*The Mail on Sunday in the UK reports that the UK Foreign Office has concluded that there just weren't any chemical or biological weapons in Iraq: 'Senior Government sources have told The Mail On Sunday that the Foreign Office has given up hope of finding chemical and biological weapons in Iraq. The source said: 'We live in hope but we just can't find them. Most people at the Foreign Office don't think we ever will. The Prime Minister still thinks they will be found - perhaps he has more information.' The disclosure is a major embarrassment to Mr Blair on the eve of tomorrow's publication of a Commons report into the row over whether the Government lied in the run-up to the war with Iraq.'
*7 US trained Iraqi policemen were blown up in Sunni Arab stronghold Ramadi on Saturday. I saw someone on Fox News going on about how 25,000 Iraqi policemen have already been trained and deployed. I find this assertion incredible. Trained? What must really be going on is that the old Baath police are being rehired and given a couple of days of sensitivity lessons on not torturing just everyone they arrest. You couldn't train 25,000 policemen in a month or two! And, the estimates are that 50,000 are needed. And, there is still no security in major urban areas, with running gun battles at night, kidnappings, robbings, etc. still going on. And, some of the newly trained police are bing blown up and killed. Many such attacks apparently go unreported.
*Hizbullah in Lebanon refuses to disarm and evolve into a regular political party, according to Asharq al-Awsat. The question arises whenever there is a vigorous Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Hizbullah, probably correctly, doesn't think there is much of a real peace process. Hizbullah also denies any relationship to events in Iraq. Since most of the violence in Iraq has been coming from Sunnis or from spontaneous crowd action by Shiites, this denial is plausible so far.
*The liberals lost big in the Kuwaiti elections, in which only men can vote or run for office. About a third of seats went to Sunni and Shiite fundamentalists, a big increase. But the government still has the majority of seats, and may succeed in ramming through a provision that would allow women to vote henceforth.
Saturday, July 5, 2003
*One US soldier was killed by a sniper in Baghdad on the US Independence Day, and 17 were wounded by a mortar attack in Balad. A little later Iraqi insurgents ambushed a US convoy near Balad, and the US took out 11 of the attackers. The low grade guerrilla conflict thus continued unabated. Indeed, it looks like the Sunni opposition is getting better organized and having more successes, according to the Washington Post.
*There was a big attack on a Hazara Shiite mosque in Quetta, Pakistan, on Friday, where 2000 congregants were worshipping. The Hazara Shiites, from the center of Afghanistan, had been especially targetted by the Taliban and their allies among Sunni extremist groups. They form part of the Karzai government. There are still a lot of Afghan refugees in northern Pakistan, and this incident appears to be a case of their carrying on feuds from the old country in their host environment. That is, the Taliban have struck from beyond their supposed grave. The attack provoked rioting in Quetta, as it was no doubt intended to. The Taliban are still attempting to disrupt Pakistani society as an adjunct to their efforts to disrupt Afghan society. Shiites are probably about 13% of Pakistanis, amounting to some 18 million persons. This sort of incident is likely to make them stronger supporters of the Musharraf government, which has been cracking down on the Sunni radicals, and so may backfire on the perpetrators.
* Muhammad Baqir al-Hakim, head of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, called Friday from Najaf for greater United Nations involvement in rebuilding and reconstructing Iraq. Al-Hakim has been increasingly unhappy with American-governed Iraq, so in a way it is not strange that he should turn to the international community. But the Iraqi Shiites mostly despise the UN for doing nothing to help them against Saddam, so actually this call may be a sign of growing desperation on his part. It should be read as, even the UN would be better than Bremer.
*Agence France Presse reports that "US troops on Friday released a Shiite Muslim leader [Sheikh Ali Abdul Karim Madani] in this town northeast of Baghdad, a day after his detention sparked a protest by thousands of his supporters, according to an AFP correspondent at the scene." The some three thousand protesters were scattered by a bomb of unknown provenance, which killed one of their number.
This release follows a pattern of arrests of radical Shiite clerics by US forces in the past month or so, wherein they are taken in, detained, and when thousands of supporters gather to protest, they are released. Typically they are more circumspect after their release. But I have complained before that this pattern may make it look to the protesters as though it was their protests that secured the release. I suspect it would be better to give the man a good talking to before actually detaining him, though perhaps that is being done.
*Christian women in Basra are having to veil themselves from head to toe when they go out for fear of harassment from hardline Shiites, according to an eyewitness report from a worker for the Vatican there. Here's part of the interview:
Q: What is the effect of this Shiite pressure on the life of the Christian minority in Iraq?
Siebrecht: I myself saw how Christian women cover themselves from head to toe for their own safety when going out into the street, otherwise they might be attacked or suffer abuses. This is the reality in Basra. We didn't see this in Baghdad or in the north, in Mosul. The situation is better there. The Shiites are stronger in the south and that is why they try to exert pressure.
Q: Are the fundamentalists' demonstrations of force an attempt to impose a radical Islamism?
Siebrecht: It's hard to say. None of the people with whom we spoke -- nuncio, bishops, priests -- could tell us what might happen. All hope that the present situation will not serve to strengthen Muslim fundamentalism. But no one can exclude this possibility, at least in the south.
*There was a big attack on a Hazara Shiite mosque in Quetta, Pakistan, on Friday, where 2000 congregants were worshipping. The Hazara Shiites, from the center of Afghanistan, had been especially targetted by the Taliban and their allies among Sunni extremist groups. They form part of the Karzai government. There are still a lot of Afghan refugees in northern Pakistan, and this incident appears to be a case of their carrying on feuds from the old country in their host environment. That is, the Taliban have struck from beyond their supposed grave. The attack provoked rioting in Quetta, as it was no doubt intended to. The Taliban are still attempting to disrupt Pakistani society as an adjunct to their efforts to disrupt Afghan society. Shiites are probably about 13% of Pakistanis, amounting to some 18 million persons. This sort of incident is likely to make them stronger supporters of the Musharraf government, which has been cracking down on the Sunni radicals, and so may backfire on the perpetrators.
