Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that the Iraqi parliament again on Thursday failed to pass an electoral law to govern the holding of the planned January 16 parliamentary elections. The Kurdish delegates refused to come into the parliament building, thereby denying the session a quorum. The Turkmen and Arab delegates had demanded that Kirkuk be treated differently in the legislation than other provinces (Kurds are now a majority in Kirkuk, and the Kurds wish to annex the province to their Kurdistan Regional Government, a semi-independent confederacy in northern Iraq; Turkmen and Arabs consider the majority artificial, the result of Kurdistan-backed Kurdish in-migration, and consider having an ordinary election there a reward to the Kurds for land-grabbing. Kurds maintain that the province has long been theirs and that they are just correcting the ‘Arabization’ or ethnic cleansing and settlement policies of Saddam Hussein, who brought Arab families north to make the oil-rich province indisputably Arab).
Back to elections. Elections in Iraq cannot be held to international standards. There typically are no big public rallies, for fear that they would be blown up by Sunni Arab guerrillas. Candidates can seldom campaign publicly for fear of assassination. For the election itself, the US military declares a curfew and prohibits vehicular traffic for 3 days. Everyone is reduced to walking to the store to buy bread and other necessities. You can’t drive. This measure prevents car bombings of the polling stations.
So why does the US still have 120,000 troops in Iraq? They aren’t for the most part doing patrols anymore. They are just being kept in place so that they can swing into action as soon as the election date is fixed, and protect the electoral process from sabotage by bombing.
Is this rationale really a good enough reason to keep so many troops in Iraq? Shouldn’t the Iraqi army by now be able to supervise a vehicular curfew on its own? And, why should the Obama administration care if the election is held or not? Saudi Arabia hasn’t held any elections lately and it is our ally. The Iraqis were made by the US to have several elections, and they know how to do it if they want to. Why allow their interminable parlays on basic things like an electoral law to hold US troops hostage in the country with nothing much to do for a year?
The parliamentary and provincial elections and the referendum on the constitution were always imagined by the Bush administration as propaganda exercises on behalf of the Republican Party and Neoconservatism. Although the elections have not been meaningless, and a lot of Iraqis obviously express their political spirit through them, they have been highly flawed and artificial. The first, in January 2005, completely excluded the Sunni Arabs because it was not based on voting districts, and it appears to have been stolen by Iran, much to the delight at the time of the Red States (?). In some ways that election provoked the Great Sunni-Shiite Civil War. The constitution was rejected by a majority in each of the major Sunni Arab-majority provinces and so is not a national constitution, and it has a strong theocratic overtone (read it and weep, Christopher Hitchens). Islam is the state religion and parliament may pass no legislation contradicting sharia or Islamic canon law. Kurdish separatism is virtually enshrined in it. The Muslim fundamentalists won the December 2005 parliamentary elections as well. Critics accused Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki of using intimidation by tribal forces and the advantages of incumbency to skew the results of the provincial elections of January, 2009 toward his Islamic Mission (Da’wa) Party. (Some charge al-Maliki of increasingly adopting the techniques and rhetoric of the region’s ‘soft’ dictators).
Iraq is a poor candidate for successful transition to democracy or for social peace. It has a low per capita income if you subtract the notional petroleum income, which is not exactly shared out with the people. Poor countries often fail in their attempt to democratize. It does not have a long-established, respectable business class. It has no effective trade unions to speak of, since the Baath Party had coopted them and then Paul “Jerry” Bremer dissolved them by viceregal fiat. The UN/ US sanctions of the 1990s and the US occupation has pushed literacy down to 58% from more like 78% in the heyday of the pre-Saddam Baath Party. The country has come to be strongly divided by ethno-religious divisions. Its economy is dominated by a pricey primary commodity, petroleum, and gasoline is easily stolen and fought over, producing militia competition and deaths. . All of these factors have been cited to explain failure at democratization and/or high rates of political violence, and all are present in Iraq in spades.
