Category: Iraq-2005-Q4

So here’s what’s happened so far today re the Iraqi constitutional referendum:

1. At or before 2 p.m. today London time (9 a.m. US Eastern Time) — a bare 18 hours or so after the polls had closed in Iraq– Condoleezza Rice was able, miraculously, to “call” the results in London. What an amazingly talented woman! To think that she could coordinate the collection, counting, verifying, and announcing of the results of a poll involving so many millions of far-flung voters, in such a short space of time! What a testimony to this woman’s truly extraordinary powers!!! (Heavy irony alert.)
(By the way, did I mention that Rice told the breathlessly waiting world that the draft constitution has “probably passed”?)
2. U.N. elections chief Carina Perelli (who by the way is in all kinds of her own professional trouble over there at the UN, and who is thus in a fairly weak position in global politics) “stressed that final results were still days away and any early estimates were “impressionistic”. And–
3. President Bush hailed the vote as a victory for “opponents of terrorism”: “The vote today in Iraq is in stark contrast to the attitude, the philosophy and strategy of al-Qaida, their terrorist friends and killers,” Bush said.

As we should all know by now, in order to defeat the draft constitution, its opponents needed two-thirds of the voters in at least three of Iraq’s 18 provinces to vote “No.”
The “announcements” by Rice–and before her, Amb. Khalilzad and Iraqi transitional Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari– that hailed the defeat of the No vote apparently conceded that the No-voters had won the required vote in Al-Anbar and Salah ad-Din provinces. But they “believed”(Rice) or “guessed” (Zebari) that the No campaign had failed to win that threshhold anywhere else, including in Ninawa, which had been thought of as the site of a possible/probable No victory.
Oh but wait, here’s another part of that AP report from Baghdad (dateline around 2 p.m. Sunday, US Eastern Time):

… Some ballot boxes were still making their way to counting centers in the provinces. Provincial election workers were adding up the paper ballots, which will be sent to the counting center in Baghdad’s Green Zone for another check to reach the final, certified result.

So all that business about “guessing” and “believeing” that there’s a victory for the Yesses is based on– ? Just about nothing, if they haven’t even finished hauling all the ballot boxes in for the counting of the paper ballots yet, right?
Small surprise, therefore, that AP’s Sameer Yacoub was also reporting this:

Some Sunni Arab leaders of the “no” campaign decried the reported results and insisted their figures showed the constitution’s defeat, though they did not cite exact numbers. Some accused the United States of interfering in the results.
“We are warning of acts of fraud. This might lead to civil disobedience if there is fraud,” said Saleh al-Mutlaq, head of the National Dialogue Council “We consider that Rice’s statement is pressure on the Independent Election Commission to pass the draft.”

It is, anyway, really outrageous that Rice and Bush should have hurried in so unseemly (and mendacious) a manner to be the the ones to “announce” the result of the referendum. It seems almost like they wanted large portions of the Sunni population to be angry both with them and with thosee Kurds and Shiites who will take everything they want from the new “constitution” and start running with it…

Addendum, Sunday 4 p.m.: I just had time to give this latest analysis from Gilbert Achcar a quick read. It confirms what I wrote here and elsewhere last week about the effect of Kalilzad’s last-minute intervention having been to sow some confusion and dissension in Sunni ranks in Iraq.
The latter third of Gilbert’s piece looks particularly interesting: It is his translation of “an analysis of the referendum in the Sunni provinces by an insider Sunni source, published on the evening of Saturday October 15 after the end of the vote.” This source, Mufakkirat al-Islam wrote:
Sheikh Abdul-Sattar Muhammad, one of the imams and preachers of Fallujah, said that al-Qaida’s organization made a huge error in preventing the people by threats and intimidations to take part in the vote, adding that al-Qaida contributed with other groups to the marginalization of the Sunnis and their impotence in the face of Shiites, Kurds and secular parties… He said also that if al-Qaida’s elements had let the people vote, the constitution would have been rejected by 100% of Sunnis and would have been aborted, while it would have been proved that Sunnis are not a minority in Iraq…
Whereas the Islamic Party has deliberately contributed in splitting the votes of the Sunnis in calling for a “yes” vote, Zarqawi has also given a gift to the occupation and the Safawi [a pejorative formula used in Sunni circles to designate the Shiites deemed to be “Iranian agents”] followers of Sistani by contributing unknowingly, through their threats to the voters, to the neutralization of the Sunni votes opposed to this constitution, under which the Iraqis may have to live miserably for a long period…
The question now in Iraq is when will al-Qaida’s organization stop allowing the assassination of Muslims under various pretexts, after the murder of some Sunnis in Ramadi today because they took part in the vote, and, before that, the authorization to kill members of the Islamic Party. Before that also al-Qaida’s followers turned their weapons against members of other armed groups during the second siege of Fallujah under the pretext that they ought to accept Zarqawi’s leadership after Usama bin Laden’s appeal to this end. This attitude weakened the ranks of the resistance and allowed US occupation forces to execute their well-known offensive in the southern part of Fallujah…

