Just World News with Helena Cobban

Buried at the bottom of this report in the Dec 12 WaPo is the dryly presented news that unidentified “authorities”, presumably American,

have identified more than 1,000 detention centers across Iraq.

More than 1,000. That makes it at least 1,001, right?

That little piece of information was in a report on a raid by troops from one Iraqi government body on a detention center run by another Iraqi government body, in Baghdad last Thursday. The raiders discovered 625 prisoners in the detention center, some of whom had been very badly tortured. (Thirteen were taken directly to a hospital.)

And this is the “new Iraq” that the US has brought into the world???

Words fail me.

With four days left to the next Iraqi election, we should look at what’s happening to the lives of the six million people who live in its capital, Baghdad.
Three weeks or so ago– in the aftermath of the revelations of the anti-Sunni torture houses in Baghdad, I became very troubled by the situation in the city. I heard several reports from friends of the widespread incidence of sectarian “cleansing” in various city neighborhoods.
But maybe the generally pro-coexistence stance of the Sadrists was sufficiently strong to put a brake on that process? In this nice piece of reporting yesterday, the WaPo’s Anthony Shadid– back in Baghdad! good!– described some rides he’d taken in one of the many passenger minivans that, he says, still traverse the city’s many different kinds of neighborhoods… Go read it to get an idea of how the conversation ran among the religiously and ethnically mixed group of people– okay, make that, men– whom he rode with recently.
But then, on the other hand, there’s this report, in tomorrow’s WaPo… It tells of the revelation of yet another Interior Ministry torture house in the city:

An Iraqi official with firsthand knowledge of the search said that at least 12 of the 13 prisoners had been subjected to “severe torture,” including sessions of electric shock and episodes that left them with broken bones.
“Two of them showed me their nails, and they were gone,” the official said on condition of anonymity because of security concerns…
Investigators said they found 625 prisoners at the center but declined to give details about them. Most of the detainees found at the secret prison last month were Sunni Arabs who had been picked up by forces of the Shiite Muslim-dominated Interior Ministry.
“The team discovered a number of problems, which the ministries of Interior and Human Rights are working together to correct,” the statement said. “The facility was overcrowded: As a result, the Ministry of Justice has agreed to receive 75 detainees from this facility at Rusafa Prison; Iraqi judges released 56 detainees directly following the inspection. . . . Thirteen of the detainees were removed from the detention facility to receive medical treatment.”
…Last week, the Interior Ministry fired its top human rights official, