The director of the main hospital in Fallujah is reporting that 450 Iraqis have been killed there during this week’s fighting, and more than 1,000 wounded. If this is anywhere close to an accurate tally, then one way or another this marks the beginning of the endgame for the US occupation of Iraq.
Even if the US forces stopped operations in Fallujah and nationwide right now, these kinds of losses inflicted on the indigenous population mean that the US has lost all its credibility as the governing force in Iraq, as well as much of its ability to dictate the timing and other modalities of its by-now inevitable exit from the country.
How many people in the Bush administration have even heard of the Amritsar massacre?
The circumstances of that April 1919 atrocity, in which British forces mowed down 400 unarmed Indian protesters on a single day were, I admit, very different. But just as the Amritsar Massacre signaled the beginning of the end of the Brits’ “thousand-year Raj” in India, so too does the Fallujah Massacre of April 2004 signal the beginning of the precipitous crumbling of the US occupation of Iraq.
History moves a lot faster nowadays than it did in the early 20th century. It took the Brits a further 28 years after Amritsar to bring their colonial rule over India to an end, though after that fateful day the writing was very evidently on the wall for them.
At the rate the US military is currently going, I doubt that its presence in Iraq will last even a further 28 weeks. One way or another, the Fallujah Massacre will certainly be in every history book in every Muslim country from here on out.
Category: Iraq 2003 thru June 2005
National unity, anyone?
I’m just wondering where all those people are who’ve been earnestly worrying that Iraq will collapse into sectarian civil war if the US forces should leave? (I wrote a little about that issue, here— scroll down about halfway.)
It seems to me that, by deciding to strike simultaneously against targets significant to both the Sunni and Shi-ite communities in Iraq, the US military has been doing a magnificent job of cementing a robust sense of national unity among them.
Maybe that was the plan?
Chickens–home–roost (Part 2)
After three days of fighting in Fallujah, AP reports that a Marine Lt.-Col. from the nearby military camp estimated that the Marines “now control 25 percent of Fallujah”.
That, after actions that included damaging two mosques:
- The Abdel-Aziz al-Samarrai mosque was hit by U.S. aircraft that launched a Hellfire missile at its minaret and dropped a 500-pound bomb on a wall surrounding the compound…
During fighting elsewhere in Fallujah, U.S. forces seized a second place of prayer, the al-Muadidi mosque. A Marine climbed the minaret and fired on guerrilla gunmen, witnesses said. Insurgents fired back, hitting the minaret with rocket-propelled grenades and causing it to partially collapse, the AP reporter said.
The U.S. commanders’ decision to launch such a highly escalatory operation against Fallujah should come under strong scrutiny at home. Okay, many people in Fallujah (but actually, only a tiny proportion of the city’s people) took part in the gleeful desecration of the corpses of those killed U.S. “contract personnel” (i.e., mercenaries). It was tragic, it was inhumane, but stuff like that happens in war.
And anyway, those contractors were not part of a military chain of command. What the heck were they even doing going as fully armed foreign civilians into downtown Fallujah– a place where up to that point few military patrols ever wandered?? What kind of reckless craziness is that?
W’s Iraq debacle unfolds
Swish, swish, swish… Can you hear it? That, friends, is the sound of our president’s chickens coming home to roost in Iraq.
I know I’ve said before that I get no pleasure from seeing this terrible–and quite avoidable–tragedy unfolding there. It will mean more families in the US and in the “coalition” countries hearing that dreaded knock on the door. It will mean many more Iraqi families hearing news of the death of a loved one. It will mean more people returning to their homes broken in body and spirit. It will mean –most likely–more political and social disruption yet to come, in Iraq and in neighboring countries. More grief, more pain, more suffering to come.
And it didn’t have to be like this.
Last night, at a seder in Washington DC with some politically active (and very anti-Bush) friends, we raised our glasses to “Next year in the White House”. That, it seems to me, is the only way at this point for the people responsible for this debacle to get anything like what they deserve for their lying, their scheming, and their war-mongering.
As I think I pointed out the last time things went downhill badly in Iraq for the US forces–last November–I had foreseen so much of this happening. One of my main points of comparison is what happened to the Israelis after their quite “voluntary” attempt to launch regime-change-by-force: in Lebanon, 1982. See this portion of a JWN post written March 21, 2003 (or the whole post there, if you want to: it’s in ‘Archives’, for some technical reason.) Or this one, from May 20, 2003.
None of this is rocket science. It just takes a basic understanding of the fact that most people in the world don’t like to have their countries remade by foreign occupation armies. I don’t know why that should be so hard for some people to understand.
But now, we are where are. More and more cities in Iraq are being taken over by–their own people! USA Today scooped the biggies by reporting that “about 24,000” of the US troops who were supposed to rotate home over the next few weeks would have to stay on, instead. (Thanks to Yankeedoodle for picking that up.) The brass and the suits in the DoD are each, separately, rushing big-time to pursue a policy of CYA… And the Prez has been… playing baseball.