This is, it seems to me (HC), very revealing stuff. The people associated with Mufakkirat al-Islam are prepared to criticize Al-Qaeda even quite openly in this medium… If the Americans and their present Iraqi proteges had been prepared to engage a broader spectrum of Iraqi Sunnis in serious discussions about the governance of the country, then they might have had a good chance of increasing this rift between Sunni-Iraqi nationalists and the agents of Al-Qaeda. As it is, those nationalists whose views were represented by Mufakkirat al-Islam look as though the will continue to be opposed to the new order that they feel is being imposed on them…

Dear JWN commenters– I’m off to my Quaker retreat and hope you may have some informative, courteous discussions here while I’m away. Back Sunday afternoon. Ommmm. (Not quite the right religion but I expect you get my drift.)

According to both Al-Hayat and the BBC, Ayatollah Sistani has now (through his aides) called on Iraqi Shias to vote “Yes” in Saturday’s referendum.
The Hayat article notes in addition that the Sunnis of Iraq are split between those in favor of and those opposed to the constitution draft. It says that the Association of Muslim Scholars (still opposed) has called on the Iraqi Islamic Party (now recently supportive of the latest draft) to reverse its position again. The Hayat piece says that IIP offices in Mosul were attacked, and one of its members was killed…
All, sadly, in line with what I was writing here.

I have a column on Iraq in the Christian Science Monitor today. The title is In Iraq, a rush toward democracy could trigger civil war.
Well, I didn’t write that headline… I would have phrased it a little differently, since what they’re rushing toward doesn’t exactly look like “democracy” to me… More like a series of murky deals concluded behind closed doors.
As so often, though, it was really tough to write something on Monday-Tuesday for a Thursday paper, about a topic that was such a fast-moving target. The major intervening development has been the “breakthrough” that Zal Khalilzad achieved yesterday by winning the support of some (but by no means all) of the country’s Arab Sunni political leaders for yet more last-minute changes in the “constitution” document to be voted on Thursday.
The text of the Constitution now looks like a ragged old patchwork, it’s had so many post-“deadline” changes sewn into it… And of course, we now learn that a major provision in it is a textrual promise there that it can– indeed will– be changed very rapidly after the referendum.
I think the effect of all these last-minute shenanigans may well be to sow confusion among the Sunni voters, who had previously been reported to be lining up pretty solidly behind those who urged them to (a) take part in Saturday’s referendum, and (b) do so by voting “No.”
In addition that position, two others are now being advocated in the Sunni community: To take part and vote “Yes” to the newly fiddled-with version; or to stay away from the polls altogether.
Those urging abstention are the Islamist militants. Those urging a “Yes” vote are apparently the Iraqi Islamic Party– hard to find out quickly who else. Those urging a “No” vote are, according to the NYT article linked to above:

the powerful Association of Muslim Scholars, which represents hundreds of Sunni clerics from across the country. At least two other Sunni leaders, Adnan al-Dulaimi of the Conference of the Iraqi People and Kamal Hamdoon, a Sunni member of the constitution drafting committee, said Wednesday that they would also continue to oppose it.

It strikes me that what has been achieved with the latest round of (quite extra-procedural) textual finessing of the document is not (gasp!) a more perfect Constitution for Iraq, and most certainly not a document that will help Iraqis to escape from the cluitches of the present violence and insecurity. What has been achieved is to sow dissension in Sunni Arab ranks, with the effect of weakening that community’s political cohesion– and also, with the possible consequence that the “No-voting bloc” fails to get the required 2/3 majority required to block the document.
(Though how can anyone be assured that we will ever know what the “true” vote in the majority-Sunni provinces ends up as being?)
I end my CSM column warning of the danger of a full-blown civil war that could spread further throughout the region…

What can the US do to avert such a disaster? Some people say the US should stay in Iraq to prevent the outbreak of a civil war. But this misreads the record of the 30-month period the US has already spent as the occupying power there. During those 30 months, ethnic and sectarian tensions have worsened considerably. There is no reason to expect that another 12 or 30 months of US presence would be any different.
If the US stays, the intra-Iraqi civil strife is very likely indeed to continue, or even escalate. But if the US announces a speedy departure, and then leaves in good order – who knows? The Iraqis may fall into civil war afterward, or they may not. But at least the US troops will not be caught in the middle, and the US will not be as morally responsible for the strife. Also, if the US troops are clearly on their way out, then no Iraqi community will find it as easy to overreach politically as the Kurds and Shiites have done recently (while protected by the imperfect shield of the US troop presence). And all sincere Iraqis will realize – as South Africans did some dozen years ago – that if they want to save their country they will need to find a way to deal with each other.
Will that happen? It still might. Who would have thought back in 1990 that black and white South Africans could find a way to work together? And if Iraqis should lack confidence in negotiating their future among themselves and feel they still need a reassuring outside presence – well, there are many candidates for the job more qualified than the US military.
Despite many good intentions, US policies have thus far brought Iraq to the brink of internal breakdown. This week’s referendum won’t stop that process. Within the next six to eight months, the best thing that could persuade Iraqis to hold their country together is a speedy and total exit of US troops.

