Osman, Qubanji: Attack on Iran a Catastrophe for Iraq, Gulf
Patrick Cockburn reports from Baghdad that Mahmud Osman, a Kurdish MP, maintains that an attack on Iran by Israel or the US would plunge Iraq back into war. Cockburn points to two terrorist groups based in Iraq that the US Pentagon appears to be deploying against Iran. They are the Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MEK or MKO) and the PEJAK or Iranian branch of the Kurdish Workers Party. The Iraqi parliament has discussed expelling the MEK.
Gunmen on motorcycles shot down Sheikh Salim al-Darraji of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI) in the al-Hayaniya slum of Basra on Friday. The district is a stronghold of the Sadr Movement and had been attacked by the Iraqi Army, helped by the Badr Corps paramilitary of ISCI, in late March. The Mahdi Army militia of the Sadr Movement has gone underground under pressure from conventional forces, but is not so far underground that they will put up with ISCI officials operating openly in their territory.
The Iraqi government has decided one of the contentious issues that was holding up the provincial elections law. It has forbidden political campaigns from using photos of non-candidates in their literature and posters. This move will prevent the Sadr Movement from showing pictures of the father of Muqtada al-Sadr, who founded the movement. But it will also prevent ISCI from using pictures of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, who is popular and has great moral authority in the Shiite south. Campaigning in mosques will also be forbidden. For the first time in a major election, Iraqis will vote under an open list system, so that they can vote for individual candidates rather than just a party list.
The handshake between Iraqi President Jalal Talibani and Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak at the Socialist International congress recently has angered many Iraqi parliamentarians.
The Syrian military maintains that it is doing its best to keep radical Muslim vigilantes from going off to fight in Iraq through Syrian territory. Syria also charges that the US has been routinely invading its air space.
This NYT article argues that despair (a killed husband or son) often is what drives women to become suicide bombers in Iraq. Oh, I think they think they are fighting the foreign military occupation of their country and its collaborators, just as the men do who undertake this sort of attack.
Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that in his Friday sermon, Shaikh Abdul Mahdi al-Karbala'i, representative in the holy shrine city of Karbala of Grand Ayatollah Sistani, warned that the Status of Forces Agreement now being negotiated between the Bush administration and the Iraqi government must not detract from Iraq's sovereignty. He also said that parliament must past an elections law enabling provincial elections as soon as possible. He said the Iraqi voting public is eager to go to the polls, having by now gained the experience to put in a non-corrupt and efficient government. [If they have figured this out, they should please let us Americans know the secret.]
He also commented on recent Sunni delegations to Karbala and Shiite delegations to Tikrit, Samarra and Mosul, saying that they were aimed at spreading the spirit of harmony among all the sons of the single country. [Shaikh al-Karbala'i needs to work on his gender inclusiveness.]
Al-Hayat also reports that Sayyid Sadr al-Din al-Qubanji of the shrine city of Najaf [a leader in the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq] said in his sermon that Iran and the United States are locked in a Cold War with one another, as evidenced by the continual threats and escalation of tensions between the two. He said that any war in the region would be a global catastrophe. He called on both countries to reexamine their positions, and he called on politicians in the region to intervene to end the struggle. He said that the region is living above an active volcano. He added that Iran's threat to close the Straits of Hormuz if it is attacked will lead to an economic calamity.
He also spoke about the energy shortage and the lack of services in the country. He said that Grand Ayatollah Sistani had recently written him that it was embarrassing for the Shiite exemplar to urge people to vote in the provincial elections when government services were so bad.
McClatchy reports political violence on Friday in Iraq.
posted by Juan Cole @ 7/05/2008 12:59:00 AM
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9 Comments:
Dear prof. Cole,
Since a few days, you have introduced a new word : instead of "militiamen", you are now speaking of "vigilante" and I was wondering why ? I made a little search in different online dictionaries and noted t the term vigilante is mostly associated with people waging a rough justice, in zones escaping to regular authorities. In another sense, the word is also linked to expeditive justice. On the contrary, the word militia indicates a group of citizen looking for their own safety. The first word seems associated to parallel military groups, like in South America, while the other is often (if not always) associated with socialism, communism and revolution. IMO the word militia has a positive conotation, while the other has a rather negative connotation. So I'm getting suspicious as to who introduced this new term in the US media ? Is that another way of the US to discredite the Al'Sadr movement (who oppose the SOFA and wants a time table for a complete US withdrawal ? New words never come out by case, especially when they are introduced by the Bush government.
