21 Killed around Baghdad
Jaafari denies Allegations against Iran

Guerrilla violence killed 21 persons, including a US soldier, around Baghdad on Thursday.

Reuters reports the following violence outside Baghdad:

‘ KIRKUK – Gunmen shot dead five Oil Ministry security guards and wounded another three as they were driving to the northern city of Kirkuk, 250 km (155 miles) north of Baghdad. Lieutenant Jawaad Abdullah said they were shot in the town of Uthaim, south of Kirkuk.

MOSUL – Gunmen killed Salem Ayoub Sillo, a local prison chief, and his driver in the northern Noor district of Mosul, a police source said.

FALLUJA – Police said a suicide car bomb detonated against a U.S. convoy in central Falluja on Wednesday evening, destroying one Humvee . . .

RAMADI – One U.S. Humvee was struck by a roadside bomb south of Ramadi, 110 km (68 miles) west of Baghdad, a police source said . . .

RAMADI – The U.S. military said in a statement that it had killed “six Al Qaeda in Iraq terrorists” and detained at least 110 suspects since operation “River Gate” began on Oct. 4 in the western cities of Haditha, Haqlaniyah and Barwana. ‘

UPI reports doubts arising in the US officer corps in Iraq about whether the military can in good faith ask its soldiers to die for a conflict that is becoming increasingly politicized in Washington. They complain that everything that happens in Iraq is viewed through the prism of whether it is good or bad for George W. Bush. (I agree that this is the rhetorical game in the US, and also that it is stupid. Bush won’t be in office in 2008, but Iraq will still be there, and whether it is in flames will matter to the fate of the United States long after the Bush era is a dim memory.)

A Daily Kos diarist with military experience comments on the US destruction of 7 bridges over the Euphrates, saying, ‘Why is this a big deal? Because we are actually destroying infrastructure in a country we occupy. We are saying that the military value of the bridges to the insurgancy is greater than the value to us in either a military or economic/social way. This can be compared to the use of chemicals to destroy the jungle in Vietnam. Not because it caused cancer but because it was the long term destruction of some portion of the country. ‘

I would just add that the US military has been destroying infrastructure in the Sunni Arab areas for some time. They damaged 2/3s of the buildings in Fallujah last November and December, knocking out electricity, sewage, etc., as well. One officer told me, “we destroyed that city, but we’ll rebuild it.” They also appear to have flattened entire neighborhoods in Tal Afar more recently. This destruction was just as significant as taking out the bridges, and was the same sort of action. It also does signal that the US military is forced to resort to scorched earth policies, to deny the enemy infrastructure because it is too weak to deny it via conventional warfare.

Then there is Iran. First the US Department of Defense floated an attempt to accuse Iran of supplying shaped charges to Sunni Arab guerrillas in northern Iraq. The idea of the ayatollahs helping radical Salafi Abu Musab Zarqawi to blow up fellow Shiites was so absurd that the US dropped the whole thing for a while. Now the Blair government has retooled the charges slightly more plausibly, claiming that the Iranians were sending shaped charges to radical Sadrist splinter groups in Basra for use against British troops. But Iran has long backed the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) and its Badr Corps paramilitary, which was trained by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. The Sadrists have clashed several times with SCIRI, most recently in Najaf. And, Sadrists are ghetto Arab Shiites who openly distrust Persian influence in their affairs. So why would the Iranian government arm the enemies of its proteges, and persons who, moreover, routinely badmouth Iran and work against its influence in Iraq. The whole thing makes no sense.

On Thursday Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari, the elected head of the Iraqi executive who is the putative ally of Blair and Bush, strongly denied Blair’s charges against the Iranians. He pointed out that the two countries were developing a very constructive relationship, in which Iran was proving most helpful. He said, according the the BBC Persian site [courtesy a kind reader:] “some people want to harm the friendly relations beween Iran and Iraq, but not only will Iraq not allow them to do so, but it will continue to expand its relations with Iran.”

I’d say Blair has been cut off at the knees in this latest propaganda effort against Iran. My friends with military experience tell me that shaped charges are not so esoteric that Iraqis would have to get them from Lebanon’s Hizbullah via Iran, and that, indeed, there were probably lots of shaped charges in Iraqi arms depots, which have been extensively looted.

Meanwhile, in the real world, Iran has opened its borders for the pilgrim trade to Iraq. Up to 1500 Iranians per day will be allowed to visit the holy cities of Najaf and Karbala. When that quota begins being reached, it will translate into over half a million Iranian pilgrims in Iraq per year, and be worth hundreds of millions of dollars, probably billions. Najaf and Karbala are eager to get it going. Good luck to Mr. Blair in controlling from London half a million Iranians traipsing through Iraq every year.