* Muhammad Baqir al-Hakim, head of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, called Friday from Najaf for greater United Nations involvement in rebuilding and reconstructing Iraq. Al-Hakim has been increasingly unhappy with American-governed Iraq, so in a way it is not strange that he should turn to the international community. But the Iraqi Shiites mostly despise the UN for doing nothing to help them against Saddam, so actually this call may be a sign of growing desperation on his part. It should be read as, even the UN would be better than Bremer.
*Agence France Presse reports that "US troops on Friday released a Shiite Muslim leader [Sheikh Ali Abdul Karim Madani] in this town northeast of Baghdad, a day after his detention sparked a protest by thousands of his supporters, according to an AFP correspondent at the scene." The some three thousand protesters were scattered by a bomb of unknown provenance, which killed one of their number.
This release follows a pattern of arrests of radical Shiite clerics by US forces in the past month or so, wherein they are taken in, detained, and when thousands of supporters gather to protest, they are released. Typically they are more circumspect after their release. But I have complained before that this pattern may make it look to the protesters as though it was their protests that secured the release. I suspect it would be better to give the man a good talking to before actually detaining him, though perhaps that is being done.
*Christian women in Basra are having to veil themselves from head to toe when they go out for fear of harassment from hardline Shiites, according to an eyewitness report from a worker for the Vatican there. Here's part of the interview:
Q: What is the effect of this Shiite pressure on the life of the Christian minority in Iraq?
Siebrecht: I myself saw how Christian women cover themselves from head to toe for their own safety when going out into the street, otherwise they might be attacked or suffer abuses. This is the reality in Basra. We didn't see this in Baghdad or in the north, in Mosul. The situation is better there. The Shiites are stronger in the south and that is why they try to exert pressure.
Q: Are the fundamentalists' demonstrations of force an attempt to impose a radical Islamism?
Siebrecht: It's hard to say. None of the people with whom we spoke -- nuncio, bishops, priests -- could tell us what might happen. All hope that the present situation will not serve to strengthen Muslim fundamentalism. But no one can exclude this possibility, at least in the south.
Friday, July 4, 2003
My opinion piece in the Daily Star covers some of the same ground as postings here earlier in the week, but also makes some new points:
Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani has intervened forcefully in Iraqi politics. In a fatwa, or legal ruling, issued on July 1, he denounced US civil administrator L. Paul Bremer's plan to appoint a committee to draft a new Iraqi constitution. He insisted that Bremer had no such authority, and that the Iraqi people themselves must elect delegates to any constitutional convention. Moreover, he said, the constitution should be subject to a popular referendum before being implemented.
The US sees itself as the liberator of Iraq, one that must patiently oversee the transition to a new government for an Iraqi people still incapable of governing itself. Iraqis like Sistani, however, insist that Iraqi sovereignty must be part of the process.
The problem is that Bremer plans to rule Iraq himself, through Western and Iraqi appointees, for at least two years. He has announced he will form a political committee of 25 to 30 individuals that will, according to the liberal Iraqi newspaper Al-Zaman, advise the civil administrator and help oversee ministries. It will also prepare the way for an Iraqi constitution, to be drafted by a gathering of 125 appointees who will be called together in a month or two.
Bremer has reversed America's course. In the past year, the US Defense Department gave the impression to the Iraqi National Congress (INC), a group largely made up of expatriate parties, that it would hand over power to it in an orderly fashion after Saddam Hussein's regime was removed. Bremer's predecessor, Jay Garner, appointed INC members, including its leader, Ahmed Chalabi, to a seven-man political council charged with calling a national congress to elect a transitional government in July.
Bremer, a former State Department official, canceled these plans and has largely sidelined the INC. He even opposed the holding of municipal elections. The State Department and the CIA are opposed to Chalabi and the INC. They believe that Chalabi is corrupt and suspect Ayatollah Muhammad Baqir al-Hakim, the leader of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, of being an Iranian Trojan horse. Finally, after the experience of Bosnia, the State Department has argued it is unwise to hold elections too soon, since hard-liners may win and obstruct real change for years thereafter.
Enter Sistani. His fatwa was issued after he met with Chalabi. It may well be that Chalabi and Hakim have decided that the best way to push Bremer back toward the original Defense Department plan is to enlist the aid of Sistani, a towering religious and moral authority for most Iraqi Shiites. The ayatollah, a quietist, would not have ordinarily wanted to get involved in day-to-day politics. But he is in competition with more radical clerics like Muqtada al-Sadr, who have rejected American rule altogether, and he is willing to address foundational issues like the constitution.
Sistani's fatwa burnishes his anti-imperialist credentials by appealing to the primacy of national self determination. He said of Bremer's 125 appointees: "There is no guarantee that this council would grant a constitution that accorded with the highest interests of the Iraqi people and express their national identity, among the pillars of which is the foundation of the pure Islamic religion and noble social virtues." His main worry appears to be that the constitution will enshrine a seperation of religion and state and a liberalism that weakens Iraq's moral fabric.
So far, ordinary Iraqi Shiites, grateful for the end of Saddam's reign, have provided the US with a grace period. Calls by radical followers of Sadr for demonstrations against the US occupation have elicited little support. Sistani's fatwa, however, signals that the patience of even quietist Iraqi Shiites is not unlimited. It also raises the question of whether a government fashioned mainly by the US can ever achieve true legitimacy. Without such legitimacy, Iraq could become a cauldron of instability.
Sistani has thrown down a heavy steel gauntlet. Will Bremer pick it up? He ignores the fatwa to his great peril.
Sistani throws down a gauntlet
Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani has intervened forcefully in Iraqi politics. In a fatwa, or legal ruling, issued on July 1, he denounced US civil administrator L. Paul Bremer's plan to appoint a committee to draft a new Iraqi constitution. He insisted that Bremer had no such authority, and that the Iraqi people themselves must elect delegates to any constitutional convention. Moreover, he said, the constitution should be subject to a popular referendum before being implemented.
