Informed Comment

Naguib Mahfouz, RIP

Nobel prize-winning Arabic novelist and short story writer Naguib Mahfouz is dead at 94.

Do yourself a favor and read him. If you want a window on Arab culture, forget the posturing politicians (who mostly actually work in English and French), and the American pundits who interpret the Arab world to us without knowing Arabic or having lived in the Arab world (sort of as though Aljazeera’s correspondent who reported on Washington, DC, government affairs did not know English and had never visited the United States; believe me, it would not happen.)

Read Mahfouz.

I suggest you start with Midaq Alley, set in a fast-changing lower middle class neighborhood of Cairo during the British occupation of World War II. If you ever wondered what the Egyptians were thinking as Montgomery duelled Rommel, here is the most painless way possible to find out. The characters alone, and they are characters, are worth the price of admission.

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Bush Maintains ending US Occupation of Iraq will Infuriate Terrorists

Bush says that ending the Iraq occupation will open America to a terrorist attack.

I can’t imagine why he says that. If we weren’t occupying Iraq, how would that infuriate al-Qaeda and the Muslim radical fringe?

Can you imagine the discussions in the cave in Waziristan?

“They got out of Iraq!”

“Damn them, this is unacceptable.”

“How dare they leave a Muslim country alone?”

“They are imperialists,aren’t they? Why don’t they imperialize? I am confused.”

“The Iraqis are rejoicing, saying that they are independent and can practice Islam freely.”

“It is horrible, I tell you, horrible.”

“It cries out for vengeance! It is not acceptable for them not to colonize us!”

“I say we hit them where it hurts.”

For a peak at the real world, try here.

Or you could try here. Robert Pape is a social scientist and has crunched the numbers.

As for the argument that withdrawing from Iraq will encourage the terrorists and make them feel victorious, we can turn Cheney’s argument around. What had we withdrawn from in the mid to late 1990s that precipitated 9/11? Bin Laden cited Beirut (two decades earlier!) and Yemen (where we just stopped refueling). This was a pitiful attempt on Bin Laden’s part to convince himself that the US is a paper tiger, not a realistic accounting of strategy! Do Bush and Cheney really want to rely on al-Qaeda propaganda in making their own policies?

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Diwaniyah Ceasefire in Doubt
Spike in Death toll Continues, with over 50 dead

Dan Murphy of the CSM writes about the increasing fragmentation of Iraqi politics and militias at the local level. He argues that Muqtada al-Sadr and even the powerful Kurdish warlords are losing control to local militant groups that take the law in their own hands. His comparison of the PKK (Kurdish Workers’ Party) in Kurdistan, which blows up things in Turkey, to the extremist Sadrists in Diwaniyah and Karbala who are beyond Muqtada al-Sadr’s control strikes me as extremely perceptive.

A roadside bomb in the market of Shurjah in Baghdad killed 25 and wounded 25 others. In Hilla to the southwest of the capital, a bicycle bomb killed 12 and wounded 38 at a recruitment station. Altogether at least 50 were killed and 100 wounded, though that is a substantial undercount. Al-Hayat puts the death toll on Wednesday at 80.

Defense Minister Abdul Qadir Jasim Muhammad al-`Ubaidi visited Diwaniyah Wednesday, the scene of fighting between militias, and between a militia and local Iraqi tribal troops. He abruptly denounced the cease-fire that had been negotiated by the elected governor of Qadisiyah province with Muqtada al-Sadr, who roundly condemned the Mahdi Army militiamen that engaged in the firefight. Al-Hayat reports that the rural tribal youth that make up the Iraqi army in Diwaniyah are in the mood for revenge and want to start back up the fighting with the Mahdi Army. For its part, the Sadr Movement in Najaf complained that the governor of Qadisiyah Province had already broken the cease fire agreement, with government troops moving into Sadrist neighborhoods “as though they were Occupation forces,” and firing indiscriminately, killing several persons. At the same time, an aide to Muqtada said the young nationalist cleric commanded his followers to stop fighting and to put away their weapons, and to avoid appearing armed in the streets, lest they give a pretext to forces that would like to move against the Sadr Movement and its leadership.