Me, I don’t think the US troop withdrawal should be tied to the successful holding of a parliamentary election, in which US troops are assigned the role of watchmen. The Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) should be adhered to, and the Iraqis will just have to decide if they want to hold an election or not, and if they do, their troops should supervise it.
I’m as in favor of democracy as anyone else. But I’m a also skeptical that it can be imposed at the point of a gun on a deeply divided society that is at the moment dirt-poor.
The time for elections as US propaganda victory has passed.
The story of the gigantic car bombing of the area between Meena and Kochi bazaars in Peshawar, which killed at least 105 persons, is especially heartbreaking. Muslim extremists in Darra Adam Khel appear to have planned and carried out the attack, done by remote-controlled car bomb. They had threatened the markets with retribution if they did not forbid women to shop there. Pakistani extremists often preach ‘char divari’ or the immuring of women– keeping them within the four walls of their homes and forbidding them to go out at all. This idea, typical of Taliban sorts of thinking, is not Islamic and is contradicted by what we know of early Muslim history, in which women played an active and public role.
In any case, the extremists then bombed the area around these markets, since Kochi is a women’s market. At least 70 of the victims were women and children.
Darra Adam Khel is an Afridi Pashtun village in the North-West Frontier Province between Peshawar and the Federally Administered Tribal Area of Kohat (which itself witnessed a big bombing last week). Darra Adam Khel is notorious as a center for arms and munition production, using artisanal techniques. Adam Khel tribesmen can reproduce virtually any rifle or other weapon with which they are presented.
Of course, a further context for the attack is the ongoing Pakistani military campaign against the Tehrik-i Taliban Pakistan in South Waziristan.
Clinton pledged the Pakistanis American aid in increasing and making more reliable their electricity production. Pakistan has been plagued by brown-outs, referred to in India and Pakistan as ‘load-shedding.’ These electricity outages are more than mere annoyances. You cannot run a factory if the electricity keeps going off. Details of the energy aid plan are here.
The USG Open Source Center translates from Jang for Weds. October 28:
“Pakistan is facing stern energy crises. The industrial, trading, and domestic consumers are affected so severely that approximately 24000000 workers will face unemployment only in the textile sector because of energy crisis. These crises will badly affect the textile sector and other sectors also. During the past week, the Standing Committee of Senate on Petroleum has been informed that the Oil and Gas Development Company Limited (OGDCL) is facing problems in producing 300 MMCFD (millions of cubic feet per day) gas and 7000 liters of oil daily and there are cases filed in several courts, while 250 stay orders are there in this regard.”
The aid of which Clinton spoke, assuming it is efficiently delivered and used, could therefore be key in preventing a big rise in unemployment, and thus could help forestall disturbances deriving from bitter and unemployed workers (who are more numerous and more potentially disruptive than mere rural Taliban). Pakistan will grow a little over 3% this year, though to tell you the truth, that is their population growth, as well. So their net collective increase in gross deomestic product will be . . . zero.
Clinton’s press conference was overshadowed by the bombings, and most channels put her on a split screen with the bombing aftermath, rather undermining her message of reconstruction.
The Afghanistan debate is mired in the very shortcomings that have kept us from doing well there up to now. We need a qualitative shift of policy, but we dither about metrics and troop levels. We ask ourselves if we should “get out” as if there is somewhere to go that is out of range. Meanwhile, our enemies control the political meaning of everything we do. We need to take that control away from them, and that requires us to know our world, our enemy, and this struggle.
Today, power is so diffuse that empire and isolation are equally dead. Control of information, money, natural resources, and ideological persuasiveness all move parts of the political world. Still, all of it hangs on a framework of formal authority residing in a collection of states that wield force, legitimacy, representation, and diplomacy.
Terrorism prospers in the complexity of this political world. Political identity is no longer simple and fixed, so friend and enemy are hard to know. If I hit you, we fight, because the enmity is clear. If I coerce you with weapons, you might be intimidated or you might defy me, but the choice is clear. However, if I kill someone else in a spectacular manner, you need to know why before you can react. My cause might be just. My enemy might be your enemy. Or I might be coming for you and yours if you take the wrong path.