The US sees itself as the liberator of Iraq, one that must patiently oversee the transition to a new government for an Iraqi people still incapable of governing itself. Iraqis like Sistani, however, insist that Iraqi sovereignty must be part of the process.
The problem is that Bremer plans to rule Iraq himself, through Western and Iraqi appointees, for at least two years. He has announced he will form a political committee of 25 to 30 individuals that will, according to the liberal Iraqi newspaper Al-Zaman, advise the civil administrator and help oversee ministries. It will also prepare the way for an Iraqi constitution, to be drafted by a gathering of 125 appointees who will be called together in a month or two.
Bremer has reversed America's course. In the past year, the US Defense Department gave the impression to the Iraqi National Congress (INC), a group largely made up of expatriate parties, that it would hand over power to it in an orderly fashion after Saddam Hussein's regime was removed. Bremer's predecessor, Jay Garner, appointed INC members, including its leader, Ahmed Chalabi, to a seven-man political council charged with calling a national congress to elect a transitional government in July.
Bremer, a former State Department official, canceled these plans and has largely sidelined the INC. He even opposed the holding of municipal elections. The State Department and the CIA are opposed to Chalabi and the INC. They believe that Chalabi is corrupt and suspect Ayatollah Muhammad Baqir al-Hakim, the leader of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, of being an Iranian Trojan horse. Finally, after the experience of Bosnia, the State Department has argued it is unwise to hold elections too soon, since hard-liners may win and obstruct real change for years thereafter.
Enter Sistani. His fatwa was issued after he met with Chalabi. It may well be that Chalabi and Hakim have decided that the best way to push Bremer back toward the original Defense Department plan is to enlist the aid of Sistani, a towering religious and moral authority for most Iraqi Shiites. The ayatollah, a quietist, would not have ordinarily wanted to get involved in day-to-day politics. But he is in competition with more radical clerics like Muqtada al-Sadr, who have rejected American rule altogether, and he is willing to address foundational issues like the constitution.
Sistani's fatwa burnishes his anti-imperialist credentials by appealing to the primacy of national self determination. He said of Bremer's 125 appointees: "There is no guarantee that this council would grant a constitution that accorded with the highest interests of the Iraqi people and express their national identity, among the pillars of which is the foundation of the pure Islamic religion and noble social virtues." His main worry appears to be that the constitution will enshrine a seperation of religion and state and a liberalism that weakens Iraq's moral fabric.
So far, ordinary Iraqi Shiites, grateful for the end of Saddam's reign, have provided the US with a grace period. Calls by radical followers of Sadr for demonstrations against the US occupation have elicited little support. Sistani's fatwa, however, signals that the patience of even quietist Iraqi Shiites is not unlimited. It also raises the question of whether a government fashioned mainly by the US can ever achieve true legitimacy. Without such legitimacy, Iraq could become a cauldron of instability.
Sistani has thrown down a heavy steel gauntlet. Will Bremer pick it up? He ignores the fatwa to his great peril.
Thursday, July 3, 2003
* A happy Fourth to all the Americans in Iraq, where I know I have some readers. Hope you can all be back home soon, safe and sound. And to my Iraqi friends, I wish you well with the sentiments we celebrate on the Fourth - We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed . . .
*The Badr Corps will not fight against the next government of Iraq, said Ayatollah Muhammad Baqir al-Hakim, head of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), in an interview published in SCIRI's al-`Adalah on Thursday. He said the Corps was formed to fight Saddam. He said there was no point in attempts to disarm it [by the Americans], since it had not entered Iraq from Iran with any heavy weaponry to begin with. He said its soldiers would be dedicated to national development projects. He said there was no need to maintain an armed such corps now that Saddam was gone, and that there was no excuse for it to raise its weapons against any government chosen by the Iraqi people. - AFP/Asharq al-Awsat.
This statement is, of course, a pledge to keep the Badr corps from being disarmed (it would retain "light" weapons), and a threat that it will be used against the new government if it is not chosen by the Iraqi people. Hakim is always trying to sound reasonable even when he is making outrageous demands and launching threats.
*Thursday was another awful day, with US troops falling as casualties in more than one incident. In one instance, a team brazenly drove a civilian vehicle with a sun roof beside a humvee. An enemy combatant stood up through the sun roof with an rpg launcher and fired beneath the humvee, then the vehicle sped off. In another incident, the Marines arrested Shaikh Ali Abdul Karim al-Madani, the leading Shiite cleric in Baaquba, leaving his books scattered around as they carted him off. This arrest provoked a demonstration. A bomb was tossed into the middle of the demonstration (presumably by a left over Baathist provocateur trying to make trouble between the US and the Shiites). The US has been cracking down on SCIRI and its Badr Corps fighters in Baquba, and presumably saw al-Madani as a backer of these two. It is unwise to go about provoking demonstrations and giving the impression that we are arbitrarily arresting Shiite clerics. But maybe al-Madani really was involved in some bad business that needed to be nipped in the bud. Whatever the rationale, his arrest may have been unwise; at the least, things don't seem to be going well in Baquba, a large Shiite town near the Iranian border.
*The US has a brief window of opportunity to get the major Shiite clerics on its side, according to Trudy Rubin of the Philadelphia Inquirer, just back from Iraq. She says the moderate ayatollahs of the religious establishment in Najaf are largely favorable to the US, but they do not want the occupation to drag on. She quotes Ayatollah Muhammad Sa`id al-Hakim as saying, "The Americans have promised that the period of their occupation is limited....The Americans must give the Iraqi public the opportunity to elect a new Iraqi government as soon as possible. There is no other reason for them to be here in Iraq." In other words, the hawza has limited patience with proposals for a long-term occupation, or current U.S. plans to postpone Iraqi elections. Thanks to Ms. Rubin for risking so much to go to Najaf and get the story from the principals for us.
