Just World News with Helena Cobban

I’ve been working on a conference paper on (mainly) African topics these past couple of days. So I failed to produce “instant” commentary re the plan that John Kerry proposed for exiting from Iraq, in yesterday’s NYT.
Maybe I’ll come back to it later. But here, I’ll just note the following:

(1) Kerry has come a long way since the time– not so long ago!– when he was urging the administration to deal with the Iraq situation by increasing the troop levels.
(2) He is now urging “a schedule for withdrawing American combat forces by year’s end.” This is good– even though it’s not spelled out exactly as being the “speedy, total, and generous” US withdrawal that I’ve been urging for nearly a year now. I’m particularly worried about the qualifier “combat” that Kerry put there… What other kinds of US forces are there that might remain according to his plan? Perhaps special ops forces, or MPs, or…
(3) In addition, when Kerry advocates this withdrawal schedule, it’s still conditional on the Iraqis “putting together a government” first….
(4) In fact, this business of placing conditions and demands on the Iraqis is integral to the general approach of his piece, which is to seek to “cover” what is actually a call for (some kind of) withdrawal behind a lot of imperialist-sounding rhetorical bombast… “Iraqi politicians should be told… !”
(5) But this is precisely the point at which his approach is shown to be thin, blustery rhetoric, because what they are to be told is this: “that they have until May 15 to put together an effective unity government or we will immediately withdraw our military.” Excellent idea! So, John, why don’t we just make plans to “immediately” (i.e., as rapidly as possible) withdraw the military anyway, and forego all the bluff and bluster?? And not just make the withdrawal plans, but also announce and implement them?
(6) For all the operational thin-ness of what Kerry proposed, at least it’s an important development in the upper ranks of the Democratic Party leadership that he has moved this far toward a pro-withdrawal position. (Even if he still feels he has to cover his behind with the rhetorical bombast.)
(7) So when will Hillary and the rest of the party leadership be following him?

There are actually a couple of other things from yesterday that I want to comment on when I have time.
One was Juan Cole’s argument that,

Exit is easy. Exit with honor will be the hardest thing the United States of America has ever done in its over two centuries of history. Exit without honor will endanger the security of the United States for decades.

I’d love to engage with Juan on what exactly he means by “honor.” I guess I have no plans to see him any time soon; but it will be a good thing to talk about.
For my part, I’m fairly distrustful when guys start to talk about “honor” in any context– but particularly in the context of a still-aspiring world hegemon like the mainstream US, it sounds like a cover for keeping the hegemonic aspirations well in place. Personally, I believe the longterm interests of the US citizenry are best served if we seek to reintegrate ourselves into the world community on a respectful, nonviolent, and egalitarian basis that recognizes that actually, we make up only around 4% of humankind… So any aspiration to act hegemonic, boss other people around, change their regimes, invade their countries, etc, is one of pure arrogance (and actually, of zero “honor.”) And in the longer-than-tomorrow term it is doomed not only to fail but to bring great human suffering as it does so.
… In addition yesterday, there was an intriguing piece about Iraqi politics from David Pugnacious in the WaPo, that featured reports of phone conversations he’d had with Zal Khalilzad and Barham Saleh, among others.
It includes this:

Khalilzad recounted the items that the Iraqi political factions have agreed on in private negotiations over the past month. On Sunday, the leaders signed off on the last of these planks of a government of national unity. The Iraqis have saved the hardest issue for last — the names of the politicians who will hold the top jobs. That bitter fight will play out over the next several weeks.
An example of what’s in these unity documents is a passage that calls for “a timetable so the Iraqi forces assume the security tasks completely and end the mission of the multinational force in Iraq.” That timetable language is vague, but it would allow the new government to say it is committed to ending the American occupation. Interestingly, U.S. officials said yesterday that this passage on troop withdrawal is consistent with Bush administration policy.

Just worth spending an extra moment pondering there: the amazingly hubris-revealing content of that first sentence… But all of that excerpt is very, very interesting.
And then there’s this:

the Iraqi factions agreed on two bodies that weren’t mentioned in the constitution. They endorsed a 19-member consultative national security council, which represents all the political factions. And they agreed on a ministerial security council, which will have the Sunni deputy prime minister as its deputy chairman. Shiite leaders have tentatively agreed that the defense minister will be a Sunni. And for the key job of interior minister, the dominant Shiite faction, known as the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, appears ready to accept the replacement of one of its members by an independent Shiite, perhaps Qasim Dawood, a man acceptable to most Sunni leaders.