So “terrorist” is not just a dirty word for your enemy. Terrorism exists and has character that can be understood and fought. Using violence to raise uncertainty in an audience is terrorism. It earns the terrorist the authority to relieve that uncertainty about who will be killed and why. Making “war” on terrorism is usually just an attempt to build authoritarian power on the back of someone else’s atrocities. If the terrorist is demonic, the pretended savior can claim to justify methods drawn from “the dark side.”
Terrorism is strong because it is indirect. It appears to attack one group in order to persuade a different group. On the other hand, terrorism is weak because it is so often hypocritical. In the French Revolution, the vast majority of guillotine victims were commoners executed as “aristocrats.” In the Algerian Revolution, the bombings mostly killed Arab Muslims in the name of evicting French colonialism. The audience really is the victim, but does not see that truth.
Thus, terrorism (from above or from below) is different from ordinary coercion because it depends less upon credible threats than viable lies. It gets away with these lies because the terrorist establishes control over what people think the violence means. This control can be so strong that it dominates the thinking of friend and foe alike. It took 200 years of research to reveal that the French Revolution was not a class war.
This is where we are in Afghanistan and the struggle with Muslim radicalism generally. Muslim terrorists are seeking a level of authority over Islam that no one has exercised since the Prophet Muhammad. Muslims die from Muslim radical violence in vastly greater numbers than do Americans. All the ramblings about destroying the West or creating a global caliphate are just background noise. The biggest debate al Qaeda ever had was whether to attack the US at all.
That attack on America transformed a band of fewer than 400 militants into global rebels because the US embraced the imperial role al Qaeda cut out for us. Yet there is no serious, ongoing attempt to overthrow the West. The true goal of the radicals is shown in the brutal rule of the Taliban in Afghanistan and the Swat region of Pakistan. It showed itself in parts of Iraq controlled by the al Qaeda affiliate there.
No movement of US troops (or drones) into or out of Central Asia will help in this struggle as long as the radicals control what our coming and going means to the Islamic world. If we stay we are imperialist, if we leave we are defeated. To succeed, we must take control of the meaning of the struggle.
The only viable posture is a self-limited commitment. This is a struggle within Islam. We are useful victims, and we have a right to hit back. But we are neither the political audience, nor the group that will most suffer under the rule of Muslim radicalism if it wins. Our military power can only be effective if it is explicitly expeditionary, not imperial. We must say that, and prove it, at every opportunity.
Promise Afghanistan two years of major combat support. Proud local rebels who only want us out need only wait – no point in being killed over the inevitable. If the radicals want to come after us without a recruiting pool in the Afghan villages, they are welcome to take the unreplaced casualties. The Afghan government has two years to be viable, or it will be thrown to the wolves, and Afghanistan will revert to the status of international shooting gallery. In the meantime, the better it does, the better we do.
Such a posture is credible. We were deeply involved in Afghanistan against the Soviets, and we left then, and we are leaving Iraq now. It is sustainable, because it matches how the American public sees our legitimate use of force in the world. It makes our point about who we are and what the terrorists really want, no matter how well Kabul fares down the road. It puts our allies on notice – we can give many forms of ongoing help, but when it comes to military force our help comes tailored to a sink or swim world of independent states, and we are not afraid to invade a place twice if we need to do so.
There will be fighting, but this is not a war. It is a violent argument and it is a race. The argument is about whether the US is an imperial foe, or a tough friend, of the Islamic world. The race is to get Kabul to rebuild its power on its own people, not our might. If we lose the race, Afghans suffer. If we try to make this an open-ended war, we lose the argument. Should that happen, the next generation of Muslims may justly curse us for abetting the oppressive radical movement that prospered when we were strong, but not wise.
Scott Corey
—
Scott Corey has a PhD in Political Science from UC Berkeley, and did his dissertation on political violence. He now works at a small non-profit crisis center in the Sierra Nevada.
