Rubaie: No Permanent Bases;
Bombing Near Allawi's Compound;
Basra Christians cancel Christmas Celebrations
Iraq's national security adviser, Muwaffaq al-Rubaie, said Tuesday that the Iraqi nation would never permit permanent US military bases in that country. He named some areas where there would be continuing US support for the Iraqi military. The announcement does not envision an early departure of US forces, and seems mainly intended to blunt criticisms of the Supreme Islamic Council of Iraq by the Sadr Movement for being to cozy with the Americans (see yesterday's entry).
A suicide bomber detonated his payload Tuesday morning at a checkpoint near the homes of secular ex-Baathist politician Iyad Allawi and secularist Salih al-Mutlak of the National Dialogue Council. Supporters of Allawi, who was abroad, charged that the attack was an assassiation plot. Two persons were killed and 12 wounded in the explosion.
Al-Hayat, writing in Arabic, darkly hints that the bombing came as a response to a joint letter written by Allawi, Sunni Arab leader Adnan Dulaimi and others last Saturday. They had made an appeal to George W. Bush to withdraw support from the government of prime minister Nuri al-Maliki, charging that it was a vehicle for Iranian influence in Iraq and raised the specter of "religious fascism."
Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that the man who tried to organize a tribal "Awakening Council" in the Shiite holy city of Najaf south of Baghdad was arrested by the Najaf authorities. They maintained that they needed to issue a license for such activities. At the same time, a tribal leader in Diyala Province complained publicly that the capital of Baquba has been infiltrated by Iranians. (This charge is not plausible, but many Sunni Iraqis have difficulty accepting that Shiite Iraqis are not being supplemented by Iranian Shiite immigrants.
The AP report linked above also says:
' Gunmen on motorcycles fatally shot the head of Iraq's largest psychiatric hospital as he was returning home from work late Monday, police and a Health Ministry official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they feared reprisal. Dr. Ibrahim Mohammed Ajil, believed to be in his 50s, was the head of Rashad hospital, Iraq's largest and well-known mental institution, which lies on the outskirts of the sprawling Sadr City district of Baghdad. According to figures from the Iraqi Health Ministry released earlier this year, 618 medical employees, including 132 doctors, as well as medics and other health care workers, have been killed nationwide since 2003. '
McClatchy reports that the killing of two Christians in the southern port city of Basra has caused the local archbishop to urge Christians to avoid decorations and gift-giving this Christmas, as an act of mourning. The two bodies were found in a district controlled by the Mahdi Army militia.
Reuters reports that formerly warring Shiite militias in the southern port city of Basra have called a truce. My own guess is that they believe such rhetoric of sweet reasonableness will hasten the departure of the British troops (there are still 5500 out at the airport, scheduled to go down to 2500 by March). It is also possible that, like crime families in New York, each has established a 'turf' within which it runs protection rackets and does gasoline and kerosene smuggling, so that the 'truce' is just a recognition of current turf boundaries. But obviously if any of them tried to expand into someone else's territory, it would ignite fighting. I have seen the value of the gasoline smuggling and embezzlement from the state oil company by militias estimated at $2 billion a year. That these activities have suddenly ceased is not plausible.
The allegations by some interviewees that there isn't much militia violence in Basra does not accord with other reports, of waves of assassinations, killings of unveiled women, and occasional gun battles. (See above). And the idea that the Iraqi 10th Division is likely actually to keep order in the city seems to me overly optimistic based on past behavior. The report, by Aref Mohammad, has some great nuggets of information:
' Cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's followers are thought to have the most clout on the streets, while the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council has influence in the security forces and the smaller Fadhila party controls the governorate. Each has a different view on regional autonomy: Sadr opposes it, the Supreme Council wants Basra as part of a Shi'ite region across the south and Fadhila wants autonomy for Basra itself. '
and:
' Faction leaders, once at daggers drawn, have taken to making conciliatory remarks. "The period of dispute between us and the governor are over. We have good relations with the governor and the Fadhila party," Sheikh Ali al-Suaidi, a senior Sadrist in Basra, told Reuters. Prominent Fadhila member Aqeel Talib said the Sadr movement had "played a positive role in recent weeks". '
Bill Gallagher is scathing on the proposed CNN 'docudrama' on the Bush administration's confrontation with Iran over its nuclear program, a program that has now had to be scrapped because reality has set in. The fictional news was entitled 'We were Warned' and imagined that Iran had gone nuclear. Gallagher is developing an impressive critical voice as a practicing journalist.
