Iran Cleans up in Iraq
Iran is perhaps the only unambiguous winner in the new situation in Iraq, and its foreign minister was basking in the glow on Saturday. On Friday, Iraqi foreign minister Hoshyar Zebari defended Iran's right to have a civilian nuclear energy program. That can't be what Washington was going for in backing the new Iraqi government.
Al-Hayat reports that Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki wrapped up his visit to Iraq by meeting in Najaf with Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani and with the junior cleric and nationalist leader Muqtada al-Sadr, along with numerous other clerics in Najaf and Karbala. He also met in Baghdad with Sunni fundamentalist leader Adnan Dulaimi in an attempt to "reassure" him about Iran's intentions in Iraq. The representative of Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, Labid Abawi, said that Mottaki's visit was "extremely positive." He added, "One of our objectives was to underline that Iran is close to Iraq and that it is impossible to bypass it in looking for a resolution of the Iraq question."
Mottaki reaffirmed that Iran had committed $1 billion in aid to Iraq, and would cooperate in the area of energy production. Mottaki also sent a letter to the tribunal judging Saddam Hussein with a list of charges against him.
Issues the Iraqis brought up with the Iranian official included the need for better border control to stop unauthorized entry of Iranians, as well as combatting weapons smuggling and drug smuggling. The Iranians in turn complained about the infiltration of Iran from Iraq of terrorists from the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK) guerrilla movement. Saddam had allowed this terrorist group to establish a base in Iraq, in order to use it to harass the Iranian regime. Although the State Department considers the MEK a terrorist organization, the Department of Defense appears to be giving it free rein in Iraq.
Iranian news of the visit concentrated on the new Iranian consulates that will be established in Iraq.
Al-Sharq al-Awsat reports that Mottaki said Sistani emphasized the necessity of Iraqi national unity, and had avoided using the words "Shiite" and "Sunni."
Tom Lasseter of Knight Ridder looks at the Shiite militias of the south. His interviewees in the British and US military maintain that Iran is running training camps inside Iran for Iraqi militiamen. (Iran for over two decades had trained the Badr Corps, recruiting from Iraqis who fled Saddam, so such training camps, facilities and expertise are nothing new.) On the other hand, since they have such longstanding and tight relations with Badr, it doesn't really make much sense for them to arm, fund and train Badr's potential rivals, such as splinter groups of the Iraqi nationalist Sadr movement. On that, I would have to see more proof. Badr is a no brainer.
Lasseter says that the Sadr movement dominates the city council of Amarah. Then he says that Amarah police are mostly Badr corps. That I don't understand (I'm not challenging it, I just don't understand). Wouldn't the Sadrist councilmen have packed the police with members of the Mahdi Army? [Answer: The central government's Ministry of Interior has enormous influence over the hiring of local police, and under Bayan Jabr it was in the hands of the Supreme Council, which has Badr as its paramilitary arm.]
Lasseter also reports on suspicions that the governor of Basra is using Shiite militias (of various sorts) for extortion and assassination. The governor is from the Virtue Party but is alleged to be using Badr and the Mahdi Army. (Last I knew, the Mahdi Army is not actually very powerful in Basra, but this may have changed).
The NYT profiles the ways in which Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is drawing power into the traditionally weak office of president.
posted by Juan Cole @ 5/28/2006 12:32:00 AM
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9 Comments:
Prof Cole; "Lasseter says that the Sadr movement dominates the city council of Amarah. Then he says that Amarah police are mostly Badr corps. That I don't understand
Badr was recruited by the Brits, not the Council. Despite its clear Iranian links, Badr was, and is, treated as a Western collaborator too, as a result of deals with Hakim.
In any case, the total anarchy and various foriegn factors in Iraq are causing militias to splinter and regroup almost on a daily basis.
The criminal elements now the most powerful -- due to the massive wealth they have accumulated. It is very much like the rise of the Russian super-Mafias under Yeltsin.
The Iraqi mafia cheifs, originally militiamen, now simply buy their way into the police and other, even rival, militias.
Perhaps Mr Biden will now divide provinces and cities into little pieces and hand them over to the mafias!
In almost every generation of youth, there is a segment that gravitates towards a violent romantic tryst with patriotic bloodlust...
In nation states where the opportunity avails itself to allow such youth to volunteer for military service, they fill the ranks of Sandhurst, West point and NDA seats...
But in Arab and Muslim states, especially since the devastating defeats of the 1967 wars, followed by the humiliating degeneration of national military institutions under Shahs and El Presidentes, the youth have gravitated towards militia movements...
Those who do not understand why young people join the ranks of Hizbollah or Hamas or any other of a few dozen of Muslim militias across the world only need study the comprehensive castration of nationhood in these states...
No matter what we do, there will always be a segment of every generation that wants to sacrifice itself for supposed higher causes...
In Ummrikka, we have movements such as the Christian RightWing BattleCry pulling teenagers out of video games into real combat... In the Muslim world, well, they don't really have to go very far beyond their door step to find an enemy now, do they?
Stewie.
What a Good Reporter Can Get Away With
Under the cover of an anti-Iranian headline (what else these days?), Tom Lassiter's report has a number of gems, including this bit of dynamite:
"Saudi Arabia is trying to counter the rising power of Iran in Basra by giving money and weapons to fanatical Sunni groups operating there," attributed to "a senior Iraqi Ministry of Defense official in Basra. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because he feared for his life."
Some have suspected the Saudis have been supporting "fanatical Sunni groups" in the rest of Iraq for years, but such information does not seem to have been welcome in the Western press. Censorship? Would the US public be upset to learn the Saudis have been supporting groups that target US troops? Is the USG pro or con even these groups in Basra?
Another aspect of the report worthy of comment but also "under the headline" is the lackadaisical attitude of the British to much of the violence occurring in Basra. They can't even be bothered to go after groups that mortar the British base camp, if the report is to be taken at face value!
If even self-defense is outside their brief, why in Margaret Thatcher's name are they there? Is the pay and special allowances schedule that good? Or are they, like the US, just hanging around until all the various groups kill each other off in five or ten years' time, leaving the Westerners to pick up the pieces and extract the oil?
The anti-Iranian theme of the piece is droll, if viewed in the context that the Iranians are doing exactly what the Saudis, other Sunni governments, and the US and the UK are all doing, interfering with armed force in Iraq's internal affairs. Guess which country will be attacked by the USG for doing so?
Another dilly is this: "British military officials suspect that the missile that was used to shoot down a British helicopter over Basra on May 6 came from Iran." Yet as late as May 18, BBC said the cause of the crash was still under investigation. Has the investigation concluded a missile was involved, or is the anti-Iran theme pre-empting those pesky facts again? Does the ghost of Lincoln stalk as far as Knight-Ridder?
Is the NYT Reduced to Writing Between the Lines?
With the long arm of the FBI and even the lowly Capitol Police pushing the Congress around (richly as they may deserve it), one has to ask if the NYT is becoming more cautious, putting its view of Washington in the guise of reporting on Tehran? --
"President ... is trying to consolidate power in the office of the presidency in a way never before seen in the ...-year history of the ... Republic...."
"Political analysts and people close to the government here say ... and his allies are trying to buttress a system of conservative clerical rule that has lost credibility with the public."
"... is pressing far beyond the boundaries set by other presidents."
"... is pursuing a risky strategy that could offer him a shot at long-term influence over the direction of the country — or ruin."
"The president's strategy is also aimed at limiting political challenges to the system. While political arrests are down, and the government has not moved to close privately held newspapers, it has staged a few crucial arrests — sending a chill through intellectual and academic circles — and it has pressured newspapers to be silent on certain topics, like opposition to the nuclear program.
"He also has struck back at those who would undermine or mock him. The local press reported that the president became so incensed with jokes about his personal hygiene that were being exchanged via text messages on cellphones, that he had the messages stopped and people at the top of the cellphone system punished."
