He also claimed to have received death threats and to have unearthed political scandals.'

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

23 Dead in Violence
Sunni Arabs Threaten Popular Uprising over Constitution

Al-Hayat: Guerrilla violence left 23 Iraqis dead on Tuesday, among them 16 policemen. In addition. guerrillas bombed an American-Iraqi [military] Coordination Center in the northeastern city of Baqubah, leaving 2 Americans dead and as many as 9 other persons wounded. Reuters has some details (some of the casualty figures are too small because this report was filed earlier on Tuesday).

Bush's statement, "This talk about Sunnis rising up, I mean the Sunnis have got to make a choice. Do they want to live in a society that's free, or do they want to live in violence?" was interpreted as a "veiled threat" by Al-Hayat. [This is my gloss, but they seem to be implying that Bush was attempting to cow the Sunni Arabs into accepting the constitution by menacing them with more Fallujahs.]

Al-Hayat: President Jalal Talabani began a last push to convince the Sunni Arabs, the Sadr Movement, and the Iraqi National Accord (led by former interim prime minister Iyad Allawi] to accept the new constitution. The government of Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari said it was unlikely that substantial alterations would now be made to the draft.

This, despite the threats of those who oppose it to mount a "popular uprising" (Intifada) and to "set the streets afire." Sunni Arab politician Salih al-Mutlak predicted that the falsity of the consitution would be demonstrated in the October 15 referendum, which he said it would fail.

Muqtada al-Sadr organized crowds to protest the constitution in several Shiite cities. (Crowds in Najaf have come out in favor of the constitution). Muqtada warned that if it looked as though the country were heading toward a break-up, he could not sit idly by, but would have to take action.

I am told that the situation in Latifiyah, a battleground between Sunnis and Shiites, continues to deteriorate.

Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal warned with regard to disputes over the Iraqi constitution, that sectarian positions “will not lead to anything but the partition of Iraq along sectarian lines.” He called on Iraqi leaders to “let national interests supercede sectarian interests.” The Saudis are very cautious and seldom speak out on such matters, preferring to work quietly and behind the scenes. So when the Saudi foreign minister speaks publicly in these terms, it means that the royal family is terrified that there really will be a civil war in Iraq. As I have tiresomely pointed out, such a war almost certainly would pull the Saudis into it, with catastrophic consequences for us all. Roger Hardy of the BBC points out,"There is no tradition in the Arab world of a successful decentralised state. The fear is that a weak multi-ethnic, multi-confessional state will go the way of Lebanon in the 1970s and 1980s - and descend into civil war."

By the way, Saud al-Faisal correctly points out that a key element in the current high price of petroleum is lack of refining capacity. Since the oil majors are not willing to build a new refinery, why not resolve the problem ourselves. Can't California do one of those fancy referendum items instructing the state to build a refinery? They could insist that its products meet California pollution standards. A refinery would cost $5 billion, but it might or might not be profitable in the medium term (petroleum prices could dip once it was completed), which is why the corporations are not building one. It is highly irresponsible, and hurting the world economy.
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Coup in Baghdad
Unfinished Constitution Presented, vote Delayed

According to the interim constitution, the permanent constitution should have been presented to parliament and passed by August 15. There should have been two readings of it, two days apart, before the vote. Otherwise, parliament should have been dissolved and new elections called. Parliament avoided this fate with a last-minute amendment of the interim constitution, allowed if by 3/4 vote, though the nicety of two readings of the amendment two days apart was dispensed with (arguably, unconstitutionally, though it is a relatively minor affair). The amendment stipulated that the new constitution would by passed by August 22, with other conditions unchanged.

The new constitution, with blank passages, was presented to parliament just before midnight on August 22. But parliament did not vote on it, and a "three-day delay" was announced.

Announced?

The rule of law is no longer operating in Iraq, and no pretence of constitutional procedure is being striven for. In essence, the prime minister and president have made a sort of coup, simply disregarding the interim constitution. Given the acquiescence of parliament and the absence of a supreme court (which should have been appointed by now but was not, also unconstitutionally), there is no check or balance that could question the writ of the executive.

The NYT suggests that the religious Shiites had been planning to use their majority in parliament to simply pass the constitution they liked into law, presenting everyone else with a fait accompli. Somehow they were blocked in this plan by the secular Iyad Allawi bloc and by the Kurds. Having failed in this gambit, they punted, giving themselves 3 days by simple announcement.

Al-Zaman suggests that some parliamentarians, including Allawi and some of the Kurds, actually want parliament dissolved and new elections held, convinced that in the next parliament the religious Shiites will not have such a dominant position. They think that might be a better situation for drafting the constitution. Al-Zaman did not give any quotes or proof that this suggestion is founded in more than speculation.

The unfinished draft of the constitution presented was hammered out by community leaders like Jalal Talabani (the Kurdish president of Iraq) and Abd al-Aziz al-Hakim (Shiite leader of the United Iraqi Alliance parliamentary bloc). The constitution drafting committee in parliament appears to have been superseded. The Sunni Arab delegates complained of being frozen out. A partial deal was struck between Shiites and Kurds. Now they will take 3 days to complete the bargain and then lobby the Sunnis to accept it. ("Have we got a deal for you!") The Sunni Arab members of the drafting committee, not recently consulted on the draft, rejected the entire process and much of the language with some outrage.

It could matter. Any three provinces can reject the constitution by a 2/3s margin in the October 15 referendum. I'd say Anbar and Salah al-Din are in the bag for a no vote at the moment. Since Ninevah, Diyala Baghdad, and Babil are mixed, though, it isn't clear whether the Sunni Arabs can muster a 2/3s "no" vote elsewhere. Maybe if the Turkmen and Chaldeans/Assyrians join them in Ninevah. Or if the Sadrists join them in Baghdad Province. In insisting on this veto privilege, which Grand Ayatollah Sistani always rejected, the Kurds may have hoisted themselves on their own petard-- giving the Sunni Arabs a means of rejecting the loose federalism they advocate.



I don't know how this very loose federal system will work, and the granting of the right to form provincial federations seems to me dangerous. And I have a sinking feeling that rigid interpretations of Islamic canon law may end up trumping some of the beautiful human rights otherwise promised.

Back in the real world, all of Iraq's petroleum production was knocked out on Monday.

Al-Sabah gives the Arabic text of the draft constitution presented to the Iraqi parliament just before midnight on Monday, Baghdad time.

Although the wire services say that the preamble was blank in the version presented, al-Sabah gives a long and quite beautiful preamble that recalls Iraq's past greatness (Sumer, Babylonia), and claiming that Iraqis invented writing and the elements of civilization and passed the first law ever formally passed. This assertion may be more or less correct. It also bows to the Shiite religious authorities in Najaf, as well as "leaders and reformers."

Here is my rendering of some key passages:

Article 1: The Republic of Iraq is an independent state and sovereign. The form of government therein is republican and parliamentary, democratic and federal.

Article 2:

Para. 1: Islam is the official religion of state, and is a fundamental source for legislation. [Note: It is not THE source of legislation, though being A FUNDAMENTAL one may amount to much the same thing.

a) No law may be legislated that contravenes the essential verities of Islamic law. [Note: The TAL and earlier drafts said that law may not contravene the verities of Islam. By specifying ISLAMIC LAW-- ahkam al-Islam-- this text enshrines the shariah or Islamic canon law quite explicitly in the constitution and would allow religious jurists to question secular legislation.]

b) No law may be legislated that contravenes the principles of democarcy.

c) No law may be legislated that contravenes the rights and basic liberties enumerated in this constitution.

2. This constitution guarantees the preservation of the Islamic identity of the majority of the Iraqi people, just as it guarantees complete religious rights to all individuals, of freedom of religious belief and practice.

3.Iraq is a country of numerous peoples, religions and rites, and is a part of the Islamic world; and the Arab people within it form part of the Arab nation.

[Article 4 gives full recognition to Kurdish as a national language for official purposes, alongside Arabic.]

5) Law is sovereign. The people are the source of (governmental) powers and of their legitimacy, and exercise it through direct secret ballot and through its constitutional institutions . . .

Article 7 forbids racism, terrorism, excommunicating people [saying that someone who claims to be a Muslim is actually an infidel], ethnic cleansing, excluding these phenomena and anyone who incites to them from Iraq's political pluralism. Especially named in this regard is the "Saddamist Baath Party," which is banned here just as the Nazi Party is in post-war Germany. [The Sunni Arab delegates are complaining about this provision, and the mention of Saddam's name. Many are ex-Baathists.]

Later, the production of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons is forbidden.

10) The [Shiite] holy cities [al-`atabat] and religious shrines in Iraq are a religious and civilizational entity, and the state emphasizes and safeguards their inviolability, and guarantees the free performance of rituals in them.

Article 13 forbids any provincial constitution from including provisions that contravene the national constitution.

18 a forbids stripping any natural-born Iraqi of citizenship under any circumstances. Gee, maybe Bush could learn something here-- he wanted to strip US citizens of their citizenship as part of his 'war on terror.' But no one has more terror than Iraq, and they resisted this temptation. US congressional supporters of Bush's authoritarian so-called "PATRIOT" bill should be shamed by article 18, section A of the Iraqi constitution.

22 guarantees the right of employment to all Iraqis. [Good luck.]

39: Iraqis are free to practice personal status matters in accordance with their religions or rites or beliefs or choice. This will be organized by statute. [Note;: This article is a judge's ultimate nightmare. There will be a civil code governing marriage, divorce, inheritance, alimony, etc, which are called "personal status" matters. But there are also religious codes, whether Shiite law or Catholic canon law. Each individual may choose which law to be under. But what if a Shiite woman wants to be under civil law and her husband wants to be under Islamic law? What if civil law provides for alimony after divorce but Shiite law does not? Which legal code will the family's case be judged under? The man might favor the Shiite court, which will relieve him of alimony. But the woman has chosen civil law, which will award her alimony. How is this dispute over jurisdiction adjudicated?]

AP's translation of some articles is online. But frankly it is so untechnical as to be almost useless with regard to some key paragraphs. It leaves out the bit about no legislation contradicting the laws (akham) of Islam. You can't tell what is going on with regard to personal status law, etc. News organizations ought to hire bilingual lawyers as free-lancers for this sort of task-- translating a constitution is a tricky thing and many technical terms can be deceiving, especially if you have technical terms drawn from both civil and religious law!
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Achcar on Cole Proposals for Withdrawal of US Ground Troops

' Dear Juan,

As a regular reader and occasional contributor to your blog, which I believe is doing a real service to all those concerned with the situation in Iraq, and as an activist in the antiwar movement, I feel it necessary to comment on your last piece of argumentation posted today, August 22, 2005, where you argue at length against the “US Out Now” position. I was surprised to see that, on this score, you are quite a bit softer toward the US occupation of Iraq than Andrew Bacevich, whose piece The Washington Post ran yesterday.

The core of your argument is stated from the beginning when you talk about “the lid the US military is keeping on what could be a volcano.” Using the same “lid” metaphor, I would reply that the lid that the US military is keeping on the Iraqi situation is precisely what makes the pot boil so dangerously and threaten to explode at any moment.

You add: “All it would take would be for Sunni Arab guerrillas to assassinate Grand Ayatollah Sistani. And, boom.” Agreed: that could definitely lead to a disaster. But, aside from the fact that Sistani does not rely for his protection on US or any other foreign troops, do you seriously believe for one second that, if he were assassinated, the presence of US troops would prevent the disaster? You know quite well that, not only is this last assumption highly unlikely, but it is also quite possible to make the opposite point: that such an explosion in the presence of US troops would just make things worse, by greatly increasing the number of casualties when the US military resorts to the “conventional” weapons of mass destruction that it possesses and has not hesitated to use in cases like Fallujah.

The only hope one could have of avoiding the slide into a full-blown, devastating civil war — if Sistani were to be assassinated — is if the forces involved in the political process, i.e. those not already involved in the low-intensity civil war going on in Iraq, were successful in achieving control over their constituencies after an inevitable first outburst of anger, by emphasizing that the perpetrators are either the Baathists or Zarqawi’s followers or the like, that their objective is exactly to ignite a civil war, and that the best reply to that is precisely to pay heed to Sistani’s insistence on the necessity of avoiding any kind of sectarian war.

As for the other argument that you make implicitly, namely that the presence of US troops in Iraq would prevent the shift from a local civil war to “a regional war, drawing in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria and Turkey,” this too is unconvincing. One could more easily argue that it is the very presence of US troops in Iraq, combined with Washington’s provocative policy toward Iran and Syria, that threatens very concretely to ignite a regional war, with all the consequences that you may imagine, including those on the price of oil, the importance of which you underline. Isn’t it already quite clear, by the way, that Washington’s saber rattling toward Teheran is responsible for a great deal of the recent hike in oil prices?

Let me now comment on the “responsible stance” that you advocate in the guise of an “exit strategy.” I’ll take up your main arguments:

1) “US ground troops should be withdrawn ASAP from urban areas as a first step. Iraqi police will just have to do the policing. We are no good at it. If local militias take over, that is the Iraqi government's problem. The prime minister will have to either compromise with the militia leaders or send in other Iraqi militias to take them on. Who runs Iraqi cities can no longer be a primary concern of the US military…”

Strange indeed! If the argument against the “Out Now” position is that the withdrawal of the troops ASAP would lead to civil war, everything in the above paragraph backfires completely.

2,3&4) US ground troops would be withdrawn, in a second phase, while US air bases would be kept and US air forces used in support of the Iraqi government: “we would replicate our tactics in Afghanistan of providing the air force for the Northern Alliance infantry and cavalry.” This, you believe, “could prevent the outbreak of fullscale war.” And than you add: “This way of proceeding, which was opened up by the Afghanistan War of 2001-2002, and which depends on smart weapons and having allies on the ground, is the major difference between today and the Vietnam era, when dumb bombs (and even carpet bombing) couldn't have been deployed effectively to ensure the enemy did not take or hold substantial territory.”

First, starting from the end, I am surprised that, whereas you stress the difference between Vietnam and Afghanistan, you don’t see the much greater one — in terms of the nature of the terrain, of the kind of war (urban vs. rural guerilla), etc. — between Afghanistan and Iraq. From the military point of view, your suggestion of a replica in Iraq of US support to the Northern Alliance troops in Afghanistan is, to be frank, quite nonsensical. The proof of the pudding is that, if anything of the kind could work in Iraq, I am sure the Pentagon would not have waited until they read your blog.

Second, have you considered that the goal of the Bush administration might precisely be to keep US air bases in Iraq for the long haul, and that arguments such as yours are very likely to be used to support this goal? Keeping in mind the nature of the dominant political forces in Iraq, and everything you yourself have written repeatedly about their Iranian connections, do you seriously believe that Iraqi majority leaders would agree to US air bases remaining in their country after the withdrawal of all ground troops? And even if we assumed that to be the case, don’t you see that this would be the best recipe for the continuation of the “insurgency” and for regional conflicts, for that matter?

7&8) “The US should demand as a quid pro quo for further help” — a. “that elections in Iraq henceforward be held on a district basis so as to ensure proper representation in parliament for the Sunni Arab provinces.” ; and b. “that the Iraqi government announce an amnesty for all former Baath Party members who cannot be proven to have committed serious crimes, including crimes against humanity. Former Baathists who have been fired from the schools and civil bureaucracy must be reinstated, and no further firings are to take place.”

First of all, let me state clearly that I am resolutely opposed to the US government demanding any quid pro quo for “help” it could offer the Iraqi authorities: this reminds me of the Godfather’s “offer you can’t refuse.” Second, the procedure of Iraqi elections is no more the business of the US than that of US elections is the business of Iraq. Third, Washington’s imposition of an amnesty for whatever Baathists, aside from its reaching the highest degree of cynicism, would be the best way to replace the frustration of the “Sunni Arab political elites” that you are keen to quench with the frustration of the overwhelming majority of the Kurdish and Shia Arab masses and political elites (except Allawi and his crowd)! Of course, Washington, with its global arrogance, sees no problem with ignoring the basic principles of peoples’ right to self-determination and non-interference of a state in the internal affairs of another — both inscribed in the UN Charter of which the US is the foremost world violator — but surely the antiwar movement shouldn't take a similar position.

For the rest, I think that Bacevich, a Vietnam veteran himself and definitely not a radical, has made very clearly the main commonsensical arguments for the call for bringing US troops home now so that I don’t need to repeat them here. I am sure, Juan, that you are genuinely seeking to elaborate a “responsible stance,” as you call it, which would be in the best interest of both the US and Iraqi peoples. I believe, however, that you are on the wrong track and hope that you will rethink your stance accordingly and join the increasing majority of both populations calling for a total and immediate withdrawal of US troops from Iraq.

With my best regards,

Gilbert Achcar '

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Ten Things Congress Could Demand from Bush on Iraq

The Washington Post notes that the Democratic Party is deeply divided between those who want US troops out now and those who fear the consequences and think it best to stay the course. The article might as well have noted that the Republicans are also divided on Iraq policy.

So the issue isn't a partisan one. It is an American one.

Personally, I think "US out now" as a simple mantra neglects to consider the full range of possible disasters that could ensue. For one thing, there would be an Iraq civil war. Iraq wasn't having a civil war in 2002. And although you could argue that what is going on now is a subterranean, unconventional civil war, it is not characterized by set piece battles and hundreds of people killed in a single battle, as was true in Lebanon in 1975-76, e.g. People often allege that the US military isn't doing any good in Iraq and there is already a civil war. These people have never actually seen a civil war and do not appreciate the lid the US military is keeping on what could be a volcano.

All it would take would be for Sunni Arab guerrillas to assassinate Grand Ayatollah Sistani. And, boom. If there is a civil war now that kills a million people, with ethnic cleansing and millions of displaced persons, it will be our fault, or at least the fault of the 75% of Americans who supported the war. (Such a scenario is entirely plausible. Look at Afghanistan. It was a similar-sized country with similar ethnic and ideological divisions. One million died 1979-1992, and five million were displaced. Moreover, all this helped get New York and the Pentagon blown up.)