Heavy gunfire reverberated through the streets shortly after dawn and a large plume of smoke rose over the city following the attack on the hostel in the Shar-e-Naw district. Kabul police chief Abdul Rahman Rahman said seven people were killed, including some attackers.
The Soviets more or less withdrew to the cities in the mid-1980s, and it didn’t stop them from being forced ultimately to withdraw from the country. And they even had loyal Communist Party cadres and large numbers of urban women on their side. I doubt there is any similar genuine support group for US and NATO presence in the country, though the Tajiks don’t so far seem to mind it the way elements among the Pashtuns do.
What I still don’t hear is what the objective of the war is, and how it will be accomplished in some reasonable time frame. If the objective is that Pashtun tribesmen shouldn’t feud with each other and with their government, and should become secularized, then this really is a 40-year war.
Imagine if the Senate hearings about a climate change bill had been held a year ago.
Think of the context: $4 per gallon gas and oil over $130 per barrel. Waiting lists to buy popular fuel efficient cars. Polls in summer 2008 found 7 in 10 Americans saying there was solid evidence of global warming, and presidential candidates of both parties reiterating that it was real and had to be addressed.
It wouldn’t have been an easy debate. Most Republicans were busy chanting “drill baby drill” while most Democrats were swooning at the very mention of green jobs and solar panels. But at least the public would have been engaged.
Now? Not so much. Certainly there’s strong and urgent rhetoric from world leaders about the need to come up with a plan to cut greenhouse gases at the international climate conference in Copenhagen. But gas has settled back to $2 per gallon, the number of Americans who say there’s evidence of global warming has dropped 14 points, and surveys show climate change and energy policy as dead last among priorities for Congress. The twin problems we face on energy — controlling global warming and ensuring we’ve got enough fuel to go around — are just not registering with the public.
“How quickly we forget” is one possible reaction, but Ronald Reagan’s “There you go again,” is better.
The United States has been around the block multiple times on energy policy, much like Bill Murray living the same sequence of events over and over again in Groundhog Day. Oil and gas prices shoot up. Voters get upset. Politicians say we absolutely, positively need to change the way we get and use energy. We make a few adjustments here and there — both in the country’s overall policies and in our own personal habits. Then a couple of years later, we seem to forget the whole thing. At least Bill changed his line of attack after hearing Sonny and Cher sing “I Got You Babe” on his radio alarm for the umpteenth time.
Our boom-or-bust mind-set on energy poses a genuine hazard to our economy — one that could last decades. The notorious energy crises of the past (for those too young to remember) were painful, but relatively brief. They were generally set off by events that caused problems somewhere in the supply system — war in the Middle East, American diplomats held hostage in Iran, Hurricanes Katrina and Rita pushing up prices because some refineries were knocked out by the weather. However troubling and unpleasant these situations were, they were temporary.
The conditions that generated the country’s more recent energy problems are not going to go away quickly, even though they have been tempered by the worldwide economic slowdown. We’re competing with many more people worldwide for the energy that’s available. There are truly astonishing levels of growth in China, India, and elsewhere. These countries need massive amounts of energy for their factories and transportation. As they become more prosperous, people living there will start buying cars and refrigerators and microwaves and computers. All these things use energy.There’s also a pretty solid expert consensus that humans are beginning to use up most of the oil that’s easy to get to. It’s not going to be Mad Max exactly, because the world is not actually going to run out of oil in our lifetimes, but chances are that it’s going to get tougher and more expensive to find it.
Plus, if we’re going to do anything about controlling greenhouse gases, we need a steady, consistent effort to change our energy mix. You can’t do this by fits and starts. We need both steady investment in new technology and long-term commitment to changing the economic rules of the game so that clean energy is a reliable, affordable alternative to fossil fuels.