Interesting, huh? Qasim Dawood (a.k.a. variously as Kassim Daoud, etc etc) was of course the person who last week was reported to be the first of the UIA parliamentarians to speak out openly against Jaafari’s nomination as PM…
I’ll write more about all of this– and more about the real reasons behind the political ‘impasse’ in Iraq, as best I understand them– as soon as I can. For now, I have to get back (conceptually) to Africa.

Iraqi political chameleon Adel Abdul-Mahdi today joined his UIA colleagues Qasem Daoud and Jalaleddine al-Saghir in calling openly on Ibrahim Jaafari to withdraw his candidacy for the PM post.
So that makes three of the UIA’s 128 National Assembly members who have thus far succumbed to intense US/UK arm-twisting to come out openly against Jaafari.
It is now 51 days since Jaafari was nominated, Feb. 12. At this rate– one open UIA defection won every 17 days– it will take the US/UK outside agitators “only” a total of 1,105 days to win the open defections of the 65 UIA members required to overturn the Jaafari nomination.
And 51 of those days have already passed… So “only” a further 1,056 days will be required for Washington to win its goal of having a compliant PM nominated by the UIA.
Why, that’s less than three years! Surely the Iraqi people can see what’s good for them and wait those further years before they get a government?? (Very heavy irony alert there.)
… Yes, of course I realize that Jaafari only originally won his February nomination by a margin of one vote. But that’s not the point here. The UIA people who are speaking out openly now against his nomination are doing so expressly against the wishes of Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, whose few recent declarations on Iraqi political matters have all stressed the supreme need for his followers to maintain their political unity. That is why we haven’t seen a cascade of 63 UIA parliamentarians (those who voted against the Jaafari nomination back in February) all now streaming into the openly anti-Jaafari camp.
Once again, it seems to me, there is something about Ayatollah Sistani that the Americans just don’t get.
(And let’s face it, getting Adel Abdul-Mahdi to come out openly against Jaafari probably wasn’t terrifically difficult, since he has consistently been described by US officials as the person whom they would like to see in the PM post.)

At last an American MSM publication (other than JWN) seems to be starting to find the right way to approach the question of the continuing government-formation impasse in Iraq. Newsweek’s Rod Nordland has a mid-length piece in this week’s Newsweek titled Sadr Strikes. The subtitle is: Deadly Vision: U.S. forces once had the renegade cleric in their cross hairs. Now he’s too strong—and too popular—to confront.
And for good measure, alongside that article, they’re running this interview with Fatah al-Sheikh, described as “a trusted confidant of Moqtada al-Sadr and editor of the cleric’s personal newspaper, Ishraqat al-Sadr”.
Nordland is quite right to focus right now on the “kingmaking” role that Sadr now plays. He writes:

The American military no longer talks about killing or capturing Sadr; in fact, they’re careful to not even point a finger of blame at him. Why not? In part because Iraq has become an unstable democracy, and Sadr has massive support where it counts—in the streets. He has also learned the art of crafting different messages for different audiences. Even while his black-clad militiamen struck at Sunni targets recently, Sadr took the moral high ground and appealed for calm. “It is one Islam and one Iraq,” he said.
Sadr has joined the political process, with stunning results. The current prime minister, Ibrahim Jaafari, effectively owes his job to the renegade cleric. “Despite the fact that Sadr was not himself an elected official, he and his followers were able to play the role of ‘kingmaker’ within the Shiite coalition,” says Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Sadr’s group has 30 seats in the new assembly that was elected last December, but the Sadrist party is allied with a larger Shia coalition, the United Iraqi Alliance. With Sadr’s blessing, his followers cast the deciding vote making Jaafari the choice of the UIA for prime minister.

