Category: Iraq-2008-q2

I’ve now taken the chance to examine the Executive Summary of the “Necessary Steps” report issued yesterday by the Task Force for a Responsible Withdrawal from Iraq. From a quick scan through the report’s other 28 or so pages, I think the Executive Summary looks easier to deal with. The rest looks a little amorphous and unclear.

My main reactions to reading it are these:

1. They did indeed use many of the ideas I have been working on and advocating for throughout the whole of the past three years. Points of what I would call our “distinctive” convergence include our shared emphasis on the need for the UN to have a key role in helping organize some of the key political aspects of the departure; and our shared emphasis on the need for the US to be “generous” to the Iraqis as we depart their country, in partial compensation for the sheer harm and misery inflicted on them.

2. There are many other points of convergence that i would not necessarily judge to be so “distinctive”, since they are points that are also articulated by many others in the peace and justice community. These include, crucially, the need for the withdrawal to be total, which was indeed right there.

3. Altogether, therefore, there are very many points of convergence between their plan and what I have been articulating, refining, and advocating throughout these past three years. So bravo to them.

4. In four key respects, however, their plan differs significantly from what I have been advocating. These are:

(a) They do not envisage nearly so definitive a handoff of decisionmaking and “convening” power regarding Iraq, from Washington to the UN Secretary General, as I do.

(b) They make no mention at all of the need for focused attention also to be paid to reaching a final resolution of the remaining strands of the Israeli-Arab conflict, as I have consistently done since before the publication of the Baker-Hamilton report– of which that was also, we can recall, a key feature. Baker Hamilton rightly recognized the close linkage between the two theaters. At a political level, I don’t see how the US can expect to involve the UN in any meaningful way in handling complex diplomatic tasks regarding Iraq if at the same time Washington is keeping the UN and the international legitimacy it represents at arm’s length in the Arab-Israeli theater.

(c) They make no mention of the need for new national elections in Iraq or, crucially, the need to craft a new, post-occupation Constitution, or at the very least, submit the existing one to very thorough review.

(d) They call for a plan to fund “refugee resettlement in third countries” but make no mention of supporting the return and repatriation of the two million refugees and the two million IDPs to their home communities; whereas I see that, rather than resettlement in other countries, as the prime need.

In general, therefore, I think it would have been excellent if I could have discussed these differences with the people who wrote the Necessary Steps report, before they published it. I think those discussions would have been excellent. We would probably all have learned a lot from them. And the result would have been a significantly richer and more helpful report all round. But, ahem, as I noted yesterday, they didn’t bother to consult me before they went about ripping off my work without attribution and publishing this report.

In addition to the four broad points of difference I’ve identified above, I have some other, more detailed comments on some of the points they make in their Executive Summary. And I’ve made a table in which I’ve put those comments alongside the relevant portions of their text. So read on, dear readers…

Continue reading “The ‘Necessary Steps’ recommendations, annotated”

Read this, from McClatchy’s Baghdad correspondent Laith, and think about how the violence and social collapse set in motion in Iraq by President Bush’s decision to invade the country has affected just about every Iraq family.
If you are Iraqi, as a US citizen I say to you I am sorry beyond words for what my government has done to your country. Many of us here in the US tried to prevent the invasion before it happened, but we failed to rein in our government. We should take responsibility for that failure.
If you are an American or any other non-Iraqi reading this, think about how you would feel if these catastrophes happened in your country.
In poll after poll after poll, Iraq’s citizens tell us they want a fixed timetable for a total US troop withdrawal from their country. They are willing to take responsibility for what happens after that. For American politicians to claim they have to keep US troops in Iraq “for the sake of Iraq’s people” is (a) quite simply mendacious, and (b) incredibly imperialistic and patronizing.
Stop the harm inflicted by the continuing US occupation. Pull the US troops out, and let Iraq’s people find their own way to heal.

Thanks to Glen Rangwala of Cambridge and Jonathan Schwarz of Democrats.com who have found the definitive UN-archived version (PDF) of the 1930 treaty between Britain and Iraq.
Here is an HTML version of the treaty’s text (copied and pasted from the text in Schwarz’s blog post there.)
The 1930 treaty provides an instructive precedent for with the present US attempts to force the (US-constituted) Iraqi government into a long-term security arrangement in many respects:

• In both cases, a western government that had taken control of Iraq by military means later had its presence there given some cover by the world’s leading intergovernmental body, and also set about constituting a puppet “national” government there which was the body with which this agreement was “negotiated.”
• In both cases, there is some attempt by the occupying power to couch the treaty in terms of equality, and to make some of its provisions look advantageous to the occupied country. But in both cases, close attention to the terms of the agreement reveals its highly asymmetrical nature.
• In both cases, provision is made for the western power in question to have wide access to, use of, and control over military bases in Iraq; there are components relating to it providing “advisors” to the Iraqi armed forces; and Britishers service-members in Iraq are offered immunity from local prosecution and other privileges.