(See also Barnett Rubin's critique of Miles O'Brien for a hatchet job piece on CNN in which he compared Al Gore to comedian Jerry Lewis. I also noticed many months ago that CNN let Jeff Greenfield (before he went to CBS) do a shameful piece comparing Barack Obama's wardrobe to that of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. A lot of editors run American "news" mostly as gossip and personal attacks in the service of the big corporations and the American right wing.
Ret. Col. Douglas MacGregor worries that the Sunni Arab awakening councils in Iraq could lay the groundwork for a large scale civil war when the Americans draw down their troops.
McClatchy reports political violence for Tuesday.
Reuters has more.
Labels: Iraq
posted by Juan Cole @ 12/12/2007 06:30:00 AM
9 Comments:
I've always found the issue of autonomy of interest because Iraq is such a small state, about the size of California. Wouldn't it be possible for Basra to enjoy the same amount of autonomy from Baghdad as San Diego has from Sacramento? Ideally, the true nature of federalism is for both political entities to be independent of each other except in areas of overlapping governance. Are there any Iraqis subscribing to this form of governmental relationship?
Looting/smuggling and gangster-like relations can only last so long; I think Iraqis are sophisticated enough to not consider such as normal sociopolitical and culturaleconomic behavior. Where is the visionary Iraqi leader who will shout: "There's more than enough riches here for all to share in, but we all must stop fighting and relearn how to trust each other as Muhammad (PBUH) requires." It's actually incredulous to me that some one hasn't done so. I certainly don't recall Maliki or Allawi saying so. Sistani's fatwas may have some what, but he's not about governing; he's an advisor, but only if you go to him. Perhaps the coming battle for Kirkuk will push someone to act.
Oil: The sovereignty showdown in Iraq
The oil game in Iraq may be almost up. On September 29, like a landlord serving notice, the government of Iraq announced that the next annual renewal of the United Nations Security Council mandate for a multinational force in Iraq - the only legal basis for a continuation of the American occupation - will be the last. That was, it seems, the first shoe to fall. The second may be an announcement terminating the little-noticed, but crucial companion Security Council mandate governing the disposition of Iraq's oil revenues.
By December 31, 2008, according to Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, the government of Iraq intends to have replaced the existing mandate for a multinational security force with a conventional bilateral security agreement with the United States - an agreement of the sort that Washington has with Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and several other countries in the Middle East.
The Security Council has always paired the annual renewal of its mandate for the multinational force with the renewal of a second mandate for the management of Iraqi oil revenues. This happens through the "Development Fund for Iraq", a kind of escrow account set up by the occupying powers after the overthrow of the Saddam Hussein regime and recognized in 2003 by UN Security Council Resolution 1483. The oil game will be up if and when Iraq announces that this mandate, too, will be terminated at a date certain in favor of resource-development agreements that - like the envisioned security agreement - match those of other states in the region.
The news that the duly elected government of Iraq is exercising its limited sovereignty to set a date for termination of the American occupation radically undercuts all discussion in the US Congress or by American presidential candidates of how soon the US occupation of Iraq may "safely" end. Yet if, by the same route, Iraq were to resume full and independent control over the world's third-largest proven oil reserves - 200 to 300 million barrels of light crude worth as much as $30 trillion at today's prices - a politically incorrect question might break rudely out of the Internet universe and into the mainstream media world, into, that is, the open: Has the Iraq war been an oil war from the outset?