The prospects all seem to me fairly depressing. But at least, within the US, the ground-swell of opinion that is ready to criticize Bush on his handling of the war, and to seriously consider a pullout, is finally starting to build.

Four days to go to the referendum… and according to this story in Az-Zaman — as translated by IWPR– the Independent Electoral Commission has still not been able to open any voting stations in the western Anbar region, the site of military operations over the past two weeks.
The IEC head, Adil al-Lami, has apparently,

urged Iraqi prime minister Ibrahim al-Jafari to stop military operations in the western sector of the country so that citizens can participate in Saturday’s constitutional referendum. Lami… said Jafari was cooperative on the matter. Lami announced that the commission has opened 94 voting stations in the Anbar region and Fallujah.

From the total huge number of polling stations that the IEC operated countrywide during the last election, 94 doesn’t actually sound like very many.
Let’s hope that transitional PM Jaafari and the US commanders actually do start a ceasefire immediately to enable some semblance of decent referendum to be held… Though even then, the conditions for a reasoned, well-informed public consultation on this matter still look, let’s say, decidedly sub-optimal.

I read it here, on Riverbend’s great blog, first. You should read the whole of that wonderful post there… Bottom line: a conversation with her nieghbor, Umm F., to whom River has loaned one of her much-marked-up copies of the constitution…. Only to find that Umm F has split the bundle of papers in two and is using the two bundles to sweep dried berries off her porch…
Riverbend:

“But what will you vote?” I asked, watching the papers as they became streaked with the crimson, blood-like tooki [berry] stains.
“You’ll actually vote?” She scoffed. “It will be a joke like the elections… They want this constitution and the Americans want it- do you think it will make a difference if you vote against it?” She had finished clearing the top edge of the wall of the wilting tooki and she dumped it all on our side. She put the now dusty, took- stained sheets of paper back together and smiled as she handed them back, “In any case, let no one tell you it wasn’t a useful constitution- look how clean the wall is now! I’ll vote for it!” And Umm F. and the hedge clippers disappeared.
It occurred to me then that not everyone was as fascinated with the constitution as I was, or as some of my acquaintances both abroad and inside of the country were. People are so preoccupied trying to stay alive and safe and just get to work and send their children off to school in the morning, that the constitution is a minor thing.

And now, here is a poll from the United Nations, as reported by Duraed Salman of IWPR’s Baghdad bureau:

a recent nationwide public opinion survey conducted by the United Nations found the majority of respondents – slightly over 60 per cent – knew little or nothing about the constitutional drafting committee. Nearly 77 per cent had not seen a copy of the proposed constitution, and 91 per cent had never participated in constitutional discussions hosted by civic or non-governmental organisations.
On the streets of Baghdad, posters encouraging citizens to vote were torn down so often in some neighbourhoods that the government decided to stop replacing them. The UN began distributing five million copies of the proposed constitution for public distribution just a little over a week before the referendum. And a government-sponsored media campaign that was supposed to outline in simple language details of the draft has proved ineffective.
Instead, the media has focused almost entirely on the politics surrounding the referendum on the proposed constitution, [sociology professor Adul-Qadir] Hamdi asserted, and has ignored explaining the document itself.
“The public only knows about the disagreements among the blocs drafting the constitution,” he said.
Some residents are so unaware of the upcoming vote that they believe it is for a new Iraqi cabinet. Others are not registering to vote because they say the results are already fixed. And some argued they are too consumed in trying to survive to pay attention to the referendum.
“What vote are you talking about?” asked Amjad Sa’ad, a 31-year-old security guard. “When our basic daily needs are met and our security is restored, then we will care about such things.”
Zuhra Abdu-Samad, 53, reacted angrily when asked about the upcoming referendum, indicating that it would not produce anything of value. “It is just like shaking a fruitless palm tree,” she said.

… Yes, or maybe a tooki tree. But then, at least you can use the constitution to help clean up the mess?