I note that Schwarz made some, but not all of those points. I’m hoping I can get back to doing a more thorough annotation of this treaty and what we know about the Bush administration’s present proposals to Iraq, as soon as possible.
I note, however, that the regional and global political climate within which the Bush administration is pursuing its Iraq policy is very different indeed from those in which “His Britannic Majesty” was acting.
Back then, London faced no significant challenge from any third-party (i.e. non-Iraqi and non-British)powers to its pursuit of its imperial policies in Iraq. The biggest third-party “challenger” to British designs in the Middle East was France; and in the post-WW-I diplomacy, Britain and France had reached extensive agreement on how they would divvy up control over the mashreq between them. There were numerous Arab and non-Arab critics of Britain’s policy in Iraq, but none that caused London any significant level of concern.
Today, as the Bush administration attempts a reprise of 1930, it faces significant opposition from the following sources:

* an educated and increasingly well-organized population inside Iraq;
* Iran;
* public opinion throughout the Arab and Muslim worlds, and some though not all of their governments;
* democrats (small ‘d’) in the US who increasingly reject lengthy, imperial-style entanglements in Iraq;
* most likely, other significant world powers.

So Bush is basically whistling in the wind on this…
However, the fundamental irrationality and unwinnability (not to mention immorality) of this project is no guarantee at all that he will not continue to pursue it, doggedly, as long as he can. That means, I guess, that we need to continue our campaign to oppose it.
Revisiting the history of the 1930 treaty is, it seems to me, a helpful part of doing this. Thanks, Jonathan and Glen.

Juan Cole has a brilliant post today in which he soberly assesses and presents the data on the excess deaths suffered by Iraqis as a result of George W. Bush’s decision to invade their country:

By now, summer of 2008, excess deaths from violence in Iraq since March of 2003 must be at least a million. This conclusion can be reached more than one way. There is not much controversy about it in the scientific community. Some 310,000 of those were probably killed by US troops or by the US Air Force, with the bulk dying in bombing raids by US fighter jets and helicopter gunships on densely populated city and town quarters.
In absolute numbers, that would be like bombing to death everyone in Pittsburgh, Pa. Or Cincinnati, Oh.
Only, the US is 11 times more populous than Iraq, so 310,000 Iraqi corpses would equal 3.4 million dead Americans. So proportionally it would be like firebombing to death everyone in Chicago.
The one million number includes not just war-related deaths but all killings beyond what you would have expected from the 2000-2002 baseline…

And for a more granular, personal view of what it is still like, today, to live in the climate of violence, read this searing description by the LA Times’s Usama Redha of a bombing near his home in the Hurriya neighborhood of Baghdad:

When I come home from work I always walk from the bus terminal past the vegetable and fruit vendors and shish kebab restaurants in the market, not just for shopping, but to chat a few minutes with some of the vendors who were my childhood friends.
Suddenly, BOOM! A huge explosion shook the bus..
But my daily chat that should have ended with a joke and a smile turned to tears and sorrow.
The driver swerved the microbus. We saw a huge ball of dust and black smoke rise from the bus terminal.
People were running to see what was going on and to rescue the injured.
I called my wife to tell her that I was OK, and then called the office to report the news.
My heart was pounding as each step took me closer to the scene. Through the heavy smoke I could see the human flesh. The faceless, burned body of a woman and others were spread here and there. They were lucky that they were in peace, I told myself. The injured lay on the ground in suffering. I thanked God because I could have been one of them. It was just three minutes between death and life.
I was trying to cover the story, but something fixed my legs to the ground. At first I felt afraid to go closer, afraid there could be another explosion. But then I saw people I knew screaming about beloved ones. I knew then that my friends were killed. I had lost two of my dear friends, their lives turned to lifeless digits in the casualty count of at least 63.
I passed the scene three days later. There were candles with flowers here and there. I approached a charred spot that had been a booth. There was a picture and black sign: “The Happy martyr Ahmad Salih.”
I approached a man who was standing nearby. He was smoking and had an absentminded look.
“Why have people put the flowers and candles here?” I asked.
He looked at me, and said in a depressed tone, “These candles and flowers are for the ones whose bodies were not found.”
The man spoke again more sadly.
“Look to the top of the building. There, people found the head of a child. He is my grandson.”