My guess? Prime Minister Maliki will try to rein in Gen. al-`Ubaidi and try to preserve the shakey the cease fire. The Diwaniyah crisis was settled in the Najaf way, with talking it out and face saved for everyone. The Defense Minister wants to settle it in the old Baathi way, with the non-government side crushed. This would be all very well if the government were a) actually strong enough to pull it off and b) not a composite that includes the Sadr Movement!

Al-Zaman says that an assistant secretary (Mudirah `Ammah) in the Ministry of Justice was assassinated on Wednesday.

Al-Zaman/ DPA allege that Marines on patrol in parts of West Baghdad where Sunni Arabs from al-Anbar province have taken refuge used megaphones to tell them that the US troops were leaving Iraq soon. In Ramadi to the west, Sunni Arab guerrillas clashed with US troops.

With Bush and Blair’s Iraq War, much of the lying was done through silence or silencing others. In spring of 2004 the [oops of course should have been Australian] foreign minister Alexander Downer suppressed a message from a weapons inspector saying point blank that there was no WMD in Iraq. He was briefed by the scientist. And then a month later the foreign minister said at a news conference that the hunt for WMD was a work in progress and he could draw no conclusions. Over on this side of the Pacific, not only did Rummy, Bush and Cheney stonewall us on the empty well, but Pete Hoekstra and Rick Santorum are still effectively lying about it. People in a democracy get the representatives they deserve.

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Israeli War on Lebanese Civilians Continues

A top United Nations humanitarian official, Jan Egeland, said he was shocked on inspecting southern Lebanon to find it littered with deadly unexploded cluster bombs. These were for the most part dropped in the last three days of the conflict, when it was foreseen that there would be a resolution and a ceasefire. He said, “What’s shocking and I would say, to me, completely immoral is that 90 percent of the cluster bomb strikes occurred in the last 72 hours of the conflict, when we knew there would be a resolution.”

Egeland was not just harshly condemning a UN member state, which is a breach of protocol. He was also accusing Israel of crimes against humanity. You see, if a rationale could be found at all for using cluster bombs, it would be against a massed, invading enemy infantry corps. But just to scatter them all around a civilian area as a cease fire is imminent is not a legitimate military action. It is a monstrous crime. It is a surefire death sentence on hundreds, perhaps thousands of innocent children, who will find the bomblets and think they are playthings. The government of Ehud Olmert committed this crime as part of its cynical attempt to ethnically cleanse the far south of Lebanon of its Shiite inhabitants. It was a way of discouraging them from returning, just as was the massive demolition of thousands of houses, with bulldozers and aerial bombing, which had no military value whatsoever.

The American people are complicit in these war crimes, insofar as they provided the cluster bombs and supported Olmert to the hilt in his dirty war, which was only occasionally about actually combating Hizbullah fighters (there weren’t any, in a lot of the places that were bombed).

Israel continued its across the board blockade of Lebanese ports, which is depriving dialysis patients of needed medicines and continuing to harm the entire Lebanese economy. 40% of the Lebanese electorate is Christian, and they are suffering along with everyone else. Lebanese unemployment is surging to Depression-era levels.

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Rumsfeld Accuses Critics of Appeasement of Fascists

The LA Times reports that

‘ Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Tuesday compared critics of the Bush administration to those who sought to appease the Nazis before World War II, warning that the nation is confronting “a new type of fascism.” ‘

(Click here for explanation of photo.)

The LA Times continued:

‘ He continued, “Can we truly afford to believe that, somehow or someway, vicious extremists could be appeased?” ‘

For an alternative view, see The Crock of Appeasement, an IC golden oldie:

‘The Crock of Appeasement

The warmongers, imperialists, and just plain greedy who wish to use up US troops to gain their ill-gotten goods love to use the word “appeasement.” Anyone who stands against their expansionist ambitions will be tagged with this term. In the lexicology of the Rabid Right, it evokes British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s attempt to negotiate with German Chancellor Adolph Hitler. It is certainly the case that Hitler was a genocidal maniac and not the sort of man with whom one could usefully negotiate. But not all negotiation is equally fruitless. Before that incident, by the way, “appeasement” had a positive connotation, of “seeking peace.”