I mean, we are always complaining, and rightly so, about the genocide in Darfur and the inattention to genocides in Rwanda and the Congo earlier. Can we really live with ourselves if we cast Iraqis into such a maelstrom deliberately?

And as I have argued before, an Iraq civil war will likely become a regional war, drawing in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria and Turkey. If a regional guerrilla war breaks out among Kurds, Turks, Shiites and Sunni Arabs, the guerrillas could well apply the technique of oil pipeline sabotage to Iran and Saudi Arabia, just as they do now to the Kirkuk pipeline in Iraq. If 20% of the world's petroleum production were taken off-line by such sabotage, the poor of the world would be badly hurt, and the whole world would risk another Great Depression.

People on the left often don't like it when I bring this scenario up, because they dislike oil; they read it as a variant of the "war for oil" thesis and reject it. But working people, whom we on the left are supposed to be supporting, get to work on buses, and buses burn gasoline. If the bus ticket doubles or triples, people who make $10,000 a year feel it. Moreover, if there is a depression, the janitors and other workers will be the first to be fired. As for the poor of the global South, this scenario would mean they are stuck in dire poverty for an extra generation. Do you know how expensive everything would be for Jamaicans, who import much of what they use and therefore are sensitive to the price of shipping fuel? It would be highly irresponsible to walk away from Iraq and let it fall into a genocidal civil war that left the Oil Gulf in flames.

On the other hand, the gradual radicalization of the entire Sunni Arab heartland of Iraq stands as testimony to the miserable failure of US military counter-insurgency tactics. It seems to me indisputable that US tactics have progressively made things worse in that part of Iraq, contributing to the destabilization of the country.

So those who want the troops out also do have a point.

So here is what I would suggest as a responsible stance toward Iraq. Others, including Iraqi politicians, have already suggested most of these things, but I think the below hang together and could avert a tragedy while allowing us to get out.

1) US ground troops should be withdrawn ASAP from urban areas as a first step. Iraqi police will just have to do the policing. We are no good at it. If local militias take over, that is the Iraqi government's problem. The prime minister will have to either compromise with the militia leaders or send in other Iraqi militias to take them on. Who runs Iraqi cities can no longer be a primary concern of the US military. Our troops are warriors, not traffic cops.

2) In the second phase of withdrawal, most US ground troops would steadily be brought out of Iraq.

3) For as long as the elected Iraqi government wanted it, the US would offer the new Iraqi military and security forces close air support in any firefight they have with guerrilla or other rebellious forces. (I.e. we would replicate our tactics in Afghanistan of providing the air force for the Northern Alliance infantry and cavalry.) I concede that this tactic will get some US Blackhawks shot down from time to time, and won't be painless. But it could prevent the outbreak of fullscale war. This way of proceeding, which was opened up by the Afghanistan War of 2001-2002, and which depends on smart weapons and having allies on the ground, is the major difference between today and the Vietnam era, when dumb bombs (and even carpet bombing) couldn't have been deployed effectively to ensure the enemy did not take or hold substantial territory. [I am not advocating bombing civilian neighborhoods of cities; I am talking about intervening in set-piece battles of the sort that will become possible in the absence of US ground troops.]

4) With the agreement of the elected Iraqi government, the US would prevent any guerrilla force from fielding any large number of fighters for set piece battles. Such large units of militiamen attempting to march from Anbar on Baghdad, e.g., would be destroyed by AC-130s and other US air weaponry suitable to this purpose. This tactic cannot prevent the current campaign of car bombings, but it can stop a full-scale Lebanon or Afghanistan-style civil war from erupting.

5) In addition to the service of its air forces, the US would offer targeted military aid to ensure the stability of the Iraqi government. It would help protect key political figures from assassination, and it would give the Iraqi government help in preventing pipeline sabotage so as to increase Iraqi petroleum revenues and strengthen the new government.

6) The US would help rapidly build an Iraqi armor corps. The new Iraqi military's lack of tanks is almost certainly because the US is afraid they might be turned on US troops in a crisis. Once US ground troops are out, there is no reason not to let the Iraqi military just import a lot of tanks and train the new Iraqi army in using them.

7) The US should demand as a quid pro quo for further help that elections in Iraq henceforward be held on a district basis so as to ensure proper representation in parliament for the Sunni Arab provinces. This step is necessary if there is to be any hope of drawing the Sunni Arab political elites into the new government.

8) The US should demand as a quid pro quo for further help that the Iraqi government announce an amnesty for all former Baath Party members who cannot be proven to have committed serious crimes, including crimes against humanity. Former Baathists who have been fired from the schools and civil bureaucracy must be reinstated, and no further firings are to take place. (This step is key in convincing the old Sunni Arab elites that they won't be screwed over in the new Iraq.)

9) Congress must rewrite the laws governing US reconstruction aid to Iraq so as to take out provisions that Iraqis must where possible use US companies or materiel. All of the reconstruction money should go directly to Iraqi firms, so as to help jump-start the economy.

10) The US should join the regular meetings of the foreign ministers of Iraq's neighbors, with Condi Rice in attendance, along with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, employing a 6 + 2 diplomatic track to help put Iraq back on its feet through diplomacy and multilateral aid. This step will require that the Bush administration cease threatening regularly to bomb Tehran or to overthrow the governments of Syria and Iran. For the sake of getting out of Iraq without a world-class economic disaster, the US will just have to deal with the real world, which contains Iran and Syria. The US is now a Middle Eastern Power, not just a New World one, and as such it needs to use Iraq's neighbors to calm their clients within Iraq. This goal cannot be achieved through simple intimidation, more especially since, with half of all fighting units bogged down in Iraq, the US is in no position to follow through on its threats and everyone knows it.

I can't guarantee that these steps will resolve the crisis in the short or even medium term. But I do think that, if taken together, they would allow us to get the ground troops out without risking a big civil war or a destabilization of the Middle East. Once Iraq can stand on its own feet, I am quite sure that the Grand Ayatollah in Najaf will just give a fatwa for complete US withdrawal, and the US will have to acquiesce, as it did in similar circumstances in the Philippines.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Another Constitution Cliffhanger
Muqtada urges Followers to Register to Vote

Al-Zaman: Informed observers close to the negotiations on the constitution are saying that it is likely parliament will be asked for another one-week extension because some issues are still unresolved.

Al-Jazeera says that Adil Abdul Mahdi, the first vice president and a member of the United Iraqi alliance, has predicted that a draft of the constitution will be presented to parliament for a vote on Monday. Other observers were not so optimistic.

Al-Hayat: Ibrahim Jaafari is not ruling out dissolving parliament and calling new elections if the parties cannot agree on a text for the constitution. His spokesman said the step might be taken if there was no further postponement and no constitution was produced.

Jaafari is threatening the members of parliament with losing their jobs. Both the Kurdish and the religious Shiite contingent in parliament will shrink if there are new elections, since the Sunni vote will almost certainly be larger this time. Neither will therefore ever be in as a good a position as they are now to achieve their political goals through domination of the committee writing the constitution. Jaafari is using the threat to push them to compromise and come up with a final text.

The Sunnis on the constitution-drafting committee complained again about their marginalization by the Shiites and the Kurds, who they said were striking a "deal" without them. Salih al-Mutlak threatened a walk-out of the Sunni delegates if they were ignored on the issues of federalism and the distribution of oil profits. The Sunnis also objected to any special place being given to the Shiite religious authorities in Najaf. Some Sunnis were calling for a meaningful delay in submitting the constitution, and for an end to their marginalization, according to the LA Times.

The two main Kurdish parties, according to al-Hayat, have sent delegations to Arab countries seeking to open offices in their capitals that somewhat resemble embassies. If Iraq's federalism becomes so loose that provinces have their own foreign policy, then it will be nothing more than the Commonwealth of Independent States set up by the former Soviet republics that became independent countries. CIS never amounted to much, and the member states are just behaving like countries with their own interests.

Al-Sharq al-Awsat: Muqtada al-Sadr on Sunday urged his followers to register to vote. Some 500 voting registration stations are opening. Registered voters will participate in a mid-October referendum on the Constitution, and in new parliamentary elections in December. Sahib al-Amiri, of the Sadrist Foundation of the Prayer Niche of the Martyr, said, "Sayyid Muqtada al-Sadr asked his supporters to register their names in the rolls for participation in the referendum." Al-Amiri said that the Sadr Movement is awaiting the text of the constitution. He said, "If the constitution is Islamic, we will participate in the referendum. If we judge that it is not, our response will be different.

I can only speculate on Muqtada's motives. But it is possible that he will join efforts by Sunnis to torpedo the constitution if it does not seem Islamic enough to him, or if its federalism is too pronounced. If any three provinces reject it by a 2/3s majority, it will not be approved. Baghdad province contains the capital, which is divided between Sunni Arabs and Shiite Arabs. Muqtada has substantial influence in Shiite East Baghdad. If he can convince his followers there to oppose the constitution, with the rejectionist Sunnis they could help reject it by 66 percent. Because Muqtada sat out the Jan. 30 elections, many Shiites in Baghdad voted for SCIRI of his rival, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim. Since Muqtada rejects federalism and rejects the political process now taking place in what he calls the "shadow of occupation," a voter registration drive for the purpose of defeating the constitution would put him back in the political game. If all Sunni voters, and about a third of Shiite ones, vote no, that would be enough to vote down the constitution in Baghdad Province. This strategy would increase the likelihood of its rejection, since only two other rejectionist provinces would then be required.

Al-Sharq al-Awsat says that the 25 percent automatic representation of women in the parliament has been retained.

Al-Zaman Ansar al-Sunnah, the Sunni terrorist organization that has links to al-Qaeda, has bucked the movement of some Sunni guerrilla organizations to call for voter registration. In a statement on the internet, it demanded that Iraqis boycott the referendum.

The Guardian reveals that Haditha, a small farm town of 90,000 near the Euphrates, has become a stronghold of Ansar al-Sunna and Zarqawi's Monotheism and Holy War. Apparently many small towns of western Anbar province are similar theocratic mini-states. Occasional sweeps by the Marines in the area do no more, it seems, than stir up dust in the air for a few days.

The Communist Party of Iraq is so alarmed at the direction of the country that it is seriously considering going back underground in some part and depending more on covert cells.

Dexter Filkins of the NYT reveals some of the details about which the constitution drafting committee has been arguing. One is whether clerics will sit on the Supreme Court (they do in Afghanistan). Apparently one plan would give them 4 of 9 seats. You can only imagine what US law would look like if 4 of the Supreme Court seats were set aside for Cardinals and televangelists. We'd all have 12 kids and they would be taught "intelligent design" in state schools.

A compromise is being suggested on the issue of whether provinces can confederate, according to Vice-Premier Ahmad Chalabi. He says it is being proposed that no more than 3 provinces can form a confederation together. This step would forestall the emergence of a huge Shiite confederation in the south, of 9 provinces. But Chalabi is typically dismissive of Sunni concerns. "How many votes have they got?" he sneered. Chalabi's commitment to deep debaathification helped persuade the Americans to dissolve the Iraqi army and exclude most Sunnis from public life (since most of them had been Baath Party members at some times in their lives). This exclusion and marginalization has helped push the Sunni Arabs into a deadly guerrilla war against the Shiites, Kurds and Americans.

There may also be a compromise on the distribution of oil and gas income. Profits would be chared among provinces in accordance with their population.

As for the issue of personal status law, one compromise plan is being floated that would allow an Iraqi family to opt out of religious law and be judged by a code of civil law. Such a system would be a nightmare. Wouldn't girls be at risk of being pushed by male relatives into registering marriages and other matters with a religious court? What if a Chaldean Catholic wife wants a divorce in civil court but her husband insists that they go to a Catholic canon law court (which would of course deny her a divorce).

From Filkins' diction, it is clear that he double checked everything Chalabi alleged with other Iraqi politicians. The good news is that Chalabi is willing to talk, and reveals a lot of details. The bad news is that Chalabi is a notorious liar and you cannot believe anything he says. If I had been burned by a source as badly as the NYT was by Chalabi, I'd never talk to him again.

The Iraqi government is worried about Jordan becoming a neo-Baathist base for the guerrilla war against Baghdad. Bush administration figures are always complaining about Syria and Iran not doing enough to stop infiltration of foreign fighters, as a way of putting pressure on Bush foes in Damascus and Tehran. But the elected Iraqi government, which has all the same intelligence Rumsfeld does, never significantly criticizes Iran in this regard. Now we know what they are really worried about-- Jordan! But Jordan is a close US ally and is not publicly chastised by BushCo.

In fact, the attack with Katyusha rockets on US vessels at the port of Aqaba in Jordan shows that the Iraqi war is spreading terrorism in the region. Arab diplomats are very worried about a whole new generation of "Iraqi Arabs", fighters who honed their skills in the Iraq guerrilla war but then fan out to other Arab lands to plan and carry out terror operations. Bush's Iraq misadventure, far from making Iraq a "fly trap" (and ask yourself if you would like some other country to turn your neighborhood into a fly trap for terrorists), is in danger of creating a new generation of highly trained and experienced terrorists, who will go on to attack US targets. US shipping in Aqaba is no longer safe.

Meanwhile, the guerrilla war marched on.

Reuters reports casualties in the ongoing war:

In BAGHDAD, guerrillas set up a booby-trapped car to blow up at a police checkpoint, killing 4 and wounding 7.

In DAWR near Tikrit, guerrillas killed a US soldier with a roadside bomb.

Late Saturday in SAMARRA, guerrillas killed a family of 5. The father had been a guard at a local pharmaceutical company.

Other individuals were killed, captured or wounded. See Reuters for the complete roundup.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Whither Foreign Investment in Iraq under Islamic Law?

Doug Ireland covers how the US media covered the story that the Bush administration acquiesced in enshrining Islamic canon law in the Iraqi constitution.

What is amazing to me is that no one has brought up the issue of commercial law. Islamic law has three parts: 1) ritual acts and personal status (`ibadat or what the human individual owes to God) 2) commerce and other human interactions (mu`amalat or what human beings owe each other); and 3) government regulations beyond the text of revealed law (as-siyasah ash-Shar`iyyah or public law).

If no law may be legislated by parliament that contradicts shariah or Islamic canon law, then may corporations operate in Iraq? Traditional Islamic law does not recognize corporations as persons, and stops with partnerships. Moreover, presumably banks would not be allowed to charge interest on loans. (Islamic banks typically offer depositors something like mutual funds, on which there could be returns but there is also risk of loss). Mr. Bremer's hundred laws are likely to be replaced with fiqh or Islamic law manuals (that discuss things like Islamic contract law. Halliburton had better hire some ayatollahs as advisers.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

More on Iran and Iraq
Or, Part 13 of the Rumsfeld Follies

Anna Badkhen of the San Francisco Chronicle, who has reported from southern Iraq, examines the claims by US officials that Iran is sending bombs to Iraq to be used in the Sunni guerrilla insurgency.

The claim, by Rumsfeld and others, is so ridiculous that the proper response is to fall down laughing and to get off some kicks amidst the hilarity.

Michael O'Hanlon of Brookings is quoted as saying he could imagine the Iranian Revolutionary Guards arming Sunni Salafis to blow up the Badr Corps, the decades-long proteges of the IGR. All I would say is that if so, O'Hanlon has quite an imagination. What is it about Iran that reduces American analysts to making such absurd allegations?

Badkhen notes that the British officer corps in Iraq is extremely skeptical of the American claims. Since they actually deal with Iranian influence in the South, they are much more likely to know whereof they speak.

Iran does not want Iraq to break up, because they are as afraid of an independent Kurdistan as Turkey is. (I am quoted on this issue, which O'Hanlon most unwisely dismisses; it is a very serious question for Tehran.) Iran wants a united Iraqi state with a Shiite predominance. I.e., their strategic interest generally overlaps that of the US, except that they also want US troops out (eventually).
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Sufis condemn Killing of Innocents

Al-Zaman: The Legal Rulings Office of the Central Council for Sufi Orders issued a fatwa or legal ruling on Sunday that forbids the killing of unarmed innocents from among the children of the Iraqi people.

The fatwa or legal ruling clarified, "The gunmen's shedding of the blood of the people, and these sorts of torture against innocents are things that humanity has not witnessed before . . . No Muslim should shed the blood of innocents lest he become a cause for people to return to unbelief."

Sufis are Sunni mystics. Some have sided with the guerrilla movement against the government, while others have been in favor of the new order in Iraq. This statement condemns the killing of innocent noncombatants, but not jihad against the new Iraqi police or army, or against the US military.

The Shiite Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq issued a statement in response that suggested the fatwa was just empty words as long as Muslims were being killed.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

The Prospect of Islamic Law in Iraq

A secular Muslim reader writes on the reactionary implications of implementing Islamic canon law in Iraq:

' Unfortunately Sharia as we know it is implemented to punish the down trodden and the powerless, whose hands are cut off or who are pelted with stones or lashed in public for what is described a "sin committed by people who live in Dar-Al Islam."

Sharia became a major tool to beat down moderate opposition as well as pushing women into the back seat in the corrupt kingdom of the Saudis. Nimeiri of Sudan used it in the 80’s to get a base of support among Muslims and in northern Nigeria zealous Muslims declared Sharia without realizing Sharia is not a solution to what had befallen Muslim communities there.

I am not sure why America is supporting the implementation of Sharia to be imposed from the top to bottom at a time of chaos, killings and mayhem. Corruption is rampant in Iraq, and assuming there is implementation of Islamic canon law, would the punishment start with Allawi, whose cabinet members including his defense minister [are accused of having] pocketed hundreds of millions of dollars--or a man who steals a pack of cigarette from vendor? I am sure the latter is true.

Sharia and a religion that is mixed with politics only protects the powerful and it should be known to the Muslim masses throughout the world that the priority is the rule of law, development of modern society, civil society, the right to assembly and peaceful demonstration, electing public officials, and transparency that encompasses all types of activities.