Hey, Dick Cheney! Isn’t it time you had someone go in there and re-program young Junior?
There is only one even half-way plausible way for our Prez to get his backside out of this mess…
Iraq: an administrator’s-eye view
I realize that there are many massive political developments underway in Iraq. I don’t have time right now to say anything new or interesting about them. But I just wanted to make note of the following little sub-set of the story…
There’s a slightly dank-looking blog out there in the blogosphere called Deeds. It’s written by someone using the pseudonym “John Galt” and describing himself as “a U.S. citizen working in the CPA in Baghdad”. If you click on the link “Who is John Galt?” you end up at a picture of a cat.
Why all this secrecy? He links prominently in his blogroll to something called Debkafile, which is an unabashedly pro-Likud website full of alleged “hot news” from the Global War on Terror… Maybe that’s a clue, right there?
Anyway, he hasn’t been posting much recently. Too busy winning the war on terror, eh, John? But cruising through his blog quickly today I found a fascinating set of contributions to his Comments board, as follows:
- John, I am here at the CPA again. I was in Al Ramadi for three weeks, which is in Al Anbar. I was helping 82nd transfer everything to the Marines. Things were okay when I arrived, but as the Marines moved in I noticed that hostilities were growing. Here are a few things that I noticed:
Elections, legitimacy, and the ‘international community’
I’ve been mainly immersed in matters Mozambican this week. (When I wasn’t doing other bits of work on Palestine or Rwanda…. Tenth anniversary of Rwandan genocide coming up April 7th. Great-sounding ‘Frontline’ special on that subject on April 1st. My contribution to it will be on their website, not on the broadcast.)
So anyway, back to Mozambique. I was writing about the landmark elections they had there in October 1994. Those were the country’s first-ever democratic elections. The commitment to holding them was enshrined in the General Peace Agreement that in October 1992 ended 17 years of truly devastating civil war between the Frelimo government and the Renamo insurrectionists…
There is at least one aspect of those elections that is of direct relevance to the elections hopefully to be planned soon inside Iraq– namely: the key role that the “international community” played not solely in helping to organize the elections but also, crucially, in certifying their outcome.
All of which bears out my theory that the esential “legitimacy” of a sovereign government has much to do with the ability of this government to win the recognition of its legitimacy by other governments, as well as its ability to win the “consent” of those over whom it governs. (Recognition of other beings as fully right-bearing persons also has much to do with the recognition of this status by other persons, as well. But that’s a whole different, though intriguingly parallel, line of enquiry.)
So, in Mozambique in 1994, the elections were due to be held October 27-28. But on October 25 the Renamo chief, Afonso Dhlakama suddenly went into a funk and declared that he and his people would not take part. Yikes! A similar thing had happened with the IFP, in South Africa’s elections just six months earlier–but ended up getting resolved. But in October 1992, in Angola, UNITA’s Jonas Savimbi had contested the results of the UN-sponsored elections immediately after his defeat in them had been announced; and he then reignited his insurgency against the Luanda government… And that horrifying civil war has only recently now been brought toward an end…
So in Mozambique, Dhlakama went to his home city, Beira, and holed up there, and refused to come down to the capital, Maputo.
All the diplomats who were in the country, desperately eager to see the elections work, went into a big tizzy. The South African Ambassador was the only one Dhlakama would talk to. He flew up to Beira and started talking to him. Dhlakama expressed all the complaints he had about Frelimo’s alleged misdeeds in the organization of the election…
Negotiations ensued. In the early morning of October 27, the head of the electoral commission, Brazao Mazula, announced that the two-day-long elections would go ahead as planned… Still no constructive word from Dhlakama… But the negotiations continued round the clock…
Continue reading “Elections, legitimacy, and the ‘international community’”
Iraq’s Transitional Law: Sistani does okay
Okay, I still think that Iraq’s Transitional Administrative Law is “illegal…
pointless and diversionary… and divisive.” Sadly, events already
seem to be bearing me out on that last judgment. (See
here
and elsewhere on that. For my earlier reasoning on the TAL, see
here
and here
.)
However, the TAL, with all its faults and evident imperfections, is now with
us. For how long? Who knows. According to
Juan Cole, Ayatollah Sistani has issued a fatwa spelling out his view that:
- any law prepared for the transitional period will
not gain legitimacy except after it is endorsed by an elected national assembly.
Additionally, this law places obstacles in the path of reaching a permanent
constitution for the country that maintains its unity and the rights of its
sons of all ethnicities and sects.
(Juan wrote that this text is available at Sistani’s website. However,
after a few minutes picking my way around the Ayatollah’s sacred rulings
on anal intercourse, temporary marriage, etc., I still couldn’t find it.
I’ll take Juan’s word for it.)