*The Badr Corps will not fight against the next government of Iraq, said Ayatollah Muhammad Baqir al-Hakim, head of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), in an interview published in SCIRI's al-`Adalah on Thursday. He said the Corps was formed to fight Saddam. He said there was no point in attempts to disarm it [by the Americans], since it had not entered Iraq from Iran with any heavy weaponry to begin with. He said its soldiers would be dedicated to national development projects. He said there was no need to maintain an armed such corps now that Saddam was gone, and that there was no excuse for it to raise its weapons against any government chosen by the Iraqi people. - AFP/Asharq al-Awsat.
This statement is, of course, a pledge to keep the Badr corps from being disarmed (it would retain "light" weapons), and a threat that it will be used against the new government if it is not chosen by the Iraqi people. Hakim is always trying to sound reasonable even when he is making outrageous demands and launching threats.
*Thursday was another awful day, with US troops falling as casualties in more than one incident. In one instance, a team brazenly drove a civilian vehicle with a sun roof beside a humvee. An enemy combatant stood up through the sun roof with an rpg launcher and fired beneath the humvee, then the vehicle sped off. In another incident, the Marines arrested Shaikh Ali Abdul Karim al-Madani, the leading Shiite cleric in Baaquba, leaving his books scattered around as they carted him off. This arrest provoked a demonstration. A bomb was tossed into the middle of the demonstration (presumably by a left over Baathist provocateur trying to make trouble between the US and the Shiites). The US has been cracking down on SCIRI and its Badr Corps fighters in Baquba, and presumably saw al-Madani as a backer of these two. It is unwise to go about provoking demonstrations and giving the impression that we are arbitrarily arresting Shiite clerics. But maybe al-Madani really was involved in some bad business that needed to be nipped in the bud. Whatever the rationale, his arrest may have been unwise; at the least, things don't seem to be going well in Baquba, a large Shiite town near the Iranian border.
*The US has a brief window of opportunity to get the major Shiite clerics on its side, according to Trudy Rubin of the Philadelphia Inquirer, just back from Iraq. She says the moderate ayatollahs of the religious establishment in Najaf are largely favorable to the US, but they do not want the occupation to drag on. She quotes Ayatollah Muhammad Sa`id al-Hakim as saying, "The Americans have promised that the period of their occupation is limited....The Americans must give the Iraqi public the opportunity to elect a new Iraqi government as soon as possible. There is no other reason for them to be here in Iraq." In other words, the hawza has limited patience with proposals for a long-term occupation, or current U.S. plans to postpone Iraqi elections. Thanks to Ms. Rubin for risking so much to go to Najaf and get the story from the principals for us.
*The US is bogged down in a low-intensity guerrilla war in Iraq, with daily attacks that for the most part go unmentioned in the Western press, including grenade, mortar and rocket propelled grenade assaults on Anglo-American military and on Iraqi police personnel and facilities. So reports Richard Sale, the intrepid terrorism correspondent of UPI. He says that US proconsul in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer III, began asking for more troops 10 days ago, and that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld reviewed the request. It seems unlikely to be granted. The US military is already stretched thin in Iraq, and the army doesn't have much more to give. Reservists are being kept out there, away from their jobs, already.
Sales writes, A former very senior CIA official commented: "There is a deep foreboding spreading across (Washington) about Iraq. Bremer can't win without another 100,000 troops, and he isn't going to get them. U.S. troops on the ground are almost used up, and literally tens of thousands of active duty and reservists are blocked from leaving the Army. We've got trouble, and we're in Vietnam-era denial." But there is agreement on one matter. Several administration officials and serving U.S. intelligence agents said they believe the United States is now involved in a guerilla war in Iraq, also despite the Defense Department's denials. "It's what I would call a long-term, low-intensity conflict," an administration source said, adding: "There is a high degree of concern at the White House."
The problem is acute. The US does not have the troops on the ground to provide security, even to key facilities such as electrical plants. One of Sales's interviewees thought Bremer needs another 100,000 troops to get the job done. (I am suspicious of such assertions; it may just be that the job is too big to get done at this scale at all). Bush and Rummy are afraid to admit that they are now bogged down in a guerrilla war, castigating their foes as "terrorists" and "Baath remnants." But there is evidence, Sale says, in radio intercepts of coordination among groups, and all the groups are not Baathists. The guys who blew themselves up in the al-Hasan Mosque in Falluja during a bomb making class are more likely to be Iraqi Muslim Brotherhood than Baath.
The basic problem for the real terrorists, i.e., al-Qaeda and its sub-contractors, was that the US was an awfully difficult target. It has limited exposure. The few loopholes that existed in its security, as with the unforeseen tactic of hijacking a plane and using it for suicide bombings, have largely been closed since September 11. But the Iraq War was a godsend to Sunni radicals, since it placed 160,000 American troops right in the middle of the Arab world, where they could be gotten at easily. Al-Qaeda likes symbolic targets, and now it has thousands of them. Although foreign al-Qaeda fighters may represent a small number of the insurgents striking at US troops now, the danger is that as the occupation drags on, there will be more of them, and more of the Sunni Arab Iraqis will give them cover. The Bushies have Bin Laden exactly where he wants them.
*Bremer brushed off Grand Ayatollah Sistani's demand for an elected constitutional convention, according to the Financial Times: 'Mr Bremer brushed off a religious edict issued on Monday by Ayatollah Ali Sistani, a leading Shia Muslim jurist. He said his call for an elected convention to draw up a constitution was impractical. "There is no way to conduct national elections," said Mr Bremer. "There is no census. There is no voting register. There are no constituency boundaries. There is no electoral law, and there is no law governing political parties." Mr Bremer reaffirmed that the administration would by mid-July announce a political council of 25-30 people "representative of the broad strata of Iraqi society", which would exercise "political responsibility . . . [including] responsibility for appointing ministers and making recommendations on how they spend money".'
