Tension between Iran and Shiites In Iraq
Iraqi Shiite Attacks on Iran
Amit Paley and Saad al-Izzi at WaPo explore anti-Iranian feelings among Shiite sectarian groups in southern Iraq.
Louise Roug of the LA Times profiles Sheikh Mahmud Sarkhi al-Hasani of Karbala.
Too dangerous in Iraq to go to mosque, many Muslims in the center of the country told NYT.
Kurds charged that Iranian forces on the border with northern Iraq fired mortar shells repeatedly at a camp of Kurdish guerrillas (presumably PEJAK, an Iran-oriented offshoot of the PKK or Kurdish Worker's Party.) It was alleged that the Iranians killed two civilians in the barrage. Iran and Turkey both maintain that Iraqi Kurdistan is allowing guerrilla groups to operate freely, and to blow up things in Turkey and Iran then return to Kurdistan.
The only way to stop carbombings in Iraq is to ban vehicular traffic. So that's what the authorities have done in Baghdad for the next couple days, during which Shiite pilgrims will come in the thousands to commemorate the death of Imam Musa al-Kadhim, the 7th Imam for the Twelver Shiites, whose shrine is in the northern suburb of Kadhimiyah. Such a gathering is an ideal place for Sunni Arab guerrillas to strike, in their continued quest to jump start a conventional civil war, but Baghdad authorities hope to foil them.
More on Shiite and Kurdish politicians' efforts to dismiss (the Sunni Arab] Mahmoud al-Mashhadani as speaker or president of the Iraqi parliament.
Reider Vissar reviews Peter Galbraith's new book and takes the author to task for the thesis that Iraq is an artificially cobbled together country.
Scroll down for a podcast interview with yours truly.
I seriously doubt that there are Sunni Arab guerrillas freely operating down at Amara, deep in the Shiite South. It therefore seems likely that if the British military base there came under concerted mortar fire on Friday, the shells were being fired by Shiite militiamen.
Iraq is projecting a budget of $39 bn. in the coming year. Most of the income is from oil, but it appears to be the case that a lot of the oil income is siphoned off by party-militias and mafias, through smuggling.
posted by Juan Cole @ 8/19/2006 12:23:00 AM
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Is there full disclosure of Iraq's present or past government budgets? Does any sort of GAO or CPA sign off on the validity of the figures? There are allegations of graft or unaccounted expenditures. Any source (in English or Arabic) to clarify any of this? What share of the salaries are paid to authentic civil servants, teachers, or police? What share amounts to disretionary outlays that mafias and militias divvy up as they please? Do any DoD, State, USAID, or CIA bodies have any inking what is going on? Or is this yet anouther "elephant in the room"?
Juan,
Please find this article that was written a few days ago about the alleged terror plot over the atlantic. It is worth publishing in my opinion , I will have the source link for you to check on. I just did not know how to put a link in red like you do.
Keep up the good work.
August 14, 2006
The UK Terror plot: what's really going on?
By Craig Murray
I have been reading very carefully through all the Sunday newspapers to try and analyse the truth from all the scores of pages claiming to detail the so-called bomb plot. Unlike the great herd of so-called security experts doing the media analysis, I have the advantage of having had the very highest security clearances myself, having done a huge amount of professional intelligence analysis, and having been inside the spin machine.
So this, I believe, is the true story.
None of the alleged terrorists had made a bomb. None had bought a plane ticket. Many did not even have passports, which given the efficiency of the UK Passport Agency would mean they couldn't be a plane bomber for quite some time.
In the absence of bombs and airline tickets, and in many cases passports, it could be pretty difficult to convince a jury beyond reasonable doubt that individuals intended to go through with suicide bombings, whatever rash stuff they may have bragged in internet chat rooms.
What is more, many of those arrested had been under surveillance for over a year - like thousands of other British Muslims. And not just Muslims. Like me. Nothing from that surveillance had indicated the need for early arrests.
Then an interrogation in Pakistan revealed the details of this amazing plot to blow up multiple planes - which, rather extraordinarily, had not turned up in a year of surveillance. Of course, the interrogators of the Pakistani dictator have their ways of making people sing like canaries. As I witnessed in Uzbekistan, you can get the most extraordinary information this way. Trouble is it always tends to give the interrogators all they might want, and more, in a desperate effort to stop or avert torture. What it doesn't give is the truth.
