Author: Helena

In the wake of every catastrophe comes grief… mourning… human solidarity and the arrival of efforts to help… and a search for understanding and answers. In many cases, this last process can have huge political ripple effects.
Billmon put up a great post yesterday about the search for understanding the background to the current Louisiana-Mississippi disaster. He and Matt over at Today in Iraq have both explored some of the effects that pursuit of the war in Iraq and other Bush administration priorities had on the readiness of the southern U.S. states to deal with Hurricane Katrina.
I want to focus more on the possible political fallout of the Baghdad bridge stampede on politics inside Iraq.
I realize that the government of Iraq has announced a three-day period of national mourning. (It would be interesting to know the extent to which it is observed in all the different parts of the country?) However, even while observing this mourning period, I believe it’s possible to start looking at the possible political fallout from the disaster– which has already started to happen.
For example, Iraqi Health Minister Abdul Mutalib Mohammed Ali already, on Wedesneday, demanded the resignation of the ministers of interior and defense, holding them responsible for the stampede:
Hat-tip to Matt at TII for that link. Hat-tip to Juan Cole for noting that the health minister is a Moqtada Sadr supporter and the two he accuses are SCIRI people.
Abdel-Hussein Ghazal and Zaner Mazloom Abbas of the Iraqi daily Az-Zaman had a piece on the paper’s website yesterday with the headline:

One thousand martyrs in an Iraqi catastrophe on the al-Aema bridge; Ja’fari announces three days of mourning; the Health Minister calls on the ministers of the Interior and Defense to resign; Washington is confident the crisis can be overcome; the people of al-Aazhamiyeh rush to the aid of the wounded from the incident; and Iraqis acuse the government of a lack of readiness regarding security and services.

Well, as I said that’s just the headline. If any of our readers would like to contribute English language translations of some or all of the text of that piece– or of any other strong pieces of reporting from Baghdad; or of links to good English-language translations published elsewhere– then I would really appreciate that.
(No length limits for such contributions, which will be put up on JWN with as much or as little attribution to you as you would like. If you’re sending in anything more than a few sentences, maybe send it to me in an email or as an email attachment, rather than trying to cram it into a Comments box.)
Politically, I would note here that the Sadrists have been quite critical of the degree of decntralization enshrined in the currnetly proposed Iraqi constitution; and they have worked hard to keep good, nationalism-based links open with the country’s Sunni Arab community. I believe al-Aazhamiyeh is a majority Sunni neighborhood– hence the importance of that reference to it in the Zaman headline.
SCIRI, by contrast, not only strongly favors the decentralization proposal but has also pioneered the idea of creating an (effectively) all-Shiite super-region encompassing as many as nine of Iraq’s 18 provinces.
I think PM Ibrahim Ja’afari, also a Shiite, sits uncomfortably in the middle on this issue. Untill early this year, opinion polls in Iraq revealed that Ja’afari was generally quite popular there. But his popularity, and that of the Islamic Daawa Party that he heads, has most likely plummeted since he has shown himself to be an extremely inept and indecisive Prime Minister over the past five months.
For the Bushies (or “the Cheney administration” as Billmon calls it… ) yesterday’s catastrophe in Baghdad probably seriously upsets their plan of being able to stage a “successful” referendum on the constitution in October, and then the follow-on parliamentary election there in December. It is not just the broad lack of political clarity around the constitution issue that looks set to impede their plans; there is also a stunning lack in Iraq of even the most basic institutional capacity capable of holding these votes under any acceptable conditions of safety and fairness… The lack of institutional capacity in public security and other very basic civic infrastructure was, obviously, revealed once again during the bridge disaster. And the aftermath of the disaster looks as though it might well further weaken the political capacity of the pro-constitution parties.
By the way, there are some very well-connected people in the Republican Party here in the US– even if people who are not, right now, in the present administration– who are prepared to admit to the “Potemkin village” nature of the Iraqi constitution venture as it is currently conceived.
Recently I heard one such person musing on the constitution in the following terms:

“The Iraqi constitution? Well, of course it’s a dog’s breakfast. But then it’s quite irrelevant anyway, isn’t it, since the country has no institutions capable of implementing it…”

My own thoughts exactly.