Bush’s crime family has no problem if Iraq becomes another failed nation as long as the second deadline of Aug 22 becomes “successful”. For that, Bush and his gang would fan the “good news” Iraq is reaching a new milestone! Bush has a dark vision, among which Christianity is a solution for everything that we can think of. '

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Sunni Exit Plan?

Robert Collier of the San Francisco Chronicle has a very important article today on Sunni Iraqi's own exit plan for the US, which is much more nuanced than one might have imagined.

Excerpts:

' "It's impossible for them or us to fix an exact schedule" for troop withdrawal, said Isam al-Rawi, a leader of the Muslim Scholars Association, a group of 3,000 Sunni clerics. "That is not the important thing right now. There are other steps that are much more necessary to calm the situation."

Largely unnoticed amid the U.S. political debate, al-Rawi and other Sunni leaders close to the insurgency have reached tacit consensus over the broad outline of an interim program to reduce the violence, stabilize the country and thus enable the U.S.-led coalition troops to begin a gradual withdrawal. While differences remain on some points, there is wide agreement on these steps:

-- A troop pullout from most urban areas and an end to military checkpoints and raids. "The Americans and British must leave all residential areas," said al-Rawi . . .

-- Overhaul of the Iraqi Army and National Guard . . . Sunni Arabs point out that these two institutions are almost completely composed of members of their ethnic enemies -- the Kurdish peshmerga and the Shiite militias. "These people want to humiliate the Sunni," al-Hashimi said. "The Army and National Guard must be professionalized. They cannot be dominated by members of the party militias . . ."

-- Release of prisoners. The number of Iraqi prisoners in American military custody has grown rapidly in recent months, with as many as 15,000 Iraqis behind bars, according to U.S. estimates. '

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Islamic Law Primary in Iraqi Constitution
Thousands demonstrate against Federalism
Kurdish Masses demand right to Secede

Guerrillas ambushed a group of special police in Baghdad on Saturday, killing two of them. There was also a bombing of police in Fallujah. Altogether, al-Sharq al-Awsat says, some 11 Iraqi police and civilians were killed by guerrilla action on Saturday, and four guerrillas were killed by US and Iraqi troops south of the capital. On Saturday a US soldier was killed by an improvised explosive device.

In Ramadi, 5,000 Sunni Arab demonstrators came out to protest the designation of Iraq as a federal state in the new constitution. [Al-Sharq al-Awsat/ AFP:] There was a similar demonstration in Kirkuk by Arabs and Turkmen against federalism. (A federal Iraq will probably cede Kirkuk to Kurdistan, which will have vast local powers of governance, and the Turkmen and Arabs resident in the city (probably over half the population if taken together) oppose this development.) Many of the demonstrators were Shiite followers of Muqtada al-Sadr. They denounced federalism as likely to lead to the partition and weakening of Iraq, and thus as an imperialist and Zionist plot.

Al-Jazeera is reporting that the Kurds staged big demonstrations on Sunday morning in Irbil, Sulaymaniyah and other cities demanding that their right to "determine their fate" (i.e. secede) be enshrined in the constitution. A Shiite parliamentarian on the drafting committee told al-Hayat that this demand is "a major obstacle" to finalizing the constitution. Al-Sharq al-Awsat suggests that high Kurdish politicians involved in the negotiations on the constitution are signalling that they are willing to give up on this demand.

Sunni Arab delegates on the constitution-writing committee declined to meet with the others on Saturday, leaving the Shiites and the Kurds to negotiate with one another. Sunni Arab opposition to a federated state as opposed to a central government that rules directly appears to be an insuperable obstacle to agreement. Borzou Daragahi of the LA Times reports that the Sunni Arab delegates believe Iran is behind the recent calls by Shiites for a confederation of 9 southern Shiite provinces, a plan they vehemently reject.

Al-Hayat: In one of the major disputes outstanding between the Kurds and the Shiites, on whether Islamic law will be the fundamental source or only one of the sources of Iraqi law, the Shiite religious parties appear to have won out. AFP reports that the reason for this is that the United States has swung around and begun to support the primacy of Islamic canon law.

Al-Hayat writes, "Also, an agreement was reached that Islam is the religion of state, and that no law shall be enacted that contradicts the agreed-upon essential verities of Islam. Likewise, the inviolability of the highest [Shiite] religious authorities in the land is safeguarded, without any allusion to a detailed description. The paragraph governing these matters will specify that Islam is 'the fundamental basis' for legislation, though there will be an allusion to the protection of democratic values, human rights, and social and national values. A Higher Council will be formed to review new legislation to ensure it does not contravene the essential verities of the Islamic religion." Personal status law, concerning marriage, divorce, alimony, inheritance, and so forth, will be adjudicated by religious courts in accordance with the religion or sect to which the individual belongs.

Similar law is present in the constitution of the US-installed "Islamic Republic of Afghanistan". In fact, the text of the Afghanistan constitution is instructive:

In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate

Preamble
We the people of Afghanistan:
1. With firm faith in God Almighty and relying on His lawful mercy, and Believing in the Sacred religion of Islam . . .
3. While acknowledging the sacrifices and the historic struggles, rightful Jehad and just resistance of all people of Afghanistan, and respecting the high position of the martyrs for the freedom of Afghanistan . . .

Chapter I The State

Article 1 [Islamic Republic]
Afghanistan is an Islamic Republic, independent, unitary and indivisible state.

Article 2 [Religions]
(1) The religion of the state of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan is the sacred religion of Islam
(2) Followers of other religions are free to exercise their faith and perform their religious rites within the limits of the provisions of law.

Article 3 [Law and Religion]
In Afghanistan, no law can be contrary to the beliefs and provisions of the sacred religion of Islam . . .

Article 131 [Shia Law for Shia Followers]
(1) Courts shall apply Shia school of law in cases dealing with personal matters involving the followers of Shia Sect in accordance with the provisions of law.
(2) In other cases if no clarification by this constitution and other laws exist and both sides of the case are followers of the Shia Sect, courts will resolve the matter according to laws of this Sect. '

[I take it that article 131 implies that ordinarily personal status law is Sunni, but Shiites will be ruled by Shiite law.] This Afghan constitution was also enacted with the help of Zalmay Khalilzad, then US ambassador in Afghanistan and now US envoy in Iraq. I'm not suggesting that Dr. Khalilzad has a soft spot for Islamic canon law. More probably he is just a pragmatist who recognizes that these provisions reflect the current mood and convictions of the majority in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Al-Hayat: One of the outstanding issues in the drafting of the permanent constitution is how the provinces or regions will share petroleum revenue with the center. Under the old regime, the oil profits from the Kirkuk (north) and Rumaila (south) fields went straight to the central government, and, indeed, into the coffers of the Baath Party.
The Kurds have been insisting that some proportion of the revenues generated by the Kirkuk fields stay in Kurdistan. Various percentages have been floated-- 24%, 17%, 10%, etc. The original plan was to specify the percentage in the constitution. But now it has been decided that the issue will be handled by a subsequent law to be passed by the national assembly, and that the constitution will only say that the sharing of petroleum revenue between province and center will be carried out in accordance with this statute, yet to be enacted.

Al-Hayat: Six armed guerrilla organizations called for greater speed in the registration of voters for the October 15 referendum on the constitution. They appear to be taking advantage of the provision that any three provinces can reject the constitution by a 2/3s vote in each, and planning for three Sunni-majority provinces to cast "no" votes. They said the voter registration is in order "to defeat the American plan." These six groups differ in their strategy from other guerrilla organizations, which oppose the voter registration process and Sunni Arab participation in the referendum at all, and which have been killing Sunni Arabs who urge or help with voter registration.

Ed Wong of the NYT does a groundbreaking and very important article on the attacks on Iraqi Sufi orders by Salafi Sunni fundamentalists. Sunni Islam in Iraq, both Kurdish and Arab, is closely tied to the mystical Sufi heritage. In this it resembles Sunnism in Turkey, Pakistan and Senegal much more than it does most Arab countries. Wong helps complicate the story familiar to Western readers, of Shiites, Sunni Arabs, and Kurds, by focusing on the next level down, of actual religious organizations, and so illumines a significant part of Iraqi society for us.

Although Western readers often associate the guerrilla movements with the Sunni Arab areas, in fact guerrillas operate everywhere in Iraq. It is just that some favor the new status quo and wish to burrow into it, while others reject it. Anthony Shadid and Steven Fainaru report on the way in which militias and militia-infiltrated police forces have established hegemony in cities such as Basra and Mosul. The existence of party-based paramilitaries alongside the police, described here, is similar to the situation in Iran after the Khomeini revolution. Revolutionary Guards and basij volunteers operated parallel to formal government bodies such as the police and army. The Kurdish and Shiite militias have such power because of a vacuum. There are only a few hundred US troops in the Kurdish north, apparently. And only 8,500 British troops are responsible for much of the Shiite south.
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Village Voice on Feith

US foreign policy supports the withdrawal of Israeli colonizers from the Palestinian Gaza Strip. But the outgoing number 3 man at the Pentagon, the son of a founder of the proto-fascist Likud Party, has his own foreign policy and fanatically favors the aggressive expansion of Israel and further expropriation of Palestinian property. It is shameful that he is only now resigning, since he has all along opposed the roadmap to peace of the Bush administration. And while others might have had complex motives for taking out Saddam, the reams of disinformation that issued from Feith's "Office of Special Plans" are easily explained. He saw the Baath regime as a brake on his hopes for a "Greater Israel." As number 3 in the US Department of Defense, moroever, it is hard to see how he could have been insulated from the decisions that led to the torture of Arab prisoners.

If France appointed Jean-Marie LePen as its number 3 in the Ministry of Defense, there would be howls of outrage from the international community. But Feith's commitment to colonizing Palestinians is just as racist a project as any of LePen's programs. If any other American bureaucrat had dared to maintain that it is perfectly all right for one country to colonize another, he would have been considered poison in Washington. But the Likudniks have made themselves respectable in ways that are mysterious to those of us outside the beltway.

See also Doug Ireland at ZNet on the AIPAC case and the conspiracy to get up an Israeli or US attack on Iran, in which Feith's subordinates and contacts have been implicated.

The outing of CIA undercover operative Valerie Plame is also wrought up with protecting the phony rationales for the Iraq War cooked up by people like Feith. Elizabeth de la Varga argues that the Plame leak is in fact prosecutable.
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Visser on Shiite Separatism in Iraq

Reidar Visser's "Shi‘i Separatism in Iraq: Internet Reverie or Real Constitutional Challenge?" [pdf] is now available online. It is a very serious piece of research and lays out the details of an important but little-examined political movement in the south.
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Sistani Opposes Ceding Kirkuk to Kurdistan
Sadrists Demonstrate against Federalism

Al-Zaman: On Friday, a major split became apparent among the Shiite clerics of Iraq on the issue of a federated state. Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani himself maintained a studied silence on the issue. He is reported initially to have opposed the establishment of further confederacies among existing Iraqi provinces, but later said that such matters were best left to the elected representatives of the Iraqi people.

The Sadr Movement of young nationalist Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr brought thousands of demonstrators out in Baghdad. I saw footage on al-Jazeerah and I think the Telegraph is right to say the turnout was in the thousands. Al-Sharq al-Awsat says it is the largest Sadrist demonstration in many months. The rallies were held in the vast Shiite slum of Sadr City (east Baghdad), as well as Kadhimiyah and al-Bayya', all Shiite areas. Fattah al-Shaikh, a parliamentarian close to Muqtada, was among the leaders of the rally. He proclaimed that the latter wanted a united rather than a divided Iraq. He said the demonstration was for the sake of this principle, as well as in favor of the withdrawal of what he called occupation forces. A cleric addressing the crowd, Abdul Zahra al-Suwai`idi, called on the Sunni "Iraqi Islamic Party" to participate in the October referendum on the constitution.

(There was a similar anti-federalism demonstration in the northeastern city of Baqubah by a mainly Sunni crowd of about 1,000.)

In Najaf on Friday a rare meeting took place between Abdul Aziz al-Hakim and Muqtada al-Sadr. Al-Hakim is the leader of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq and of the United Iraqi Alliance coalition that dominates parliament. Both had earlier met individually with Sistani. Not much is known about the substance of these consultations, but Al-Zaman says that informed sources in Najaf maintained that the foremost subject was the constitution.

Sources close to Sistani said that he wished to enhance the importance of Islamic canon law in the constitution, but that he was cautious about the issue of provincial confederations. (Sadr and al-Hakim could both agree on Islamic law, but they oppose each other on the issue of federalism; Sistani seems to be leaning closer to Sadr's position on that issue.)

Some reports indicated that Sistani has formally come out against the incorporation of Kirkuk into Kurdistan, maintaining that the northern oil city is for all Iraqis. A press release attributed to the grand ayatollah's office read:

' "His Excellency [al Sistani] will not allow Kirkuk to be included in Kurdistan since it belongs to all Iraqis regardless of their national, religious and confessional background", said the Iraq news agency, quoting a press release from Sistani's office.

"We have to avoid the squandering of the country's wealth among people who give themselves the right to speak on behalf of Iraq, trying to split the resources according to their personal interests, regardless from where they come from - South or North", the release went on saying. '

Kurdish parliamentarian Mahmoud Osman [Mahmud Uthman] said that the committee charged with drafting the permanent constitution "will convene a meeting of all the blocs in parliament in an effort to resolve contentious issues with finality." He added, "Although affairs are moving slowly, they nevertheless do go forward, and there is a chance that everything will be finished on Saturday."

Kurdish member of parliament Faris Rowshkehray alleged that only two articles remained to be finalized, and that they were being discussed. One pertained to the distribution of natural resources extracted from the provinces, which are to be distributed in some proportion among province, central government, poor regions, and victims of the former regime. The other relates to "how the laws will interact with Islamic essentials."

The Kurds are playing hardball with the US Embassy in Baghdad. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, himself a secular Pushtun Sunni originally from Afghanistan, appears to be acquiescing in the inevitability that the Shiite majority will incorporate Islamic law in some way into the constitution. The Kurds, many of them secularists, traditionalists or mystics uninterested in religious canon law, oppose this move. They have now gone to the Western press in an effort to use US public opinion to pressure the Bush administration to back off support for the shariah or Islamic law in the constitution. But the fact is that all along Grand Ayatollah Sistani has been more influential on the course of post-Saddam Iraqi politics than has Bush.

[Just a piece of pure speculation: You have to wonder if Khalilzad has a special relationship with Grand Ayatollah Ishaq Fayyad, a slightly junior colleague of Sistani, who is also originally from Afghanistan and is extremely pro-American. Fayyad has played an important behind the scenes role in encouraging the US to curb the Sadr Movement, and unlike Sistani will talk to Marine officers. But he is even more insistent than Sistani on the implementation of Islamic law. Is there an Afghan connection running between the Green Zone and Najaf?]

Sistani's statement on Kirkuk could be seen as the introduction of yet another bargaining chip into these negotiations. Will the Shiite religious parties in the end blink on Kirkuk in return for Kurdish acceptance of Islamic law?

The Sunni Arab delegates were far more reserved, and continued forcefully to reject the idea of provincial confederations. Salih al-Mutlak, a Sunni Arab comittee member, warned that if the constitution contains the word "federal," it will be rejected by the provinces in the referendum scheduled for mid-October. (The constitution will fail if three of 18 provinces reject it by a 2/3s margin, and Mutlak is warning that the Sunni Arab provinces could well inflict such a defeat on it.)

Al-Hayat says that both Shiite and Sunni preachers in the mosques attacked federalism. The prayer leader or imam of Umm al-Qura Mosque in Baghdad, Shaikh Ali al-Isawi, condemned "the separation of religion and state . . ." and "any article in the constitution that rends the unity of the nation (ummah) and squanders its riches." He added that Iraq "must be Arab and Islamic, and we must not accept any departure from the essential verities of Islamic law."

In contrast, Shiite politician Muwaffaq Rubai warned that if the constitution did not enshrine the principle of federalism, a civil war might ensue.

Shaikh Abdul Mahdi al-Karbala'i, the representative of Grand Ayatollah Sistani in Karbala, said in his Friday prayers sermon, "It is not important to finish the constitution on schedule. Rather, the important thing is to achieve the unity of Iraq, with regard to territory and people both now and in the future, and to avoid provoking a partition or breakup, and to preserve for us its Islamic identity." He added, "If the constitution does not bring these things in its train, then it will not be welcomed."

[Although Sistani has been silent on some issues, it seems obvious that al-Karbala'i is conveying the sentiments of the Grand Ayatollah here.]

The guerrilla movement in Mosul assassinated 3 Sunni Arabs outside a mosque, apparently for urging that Sunnis participate in the upcoming round of parliamentary elections. Al-Hayat says that they were workers for the Iraqi Islamic Party.

Guerrillas assassinated a city council member for the northern city of Hawijah Friday morning.

US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's apparent belief that Iran might be helping the radical Sunni fundamentalists in Iraq to kill Shiites is frankly nuts. But if there is anything more nuts, it is Iranian Supreme Jurisprudent Ali Khamenei's counter-charge that the US military is secretly blowing things up in Iraq and blaming insurgents, so as to create a pretext to stay in Iraq.

Hey, Ali, the US Department of Defense doesn't want to have to keep 138,000 troops in Iraq. They only probably want to keep a division there (say 20,000 men). So they aren't blowing up all those bombs (including the ones that kill US troops) so that they have to remain overstretched and suffering in Iraq!

And, Don, radical Khomeinist Shiites don't give bombs to radical Salafi Sunnis to use on Iraqi Shiites.

Jehosaphat, can we live in the real world here, folks? It's like the inmates run the asylum.

Michael Schwartz has more on the ironies of the benefits Iran draws from the US misadventure in Iraq.
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Guest Editorial: Amendment and Empire

Andrew Arato

Amendment and Empire

' Constitutional amendment rules are beautiful things. They signify the sovereign right of a political community and its legitimate representatives to fashion and revise their political rules and institutions. Both Jefferson and Madison, though at odds concerning the nature and frequency of desirable constitutional amendments, agreed on this point. Empire, in the modern world, is ugly, precisely because it means the confiscation of state and perforce popular sovereignty. On Sunday, August 14, 15 minutes to midnight, the amendment rule of the TAL, the Transitional Administrative Law was used, in the presence of the American Ambassador, resisting to the end, to strike a blow against empire and imperial imposition.

