Category: Iraq 2003 thru June 2005

This, from AP’s Thomas Wagner a couple of hourse ago:

in the National Assembly, lawmaker Fattah al-Sheik stood and cried as he described being stopped at a checkpoint on the way to work Tuesday. He claimed an American soldier kicked his car, mocked the legislature, handcuffed him and held him by the neck.
“What happened to me represents an insult to the whole National Assembly that was elected by the Iraqi people. This shows that the democracy we are enjoying is fake,” al-Sheik said. “Through such incidents, the U.S. Army tries to show that it is the real controlling power in the country, not the new Iraqi government.”
Al-Sheik’s small party has been linked to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who led uprisings against the U.S.-led coalition in 2004…
The U.S. military said its initial investigation indicated that in the morning, al-Sheik got into an altercation with a coalition translator at the checkpoint. U.S. soldiers tried to separate them and “briefly held on to the legislator,” while preventing another member of al-Sheik’s party from getting out of his vehicle, a military statement said.
“We have the highest respect for all members of the Transitional National Assembly. Their safety and security is critically important,” U.S. Brig. Gen. Karl R. Horst said in the statement. “We regret this incident occurred and are conducting a thorough investigation.”
[Right. And we’ll hear the results of this “investigation” when? Actually, most of the basic facts about what happened could be “discovered” and reported on publicly just about immediately… Like, were handcuffs in fact used? Was the legislature in fact mocked? Let the US military get the whole truth out, right away. There is no need for any kind of a lengthy, time-wasting “investigation” on this: just the truth, and with due speed.]
During a one-hour adjournment to protest al-Sheik’s treatment, lawmaker Salam al-Maliki read an assembly statement demanding an apology from the U.S. Embassy and the prosecution of the soldier who allegedly mistreated the legislator.
Hajim al-Hassani, the parliament speaker, said: “We reject any sign of disrespect directed at lawmakers.”

So if an out-of-control soldier on a checkpoint treats an elected Iraqi lawmaker this way, how do you think they treat the rest of the Iraqi people?

So today, the western media have breathlessly broken into all their news bulletins to say that the cry of “habemus papum” (We have a pope) has gone up from the Vatican.
Like that’s news? Like, the 120 or however many aging male cardinals were going to sit around forever and not come to agreement on which of their number would become pope?
But when, I wonder will we hear the joyous cry from Baghdad that “We have a democratically accountable government”?? (Do you think it would sound better in Latin? My dear late father, a Latin-and-Greek teacher, would be ashamed of how unable I feel right now, several languages later, to compose this simple phrase in Latin…)
This new Pope sounds incredibly Dick Cheney-ish, don’t you think? The guy was put in charge of a high-level political “search” process that ended up discovering that the best candidate for the job in question was indeed…. himself???
Just thinking about this whole process makes me unbelievably glad I’m a member of a faith community (the Quakers) that doesn’t believe in the “anointing” of some people to be spiritual “leaders” while others– including, in the case of the Catholics, all the females on God’s earth– get stuck in the role of merely doing what they’re told.
I’ve been wondering, too, if the cardinals who think that they might, just might, get appointed pope at the next “conclave” spend much time along the way picking out their future papal “names”… How long do you think this Cardinal Ratzinger has been practicing signing his name “Benedict”??
But back to my main point. Ratzinger/”Benedict” was “elected” today, and will be installed as Pope on Sunday. Five days. In Iraq, the UIA list was elected to head the National Assembly back on January 30th, and huge numbers of factors have since intervened– including, most recently, the desperately obstructive maneuverings of long-time CIA cat’s-paw Iyad Allawi; not to mention Don Rumsfeld– to prevent that list from even forming its government, let alone taking over any of the reins of real power in Iraq.
79 days, and still counting. It makes even the Vatican look like a model of efficiency.