"He has traveled around the country, promising to dole out development projects the government can hardly afford."
"... is representative of the class of people — wealthy and influential from the first generation of the revolution — that the president is trying to displace...."
Veiling comment on the domestic situation in the guise of "observations" about "foreign countries" has long been a staple of the press in totalitarian countries, such as the USSR and China. Is this now a ploy the staff of the NYT feels expedient to utilize as the Presidency speeds from one power grab to the next?
You say, "Although the State Department considers the MEK a terrorist organization, the Department of Defense appears to be giving it free rein in Iraq."
If true this is very important because it shows that the US government again really has no principles to which it adheres other than power. If we bleat incessantly about "international terrorism" EXCEPT when the terrorism is against a government we consider an enemy we are shown to have no principles.
One of the points used to difuse the Iranian president's more outragious statements (although some of those statements have proven to be false) is to rightly claim that the President has little power.
As the former home of Judith Miller, perhaps the NYT is trying to "build up" the President of Iran in order to make him more "scary," and thus provide more justification for action against Iran.
Juan, could you elaborate some on the NY Times article? The sense I got off of it was that the President of Iran is attempting to develop his office more as a front for the Supreme Council than as an actual power unto itself. Can you elaborate?
For the reasons Brian stated, I don't believe a word of reporting on Iran from the NYT. I'd like to hear Prof. Cole's take on the NYT story as well, which is why I clicked over. It seems that the rise of the Iranian president is happening with the blessing of the clerics and so who's in charge after all?
But again, this could all be another big lie from the paper of record.
I am not all that surprised and certainly not outraged that Hoshyar Zebari would issue a statement supporting Iran's right to pursue a civilian nuclear energy program. First, that's also the stated position of the EU and even of the U.S. itself. Second, nobody in Iraq wants a war between the US and Iran, because Iraq will suffer even more. Everyone wants both sides to turn dowen the rhetoric and not act stupid - and that includes both the Shia' parties, who obviously don't want the US to attack Iran, but even the Kurds. The KDP (Zebari is KDP) and the PUK both want to maintain a careful neutrality when it comes to Iran. I do not believe that they will readily back any efforts by Washington to destabilize Iranian Kurdistan, even though there are many Iranian Kurds in Iraq who would love to see the Iranian government fall. Quite the contrary - I think the Iraqi Kurdish leaders are caught between a political need to keep a lid on Iranian Kurdish separatists, and an Iraqi Kurdish population that is growing increasingly sympathetic to Kurdish movements in Iran (and Turkey, for that matter).
The second point is that SCIRI sometimes gets bad press here for the wrong reasons. They require bad press and a lot more outside pressure to stop the grotesque excesses of their shadow war in Baghdad and just south of Baghdad. However, they seem to be in an unenviable position in which the US and the Sunnis accuses them of collaboration with Iran, while Sadr's goons accuse them of collaboration with the US. The truth is Sadr's group surely collaborates with Iran too, and Sadr's Ministries are happy to take funding and support from the US. Sadr controls several ministries that get millions in US assistance, so it seems ironic to me that SCIRI gets blamed for collaboration. Sadr has the upper hand in messaging, sort of like the Republicans do here in the US.
That's too bad, because from my experience, SCIRI is by far the more reasonable, calm and responsible force in most of southern Iraq. I am involved in some projects in the area, and SCIRI municipal authorities and leaders are less violent, more open to assistance, and better at policing their own. They may be a little more rooted in traditional structures of authority, but that's probably a good thing because it beats the alternative of chaos or Sadr's brownshirts.
The SCIRI people behave like Iraqis, but the Sadr people behave like devotees of Muqtada al-Sadr, and that scares me. Sadr is not one to shrink from absolute power, and that's clearly what his supporters have in mind. It's not my position to back one or the other, but I cringe a little when SCIRI gets such consistent bad press because from my standpoint, they are not all that unreasonable.
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