The gentleman being "interrogated" had fled the UK after being wanted for questioning over the murder of his uncle some years ago. That might be felt to cast some doubt on his reliability. It might also be felt that factors other than political ones might be at play within these relationships. Much is also being made of large transfers of money outside the formal economy. Not in fact too unusual in the British Muslim community, but if this activity is criminal, there are many possibilities that have nothing to do with terrorism.
We then have the extraordinary question of Bush and Blair discussing the possible arrests over the weekend. Why? I think the answer to that is plain. Both in desperate domestic political trouble, they longed for "Another 9/11". The intelligence from Pakistan, however dodgy, gave them a new 9/11 they could sell to the media. The media has bought, wholesale, all the rubbish they have been shovelled.
We then have the appalling political propaganda of John Reid, Home Secretary, making a speech warning us all of the dreadful evil threatening us and complaining that "Some people don't get" the need to abandon all our traditional liberties. He then went on, according to his own propaganda machine, to stay up all night and minutely direct the arrests. There could be no clearer evidence that our Police are now just a political tool. Like all the best nasty regimes, the knock on the door came in the middle of the night, at 2.30am. Those arrested included a mother with a six week old baby.
For those who don't know, it is worth introducing Reid. A hardened Stalinist with a long term reputation for personal violence, at Stirling Univeristy he was the Communist Party's "Enforcer", (in days when the Communist Party ran Stirling University Students' Union, which it should not be forgotten was a business with a very substantial cash turnover). Reid was sent to beat up those who deviated from the Party line.
We will now never know if any of those arrested would have gone on to make a bomb or buy a plane ticket. Most of them do not fit the "Loner" profile you would expect - a tiny percentage of suicide bombers have happy marriages and young children. As they were all under surveillance, and certainly would have been on airport watch lists, there could have been little danger in letting them proceed closer to maturity - that is certainly what we would have done with the IRA.
In all of this, the one thing of which I am certain is that the timing is deeply political. This is more propaganda than plot. Of the over one thousand British Muslims arrested under anti-terrorist legislation, only twelve per cent are ever charged with anything. That is simply harrassment of Muslims on an appalling scale. Of those charged, 80% are acquitted. Most of the very few - just over two per cent of arrests - who are convicted, are not convicted of anything to do terrorism, but of some minor offence the Police happened upon while trawling through the wreck of the lives they had shattered.
Be sceptical. Be very, very sceptical.
Ellie C
http://www.islamonline.net/discussione/thread.jspa?threadID=1951&tstart=0
Bush is a genius in comparison with the Kurdish warlords.
Getting Kirkuk's oil is pointless unless it can be exported. The existing pipeline goes to Sunni Baiji, Sunni Mosul, Turkey, then the Mediterranean. The chance of that pipeline ever exporting Kurdish oil is nil, or less.
Talabani, who took refuge in Iran for years, was counting on building a pipeline through Iran to the Gulf, forgetting that Kurdistan is Israel/USA territory and that Iran is not very friendly with either.
The warlords then try to help the US spread unrest in Iran by working with the Iranian Kurdish speeratists!
Outsiders don't seem to be aware that Kurdistan still has two ministries for each of the finance and Peshmege (all that matter if one is a warlord) and haven't yet settled how the warlords are going to split Kirkuk if they get it.
All the above doesn't matter if reality is no object, aka the Bush logic.
"I will have the source link for you to check on. I just did not know how to put a link in red like you do."
To insert a hyperlink into the Leave your comment plain ASCII text window, you need two things.
One would be the complete URL to the site. An example would be:
http://justworldnews.org/archives/002068.html
The other thing is the href tag and the href end tag. In the following description, the left pointy bracket < is replaced with [, and > with ]. Otherwise the browser would try to interpret the tags and you wouldn't be able to see them.
To create a hyperlink to the URL with the name in bold, type this:
[a href= "type the http thingy here, inside quotes"] type the name, such as click this here [/a].
Lo and behold, finished product.
[a href= "http://justworldnews.org/archives/002068.html"] Click here [/a] which yields...
Click here
Thanks for the tip, appreciated.
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