Just World News with Helena Cobban

A hawkish and militarily ill-informed political leadership with a losing “plan”… A military leadership, recognizing some realities of imminent defeat on the battlefield, but split over whether to escalate or pull out… The dawning of a stark realization that one actually needed more ground troops back at the beginning; but now, one doesn’t have a strong enough ground force to be able to make any concerete difference… The rising of a “last-gasp” demand from within a highly ideologized portion of the ruling elite that one “do something militarility”… But the recognition from the serious military commanders that there’s nothing one can actually do on the ground, any more, that will make any real difference…
Where did we last hear all these stories?
Israel, in late July and early August.
And now we hear them again: Washington, late December.
Get out of Iraq while you can still minimize your losses, guys.
That, surely, is the best “lesson” you can get from Israel today. (Not that that’s the lesson the Israeli leadership– eager as ever to have America fight its wars for it– is currently offering.)
But even in Israel, even after they’d figured out they needed to end the summer’s imbroglio in Lebanon as fast as they could, in order to avert the massive catastrophe that loomed for their forces there, it still cost them relatively large numbers (for them) of uselessly spent losses among the ground troops before they could extricate themselves from a foolhardy and ill-prepared aggression against and into another country.
How many more US soldiers’ lives will be lost before the US pulls out of Iraq?
That’s the question we Americans should all be asking our leaders.

Our striped-face friend Badger writes that he’s taking a few days off. That’s a huge pity, because in the few weeks it’s been in existence his ‘Missing Links’ blog of (mainly) English translations of extremely strategically chosen items from the Arabic media has added a whole new dimension to our ability to understand what’s going on in Iraq.
And right now, Americans and all other members of the English-speaking world are sorely in need of greater understanding. Even for those of us who can read some Arabic, it is really, really hard to keep up with everything that’s out there. Besides, there really is a lot happening in Washington DC that needs writing about, too, these days…
Hence, the strong value of having someone of good judgment choose what Iraq-related Arabic sources to delve into and translate. I guess nosing around and digging deep are badger-y things to do.
So after writing this JWN post this morning, I made a long-overdue visit back to Badger’s blog and found a wealth of great posts that he’s put up there in recent days… And most especially, the posts dealing with the meeting held in Istanbul on Dec. 13the and 14th by a group of leaders of Sunni political currents from Iraq and from elsewhere in the region, and the political ‘fallout” from that meeting.
On Dec. 14th, Badger told us that the “government” of Iraq was protesting the holding of the meeting.
On the 15th, he told us about a statement Moqtada al-Sadr had issued, expressing his support for the gathering. Badger translated part of Sadr’s statement thus:

my whole concern is for the success of meetings like this, [of people] aiming to extricate themselves from the clutches of the occupation and the Baathists…I am ready to attend conferences in support of the Sunnis, those in support of the Shiites, or those in support of Iraq as a whole or indeed of any Islamic country”.

On the 16th, Badger gave us lengthy translations from the Az-Zaman and al-Hayat accounts of the conference.
On the 19th, he gave us a translation of a summary, posted on Aljazeeratalk.net, of a televised discussion held among participants after the wrap-up of the conference in Istanbul. Including this portion of the Aljazeeratalk text:

there was unanimous agreement on the concluding recommendations… but there was also one major point of disagreement: Is the Iraqi conflict sectarian or is it political?
Dulaimi is quoted as a proponent of the former view, as follows: He said (according to this summary): “[There is a] Shiite Safavid Persian Majousi threat originating in Iran and aiming to consume all of Iraq, and after that neighboring countries including Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, by way of reviving the dream of a new Persian empire.”
Harith al-Dari disagreed and said this is “a political struggle plain and simple”. He said (according to this summary): “There are both Shiites and Sunnis on the one side under a single banner, and on the other side, arrayed against them, is the Occupation along with its Iraqi agents, aiming at the realization of its colonialist aims. [And this is the case] whether or not those [agents] connive with the Iraqi government and its institutions, or with the death-squads and the militias that are supported from outside”.

