(I see that Juan Cole also has this intriguing Gilbert Achcar report on his blog today. But I think it’s significant enough to also put the whole text here. Its significance lies in the evidence it presents of the existence of a non-marginalizable “nationalist” trend within today’s Iraqi politics– even if, as it seems, that nationalism seems in this gathering to have been mainly of the “Arab Iraqi” rather than “pan-Iraqi” variety. Achcar notes that there seems to have been a sizeable media blackout of the conference in question. One can speculate whether this was motivated more by the anti-Moqtada feelings of the US military paymasters of much of the present Iraqi media, or by these paymasters’ desire to accentuate the “sectarianism” of Iraqi politics while playing down evidence of robust trans-sectarian initiatives like this one… Anyway, thanks once again to Gilbert for this! ~HC)
A PAN-IRAQI PACT
ON MUQTADA AL-SADR’S INITIATIVE
Gilbert Achcar
December 9, 2005
As part of his
effort to influence the political forces in Iraq prior to the forthcoming
parliamentary election, at the end of November Muqtada al-Sadr had his supporters
distribute the draft of a “Pact of Honor,” and called on Iraqi parties to
discuss and collectively adopt it at a conference to be organized before
the election.
This conference
was actually held on Thursday, December 8, in al-Kadhimiya (North of Baghdad).
Despite extensive search, I found it only reported in a relatively short
article in today’s Al-Hayat and
in dispatches from the National Iraqi News Agency (NINA). There is legitimate
ground to suspect that this media blackout has political significance; indeed
most initiatives by the Sadrist current are hardly reported by the dominant
media, even when they consist of important mass demonstrations (like those
organized yesterday in Southern Iraq against British troops).
In the case of
the recent conference, the vast array of forces that were represented and
that signed the “Pact of Honor” is in itself already worthy of attention.
Aside from the Sadrists, chiefly represented by their MPs, those represented
and who signed the document included: SCIRI, al-Daawa (al-Jaafari’s personal
representative even apologized in his name for his absence due to his traveling
outside of Iraq), and the Iraqi Concord Front (the major Sunni electoral alliance
in the forthcoming election), to name but the most prominent of a long list
of organizations, along with several tribal chiefs, unions and other social
associations, members of the De-Ba’athification Committee and a few government
officials. Ahmad Chalabi — who definitely deserves to be called “The Transformer”
— attended in person and signed the document in the name of his group. It
seems that the Association of Muslim Scholars did not attend, as its name
is not mentioned in any of the two sources.
According to the
reports, the “Pact of Honor” that was adopted consists of 14 points, among
which the following demands and agreements are the most important (the sentences
in quotation marks are translated from the document as quoted in the reports):
·
“withdrawal of the occupiers and setting of an objective timetable for their
withdrawal from Iraq”; “elimination of all the consequences of their presence,
including any bases for them in the country, while working seriously for
the building of [Iraqi] security institutions and military forces within
a defined schedule”;
·
suppression of the legal immunity of occupation troops, a demand coming with
the condemnation of their practices against civilians and their breach of
human rights;
·
categorical rejection of the establishment of any relations with Israel;
·
“resistance is a legitimate right of all peoples, but terrorism does not
represent legitimate resistance”; “we condemn terrorism and acts of violence,
killing, abducting and expulsion aimed at innocent citizens for sectarian
reasons”;
·
“to activate the de-Ba’athification law and to consider that the Ba’ath party
is a terrorist organization for all the tyranny it brought on the oppressed
sons of Iraq, and to speed up the trial of overthrown president Saddam Hussein
and the pillars of his regime”;
·
“to postpone the implementation of the disputed
principle of federalism and to respect the people’s opinion about it.”
The conference
established a committee that is responsible for following up the implementation
of the resolutions and reporting on it after six months.
If anything, the
conference was a testimony to the increasing importance of the Sadrist current.
As for the actual implementation of its resolutions, it will greatly depend
on the pressure that the same current will be able to exert after the forthcoming
election, if the United Iraqi Alliance — of which the Sadrists are a major
pillar on a par with SCIRI — succeeds in getting a commanding position in
the next National Assembly.
Ahmad Chalabi — who definitely deserves to be called “The Transformer”
You created him, you supported him, and you rewarded him, now you give him the names and legacy…,
What’s a fantasy…….?
This is excellent news. But Helena, I don’t understand where your comment that: ‘nationalism seems in this gathering to have been mainly of the “Arab Iraqi” rather than “pan-Iraqi” variety’is coming from.
I don’t see any evidence for that assertion. There’s nothing of that kind in the parts of the declaration that we are given. We don’t have the full attendance list.
Ashcar’s opening paragraph is problematic. It attributes the initiative to ‘Muqtada al-Sadr’ because Muqtada ‘had his supporters distribute the draft of a “Pact of Honor”‘.