Marla Ruzicka was an extremely compassionate and talented person who sought constantly to understand, chart, and publicize the steep human costs of war. Any war. Including in Iraq.
At the end of 2003, working with Raed Jarrar and other Iraqis, she helped produce the first systematic Iraq-wide survey of casualties attrobutable to the war the US launched upon the country in March 2003. The results were published here.
Now Marla herself has joined the casualty list. Raed reports that he has been informed that Marla was killed in a car crash in Baghdad Saturday night.
Raed posts this email he got from Justin Alexander:

Dear friends & collegues of Marla,
Sometime between 3-6pm Baghdad time Marla died in a car crash. My current information is poor, but the accident may have happened on the Baghdad Airport road as she travelled to visit an Iraqi kid injured by a bomb, part of her daily work of identifying and supporting innocent victims of this conflict.
A US military convoy was involved in the event, but it is not clear at this stage in what way precisely.
I have no information on the whereabouts or health of her collegue Faiz who I believe was with her in the car.
I believe it is important that Marla be commemorated and that her work continue. In the short term I hope her friends will be able to identify and help those Iraqis she was in the process of assisting.
[…]
Marla was one innocent victim of conflict among millions, but I believe her work over the last two years has made a unique impact in highlighting and helping these people often forgotten as “collatoral damage”.

It is true that Marla was “one innocent victim of war among millions”. Still, if we can stop and remember her, and celebrate the incredible gifts she gave to humanity, we can also perhaps imagine that each and every one of those other millions killed by war opver recent years– Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan, Congo, West Africa… — was a person with equal gifts, equal human warmth, equal God-given potential.
RIP, Marla Ruzicka. RIP, all the victims of war.
This is a good profile of Marla that ran in the WaPo last August.
This is a letter she wrote to the editor of the NYT just in February.
What can we do to commemorate Marla?

Folks who made a donation to the campaign mounted by the Jarrar family of Baghdad to get urgently needed medical supplies to Iraqis in distress should check out the entries for today on Raed Jarrar’s blog.
Taken together, these blog posts give you both copies of the receipts Raed and his friends got from the drugstore in Amman, Jordan where they bought many or all of the med supplies, and then a photo essay on moving these numerous bulky items through, as Raed says, “my mother’s apartment”.
Each image is posted as a separate post which makes it a little hard to link to the whole sequence. But the whole series is worth looking at and shows some really wonderful young people working together on this project. Just keep on scrolling down…
This trans-shipment was taking place in Amman, a fairly good place from which to get things into Iraq (especially cities west of Baghdad like Fallujah, Ramadi, etc.) Raed’s mom Faiza has been living in Amman for a few weeks now. At the end of the photo-essay you see the group’s four big cars loaded with supplies “leaving for Baghdad”.
I particularly liked the picture titled “my mom was totally shocked when she woke up and found the house FULL of medicens boxes!!” Go, Faiza!
I realize that what Raed and his family and friends have gathered together is only a drop in the bucket of the total needs. But even one drop in the bucket is better than none! And they are showing the way for all concerned individuals and groups.
You can still contribute to these great people’s ongoing campaign through the Paypal button on the sidebar of Raed’s blog.

My column in Thursday’s CSM on the Iraqi transition is now up on their website. I’ve also archived it here.
Here’s the core of what I’m writing:

Can the hoped-for handover of power [in Iraq] to a permanent elected body take place without further major crises? I believe that two parallel sets of steps – one to be undertaken by the US alone and the other by the US in conjunction with Iraq’s transitional leadership – would help a lot.
In Washington, the Bush administration should issue an authoritative declaration that the US has no claims of its own on Iraq’s territory or natural resources, and no desire to constrain the decisionmaking of a freely elected Iraqi parliament in any way. This would do a huge amount to reduce suspicions and tensions inside Iraq. It would also rightly focus the attentions of all Iraqis on finding a good formula for getting along with one another rather than – as some have done – relying on US power to bolster their own group’s position.
In Baghdad and Washington, meanwhile, policymakers should certainly consider tweaking the terms of the US-designed TAL so that what is drafted and voted on this year would be only an interim constitution, rather than the final thing. At the same time, the two planned end-of-2005 referenda could be consolidated into a single vote – which would be both a general vote of confidence in the interim constitution and the election of a sovereign democratic government based on it. Smaller details of the final constitution could be worked out later, and submitted to a referendum at that time.