One of the refreshing things about the Nordland piece is that not once does he refer to SCIRI or its leader Abdul-Aziz Hakim as being “the most powerful force in Iraqi politics”, or the like. Indeed, he doesn’t mention either SCIRI or Hakim at all!
Boy, that makes a change, after all the pumping-up of SCIRI’s role we’ve heard from the US MSM over the past few months.
Here on JWN, I’ve been consistently noting the Sadrists’ success in the Dec. 15 election– back as long ago as this Jan. 1 post, this Jan. 20 post, and this Feb. 11 post. Or even this Dec. 22 post.
In all of those, I was leaning heavily on the detailed, expert work of the western world’s leading UIA-ologist, Reidar Visser, and also on my own other readings, gut feelings, and analysis… But meanwhile, Juan Cole and just about the whole of the US MSM have been continuing to parrot the description of SCIRI/Hakim as “the most powerful force in Iraq”, etc, etc….
All of which must have made it very difficult for anyone to understand why Zal Khalilzad was so unsuccessful in imposing his favored candidate (SCIRI’s Adel Abdul-Mahdi) on the rest of the UIA, as I noted here recently. In this early-February analysis, Visser provided his own best explanation for the misperceptions of western analysts, most of which he attributed to SCIRI’s fairly successful, west-oriented (or should I say occidented?) media operation…
But enough of my longstanding “Why doesn’t anyone listen to me and Reidar?” rant. What about Nordland’s piece?
Well, for starters, he’d have done well to have read or spoken to Reidar Visser about all this… a long time ago! As long ago as early February, Visser calculated that the Sadrists (pro-Muqtada plus Fadila flavors) accounted for a total of 45 seats— as opposed to SCIRI’s total of 29. (And as opposed to Nordland’s own figure of “30” seats for the Sadrist party in the new Assembly.)
And then, in much of the body of his piece, Nordland seems to be following the very standard, US-government-issue line that portrays Muqtada as only a violent and divisive troublemaker. For example, he writes of Muqtada’s behind-the-scenes role as the real power behind the Jaafari nomination that:

Continue reading “Muqtada Sadr featured in Newsweek”

As I noted earlier, these are fateful days in Iraq. Condi Rice, fresh from the embarrassment of the reception she got from the good people of Blackburn, Lancashire, flew to Baghdad with her friend Jack Straw to try a hands-on approach to subverting the results of last December’s election.
But what they are trying to sell to Iraqi politicians is, it seems to me, notably unsellable. Their basic pitch (in public) is, “If you Iraqis want to get rid of the occupation forces then you need to hurry up and form a government.” But Rice (and Straw, for what it’s worth) are still also apparently determined that Ibrahim Jaafari, the person duly nominated to the PM post by the largest bloc in the parliament, is “unacceptable” to the occupation forces. So they have been wheedling and doing goodness only knows what else to try to get as many Iraqi politicians as possible to come out publicly against the Jaafari nomination…
In recent days they won two breathlessly reported tactical victories, winning public statements from two political figures within the victorious UIA alliance who called for Jaafari to step down. The two are Qasim Daoud, the head of the small Movement of Iraqi Democrats (hat-tip to Reidar Visser, there) and Jalaleddine al-Saghir of SCIRI.
But here’s the thing. In insecurity-plagued, traumatized circumstances like those in which the Shiite (and most other) Iraqis are currently living, what would persuade any individual to go against the opinion that is still sustained by a majority of members of the community with which which he/she most closely identifies? I suppose it could be a judgment that working with (rather than against) the Americans at this point would be “good” for the general interest of the person’s community of identification– or, an expectation of professional, financial, or other forms of personal advancement…
But if the Americans are also, at the same time, saying that they want this Iraqi government formed so that the occupation forces can get out, then it strikes me it is going to be hard for them to attract any Iraqis– but most especially, any Shiite Iraqis– to their anti-Jaafari scheme for any but the basest of personal motives.
Everyone knows the Americans are currently the declining power inside Iraq… So why would any Iraqis seek to hitch their wagon to them? Unless it’s for the sake of that secret bank account in Switzerland, promises of Green Cards for all members of the extended family, etc etc…
While Rice and Straw were having their “newsmaking” sleepover visit to the Green Zone Sunday/Monday, they met a bunch of Iraqi pols, of course. Including, they held a notably frosty meeting with Jaafari himself. One person they didn’t meet with, but with whom they were evidently extremely eager to communicate while there, was Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.
This AFP report from Baghdad notes that,

Both envoys praised Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the spiritual leader for much of the country’s majority Shiite community, for his aid in building a new Iraq, suggesting he could help break the political deadlock.
“Without the remarkable spiritual guidance shown by his eminence, the Grand Ayatollah Sistani, this country for all its problems it now faces would not have in its hands the potential for a better future,” said Straw.