As the pundit says "Blood and treasure for oil is one equation. Blood and treasure for no oil is another."
Will Iraq's Great Awakening Lead to a Nightmare?
“But it is doubtful Muqtada al-Sadr will do nothing as U.S. forces halt operations against the Shiites' old enemies and allow these enemies to rebuild. He may well step up attacks on Americans, assisted by the Shiite-dominated Iraqi Security Forces. And if that happens, retaliatory attacks by U.S. forces on the Mahdi Army could mobilize the Shiite population behind Muqtada al-Sadr in the fight against their old Sunni Baathist oppressors who are now openly allied with the Americans.”
I think there are several errors in the statement above (from "Will Iraq’s Great Awakening Lead to a Nightmare?"). First, it is unlikely that Sadr will be “assisted” by Iraqi Security Forces, which are under the control of Maliki and Hakim. Second, of all the Shi’ite groups, Sadr’s is the closest aligned to the Sunni forces, being that his group is the most nationalist. His group, in the past, has helped out the Sunni resistance when other Shi’ite and Kurdish groups did not. Whether Sadr’s group would go after Baathists is unknown.
Considering that the Pentagon had a stated policy of “villianize Zarqawi, leverage xenophobic response” I imagine that they also have other (unstated) policies of ‘divide and conquer’ between Iraqis, using fear and god-knows-what-else. Therefore, I put a lot of the blame for the sectarian violence directly on Pentagon (and bush White House) policies - both stated and unstated.
We live in a time (have for a while, actually) where US public officials and religious figures aligned with them publicly call for the killing of foreign leaders. In light of that, it is not at all hard to imagine that they would do some undercover 'false flag' operations if they thought that would be 'helpful' to their cause.
Divide and conquer, like torture, is as old as the human race.
Susan
"...seems mainly intended to blunt criticisms of the Supreme Islamic Council of Iraq by the Sadr Movement for being to cozy with the Americans"
The above comment is why this blog is so valuable. It places events in a context where they make sense. President Bush has said many times that the US does not seek permanent bases in Iraq. "Enduring" bases-- well, of course, that's different.
re Rubaie's 'no permanent bases' in Iraq:
The basic tension is that no Iraqi force that depends on US protection for power and survival can build or maintain legitimacy. That goes for the Sunni 'awakening' militias, or the Maliki coalition. But as long as the US is the dominant miiitary and economic power, resources necessary to build power are connected to cooperation with our conflicting plans and schemes.
We all keep circling, and everyone continues to hope they will be able to grab a seat if/when the music stops.
Re Col. McGregor's post-surge analysis:
What is going on tactically in Baghdad and surrounds strikes me as a bait and switch. Petreaus COIN doctrine calls for 'hold and re-build' under Iraqi army and police protection. In practice the Kurd and Shiite armies are linguistically and politically separate entities, with sectarian agendas, rivalries, and blood enemies. Neither IA or IP are likely to be safe in JAM or Sunni 'concerned citizen' controlled neighborhoods, except by local agreement.
Consequently the US force is mostly stalled in place, vouchsafing a patchwork of ad hoc ceasefires between armed neighborhood and gov't factions, unable to close the security gap in the southern (Yousefiya) belt.
By expending our mainforce reserves, we've managed to block and jack the teetering civil war back to a 2005 state of violence, with an unprecedented condition of armed sectarian neighborhoods, refugees and squatters.
But a tipping point? Neither Petreaus or Crocker are claiming any such thing, while the window of opportunity begins to swing closed.