All this talk about the lack of electoral rolls and so forth is not completely irrelevant, since one wants elections to be fair. But the US held a Loya Jirga in Afghanistan to elect Karzai, and it could hold some sort of consultative elections if it wanted to in Iraq. My guess is that the US civil administration isn't confident that they could orchestrate elections in Iraq the way they did in Afghanistan, and they don't want Shiite firebrand Muqtada al-Sadr elected head write of the Iraqi constitution. This is a case where I am a typical intellectual and can see both sides of the issue. Bremer is doing what he thinks is for the best in the long run. Sistani is insisting on the preservation of Iraqi national sovereignty, which is also a legitimate concern. I guess I think the Washington crowd has become awfully arrogant, talking about imposing their will on Iraq, and about "writing their constitution for them the way we did with Japan and Germany." I wonder if some sort of political solution could not be had that would satisfy both Bremer's concerns and those of Sistani, if that Washington arrogance were not getting in the way.
Asharq al-Awsat ran an unsourced item today claiming that the US civil administration intends to give pride of place to the Shiite community because they are the majority and have suffered more than anyone else, and will in fact acquiesce in Sistani's demand that the delegates to any constitutional convention be elected. This looks to me like planted disinformation for the Arabic reading public. I'd say it is unwise to raise unrealistic expectations in people in a short term attempt to mollify them.
*In fact, Hamid Bayati of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq is already complaining that his organization was misled by the US into thinking it would hand off power to the Iraqis soon after Saddam was overthrown. The AP article notes, 'During war preparations, the U.S. special envoy to the Iraqi opposition, Zalmay Khalilzad, promised the government would be handed over to Iraqi representatives once the war ended, al-Bayati said. "They have swallowed all their promises, and from now on we should ask them for written statements of pledges because they always back down," he said. I think the Iraqi expatriates were led on by the US. On the other hand, the expatriate politicians were the ones who blew smoke up our asses about all those Iraqi nuclear programs and weapons of mass destruction and Saddam-al-Qaeda links, and who promised clueless Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz that Iraqis were nice secular people who would be friendly to US soldiers. SCIRI was using Rumsfeld to install a Khomeini-style government in Iraq, which they knew the US did not want, just as the US was using SCIRI and others to gain legitimacy for the invasion. It is not as if there was good faith on all sides here.
Sales writes, A former very senior CIA official commented: "There is a deep foreboding spreading across (Washington) about Iraq. Bremer can't win without another 100,000 troops, and he isn't going to get them. U.S. troops on the ground are almost used up, and literally tens of thousands of active duty and reservists are blocked from leaving the Army. We've got trouble, and we're in Vietnam-era denial." But there is agreement on one matter. Several administration officials and serving U.S. intelligence agents said they believe the United States is now involved in a guerilla war in Iraq, also despite the Defense Department's denials. "It's what I would call a long-term, low-intensity conflict," an administration source said, adding: "There is a high degree of concern at the White House."
The problem is acute. The US does not have the troops on the ground to provide security, even to key facilities such as electrical plants. One of Sales's interviewees thought Bremer needs another 100,000 troops to get the job done. (I am suspicious of such assertions; it may just be that the job is too big to get done at this scale at all). Bush and Rummy are afraid to admit that they are now bogged down in a guerrilla war, castigating their foes as "terrorists" and "Baath remnants." But there is evidence, Sale says, in radio intercepts of coordination among groups, and all the groups are not Baathists. The guys who blew themselves up in the al-Hasan Mosque in Falluja during a bomb making class are more likely to be Iraqi Muslim Brotherhood than Baath.
The basic problem for the real terrorists, i.e., al-Qaeda and its sub-contractors, was that the US was an awfully difficult target. It has limited exposure. The few loopholes that existed in its security, as with the unforeseen tactic of hijacking a plane and using it for suicide bombings, have largely been closed since September 11. But the Iraq War was a godsend to Sunni radicals, since it placed 160,000 American troops right in the middle of the Arab world, where they could be gotten at easily. Al-Qaeda likes symbolic targets, and now it has thousands of them. Although foreign al-Qaeda fighters may represent a small number of the insurgents striking at US troops now, the danger is that as the occupation drags on, there will be more of them, and more of the Sunni Arab Iraqis will give them cover. The Bushies have Bin Laden exactly where he wants them.
*Bremer brushed off Grand Ayatollah Sistani's demand for an elected constitutional convention, according to the Financial Times: 'Mr Bremer brushed off a religious edict issued on Monday by Ayatollah Ali Sistani, a leading Shia Muslim jurist. He said his call for an elected convention to draw up a constitution was impractical. "There is no way to conduct national elections," said Mr Bremer. "There is no census. There is no voting register. There are no constituency boundaries. There is no electoral law, and there is no law governing political parties." Mr Bremer reaffirmed that the administration would by mid-July announce a political council of 25-30 people "representative of the broad strata of Iraqi society", which would exercise "political responsibility . . . [including] responsibility for appointing ministers and making recommendations on how they spend money".'
All this talk about the lack of electoral rolls and so forth is not completely irrelevant, since one wants elections to be fair. But the US held a Loya Jirga in Afghanistan to elect Karzai, and it could hold some sort of consultative elections if it wanted to in Iraq. My guess is that the US civil administration isn't confident that they could orchestrate elections in Iraq the way they did in Afghanistan, and they don't want Shiite firebrand Muqtada al-Sadr elected head write of the Iraqi constitution. This is a case where I am a typical intellectual and can see both sides of the issue. Bremer is doing what he thinks is for the best in the long run. Sistani is insisting on the preservation of Iraqi national sovereignty, which is also a legitimate concern. I guess I think the Washington crowd has become awfully arrogant, talking about imposing their will on Iraq, and about "writing their constitution for them the way we did with Japan and Germany." I wonder if some sort of political solution could not be had that would satisfy both Bremer's concerns and those of Sistani, if that Washington arrogance were not getting in the way.
Asharq al-Awsat ran an unsourced item today claiming that the US civil administration intends to give pride of place to the Shiite community because they are the majority and have suffered more than anyone else, and will in fact acquiesce in Sistani's demand that the delegates to any constitutional convention be elected. This looks to me like planted disinformation for the Arabic reading public. I'd say it is unwise to raise unrealistic expectations in people in a short term attempt to mollify them.