Maybe it’s too timid and incrementalist. Maybe I should have been bolder? But what I wanted to make quite clear was that insisting on sticking by the letter of the (unwieldy, US-designed) TAL would probably be a recipe for disaster, and that there are reasonable, constructive alternatives.
Also, I think the point about the US making an authoritative “no lasting claims” declaration is really, really important. Why on earth don’t they just do it?

Rosa Prince of London Daily Mirror has reported that:

THE US Army plans to remain in Iraq until at least 2009, secret documents obtained by the Mirror reveal.
Contract tender forms for civilian workers disclose a huge expansion of interrogation and detention centres in Iraq to remain in place for a minimum four more years.

(Chapeau to Friendly Fire of Today in Iraq for the lead.)
Prince adds that:

According to the documents from the Assistant Chief of Staff, Multi-National Forces, US chiefs plan a

Today, the “Democracy denied in Iraq” counter stands at 71 days. That is exactly one-third of the 213-day period allowed by Paul Bremer’s “Transitional Administrative Law” for the National Assembly elected January 30th, and the government accountable to it, to work on drafting Iraq’s new Constitution.
And the government hasn’t even been formed yet!
It’s not clear how much longer this might take. Allawi throwing his hat in the ring as a wannabe government member will probably complicate the government-formation negotiations yet further…
I’m working really hard on thinking through a column on this whole topic for my column in this Thursday’s CSM.
To be frank, I feel kind of torn. I think it’s really important to get the Constitution “right”, to have it well negotiated among representative leaders, and I don’t think that process should be rushed by the pressure of externally imposed deadlines. On the other hand, I think it’s really important for the Iraqis to be able to exercise sovereign self-government absolutely as rapidly as possible, and that nothing– least of all any actions undertaken by the US– should stand in the way of that.
I’m getting close toward formulating a proposal that I think can meet both those needs. But I’ll probably be up late tonight…

AFP reported yesterday that,

US and Iraqi forces are holding a record 17,000 men and women — most without being formally charged — and those in Iraqi-controlled jails live often in deplorable conditions.
About two-thirds are locked up as “security detainees” without any formal charges in US-run facilities, Lieutenant Colonel Guy Rudisill, the US military spokesman for Iraqi detention operations, told AFP.
The rest are incarcerated in Iraqi-run jails in conditions that fall well below any international standard and are in dire need of reform, said Bakhtiar Amin, Iraq’s outgoing human rights minister.

(By the way, we shouldn’t assume from the first para above that those being held by the US forces are being held in acceptable conditions…)
The report quotes Amin as saying that, “There are currently 6,504 inmates in Iraq’s 18 prisons, 2,573 of whom have already been sentenced,” and explaining that that number includes both “common criminals” and “terrorists.”
Amin also said that the British troops are detaining 27 people. (An interesting low figure, that; most likely linked to the British forces’ markedly different approach to the whole politics of trying to run the occupation. Also, maybe showing they learned some useful lessons from Northern Ireland? See below.)
My reading of the report is (from Rudesill) that none of those detained by the Americans have actually been convicted of any crime, but are still only suspects. (In international law, that is the most common meaning of the term “detainee”, as opposed to “convict” or “prisoner.)
That means that from the 17,000 people being held by US, UK, and Iraqi forces, only the mentioned 2,573 have been sentenced. That means that 14,400 Iraqis are being forcibly held with trial.
This is absolutely no way to build a democracy.

Our local paper here in Charlottesville, Virginia, today reported on a conference in town attended by John Alderdice, until recently the speaker of the Northern Ireland Assembly and described as a key negotiator of the Good Friday Agreement, which provided the political framework for peace in Northern Ireland. Alderdice was quoted as saying: