Category: Iraq 2003 thru June 2005

The BBC website has a good little photo essay about Iraqis’ views of the election. It’s been compiled by Raed’s friend Ghaith, which gives me a lot of confidence.
Alongside it, they have another burst of the sort of highly mediated, “blog”-like thing they did once before from Iraq. This one has some interesting material. But a disproportionate number of the (invited) “contributors” are expats–whether “contractors”, whatever that means, or at least one US military person. They don’t really seem to know much about Iraq.
So while the “blog” is a little bit interesting, it’s not nearly as interesting as Ghaith’s photo essay.
There’s a place for good journalism. There’s a place for (real) blogs. But fake blogs– h’mmm.

In the early 1990s, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the successful staging of democratic elections in various spots around the world became the act of political ritual that came to symbolize the transition of whole nations from authoritarianism to democratic self-rule. In South Africa, the successful staging of the April 1994 election symbolized not just that, but also an amazingly peaceable transition from white-exclusivist colonial rule to a one-person-one-vote democracy in a situation in which the non-White South Africans outnumbered the “Whites” by about seven to one.
Iraq is not South Africa.
As I think I’ve written here before, there is one key similarity between SA-94 and what ought to be happening inside Iraq at this point: that is, a handover of the main reins of power from a previously ruling minority group to members of the majority group– hopefully, with good guarantees from continued democratic and tolerant interaction between all citizens.
But in South Africa, the negotiations over how that should occur happened before the elections. They also happened without the intrusive, massively violent, and polarizing presence of a gigantic foreign occupying army.
Yes, the SA “Defence” Forces under the apartheid regime were a terrible and grossly abusive blight on the lives of most South Africans. But at least all the people in those armed forces, from Defence Minister Magnus Malan down to the legions of coerced black “askaris” who worked under the control of the SADF were members of South African society who had a stake in the success of the transition to majority rule.
The same is notably not true of the US troop presence in Iraq.
I have expressed the hope in the past that the presence of the US forces would lead to a unifying– in opposition to that presence— of many of the different strands inside Iraqi society. Last April, that seemed about to be taking place– that was when there were anti-US battles raging in both Fallujah and Najaf and much of the rest of the Shiite south.
After that, the US occupation forces managed to “pacify”– imperfectly, but sufficiently– the mainstream of the Shiites. They did that using a very wily combination of both carrots and sticks. One of the main “carrots” was the promise made to Sistani back in April that the Constitution-writing body would indeed be elected, not appointed; and that was the origin of the elections planned for this Sunday.
(Sistani wanted to have them much sooner. But the Americans wanted to stall– I wonder why? They claimed it “would not be fair” to use the old ration-card rolls as an electoral roll, and that time was needed to constitute a new roll. Guess what? They never did that, and are going along with the suggestion Sistani had originaly made… So they could have had the elections in May if they’d wanted, and skipped out on all the past nine months of killing and violence.)
Then, the Americans prepared their massive– and, as they hoped, “decisive”– assault against the Sunni militant base in Fallujah.
I was really sad to see so many Shiite political figures supporting that assault. Moqtada Sadr, to his credit, never did.
I mean, I know that just about all the different strands of Shiite society have been hit very hard indeed by terrorist attacks from people alleged to be in or around the groups directed by the extremely shadowy– and possibly apocryphal?– Abu Musaeb al-Zarkawi. But still, the tacit or on occasion overt support that some Shiite leaders gave to the assault on Fallujah gave the US occupation planners a huge opportunity to try to deepen the Shiite-Sunnite wedge and even present the US forces as somehow “protecting” the Shiites’ safety and interests.
Oh well, soon enough we will see what effects the upcoming “elections” might have.
At many levels, they seem almost irrelevant. We know that their conduct will be deeply flawed– and also, that we won’t even be able to tell how deeply flawed they are, because of the total lack of transparency in all steps of their conduct.
The “main” contest that seems to be shaping up is that for “first place”, between the Allawist list and the Sistanist list. How different are the leading figures on these two lists? I used to think, significantly different– at least on the issue of how they would propose to deal with the US troop presence.
Now, I am not so sure. Trudy Rubin had an important piece in the Philadelphia Inquirer on Tuesday– sorry, I don’t have the link– in which she reported on recent conversations she’d had with many leaders of the Sistanist list:

Continue reading ““Transitional” elections: Iraq and South Africa”

I’ve written a bit here before now (November 2003, January 2004) about the totally unproductive way in which North Carolina’s Research Triangle Institute (RTI) approached the task of “building democracy” in Iraq– based on its people’s own faulty pre-war forecasts of the situation, some genuine (but extremely naive) idealism on the part of some employees, and the RTI leadership’s keen desire to put their institute on the map and assure the continued payment of their own very comfortable salaries…
Now, North Carolina reporter Kevin Begos has done a good job reporting the total chaos into which the whole project collapsed. Including that:

RTI didn’t start a single rapid-response grant in the second year of its $236 million government contract for democracy building in post-war Iraq.

Many of the problems stemmed from the rampant lack of security inside Iraq– necessitating the purchase of $200,000 armored Mercedes cars for staff members, etc.
Begos quotes Wallace Rodgers, RTI’s former team leader for the northern region of Iraq, as saying that:

he was working in the most stable region of RTI’s work, yet by the time he left Iraq in October 2004, five of the Iraqi local governing-council members he had worked with had been assassinated.

But there were also, it seems clear, some very serious mismanagement problems. Begos also writes:

“There was all kinds of fraud I was coming across. It was rampant all over,” said Dennis Moore, a certified public accountant from Massachusetts who while he was in Iraq reviewed scores of contracts for RTI.
“Of all the transactions I would go and check on, only one was free of problems,” Moore said.

This Begos piece went up on the Winston-Salem Journal‘s website today. Thanks to Yankeedoodle for signaling it.
The site also had a companion piece from Begos in which a former founder of RTI and the dean of NC’s congressional delegation both decried the secrecy surrounding RTI’s performance under its democracy-building contract with the federal government.
In that one, Begos wrote:

All financial information about RTI’s government contract was withheld by the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, after a recent Freedom of Information request by the Winston-Salem Journal. The government agency said that the information was “sensitive and confidential commercial and financial information.” RTI officials also have declined the Journal’s requests to reveal salaries paid under the contract.

By the way, down near the bottom of the second piece is this interesting snippet about the Congressman concerned, Rep. Howard Coble (R):

Earlier this month, Coble, a staunch supporter of President Bush and chairman of the House Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security, created a stir by saying that “troop withdrawal ought to be an option (from Iraq). It ought to be placed on the table for consideration.”

The bottom of the piece also reveals that public documents,

show that Victoria Haynes, RTI’s chief executive officer, was paid a base salary of $367,500 in fiscal year 2003, not including benefits. Ron Johnson, the company’s senior vice president for international development and head of the Iraq project, was paid $262,156.

These documents also reported that theformer founder of RTI who decried the secrecy, William Friday, was paid $500 for attendance at board of governors meetings.

Once again today, Juan Cole is agonizing over the “pros and cons”– for, I assume, the Iraqis?– of the US setting a firm deadline for the withdrawal of their forces from Iraq.
(Sorry I can’t give a link as he doesn’t seem to have one. Oh, now I can. Here it is.)
I think it’s very important to challenge the points he puts in his “con” column. It’s equally important, in addition to merely fixing a “target date” for a withdrawal, to spell out the kind and speed of withdrawal we’re talking about. I strongly believe that what is needed is one that is total, speedily executed, orderly, and as “generous” to the Iraqis as possible.
But first, back to Juan’s points. Basically, he adduces three arguments against setting a withdrawal deadline that he seems to find very plausible. In fact, he finds them so plausible that he ends up advocating a withdrawal that is considerably less than “total”.
Namely, he writes,

One solution … might be to set a timetable for withdrawal of Coalition land forces, but for the US and its allies to continue to offer the new Iraqi government’s army close air support in any battles with the neo-Baathists and jihadis…

Considerably short of a “total” withdrawal, indeed.
He does not, of course, even get into the thorny questions of who would actually command those air assets. What if the US should make such an “offer” of close air support–or perhaps, air operations much more ‘untethered’ than close air support– in a future Fallujah- or Mosul-type situation… and the Iraqi “government” should dare to turn down that very generous “offer”?
Would the Iraqi PM’s office be the US bombers’ next target?
But first, let’s back up a little and re-examine some of Juan’s arguments against setting a fixed withdrawal deadline. As I said, they are three:

Continue reading “An announced deadline for a US withdrawal: pro or con?”