Although this AP article has a title saying that the UN is distributing copies of the new constitution in Iraq, in the body of the article what we actually learn is that

‘ Some 5 million copies arrived in Iraq on Monday, but distribution does not appear to have started in the north and south, where the constitution is expected to pass by a wide margin. In Basra and Hillah, major Shiite towns in the south, no copies have been passed out, nor in Nineveh — a mixed northern province of Sunnis and Kurds that could be crucial to the constitution’s passage or rejection. Kurdish-language copies had not yet reached many Kurdish areas. Parts of Baghdad were expected to start seeing their copies in the coming days. ‘

Parts of Baghdad? It is October 7, and the referendum is in 8 days, and parts of the capital haven’t gotten the text yet? And, this article makes it clear that a lot of Sunni Arabs in Baghdad districts like Dora are not even picking it up for fear it is a death warrant. See Andrew Arato’s comments on the constitution, below.

Warren Strobel of Knight Ridder looks at the ways that the US government is pressuring Iraq’s neighbors to support the referendum on the constitution. From a regional point of view, this constitution threatens to partition Iraq and to create powerful Kurdish and Shiite rump states that could redraw the map of the Middle East if they attract supporters across national borders. Nobody in the region likes this idea except Iran, which is more enthusiastic for the constitution and the referendum than even Washington.

21 Killed, Dozens Wounded
Jaafari refuses to Resign

The Iraq Civil War ground on Tuesday. Guerrilla violence killed 21 in Iraq on Tuesday, including 10 who died in a car bombing in Shiite East Baghdad. Two employees of the UAE embassy were killed. A car bomb in al-Habibiyah wounded 25. In addition, 18 corpses have been found since Monday night. They don’t seem to have been counted in the 21 total of newly killed, so the real toll for the day of known deaths is nearly 40.

Update Adil Abdul Mahdi of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) called Wednesday for his rival Ibrahim Jaafari to step down. He said Jaafari had had his chance last year, and that he lacks the full support of the United Iraqi Alliance, the coalition of Shiite fundamentalist parties to which SCIRI also belongs. But Abdul Mahdi’s argument makes no sense. Who could have run an efficient government last year in Iraq, with a civil war building and governmental institutions gutted and no army? Moreover, Abdul Mahdi had less support in the UIA than Jaafari, which is why Jaafari is the candidate. As for security, it is Abdul Mahdi’s party that is implicated in the scandals at the Ministry of the Interior over death squads and militia infiltration, not Jaafari’s Dawa Party.

Ibrahim Jaafari is refusing to resign as candidate for prime minister, despite US and Kurdish pressure. He maintains he was elected fair and square by his party. Hard to argue with.

Kurdish politician and president of Iraq Jalal Talabani threatened Tuesday to take the issue of who will be prime minister to the whole parliament. The present candidate, Ibrahim Jaafari, was put forward by the largest bloc, the religious Shiites, but has had trouble forming a government and is opposed by a substantial number of parliamentarians. In the constitution, the largest bloc is supposed to elect a candidate, and then the parliament is to elect a president by a 2/3s majority, and the president is supposed to appoint the candidate of the largest bloc as prime minister on the condition that he can form a government and get 51%. Talabani seems to be threatening to do things out of sequence somehow. Probably it is unconstitutional, but Iraq is such a mess, that wouldn’t be most people’s primary concern.

Large numbers of displaced Shiite families are moving to the southern city of Najaf, but they are not getting enough aid there. This will cause trouble.

Kurds have formed a united government in the north. It seems more and more likely that Kurdistan will go its own way. Politicians need to find an equitable solution to sharing of Kirkuk oil wealth and of the province itself, before the whole situation explodes and causes a regional war.

Regional powers are planning what they will do in case a hot civil war breaks out in Iraq:

‘ The four diplomats said on Tuesday that intelligence chiefs from Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and non-Arab Turkey held a series of meetings over the last few weeks to assess the situation in Iraq and work out plans to avoid any regional backlash that may result from sectarian conflict in Iraq. The diplomats in several Middle Eastern capitals, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said Iran and Syria have been excluded from the talks. “They are part of the problem, not of the solution,” said one diplomat whose country is involved in the talks. ‘

Cole: Sorry folks, you can’t actually do anything useful about this problem if you don’t involve Syria and Iran.

US-Iran talks will begin Saturday. The original idea was to wait until an Iraqi government was formed, but who knows when that will be?

CSM notes that solid majorities in the US and the UK have turned against the war in Iraq.

Turkey’s worst nightmare is that the Iraqi Kurdistan confederacy will inspire Turkish Kurds to want an autonomous zone. It is alleged to be happening. There will be trouble over this.

21 Dead, 40 Wounded in Guerrilla Violence

AFP reports

*At a checkpoint between Baghdad and Baquba (to the northeast of the capital) at Khan Bani Saad, guerrillas sprayed a police checkpoint with machine gun fire, killing 4 and wounding 7. When help came, a car bomber struck, wounding another three soldiers.

*In Tikrit a guerrilla in a car bomb detonated his payload near an Iraqi police patrol. He killed 3 persons [Knight Ridder] and wounded 17.

*In Samarra, a car bomber targeted an Iraqi army checkpoint. He killed 3 soldiers and wounded another 5. A roadside bomb killed another Iraqi soldier. A major battle was fought at Samarra, involving 70 guerrillas ranged against Iraqi security forces, that left two Iraqi police commandos and two soldiers dead.

*In Baghdad, guerrillas detonated a roadside bomb, killing 2 Iraqis (at least one a police officer) and wounding 5.

Al-Zaman, depending on the Interior Ministry, said that altogether car bombs in the capital killed 3 and wounded 20 on Monday.

*An Iraqi gendarme guard was shot dead near Baiji, a center of oil refining.

*In Dhulu’iyah guerrillas assassinated a businessman as he was leaving a US base.

*In Baghdad, six bodies were found, most of them having clearly been tortured before being killed.

*In Dur, the body of an Iraqi soldier was discovered in the river.

*Al-Zaman reports that a roadside bomb killed one child and wounded another in Salman Pak on Monday.

Mortar shells fell on a wake in the al-Hurriyah district, wounding 7 civilians.

Iraqi tribes are said to have decided to turn over suspects to the central Iraqi government.

Guerrillas kidnapped Jaymon Qadir, a Kurdish women’s rights activist in the Iraqi city of Kirkuk on Saturday. She is an activist in the Kurdistan Democratic Party.

*Aamer Madhani of Knight Ridder reports:A guerrilla in a car bomb targeted the HQ of the Iraqi Islamic Party, a relatively moderate Sunni group. The explosion came only 10 minutes after the departure of the acting US ambassador to Iraq, James Jeffrey, who had been conducting consultations with the IIP leadership. The car bombing wounded two US soldiers and killed a 6-year-old little girl.

Although the ambassador was probably not the target of the blast, it is a hell of a note when the acting US ambassador cannot go out of the green zone without risking bodily harm. The bombing was probably intended to punish the Iraqi Islamic Party for cooperating with the Americans.

Al-Zaman/AFP The constitution drafting committee in parliament began work Monday on writing the new constitution, even though the issue of Sunni representation remains unsettled.

Reuters reports, “Iraqi doctors say they are concerned over an increase in Tuberculosis (TB) cases in the southeastern city of Amarah, fueled by a shortage of medicine and poor living conditions.” Iraqi governments during the past 50 years had gotten the problem under control in that region.

My count of dead and wounded for Monday is many times higher than that in the mainstream media, whether the Washington Post or even the wire services. The numbers are arrived at by collating incidents reported in AFP and by Knight Ridder, and adding in incidents and casualties reported in the Baghdad daily, al-Zaman. Bad as things are in Iraq, I still don’t think the full tragedy is getting out to the American public.

Sunday, April 21, 2002

Cheney Strikes Out

Date: Mon, 18 Mar 2002 08:13:27 -0500 (EST)

To: gulf2000 list

From: Juan Cole

While we’ve been talking about press issues . . . the important event

in the Gulf has been Dick Cheney’s 11-nation tour, which clearly aimed at

drumming up support for a US strike on Iraq.

Contrary to the usual pundits on the cable news shows, I see the trip as a

complete rebuff to Cheney in which he was repeatedly humiliated publicly

by his hosts. The idea that these rulers are expressing themselves more

cautiously in private doesn’t make sense to me. Gulf leaders don’t have

to say anything at all in public about politics, if they don’t want to,

and often preserve a maddening sphinx-like silence. If they are speaking

up in public in a way that frankly would be considered rude by most Middle

Easterners toward a guest, it seems to me it is likely because they feel

strongly about the point they are making.

Besides, the idea that they will all come around once Iraq is defeated

ignores the need of the U.S. for allies in the region if an attack is to

be launched in the first place.

Here are some highlights of the unfolding catastrophe: In the UK, Tony

Blair himself was supportive. But Cabinet Minister Claire Short on Sunday

described military action against Iraq as “very unwise” and hinted she

might resign if the US went to war there. Many other Labor backbenchers

feel the same way. (We already know that France and Germany are against

the idea, and they are the only ones in continental Europe who count for

these purposes; it is not as if Italy or Spain are significant military

powers).