The rightwing use of the term appeasement, however, turns it on its head. Taken seriously, the doctrine of “no appeasement” on the right would mean we are stuck in perpectual war, always doomed to be on the offensive, always dedicated to gobbling up more of other people’s territory and wealth even at the expense of living in constant dread of being blown up and being forced to give up the civil liberties which had made American civilization great.

It would never be possible to negotiate a truce with any enemy. That would be appeasement. It would never be possible to compromise. That would be appeasement. It would never be prudent to withdraw troops from a failed war. That would be appeasement. In other words, the rightwing doctrine of “no appeasement, ever” actually turns you into Hitler rather than into Churchill.

But we are anyway not stuck perpetually in the late 1930s, and it is not the only exemplary period in history to which we can resort for our metaphors and our courses of action.

The Iraq crisis, for instance, is clearly an odd sort of neocolonialism, which can only ultimately be resolved by decolonization. Decolonization in the 1950s and 1960s was also denounced as “appeasement,” but it was the only right course.

The similarities between British decolonization in Kenya and the Bush administration “war on terror” were pointed out in The Nation last winter.

Britain gave up India (and Pakistan) in 1947. Was that “appeasement?” You may be assured that the British Right saw it that way.

Without this sort of realism, Britain would have tried to keep India and there would have been a bloodbath. Likewise, any attempt by Britain to hold on to Kenya past the early 1960s would have led to even more violence than the Mau Mau and British reprisals (20,000 imprisoned, many tortured) had. And with decolonization, the Mau Mau and violence subsided. Problems do have solutions, and war is not always the best solution. Sometimes the withdrawal of the imperial power itself solves the problem.

You will note that you never hear that Britain “appeased” the Stern Gang, Irgun, Haganah and other Zionist forces that sometimes engaged in terrorism in Palestine, when it departed that territory in 1948.

France “appeased” Lebanon and Syria by granting them independence in 1943. It “appeased” Morocco by giving it up in 1956. It “appeased” Algeria in 1962. Britain likewise “appeased” all of its former colonies. The political Right in each of these imperial countries fought decolonization tooth and nail (I do not admire Albert Camus as much as many Americans of my generation, because of his reactionary stance on Algeria).

Or let us take Cory Aquino’s people power movement that challenged-US backed dictator Ferdinand Marcos in the 1980s. The first instinct of Reagan and the rightwingers around him was to help Marcos crush Cory and her movement. Anything else would have been “appeasement.” But Senator Dick Lugar went to the Philippines, looked around, and wisely decided that the only feasible course of action for the US was to acquiesce in people power. Lugar managed to persuade Reagan, thus averting disaster. Were Lugar and Reagan guilty of “appeasement”?

All counter-insurgency struggles have to be waged at both the military and the political levels. The political side of the struggle requires that we attempt to understand what is driving the insurgents, that we negotiate with them and attempt to bring them into the system. That is not appeasement. It is counter-insurgency. Counter-insurgency by simple brute military force has never worked, except where its wielder has been willing to commit genocide or soemthing close to it.

Is negotiating with the leadership of the Baath guerrilla movement in Iraq appeasement? I favor it if it would save the lives of US troops. Would declaring an amnesty for Baath Party members who cannot be proved to have committed a crime be appeasement? I favor it. Would internationalizing Iraq and drawing down US troops be appeasement? I favor it.

Rightwingers who want to play Churchill and denounce “appeasement” should please go off to Iraq and put their own lives on the line instead of playing politics with the lives of our brave troops from the safety of Washington DC. What we want for those troops, as soon as humanly feasible, is to come out of Iraq and stay out.

And no, it is not so they can then be sent to die in the sands of Iran. ‘

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Americans bombed Diwaniyah
26 Bodies found in Baghad

On Wednesday morning in Iraq, guerrillas set off a bomb outside a military recruiting center, killing 12 and wounding 38.

