50 Dead in Violence
Jaafari Refuses to Step Down
Robert H. Reid of AP reports on deaths in Iraq on Tuesday:
* The US announced the deaths of 5 US soldiers, 3 killed by a guerrilla bomb on Tuesday and another two on Sunday.
* Guerrilla violence killed 23 Iraqis on Tuesday. Reid writes, "A car bombing killed five people, and three others died when a bomb exploded on a minibus, both attacks in Shiite areas of the capital, police said."
*Police found 24 corpses, mostly in Baghdad, the victims of sectarian reprisal killings.
Reid also writes about the rivalry between clerical politicians Abdul Aziz al-Hakim and Muqtada al-Sadr within the United Iraqi Alliance, which is in part responsible for the political gridlock. A government has still not been formed, and the Iraqi government appears basically not to be functioning, according to Louise Roug of the Los Angeles Times.
Al-Zaman /AFP report [Ar.] that sources in London from the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) are saying that Ibrahim Jaafari has absolutely refused to step aside as candidate for prime minister of the United Iraqi Alliance. One way to unseat him now would be to have another internal party vote, but he might win that again. Another way would be for the Iraqi parliament to elect a president, and for the president to appoint Jaafari prime minister, and then for Jaafari to lose a vote of no-confidence in the Iraqi legislature. The problem with that scenario is that no government can be formed and no president selected without a 2/3s majority in parliament. That cannot be had without the UIA, and the UIA won't instruct its MPs to vote for a president who will turn around and try to depose the UIA prime minister. Catch-22.
Iraq will not attend a meeting of neighboring foreign ministers in Cairo to protest the recent remarks by Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak criticizing Shiites for being more loyal to Iran than to their own countries. Iraqi Sunni cleric Harith al-Dhari of the fundamentalist Association of Muslim Scholars expressed regret that Iraq would not attend.
Mubarak either through a blunder or deliberately has put off the table any possibility for the deployment of Egyptian troops in Iraq under an Arab League or United Nations banner. The Iraqi Shiite majority would never easily have accepted them, except out of desperation. Now they will never accept them under any circumstances. I almost think Mubarak deliberately set out to anger the Shiites to produce this result. He is now off the hook, and if Cheney has been pressuring him to send a division to Iraq, that pressure will cease.
Infant mortality in Basra is up by 30% since the end of the Baath regime, according to some health officals in the southern, largely Shiite port city. This is where we came in. We used to all complain that US sanctions on Iraq were killing babies and children by denying them medicine. The sanctions are long gone. But now political insecurity and government paralysis and civil war are producing even worse results.
If the victory in Italy's elections of Romano Prodi survives the challenge to a recount launched by Silvio Berlusconi, Prodi will almost certainly pull Italy's troops out of Iraq on a short timetable. The likely result, it seems to me, is that Nasiriyah will be taken over by the Mahdi Army of Muqtada al-Sadr.
Some Turkish politicians and journalists are accusing the United States of sheltering terrorists in northern Iraq, i.e. the PKK or Kurdish Worker's Party, a violent group that has fought along guerrilla action against Ankara.
What a fall from 9/11, when the US was seen as the archetypal victim of terrorism. Now its friends call it an enabler of terrorists. And, don't forget about those Mojahedin-e Khalq fighters at Ashrafiyah Base in Iraq, Iranian terrorists of whom the Pentagon just doesn't seem able to let go.
posted by Juan Cole @ 4/12/2006 06:34:00 AM
7 Comments:
How irresponsible of "some Turkish politicians" to accuse these United States of sheltering terrorism. Any actions we may take, by the very definition of American, has to be considered pro democracy. We have ushered in an era of unparalleled democracy in Iraq and we will do the same for Iran.
"Some Turkish politicians" should be grateful for our presence in their part of the world. America stands for truth and honor and freedom and democracy.
It is outrageous that there would be any who call our perfectly targeted bombing campaigns a form of state terrorism. Outrageous!.
Terrorism is what terrorists do. Spreading democracy is what we do. The worst of collateral damage must be taken in stride as necessary and, on occasion, anxiety provoking. Still, the anxiety related civilian effects of American democratic action are minor, minor indeed.
American is great. Terrorists are evil. Keep that in mind!
The Iraqi parliament can produce a vote of no confidence against Jaafari's existing caretaker government. There is already a majority bloc opposed to him, and such a vote will be a sufficient signal for him to go now.
Jaafari has no means to cling to power. He is prolonging the agony of Iraq out of spite and anger. He now says that being a PM is not a personal gain!! No no no, he is giving his life to "his people" who have elected him (which they didn't) and he can not betray "his people" nor democracy (another democracy merchant.)
The Kurdish warlord Barzani also wants to do Iraq a great favor: he has just offered the perfect Kurdish Democracy as a template. The comical 1991 elections run by Garner were the only elections for fourteen years, until the national Iraqi elections of 2005. The Kurdish "parliament" did not sit at all between 1996 and 2004.
There are four peshmerga armies: Barazani's; Talabani's; Duhok's, and freelance second tier warlords', all engaged in low-level conflict waiting for some big blowout party.
The people of Basra who were at the receiving end of Sadam's worst barbarity compare him favorably with the horrors they now endure under their clerics' militias!