(I just note that the accusation about “Safavid Persian Majousi threat” is straight out of the Arab-nationalist– and also, anti-Iranian– script that Saddam used to use. Far as I can figure, “Majousi” has something to do with the “Magi”… and Hans Wehr seems to agree.)
In that post, too, Badger made this comment of his own:

It is worth considering the nature of this debate, alongside the comparable “debate” in America, on whether the Iraqi situation is “civil war, yes or no”. The trick here is that if you can pin the “civil war” label on Iraq (meaning essentially “sectarian conflict”), then in Dhari’s terms, this would be seen as no longer a political struggle at all, but a religious war. America would supposedly become a non-combattant, supposedly turning into a humanitarian assistant and peacekeeper. And America’s continued involvement would thus be justified. So while there are huge stakes for the Iraqis in correctly understanding what is going on, there are also stakes for Americans. Which is why I repeat: I am spooked by the fact that there is not a word about this conference, or the issues it raises, in any of the American media, or in any of the big, supposedly enlightening blogs either.
This AlJazeera item concludes with some remarks on the mechanics of the Istanbul conference. It is worth highlighting this: The meeting was held in Istanbul, Turkey, because Turkey is a country that enjoys the benefits of democracy, and allows for the free expression of a wide range of opinions. Food for thought.

Yesterday, Badger wrote a little about a storm of criticism that met some of Dulaimi’s statements from some figures in the Iraqi “parliament”.
(He also, inter alia, makes reference to something that’s a very salient fact regarding the depth of Iraq’s political crisis today: Namely, that this “parliament” has been quite unable to muster anything like a quorum for some time now. And I think that even predates the Sadrists’ walkout…)
Further down in this post, Badger notes that, “Americans got their first report about the Istanbul conference this morning, via Juan Cole.” Well, make that “most” Americans, Badger, since there were a few of us who had read about it earlier.
He then goes on to criticise Juan’s portrayal of the conference and the subsequent political flap around it, in quite strong terms. He wrote that Cole,

(1) called statements of Dulaimi “incendiary”, but failed to mention the more enlightened comments that Harith al-Dhari made in rebuttal; (2) quotes a Shiite website that reported allegations about an arrest-warrant against Dulaimi, without telling readers that this was false; (3) failed to pay any attention to the more balanced Al-Jazeera summary of the Istanbul proceedings (mentioned here in a prior post). Cole presents a one-sided account, followed up with something equally incendiary (and false to boot). It is a case study in how to go about taking a contentious event, and instead of explaining the dynamics in an even-handed way, using it instead in a partisan way to fan the flames higher.

I think that’s a fair criticism, though I don’t know if Juan was doing that with bad (inflammatory) intentions or simply through lack of attention to the details of what he was writing about. I suspect the latter. I do know that Juan has been paying far less sustained attention to the Arabic source media than he used to in the early months of the war.
Which is one of the reasons I am particularly glad we have Badger addressing himself to the task there.
In addition to writing about the Istanbul conference and the developments that flowed from it, Badger also gave us this timely offering on Monday (Dec. 18th). It gives translations from items in both al-Hayat and Aswat al-Iraq that reported that Moqtada Sadr had sent a delegation to Basra to thank a group of political leaders connected with the Islamic Party, with the Muslim Scholars Association, and with something called the League of Islamic Unity– all of them Sunni-based organizations– in which these leaders issued a fatwa banning the killing of other Muslims, and the killing of Shiites, in particular.
The statement was issued shortly after the series of incidents Dec. 12th in which three car-bombers killed some 70 day-laborers in a busy square in a Shiite part of Baghdad.
Badger told us the Aswat al-Iraq account reported that,

The (above-mentioned) spokesman for the Sunni group added that there was a meeting between the Sadr representatives and the Sunni group, at which “a spirit of understanding and cooperation prevailed”. He said they agreed on the need to support Iraqi unity, and to denounce terrorist operations and “anything that detracts from the unity and the fabric of Iraqi society”.

Again, a development of which we heard zero in a US MSM that is still– and quite in line with the spin from the Bushites and other American hawks– far, far too intent on painting everything in Iraq in starkly sectarian and belligerent colors.
So anyway, thank you Badger. Have a happy Christmas break. But please get back to your badger-y pursuits as fast as you can.