According to its first project (“Fundamental Law”), introduced on November 15, 2003 in the so-called agreement of the Coalition Provisional Authority and the Iraqi Interim Governing Council, the interim constitution was not supposed to have an amendment rule at all. The whole process was legally speaking imposed by the American occupiers, and they apparently wanted to make sure that their imposition was not going to be tampered with after the supposed “transfer” of “sovereignty”. In the subsequent process, which had an element of negotiations built into it, however distorted by the exclusion of legitimate Sunni partners, the TAL was in any case given an amendment rule. What it provided for however was almost like an unchangeable constitution though, because of the powerful built in vetoes meant to protect above all the beneficiaries of an American-Kurdish side agreement on the structure of the state. It was to take ¾ of all the votes in the National (Constitutional) Assembly elected in January, and the agreement of all three members of the presidential council (probably: one Shi’a, one Kurd, and one Sunni) to amend the TAL. In fact even this rule was not supposed to be used to change certain things, like the over-all time frame of the transition, the fundamental rights and the rights of governorates.

Enter or re-enter empire. The results of the early processes of Sunni exclusion were disastrous, also for the United States. The insurrection was followed by the electoral boycott, which meant an even more radical Sunni exclusion from the National Assembly, which fuelled, in turn the insurrection. The United States shifted gears. From an advocate of Sunni exclusion (de-baathification, destruction of the army, construction of the GC from exile groups mainly, blacklisting Arab nationalist parties etc.) it became a significant force for Sunni inclusion, probably against the impulses of many of the other actors. So far so good, because the result of the earlier imposition had to be somehow balanced by the only possible actor that had sufficient influence on the earlier beneficiaries. The Constitutional Committee of the National Assembly was expanded in a very intelligent way; finally capable and probably (I really hope!) influential Sunni politicians appeared on the scene, interesting debates occurred along different conflict lines.

Still good, though of course imposition is hard to justify unless it is fully self-vitiating. Which it never is. The U.S. government in a true imperial over-reach began setting time- tables, insisting on when the process had to be completed, that the provision of the TAL for a six-month extension, possible till August 1, was off limits. After that date was missed, they spread the quite mistaken (because the total time frame need not be affected) interpretation, that TAL could not be amended on this point at least (Why not? The texts with the dates TAL Art. 61A , and 61F were not enshrined in any way! Thus the ban against extension applied only under the TAL as it was, not as amended). So when the political principals began to meet in something like a genuine round table negotiations format, after that big sandstorm, on the 8th of August, they had a few days to negotiate all the contentious issues, six days exactly if they were to leave zero time for a debate in the constitutional assembly!!!! And yet Ambassador Khalilzad, like the actual ruler of a neo-colonial dependency insisted that they had to do this anyway, within the deadlines. He continued to insist even after Mr. Hakim of SCIRI threw in a major monkey wrench, probably with some Iranian support, with his demand of the 9 province Shi’a mega state with half the people, all the ports, who knows how much of the oil. Now the negotiators needed even more time, but they were supposed to have less.

Even worse, Khalilzad personally and in a highly publicized way attended meetings of the round table, distributed a constitutional draft or something like it, probably twisted arms, cajoled, threatened and who knows what else. He, or any other Federal official could not have even attempted something like this at a constitutional convention of New York state or Texas, and I would bet Puerto Rico or Guam. But he did it in Iraq, without the U.S. press saying one negative word about the matter in the country of Jefferson and Madison- but admittedly also Mac Arthur whose team by the way kept the constitutional imposition in Japan entirely secret!

Well here is a negative word, that the NY Times would never print. But I want to be fair. Khalilzad is the first intelligent American pro-consul in Iraq. He has pushed for many right things (for whatever reason): womens’ rights, Sunni inclusion (he seems to be the main force behind this still), the integrity of Iraq. Amazingly enough given what I think about this war and occupation, I have no disagreement with him on the substance, except perhaps his idea of a delay on the main issue of constituting new regions that later on could be redeemed by simple majority rather than more consensual 2/3 majority votes (I made an error on this in my last editorial, not having the text). But I cannot understand why he does not understand that his procedural role suggests imperial imposition once again, which could be easily used to delegitimate the final product of the efforts, his own, but much more importantly the actually autonomous work of the participants themselves. Because I do not for the moment think that the formulas Khalilzad advocates have a chance merely because he is advocating them, or imposing them for which he does not have the power anymore, but because given the political constellation, the relevant splits, the need for consensus, the only deal possible is more or less around what 1. moderates on all sides can live with and 2. what the Sunni delegates can take home, and use as the bases of a plausible alternative to the insurrection, with sufficient popular and tribal and mosque support behind it. And that is the deal more or less which Khalilzad too is advocating. Let us hope that he has not compromised it too much.

A ray of hope, against imperial appearances, lies in the use of the amendment rule that was never meant to be used. Using the TAL Article 3A to extend the process by a week, in spite of the apparently raging resistance of the U.S. Ambassador who stormed out of a meeting when he heard of the decision, was a small declaration of independence on the part of the Iraqis. This too went unreported by the U.S. press, that focused on the new spin from Crawford, Texas: praise for the Iraqis for using the democratic process so well. For once, Bush (whose last Iran speech almost shipwrecked the whole process!) was right and Khalilzad was wrong. But of course neither gets it. No major Arab country today will submit to imperial rule, its reality or even its appearance. That is what President Chirac tried to explain to the U.S. President, but in vain. The Iraqis moreover understand the stakes, the rules, the process, and they probably hate both the reality of a low scale civil war as well as the prospects of a full blown one. Now that they are in a genuine negotiation process let them finish the job, at their own pace with their own result. Things will be difficult enough afterwards, even without the appearance of yet another imperial imposition. '


Andrew Arato

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Bush Administration and 'Democracratic Process' In Iraq: The Dark Details Revealed

An informed reader writes:

' From the now-unclassified State Department Report to Congress – 15 December 2003:

“On November 15, the CPA and the Governing Council (GC) agreed to and announced a plan to expedite the process of transferring authority to the Iraqi people. [!?] Under this plan, the GC, in cooperation with the CPA, is expected to establish a political process that will lead to a representative transitional national assembly to assume full sovereign powers by July 2004. The agreement also provides, in connection with the wishes of the Iraqi people, for the drafting of a permanent constitution ….”

There are four points:

1. While the “Agreement on Political Process” (which provided for caucuses) was signed by then rotating President of the Governing Council Talabani (probably on the following Monday, because the draft released earlier, it being clearly a rough draft, was worked on over the weekend after the announcement), and announced on Saturday evening, 15 November, in Baghdad, within days, it became clear that there was no agreement, at least with respect to the caucuses, and on 28 November, Grand Ayatollah al-Sistani issued the following statement:

In the Name of Allah, The Compassionate The Most Merciful

His Eminence the Sayyid (long may he live) has some reservations regarding the said plan.

Firstly, it is based on preparing the law of the Iraqi state, for the transitional period, through the Governing Council in conjunction with the occupying power - thus not providing it with legitimacy. For this (legitimacy) to be achieved it must be presented to representatives of the Iraqi people for approval.

Secondly, the mechanism in place to choose members of the Transitional Legislative Assembly does not guarantee the establishment of an assembly that truly represents the Iraqi people. Therefore this mechanism must be replaced with one that guarantees the aforesaid, which is “elections”, so the Assembly will emanate from the desire of the Iraqi people and will represent them fairly without its legitimacy being tarnished in any way. Perhaps “elections” can be organized using rationing-cards and other supplements.



Seal of the Office of Sayyid Seestani - Najaf
3 Shawwal 1424
28 November 2003

2. As I have suspected – and, indeed, much earlier articulated as a theory – it appears possibly to be the case, that the White House, in some concern or even panic at the mounting casualties at the time, determined in November 2003, that “full sovereignty” was an answer, and that, notwithstanding the predictable fate of the caucuses, the Team could not turn back, and proceeded with faux full sovereignty, from a legitimacy point of view, notwithstanding the flaws, even if they were recognized as such. At the same time, President Bush, not being an international lawyer, might well have believed that the interim government under discussion, which was to receive “full sovereignty,” because it was to be selected by a caucus procedure with which he was familiar, would be sufficiently “elected” to be legitimate.

3. The report is dated 15 December 2003, whenever written in fact, and is materially misleading as of that date by not reflecting the matters referred to in point 1 above. Here is the relevant portion of the balance of the Report:

“On November 15 ...[as quoted above] Under this plan, Iraqis will draft a “Fundamental Law” that will formally set forth the scope and structure of the Iraqi transitional administration. Through a system of caucuses … Iraqis will select a broadly representative Transitional National Assembly. This assembly will elect a temporary government to which the CPA will transfer full authority. GC members will be allowed to serve in the transitional assembly, if elected in accordance with the transparent and democratic process [!?] set out in the plan.”

Of course, even if Congress was materially misled (a speed Congressional reader might assume that Iraq’s interim leaders were to be elected), as appears to be the case, what they could or would have done about any of this is a question.

4. The constitution is deemed secondary. There already was an interim government which could have served as generally acceptable administrator of limited powers during a period in which the constitution was drafted and approved in a referendum. The authority, powers and limitations could have been set forth in less than ten pages. The TAL apparently was originally intended to apply to, and limit the conduct of, Iraqi officials who would serve in the next government, and who were to be deemed in effect to be pseudo-elected by reason of the caucuses, and therefore, by process and constitution-like document, would have the capability, from a democratic legitimacy point of view, to receive “full sovereignty.” Without the caucuses, or elections in lieu thereof, legitimacy was left to be provided by a document. Without tracking cause and effect and other things, the necessity for elections for still another transitional government became even more important than it otherwise would have been.

People in the US Embassy continued to work on the caucus procedures and possible implementing institutions through the entire TAL-drafting process, notwithstanding the fact that they had been dead on arrival in November, unless Grand Ayatollah al-Sistani was to be ignored not only with respect to his June 2003 statement that the constitution and referendum must come first, but also with respect to the fundamental deficiency of the caucus process proposed.

It probably also was intended by momentum and other human factors to influence the text of the constitution.

Unfortunately, all is history, by now.

But the final point is not unimportant. This was and is serious stuff, and the “picture” of the five most powerful people in the US Government throwing together in haste basic documents with respect to the future of Iraq, amid confusion with respect to, if not intentional distortion of by some, the facts and applicable legal and political principles, is not a good one.

It is more than understandable that other governments were unwilling to get involved then, and may be (are) reluctant to do so even now.

The last point is the most important of all, and is continuing.

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Health Care for our Troops

Byron Williams reports:

' WITH the percentage of American troops in Iraq who are National Guard or Reserve forces estimated at 40 percent, one in five National Guard members have no health care. The U.S. Government Accountability Office further estimates that this number rises to 40 percent when accounting for junior enlisted men and women. There are approximately 6,100 California National Guard members currently serving overseas in active duty.
State Treasurer Phil Angelides, along with Assemblyman Lloyd Levine, D-Van Nuys, are sponsoring bill AB 1525 that will provide refundable income tax credit of up to $4,000 a year for health insurance premiums to cover Guard members and their families.

"It is shameful to ask these men and women to protect us if we won't protect them against financial risk of sickness and injury," Angelides said in a prepared statement. He added, "It is both patriotic and fair to salute our troops by giving them and their families access to basic, affordable health care." '

What he said.
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More on Amiriya Demonstration

An informed reader writes:

' You had a brief mention today: "Al-Sharq al-Awsat: Hundreds of residents of Amiriyah, a district of Baghdad, demonstrated Thursday in protest against the recent killing of three men there in a joint US-Iraqi military sweep." Reuters also ran the story . . .


I recently wrote to some friends:

"Most Americans - and especially American troops who were only kids at the time - are also unaware that the neighborhood where this happened is the site of the Amiriya air raid shelter that was hit by a US smart bomb in the 1991 Gulf War. The US military at the time admitted they had made a mistake (they thought it was a shelter for Iraqi leaders if I recall right), but they managed to send a smart bomb down the air shaft into the shelter and literally incinerated 400 civilians. I remember thinking right before Baghdad was captured "what's the reaction going to be when US troops capture the Amiriya shelter?" It was and is a symbol of how completely out of touch we as Americans are with the reality of life as Iraqis live it in their own country. The place had become a shrine in Iraq for the past decade, a symbol of unquenchable sorrow and anger at the US during the decade of sanctions, but I doubt if there was a single US soldier who - while no fault of their own, they didn't know they were going to be sent to rule this foreign country - knew what the place meant to Iraqis. It was absolutely manipulated by Saddam as a tool for his political gain, but it also had a genuine life of its own.

"Many, many people in Iraq were truly devastated and angry at what the US did in that shelter and did not believe US explanations or apologies. I just give that as a background to this incident. There is a longer history to Iraqi anger in Amiriya than just the last three years, and every mis-step, every friend and family member killed by an American simply ratchets up the anger and the already wide divide between the sides. A recurring tragedy with deep roots." '

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4 US Troops Killed
Shiites demand Islamic Law

Al-Hayat: At least four US troops were killed in Iraq near Samarra on Thursday, and at least 8 Iraqis. US casualties from a car bomb in Baghdad were reported by eyewitnesses but not yet confirmed by the US military. Guerrillas assassinated a judge in Baghdad. Two bodies were found.

Al-Sharq al-Awsat: Hundreds of residents of Amiriyah, a district of Baghdad, demonstrated Thursday in protest against the recent killing of three men there in a joint US-Iraqi military sweep.

Guerrillas opened fire on the governor of Anbar province, Ma'mun al-`Ulwani, and a group of prominent Sunni clerics, during a meeting they were holding in the large state mosque in Ramadi. Anbar governing council is dominated by the Iraqi Islamic Party, which is encouraging Sunni Arab voters to register and participate in the next parliamentary elections, now scheduled for the end of the year.

Kurdish parliamentarian Mahmud Othman expressed concerns Thursday about whether the final draft of the constitution will be acceptable to the Sunni Arabs.

Billmon has more on the Israeli spy scandal, in which the current deputy chief of mission in Baghdad, David Satterfield, has been implicated. An informed reader writes to say that Satterfield may well have been under orders from higher-up to brief AIPAC officials on sensitive subjects. (If this is true, it would help to explain why he is not slated for any further investigation or sanction.)

Al-Hayat: A source with knowledge of the further negotiations on the constitution says that the Shiites have dropped their demand for a confederation of the 9 southern, largely Shiite provinces in return for 3 concessions from the other groups. The most prominent of these is that Kurds are to give up their demand for the right to decide on their fate [i.e. the right to secede if they so decide], or at the very least to postpone any such referendum for 20 years. The second is an increase in the powers of the provinces in the shadow of a decentralized administrative system of governance, which will approach a loose federalism. The third is amendments to the law of personal status, which guarantee a bigger role for clerics, as well as the inviolability of the Shiite religious authority in Najaf such that the state formally willl abide by the fatwas of the grand ayatollah. Likewise, there would be a council for the protection of the constitution.

The Shiites are determined to create a "Council for the Protection of the Constitution" similar to the one in Iran. [ In Iran, "Laws enacted by the Majlis must be approved by the Council for the Protection of the Constitution." This procedure seems fairly ominous to me; one of its latent functions is to prevent any conflict between civil statute and Islamic canon law.]

The spokesman for the (Sunni Arab) National Dialogue Council, Salih Mutlak, challenged the Kurds to go ahead and secede now if they want to. He said, "Either they should divorce immediately, or they should accept a Catholic marriage, for good." He told AFP, "We are against the principle of federalism. But given the insistence of some parties on implementing it, we have been constrained to insist on three conditions: A two-thirds majority voting for it in the provincial governing council; a two-thirds majority among the voters in a province aiming to confederate; and the approval fo two thirds of the members of the [central] parliament."

Russian President Vladimir Putin called Thursday for a specific timetable for withdrawal of US troops from Iraq. He also suggested again that an international conference be held on the crisis.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Fear Stalks Iraq as "Truce" Ends
US Diplomat in Baghdad Implicated in Israel Spy Scandal

Al-Hayat: The one-day total for deaths related to the guerrilla war in Wednesday ended up being about 55, with dozens injured (probably over a hundred). Iraqis perceived the massive bombings as the end of a "truce" of the past few days, when bombings in the capital had become rarer. The deputy minister of Interior for Intelligence Affairs, Hussein Ali Kamal, confessed that the abilities of the ministry were still "inadequate," which allowed the return of the bombings.

[The second highest ranking US diplomat in Iraq, David Satterfield, has been implicated in the AIPAC spy case. Satterfield is not known for being lock step with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. But I minded two things about this article in the NYT. First, the two persons it quotes on Satterfield, Indyk and Ross, both have a long association with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, which was set up by AIPAC as a think tank to promote Israeli interests in Washington. No critic of AIPAC is quoted in the article; none. Second, the article does not stop and consider how Iraqis are going to feel about this news. I mean, he is the deputy chief of mission, as I understand the description given by the NYT. If he did leak classified information to an Israeli lobby from the US Government, wouldn't Iraqis be worried he was leaking to the Israelis from Baghdad? I mean, the US is always complaining that they are afraid anything they share with the Shiite-dominated Iraqi government goes straight to Iran. I don't know if Satterfield is guilty of anything, but an article about this issue should at least have involved one interview with an independent Iraqi politician about the meaning of it for the latter's country.]

Out in the provinces, there was further mayhem. Guerrillas ambushed 6 Iraqi soldiers near Hawija in the north, killing them all. Another 5 police were killed in Tikrit.

Al-Hayat: The Association of Muslim Scholars announced that one of its members was killed by a gun shot in the region of Khan Bani Saad, 30 miles north of Baghdad. The US military said 5 of its troops had died since Tuesday.

AP reported that guerrillas detonated a car bomb in downtown Fallujah, killing 3 persons, including 2 children.