Hi
regarding the current "lull" in violence in some parts of the country - and you are right the violence in basra is increasing, as for the north - there is a very accurate analysis by P. Cockburn in the Independent today. the main reason of the increasing security in some parts of the country is, as cockburn says, the change of agenda of some groups. the surge has almost nothing to see with that.
here is the Cockburn's comment:
Only One Thing Unites Iraq: Hatred of the US
http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/article3241904.ece
Commentary By Patrick Cockburn. The Independent
The Americans will discover, as the British learned to their cost in Basra, that they have few permanent allies
As British forces come to the end of their role in Iraq, what sort of country do they leave behind? Has the United States turned the tide in Baghdad? Does the fall in violence mean that the country is stabilizing after more than four years of war? Or are we seeing only a temporary pause in the fighting?
U.S. commentators generally are making the same mistake that they have made since the invasion of Iraq was first contemplated five years ago. They look at Iraq in over-simple terms and exaggerate the extent to which the U.S. is making the political weather and is in control of events there.
The U.S. is the most powerful single force in Iraq but by no means the only one. The shape of Iraqi politics has changed over the past year, though for reasons that have little to do with "the surge" in the 30,000 U.S. troop reinforcements -- and much to do with the battle for supremacy between the Sunni and Shiite Muslim communities.
The Sunni Arabs of Iraq turned against al-Qaida partly because it tried to monopolize power but primarily because it brought their community close to catastrophe. The Sunni war against U.S. occupation had gone surprisingly well for them since it began in 2003. It was a second war, the one against the Shiite majority led by al-Qaida, which the Sunni were losing, with disastrous results for themselves. "The Sunni people now think they cannot fight two wars -- against the occupation and the government -- at the same time," a Sunni friend in Baghdad told me last week. "We must be more realistic and accept the occupation for the moment."
This is why much of the non-al-Qaida Sunni insurgency has effectively changed sides. An important reason why al-Qaida has lost ground so swiftly is a split within its own ranks. The U.S. military -- the State Department has been very much marginalized in decision-making in Baghdad -- does not want to emphasize that many of the Sunni fighters now on the U.S. payroll, who are misleadingly called "concerned citizens," until recently belonged to al-Qaida and have the blood of a great many Iraqi civilians and U.S. soldiers on their hands.
The Sunni Arabs, 5 million out of an Iraqi population of 27 million and the mainstay of Saddam Hussein's government, were the core of the resistance to the U.S. occupation. But they have also been fighting a sectarian war to prevent the 16 million Shiite and the 5 million Kurds holding power.
At first, the Shiite were very patient in the face of atrocities. Vehicles, packed with explosives and driven by suicide bombers, were regularly detonated in the middle of crowded Shiite market places or religious processions, killing and maiming hundreds of people. The bombers came from al-Qaida but the attacks were never wholeheartedly condemned by Sunni political leaders or other guerrilla groups. The bombings were also very shortsighted since the Iraqi Shiite outnumber the Sunni three to one.
Retaliation was restrained until a bomb destroyed the revered Shiite al-Askari shrine in Samarra on Feb. 22, 2006.
The bombing led to a savage Shiite onslaught on the Sunni, which became known in Iraq as "the battle for Baghdad." This struggle was won by the Shiite.
They were always the majority in the capital but, by the end of 2006, they controlled 75 percent of the city. The Sunni fled or were pressed back into a few enclaves, mostly in west Baghdad.
In the wake of this defeat, there was less and less point in the Sunni trying expel the Americans when the Sunni community was itself being evicted by the Shiite from large parts of Iraq. The Iraqi Sunni leaders had also miscalculated that an assault on their community by the Shiite would provoke Arab Sunni states like Saudi Arabia and Egypt into giving them more support; this never materialized.
It was al-Qaida's slaughter of Shiite civilians, whom it sees as heretics worthy of death, which brought disaster to the Sunni community. Al-Qaida also grossly overplayed its hand at the end of last year by setting up the Islamic State of Iraq, which tried to fasten its control on other insurgent groups and the Sunni community as a whole. Sunni garbage collectors were killed because they worked for the government and Sunni families in Baghdad were ordered to send one of their members to join al-Qaida. Bizarrely, even Osama bin Laden, who never had much influence over al-Qaida in Iraq, was reduced to advising his acolytes against extremism.