The Bush administration and its hangers-on in the US MSM have concocted a narrative of what the US is doing in Iraq– and throughout the whole Middle East, except Israel– as being to support the “moderates” against the “extremists”. (How amazingly unoriginal of them.) In Iraq, Moqtada Sadr has been firmly pinned with the Bushists’ “extremist” label, while another Shiite cleric, Abdul-Aziz Hakim, has been given the dubious benefit of winning the “American Idol” award.
In order to support this narrative, the spinmeisters have leaked and propagated (and quite possibly also exaggerated) much scaremongering “news” about the Sadrists’ various operations. The intentionally Satanic image of Sadr published on the cover of Newsweek a couple of weeks ago was the single most egregious product of this spin, but it really has become very pervasive over the past month or so… At the same time, these spinmeisters have been notably silent about the many respects in which the actions of Hakim and his followers have been as abusive of human rights as those of the Sadrists, if not more so. And they’ve also been strangely quiet about the lengthy and close relationship between Hakim and the mullahs’ regime in Teheran, while they have tried to smear Sadr as little more than “a puppet of Tehran” while remaining largely quiet on what seem to be some seriously Iraqi-nationalist aspects of his thought and his behavior…
Truth, the first casualty of war. ‘Twas ever thus, I guess.
Many of these same aspects of US spin were noticeable back during the lengthy government-formation process in Baghdad at the beginning of 2006. Heck, even Juan Cole jumped on the bandwagon of describing Hakim as “the strongest leader” in the Shiite coalition, despite some clear evidence that that was not the case…
Well, here we are, a year later, and the Bushists are now quite openly pushing for a Hakimist putsch against the Sadrists. One intriguing account of how this is playing out on the ground comes in today’s WaPo article by Sudarsan Raghavan. Raghavan seems to have traveled much more outside the Green Zone (and outside the heavily fortified coccoon of the house the NYT used to maintain in non-GZ Baghdad) than venerable “white” NYT reporters like John Burns, etc. And he conveys a noticeably more skeptical attitude toward the broad narrative of the Bushist spinmeisters than Burns ever did.
He says of Sadr and Hakim,

they both lead militias that are widely alleged to run death squads.
But in the view of the Bush administration, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim is a moderate and Moqtada al-Sadr is an extremist…

Good for him, making that clear near the top of his piece.
Raghavan does some reporting from Karrada, which he describes as “a mostly Shiite Baghdad neighborhood [of Baghdad]”, containing both middle-class and working-class sections. He conveys the clear impression that Hakim’s influence there and, that of the much revered and generally quietist Shiite marja’, Ayatollah Ali Sistani, have both waned considerably in recent months, while that of the Sadrists has grown.
He also reports this:

In many circles, Iraqis question whether Hakim and other so-called moderates can curb the growing power of Sadr.
“I have serious doubts about Mr. Hakim’s influence among the Shiites, and I have serious doubts of Hashemi becoming the leader of Sunnis,” [Baghdad political analyst Wamid] Nadhmi said.
It’s a sentiment shared in Karrada. “Al-Hakim is not loved by the people,” said Abdul Amir Ali, a burly Shiite shopkeeper. “People love the Islamic Dawa Party and Maliki because they don’t have militias.”
In the sidewalk restaurant where Sadr’s poster hangs, its owner, Ali Hussein, points at clusters of young men nearby. They are all Mahdi Army, he said. And so is he.
Hakim, he said, made a fatal mistake by meeting Bush. In today’s Iraq, credibility and power are measured by opposition to the United States.
“At this time, whoever has his hands with the Americans or Jews is not an Iraqi,” said Hussein, as he chopped up cubes of lamb. “So how could Hakim put his hands with the Americans? There will be tensions because Sayyed Moqtada Sadr is a revolutionary man, like his father. Even if Hakim tries to come back to Sadr, Sadr will never receive his hand.”
If the rift between Hakim and Sadr deepens, moderate Shiites fear, all Iraqis may suffer. “It should not leave any shadow on a fragile situation on Iraq,” said [Ali] Dabbagh, the government spokesman. “Iraq cannot absorb such a shock.”