The paper suggested that US Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Richard Myers' visit to Baghdad was part of an American campaign to pressure Iraqi politicians into finishing the constitution.

The governor of Karbala Province, the site of a Shiite shrine that attracts many pilgrims from Iran, complained Wednesday that some Iranians were peddling drugs and performing services for political forces locally. (That some Iranians in Karbala are gangsters is far more plausible than recent phony Bush administration charges that the Shiite Iranians are helping the Sunni insurgents in the north-central part of the country!) Aqil al-Khuzai called on Iranian pilgrims to obey security laws and to refrain from importing drugs or becoming involved in local politics. (Iraq is expecting tens, perhaps hundreds, of thousands of Iranian pilgrims in coming years, so controlling them is going to be anything but easy. There are enormous pressures from Najaf and Karbala elites, however, to promote the pilgrim trade, which could be worth half a billion dollars a year in the near to medium term).

Al-Zaman/AFP/Reuters: Iraqi government spokesman Laith Kubba said of Wednesday's horrific bombings in central Baghdad, which left over 40 dead and twice as many injured, "Those who commit these crimes are the same ones who specialized in mass murder during the era of the tyrant Saddam." He added, "They have a plan that is composed of two stages. The first is to spread terror and grief serially, in order to break the will of the Iraqi people. The second is to attempt to overthrow the government through spreading chaos in the land."

[Kubba is in part correct and in part in error, and he left out something big. Some of those behind the campaign of car bombings and other acts of terror are the old Baathist power elite (especially military intelligence, elements of the officer corps, and the secret police or mukhabarat). But some of them are Sunni jihadis who would not have been allowed to operate in Baghdad by Saddam. And others were relatively apolitical in the Saddam era but have been galvanized by a conviction that their country is suffering foreign occupation (Anglo-American at least, and perhaps Iranian as well). So it isn't correct to say that the perpetrators are exactly the same group as put all those Shiites and Kurds in mass graves, though there is certainly an overlap. Note how different Kubba's discourse is from that of the Bush administration, which almost never talks about anything but "al-Qaeda" in Iraq. Here we have a high-level Iraqi spokesman, and all he sees in the insurgency are Baathists.

The important thing he left out is that the plan actually has three parts. First the guerrillas force the Americans and British out. Then they destabilize Iraq. Then they make a coup and kill the elected government, along with Sistani and anyone else who gets in their way. Since the guerrillas have so many former military officers and veterans in their ranks, and since they know where thousands of tons of hidden munitions are buried, they believe they still have an edge over the ragtag Shiite militias such as Badr Corps and Mahdi Army. I personally think they would need tanks and helicopter gunships actually to prevail; but maybe they think they can buy some on the world market. The Lebanese militias brought in tanks in the late 1970s. You can't make authentic WW II movies any more because the Sherman tanks left behind in Europe by the US military, which used to be deployed in the films of the 1950s and 1960s, were sold to the third world by arms merchants. People like Michael Ledeen's friend Manuchehr Ghorbanifar, by the way, are in the biz, as are some Israelis, and some of what the arms merchants spring for the black market ends up in very, very unsavory hands.

The Independent reported that the Baghdad morgue received 1100 bodies in July, the highest number in the history of modern Iraq. My understanding is that the families often just quickly bury loved ones killed by bombings, and do not necessarily send them to the morgue (devout Muslims do not embalm, and most often prefer to bury on the day of death.). The paper also noted that this number of Iraqi dead in one month is 2/3s the number of all US troops killed since Bush launched the war.

President Jalal Talabani delegated to one of his vice presidents, Adil Abdul Mahdi, the signing of death sentences against captured terrorists and criminals. Talabani, an old-time socialist, opposes the death penalty. Many idealistic Iraqis had vowed after the fall of Saddam that Iraq would not have a death penalty, as a rebuke of the age of genocide. But the constant violence has forced politicians to talk tough, and at least sometimes to act tough.

AP reports of the Iraqi Islamic Party,

' However, the largest Sunni group, the Iraqi Islamic Party, issued a blistering attack on the drafting committee, accusing it of bias and incompetence. The party, which has members on the committee, said major differences remain on the same issues that blocked a deal last week.

They included federalism, the role of the Shiite clergy and the distribution of Iraq's vast oil wealth. The Sunni party also insisted that the new constitution affirm the country's Arab and Islamic identity and demanded that Islam be declared a main source in legislation - a measure opposed by Kurds and women's activists.

"The battle of the constitution is not over yet," the Sunni party said. "Our people should be awake and cautious and the popular will should arise to put pressure for a free Iraqi national draft constitution that preserves the sovereignty and unity of its people." '

The Iraqi Islamic Party has roots in the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and has a long history in Mosul. Controversially, it has generally cooperated with the US since the fall of Saddam. It sat out the Jan. 30 elections to protest the Fallujah campaign of last November, but as I remember it may have a representative in parliament anyway. It was apportioned 3 delegates on the 71-member constitution drafting committee. It captured the provincial council of Anbar Province (but that does not mean much since only 2 percent of the electorate voted on Jan. 30). It is dedicated to implementing Islamic law for Sunnis, and on that issue it is allied with religious Shiites against secular Sunnis, including the Kurds.

The party statement said, "We have reservations about a number of articles in the constitution in their current form or even in principle, and we announced our reservations to all the parties." It added, "We will continue to criticize these articles and to demand that they be amended, whether before the present National Assembly or through the pressure of the masses, or even via the future National Assembly." (The next assembly will have far more Sunni Arabs in it if they come out to vote this time).

He complained that many delegates were writing the constitution to support narrow ethnic or sectarian interests, warning that this way of proceeding could prove a disaster, especially when the timetable for completion is so short.

He said that the Sunni Arabs were worried about establishing Iraq as a federal state, but also about the Arab and Islamic identity of the country, the role of the Shiite religious leadership in Najaf, the law on personal status, the rights of women, and so forth." (The rights of women?)

The Sunnis Arabs, he said, are reconciled to a special status for the three northern Kurdish provinces (i.e. the status quo) but oppose further provincial confederations.

Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the Shiite cleric who leads the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, has proposed a confederation of 9 southern Shiite-majority provinces, with a status similar to that of Kurdistan.

The thing I take away from today's NYT article on the US military rebuilding of the police force in Mosul is that if the US leaves next year, I wouldn't want to have to call 911 in Mosul. The last police force the US stood up in Mosul, all 4000 of them, resigned en masse last November to protest the US assault on Fallujah, after which the city (which had been relatively calm) fell into a chaos typical of the Sunni Arab regions. It is now better, and a new police force is being trained. But the comments of the Iraqi army (mostly Shiites and Kurds) in Mosul that they don't trust the Sunni Jubur tribal elements in the Mosul police suggests a harrowing possible scenario-- civil war between the army and police in the city on ethnic grounds. I suspect the US military invited the NYT to town to show off the new police, but the resulting article did not reassure me, at least.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

43 Dead in Wednesday Bombings
Constitution Wrangling continues

Guerrillas detonated three car bombs in central Baghdad Wednesday morning, killing at least 43 and wounding 73. In a separate incident, an American soldier was killed on Tuesday evening.

Al-Hayat says that Shiites, Kurds and Sunni Arabs are pointing the finger of blame at one another over the failure to ratify a new constitution on Monday. There was a widespread feeling, however, that it is urgent to meet the new deadline of August 22, in order to avoid a "vacuum" and "a descent into the unknown." (It is widely thought that the vacuum created by the long weeks it took to form a government last spring encouraged the Sunni Arab guerrilla movement).

Jawad al-Maliki, a parliamentarian from the Dawa Party (Shiite fundamentalist) said that the one-week extension was not arbitrary, but was a genuine estimation of how much more time was needed to settle outstanding issues.

Iraqi foreign minister Hoshyar Zebari revealed to al-Hayat that his ministry repeatedly contacted Iran to encourage Tehran to deal directly with the Iraqi central government rather than making separate agreements with Iraqi provinces.

I wish he had been more specific. What does it mean that the Iranian foreign ministry has contacts and promotes deals with individual Iraqi provinces? Presumably the relationship is with those provinces dominated by Shiites and by the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (which used to be in exile in Tehran).

A member of parliament told Al-Sharq al-Awsat that the relgious Shiites were most concerned with "religion and state, the law of personal status, the constitutional council (?), and the distribution of natural resources and the portion to be received by the provinces [from petroleum receipts]."

Some readers and bloggers have complained about my allegation that the postponement of the deadline for the submission of the final draft of the permanent constitution was "unconstitutional." They point out that the interim constitution allows its own amendment by a supermajority of parliament.

It is true that the Transitional Administrative Law (TAL) or interim constitution can be amended in this way. However, the language I quoted on Monday also makes it clear that any such amendment would have had to be introduced before August 1. The text is very clear about the need to dissolve parliament if no postponement is sought before August 1, but the new constitution is not adopted by August 15. But the point is not important procedurally. After all, there is no supreme court, and the elected parliament is sovereign, so the legislature may do as it pleases. My larger point has been missed, which is that by taking this action the parliament has asserted its sovereignty clearly for the first time over the TAL, which was in some important part an American creation (many Iraqis worked on it, as well).

A reader writes with a further insight:

' It seems that the National Assembly ignored Article 32(C) of the TAL:

(C) A bill shall not be voted upon by the National Assembly unless it has been read twice at a regular session of the Assembly, on condition that at least two days intervene between the two readings, and after the bill has been placed on the agenda of the session at least four days prior to the vote.

How could an extension be approved in one day?

Clearly this was not legal process, somehow a "resolution" was passed which nowhere is defined or allowed to be passed in this manner (perhaps you can find authority for it, I cannot). Clearly Article 32(C) was designed to cover any/all amendments or laws, and it was ignored here. '

I agree with the reader that the interim constitution does require that bills be passed in such a way that they can't be railroaded through, and it is hard to imagine that it was envisaged that constitutional amendments (which are more important than mere statutes) would be passed in a flurry of activity late on the day they were introduced!
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

It's the Cities, Stupid

An Iraqi reader writes in to complain about the tendency of Western analysts to focus on "tribes" in their political analyses. He says the action is in the cities, where urban elites are the future of the country.

' It is remarkable how the "experts" on Iraq ignore the most important section of Iraqi society: the non-tribal millions centred in Baghdad, Basra, Mosul, Kirkuk and some other large cities. These may well belong to tribes and may even be religious, but are totally independent. They regard their Sheikhs [tribal leaders], if they know who they are, almost as a lower cast: Asha'ir (Tribal people) who are considered clumsy, thuggish, and worst of all obeying the tribes rather than following their principles or the country's institutions.

Until the 1980's Iraq enjoyed the best health, education and other governement service, while the tribal areas were, and still are, quite backward and even primitive, while the cities were as advanced as south western Europe. The non-tribal Iraqis, call them Nationalist if you like, have had no place in Bush's Iraq because the Americans promoted tribalism from day one in the hope of controlling Iraq by buying its Sheiks and Mullahs. This policy worked in Afghanistan and Kurdistan
because these are collections of self-ruled tribal areas, and not real countries, but have failed in Iraq's large cities with their complex relationships and mobile population.

These urban Iraqis are critical for the future of Iraq because of their skills and patriotism - do not confuse them with the corrupt Ba'athists though. The Iraqi ministries now are paralysed by the corrupt and incomptent relatives and friends appointed by the Mullahs and Sheikhs who now rule Iraq, which is being transormed into a failed state. The militias and terrorists decide what happens to the people of Iraq. The Constitution and state Institutions are irrelevant no matter how much fuss is made about them.

The Nationalists, who are more likely to be highly educated professionals do not have militias, but can leave the country in droves. Thousands already have, and the country can not function without them regardless of who is in power. The bizzare collection of "Iraq Leaders" today are fighting over spoils that do not exist. The Oil money is not enough even for basic needs, and the failed economy and services will sooner or later trigger national revolt. Unlike other nations, millions of ordinary civilians have AK47s in their homes, and plenty of military training. '

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

One-Week Postponement

The Iraqi parliament voted to amend the interim constitution to allow the permanent constitution to be presented for a vote on August 22 rather than Aug. 15. That gives negotiators one more week to work out a deal.

The one-week extension is clever, since it avoids the dissolution of parliament and it keeps the pressure on the various parties to agree.

It is not clear, however, what difference a week will make.

I suppose they could serially amend the interim constitution to allow further delays, but at some point this procedure will begin to look silly.

Anyway, one cliff-hanger is over, and now yet another one begins.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Now They're moving the Goalpost

Every indication is that a final text of Iraq's permanent constitution just won't be reported out of the drafting committee in time to have parliament vote on it on Monday. Now Iraqi politicians are talking about having parliament amend the interim constitution to allow a delay of say, two weeks. In fact, according to the Transitional Administrative Law, if the committee did not ask for an extension by August 1 (which it was pressured not to do by the Bush administration); and if the parliament did not approve the new constitution by August 15; then parliament should be dissolved.

This is the text::

61 (G) If the National Assembly does not complete writing the draft permanent constitution by 15 August 2005 and does not request extension of the deadline in Article 61(F) above, the provisions of Article 61(E), above, shall be applied. '

So what does 61 (E) say?

' If the referendum rejects the draft permanent constitution, the National Assembly shall be dissolved. Elections for a new National Assembly shall be held no later than 15 December 2005. The new National Assembly and new Iraqi Transitional Government shall then assume office no later than 31 December 2005, and shall continue to operate under this Law, except that the final deadlines for preparing a new draft may be changed to make it possible to draft a permanent constitution within a period not to exceed one year. The new National Assembly shall be entrusted with writing another draft permanent constitution. '

The language about changing the final deadline refers to the period after new elections, not before.

Thus, according to the existing interim constitution, the plan of extending the deadline at this late date is clearly unconstitutional, and parliament should instead be dissolved and new elections held. (They have to be held no later than December, but could be held, e.g., in September or October in principle).

In fact, holding new elections will require another lockdown of the whole country, perhaps the addition of a division or 20,000 American troops to what is there now, another 3-day curfew on all vehicle traffic, and all the logistics these steps would entail. In other words, even if they interim constitution was followed, new elections probably could not be held before November at the earliest.

In the meantime, with no parliament Ibrahim Jaafari and his Shiite-dominated cabinet would become an executive unchecked by a legislature, and so a sort of elected dictatorship (there is no supreme court yet) for two to four months.

It is not clear that the Iraqi public would have the heart for these new polls, since the last ones only produced deadlock. (People kept asking me why I wasn't more enthusiastic about Jan. 30 at the time. It was because I knew the system had been set up so that the Sunni Arabs would probably be excluded and the Shiite religious parties would do very well, and both developments seemed to me harbingers of doom.)

We may well be watching the point at which the interim constitution begins being abandoned even in the absence of a new one, the point at which party politics and the interests of indigenous politicians overpower the technocratic dreams of the American political authority of 2003-2004. Paul Bremer had to slip out of Iraq in the middle of the night, and now his constitution may be making the same undignified exit.

Even if all this is somehow retrieved, the constitution could still be rejected in the referendum, and the Sunni Arab guerrilla movement is likely to go on anyway. Already Monday morning the wire services were reporting 9 killed in various places by guerrilla violence.

Allegations were also made Monday that the Iraqi government is guilty of torture, in contravention of the interim constitution and also of the draft of the permanent one.

The real question isn't the constitution. The real question is actual, concrete politics. How do you keep the Kurds in without giving away the north? How do you bring the Sunni Arabs back in to ordinary politics? How do you satisfy the Shiites without implementing Islamic law as the law of the land? Those aren't even necessarily constitutional problems (Nigeria wrestles with similar issues every day, just in the framework of provincial statute). They are political ones. Resolving them requires compromises that the major political forces seem unwilling to make. It looks, in fact, like Nigeria circa 1966 (google Biafra).
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Constitution likely Not Achieved
30 More Bodies of Police Found in Baghdad

The prospect that Iraqi politicians might make some last-minute deal on key issues in the constitution receded Sunday evening.

Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the leader of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), declined to come to a planned evening meeting with the Kurdish leadership to be brokered by Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari of the Dawa Party. Dawa and SCIRI are both religious Shiite parties. But Dawa is more lay in its leadership and appears willing to forego a Shiite confederation of provinces in the south.

There had earlier been reports that Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani also disliked the idea of a confederation, which would seriously weaken the central government and might pave the way for a break-up of the country. Sistani believes the Shiites can regularly capture the central government, with a majority in parliament and the ability to choose the prime minister, so he cannot see what benefit the Shiites would get from provincial confederation. Jaafari and Dawa may be reflecting Sistani's thinking on this matter, though he later backed off from intervening directly on the issue, believing that the elected parliamentary representatives of the people are the ones who should make these decisions.

The major advocates of a loose federalism plus provincial confederation are SCIRI and its paramilitary offshoot, the Badr Organization. Both of them ran extremely well in the provincial elections and apparently expect to continue to be able virtually to sweep such elections. So not only would loose federalism plus the ability of the southern provinces to confederate benefit the Shiites in general from their point of view, but it would much strengthen the power of SCIRI, which cannot hope for a parliamentary majority in the federal legislature. That is, the logic of the political party has now emerged in these disputes--it is not just a handful of top politicians bargaining among themselves. There are 8 or 9 SCIRI governors with their own agendas, who are pressuring their party leader, al-Hakim. SCIRI is also close to Iran, and it is not impossible that Tehran is encouraging the idea of a Shiite confederation.

Finally, petro-politics is important. The Kurds have a 3-province confederation, which even has its own legislature (maybe an analogy to Scotland?), and have demanded that it be expanded (adding parts of 3 other provinces); and also that some proportion of petroleum receipts from Kirkuk in the north stay in the Kurdish confederation.

The Shiite south has a bigger and younger field, the Rumaila oil field, and a Shiite confederation of provinces would benefit if they could keep a proportion of the petroleum receipts locally rather than having them go to Baghdad. Since the petroleum and its profits are owned by the government, in practice this system could directly transfer to SCIRI leaders as much as $4-$5 billion dollars a year even now, with the prospect of it being more in the future.

