Politics in Iraq

The delegation from Baghdad did not get to meet Moqtada Sadr Tuesday. (I
wonder if that had anything to do with the possibility that the delegates
flew into Najaf on a US Blackhawk chopper, as Jazeera reported?) But
the news is that the delegation will try again Wednesday or Thursday …
Even more importantly, we should all be looking at the many signs there are
that a lively political process is currently underway inside Iraq today
. That, despite all the moves the US forces are constantly making
to try to escalate the military/insecurity situation.

It’s still hard to say how this political process will turn out. Contrary
to what some pro-Allawist people have continued to try to say, Moqtada is
nowhere near being “run out of town on a rail” (in the infelicitous phrasing
of US journo Chris Allbritton.)
Indeed, Moqtada has been doing really well, politically, over the
past ten days. Not least, he has forced the whole 1,300-member
Iraqi “National Conference” to focus almost totally on his issue, rather
than on the planned agenda of signing smoothly off on the election-prep plans
previously cooked up by Allawi and his cronies.

To try to get a reading on the political situation inside the
country, I’ve been doing a little search in “all the usual sources”–mostly in English,
but also Al-Hayat in Arabic. I found some very interesting items,
which I’ll just quickly list here.

**Al-Jazeera.net has what looks like some good, solid
reporting
from inside the NatConf hall. Firstly, they note that the conference
has had to be prolonged for at least one further day, since some 450 delegates
(out of a total of fewer than 1,300),

accused the main political parties of hijacking the vote, saying
most members were chosen long ago in secret.

Many had threatened to quit the conference unless the voting mechanism was
changed.

Conference chair Fuad Maasum, a Kurdish former exile, had tried to insit
on an up-or-down vote on a single pre-cooked list… Well, it’s true
that that may have been the way that many of the “delegates” themselves were
chosen to go to the conference at all–see what
Faiza
wrote about that last week. But still, a good number of them objected
to Maasum’s plan.

And remember, only 80 (or 81) of the 100 seats on the body being elected
there–which will be an electoral commission and a sort of interim parliament
rolled into one–are to be filled by election at all. The other 20 (or19)
are to be filled by the former members of the old, Bremer-appointed IGC…

19 or 20, I hear you ask: why the confusion? Well, the confusion has
to do with whether our old friend Ahmad Chalabi gets included in that number
or not… The question of his participation in (or banning from) the
NatConf itself has also been the subject of some heavy internal politics there.
See below.

(Talking of Ahmad Chalabi, the IWPR’s
Iraqi Press Monitor
reported yesterday that Al-Bayan, which is issued by Vice-President
Ibrahim al-Jafari’s Islamic Daawa Party, reported yesterday that the “Minister
of Justice”, Malik Dohan al-Hasan, resigned

because the cabinet did not respond to his memorandum calling
for the dismissal of the head of the Judicial Council, Judge Zuhair al-Maliki…
The minister said the way in which Ahmed al-Chalabi and his nephew Salim
al-Chalabi had been treated does not protect any Iraqi from legal interrogation
for reasons arranged by some parties to defame political and patriotic figures.

There’s some interesting politics for you!)

**Today’s Iraqi
Press Monitor
has this intriguing little excerpt from London-based Az-Zaman
:

Muqtada al-Sadr has agreed on the initiative of the National
Congress to solve the crisis of Najaf peacefully. The members of the congress
aided the proposal of Sayyid Hussein al-Sadr by solid margin. Sayyid Hussein
said no one had the right to control the Imam Ali shrine, and that the government
was the only body that should be in charge of it. Sayyid Hussein added that
the government did not ask Muqtada to leave Najaf but had only
asked him not to keep control of the shrine. [HC emphasis] He emphasised
the importance of ending armed scenes in Najaf and that Mahdi elements entrenched
in the shrine were free to leave the shrine and go anywhere without being
chased by the government.

It may not be totally up-to-date as of now (Tuesday evening), but there are
still a couple of very pertinent little details there.

** Actually, the whole of the August 17 edition of Iraqi Press Monitor
is very interesting…

There’s a report from Al-Adala about what happened when Chalabi tried
to enter the NatConf hall:

The police, who stopped Chalabi from attending the congress,
told al-Adala that they did so according to an order from the Minister of
Interior. But Fuad Masoom said he had no idea about the order and that Chalabi
had the right to attend the congress.

This snippet, from Ad-Dustour:

Some tribal leaders have withdrawn from the second
session of the National Congress for not being fully represented to occupy
the seats of the parliament and for the critical situations under which the
congress was held.

This, from Al-Mashriq:

Clerics and preachers in Samarra
have asked young believers to join the so-called Hadi Army in reference to
Imam Ali al-Hadi, who is buried in Samarra. Sources affirmed the army would
consist of armed elements that would be attached to the Mahdi army in Najaf.
The insistence of the government to solve the crisis militarily has urged
many Iraqis to join the resistance, and it has unified the different bodies
of resistance. Member of the political office of the Islamic Party Ammar
Wajeeh said the party rejected the government’s attempt to solve the issue
with Muqtada al-Sadr militarily.

Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but I think we’d be talking about a (pro-Sadrist)
Sunni militia and political activity there…

There’s this from Al-Mutamar (Chalabi’s old moutpiece; maybe still
is his?):

News sources said American forces have besieged
the mosque of Umm al-Qura, which serves as headquarters for the Muslim Clerics
Board in Baghdad, and have prevented anyone from entering or leaving the
mosque. Board member Sheikh Ahmed al-Samarrai said the Americans have besieged
the mosque and the adjacent area under the allegations they were attacked
from that area. Therefore, he said, they insisted on inspecting the whole
area including the mosque.

Now that definitely would, if confirmed, be a story about a Sunni institution…

And so it goes on. Basically, Iraqis of all stripes trying to figure
out how to build themselves a political system, and US soldiers using guns
and bombs to realize extremely uncertain (and anyway only very transient)
military “objectives”.

I see the situation as something of a race between these two processes. Can
the political process win out over the militarists? They still have
a chance. But boy, those militarists in the Marine Corps are bullheaded.
What the heck do they think they would even do with the whole of downtown
Najaf even if they “won” it? Do they even have any idea what’s at stake
there?