The antics of warlords and the Turbans ["ahl-il-ema'em" which describes the turbaned clerics is a derogatory Iraqi slang] are destroying their long-term chances -- a good thing for Iraq.
On the issue of child mortality in Basra, a little perspective. Conservatives tended to argue that high infant deaths in Iraq were Saddam’s fault. Liberals, that they were the fault of the U.S. sanctions against Iraq. Who was right? Look at how the numbers were calculated. The 500,000 dead children number came by comparing death rates before and after the 1991 war. Saddam was in power in both cases. The thing that changed was the sanctions. Hence U.S. responsibility is the most plausible explanation.
But I believe once the sanctions were eased, the child mortality rates went down. If the 30% increase cited in Informed Comment is a comparison to the immediate pre-invasion period, it is not much of an argument against the ‘save the children’ rationale. However, the 1991 comparison is a very good argument against the save the children rationale.
All of this should be considered in light of Les Roberts' study on Iraqi mortality (Lancet). It is the only scientific study of the question. Again, look at the methodology. Roberts compares the period under Saddam to the period under military occupation, and finds a dramatically increased death rate under occupation leading to 100,000 deaths in 18 months. It is entirely valid to conclude the number is now 200,000 after 36 months.
This last number is, indeed, an extrapolation. But no other scientific data are available. One of Roberts points is that it would be relatively easy for a large institution (i.e. the U.S. government) to come up with better scientific estimates if it wanted to. Barring that effort, the 200,000 number is the best (and only) available estimate of excess deaths caused by the U.S. invasion.
And it needs to be emphasized that the comparison is to Saddam. Call Saddam a monster and you implicate the U.S. Mass graves under Saddam? 200,000 more people are dead because of the U.S. invasion and occupation.
Using Saddam as your benchmark is setting the bar incredibly low. Unfortunately, the U.S. hasn’t even been able to lower mortality in Iraq when compared to Saddam Hussein.
A small correction about Italy: some months ago the Berlusconi government set a timetable for pulling the italian troops out of Iraq in the fall of 2006. A lot of italians believe that this was just one of his many campaign tricks, however the timetable was said to come from an agreement with the US. As the new government is unlikely to be formed before the summer, my guess is that it will simply "stay the course" with the announced timetable.
Re Basra infant mortality: if I understand correctly, the insurgency isn't a problem in Basra, because it's deep in Shi'ite territory. So if the U.S. were really spending money to help out Iraqis, this is the sort of place they could make a difference, without having to spend a fortune on security.
Three years after the invasion, and even the safe areas of Iraq are like this. What does that tell you?
There is an article in today's Guardian that quotes the Iraqi interior minister as claiming that the death squads operating in Iraq are not affiliated with the government, but rather are the result of infiltrations into private security agencies. He says such agencies employ about 180,00 Iraqis.
There has been very little discussion in the media of these mercenary forces that operate with impunity in Iraq. This is the first time, though, I've heard the accusation that they are the ones responsible for the death squads. Whether this is true or not, it seems to me there are profound questions about the role these agencies are playing in Iraq, and with the lack of oversight and accountability, the accusation seems to me to be at least somewhat credible.
I wonder, Juan, if you have any thoughts or comments on this.
On April 12 Juan Cole wrote: “If the victory in Italy's elections of Romano Prodi survives the challenge to a recount launched by Silvio Berlusconi, Prodi will almost certainly pull Italy's troops out of Iraq on a short timetable.” Well, not exactly.
Page 5 of the April 13 edition of La Repubblica is almost entirely devoted to this topic, quoting Romano Prodi as saying his new government will withdraw the troops “by the end of the year,” or in other words, on the same time schedule as that proposed by Berlusconi. Although Repubblica lauds Prodi for keeping his word, only four days previously this newspaper had Prodi reiterating the same stand he has taken throughout his campaign: “Our government will begin a secure and rapid withdrawal in agreement with the Iraqi authorities.”
Prodi might be forgiven for stretching the meaning of “rapid” if he actually intended to bring all the troops home, but some 600, more than a fifth of the current contingent, will remain to “provide security” for a group of Italian civilian technicians in Dhi Qhar Province, where the Italian troops are now based.
At this point a little history is in order; a year ago the Italian media reported that in the late 90’s ENI, Italy’s largest energy producer, signed a 300 billion dollar deal with the Hussein government to exploit petroleum in the area of Nassiriya after the lifting of UN sanctions. About this same time similar contracts were also signed with Russian, Chinese and French petroleum firms, leaving the United States and Great Britain out in the cold.
Fast forward to July 2003. Five days after Berlusconi visited George Bush’s ranch in Texas the Italian parliament voted to send 3000 soldiers to Iraq. And where were the Italian troops stationed? In Nassiriya, of course.
In case this should be thought a coincidence, let today’s Repubblica have the last word. After mentioning that two-thirds of Iraq’s oil is located in the south, it goes on to say “in this total is included the petroleum of Nassiriya, an immense deposit over which ENI has a preemptive claim agreed upon with Saddam’s Iraq. The stationing in Nassiriya of a ‘civilian Italian contingent’ would also serve the purpose of safeguarding our legitimate interests in the event that the parliament of Thi Qhar should annul the agreement with ENI and open negotiations with another potential customer.”
No, Prof. Cole, so long as Bush dangles the oil of Nassiriya in front of Italy, its troops will remain in Iraq.
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