Do we need to recall that, as the foreign belligerent occupying power, the US still bears overall responsibility for ensuring the security of Iraq’s civilian population?
Hurriya, by the way, is Arabic for “freedom.” I have always been disgusted that Bush and his officials gave the name “Operation Iraqi Freedom” to their military invasion of Iraq. What an Orwellian abuse of language.

Kudos to Haaretz’s Avi Issacharoff who yesterday conducted a phone interview with Hamas legislator and Gaza Strip spokesman Salah Bardawil about the thadi’eh.
Issacharoff asked what Hamas would do to any Gazans who might violate the tahdi’eh by firing rockets at Israel.
Bardawil replied:

“I’m not going to say that we’ll start deploying forces at the border and turn into the Palestinian Authority, which works to safeguard Israel?s security interest. But we made a decision that anyone who fires rockets at Israel will be doing so without our approval. We’ll let the organization with which he is affiliated deal with him. If it?s someone who doesn’t belong to any organization, measures will be taken against him. Anyone who violates the factions? decision on the cease-fire is harming the Palestinian interest and we will deal with him accordingly.”

Evidently, anyone in Israel who wants to see the tahdi’eh maintained should have an interest in ensuring that the responsible party in Gaza, i.e. Hamas, has the capability to monitor and police the Strip’s border zones, which given its tiny size means really the whole Strip, effectively.
The rest of the article is interesting, too. Issacharoff not only engages Bardawil in a fascinating conversation on broader prospects for Israel-Hamas diplomacy, but also has a short report of a conversation with an unnamed former Fateh official in Gaza who expressed what Issacharoff described as “consternation” that the ceasefire has further strengthened Hamas politically.
Issacharoff writes this about his conversation with Bardawil:

Continue reading “Hamas’s Bardawil on the tahdi’eh, etc.”

Mr. Obama, I am not privy to the whole of the conversation you recently had with Hoshyar Zebari, the foreign minister in every Iraqi government since the US installed its own puppet regime there in 2003. Zebari, as you doubtless know, is also a prime example of what many Middle East experts have taken to calling the “Kurdification” of Iraqi politics under the Americans.
But Mr. Zebari waited barely a few hours before retelling his side of the conversation to the editors of the Washington Post (who returned the compliment by referring to him as a “dedicated Iraqi leader.”) The way he told it, he had given you a a harsh lecture about (his version of) the realities in Iraq. The WaPo editors reported approvingly that Zebari said he’d told you “We have a deadly enemy” in Iraq”, and that, while he believes the US force levels can and should be drawn down, those reductions should only be made gradually.
Senator, I’m glad you listened to Zebari. I don’t know whether, in doing so, you probed him a little deeper on some of his assertions. It would be fascinating to hear, for example, his version of who he thinks the– apparently monadic– “enemy” in Iraq really is. The WaPo people never probed him on that, of course, because once you do try to define who “the enemy” is, you immediately see that the situation there is very complex, and certainly not conducive to any form of a US-imposed solution.
But Senator, you should also make sure you listen to a broad range of other voices from Iraq. Including, but not limited to, thoughtful Iraqi legislators and community leaders like the ones I listened to in Washington in the past two weeks. (See here and here.)
Above all, try to make sure you hear the views of Iraqis who are not residents of the US-protected Green Zone. You’ll find that their views are very different indeed than those of their “foreign minister.”
You’ve no doubt already remembered that Zebari was an important member of the coterie of Iraqi exiles who in the lead-up to 2003 worked tirelessly to try to get the US to invade Iraq (and then to install them in power.)
I’m assuming you’re smart enough not to get snookered by these guys– that is, either the Zebaris or the WaPos– this time around, just as you weren’t snookered by them in 2002…

The National Security Archive at George Washington University has succeeded in winning declassification of some intriguing– though heavily “redacted”– documents dating back to Nobember 2003 that detail the Pentagon’s longstanding efforts to win a very permissive (from their point of view) long-term security agreement from Iraq.
The page linked to there has a good analysis of the documents and ends with links to PDF versions of the docs themselves.
The NSA analyst, Joyce Battle, starts with a reference to Patrick Cockburn’s excellent recent reporting on the details of the SOFA-plus agreement that the Bushists presented to the Iraqi side at the beginning of this month. Under the heading “Looks like San Remo all over again”– a reference to the 1920 conference at which Britain and France got generously handed their League of Nations “Mandates” over the governance of five majority-Arab countries (take that, Woodrow Wilson!)– Battle notes:

Recently declassified documents show that the U.S. military has long sought an agreement with Baghdad that gives American forces virtually unfettered freedom of action in – and possibly around – Iraq. This new information appears to run counter to Bush administration claims that U.S. intentions have been more limited in scope.