In Jordan King Abdullah II was clearly extremely disturbed by the idea of

a war. He knew it would throw the Jordanian economy again back down to

the level of Chad, as happened in 1991, that it would bring angry crowds

into the street (thousands already came out Saturday for demonstrations in

Amman over Palestine), and that it had the potential if he stood with the

US to provoke a second Jordanian Civil War. His reaction was almost

apocalyptic. He said such a war could go (in Robin Wright of the LA

Times’s report) ‘”completely awry” and even backfire, producing a civil

war in Iraq that could involve neighboring countries–and even have a

ripple effect in the United States and Europe.’ He added, “It’s the

potential Armageddon of Iraq that worries all of us, and that’s where

common sense would say, ‘Look, this is a tremendously dangerous road to go

down.”

In Egypt, at a news conference at Sharm El Sheikh, President Hosni Mubarak

“voiced opposition to any U.S. plan to topple Iraq’s Saddam Hussein”. He

added, “It is of vital importance to maintain the sovereignty and

territorial integrity of Iraq. This is a must for preserving regional

stability,” The words “very unwise” keep popping up in the press reports,

following the VP like signature line in a stand up routine.

One factor outside observers may not understand is that Mubarak really is

committed to an Arab League point of view on the sovereignty of the Arab

nation. He joined in the Kuwait campaign on precisely those grounds: an

Arab country’s sovereignty had been violated and had to be restored. But

he would not have agreed with invading Iraq in 1991, and will not agree

with it now. In fact, my contacts at the al-Ahram Center for Strategic

Studies insist that Egypt did not send troops to Afghanistan because

Mubarak foresaw that Iraq might be next and he did not want to get

involved in any enterprise that might evenutate in a Western country

invading an Arab one. Mubarak’s political genealogy lies in Nasser’s

anti-imperialism ultimately, and Arab countries feel they were invaded

quite enough by Western ones in the last century, thank you, and that it

caused a lot of their present problems, and would rather the new century

be one of Arab independence.

In Saudi Arabia, al-Watan reported that reliable Saudi sources told them

that Cheney was informed the US cannot use Saudi territory to launch an

assault on Iraq. CP Abdullah told Cheney that a war on Iraq “catastrophic

for the region because of the expected (negative) consequences and the

dangers to the security of the area . . .”

Even the little United Arab Emirates bristled. UAE President Sheikh Zayed

Ibn Sultan Al-Nahayan was announced as opposed to military action in Iraq.

The US would be hard pressed to fight Iraq without Saudi territory and

facilities, it seems to me. And the absence of Egyptian troops or any

other Arab troops in the campaign would make an attack look very much like

a reprise of the British invasions of Iraq or the British invasion of

Egypt in 1882, or the French invasion of Syria in 1920. These dates have

not been forgotten in the region. An act of collective security with a UN

umbrella and substantial Arab involvement, like the Gulf War, is very

different from a unilateral American strike on an Arab country.

Knowing this, the Bush administration announced Mar. 16 that Bahrain is

now “a major non-NATO ally.” Bahrain is the third Arab country to have

this status (also enjoyed by Israel), after Egypt and Jordan. But note

that neither of them are joining in a war on Iraq, and there is no

guarantee Bahrain will. The Akhbar al-Khalij (News of the Gulf) newspaper

on the day of Cheney’s visit ran a headline announcing that the bully in

the region appeared to them to be Israel, not Iraq.

No one appears to be reporting what the Al-Khalifah dynasty in Bahrain

told Cheney, a circumspect silence that is more what one would have

expected for the other Gulf rulers, as well.

The Qatari newspaper al-Raya predicted, “Doha will express to Mr. Cheney

its strong opposition to an American military strike against Iraq.” If

so, it would cast doubt on the US ability to use its al-Udeid air base

near Doha (well, everything in Qatar is near Doha).

I don’t expect the news to be better for Cheney in Kuwait or Turkey.

The other thing he kept hearing aside from the phrase “very unwise” was

that the countries in the region are much more worried about the

destabilizing effects of the continued Israel-Palestinian fighting than

they are about the destabilizing potential of Saddam, and their nightmare

is that the U.S. intervention in Iraq only produces the kind of chaos

there that the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan produced in that country,

and that the US *also* allows the Israel/Palestine conflict to continue to

fester, so that they end up with the worst of all possible worlds.

Cheney was on a diet of fish and salad on this trip, and had a big red

blotch on his head from bumping it getting into a limousine. For someone

from Wyoming, such a diet is as much an embarrassment as the bruise. It

wasn’t the macho exercise it was supposed to be; no red meat and a

humiliating blow to the head. Then there was that annoying “very unwise”

chorus line. I really wonder whether the Pentagon’s Iraq campaign isn’t

dead in the water.

Sincerely,

Juan Cole

U of Michigan

– Juan, 4:24 PM