But anyway, the point of this post is to record a few things that I noted
after reading through
the text of the TAL, which fortunately is fairly short, having only 62 Articles.
Personally, if I were Ayatollah Sistani– which, contrary to some indications
I am not– I would be pretty pleased with the progress made so far in the
following directions:
- Blocking the Bushies’ attempts to foist a SOFA onto an unelected ,
quasi-puppet leadership in Iraq, - Securing a substantial role for the UN in key aspects of the transition,
- Getting a strong basis for national-level control of oil revenues,
and - Generally, making my influence felt.
It’s true, he probably has not gotten everything he wanted so far, especially
with regard to that pesky [from his point of view–HC] “Kurdish veto” issue (Art. 61-C.) But he’s doing pretty well, all things considered.
Continue reading “Iraq’s Transitional Law: Sistani does okay”
Salam/Pax survived
Salam/Pax, the cosmos’s most famous Iraqi blogger, survived the Karbala bombing, and also has written beautifully (though oh too briefly) about the whole experience of having been there for Ashoura.
Meanwhile, on Wednesday, Riverbend wrote a lovely and to me very heartening short post about the after-effects of the Ashoura bombings…
I meant to get the ref to her post up here earlier. Sorry about that. I seem to recall that both she and Salam have written in the past that they have “mixed”, Sunni-Shiite heritages. Maybe I’m wrong about her.
What burns me up is that in the midst of all that emotional period– Ashoura, the bombings, their aftermath, Sunnis and Shi-ites trying to figure out how to get back together again, etc– Paul Bremer was out there pursuing his inherently divisive agenda of trying to get everyone to sign off on his pointless little interim constitution.
Has he no cultural or emotional sensitivity? (Silly question.)
Why I was not sitting on the edge of my chair…
“Hot” news out of Baghdad today about the failure of the Iraqi Governing Council to sign what, it turns out, was to have been called the Transitional Administrative Law… Poignant pictures of the table all ready for the cermony with the 25 pens lined up down each side of it… The children’s choir members eagerly awaiting their turn on the stage.
I’d like to quote Macbeth:
- … it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
See this post from last Saturday (Feb. 28th), in which I argued that the attempt to ram through this law right now was “illegal… pointless and diversionary… and divisive.”
So let’s hope they quit banging their collective heads against that particular brick wall once and for all. Let’s hope they turn instead to the playbook so beautifully sketched out in the report that Lakhdar Brahimi presented to Kofi Annan last week.
The focus there is on how credible, legitimate elections can be organized in a country in a situation as complex as Iraq’s, in order to start to generate a credible, elected national leadership there.
That national leadership will then, at some point down the pike, deliberate on the issue of the Constitution. And on the Status of Forces Agreement (if any) with the US. And on federalism, and the role of women, and everything else.
Who gets to run the country in the meantime?
Continue reading “Why I was not sitting on the edge of my chair…”
Kerbala, Kazimiya, memories of Lebanon
I am just saddened beyond words by today’s bombings in Kerbala and Kazimiya (Baghdad).
There is something particularly sickening about people launching such horrific attacks at times of particular religious/community significance. I recall the recent dual attacks against the Iraqi Kurdish leaders during their celebration of Nowruz– and also, a couple of years ago, in Israel, the suicide bombing against the families celebrating Pesach in the Park Hotel in Netanya.
Enough! Enough!
Regarding the Nowruz bombings and the latest attacks, one can only up to this point speculate whether the same person/organization is beyond both sets of incidents, and if so who that might be. I seem to recall the Kurds had found a suspect?
This is all so eerily reminiscent for me of the early days of the Lebanese civil war in April, May, and June of 1975, which I lived through from day to day. None of us knew what was coming next.
In those days, the “tinder” for conflagration was everywhere present in terms of old resentments, etc, etc. Plus there was no effective state apparatus that could guarantee public security. (Many Lebanese people have always had a strong anti-government cast to their thinking, and the state there had been kept weak and impotent by design.) But there were definitely foreign hands stirring things up, as well. Certainly the Israelis were active, building up their ties with some of the Maronite extremists who wanted to eradicate the Palestinians’ political/military presence in Lebanon. But the Palestinians themselves, the Syrians, Iraqis, Saudis, and all other regional and world powers were also all eager to pursue their own ends inside Lebanon at that time….
That’s what happens when you don’t have a functioning state: everyone else from the neighborhood and from far beyond piles in and treats the country and its existing divisions like a football field on which they can kick around their own private grudges over the corpses of the country’s people.
So I weep for the Shi-ites, I weep for the Kurds, I weep for all Iraqis. My special hope/prayer for them all is that they can find some way, with or without the help of outside parties, to (re-)build a decent and working national compact among themselves that will provide a strong foundation for the working Iraqi state which is the only institution that, at the end of the day, can provide the continuing atmosphere of public security that all of the world’s peoples need.