It seems to me that intentionally or otherwise, this report manages to spin a sectarian conclusion out of a deliberately anti-sectarian (and therefore very welcome)initiative.
Of course Muqtada’s supporters would have had to distribute the draft. So would the other supporters of the conference. There is no other way it could be done. But to announce a non-sectarian conference as the property of one of the participants is annoying, to say the least. Even if the Sadrists were the largest single component, which is questionable, the fact that they feel obliged to take part in a popular front shows not that they can dictate, but precisely the opposite – that they have no way forward other than a negotiated one, and they know it.
Which is obvious, and must apply generally.
So I wish you would withdraw this “Arab Iraqi” label you have stuck on this conference, unless you have further information. Otherwise you are in danger of mirepresenting and damaging a non-sectarian initiative for peace, in my opinion.
Salah– I think when Gilbert called Chala a “Transformer” this was probably a reference to a popular little-boys’ toy that’s a sort of tiny robot-machine that you can bend into many different shapes and configurations… If I’m correct in that reading, then the reference is NOT an admiring one… far from it. (These toys always break very quickly. Chala not so quickly… )
Dominic, I understand your concern with my highly hedged-about reading of Gilbert’s piece– and principally of the list he provided, from Hayat, of the participants in the conference.
Yes, it is indeed possible that some of the “several tribal chiefs, unions and other social associations, members of the De-Ba’athification Committee and a few government officials” listed in the Hayat account, or other non-listed participants in the initiative, were Kurds or other non-Arabs. But I imagine if that were the case, the conference organizers would have done something to highlight the participation of such people/currents, and the Hayat reporter to note it.
Anyway, the major theme of the conference was strongly Iraqi-nationalist, and the statement contained nothing in the excerpts we can see there to alienate Iraqi non-Arabs, so that is good and interesting.
Supports extreme de-Baathification
Opposes federalism
Supports legitimate right of resistance
By process of elimination, that combo seems to leave only al-Sadr.
Also, the forming of a popular front is the logical next phase of a revolutionary movement. I’ve made fun of al-Sadr before, I even commonly call him Sonny because of Don Vito’s bullheaded son in The Godfather. But I now admit he’s a lot smarter than Sonny Corleone. Check this link for an Asia Times article on the Sadrist effort at revolutionary organization:
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GA12Ak02.html
Folks, I don’t know how, but this guy got the Leninist-Maoist playbook. If he weren’t wearing a turban it would be obvious. He’s organizing a parallel state from the ghetto out, instead of SCIRI’s approach of jumping in from Iran with the biggest armed gang. As the expatriate Shia and their middle class faction fail to govern and the country falls deeper into poverty, it becomes a class war between SCIRI and Sadr, with the latter always gaining numbers. In many past Communist struggles, the Reds would out-organize other radicals, then announce a popular front like the Viet Minh that they easily controlled. Or they would get into power and announce a coalition government, like Castro in ’59.
And to put it bluntly, good for him. Most of the world’s people are poor. Real majority rule should thus be in their hands. Because America used murder and divide-and-conquer to destroy egalitarian movements all over the world, the only way a class warrior can restart the struggle is to subvert some other ideology. America and Saudi Arabia created the Islamic jihad movement to destroy the Soviets in Afghanistan, and Arab socialism everywhere else. (Hey, Israel even helped Hamas get started to weaken socialist Fatah) So now an egalitarian faces a stupid, ugly world balkanized into religious fanaticisms, just as the egalitarians of 1815 faced an ugly world divided by British diplomats between reactionary nationalist monarchs. Solution then: co-opt nationalism. Solution now: co-opt whatever is left. Too bad that’s race & religion. Sonny is a thug, but Cromwell, Napoleon, John Adams (Alien & Sedition Act) and probably half the nationalist heroes of Europe were thugs. Their movements started the poor on the road to politics, a struggle of generations which requires the poor to hide in an ideological coalition until they have the power to break free and demand equality. But they also altered and humanized those ideologies. Al-Sadr is no more cruel than SCIRI (but no less), but by the time he’s assassinated (inevitably) his crazy teenage fanatics will be adults facing the economic injustice of daily life in the new world order, and complaining about it. And is there anything our empire fears more than all the sons and daughters of Hamas and Hezbollah and the rest demanding global wealth redistribution instead of Sharia?
super390: ideological coalition?
Which side are you on?
These two words show exactly what is wrong with your argument, which is not cynical, or detached, and not sympathetic to the poor, just wrong.
An effective coalition in politics is a unity in action, not in thought.
If you say otherwise you are misleading us, either out of ignorance or deliberately. I think the latter, not because you are working for the CIA or anything like that, but because you cannot face the truth.
Participation in a unity-in-action coalition is personally difficult for you. Who knows why? Only you know. But instead of talking about it you are happy to divert as many people as will listen into a false understanding.