*In fact, Hamid Bayati of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq is already complaining that his organization was misled by the US into thinking it would hand off power to the Iraqis soon after Saddam was overthrown. The AP article notes, 'During war preparations, the U.S. special envoy to the Iraqi opposition, Zalmay Khalilzad, promised the government would be handed over to Iraqi representatives once the war ended, al-Bayati said. "They have swallowed all their promises, and from now on we should ask them for written statements of pledges because they always back down," he said. I think the Iraqi expatriates were led on by the US. On the other hand, the expatriate politicians were the ones who blew smoke up our asses about all those Iraqi nuclear programs and weapons of mass destruction and Saddam-al-Qaeda links, and who promised clueless Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz that Iraqis were nice secular people who would be friendly to US soldiers. SCIRI was using Rumsfeld to install a Khomeini-style government in Iraq, which they knew the US did not want, just as the US was using SCIRI and others to gain legitimacy for the invasion. It is not as if there was good faith on all sides here.
Wednesday, July 2, 2003
For some odd reason, my July 1 posting of Sistani's fatwa is not being archived by the new blogger software, so I am attempting to repost it here so it can be linked to.
Tuesday, July 01, 2003
*Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani has entered Iraqi politics in an unexpectedly big way. He has denounced US administrator Paul Bremer's plan to appoint a large constitutional committee to write a new Iraqi constitution. He insists that Bremer has no such authority, and that delegates to an Iraqi constitutional convention must be elected by the Iraqi people. Moreover, he says, the constitution itself should be subject to a popular referendum before it is implemented.
I reproduce below my translation of the article on this from the liberal Iraqi newspaper az-Zaman, which quotes a good deal of the fatwa itself.
It is very suspicious to me that this fatwa was issued after Sistani met with Ahmad Chalabi, head of the Iraqi National Congress. Chalabi had been hoping for some time that the US would just hand Iraq over to him and walk away after Saddam fell. Jay Garner, the first American proconsul, seemed inclined to do just that. This seems to have been what passed for a plan for post-war construction at the Defense Department. The State Department and the CIA were opposed to this plan for a number of reasons. They believe Chalabi is highly corrupt (they gave the INC $4 million, and Chalabi cannot account for $2 million of it). He is wanted on bank fraud charges in Jordan. If you can't trust a man with $4 million, how can you trust him with a whole country, that has an oil income of some $13 billion? They also did not like that the INC includes the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), which they see as a Trojan Horse for Iranian influence in Iraq. Finally, their experience in Bosnia was that it is unwise to hold elections too soon, since hardliners may get in who obstruct real change for years thereafter.
Garner tried to hand power over to the INC before he was deposed, but he was reversed in this by Paul Bremer, who is the State Department's man even if he ultimately reports to Rumsfeld. Bremer nixed the idea of early elections, an early handover to an Iraqi government, or an unsupervised constitutional convention. Bremer thinks he is going to rule Iraq himself, personally, through his appointees--Westerners and Iraqis--for at least two years. Bremer seems determined to sideline both Chalabi and SCIRI.
My guess is that Chalabi and SCIRI spiritual leader Ayatollah Muhammad Baqir al-Hakim have decided that the best way to push Bremer back toward the Garner (aka Wolfowitz/Rumsfeld) plan is to enlist the aid of Sistani, the towering religious and moral authority for most Iraqi Shiites. Sistani is basically a quietist and would not have wanted to get involved, but somehow they have convinced him to do so.
What is remarkable to me is how little his fatwa appeals to principles of Islamic law. It cites no holy text or principle, at least as quoted in az-Zaman. It is a simple statement of the primacy of national self-determination. It echoes Jefferson and Wilson.
It was announced today that Bremer has decided to allow local US military authorities to hold municipal elections if they deem it best, though they can appoint governments if they choose. Bremer had earlier intervened to stop such local elections. But the outbreak of violence at Majar al-Kabir last week, along with the problems of the appointed government of Najaf, seem to have changed his mind. The appointed mayor of Najaf was an ex-Baathist officer and turns out to have been corrupt as hell. Najaf residents have been protesting against him for weeks. It was poor judgment of the US to appoint a Sunni officer only recently out of the Baathist army to rule the Shiite holy city of Najaf in the first place. (See earlier columns of mine on this). But to have his administration be so shot through with embezzlement, kidnapping, etc., is a real black eye for the US.
As if all this were not enough, SCIRI leader Muhammad Baqir al-Hakim just issued a call for the formation of an Iraqi government that would peacefully move the US back out of Iraq, according to AP. Hakim said, ""Our demand is that a government be formed by the Iraqis and work to end the occupation by peaceful means." His statement seem coordinated with Sistani's fatwa, and with Chalabi's visit to Najaf.
Sistani has thrown down a very heavy steel gauntlet. Lets see if Bremer picks it up. He ignores this fatwa to his very great peril.
Here's the article, translated by moi, from az-Zaman:
1 July 2003
Az-Zaman
Najaf
Ali Sistani, the most senior of the Shiite religious authorities in Najaf, affirmed in a new fatwa that he issued yesterday (of which az-Zaman obtained a copy by fax) the necessity of holding general elections so that all Iraqis would be represented in a founding convention. It would have as its mission the fashioning of a new draft constitution. He stipulated that the constitution would have to be voted on by the Iraqis before its implementation could be authorized. Sistani issued this fatwa based on a question concerning the legitimacy in Islamic law of the Occupation Authority?s appointment of members of a founding convention authorized to produce a new constitution after consultations with political parties and movements. Sistani said in the fatwa itself, ?The Occupation Officials do not enjoy the authority to appoint the members of a council that would write the constitution.?
He added, ?There is no guarantee that this council would grant a constitution that accorded with the highest interests of the Iraqi people and would express their national identity, among the pillars of which is the foundation of the pure Islamic religion and noble social virtues.? He affirmed that ?the proposal referred to is fundamentally unacceptable.? The American ruler of Iraq, Paul Bremer, broached at the beginning of June a plan that specifies the formation of a political council of 25 to 30 members. The chief mission of this council will be to present discussions to the occupation administration in the economic and political spheres. One of its purposes, as well, is to appoint counselors in the ministries that will achieve at a later point the rank of deputy minister. Another purpose of the political council will be to prepare a referendum on the new constitution that will be fashioned by a convention of 125 members that will be formed in a month or two. Calling for general elections, Sistani said, ?general elections must be held so that every eligible Iraqi can choose someone to represent him at the constitutional convention that will write the constitution. Then there must be a public referendum that will be called by this convention.?
Sistani affirmed that ?It is incumbent upon all believers to demand the realization of this important matter, and to join together in achieving it in the best manner possible.?
In other news, a spokesman for the Iraqi National Council said that the president of the INC, Ahmad Chalabi, visited Ayatollah Ali Sistani in Najaf yesterday.
One source said that Sistani affirmed during this meeting, which lasted more than an hour, the necessity for a constitutional council that would undertake to write a new Iraqi constitution, be ?a purely Iraqi council that would be chosen by the children of the Iraqi people.?
He added that Sistani and Chalabi discussed ?the necessity for the American government to issue a political proclamation affirming that the American forces present in Iraq are forces of liberation and not forces of occupation.?
Chalabi and his delegation also visited Ayatollah Ishaq Fayad, one of the chief Shiite religious authorities in Najaf, according to the same source.
- Juan, 8:58 AM
Tuesday, July 01, 2003
*Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani has entered Iraqi politics in an unexpectedly big way. He has denounced US administrator Paul Bremer's plan to appoint a large constitutional committee to write a new Iraqi constitution. He insists that Bremer has no such authority, and that delegates to an Iraqi constitutional convention must be elected by the Iraqi people. Moreover, he says, the constitution itself should be subject to a popular referendum before it is implemented.
I reproduce below my translation of the article on this from the liberal Iraqi newspaper az-Zaman, which quotes a good deal of the fatwa itself.
It is very suspicious to me that this fatwa was issued after Sistani met with Ahmad Chalabi, head of the Iraqi National Congress. Chalabi had been hoping for some time that the US would just hand Iraq over to him and walk away after Saddam fell. Jay Garner, the first American proconsul, seemed inclined to do just that. This seems to have been what passed for a plan for post-war construction at the Defense Department. The State Department and the CIA were opposed to this plan for a number of reasons. They believe Chalabi is highly corrupt (they gave the INC $4 million, and Chalabi cannot account for $2 million of it). He is wanted on bank fraud charges in Jordan. If you can't trust a man with $4 million, how can you trust him with a whole country, that has an oil income of some $13 billion? They also did not like that the INC includes the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), which they see as a Trojan Horse for Iranian influence in Iraq. Finally, their experience in Bosnia was that it is unwise to hold elections too soon, since hardliners may get in who obstruct real change for years thereafter.
Garner tried to hand power over to the INC before he was deposed, but he was reversed in this by Paul Bremer, who is the State Department's man even if he ultimately reports to Rumsfeld. Bremer nixed the idea of early elections, an early handover to an Iraqi government, or an unsupervised constitutional convention. Bremer thinks he is going to rule Iraq himself, personally, through his appointees--Westerners and Iraqis--for at least two years. Bremer seems determined to sideline both Chalabi and SCIRI.
My guess is that Chalabi and SCIRI spiritual leader Ayatollah Muhammad Baqir al-Hakim have decided that the best way to push Bremer back toward the Garner (aka Wolfowitz/Rumsfeld) plan is to enlist the aid of Sistani, the towering religious and moral authority for most Iraqi Shiites. Sistani is basically a quietist and would not have wanted to get involved, but somehow they have convinced him to do so.
What is remarkable to me is how little his fatwa appeals to principles of Islamic law. It cites no holy text or principle, at least as quoted in az-Zaman. It is a simple statement of the primacy of national self-determination. It echoes Jefferson and Wilson.
It was announced today that Bremer has decided to allow local US military authorities to hold municipal elections if they deem it best, though they can appoint governments if they choose. Bremer had earlier intervened to stop such local elections. But the outbreak of violence at Majar al-Kabir last week, along with the problems of the appointed government of Najaf, seem to have changed his mind. The appointed mayor of Najaf was an ex-Baathist officer and turns out to have been corrupt as hell. Najaf residents have been protesting against him for weeks. It was poor judgment of the US to appoint a Sunni officer only recently out of the Baathist army to rule the Shiite holy city of Najaf in the first place. (See earlier columns of mine on this). But to have his administration be so shot through with embezzlement, kidnapping, etc., is a real black eye for the US.
As if all this were not enough, SCIRI leader Muhammad Baqir al-Hakim just issued a call for the formation of an Iraqi government that would peacefully move the US back out of Iraq, according to AP. Hakim said, ""Our demand is that a government be formed by the Iraqis and work to end the occupation by peaceful means." His statement seem coordinated with Sistani's fatwa, and with Chalabi's visit to Najaf.
Sistani has thrown down a very heavy steel gauntlet. Lets see if Bremer picks it up. He ignores this fatwa to his very great peril.
Here's the article, translated by moi, from az-Zaman:
1 July 2003
Az-Zaman
Najaf
Ali Sistani, the most senior of the Shiite religious authorities in Najaf, affirmed in a new fatwa that he issued yesterday (of which az-Zaman obtained a copy by fax) the necessity of holding general elections so that all Iraqis would be represented in a founding convention. It would have as its mission the fashioning of a new draft constitution. He stipulated that the constitution would have to be voted on by the Iraqis before its implementation could be authorized. Sistani issued this fatwa based on a question concerning the legitimacy in Islamic law of the Occupation Authority?s appointment of members of a founding convention authorized to produce a new constitution after consultations with political parties and movements. Sistani said in the fatwa itself, ?The Occupation Officials do not enjoy the authority to appoint the members of a council that would write the constitution.?