I’m just quickly working my way through the top of an article in Sunday’s Al-Hayat (Jan. 16th). It’s titled, “The fear of a Sunni boycott hangs over the election campaign and the ‘Ansar al-Sunna’ is responsible for the kidnaping of 15 Guardsman [ING]”.
The dateline is, “Baghdad, Abu Dhabi, London, Al-Hayat” Here’s the top of the piece:

The fear of a Sunni boycott of the Iraqi elections hangs over the information campaigns that the candidates have launched. And while the Minister of the Economy and member of SCIRI Adel Abdel-Mahdi stressed that the participation of 40-50 percent of the Sunnis is enough to make the elections legitimate, Ahmad Chalabi said that, “A handful of terrorists will not prevent the Iraqis from voting.” And the former National Security Advisor Muwaffaq Rubaiee stressed that, “There is no goal to establish an Islamic state along Iranian lines.”
And Saudi Arabia and the UAE, in a joint communique issued at the end of the visit of the [Saudi] second deputy prime minister, and Minister of defense and Aircraft, Prince Sultan ibn Abdel-Aziz to Abu Dhabi,expressed their hope that all Iraqis would take part in the political process.
On the security front, the ‘Army of the Ansar [partisans] of the Sunna’ announced its responsibility for the kidnapping of 15 members of the National Guard; and 17 bodies were discovered south of Baghdad; and meanwhile an American helicopter was damaged during clashes with armed men in Mosul, but no casualties have been announced.
In Baghdad, the parties and [political] forces intensified their electoral activities, and the head of the ‘Constitutional Monarchy Movement’, Sharif Ali bin al-Hussein, toured a number of schools while the Prime Minister Iyad Allawi visited Tikrit; and speakers for the ‘United Iraqi Alliance’ list which is supported by the Shiite Marja Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani held a press conference, under a large picture of the Shiite Marja Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani: the speakers included the leader of the National Congress, Ahmad Chalabi, and the leader of SCIRI, Abdel-Aziz al-Hakim, and the head of the Daawa Party, Ibrahim Jaafari…

Just before I post this and run off, I note that a couple of days ago Allawi had announced that no-one should use “religious symbols” in their campaigning– and that, yes, indeed, that included pictures of religious figures like Sistani. So I guess he does not get to control everything in this election, after all..

On Friday, I wrote here that, ” I would love to see [Sistani] or someone high up on the UIA list that he helped form making a really dramatic move to reach out to the Sunnis.” Yesterday, it seems that a “source close to Sistani”– and also, one dearly hopes, one expressly authorized by him– was trying to do just that.
As reported and translated by Juan Cole today, this Sistanist source told al-Hayat yesterday that,

“The representation of our Sunni brethren in the coming government must be effective, regardless of the results of the elections.”

I believe that the source may well have been using al-Hayat as a way to communicate with many Iraqi Sunni figures inside and outside the country. Hayat is Saudi owned, and is widely read throughout the Middle East.
I’m sure that Sistani has numerous other ways of communicating his point of view with selected Iraqi Sunni leaders as well. But to reach a broad array of Sunnis, inside and outside the country, using al-Hayat would be a sensible choice.
In what the Sistanist “source” (un-named) told al-Hayat, he also attempted a vigorous defense of Sistani’s argument that the elections should not, at this point, be any further delayed beyond the presently scheduled Jan. 30 date. (This could also be a communication with Muqtada Sadr and others within the Shiite community who have started to argue openly for boycott or postponement.)
However, the source indicated that Sistani might yet change his mind on the no-postponement issue. In Cole’s version:

” … If Sistani became convinced that there was a likelihood of widespread fraud in the elections, he would not hesitate to urge that they be boycotted. But for the moment, he said, the alternative to elections seems to be chaos… ”

Juan’s translation of the article has a few elisions and what seem to me to be questionable renditions of the original. For example, in the immediately preceding quote, according to the Hayat original, the source was saying (HC version):

” … and the Marjaiyah [the Shiite source of authority] could at any time issue a fatwa to boycott the elections in the event that it becomes convinced that they will see widespread [election] fraud. And the alternative to elections, as we see it, is chaos… ”

I also went back to the original to try to gain a clearer idea of exactly what message it might have been that Sistani was trying to send to the Sunnis, and I came up with this translation, again slightly and, I think, non-trivially different from Juan’s rendering of this section:

Continue reading “Sistani speaks to the Sunnis”

Monday’s attack against the Baghdad headquarters of the (Shiite) Supreme
Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, which killed 13 SCIRI members,
was only the latest in a long string of acts of extremely deadly, specifically
anti-Shiite, violence in Iraq which seem intended to try to stir up a desire
for Shiite revenge against the Sunnis and thus to a total breakdown of trust
between members of the two groups.

So far, that plan seems not to have completely succeeded. For example,
on Monday, Al-Hayat reported that the (Sunni) Association of Muslim
Scholars was holding meetings with some of the Shiite members of Ayatollah
Sistani’s big “Unified Iraqi Alliance” electoral list.