I have changed the border of the blog to black to express my deep condolences to those who lost loved ones or have otherwise had their lives blighted by the two great catastrophes of this week.
Probably the biggest of these, in terms of lives lost, is the impact of Hurricane Katrina on the Gulf Coast of the southern U.S. We don’t know how many have been killed there, possibly some or even many thousands. In addition many hundreds of thousands of people have had to leave their homes, many of which have been– and are continuing to be– destroyed by nature’s wrath. The living conditins of millions of people in the affected areas are frightful. Relief operations are complex and slow.
(Later, we can think more about the longer-term effects of the hurricane on oil prices and the economy; the wisdom of many of the engineering and zoning decisions that have been previously been made in that region; and other weighty related matters. For now, the human tragedy just seems paramount to me.)
And then, today in Baghdad there was the horrifying stampede on the bridge to Kazemiyah, that left a reported 960-plus people dead. I can barely believe how terrible it must have been to be caught up in that. The chaos, uncertainty, and loss suffered by the survivors must be terrible. I just hope that some authority– whether mosques, local parties, government authorities, or whatever– is able to deliver the aid and emergency services that the survivors now so desperately need.
It seems particularly tragic that those who drowned, were crushed to death, or suffered injuries in that incident met their fates while participating in a religious pilgrimage. Bill the spouse reminded me there have been a number of analogous incidents during the Hajj in recent years– and that there, too, it is often particularly dangerous when procession participants are channeled into the relative narrowness of a bridge. This site tells us that in 1990, 1,402 pilgrims were killed in a stampede during Hajj time in Mecca. (I think that one was on a bridge.) In 1994, 400 were killed in a stampede there; and just last year, another 244.
But now, this week, maybe the concurrence of these two events in Iraq and the southern US can remind everyone that there are more important human values to attend to than the pursuit of foreign wars?
Wouldn’t it be amazing if the concurrence of these events served– as last December’s tsunami in Asia did, too, in its way– to turn people’s attention away from wars of conquest and back to the needs of human survival and human solidarity?
I guess I mean there particularly the attention of the US citizenry. We US citizens could use our country’s rich resources and fine capabilities so effectively to help our fellow-humans in our own southern states, in Baghdad, and in other places where people are sick, hurting, and in need– if only we could cure ourselves of our addiction to this doomed and ultra-violent war.
If we really want this, we can make it happen.

The Prez and his people continue to crow to the US citizenry about the Iraqi negotiators’ “agreement” on the text of a Constitution– even while Viceroy Zal Khalilzad is also reported by AP as saying that further “edits” might be made to the text.)
I would be very happy if the Bushies could somehow just “declare victory” and, more to the point, pull all the US troops speedily out of Iraq. But they aren’t about to do that. Indeed, in the US press today, administration people were quoted as saying there would be an increased troop deployment at least through January, to try to “assure safety” for both the October referendum and the December election.
The administration’s entire attempt at the political reconstitution of Iraq is crumbling into chaos with every minute that passes.
Is there the text of a constitution– or not?
Has the conclusion of an agreement on this text met the (arbitrarily made-in-the-USA) TAL deadline– or not?
Should it be the Prime Minister who represents “Iraq” at important international gatherings like next month’s UN Summit– or not?
Indeed, is there even an elected Iraqi Transitional Assembly in place in Baghdad these days– or not?
The answers to all these questions appear to be “no.” (How many of you went to the link that Juan Cole provided that went to this Reuters story about the National Assembly not even nowadays being able to reach the required quorum to make a decision? That’s a reveealing and sobering piece of reporting.)
Some people on JWN and elsewhere have asked, quite reasonably, what anyone’s specific objections are to the text of the constitution. As I understand it, nearly all Arab Sunnis in Iraq and an unknown (but probably not trivial) number of other Iraqis have two kinds of objections to the constitution:
(1) They object to specific clauses (or absences) in its text. Most of these center around the decentralization question– the devolution of powers previously held by the central government to the provinces or the new entity of “regions.”
In particular there is opposition to Art. 110, part 2, which states “The federal government and the governments of the producing regions and provinces together will draw up the necessary strategic policies to develop oil and gas wealth…” This mandates central government power-sharing with the regions in the case of new (but not existing) oil developments. Also, Art. 150 states that contracts that the Kurdish region has already, earlier, concluded are effective; and the Kurdish has already– according to a rceent piece in Al-Hayat signed a number of oil-development contracts in recent years.
There is also objection to the absence from the text of any mention of Iraq being “part of the Arab world.” (This could be a concern to people who are worried about Kurdish separatism– but also those worried about Iran’s influence in the new order.)
(2) In addition to those and other objections on matters of the content of the constitution, many Iraqis– and certainly, nearly all Sunni Iraqi leaders and personalities– have expressed very strong objections to the way the constitution negotiations have been conducted. Especially, as they see it, the fact that the “final” draft– or as it now turns out, perhaps the “near-final” draft– was rammed through by Khalilzad acting in concert only with the Kurds and with the pro-SCIRI Shia.
There are all kinds of other allegations of misdoing out there, as well, including reports of massive bribes being offered by the Americans and taken by some Iraqi pols.
I think these objections to the process of constitution-making are much more serious than the objections to the content of draft now being discussed.
To succeed, this constitution– like any other in a situation of radical transition– needs to be seen by the vast majority of the electorate involved as being the result of a credible and legitimate negotiation. So far, this looks far from being the case with the various pieces of paper being floated around Iraq.
Credible? Legitimate? Negotiation?
I don’t think so… Especially not on a day in which US forces were reported as having killed 47 people in an air-strike in the west of the country.
The problem with the “negotiation” over the Iraqi constitution at this point has little to with the representativity or otherwise, or the degree of organization or otherwise, of the various Iraqi parties to it. (Though over the long haul those are certainly legitimate concerns.) It has to do with the credibility and legitimacy of its US sponsors– in the eyes of the Sunnis, and others.
Hint to the Bush administration: “You don’t win ‘legitimacy’ as a political-diplomatic coordinating force through the barrel of a gun. All you win that way is continued enmity, strife, suffering, and division.”
You’d think they might have learned that lesson with their brutal and unnecessary escalation against Fallujah, last November? But no. Now it looks as if the preparations for the October referendum and the election to follow might similarly include US escalation rather than any attempt at skilled and inclusive diplomacy.
(You also might think that at a time when their faithful friend Hosni Mubarak is up for re-election in Egypt, they might have tried to avoid arousing Sunni passions throughout the Arab world… But again: no. What do they care?)
A tragedy, a tragedy. With these cynical and deeply ignorant people in charge in Washington, the future can only bring further terrible suffering to the Iraqis– and also, to use Americans.

It’s been such a busy week for poor old President Bush! This week, this guy– whose handsome salary and lavish upkeep I am of course contributing to– had to take time out from his current 5-week vacation to do the following:

— go and give a couple of speeches justifying his Iraq “policy” in other (but very scenic) parts of the country than Crawford, Texas
— Thursday night he had to pick up the phone and shmooze with Abdel-Aziz al-Hakim, the head of Iraq’s SCIRI party (the Iran-backed party that’s been aggressively pushing for the creation of a large, separate “Shia-stan” in southern Iraq… H’mmm, can you imagine how that little conversation went?)
— today, he delivered a radio address, doubtless painstakingly drafted by himself (irony alert!), in which he told the waiting public that,
“the people of Iraq are … making the tough choices and compromises necessary for a free and peaceful future… Like our own nation’s founders over two centuries ago, the Iraqis are grappling with difficult issues, such as the role of the federal government. What is important is that Iraqis are now addressing these issues through debate and discussion — not at the barrel of a gun… “

Oh, how great to learn that the Iraqis aren’t using violence in the course of their current constitutional discussions. But I just wonder where our friends from Today in Iraq got all those reports of “36 executed Iraqis discovered near Badrah… 40 Iraqis, one American killed in Baghdad fighting…” ??
And that was just on their Friday post. Scroll on down to read more about the ongoing massacres and horrors that have accompanied this grotesquely mishandled “Constitution-writing” exercise throughout the past few weeks.
Bush had to engage in all this recent flurry of activity, of course, mainly because that heroic woman Cindy Sheehan had shamed him into pretending to “do something” that might be relevant to the rapidly deteriorating situation inside Iraq. His first response to her had been to stress his need to carry on recreating, and to swagger on about how good he has become at his new sport of mountain-biking… That didn’t totally work. So then he started making some speeches…
Bike-blogger Cannonball meanwhile gave us all a good first evaluation of the Prez’s much-vaunted expertise at mountain-biking here.
Then on Wednesday, Cannonball let rip with a great critique of the deeper question at hand:

But let’s set aside for the time-being, the question of whether or not Bush is a kick-ass mountain biker. Instead, let’s examine the question of whether he should be a kick-ass mountain biker or runner or scrapbooker or Trivial Pursuit player or whatever; whether his body should show absolutely no signs at all of any kind of stress whatsoever; whether he should have several free hours a day to devote to his personal pursuits…
For Bush, the presidency is just a diversion, a day job that ought not interfere with his personal life. As he did in school, in the National Guard, and in his business career, Bush is content to put in the bare minimum of effort needed to get by. While Baghdad burns, the economy churns, and Rove and Rumsfeld worm, Bush is like a kid on summer break. Last week he had Lance Armstrong and a couple of buddies over for a bike ride and a swim in his pool. Though no reporters were allowed in, rumor is that after some Hot Pockets and Mountain Dews, they also played video games and watched R-rated movies…
Bush calls himself “Bicycle Guy” these days. Shouldn’t he be calling himself “President Guy”? It would be nice if he put the same amount of vigor and enthusiasm into presidenting as he does into mountain biking.
A president should be working 18-hour days, losing sleep, and showing visible signs of fatigue. I want the POTUS to look like he is working his ass off. But quite the contrary, Bush has made leisure time part of his governing style to the point of arrogance (actually, everything from Bush starts from the point of arrogance and gets worse from there).
Referring to Cindy Sheehan, Bush boasted, “I think it’s important for me to be thoughtful and sensitive to those who have got something to say, . . . but it’s also important for me to go on with my life, to keep a balanced life.”

The sad truth is, though, that GWB is far, far less successful at being a legitimate and credible “President Guy” than he is at being a “Bicycle Guy.” And the main people paying the price for that right now are the Iraqis. Where was I reading recently that in all the terrible heat of Baghdad, people are now getting 40 mins of electricity followed by a six-hour-long cut?
And of course, the security situation continues to be horrendous.
The most interesting news I’ve read recently was the Reuters report from yesterday that Muqtada Sadr had brought some 100,00 supporters out onto the streets in eight different Iraqi cities. That protest was nominally against the terrible state of public services in the country. But it also underlined that Moqtada is still a significant political force to be dealt with.
He has opposed the idea of establishing a separate, heavily decentralized Shia-stan that Hakim and SCIRI have been pushing for. Ayatollah Sistani is also thought strongly to oppose it. Moqtada Sadr and Sistani have also been very careful to try to keep their links with the country’s Sunnis in place.
So there is some very serious politics going on inside Iraq right now. It has almost nothing to do with the words on the piece of paper that Prez Bush feels he need– the “Constitution”– but has a lot to do with what the Iraqi people themselves want to see happen.
It is not a dispute that is cast along strict inter-sectarian or inter-ethnic lines.
It is, unfortunately, a dispute that will most likely continue to be pursued using violence as well as nonviolent organizing.
A huge question in all this is: what does the Iranian regime want? Who are they backing inside Iraq? Can we assume there is one “will” in Teheran that’s being played out inside Iraq right now– or should we assume there is jockeying between different factions in Iran over the Iraq question?
All these kinds of questions are far more important to the future prospects of the people of Iraq than the exact clauses within whatever Zal Khalilzad’s latest “Constitution” piece of paper happen to be… Yet do you think there is anyone at all in this extremely out-of-touch US government who would even know how to start answering and dealing with such questions?
Please, George: bring the US troops home before their presence in Iraq causes any more division and destruction there.

Well, they’ve gone through two extensions on the previously “firm” Aug 15th deadline… Then today, this:

BAGHDAD, Iraq – Parliament announced it had no plans to meet Thursday night and no date for a future session, signaling Iraqi factions were failing to reach agreement on a new constitution before a self-imposed midnight target.
The statement from National Assembly’s top spokesman, Bishro Ibrahim, came as negotiators struggled for consensus on a draft by the close of a 72-hour extension granted Monday night by parliament, after Sunni Arabs blocked a vote on a charter accepted by Shiite and Kurdish negotiators.

As y’all will remember, unlike most members of the western media I decided not to become obsessed with every little tidbit of “news” that came out of the past month’s-worth of constitutional talks. (Here and here.)
In fact, it would be possible to make the argument that holding the permanent-constitution talks right now, under the present circs, was almost guaranteed to lead to an escalation of the tensions inside the still extremely fragile and tension-riven country. I didn’t really make that argument in those earlier posts. I didn’t want to be a complete naysayer on the constitutional venture… I just thought the conduct of the talks (held inside the Green Zone, by the strange variety of Iraqis who inhabit it) seemed completely tangential to what is going inside huge areas of the rest of the country.
I remember at one point ten days or so ago when I was checking in on the “Iraq slideshow” on my Yahoo newsfeed, how striking were the contrasts between the images of a very “well-fed”, happy, well-dressed-looking Talabani laughing and joking in various poses and the other terrible images of carnage and mayhem throughout the country; or of a small, under-nourished boy in a Baghdad slum standing amidst a vast pool of sewage sludge on the street outside his home…
Well anyway, now it looks as though this round of the constitution talks is headed south, fast.
Maybe the Bushies won’t even be able to succeed in getting a completely phony piece of paper out there called “Iraqi Constitution”, to help them cover their behinds as they, too, head south out of the country?
Maybe they will just have to leave the country, admitting that they haven’t, actually, had any real success at all in transforming it into a haven of democracy…
But we knew that already, didn’t we? Was any of us going to be fooled by that piece of paper? I really don’t think so…
George: just get out!