Two more US troops were announced dead, one from action in al-Anbar, and one from a humbee accident.

The initial story, conveyed in the press and by US officials and observers about the Diwaniyah clashes of Saturday-Monday is falling apart as new information comes out.

1. The US military represented itself as just a bystander, having sent helicopters to hover above. But Agence France Press reports today from Diwaniyah:

‘ During yesterday’s fighting, an American F-16 jet dropped a 220kg satellite-guided bomb on an “enemy position” while flying in support of Iraqi and coalition troops, the US air force said. ‘

2. Some reports and observers represented the Iraqi army as having acquitted itself well. But AFP reports:

‘ Officials said 81 people died in Diwaniyah in yesterday’s clashes between security forces and militiamen and that . . . a peace deal was reached . . . “We killed 50 gunmen in the clashes and this incident resulted in the deaths of 23 of our soldiers and injuries to 30 of them,” Mr Maliki said. Mr Jaathi said eight civilians were also killed and 61 wounded bystanders were treated after yesterday’s 12-hour gun battle. ‘

My own guess is that it took local Badr Corps (infiltrated into Diwaniyah police and security forces), Badr Corps Special Police Commandos, Iraqi army soldiers, and a US 500 pound bomb to produce an outcome where ragtag militiamen were fought to a standstill.

3. The impression was given of a clear win of the new Iraqi army over the Mahdi Army militia. But AFP reports that the battle was resolved through negotiations, not militarily, and the Iraqi army has been forced to back down on some points:

‘ The army has agreed not to enter residential areas for three days, while the Mahdi Army will withdraw its fighters and a militia commander who was arrested at the weekend will be brought to court within 24 hours, town councillor Sheikh Ghanim Abid said. ‘

4. It was implied in some quarters that Muqtada al-Sadr put the militiamen up to causing this trouble. In fact, the local Sadrist leadership in Diwaniyah has for months been far more militant than Muqtada would have liked, and he tried to rein them in. AFP confirms:

‘ but aides said the battle had been triggered by rogue elements. ‘

In my appearance on the Lehrer News Hour on Tuesday, I challenged the narrative that the brave new Iraqi army single-handedly took on a Shiite militia and put it in its place. I think the army sided with one militia (the Badr Corps a.k.a Diwaniyah police) over another (the Mahdi Army). And I see the faction-fighting in Diwaniyah, which follows similar such clashes in Karbala and Basra, as further sign that even the Shiite south has entered a new phase of profound instability. Instead of celebrating that the Iraqi army did not run away from this fight, we should be worried that such a fight was necessary in sleepy, Shiite Diwaniyah to begin with. Diwaniyah, with a provincial government run by the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, should have been a constituency for the Maliki government, not a challenge to it.

Some sort of deal appears to have been struck between the Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds about how petroleum revenues will be collected, federally and provincially, and how the federal government will share them back out. If this deal really is firm, it is a big achievement, since this is one of the issues that could blow Iraq apart down the road.

On the other hand, the deal appears intended to pave the way to the letting of some major Iraqi petroleum bids. I worry that with the country such a mess and the politicians so cash-strapped, they will be tempted to give away too much in bad contracts, just for an immediate infusion of money.

The Iraqi government will gain control of its own army in September.

You mean they didn’t have control of their own army?

Of course, this “control” that the troops will obey the commands that they are given.

The Kurds are building a refugee camp for 6,000 Iraqis who have been displaced north by the violence and poor security and bad economy in Arab Iraq. They are said not to be able to afford housing in Sulaymaniyah. It is hard to tell from a distance whether this is philanthropy or a social control mechanism.

Reuters reports political violence on Tuesday. Major incidents included the discovery of 26 dead bodies in Baghdad; other violence:

KIRKUK – A policeman was killed and nine people were wounded when a roadside bomb went off near their patrol in the tense city of Kirkuk, 250 km (155 miles) north of Baghdad, police and hospital sources said. . .

BAQUBA – Fifteen people were gunned down in several attacks in different areas of Baquba, police said. . .