A united front is a genuine thing and if you can’t allow that it that it exists then you are against it. You can’t allow it to stand up without you shouting it down.
I don’t fully understand why US people so commonly react against united front politics the way you have done here, but I have come to expect it. You go to extraordinarily irrational lengths, re-writing history as a kind of swords-and-sorcery fantasy to prop up your projection.
Well, I think the movement to end America’s criminal war is a unity-in-action coalition, and I’m all for it. But if you knew anything about Marxist history you’d know that there have been many popular fronts which included partners who had agendas far more extreme than the others. Ho Chi Minh’s guys used to have a rule, “never join anything you can’t control”, and I think it’s a sound maxim for revolutionaries. And I think the Arabs are in need of a revolution. Now there are different degrees of control. Communist participation in the French popular front government in the late ’30s might have been meant to prepare the voters to think of the Communist Party as just a normal party they could safely vote for. But we now know it was a brutal Stalinist organization that was biding its time. It only needed enough control in this case to ensure its short-term goal. Castro, on the other hand, only needed to use his popular front briefly until assuming complete power. Al-Sadr’s situation may be closer to the French than the Cuban.
I am in no way condemning the Sadrists for intending to eventually take over Iraq. Far better it be them than SCIRI. When the early British labor movement swallowed their pride and obeyed their bourgeoise Whig partners, surely they dreamed of later taking over the country and transforming it. That’s an example of a bourgeoise-proletarian coalition just as Marx predicted. Parliamentary parties don’t have to apologize for the cynicism with which they form and abandon coalitions. But it was foreseeable to leftists that Labor would abandon and overthrow the Whigs. I think you must agree that al-Sadr is a little more ruthless than British Labor and much better armed.
The other partners in the Iraqi peace coalition represent the classes and factions that failed to save the Arab world from past Western imperialism. They can form a sincere coalition now to stop the worst of America’s schemes. But demographics say the future of the Arab world is young, poor and urban, and that’s the sort of movement that must create a path to democracy – even if it doesn’t intend to. It is perfectly fair for that movement to unite with the shattered bourgeoise for the time being rather than stand alone and get slaughtered by American helicopters like last year.
It seems our misunderstanding here is that you think I’m saying the Pact of Honor is bad because al-Sadr is in it. Quite the opposite. If there are readers here who will turn against a “coalition in action” because I argue that he will never be satisfied to have 10% of the power, they should grow up and look at how wicked and corrupt our own parties are. The only political party that ever did any long-term good for the American masses was the Democratic FDR coalition (1932-80), and it was a fantastically cynical alliance: the KKK, anti-Semites, Zionists, socialists, Communists, unions, shopkeepers, blacks, immigrants who hated blacks, and millionaire Roosevelt, held together by dirty machine politics, all scheming for more power than their partners. What made them noble was their common enemy: Big Business. What made them win was that they were dirty street fighters. They made the only America I could imagine fighting for. So I hope Iraq’s Pact of Honor is the same, and defeats our GOP criminals now that we lack the balls to try.
“demographics say the future of the Arab world is young, poor and urban”
Never count out the old, rich guys. They usually come out on top in the end.
On MEMRI, translation, and interpretation
Professor Anchar’s article /1/ raises an important issue – translation vs interpretation. The problem is, MEMRI claims that all they are doing is just translations from Arabic!
The way MEMRI works, their translations are structurally inconsistent. Usually, MEMRI does not provide exact links to the originals, their translations are selective rather than complete. Sometimes, MEMRI can even concatenate a few translations into one article /2/.
However, when we deal with conflict coverage, structural inconsitency is critical, it easily results in crude propaganda. OK, some trust MEMRI, others – Professor Achcar. The question is, who is right? The simple fact that individual researchers do not have resources to make quality translations does not make this question any easier.
One solution for this problem is news links tracking. This way, source selection is explicitly separated from interpretation / commenting. One blog includes sources only, another – comments. The source blog does not include any comments, all it has is just article titles, dates, links, and abstracts. As for comments, they are all collected in the separate blog.
Now what is to be done about foreign languages? The problem is, titles are often uninformative and untranslatable. One solution is to translate the titles inconsistently, just to give an idea about the content. When links are available, it is not really confusing.
Next, articles which are considered worthy of further discussion, are treated in the comments blog. There, we are are free to interpret the sources in any way necessary, several new stories can be considered together, etc, etc.
1. Gilbert Achcar. A PAN-IRAQI PACT ON MUQTADA AL-SADR’S INITIATIVE: https://vintage.justworldnews.org/archives/001606.html
2. http://www.memri.org/
3. http://inplainview.us.tt
4. http://inplainview.monitor.us.tt
5. http://inplainview.us.tt/newsWorldRus.htm