In that
report, the AMS was also said to be offering to urge its followers to
participate in the voting– provided a firm deadline could be established
for the withdrawal of the occupation forces from Iraq…

This latter condition is, it seems to me, unlikely to be met by the Americans
any time prior to the January 30 polls. However, it is quite possible
that the Shiites in the UIA list with whom the AMS has been talking might
be ready to promise the AMS that, after winning, they will certainly stress
the need for an early timetable for American withdrawal.

I was very interested to read that report in Monday’s Hayat, and wonder
why it didn’t get picked up anywhere else. [I’ll put my translation
of the relevant excerpt further down in this post.] Many others did,
of course, pick up the the report that the (Sunni) Iraqi Islamic Party affiliated
with Adnan Pachachi had decided to pull out of the elections.

But to me, the report about the AMS signals that there is still some possibility
for Shiite-Sunni coordination in Iraq, despite all the many efforts that
have been made to stir up tensions between the two groups.

Continue reading “Fear (and a glimmer of hope) in Iraq?”

Yankeedoodle is now sharing his duties at Today in Iraq with “Matt”. Between them, they make a truly stellar team and they’ve made TII into even more of a must-read than it already was.
Today, Matt has posted the daily compilation of news there. One of the items is his own quick Google-led survey of the security situation in each of Iraq’s 18 provinces.
His conclusion? That,

out of eighteen provinces only six can be considered even relatively stable and at least a couple of those suffered major violence less than a year ago. Therefore it is Mr. Bush who is hallucinating, not me.

I’ve also just been reading the account that Virginia reporter Jeremy Redmon wrote of today’s attack on the US Army mess-hall near Mosul that killed 24, mainly US military people.
I’ve been thinking of doing a post here on the relationship between the violence and the election preparations in Iraq. I guess all the more reason now to do it. But it may have to wait till tomorrow.

In this post Thursday, I noted it seemed surprising that the two big Kurdish parties hadn’t yet presented their promised joint list for Iraq’s national elections.
Today, from IWPR’s “Iraqi Press Monitor”, I got evidence that Masoud Barzani’s KDP was– as of last Monday– calling for postponing the elections “for several months”.
This came in an email feed from IWPR. (As so often, IWPR has been slow getting this text up onto their website. I guess it might get there soon.)
What they have in the email feed is an editorial from the KDP’s daily Al-Taakhi, from Dec 6 (Mon.), which says:

The neighboring countries, especially the Arab ones, have not proven their seriousness regarding the help needed to enhance stability in Iraq. The Arab countries have tried to create a political balance in Iraq on certain bases, including a role they imagine for residents of the “opposing triangle”, so to speak. Unfortunately, Iraqi social divisions have become clearer. There is the failure to form a unified list of candidates among the Kurds and their allies. There is also the Shia list. These divisions will lead to catastrophic consequences if there are disagreements over the elections results. Hence, we call for postponing elections several months.

…Juan Cole has a lot of good material up on his site today that gives more texture to the election-preparations story. In particular, he has two or three items making clear that Moqtada Sadr has been speaking out strongly against the current election plan.
But this piece from the Financial Times, that Juan links to, makes clear that some of Sadr’s supporters intend to vote in the elections anyway, disregarding his call that they abstain. The FT piece notes too that some of the “officials” (as they call him) who helped put together Sistani’s UIA list claim that some Sadrists– or possibly, at this point, “former” Sadrists?– have been included in the list…

Continue reading “Iraq: KDP urging postponement?”

At a press conference in Baghdad a couple of hours ago Hussain al-Shahristani, the Iraqi Shi-ite pol (and former nuclear scientist) who was tipped for the “interim PM” post that Allawi finally got last June, unveiled the electoral list of the United Iraqi Alliance, that he and Ayatollah Sistani have worked at putting together.
Reuters and AP both have reports on Shahristani’s press conference. They are significantly different, so I just decided to archive both accounts together.
JWN readers are no doubt aware that the election is for a constitutional assembly – cum- parliament that will have 275 members, one-third of whom must be women. There’s a single-constituency, p.r. system for voting, similar to Israel’s. In other words, voters vote for a single party (or coalition) list, and then the seats are divided among the lists according to how many votes each receives. Obviously, it’s better for a candidate to be placed near the top of the relevant list as he or she then gets a better chance of being voted in.
So a lot of the jockeying in list-formation goes on around the position of each named candidate on the list. I think each of the lists presented has to have a woman in each third place.
The UIA list presented by Shahristani today contains the names of 228 candidates, indicating that its architects are hoping to win as many as that number of seats in the assembly.
On the crucial issue of Moqtada al-Sadr’s relationship with this list, the Reuters and AP accounts differ significantly. AP reported that,

Continue reading “Shi-ite-led list unveiled”