He added, ?There is no guarantee that this council would grant a constitution that accorded with the highest interests of the Iraqi people and would express their national identity, among the pillars of which is the foundation of the pure Islamic religion and noble social virtues.? He affirmed that ?the proposal referred to is fundamentally unacceptable.? The American ruler of Iraq, Paul Bremer, broached at the beginning of June a plan that specifies the formation of a political council of 25 to 30 members. The chief mission of this council will be to present discussions to the occupation administration in the economic and political spheres. One of its purposes, as well, is to appoint counselors in the ministries that will achieve at a later point the rank of deputy minister. Another purpose of the political council will be to prepare a referendum on the new constitution that will be fashioned by a convention of 125 members that will be formed in a month or two. Calling for general elections, Sistani said, ?general elections must be held so that every eligible Iraqi can choose someone to represent him at the constitutional convention that will write the constitution. Then there must be a public referendum that will be called by this convention.?
Sistani affirmed that ?It is incumbent upon all believers to demand the realization of this important matter, and to join together in achieving it in the best manner possible.?
In other news, a spokesman for the Iraqi National Council said that the president of the INC, Ahmad Chalabi, visited Ayatollah Ali Sistani in Najaf yesterday.
One source said that Sistani affirmed during this meeting, which lasted more than an hour, the necessity for a constitutional council that would undertake to write a new Iraqi constitution, be ?a purely Iraqi council that would be chosen by the children of the Iraqi people.?
He added that Sistani and Chalabi discussed ?the necessity for the American government to issue a political proclamation affirming that the American forces present in Iraq are forces of liberation and not forces of occupation.?
Chalabi and his delegation also visited Ayatollah Ishaq Fayad, one of the chief Shiite religious authorities in Najaf, according to the same source.
- Juan, 8:58 AM
Tuesday, July 1, 2003
*Here is what Tuesday's events in Iraq looked like to Kuwait's Arab Times: "Six more American soldiers were wounded in Iraq on Tuesday and a fatal blast at a mosque fuelled Muslim anger toward US forces, all within hours of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld insisting Iraq was no new Vietnam. Three soldiers were hurt near Baghdad's university when a makeshift bomb exploded by their vehicle, a military spokesman said. Their Iraqi interpreter was missing. Bystanders saw troops drag four seemingly badly wounded people from the burning wreck. Three others were wounded in two separate grenade attacks."
The daily litany of US casualties is extremely depressing, and apparently unlikely to stop any time soon. The recent news of 30 Iraqi looters being blown up accidentally while looting a weapons' depot was shocking to me. You mean the US and Britain are still leaving major weapons depots unguarded and open to systematic looting?? Those arms then end up in the hands of angry Sunni Baathists, fundamentalists and other opponents of US presence. The mosque explosion at Falluja, which killed the prayer leader and several seminary students, was almost certainly a Baathist ploy to get the US in further trouble with the people there. It seems to be working, and US denials that their missile landed on the mosque are being dismissed.
*The good news is that only 56 percent of Americans think things are going well for the US in Iraq, down from the 70s a month ago. The bad news is that 56% of Americans should have their eyes examined if this looks to them like anything but a growing disaster.
*The British in Basra are working with the 15 sheikhs who head the major tribes/clans in the city, to find a solution to the massive unemployment gripping the area.
*The Kurds have found a document from Iraqi intelligence dating back to the late 1980s during the Anfal (chemical weapons) campaign against the Kurds, who had allied with Iran in the Iran-Iraq War. It has long been known that the Iraqi army kidnapped thousands of Kurdish men at that time, presumably in preparation for their burial in mass graves. It now turns out that young Kurdish women were also kidnapped in some numbers, and sent off to work on the estates of Baath loyalists in the Sunni Arab center or even sold into sexual slavery abroad. Some 17, according to the document, ended up in Cairo night clubs. - Asharq al-Awsat.
*In at least a little vindication of Kurdish womanhood, a Kurdish woman has been made head of the qada' of Dukan in the governorate of Sulaimaniya. This is is the first time a woman has risen so high since the founding of the modern Iraqi state in 1921. - az-Zaman.
The daily litany of US casualties is extremely depressing, and apparently unlikely to stop any time soon. The recent news of 30 Iraqi looters being blown up accidentally while looting a weapons' depot was shocking to me. You mean the US and Britain are still leaving major weapons depots unguarded and open to systematic looting?? Those arms then end up in the hands of angry Sunni Baathists, fundamentalists and other opponents of US presence. The mosque explosion at Falluja, which killed the prayer leader and several seminary students, was almost certainly a Baathist ploy to get the US in further trouble with the people there. It seems to be working, and US denials that their missile landed on the mosque are being dismissed.
*The good news is that only 56 percent of Americans think things are going well for the US in Iraq, down from the 70s a month ago. The bad news is that 56% of Americans should have their eyes examined if this looks to them like anything but a growing disaster.
*The British in Basra are working with the 15 sheikhs who head the major tribes/clans in the city, to find a solution to the massive unemployment gripping the area.
*The Kurds have found a document from Iraqi intelligence dating back to the late 1980s during the Anfal (chemical weapons) campaign against the Kurds, who had allied with Iran in the Iran-Iraq War. It has long been known that the Iraqi army kidnapped thousands of Kurdish men at that time, presumably in preparation for their burial in mass graves. It now turns out that young Kurdish women were also kidnapped in some numbers, and sent off to work on the estates of Baath loyalists in the Sunni Arab center or even sold into sexual slavery abroad. Some 17, according to the document, ended up in Cairo night clubs. - Asharq al-Awsat.
*In at least a little vindication of Kurdish womanhood, a Kurdish woman has been made head of the qada' of Dukan in the governorate of Sulaimaniya. This is is the first time a woman has risen so high since the founding of the modern Iraqi state in 1921. - az-Zaman.
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