Meanwhile, Reidar Visser has also weighed in with some of his own observations on the chances of the Bushites’ latest anti-Sadr campaign. These comments come in the last half of this posting on his website, the first of which provides a fairly full digest and review of what looks to be an intriguing book, by former British insider Mark Etherington, of the mistakes made during the US forces’ 2004 campaign against Moqtada al-Sadr.
Regarding Washington’s current attempt to build an anti-Sadrist coalition in Iraq, Visser writes,

Even on the surface, such a new coalition would have obvious problems. Although the parliamentary arithmetic might support it, it would be a huge gamble to isolate one of the few blocs inside the Iraqi parliament that can claim to have a degree of support on the Iraqi streets (rumours suggest that the other Sadrist grouping, the Fadila, would also remain outside government). Also, it could cause a dramatic reduction of grassroots Shiite support for the government without any appreciable strengthening of its Sunni level of support (reportedly, only the Iraqi Islamic Party would be involved); in this case a perpetuation of the Sunni insurgency along with increased Sadrist violence might be expected – and this on top of problems already underway in Basra with the Fadila. And above all, this would be just another deal among the cadres of the Green Zone – many of them returnees from exile – without any substantial links to the millions of “ordinary Iraqis” who care less about ideological bickering and the finer points of federalism than about security and services. To a non-US observer it really is difficult to grasp the logic of the policy now being proposed.

Anyway, the whole of Visser’s essay there deserves close attention.
Finally, I see from this recent AP report that delegates from all the major Shiite parties in Iraq have today been gathering in Najaf, with the aim of meeting both Sistani and Sadr there. The AP writer, Qassim Abdul-Zahra, says these delegates went, “to seek [Sistani’s] blessing for a new coalition that would promote national reconciliation.” They were also, “expected to meet with radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr about joining the political process and reining in his fighters.”
Abdul-Zahra also wrote this:

In Thursday’s meeting, the group wants to assure al-Sistani that the new coalition would not break apart the Shiite bloc, said officials from several Shiite parties. Potential members of the coalition said they have been negotiating for two weeks, and now want the blessing of al-Sistani, whose word many Shiites consider binding.
The [‘national reconciliation movement in question’] is backed by the U.S. government, said Sami al-Askari, a member of the Dawa party and an adviser to [PM] al-Maliki.
“I met the American ambassador in Baghdad and he named this front the ‘front of the moderates,’ and they (the Americans) support it,” al-Askari said

It’s not clear to me why a Maliki aide would consider that having the backing of the Americans for any given plan would be considered a plus…. But politics is a strange business, eh?
In this separate and apparently earlier AP report, Abdul-Zahra had written,

Radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr is considering a one-month unilateral cease-fire and may push his followers to rejoin the political process, three weeks after they walked out of parliament and the Cabinet to protest the prime minister‘s meeting with President Bush , officials close to the anti-American militia leader said Wednesday.
Al-Sadr‘s call for a halt to fighting could come after Thursday, when a delegation representing the seven Shiite groups that form the largest bloc in Iraq ‘s parliament is to travel to the holy city of Najaf to meet separately with al-Sadr and the country‘s top Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani…
[An] official close to al-Sadr did not speak about the planned truce directly, but said when asked about it that “the security situation will improve in the coming month.”
Even if al-Sadr commands his militia, the Madhi Army, to halt sectarian attacks for a month, questions remain as to whether violence would decrease. The militia is believed to be increasingly fragmented, with some factions no longer reporting to him, and a call for a truce could further divide it.
In exchange for a halt in fighting, al-Sadr‘s followers want officials from al-Hakim‘s Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq to make a promise in front of al-Sistani that they will not sideline al-Sadr‘s movement, said a member of al-Sadr‘s group.
The Shiite, Kurdish and Sunni coalition was not a done deal, though. Several Shiites complained about conditions set by the Sunni Iraqi Islamic Party, which they said could jeopardize an agreement.
“The demands of the Iraqi Islamic Party are not logical and it is hard to implement them,” said Humam Hamoudi, a SCIRI lawmaker. For example, the Sunni party wants all checkpoints leading to and from Baghdad to have an equal number of Shiite and Sunni guards, he said.

So there we are. Lots going on. Let’s hope that Iraq’s political and community leaders of all complexions can find a way to reweave national unity amongst themselves and generate a national leadership of sufficient legitimacy and trustworthiness that it can immediately start negotiations for a full, speedy, and orderly withdrawal of the US-led occupoation force from their country. That would be farmore constructive narrative than the “divide and rule” one the Bushists are trying to pursue.