Is there any hope that Americans will support (or at least not oppose) major changes in energy policy? In fact, there is some. According to research by our organization, Public Agenda, 73 percent of Americans disagree with the statement that “If we get gas prices to drop and stay low, we don’t need to be worried about finding alternative sources of energy,” and fully 53 percent “strongly disagree.” Moreover, despite partisan debate, Americans find common ground on at least 10 major energy proposals that would provide incentives for more energy efficiency, reducing gasoline usage and supporting alternative energy have widespread support — at least in concept.
It’s quite possible that prices for oil and gas will stay relatively low in the next few years due to the global economic shake-up, and there have been some new oil discoveries and production breakthroughs that are exciting the industry. They won’t produce enough oil and gas to solve the world’s long-term problem, but it may be enough to hold prices down for a while.
This puts an even greater burden on leaders to help Americans understand that, for the sake of the planet and our economic stability, we need to get a sound energy plan together and stick with it even when the pressure is off. Besides, there are so many avenues for addressing our energy challenge. People will and can disagree over which ones are best, and no doubt the country will make some mistakes along the way. But the most damaging mistake of all would be to assume that just because energy prices are lower now, our energy problems are behind us. That would be a truly gigantic error.
Scott Bittle, co-author of Who Turned Out the Lights: Your Guided Tour to the Energy Crisis, is executive editor of PublicAgenda.org, where he has prepared citizen guides on more than twenty major issues including the federal budget deficit, Social Security, and the economy. He is also the website director for Planet Forward, an innovative PBS program designed to bring citizen voices to the energy debate.
Jean Johnson, co-author of Who Turned Out the Lights: Your Guided Tour to the Energy Crisis, is co-founder of PublicAgenda.org, and has written articles and op-eds for USA Today, Education Week, School Board News, Educational Leadership, and the Huffington Post Website.
‘ When Obama came into office in January, 142,000 U.S. troops were in Iraq, conducting regular patrols of the major cities. His Republican rivals were dead set against U.S. withdrawal on a strict timetable. He faced something close to an insurrection from some of his commanders in the field, such as Gen. Ray Odierno, who opposed a quick departure from Iraq. Moreover, Obama assumed the presidency at a time when Iran and the U.S. were virtually on a war footing and there had been no direct talks between the two countries on most of the major issues dividing them. In February, the government of Pakistan virtually ceded the Swat Valley and the Malakand Division to the Pakistani Taliban of Maulvi Fazlullah, allowing the imposition of the latter’s fundamentalist version of Islamic law on residents, and Islamabad had no stomach for taking on the increasingly bold extremists.
Also, if you haven’t checked in on Tomdispatch.com in the past week, you’ll find three closely argued new articles there on the drawbacks of the new American militariesm.
The death toll of Sunday’s twin bombings in Baghdad has risen to 155, and tragically it turns out that two dozen children were among the victims.
I still disagree with those who have been alleging that the bombing puts the upcoming parliamentary election in question, or raises questions about whether the Iraqi troops can keep order. These big bombings have been going on for years, and they went on when the US was in charge of security, as well. In fact, civilian deaths from political violence have fallen in recent months.
Many in Baghdad are scratching their heads and wondering how in the world these big trucks filled with explosives were allowed to get anywhere near government ministries. Dark suspicions of security personnel bribed or traitorous are circulating.
In the light of the security lapses for which he is now being taken to task, al-Maliki’s decision to stay out of the National Iraqi Alliance coalition joined by most other Shiite parties may have been the wrong move. He is now running against parties which can depict themselves as out of power and so not responsible for the steady drumbeat of bombings. Al-Maliki has no larger coalition partners in whom he could take cover. If his Da’wa Party loses big time in the parliamentary elections, that loss could help destabilize Iraq. A new prime minister will have to struggle to get hold of the security and intelligence forces, and the US military will have to work with a new cast of characters.
Welcome to Informed Comment, where I do my best to provide an independent and informed perspective on Middle Eastern and American politics.
Informed Comment is made possible by your support. If you value the information and essays, I make available and write here, please take a moment to contribute what you can.