Gilbert Achcar’s latest despatch warns us regarding Saturday’s upcoming referendum in Iraq that:

whether the [constitutional] draft passes the referendum or not, there will be a largely autonomous Shiite entity in Southern and Central Iraq, in control of the major part of Iraqi oil reserves and allied with Iran. When one bears in mind the fact that the bulk of Saudi oil reserves are located in the Shiite-majority Eastern province of the US-protected Saudi Kingdom, one gets to realize the full extent of what is more and more of a nightmare for Washington.

Anyway, big thanks to Gilbert for sending us yet another update. The translations and analysis that he provides here are really helpful. They provide useful background to everything the English-language MSM is telling us about the maneuverings by Khalilzad, the Arab league etc., in the run-up to the referendum.

So here, starting with a couple of pleasant little literary flourishes, are the three parts of today’s despatch:

1) Gulliver in Iraq —for how long?

US Ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay
Khalilzad, best epitomizes the actual status of the US occupation
of Iraq, which looks more and more indeed, in its relation to Iraqi Shiites
and Sunnis, like Gulliver among
Lilliputians and Blefuscudans (Google shows that the reference to Gulliver
with regard to Iraq is already very frequent—you know how this episode of
Gulliver’s Travels ended)
.

After having meddled very unsuccessfully in Iraqi haggling over the draft
constitution, and proved unable to convince the Shiite parties to water down
their own demands in order to get an impossible consensus, the Ambassador
is terrified at the result he could not prevent. One more time, the US is
proving to be an “apprentice-sorcerer” in the Middle East (after so many
decades of failed apprenticeship, it is high time for the US government to
quit this ambition).

From the very beginning of its occupation of Iraq, the US administration has
sought to apply the classical imperial recipe of “divide and rule.” In order
to be successful, such a game needs smart Machiavellian players: definitely
not what you’ve got in
Washington
. The result now is that, whether the draft passes the referendum or not,
there will be a largely autonomous Shiite entity in Southern and Central
Iraq, in control of the major part of Iraqi oil reserves and allied with
Iran. When one bears in mind the fact that the bulk of Saudi oil reserves
are located in the Shiite-majority Eastern province of the US-protected Saudi
Kingdom, one gets to realize the full extent of what is more and more of a
nightmare for Washington.

For those who do not know about the Saudi Eastern province, here are excerpts
from a
good Wikipedia
description:

Continue reading “G. Achcar on present risks in Iraq & Saudi Arabia”

Given the truly terrible security situation in many or most of the majority-Sunni parts of Iraq, and concomitant inability of reputable international election-monitoring organizations to field anything like a satisfactory presence of monitors around the country– then if the “no” vote in the majority-Sunni provinces in next Saturday’s referendum on the “constitution” is announced as being not sufficient to block the constitution’s implementation, why should anyone, including Iraq’s Sunni Arabs and their backers and friends elsewhere, be expected to accept the validity of that result?
I’m just asking the question. I guess around this time next week we’ll start to see what the answer might be…

Iraq developments — Oct. 8, 2005

by Gilbert Achcar

1) How US and British Forces help Iraqis recover
their sovereignty

For any person believing in good faith that occupation troops in Iraq are
helping the Iraqis build independent institutions in order to recover their
sovereignty, recent events in Basra—the way British troops stormed police
headquarters in that city—and their aftermath ought to be enough to prove
the contrary.

Yesterday, Reuters (
British troops seize 12 in Basra raids
) and other agencies reported
how British troops arrested 12 persons, including police officers, in Basra.
The account by Reuters correspondent is interesting
(my emphasis):

“Sources in Sadr’s office in Basra said those
detained included several lieutenants in Basra’s interior affairs department,
which is part of the Interior Ministry, and an official with the local electricity
authority.

‘They are mostly Sadr people,’ one of the sources
said.

He said some of the suspects were seized from the police building which was
attacked by British forces last month to free two undercover soldiers who
had been detained by Iraqi police.
The British military said only that the raids took place in the
Hadem district of Basra.

Another source said all 12 men were seized from one house.

The arrests run the risk of increasing tensions between the 8,500 British
troops serving in Iraq and the local population.

After the detention of the two British soldiers last month, angry crowds
of young men attacked British military vehicles with petrol bombs and rocks,
forcing units to pull back.

took place late on Thursday, shortly after the men had broken fast on the
second day of Ramadan, the Muslim holy month, in what could be seen as a
slight and provoke more anger.”

Karbala—after
Najaf, the second major Shiite holy city in Iraq—was supposed to have
come under full Iraqi sovereignty. In his Radio Address of October 1, Bush
boasted that “this week coalition forces were able to turn over security
responsibility for one of
Iraq
’s largest cities,
Karbala
, to Iraqi soldiers.”

Today, Voice of Iraq broadcast the following report, posted by
nahrainnet (my translation from Arabic) revealing what US forces have
done in Karbala at the same time that their British
counterparts in Basra:

Continue reading “Gilbert Achcar’s letter”