Ground-level reports from inside Iraq

The Institute for War and Peace Reporting has put some very good pieces up in the past couple of days.
In its Iraq collection, it has this story from an un-named IWPR trainee who was taken to a training camp for a group calling itself the ‘Iraqi Resistance’. He (she?) writes:

    A photograph of Saddam Hussein and his two sons hung on one wall, while the other displayed an old Iraqi flag and a sword.
    This insurgent leader identified himself as a former intelligence officer who transferred to the paramilitary Saddam Fidayeen organisation before the war last year.
    He explained his movement’s goal, “If we do not hold authority in Iraq, then we will allow no one else to hold authority.”

That latter statement seems to sum up the thinking behind a lot of what’s been going on in Iraq in the past few weeks: a campaign to try to make the country “ungovernable”, pure and simple.
The piece has a lot of other interesting tidbits, too.
This story, about the claimed finding of the body of former Iraqi president Abdel-Karim Qassam, and popular reactions to it, is somethng I hadn’t seen elsewhere.
Their Iraqi Press Monitor for July 19 refers to a story in Adalah that quotes Special tribunal chief Salim Chalabi as saying that two former Saddam henchmen–including former Foreign Minister Tarek Aziz–have agreed to testify against Saddam. Interesting. I hadn’t seen a reference to that anyplace else.
In IWPR’s Balkans collection, there’s a good think-piece by their editor in The Hague, Rachel Taylor, asking “Was Milosevic Charge Sheet Too Ambitious?”
Taylor recounts the whole history of how the three cases against Slobo–for Croatia, forBosnia, for Kosovo–all got joined into one. She quotes some people who have supported handling the case that way, and some who now criticize the stragey. For example:

    Marieke Wierda, senior associate at the International Center for Transitional Justice and a former law clerk to Judge May, told IWPR that having one massive case is a ‘high stakes’ approach, because “if the accused is deemed unfit or dies during the case, then you are left with nothing”.
    On the other hand, she said, if the prosecutors had gone forward with the Kosovo indictment first, they “could have had a conviction on Kosovo under their belts by now”.

Taylor also quotes Richard Dicker, head of Human Rights Watch’s International Justice Program, thus:

    In the end, he said, people’s hopes for what such a trial can accomplish may just have been too high.
    “Going forward, it is important that we have realistic expectations about the trial process and what is going to come out,” he explained. “Prosecutors should focus on a limited set of charges, or counts, for which the proof is strongest even though important incidents may not be included.
    “The trials shouldn’t attempt to be a history book.”

The latest stories on Afghanistan on the IWPR site are worth reading, too.

11 thoughts on “Ground-level reports from inside Iraq”

  1. “That latter statement seems to sum up the thinking behind a lot of what’s been going on in Iraq in the past few weeks: a campaign to try to make the country “ungovernable”, pure and simple.” This is quite wrong, and is fellow-travelling with Neocon propaganda coming out of Washington. The war in Iraq is a conflict now between the Iraqi people, well the Arabs, and the United States. There are lots of variants and different levels of resentment and opposition, of which the article describes one. But for those who know Iraq, it’s not difficult to see that if the United States were simply absent from the equation, the Iraqis would sort themselves out in a few months (The Kurds are another question, not to deal with here). Suggesting that the country is heading for anarchy which can only be resolved by continued Western intervention is to go along with the way of thinking of the Right. Actually I don’t agree with Juan Cole that US withdrawal is unthinkable, because of the importance of the oil-fields, I believe it to be the best and only solution. I am speaking from thirty-five years of experience of the Arab Near East.

  2. Well, I can see how you might think I was traveling w/ the neocons there, Alastair, but I assure you that politically that is FAR from my intention!! (Check the rest of the blog… )
    My own broad view of what’s happening in Iraq, which perhaps I should have alid out a bit more above, is that there are a lot of different struggles going on as the various parties/communities/interest groups jockey to be able to influence two key decisions: (1) how soon and in what degree of disarray the US forces leave and (2) the division of power inside Iraq over the longer term. Those are serious, and linked issues, and obviously the different political trends inside the country have widely differing views on them.
    If I were a saddamist–which I am not, but the people interviewed in that article evidently and self-avowedly were– then I would probably judge that now is NOT the time to try to build a broad popular movement inside Iraq around my “ideals”, to say the least. Hence, there is relatively little overt political organizing by those folks. But from their viewpoint, now would definitely be the time for a big “ungovernability” campaign…
    This is not always just a stupid, malignant, and despicable thing to do, that’s only done by people who are ‘deadenders’ (as the neocons would have us believe). Yes, it does have some bad longterm consequences all round, and it usually isn’t allied to a clear, compeling political agenda. But if you simply want to block what seems to be going ahead, to dig in your heels and defend some vital political space for yourself, it’s not a totally ineffective strategy.
    But that is, as I fully realize and I’ve written about elsewhere here, only a small part of what’s going on in Iraq. It’s most likely only a small part of what’s going on in the Sunni Arab community– and then, there is the much bigger-stakes “debate” (for want of a better word) over how the Shi-ite community will be led, by whom, and in what direction… And also, as you mention, the Kurds.
    So maybe you could say the neocons are like a clock that has stopped. For one instant, every 12 hours, they might be right. But as for expecting that their analyses, views etc can actually, in any period, provide a decent guide as to the real state of things–fuggedaboutit! (The stopped clock –or someone who watches only that one–never even knows when the moment comes in which it is right!)

  4. Sorry to be a perennial curmudgeon.
    There will be an increasing discrepancy between the news within Iraq, the news about Iraq as transmitted to the US audience, and the ability of that audience to imbibe or comprehend the news.
    None of the “that stuff in Eye-Wreck” news will fit the American categories of perception and discourse. Hostile Iraqis, abu Ghraib, gesticulating clerics, robed jihadist, incessant street bombings–none of these things fit the script. Soon the audience will tune out (exit Farenheit 9/11, enter Spiderman). A zesty “Be Proud, America” speech by Arnold at the GOP convention, delivered sonorously against a magnificent video backdrop and Coplanesque sounds, will set minds and spirits aright.
    They will honor the fallen. It will be a pretty spectacle, without costing much personal grief. After all, how many of those 30 to 40 poor kids and reservists who die each month have any kin on the Hill or among big donors? And, heck, they volunteered, didn’t they?
    By November, most of the electorate will privately concede that the war was a mistake, but probably hold W blameless, and elect the plainspoken guy who “at least tried to fight terror” and empathizes who must, er, “put food on their families,” and not the “blue” guy they can’t understand but are told “threw away his medals” and “voted against money for our troops.”

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