TIA for your answer ?
vigilante
Noun :
1.a member of a vigilance committee.
2.any person who takes the law into his or her own hands, as by avenging a crime.
Adjective :
3.done violently and summarily, without recourse to lawful procedures: vigilante justice.
vigilante
"member of a vigilance committee," 1856, Amer.Eng., from Sp. vigilante, lit. "watchman," from L. vigilantem (see vigilance). Vigilant man in same sense is attested from 1824 in a Missouri context. Vigilance committees kept informal rough order on the frontier or in other places where official authority was imperfect.
militia
–noun
1. a body of citizens enrolled for military service, and called out periodically for drill but serving full time only in emergencies.
2. a body of citizen soldiers as distinguished from professional soldiers.
3. all able-bodied males considered by law eligible for military service.
4. a body of citizens organized in a paramilitary group and typically regarding themselves as defenders of individual rights against the presumed interference of the federal government.
In French, we also use the word "vigile" : it is the equivalent of Blackwaters security guards : aka the member of a private militia paid by the rich or the big corporations to protect their goods, or like in Latin America, to fight workers' organizations and syndicalism.
thank you for writing July 4th. i like it.
What? The New York Times has learned that the death and imprisonment of their husbands and brothers drives Iraqi women to despair? Quelle surprise!
I expect that suicide bombers in Iraq are motivated both by anger at what their country has become (and who they blame for it) as well as despair at their own personal situation.
Interesting side note: One of the first American war heroes of World War 2 was Colin Kelly, who was (mistakenly) credited with carrying out a suicide attack by intentionally crashing his B-17 "Flying Fortress" into a Japanese cruiser.
"...an attack on Iran by Israel or the US would plunge Iraq back into war."
Back into war?
This sickening, hegemonic foreign policy seems to be sum total of American diplomacy. It is a failure and it is responsible for destabilization and needless death and misery.
What if Iran, China and Russia consistently and constantly threatened to attack the United States with missiles, bombs and internal destabilization programs?
How would we react? Would we sit idly by and do nothing, or would we try to push back against such an aggressive and pervasive threat?
Personally, I hope that Iran does acquire nuclear weapons, and FAST!
They need a real deterrent to an Israeli/US attack. If Iraq had additional military capability and was able to project real power beyond its borders [which it couldn't according to public testimony from Dr. Rice and Colin Powell in 2001], perhaps the American dreams of hegemony would have been nipped in the bud.
"If they have figured this out, they should please let us Americans know the secret."--- yes, please !!
On the gender inclusiveness...
In classical Arabic, the masculine plural is used to denote both a group of all men and a group of men and women. The difference between saying "abnaa'" and "abnaa' wa banaat" is only that the latter is explicit in including both genders while the former is ambiguous--but there is no difference in terms of inclusiveness.
Also, when the context or usage makes it obvious that both genders are intended, there is no need to use the explicit form. Thus, "waalidaay" suffices for "my parents" without a need to say "waalidi wa waalidati"; the expression in question is such a phrase in which the context is obvious. This is somwhat akin to how terms like "mankind" or "brotherhood" do not have a gender-specific connotation.
OPEC Warns against Iran War
The People's Mojahedin, who also agitate under the name of the "National Council of Resistance of Iran" (NCRI), eagerly beat the drums for Bush's intervention. At the same time, the Mojahedin are fighting to be de-listed from the EU terrorist list.
The highlight of their latest activities was a big rally outside Paris last Sunday. According to press reports, more than 70,000 people -- including several hundred politicians from Europe, North America, Australia, and the Arab world -- attended the propaganda event.
Among them was Volker Schneider, the pension expert of the Left Party faction in the Bundestag. Spiegel Online quoted Schneider: "I support the Iranian opposition." Schneider hopes that the European Parliament itself will be active in the NCRI. "The terrorists are not in Paris but are sitting in the government in Tehran." Harsh accusations, which even Washington has yet to make.
Bush and the Neocons have many willing accomplices in the EU.
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