The Sunni Arabs at the moment have no petroleum fields, so they do not like this system and are making a stand against it.

The Shiites, and not just al-Hakim, generally also want a provision in the constitution that no statute may be passed by the federal legislature that is contrary to Islamic law (shariah). This wording could be a trojan horse for making Iraq into an Islamic republic. The Kurds reject this provision absolutely, and al-Hakim was supposed to meet with them to iron the dispute out. I take it he did not believe that the Kurdish leadership can be negotiated with about this issue (and they are not wild about a Shiite confederation either). Al-Hakim also presumably believes that time is on his side and it is better to make a stand now rather than to give up key demands in hopes of retrieving them later.

As Shiite cleric Jalal al-Din Saghir pointed out, the Shiite majority in parliament could theoretically just vote in a constitution. But it would need to be accepted by 16 of Iraq's original 18 provinces. The Kurds had managed to slip a provision into the interim constitution (never accepted by the religious Shiites) saying that if any 3 provinces rejected the constitution by a 2/3s vote, it would fail. Both the Kurds and the Sunni Arabs can muster such a rejection. In the meantime, the interim constitution would continue in force (which would be a victory for the Kurds and a defeat for the Shiite religious parties that won the January 30 elections). The religious Shiites might be tempted to repeal this provision in parliament, but that would certainly provoke the Kurds to withdraw from the government and might split up the country.

The Sunni Arabs are still rejecting loose federalism (or any sort of federalism) as a basis for the state.

The Washington Post gives this quote:

' We hope the other blocs put into consideration the future of Iraq and the safety of the country," said Haseeb Arif Obaidi, a Sunni on the constitution committee. "Bottom line, we will not accept or sign the constitution if we don't agree on it." '

It should be explained that in most of the Middle East, the prime minister or president actually appoints the provincial governors, who are not elected by the people. So to go to a system where not only are the governors elected, but they can form political and economic blocs with one another (a system of confederation) so as to bargain with the central state is a real revolution. Most Western observers have seemed to me insufficiently aware of how different this proposed system (which already functions with regard to 3 Kurdish provinces in the north) is from that in the rest of the Arab world. In Egypt, for instance, there was a debate in parliament about 2 years ago about allowing the people to elect provincial governors, but President Hosni Mubarak rejected the idea. He likes appointing them. Not only is this centralized political culture strong among Sunni Arabs, but the Sunnis will de facto see their share of petroleum revenues decline if the Kurdish and Shiite ("Kurdistan" and "Sumer") confederations keep back a proportion of receipts. Sunnis could confederate, but their three or four provinces would be dirt poor.

There is talk of parliament amending the interim constitution to allow another two weeks to finish the final constitution. But it is unclear that two weeks would change anything.

The approval of a constitution would anyway not have actually halted the guerrilla war, because the guerrillas reject what they see as a colonially imposed government, and the Bush administration's "tipping points" have never actually tipped. But now even the facade of progress is peeling away. Thirty more bodies of police or police recruits were found in Baghdad Sunday; most of these are probably Shiites killed by Sunni Arab guerillas in an unconventional civil war already begun.

So this is the time Bush chooses, as he is mired in an intractable conflict in Iraq in which its Shiites are moving close to Iran, to intimate that he could take military action against Iran over its nuclear program -- in an interview broadcast from Israel (which rejected the nuclear nonproliferation treaty and made hundreds of atomic bombs with British help). The Rove theory of looking active and carrying the fight to the enemy isn't working as well in the Middle East as it did against poor John Kerry.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Guest Editorial: A Transitional Permanent Constitution?

Guest Editorial by
Andrew Arato,
New School University

With the ongoing marathon meetings of its political principals concerning the constitution, the round table of the leaders of major groups, Iraq has finally had its first genuine political negotiations of this sorry war and occupation period. How much blood and treasure could have been spared the country, as well as American families, if such negotiations were sponsored in the summer of 2003? It is not true that at that time Iraq was too torn by sectarian conflicts of identity to have such negotiations (Dexter Filkins “A Nation in Blood and Ink” NY Times August 14, 2005). The thing was never even tried. The U.S. leaders who could have initiated it were unfortunately too ignorant, self interested, and captured by their clients, and, a year later, in early 2004, the UN officials were too weak to push genuine, inclusive negotiations through despite understanding their importance. Now they happened, let us hope not much too late.

The pattern was classical: the compromise of moderates on all sides hoping to bring more radical forces on their own side along. This is so for the Kurds where President Talabani led, hoping to control Barzani, the Shi’a where the government had to neutralize the exaggerated claims of SCRIRI and of course the Sunni negotiators who have to deliver significant gains to their side, while splitting the armed insurrection. The job of the last being the hardest, they had to get the most important gains. And they did so, on the name of the country which will be neither federal as the Kurds wanted or Islamic as the Shi’a demanded.
But the make or break issue came down to what in Iraq they call “federalism”, but means rather the extension of Kurdistan’s special, more confederal status to the country as a whole. It is what American commentators like Peter Galbraith, speaking for the Kurds, have always argued for. It is a formula for the impoverishment of the Sunni heartland, for obvious reasons, and endless insurrection. Evidently, the U.S. has now turned against this type of scheme, in the face of the insurrection. But, the deal the Coalition Provisional Authority negotiated primarily with the Kurds, the Transitional Administrative Law, the interim constitution, already potentially contains it, in its Art. 53C: “Any group of no more than three governorates outside the Kurdistan region, with the exception of Baghdad and Kirkuk, shall have the right to form regions [i.e. mini-states within the state] from amongst themselves.” It is now tough to get rid of the idea, which the Kurds cling to to weaken the central state as an end in itself, and now the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution (SCIRI) has apparently embraced in a rather megalomaniac version (contrary to the TAL limit) of a nine province Shi’a region, with all the ports as well as an enormous portion of the oil.

Evidently the round table of principals had very great difficulty deciding this, with the Kurds for this so-called “federalism”, the Sunni delegates unalterably opposed, and the Shi’ites split between Da’wa and SCIRI, between the more nationalist line of the Jafaari government and the autonomist position of SCIRI now dominant in most of the Suthren provinces. Here too the only solution was to accept the proposal of the Sunni negotiators, more or less. Kurdistan can have its special position, but neither a structure extended to the rest of Iraq thereby hopelessly weakening the federal government, or vetoes on the policies of the rest of Iraq. The other provinces get their rights through a second chamber: i.e federalism as the rest of the world understands it, one based on provinces and not large regions. And what are the Sunnis asked to give in return? At the risk of their lives, they are to go back to their communities, organize them , fight for an amnesty for all those willing to lay down their arms, and help isolate the rest. In other words: the most important and most difficult thing of all.

The only thing that could have interferred with the acceptance of the alternative that moderate forces tended toward, a form of federalism tied to geographic provinces rather than to ethnic regions was a proposal strongly pushed by U.S. Ambassador Khalilzad. His presence in some of the actual negotiations was most unusual at any such round table forum, and it is said that he brought a detiled proposal , almost a constitution. It seems that Americans could remove their constitutional imposition in Iraq only in the form of another imposition. This had some positive results admittedly, and some very negative ones. Since, Khalilzad chose previously to reinforce moderate forces on all his sides, politically his intervention went in the direction that made a deal structurally possible. By insisting on human and gender rights, given America’s heavy responsibility to Iraqi women who were socially better off before its intervention, he may have contributed some to a more just model of rights in the constitution. But by the astonishing tempo of the negotiations he seemed to dictate, and the continued insistence that in spite of the very real formal possibility of amending the interim constitution, the TAL, the process could not be extended, he has greatly contributed to the legitimacy problem of a product that may in fact express the best possible compromise of the day. He made an authentic Iraqi product look like another imposed constitution.

With respect to “federalism” Khalilzad apparently proposed that this question not be decided now, that the constitution be somehow completed by the August 15 without this feature, and that the parliament elected in December of 2005 decide the question according to the new constitutions amendment rule (again apparently, since I don’t have his text). The NY Times in an otherwise sterling editorial called (and supported) this same idea (though not Khalilzad’s personal intervention, quite on the contrary!) making the constitution “transitional” as if one “transitional” constitution did not already exist in Iraq.

To their great credit, the Iraqi negotiators resisted Khalilzad on this signature proposal. Apparently, some Sunni members originally supported the notion, and may have first advanced it, with the consideration that in a new assembly elected with a new electoral rule that is not turnout dependent their provinces will be better represented. Others were more skeptical, and apparently convinced their colleagues. They were right. Sunnis will not have stronger representation in the next parliament than in the present negotiations, especially because here the decision rule is consensual. In the next parliament everything will depend on the amendment rule, that the NY Times blithely recommends they rely on in the future. Have they looked at it? In the drafts that I have seen the number is two thirds of parliament, plus a national majority in a referendum, two parliaments with an election in between in the case of important issues. Would the beneficiaries of the Kurdish 6, and Hakim’s 9 province oil rich regions lack the 2/3? The provinces in question have about 70% of the population, plus there are Kurdish and SCIRI voters in Bagdad to counter-balance nationalist voters in the South. But this amendment rule, in the context of a constitution again pronounced transitional would also provide no safety to the Kurds and their special rights, which could be, under some condtions be threatened by an easily available 2/3 Arab vote.

Juan Cole is right to point to the potentially disastrous consequences of a decisionless constitution (slavery in the U.S.) in the context of a very rigid amendment rule (U.S. article V.) The consequences of a decisionless constitution, and an easy amendment rule capable of steamrolling a minority like the Sunnis in one situation, and the Kurds in another could be equally bad. Both the impossibility of changing a constitution containing contradictory elements, and the easy option of supressing constitutional rights by amendments could lead to full scale civil war.
The round table negotiators in Baghdad decided to decide. Will their decision be legitimate? Will it hold? By putting a round table of the major political forces at the end rather than the beginning of the process, what follows will not appear particularly democratic. It will be easily denounced as an American imposition because of Mr. Khalilzad’s unthinking behavior. Because of the American rush, parliament will have no time to debate anything, and especially to amend anything. The same will be even more true for the pre-referendum public meetings held, that can be only informational and not influential. A complicated package negotiated by three sides, themselves divided on central issues cannot be easily re-opened for a while without the whole deal falling apart. In the referenda therefore there will be a great temptation to use the first chance of democratic participation to say No to a basically undemocratic, elite driven process., as it happened recently in France and the Netherlands. Since the Kurds did not get all they wanted, if Barzani is not loyal to the deal he may try to subvert it through the three province veto. And of course, the moderates may not be able to control their armed radicals on any of the three sides, and the deal, and the country will fall apart.

But today we should wish the participants well, because if their work holds up, Iraq will have a chance, and there will be no excuse to continue an occupation that would be the last major source fuelling the insurrection it tries to suppress in vain.

Andrew Arato

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Constitution Cliffhanger
6 US Troops Killed

Politicians and the parliamentary drafting committee in Iraq are meeting Sunday afternoon in an attempt to report out the new constitution to parliament in time for the August 15 (Monday) deadline for parliament to vote on it. Reuters is reporting as of late Sunday morning that a prominent Sunni politician, Saleh al-Mutlak, is still resisting federalism at this late date. (In fact, Sunni Arab opposition to federalism is no absolute bar to the constitution being reported out, since the Shiites and the Kurds could just outvote them in committee.) The issue that could really derail the whole process is rather the question of the role of Islam; if the Shiites insist on endorsing Islamic law (and not just Islam in a vague way), the Kurds could refuse to come aboard. Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani certainly wants an article enshrining the place of Islamic law. Jalal Talabani and Massoud Barzani of the Kurdish Alliance reject it.

Whereas some such issues could be settled by simply being vague, this particular one seems to me not open to such a resolution by irresolution. The vague language is a defeat for Sistani in the nature of the case. Can the Shiites accept such a defeat in the constitution and hope to deal with the problem by statute later on? We will know within 24 hours.

Meanwhile, guerrillas killed 6 US troops with roadside bombs during the past 24 hours.

The Washington Post reports that the Sunni tribal leaders and the remnants of the Baath Party (Jaish Muhammad or Muhammad's Army) in Ramadi have decided to protect the city's small Shiite minority from a planned pogrom by the Sunni Salafis allied with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. I suspect the issue of protecting the Shiites has crystalized a power dispute in the city between the Salafis and the old tribal/Baath elite. I would not put a lot of hope in the split becoming permanent, since both groups would still cooperate against US troops. I wonder if the rumors of the shelling of a mosque reported by al-Zaman yesterday are Salafi propaganda to cover the fact that Sunnis are fighting each other?

The Washington Post reports that Washington has dramatically lowered its expectations for what is achievable in Iraq-- on the political, military and economic fronts.
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US attack on Mosque?

It is so hard to tell what is really going on in Iraq now. A lot of Western reporters have left because of the poor security. So what do we make of this report in Al-Zaman (which is by no means anti-American)?--

Ahmad Hamzah, reporting from Ramadi: "6 civilians were killed and more than 30 wounded, among them 3 children, when US forces attacked a mosque on the outskirts of Ramadi. Eyewitnesses told al-Zaman yesterday that 'American tanks fired on the Ibn al-Jawzi Mosque between the cities of Khalidiyah and Ramadi during Friday prayers, killing 6 and wounding 30, who were ttansported to the hospital. The six most severely wounded of them were taken to Baghdad for treatment.' The eyewitnesses also said that 'The US forces had notbe subjected to any armed attack and no one opened fire on them, so that their action was greeted with amazement."

Al-Zaman maintains that the US had in fact been attacked.

Reuters reports that

"RAMADI - An attack on a U.S. military patrol followed by U.S. gunfire left 15 Iraqis dead and 17 wounded in a town near Ramadi, west of Baghdad, residents said. The U.S. military said it was not responsible."

So we have a situation where it is being claimed by the Iraqis that the US killed 15 and wounded 17 civilians in a mosque when it replied to the convoy attack. But the US military is denying this charge. or at least is denying responsibility.

So did the US fire on innocent civilians at prayer? Or was the mosque being used as an insurgent base, in the vain hope that the US would not hit a mosque? At this point, I have no way of knowing. But I can say that al-Zaman is a paper of record for Iraqis, and this reportage will be influential.

Nothing would make Iraqis angrier at the US than such an attack on a mosque congregation at prayer,and they will likely believe the report.
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The Constitution and the Bum Rush

A perceptive reader writes to say that the short deadline for the parliamentary acceptance of the constitution means that most members of parliament probably won't have time to read or study it carefully before the vote, and there will certainly be no proper debate on it. Is it right to expect parliament to approve a constitution it has barely read, which is highly controversial, without time for study and debate? Isn't that making parliament a mere rubber stamp? The deadline is a US political issue, not an imperative of Iraqi politics.
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Constitution Negotiations reach last Stage

Meetings are still being held on the final issues bedeviling the finalization of the Iraqi constitution. Iraqi government spokesmen keep saying that 16 or 17 issues are outstanding and all should be resolved by August 15. In fact, most of these issues are intractable (Should Iraq be a centralized state, a federal state, or a very loose federal state? Should religious law be applied to personal status issues like marriage, divorce, inheritance and alimony? Should the Shiite grand ayatollahs and the holy city of Najaf be formally recognized in some way? etc. etc.)

What now seems likely according to comments made to al-Hayat is that many of these hard issues will just be kicked down the road in order to meet the August 15 deadline.

This is probably a very bad idea. It should be remembered that the US founding fathers did the same thing. They found it very difficult to reach a compromise on the issue of slavery, which clearly is contradictory to the Bill of Rights and the spirit of the constitution in general. They therefore just sidestepped it and let states treat it with statute. That raised the question of whether slaves could count for purposes of allocating congressional seats (by size of population), and the notorious and humiliating formula was arrived at of treating slaves as a fraction of a human being for those purposes.

But the sidestepping and the postponing of grappling with the issue helped produce a Civil War a few decades later.

Likewise, it is highly unlikely that Iraqis will be more united on most of the hard issues five or ten or twenty years from now. If they are not decisively resolved now, very likely they will become persistent points of disagreement and rancor among the major ethnic groups. And thus, this rush to a constitution, mainly for the benefit of the Bush administration, which wants it done so Bush can gracefully begin exiting next year in time to affect the 2006 congressional races, is highly unwise. It may well contribute to the outbreak of a civil war in the future in Iraq (I mean a big conventional civil war with whole armies ranged against one another).

It would have been better if the parliament had taken advantage of the clause in the interim constitution allowing it to take another 6 months to finish the negotiations (which really only began in earnest two months ago).

Meanwhile, al-Hayat reveals more about the comments of Hadi al-Amiri of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, at a rally in Najaf calling for a southern, Shiite, regional confederation. He said, "What have we ever seen from the central government but death?" I am not sure whether he is referring to the anti-Shiite pogroms of the Saddam era or to the present government's inability to stop guerrilla violence. But the sentiment is stark and raw and frankly secessionist. Not a good sign. (And mind you, the central government he is complaining about is now dominated by his kind of Shiite!)
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Federalism Issue Bedevils Constitution
Infighting Undermines Municipal Governments

Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, leader of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), has made his move. Giving a speech in the holy city of Najaf, he demanded that the nine southern Shiite-majority provinces be allowed to form a regional confederation that would deal with the central government in Baghdad. This confederation would mirror the "Kurdistan" confederation of northern provinces already established. The southern confederation, which some call "Sumer," in honor of the ancient civilization of that region, would make a claim on some percentage of the petroleum revenue coming out of the Rumaila oil fields.

Al-Hakim has split on this issue with Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, who earlier, at least, is said to have opposed the plan. He has also split with his coalition partner, the Dawa Party, led by Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari, which prefers that the central government continue to deal with each of the 9 provinces separately.

Although Dawa got the prime ministership and so has a special interest in retaining the prerogatives fo the center, SCIRI won most of the provincial elections in the south, dominating their governing councils. Since SCIRI believes that it can continue to be dominant in the Shiite south, it is essentially making a claim on provincial resources and power, denying some portion of them to the central government. It cannot be good for the prospects of the approval of a permanent constitution to have a major split develop within the United Iraqi Alliance (which has a majority in parliament and groups Dawa and SCIRI) on this issue.