The first of the declassified “documents” she presents is a PDF/PPT slideshow, heavily redacted, that she believes was created by the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy. It was dated November 27, 2003. That was just five weeks after the day on which the UN Security Council– meeting in New York, not San Remo– adopted Resolution 1511 which handed the US a qualified and highly time-limited mandate to rule over Iraq.
We might remember that the three most important clauses of res. 1511 were that, acting under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, the Security Council:

1. Reaffirms the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Iraq, and UNDERSCORES, in that context, the temporary nature of the exercise by the Coalition Provisional Authority (Authority) of the specific responsibilities, authorities, and obligations under applicable international law recognized and set forth in resolution 1483 (2003), which will cease when an internationally recognized, representative government established by the people of Iraq Is sworn in and assumes the responsibilities of the Authority, inter alia through steps envisaged in paragraphs four through seven and ten below; …
13. Determines that the provision of security and stability is essential to the successful completion of the political process as outlined in paragraph 7 above and to the ability of the United Nations to contribute effectively to that process and the implementation of resolution 1483 (2003), and authorizes a multinational force under unified command to take all necessary measures to contribute to the maintenance of security and stability in Iraq, including for the purpose of ensuring necessary conditions for the implementation of the timetable and program as well as to contribute to the security of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq, the Governing Council of Iraq and other institutions of the Iraqi interim administration, and key humanitarian and economic infrastructure;
… and
25. Requests that the United States, on behalf of the multinational force as outlined in paragraph 13 above, report to the Security Council on the efforts and progress of this force as appropriate and not less than every six months.

So according to Battle, the requirements that the Pentagon sought in Iraq at the time included items in the following areas:

* Use of Iraqi facilities
* Pre-positioning of supplies
* Contracting
* Respect for Law
* Entry and Exit of forces
* Vehicle licensing and registration
* Bearing of Arms
* Taxation
* Import and Export
* Claims
* Movement of Aircraft and Vehicles
* Use of land and facilities
* Security requirements and support

The collection of documents presented through that NSA web-page comprises eight internal documents dated between the last week of November and the end of December 2003. In one of them, document 5, Paul Bremer laid out in a cable to the State Department and the National Security Council a lengthy list of items that the “coalition” forces would have to insist on still controlling and/or having access to, even after the restoration of Iraq’s supposed “sovereignty.”
Battle wrote this about the Bremer cable:

Continue reading “Washington: Concealing SOFA plans since November 2003”

The American University of Iraq, which boasts Zal Khalilzad as a Regent and Fouad Ajami as a Trustee, has run into a serious difficulty. Dr Owen Cargol, who was hired as the university chancellor in April 2007 left his post in a hurry (or was terminated?) in late April of this year, after revelations that in 2001 he had to leave the presidency of Northern Arizona University in the wake of a serious sexual harrassment scandal.
The Inside Higher Ed website reported on the AU-Iraq affair yesterday. The report noted that AU-Iraq, which is located in the Kurdish city of Suleimani and boasts many pro-US Iraqi politicians including President Jalal Talabani and vice president Barham Saleh on its board, had received much attention from the NYT and other western MSM outlets as being one of the (very few) admirable and effective parts of the US intervention in Iraq.

Continue reading “‘American University in Iraq’: another Bushist fiasco”

GWB was asked in Germany today about the “increasing controversy in Iraq over the security agreement that’s being negotiated… Does this concern you that the direction of those negotiations are going in?”
(Note, “controversy” is already a significant understatement of the tsunami of nationalist opposition the Bushists’ SOFA-plus proposal has awakened among Iraqis.)
He replied:

First of all, I think we’ll end up with a strategic agreement with Iraq. You know, it’s all kinds of noise in their system and our system. What eventually will win out is the truth. For example, you read stories perhaps in your newspaper that the U.S. is planning all kinds of permanent bases in Iraq. That’s an erroneous story. The Iraqis know — will learn it’s erroneous, too. We’re there at the invitation of the sovereign government of Iraq.

Actually, no. The Iraqi government still doesn’t have meaningful sovereignty. The US forces are still in Iraq as a belligerent occupation force whose occupation of the country has had a bit of pig’s-lipstick put on it by Security Council resolution 1511.
The contempt with which Bush refers to the efforts made by elected lawmakers in both countries to learn the content of international agreements being negotiated by their national leaders, and to hold these leaders accountable to them is on a par with the lip-sneering “So?” with which Dick Cheney met a journalist’s recent observation that Bush’s record in Iraq was judged a failure by some two-thirds of Americans.
Is there anyone left on earth who thinks George W. Bush understands anything about democracy and good governance?