BAQUBA – Gunmen attacked an office of the radical Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr in the religiously mixed city of Baquba on Tuesday, killing two guards and wounding five, police said. . .

NEAR BAQUBA – Four people were found shot dead, handcuffed and blindfolded in a village near Baquba, police said. . .

BAGHDAD – Four mortar rounds landed in two districts in northern Baghdad wounding five people, including two Iraqi soldiers, a source in the Interior Ministry said. . .

BAGHDAD – Clashes between a Sunni tribe and Shi’ite militias wounded 14 people late on Monday in southern Baghdad, the army and an Interior Ministry source said.

Read Leonard Pitts on the Bushies’ mania to control information while it is still available. :-)

Mother Jones has a timeline of the lies that led to the last war.

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Over 100 Killed in Iraq, 100 Wounded
Mahdi Army Clashes in Diwaniyah
Bombings Rock Turkey

Two more US troops were announced dead on Monday, bringing the total dead among GIs for the weekend to 9.

Vice President Richard Bruce Cheney doesn’t get it, as usual. The reason to draw down US ground troops in Iraq is that for the most part their presence in such numbers is counter-productive. Look at the fighting in Diwaniyah. All the US did was send helicopters to circle around. We don’t need US or Coalition troops in Diwaniyah. And, why would we care who controls Diwaniyah, anyway? What Americans had even heard of it four years ago? It certainly is not a security threat to the United States.

As for this tag line that the the US was not in Iraq on Sept. 11, so Iraq cannot be generating terror, how stupid does he think we are? September 11 came indirectly out of the Reagan administration’s use of Muslim fascists or mujahidin to fight socialism in Afghanistan. The lesson to draw is that unleashing large numbers of unconventional guerrilla forces and giving them billions of dollars and CIA training is a bad idea, and might well produce blowback. Afghanistan generated the last wave of terror. Now Iraq is generating a new generation of terror. Madrid and London came in response to it. Cheney’s tag line is misleading and foolish.

The Independent estimates that over 100 Iraqis were killed on Monday in political violence. Dozens died in the fighting in Diwaniyah, along with the other violent deaths reported by Reuters, and the 14 dead bodies that showed up in Baghdad according to the LA Times. Al-Hayat estimated that 100 were wounded, as well.

Guerrillas also targeted the Ministry of the Interior with a car bomb, killing at least 16 and perhaps as many as 26 (-al-Hayat) and wounding dozens. The attack was likely an attempt to kill Interior Minister Jawad al-Bulani, who was to meet with provincial police chiefs on Monday.

Diwaniyah is run politically by the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, and likely its police and security forces have been heavily infiltrated by the Iran-trained Badr Corps, the paramilitary of SCIRI (as the NYT also suggests.) So a lot of the struggle is probably actually best thought of as Mahdi Army on Badr Corps faction fighting. Although SCIRI and allies won the provincial elections of January, 2005, since then the Sadr movement has been gaining adherents and influence in this and other southern Shiite provinces. New provincial elections were scheduled but have never been held, in part for fear that the Sadrists would sweep to power in provincial statehouses.

The Associated Press explains how the fighting in Diwaniyah began on Saturday, with Shiite militia attacks on Polish troops in the area. AP says that the Mahdi Army controlled wide swathes of the city on Monday evening.

‘ The clashes in Diwaniyah began Saturday night after a rocket attack on a Polish-run base earlier in the day, and then resumed Sunday night, said Lt. Col. Dariusz Kacperczyk, a Polish military spokesman.

Sheikh Abdul-Razaq al-Nidawi, the manager of Sadr’s office in Diwaniyah, told the Associated Press that trouble had been brewing since Saturday night when the army arrested an Sadr supporter from the Jumhouri neighborhood.

On Sunday, the army raided the same place and “a gunfight erupted between them and the Mahdi Army,” Nidawi said.

Army Capt. Fatik Aied said gunbattles broke out at about 11 p.m. Sunday south of Diwaniyah, when Iraqi soldiers conducted raids in three neighborhoods to flush out militiamen and seize weapons.