Defeat in Baghdad and the extreme unpopularity of al-Qaida gave the impulse for the formation of the 77,000-strong anti-al-Qaida Sunni militia, often under tribal leadership, which is armed and paid for by the U.S. But the creation of this force is a new stage in the war in Iraq rather than an end to the conflict.
Sunni enclaves in Baghdad are safer, but not districts where Sunni and Shiite face each other. There are few mixed areas left. Many of the Sunni fighters say openly that they see the elimination of al-Qaida as a preliminary to an attack on the Shiite militias, notably the Mehdi Army of Muqtada al-Sadr, which triumphed last year.
The creation of a U.S.-backed Sunni militia both strengthens and weakens the Iraqi government. It is strengthened insofar as the Sunni insurrection is less effective and weakened because it does not control the new force.
If the Sunni guerrillas were one source of violence in 2006 the other was the Mehdi Army, led by Muqtada al-Sadr, the Shiite nationalist cleric. This has been stood down because he wants to purge it of elements he does not control, and wishes to avoid a military confrontation with his rivals within the Shiite community if they are backed by the U.S. army. But the Mehdi Army would certainly fight if the Shiite community came under attack or the Americans pressured it too hard.
U.S. politicians continually throw up their hands in disgust that Iraqis cannot reconcile or agree on how to share power. But equally destabilizing is the presence of a large U.S. Army in Iraq and the uncertainty about what role the U.S. will play in future. However much Iraqis may fight among themselves, a central political fact in Iraq remains the unpopularity of the U.S.-led occupation outside Kurdistan. This has grown year by year since the fall of Saddam Hussein. A detailed opinion poll carried out by ABC News, BBC and NTV of Japan in August found that 57 percent of Iraqis believe that attacks on U.S. forces are acceptable.
Nothing is resolved in Iraq. Power is wholly fragmented. The Americans will discover, as the British learned to their cost in Basra, that they have few permanent allies in Iraq. It has become a land of warlords in which fragile cease-fires might last for months and might equally collapse tomorrow.
"McClatchy reports that the killing of two Christians in the southern port city of Basra has caused the local archbishop to urge Christians to avoid decorations and gift-giving this Christmas, as an act of mourning. The two bodies were found in a district controlled by the Mahdi Army militia."
So again we see that the "crusade" of this ideologue President, filled with the sort of violent, missionary zeal that makes Michael Gerson thrill in his heart, has destroyed the lives of Iraq's historic Christian community. That believers in this country could continue to justify this horrid and unjust war is mystifying.
Oh, and then there's simply the fact that the South of Iraq is supposed to be one of the "stable" areas. Yeah, right.
It seems to me not only possible but necessary to view the intended longterm occupation of Iraq as the emulation of and extension of Israel's longterm occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip in Palestine.
It is necessary to connect the dots because the two pictures are in fact one. The United States and Israel will together be in a perpetual state of war with all its envisioned accompaniments as in Orwell's 1984 until Israel gives up its plans of expansion and the US stops playing its role as the private army of Exxon-Mobil.
There are 537 war criminals in Washington DC and 300,000,000 Americans betrayed by them outside Washington.
We need exert ourselves to the absolute minimum extent to sweep these criminals out of power and to put a government that represents our interests in their place.
Turn off your TV. Vote for Mike Gravel, Dennis Kucinich, or Ron Paul.
First things first. The War Crimes must stop. I like Mike Gravel.
The article about Christians in Basra also included a story about a nine year old girl killed when American helicopters opened fire, unprovoked, on three houses in Karmah.
Karmah was supposedly cleared of al-Qaida.
The continuing commision of atrocities like this seems to me to also be worthy of note.
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