Alissa Rubin of the Los Angeles Times reports that prime minister Jaafari has sent an envoy to the southern city of Samawah in an attempt to quell the political turbulence there. The governing council had attempted to oust the governor, a SCIRI figure, and he has refused to go. Now governing council members say that they are receiving death threats. The Japanese Self Defense Forces appear to be essentially barricaded in and in some danger given this outbreak of instability among Shiites in the region. See below on how likely their mission is to continue very long given these developments and also the coming Japanese elections.

Meanwhile, Jaafari has thrown his support behind the ousting of Baghdad mayor Alaa al-Tamimi by SCIRI. SCIRI won the Baghdad provincial council elections last January and therefore has the right to appoint its own mayor. Often in contemporary Iraq, incumbents put there by the United States or its proxy interim government have refused to leave when ordered to do so by the winners at the ballot box, and Tamimi was one of those who had ensconced himself, apparently with a private guard. The change of mayor therefore had to be accomplished by the elected governing council through a kind of coup whereby Badr Corps (the paramilitary of SCIRI) occupied the mayor's office.

Bill Roberts and Jeff St. Onge argue that President Bush is doing a high wire act without a net in Iraq. He cannot increase US troop strength in hopes of destroying the guerrilla movement, because the US does not have the extra troops. He also cannot keep 138,000 US troops in Iraq for another year without risking destroying the all-volunteer army. So he has to draw down. But if he does that too fast or in a strategically flat-footed way, the guerrillas could kill off the new elected government and throw Iraq-- and the oil-producing Gulf region-- into massive turmoil. The Bush administration is therefore proposing a rolling withdrawal, without fixed deadlines or targets, but simply bringing out US units when Iraqi units can take over. (The problem with this strategy is a) that it can be thwarted by a simple ratcheting up of guerrilla attacks, requiring delays in US drawdowns and b) the Iraqi troops probably are not going to be ready for 5 years.)
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Extension of Japan Mission In Iraq In Doubt

' Shingetsu Newsletter No. 58
August 9, 2005

Two and a half weeks ago Shingetsu Newsletter No. 44 predicted that the SDF mission in Iraq would certainly be extended into 2006 barring two possibilities: "a collapse of the Koizumi administration due to the bitter infighting caused by the post office privatization bill, or a lethal attack on the GSDF in Samawa." In the time since I wrote those words, both events have become far more likely to actually occur. As a result, the balance of probabilities now seems to have dramatically shifted against the extension of the GSDF mission past the December 14 deadline.

The crucial event, of course, is the failure of the Japanese upper house to pass Koizumi's main reform package, the postal privatization bill. PM Koizumi has long been clear about the fact that he would go to the mat rather than give up his long-cherished project, but the anti-reform sections of the LDP, through a combination of miscalculation, wishful thinking, and anti-Koizumi rage, seem to have underestimated Koizumi's resolve. PM Koizumi has simply done what he always said he was going to do: either push through his structural reforms or destroy the LDP. He failed on the first item and is now pursuing the second.

On September 11, 2005, the most likely outcome of the snap election is that the Liberal Democratic Party, which has dominated Japanese politics since its creation in 1955, will fall from power and quite possibly unravel into its constituent parts. In all likelihood, their fifty year reign is over.

If this truly comes about, then the successor is likely to be the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), now led by Katsuya Okada. The DPJ has already let it be known that one of the main points on which they plan to fight the election is on the diplomatic policies of the Koizumi regime. In particular, this refers to China and Korea, but it has important ramifications for Iraq as well.

A DPJ victory would almost certainly spell the end of the GSDF deployment in Samawa. Okada has on several occasions demanded the pullout of the troops from Iraq, and it would be difficult for them to backtrack on that point later. Of course, after they actually came to power, they would be subject to pressures from the United States to maintain the current policies, but it seems unlikely that that would be sufficient to halt a withdrawal.

The DPJ is a mix of politicians with extremely diverse views. It has former socialists as well as hard right elements. The balance, however, seems to favor the moderate-liberal elements, and their policies would probably reflect that at the outset. However, one key person to watch would be Seiji Maehara, who will likely be given the Defense Agency portfolio. He is a conservative who has long been marked out as being a young and talented operator. His influence, along with his faction leader, Ichiro Ozawa, may push the DPJ further toward the center-right than would otherwise be the case. A DPJ government may or may not prove to be stable in the medium term.

One thing that should make it easier for a DPJ government to bring the GSDF home from Iraq is the recent situation in Samawa itself. On the 7th, a large demonstration was held in Samawa by unemployed workers and others, perhaps supported by Muqtada al-Sadr loyalists. The number of demonstrators was said to be the largest since the Japanese have been there, variously estimated at 1000 or 3000 men. Rocks were thrown and two police cars were burned. The police opened fire on the crowd, killing one and injuring about fifty.
Matters are clearly taking an ugly turn in Samawa.

A final hint about this matter just surfaced in a Kyodo News report.

Apparently, local Iraqi reporters in Samawa have received death threats warning them not to report about the local activities of the GSDF. These threats may be having some effect on the coverage of local TV stations. It is easy to guess that these particular threats are coming from Muqtada al-Sadr loyalists. '

shingetsu_institute a t h o t m a i l d_o_t c o m

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4 US Troops Killed, 6 Wounded
Guerrilla War Kills, Wounds, Dozens of Iraqis

Reuters reports that near Baiji north of Baghdad, guerrillas killed 4 US soldiers and wounded 6 late Tuesday.

In Mosul guerrillas killed 15 persons in spearate incidents, including 2 policement.

In Baghdad, a suicide bomber killed 6 and wounded 14 in the western part of the capital. A mortar shell also hit an intersection in Adhamiyah, a Sunni neighborhood, killing a traffic policeman and wounding 6 others. A police brigadier was kidnapped.

Near Iskandariyah, guerrillas shot up a car, killing 2 civilians and wounding 3.

US and Iraqi forces discovered 9 car bombs and 28 improviced bombs in a sweep of Ramadi, arresting 32 persons.


The Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq won the provincial elections in Baghdad on Jan. 30, a fact that has been little noted in the Western press. They have now moved to depose the mayor of Baghdad and install their own man. Alaa al-Tamimi left quietly. That SCIRI and the Badr Organization (this militia ran as a political party) won the election in Baghdad province gives them the right to name the mayor. Some US reports are portraying this as a coup by a "Shiite militia", but the "coup" happened on Jan. 30 at the ballot box.

Tamimi's account of the incident is here. He was earlier charged with corruption but the charges appear to have been dropped.

Al-Tamimi was recently the subject of a glowing write up at Slate by Christopher Hitchens, who wondered why US cities were not sending aid and help to such municipal politicians in Iraq. The answer is that a) there is virtually no infrastructure for aid delivery, and any American who showed up from Cincinnati to help Tamimi would just be killed; and b) political instability is so great in Iraq that you never know from day to day whether your aid will go to Tamimi or to the Iran-trained Badr Corps paramilitary of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (from which the new mayor comes). Hitchens raised the suggestion in the context of whether the American left wants the US effort to succeed in Iraq. But the effort that Hitchens has in mind, of a secular democracy, probably failed on January 30 when SCIRI, Dawa, and a bloc of Sadrists (Shiite fundamentalist parties) jointly won the parliamentary elections. As for the security situation, I'm not sure what we mere mortals can do about it if the whole US army and marine corps are helpless before it.

Samawah politics is in turmoil after a governor belonging to the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq refused to accept his dismissal by al-Muthanna Province governing council. His dismissal came in the wake of demonstrations by followers of the Sadr movement, which opposes SCIRI. The most recent demonstration was put down harshly and one demonstrator killed. A senior member of the governing council resigned, and appears to have gotten death threats. The jockeying for position in Samawah is similar to that in Baghdad.

US troops may begin their withdrawal from select urban areas of Iraq with the holy city of Najaf. I presume that a mixture of Iraqi police and military troops plus the Badr Corps militia of SCIRI and perhaps also some tribal levies called Ansar Sistani because of their loyalty to the Grand Ayatollah will be detailed to keep the peace there. But the same sort of forces are in Samawah, and it is not quiet. The Sadr militia, the Mahdi Army, could attempt to take advantage of this withdrawal. But I agree that it is time to see what the Iraqis can do; and if a Shiite government can't keep order in Najaf, it is hard to see how they can expect to have it done by US troops from Ohio and Alabama.

Anthropologist Bill Beeman explains what an Islamic Republic of Iraq actually would entail. I agree that some degree of Islamic law will be implemented. I am not as sanguine about its consequences as Bill is. But, then, Israel and Lebanon have religious personal status law and no one jumps up and down about that.
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US Military Rules of Engagement and the Iraq War

An informed reader sent in what I found to be a fascinating reply to my comment that I thought the U.S. military's rules of engagement were wrong for a clannish society such as Iraq. My point was that as I understood it, the US rules of engagement favor meeting any violent challenge with massive force, whereas the British are more restrained. It is my impression that the force with which US troops often riposte to mortar and other attacks ends up killing innocent bystanders. Iraq is still a clan-based society, such that people know and care about and would avenge their cousins (clan feuds still are fought and deeply felt), how much moreso a sibling or parent or child. So my argument would be that the US military has by now incurred large numbers of clan feuds with Sunni Arab families, and is making more feuds with each passing day.

Rules of engagement below is given as ROE.

My correspondent explains the U.S. military rules of engagement, compares them to those of the British, and questions whether they are that different. In essence, his argument is that I was not complaining about the rules of engagement but rather about a difference in mindset. The British, he says, think of their task in Iraq as a sort of police work, regardless of the rules of engagement.

I should also say that I think it is crucial to separate out the politics of the Iraq war from the question of the safety of US troops. Each and every one of these brave men and women is serving our country under incredibly difficult conditions and deserves our undying thanks and support, whatever we think of the political mission. They removed a Saddamist regime that was frankly genocidal, and that overthrow was in itself a noble act. But the remaining tasks in Iraq (most of them in some way political even when military) are not something it is fair to ask them to stay on for, or to which their training and mindset suits them. I personally think it is time to bring them home.

'The most useful [resource for this discussion] is Chapter 5 of the Operational Law Handbook put out by the Judge Advocate School of the Army. It can be found at this site or by googling hostile act/hostile intent chapter 5. This is actually the first publication we turn to when we are working an operational law issue (not limited to ROE issues). In addition to an outstanding overall explanation of what ROE is, what it does, and how it is developed, it also contains the unclassified portions of the JCS's Standing Rules of Engagement, CJCSI 3121.01A (the "SROE"), as enclosure A. Of particular importance in the SROE is Enclosure A, entitled "Standing Rules of Engagement for US Forces."

A common misconception is that ROE and the Law of War (LOW) are synonymous. While they are inextricably linked, they are not the same. (At least at this point,) LOW subsumes ROE. The ROE cannot authorize anything that would be a LOW violation, but the ROE can prohibit many things (maybe anything) that IS permitted by the LOW. In the final analysis, ROE is essentially a policy decision. It is the commanders, up to and including the President, determining what limitations on the use of force are advisable in order to facilitate accomplishment of the units' missions and the nation's goals.

As you will see by reviewing the SROE, the ROE world is broken down into two distinct components: mission accomplishment and self-defense. [E.g., CJCSI 3121.01A, para. 6.b. "The SROE differentiate between the use of force for self-defense and for mission accomplishment."] When we talk about mission ROE, what we are really talking about are the "supplemental measures" to the SROE. There are two types of supplemental measures, "those that authorize a certain action and those that place limits on the use of force for mission accomplishment." When we talk about the differences between our ROE and the Brits' ROE, we are almost exclusively talking about the difference in the supplemental measures that have been approved for our use versus the supplemental measures that have been approved for their use. For example, one of us might be allowed to use riot control agents, such as tear gas, while the other isn't.

It is crucial to understand and remember, therefore, that "ROE supplemental measures apply only to the use of force for mission accomplishment and do not limit a commander's use of force in self-defense." The reason this is so crucial to remember is because probably more than 95% of what we are doing over there is under the rubric of self-defense. ROE differences can only be the cause of the differences between how we use force and how the Brits use force over there if we have materially different rules for self-defense. We don't.

Our concept of our "inherent right of self-defense" is predicated on our interpretation of Article 51 of the United Nations Charter ["Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a member of the United Nations until the Security Council has taken the measures necessary to maintain international peace and security."] The key here is "predicated." We can leave it for another day whether it means that lance corporals can call in B-52 strikes in populated cities to protect themselves and their three other Marines. Time and time again, the phrase, "inherent right of self-defense," is the key that unlocks the door to the use of force. [One might recall Inigo Montoya's remark to Vizzini on his overuse of the word "inconceivable." "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."]

As our ROE makes abundantly clear through repetition, restatement, and boldface type, "[t]hese rules do not limit a commander's inherent authority and obligation to use all necessary means available and to take all appropriate actions in self-defense of the commander's unit and other US forces in the vicinity." (Enclosure A, para. 2.a.) Enclosure A, para. 5., reiterates

"Definitions.

a. Inherent Right of Self-Defense. A commander has the authority and obligation to use all necessary means available and to take all appropriate actions to defend that commander's unit and other US forces in the vicinity from a hostile act or demonstration of hostile intent. Neither these rules, nor the supplemental measures activated to augment these rules, limit this inherent right and obligation. At all times, the requirements of necessity and proportionality, as amplified in these SROE, will form the basis for the judgment of the on-scene commander (OSC) or individual as to what constitutes an appropriate response to a particular act or demonstration of hostile intent. . . .

e. Individual Self-Defense. The inherent right to use all necessary means available and to take all appropriate actions to defend oneself and US forces in one's vicinity from a hostile act or demonstrated hostile intent. . . . " (emphasis added)

As you can see, the definition of self-defense has holes that you could drive a truck (or a tank, JDAM, or Cobra gunship) through. It gives the on scene individual (potentially the lowest private) the authority to determine both whether force is a "necessity" and what amount of force is "appropriate." To be sure, there are key definitions that should limit the individual's use of force. Unfortunately, however, due to the vagaries of language and the impossibility of encapsulating all possibilities into a small, readily comprehensible blurb, each definition offers more room for confusion and liberal use of force.

The bottom line is that an individual may use "deadly force" when a "hostile act" occurs or when a force or terrorist exhibits "hostile intent."

"Deadly force" is "that force which a person uses with the purpose of causing, or which he knows or should reasonably know, will cause death or serious bodily harm."

A "hostile act" is "an attack or other use of force by a foreign force or terrorist unit against the United States, U.S. forces, or other designated persons and property, or a use of force intended to preclude or impede the mission of U.S. forces.

"Hostile intent" is the threat of imminent use of force by a foreign force or terrorist unit against the United States, U.S. forces, or other designated persons and property."

Once a hostile act has occurred, or once hostile intent is present, the right exists to use force in self-defense to deter, neutralize, or destroy the threat. Hostile act/hostile intent is not a blank check to use all force available. The force used must still be reasonable in intensity, duration, and magnitude to the perceived or demonstrated threat based on all facts known to the commander or individual. This used to be referred to as the "proportional use of force," but that caused many people to confuse it with the concept of "proportionality," which is a concept that applies to planned missions (i.e., mission accomplishment ROE vice self-defense), and which deals with insuring that "collateral damage" is proportionate to the military advantage of the mission. Confused? So is everyone else. This is being changed in the new SROE which is to be released imminently.

Per Enclosure A, para. 8, you will note that

"All necessary means available and all appropriate actions may be used in self-defense." "When time and circumstances permit, the hostile force should be warned and given the opportunity to withdraw or cease threatening actions." "When the use of force in self-defense is necessary, the nature, duration, and scope of the engagement should not exceed that which is required to decisively counter the hostile act or demonstrated hostile intent and to ensure the continued protection of US forces or other protected personnel or property." "An attack to disable or destroy a hostile force is authorized when such action is the only prudent means by which a hostile act or demonstration of hostile intent can be prevented or terminated. When such conditions exist, engagement is authorized only while the hostile force continues to commit hostile acts or exhibit hostile intent."

Paragraph 8 is eminently cogent and reasonable, but as subject to interpretation as "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion," "The right of the people to be secure . . . against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated," or "Islam will be a main source for legislation."

Although this language is from our ROE, the same concepts for self-defense are all included in the Brits' ROE. They, too, make clear that nothing in their ROE limits a commander's or individual's inherent right of self-defense. They, too, utilize the concepts of hostile act and hostile intent and remind the individual that force used must be reasonable and proportionate to the threat.

Because almost all of our questioned actions have taken place under the penumbra of self-defense, and because our rules for self-defense are materially the same as the Brits', the difference must lie, and does lie, elsewhere. The difference arises primarily from our attitudes and personalities. The Brits explicitly view this as a police action. With that comes a "law enforcement" outlook on the use of deadly force. Specifically, deadly force is justified only when all lesser means have failed or cannot reasonably be employed. They may only use the minimum amount of force necessary to make the threat stop acting like a threat. We see this as a combat operation. Once you demonstrate hostile act/hostile intent, we take that as the green light to eliminate you. This attitude difference also leads to a different interpretation of what constitutes proportionate force. Where the Brits would try to take the utmost care to insure that innocent civilians are not killed and civilian property isn't damaged, our only concern is to insure that we don't recklessly kill more innocent civilians and damage more property then we consider to be reasonably necessary.

This law enforcement/combat ops dichotomy has a profound effect on how we each respond. The Brits really try to do whatever it takes to avoid the need to use deadly force. A British soldier would think, "What's the minimum I can do to cause this person to stop his hostile conduct?" On the other hand, we constantly tell out troops not to be timid. If deadly force is required, use deadly force. Our first thought would be, "What do I have available to me? Artillery? Air support? Grenade launchers?"