Nidawi said “a big force of the army raided Jumhouri, Sadr and Askouri neighborhoods and clashes broke out (again) between the army and the Mahdi Army.” He said the raids took place early Monday. ‘

Al-Zaman reports that for the past three days, Diwaniyah had turned into an arena for street battles. On Monday, 20 Iraqi soldiers were killed and 50 Mahdi Army militiamen (followers of Shiite nationalist cleric Muqtada al-Sadr), and 70 persons were wounded. The battles evolved quickly after Iraqi security forces imprisoned an official of the Sadr Movement. The government and the Mahdi Army have concluded an unofficial truce. An Iraqi government spokesman said that 20 Iraqi troops and 40 Mahdi Army militiamen were killed in clashes that began Sunday night in Diwaniyah.

A captain who asked to remain anonymous told al-Zaman, “The clashes broke out after the Coalition forces incarcerated a prominent leader of the Sadr movement, who had in his possession quanities of medium weapons and bombs, and was linked to Saturday’s assassinations after an attack in the Jumhuri District [downtown Diwaniyah].” The captain said that on Sunday, negotiations took place between the Coalition forces and the Sadr Movement concerning the release of the Sadrist leader, but they failed. That is what led to the clashes between the Mahdi Army and Iraqi security forces.” He added, that a number of Mahdi militiamen came to the province from neighboring ones, to participate in the battle.

[The "Coalition" forces were apparently the Poles.]

Sahib al-Amiri, the head of a Sadrist foundation in Najaf, denied that the Mahdi Army had been involved in the fighting, though he said that they played a role in ending it. He maintained that it was others, outside Sadr’s circle, who were responsible for the violence. He accused American military forces of “supporting these sorts of actions, for the purpose of extending the period of their presence in Iraq.”

Prime Minister Nuri al-Malki had pledged on Aug. 17 that Qadisiyah province, of which Diwaniyah is the capital, would soon witness a handover from Coalition to Iraqi troops such as has already happened in Muthanna.

The governor of Qadisiyah, Khalil Jalil Hamzah, left for Najaf to negotiate with Muqtada al-Sadr after talks with his representatives in Diwaniyah failed.

A security source in Diwaniyah told al-Zaman, “Large numbers of reinforcements from the Iraqi army arrived at the city, and they secured most of its districts aside from the districts of al-Nahdah and that of al-Wahdah, where the militia remains dominant.”

An Iraqi government source alleged to al-Zaman that “The Mahdi Army executed a number of Iraqi troops after having captured them.” He added that the militia controlled 7 of the city’s districts,a nd that they were establishing barricades and checkpoints, and were setting roadside bombs.

Abdul Mun’im Abu Tabikh, a member of Qadisiyah’s elected governing council, alleged, “What happened was an attempt by the government to finish off undisciplined elements that are attempting to undermine security in the city and to continue to carry arms openly, on the part of some disreputable members of the Sadr Movement who refused to acknowledge the commands of Sayyid Muqtada al-Sadr to turn their energies toward preaching and guidance alone.” This behavior led the government, he said to send in the army against them, especially those that were openly carrying arms. He said that there is a curfew in the city, given that the clashes are continuing.

Eyewitnesses reported an exodus from the city of dozens of families, who took refuge in surrounding villages. Shops are closed througout Qadisiyah, and both water and electricity have been cut off since Sunday evening.

The explosion at a leaking oil pipeline near Diwaniyah that killed 16 persons who came to collect petroleum from it would have been bad news enough all on its own. Instead, a mere deadly accident flew under the news radar. The tragedy came because of the severe fuel crisis in Iraq, which drives people to try to collect oil in dangerous ways.

Meanwhile, bombings rocked Turkey on Monday. A radical Kurdish group claimed credit, indicating it was trying to sabotage one of Turkey’s major industry’s, tourism.

The bombings are encouraging Turkey to step up its shelling of northern Iraq, where US-backed Kurdish politicians are harboring the terrorist PKK or Kurdish Workers’ Party.

Bombings stretched from Istanbul to southern Iraq on Monday, in a new arc of crisis. This isn’t going very well.

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