This slavering praise of Sistani came after President Bush early last week tried to send a letter and accompanying verbal message to Sistani– but, as that AP story from March 31 there noted, the letter sat “unread and untranslated” in Sistani’s office.
The unnamed Sistani aide quoted in that AP report,

said the person who delivered the Bush letter – he would not identify the messenger by name or nationality – said it carried Bush’s thanks to al-Sistani for calling for calm among his followers in preventing the outbreak of civil war after a Shiite shrine was bombed late last month.
The messenger also was said to have explained that the letter reinforced the American position that Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari should not be given a second term. Al-Sistani has not publicly taken sides in the dispute, but rather has called for Shiite unity.
The United States was known to object to al-Jaafari’s second term but has never said so outright and in public.
But on Saturday, U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad carried a similar letter from Bush to a meeting with Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, leader of the largest Shiite political organization, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq. [As noted here.]
The al-Sistani aide said Shiite displeasure with U.S. involvement was so deep that dignitaries in the holy city of Najaf refused to meet Khalilzad on Wednesday during ceremonies commemorating the death of the Prophet Muhammad. The Afghan-born Khalilzad is a Sunni Muslim…

… So all in all, the occupying governments’ attempts at using “diplomatic strongarming” to get the Jaafari nomination withdrawn seem to have failed. What will they try next?

Last weekend, Czar George tried to deliver a direct personal veto to Iraq’s dominant parliamentary bloc, the UIA, regarding its still-extant nomination of Daawa Party head Ibrahim Jaafari to be (remain as) Prime Minister. That apparently backfired.
Now, the US-backed plotters have managed to persuade a number of UIA personalities to come out publicly to back the call that Jaafari step down. That link takes you to an NYT article by Kirk Semple and Thom Shanker, in which they report that a UIA member identified as Kassim Daoud had told them he and a number of other UIA parliamentarians now want Jaafari to step down.
They wrote that Daoud,

said a sense of responsibility to end the gridlock [!!] had compelled him to speak out.
“We all hope that he will respond because we know that he is a statesman and he will take the country’s best interest into consideration,” Mr. Daoud, who would be a possible candidate for the post, said Saturday in a brief telephone interview.

A Jaafari aide, Jawad al-Maliki, said Jaafari had no intention of doing that.
This Reuters piece describes Daoud as “a senior member of the independent group within the Alliance”. Whatever that means. (Any more info about him would of course be very useful. Please send it in as a comment!)
This AFP piece also has a quote from Daoud along similar lines. The AFP reporter adds that,

Saad Jawad Qandil, member of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), one of the key parties in the Shiite alliance, also confirmed that a number of alliance members were asking for Jaafari’s withdrawal.
“There have been numerous calls from the members of the Iraqi Alliance, on an individual basis without being the view of the entire bloc, to change the current candidate of the alliance, Jaafari, to resolve the ongoing political crisis,” Qandil told AFP.

This is interesting and significant. Because although the main US-backed candidate for PM is SCIRI pol Adel Abdul-Mahdi, in recent days– until now– SCIRI spokesmen have been rejecting US intervention and expressing continued (if perhaps not terribly fervent) support for Jaafari.
As I noted in my March 29 post here, the US claim that there is an “impasse” in the Iraqi government-formation process is quite disingenuous, since it has been US meddling that has caused the impasse so far.
Also of note: that Ayatollah Muhammad al-Yacoubi has now openly entered the Iraqi political fray. Ed Wong of the NYT wrote in today’s paper that in his Friday sermon yesterday that Yacoubi– who is the head of the pro-Sadrist Fadilah Party– called for the Bush administration to replace Zal Khalilzad as US Ambassador in Iraq…
Wong wrote that Yacoubi said,

that if the Bush administration “wants to protect itself from more failure and collapse, it should change its ambassador in Iraq, honestly and seriously build strong national military forces able to secure the country, and end the claims to occupation that are the main source of the evolution of terrorism.”

Fateful days in Iraq, indeed.