This is not to say that there are no differences between the two ROEs. As you can see by various statements made by British troops, the Brits aren't allowed to use deadly force to protect property unless loss of that property would result in an immediate threat to human life, e.g., weapons systems, essential public health facilities, etc. Our ROE allows more latitude for the use of force to protect property. However, our uses of force have seldom relied on this broader authorization. It does not account for any significant difference.

The Brits are also required to provide a warning to the hostile actor before using deadly force. We seldom provide a warning. However, this also isn't really a material ROE difference. As you can see above, a warning is contemplated by the SROE. Our interpretation of the rules as they relate to the reality of the situation in MNF-W, however, is that a warning is often not practicable and in many other cases (such as escalation of force incidents like the shooting of the driver of the Italian journalist) ineffective.

The crucial difference is simply one of mindset. The British ROE is broad enough that, even if we operated under it, we would still be doing everything exactly as we are now. We see everything as an imminent threat to our safety and we believe that it is absolutely necessary, and appropriate, to use all available means to eliminate the threat. I've have heard several people accurately point out that for us, force protection is the number 1 priority. For the Brits, it's A priority, but it is by no means their first priority. To most Americans, the Brits' outlook probably sounds bizarre or naïve. Then again, force protection wasn't the number 1 priority on Iwo Jima; mission accomplishment was. When I brief the battalions that will deploy with us, I always try to remind them that it doesn't help us accomplish our mission if we kill one insurgent on Tuesday, but the way we handle it creates three insurgents on Thursday. However, I don't think any commander, or pundit, is going to be suggesting anytime soon that we're failing at our mission because we aren't taking enough casualties.

I think that many people use the phrase, "Rules of Engagement," to mean "the manner in which you use force." It may have value as shorthand, but because it actually is a term of art with a real meaning, it tends to confuse the issue. When the Brits say they don't like our ROE, they really mean that they think we are a bunch of cowboys who respond with overwhelming lethal fire to every actual or arguable threat. When we say we don't like their ROE, it means something to the effect that we think they don't understand what's really going on over there and that they are a bunch of [expurgated version] namby-pamby wankers who are afraid to do real fighting.

[Potential non-sequitur: I am reminded of an Irish pub song my father used to like where an IRA man taunts the Black and Tans, "Come tell us how you slew, those brave Arabs two by two. Like the Zulus they had spears and bows and arrows. How you bravely slew each one, with your sixteen pounder gun. And you frightened them poor natives to their marrow." As I recall, I thought that wasn't really a song about how brave the Black and Tans were. Maybe I was wrong back then.]

Juan, the real self-defense ROE is summed up in the phrase used by all the troops, "Better to be judged by twelve than carried by six." The troops have an incredibly broad view of what constitutes hostile act. As far as they're concerned, if someone could conceivably be about to do them harm, they think, "better safe than sorry," and "better him than me." With many of our Marines on their third tours over there and no real improvement in the situation, mission #1 is coming home alive.

One of the ways we train our Marines is by going over scenarios with them. In one, I propose that they are traveling down the highway in a convoy. As they approach an overpass, they see a MAM (military age male) standing on the middle of the overpass with something about the size of a baseball (grenade-sized) in his hands. When he sees the convoy, he freezes. What should you do? Most of the Marines will say, "He's demonstrated hostile intent, you need to waste him. He could be holding a hand grenade and be intending to drop it into one of the trucks as you pass under." (This is an actual tactic used by the insurgents).

I change the scenario and say that when he sees you, he drops to the ground on the overpass. Some Marine will invariably answer, to the acclaim of his fellow Marines, "That's a hostile act. He's taking cover because he's about to detonate an IED on you. You need to take him out." (Also something they've actually seen.)

Finally, I change the scenario to say that, when he sees you, he turns around in the direction from which he came and starts running off the overpass (you can see where this is going). The answer is usually that that too is a hostile act or hostile intent because he is clearly trying to get off that overpass before the IED goes off.

Apparently, the only safe action for the MAM to take is to have Scotty beam him up. As far as some Marines are concerned, the presence of an Arab male in proximity to an American convoy may be all you need to find hostile act/hostile intent. This is, of course, highly reminiscent of that quip in Michael Herr's Dispatches, "The ones who run are VC. The ones who don't run are well-disciplined VC."

It would be easy for anyone who doesn't have to drive those highways in a US convoy to castigate our young troops over there for their trigger-happy mentality, but it's just not that simple. Those young Marines are doing the hardest thing the Corps has ever done. At least in Viet Nam there were places where anybody in front of you was definitely a bad guy. Oh, for the simple (though not easy) days of Tarawa and Iwo Jima. They're not a bunch of amoral killers. They're just a bunch of well intentioned, highly trained, and highly armed young men and women stuck in a Serbonian bog with minimal clarity of purpose.

[Additional possible non sequitur: I think every Marine infantry officer has Henry V's "Once more into the breach dear friends" speech memorized. Less remembered is the soldier's remarks before Agincourt when he gets a "little touch of Harry in the night." "But if the cause be not good, the king himself hath a heavy reckoning to make, when all those legs and arms and heads, chopped off in battle, shall join together at the latter day and cry all 'We died at such a place.'"] '

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Samawah Governor Fired
Australian Officers Critique US Military in Iraq

Al-Sharq al-Awsat and agencies: 28 deaths were reported on Monday and 30 wounded in guerrilla fighting, most of it outside the capital of Baghdad.

Guerrillas killed two policemen in Sharqat, 300 km. north of the capital. Likewise, a Turkish truck drive was shot dead in the vicinity.

Near Baiji, guerrillas shot a businessman dead.

In Samarra, fighting between guerrillas and US troops left 3 Iraqis dead, among them an Iraqi soldier. Another 5 dead Iraqi soldiers were found floating in the river.

In Balad, 70 km north of Baghdad, guerrillas killed a police officer and wounded his son.

In Tikrit, guerrillas killed a police commander. Bodies of four policemen came into the morgue from the village of al-Ishaqi, having been shot dead by guerrillas.

Near Kirkuk, guerrillas shot and killed two employees of the oil company.

A US military patrol near the Green Zone in Baghdad came under mortar fire, but there were no casualties.

On Sunday night, gunmen on the way from the Shiite holy city of Karbala to Musayyib opened fire on motorists and killed 4 and wounded 12.

Other guerrillas between Baghdad and Karbala killed three and wounded 18.

Reuters adds:

In the southern city of Samawa, guerrillas launched rocket-propelled grenades toward police and army. They destroyed three military vehicles. There had been a clash between protesters and police on Sunday, which left 1 dead and 40 wounded.

Al-Sharq al-Awsat reports that the provincial governing council of Samawa fired the governor, Muhammad Ali Hasani, after two days of clashes between police and demonstrators. Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari sent a representative to the city in an effort to calm things down.

The Sadr Movement of Shiite nationalist Muqtada al-Sadr has been holding the demonstrations to protest lack of services. This tactic seems to be a way of unseating the elected government officials in key southern provinces, and of embarrassing the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the Sadrists' rival, which controls most provincial assemblies in the south after winning the elections last January. But it is also true that the services in these cities are not very good, in part because of sabotage.

Reuters adds:

'BAGHDAD - A translator working at Baghdad's Doura power station was shot dead, said a source at Yarmouk hospital.

FALLUJA - A suicide bomber attacked a U.S. patrol in the former rebel stronghold of Falluja, west of Baghdad, Iraqi police sources said. There was no immediate confirmation of the attack from the U.S. military and no word on casualties.'

The former chief of Australia's armed forces, Gen. Peter Cosgrove, has called for an end to foreign troop presence in Iraq by the end of 2006: ' "I think we've got to train the Iraqis as quickly as we can and to a point where we take one of the focal points of terrorist motivation away, and that is foreign troops," said Cosgrove, who retired from the top military post a month ago. '

Now that he is retired he can speak freely, and has. Why does he think that "foreign troops" are a motivation in Iraq for terrorism? Remember, this is not some soft civilian Green Party member speaking from a bar in Melbourne. This is a high-ranking general of a highly rated military. Perhaps what he has in mind is explained in the next article:

"

AUSTRALIAN and British military legal advisers frequently had to "red card" more trigger-happy US forces to limit civilian casualties during the invasion of Iraq in 2003, according to one of the Australian advisers.

Colonel Mike Kelly, writing in the Australian Army Journal, says the junior partners in the coalition forces succeeded in reducing civilian casualties and reinforcing the legitimacy of the invasion to topple Saddam Hussein.

In the most detailed insight yet into the secret rules Australian forces operated under during the conflict in 2003, Colonel Kelly, who went on to become a senior adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, said for Australian forces to open fire the enemy was "required to visibly carry weapons while deploying for an attack".

Defence sources said that under more relaxed US rules there only had to be a "reasonable suspicion" that the person was an enemy combatant and a threat . . .

"During Operation Iraqi Freedom legal differences in assessing legitimate targets, tended to be resolved by the use of the 'red card'," Colonel Kelly writes.

"This card involved the coalition partners being able to indicate their disapproval in their targeting or tactics in any mission that ran contrary to their legal obligations."

He added: "The United States generally accepted these decisions ... (it was) prepared to modify its approach in the interest of harmony with its military partners . . . "

I think there is a problem here when professional and hard-fighting Australian and British troops routinely feel that the US military does things that are frankly illegal, and might drag them into illegality. And that this difference in attitude has political implications seems clear--the British and the Australians are chomping at the bit to get out of Iraq ASAP. It is clear that they have often felt in the past two years that American recklessness has put them needlessly at risk. Proud of their own community policing skills, when British forces were briefly moved up to Babil province (the "triangle of death"), they complained that they were going to a place that the Americans had already ruined and made dangerous. Whether it is a fair perception or not, it has consequences.

Peter Dolan was embedded with US troops in Babil Province ("the triangle of death") and gives a sense of what daily life is like there for them.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Kurdistan and the Future of Iraq

Al-Sharq al-Awsat/ AFP reports that hundres of Kurds demonstrated on Monday in Irbil (Arbil), 350 km north of Baghdad, demanding that their rights be recognized in the permanent constitution now being crafted. The demonstrators gathered in front of the Kurdistan parliament building, carrying placards in Kurdish that said "Stop, Jaafari!" and "Kirkuk is Kurdistani!" and "We Reject any Constitution that does not Guarantee all our Rights!" and "The Peshmerga will Endure!" (The Peshmerga is the Kurdish militia, of at least 60,000 men and some say 100,000).

The demonstrators demanded a quick implementation of article 58 of the interim constitution, which stipulates the normalization of the situation in Kirkuk, through the return of Kurds expelled in the Saddam period and the resettlement of the Arabs Saddam had transplanted to the city in their original homes. (Many of the city's Arab residents were orginally from the Shiite south).

The demonstration was organized by the Democratic Union of the Youth of Kurdistan, a subsidiary of the Kurdistan Democratic Party lead by Massoud Barzani.

The Kurds are demanding the inclusion of the oil-rich city of Kirkuk in the Kurdistan confederation, the recognition of provinces' right to form confederations to deal with the central government in Baghdad (which they call "federalism"), and lack of formal recognition in the constitution of Islamic canon law.

Luke Baker of Reuters reports from Irbil (Arbil) in Kurdistan about the separatist sentiments that are apparent up there.

Another major ethnic group in Kirkuk is the Turkmen, who are probably a fourth to a third of the city of about a million. They fear that the Kurds are attempting to drive them out of it, by squatting on their property.

A correspondent in Kirkuk writes that the legitimacy of Turkmen claims to the property they say is being usurped by Kurdish squatters is uncertain. But it is certainly the case that Kurds are moving into Kirkuk in large numbers. Some are squatting, some are building new homes. This is a recent photo of Kurds living in tents on land claimed by Turkmen.



There are probably only about 750,000 or so Turkmen in northern Iraq, but they think they amount to 3 million. While they are probably only actually 3 percent of the population, they are important because neighboring Turkey has a keen interest in their fate. If violence broke out in Kirkuk that led to the ethnic cleansing of the Turkmen, it might bring Turkish troops in to stop it (assuming the US could not or would not). This article unfortunately quotes the inaccurate population statistics for the Turkmen, but otherwise it gives a fair idea of the political ideas and self-conception of activist Turkmen.
For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Party Over? On Cindy Sheehan

Bob Harris has a must-read meditation on what things are important to George W. Bush and what aren't, in light of the treatment of bereaved mother Cindy Sheehan, who wants to know from Bush why her son was killed in Sadr City in April, 2004.

I found her account of Bush's meeting with her last summer chilling. She recounted it during an interview with Wolf Blitzer on CNN on Sunday (chilling parts in bold):

' BLITZER: All right. So tell us a little bit about what you're doing now. You had a chance to meet with the president, we're told, last summer. Is that right?

SHEEHAN: I met with him, I think, about June 17th last year. It was about two and a half months after Casey had died. And it was me...

BLITZER: Was that a private meeting, just you and the president?

SHEEHAN: It was me and my family, my other three children and my husband.

BLITZER: What did you say...

SHEEHAN: And we met with about 15 other -- about 15 other families were there also. But we got to -- he came in individually and met with each one of us individually.

BLITZER: And so, what did you say to him then?

SHEEHAN: It was -- you know, there was a lot of things said. We wanted to use the time for him to know that he killed an indispensable part of our family and humanity. And we wanted him to look at the pictures of Casey.

He wouldn't look at the pictures of Casey. He didn't even know Casey's name. He came in the room and the very first thing he said is, "So who are we honoring here?" He didn't even know Casey's name. He didn't want to hear it. He didn't want to hear anything about Casey. He wouldn't even call him "him" or "he." He called him "your loved one."

Every time we tried to talk about Casey and how much we missed him, he would change the subject. And he acted like it was a party.

BLITZER: Like a party? I mean...

SHEEHAN: Yes, he came in very jovial, and like we should be happy that he, our son, died for his misguided policies. He didn't even pretend like somebody...

BLITZER: So now you're trying to meet with him again. What's the point? What are you trying to achieve?

SHEEHAN: This week we had a terrible loss of life in Iraq. Everybody knows about the National Guard unit of Marines from Ohio. And that enough saddened me and broke my heart because I know what those families are going through. And it also broke my heart because I've been working very hard for a year to end the war in Iraq. And every day that another soldier, another Iraqi person gets killed just rips my heart open. But then George Bush, in a luncheon he was giving a talk at or something, he said that the families can rest assured that their children died for a noble cause. And he also said that we have to honor the sacrifices of the fallen soldiers by continuing the mission, by staying the mission in Iraq.

And I have said this so many times: I do not want him to use my son's name to continue the killing. It's bad enough that my son is dead, and I'm a mother whose heart was ripped out on April 4, 2004. Why would I want one more mother, either Iraqi or American, to go through what I'm going through?

I don't want him to justify my son's honorable sacrifice to continue his murderous killing policies. '

For "cont'd" postings, click here.

Courage of Peter Jennings

As we comemorate the late Peter Jennings, one of the country's great broadcast journalists, it is worth remembering, as Lila Rajiva does, that he was perhaps the first major news figure to break with the cheerleading consensus on the Iraq War. He was blasted by the US Right for doing so.

Jennings once called me in my office when planning a trip to Iraq. He was so kind and gracious-- he wore his celebrity like a gentleman. We reminisced about Beirut in the old days. He said, "Are you sure we have never met?" I assured him we had not. He asked about Shiite politics and the movers and shakers. I told him who I thought was important. He asked at one point about my critique of Ahmad Chalabi. While we were talking a bomb went off in Baghdad, and he read me the wire service account. He cared about the Iraqis, you could hear it in his voice, they weren't just data to him. Later I recounted the conversation to my teenaged son, and he said, 'Dad, do you realize that Peter Jennings read you the news?'

Peter dared already on May 27, 2003, suggest that "the occupation is not going well," at a time when euphoria was still the rule in the US media on Iraq. (I mean to take nothing away from John McWethy in the following report, but I take it Peter agreed with the thrust.)

' ABC News Transcripts

SHOW: WORLD NEWS TONIGHT WITH PETER JENNINGS (06:30 PM ET) - ABC

May 27, 2003 Tuesday

LENGTH: 559 words

HEADLINE: OCCUPATION NOT GOING WELL

BODY:
JOHN MCWETHY, ABC NEWS

(Off Camera) It doesn't, Peter. US intelligence sources are insisting, however, despite the rising violence against American troops, that they see no new organized Iraqi resistance.

JOHN MCWETHY (CONTINUED)

(Voice Over) What they apparently are seeing, officials say, are pockets of Iraqis with ties to the old regime, who are realizing they have nowhere to go. They cannot escape Iraq, borders are closed. As a result, they are now fighting, often using guerrilla tactics. Defense Secretary Rumsfeld today urged patience.

DONALD RUMSFELD, SECRETARY OF DEFENSE

The transition to democracy will take time. It will not be a smooth road. There are folks that are still out there who, obviously, do not wish the coalition forces well.

JOHN MCWETHY

(Voice Over) Keeping the peace promises to be very labor-intensive. There are 146,000 American troops in Iraq today. Tens of thousands were supposed to be home by now. '

Peter's program was where you could hear this realism in May of 2003, and not very much of anyplace else.

One of the greats has passed from among us. He left us his example, though, of careful honesty in reportage and deep respect for knowledge of the region about which one is reporting, values increasingly under fire in the highly politicized world of contemporary American journalism.

I was on his show twice. I'm putting up the transcripts for old times sake.

' ABC News Transcripts

SHOW: WORLD NEWS TONIGHT WITH PETER JENNINGS (06:30 PM ET) - ABC

April 5, 2004 Monday

LENGTH: 328 words

HEADLINE: WHO IS AL-SADR? CLERIC STIRS UP SHIITE MUSLIM REBELLION IN IRAQ

BODY:
ELIZABETH VARGAS, ABC NEWS

(Off Camera) Before the US invaded Iraq, any number of analysts said that the single, most dangerous possibility was that the US would lose the support of the Shiite Muslims who make up the majority of Iraq's population. Al Sadr's ability to stir rebellion has brought that possibility very much to the forefront. ABC's Jim Sciutto tonight on the man who has now made himself into an American enemy.

JIM SCIUTTO,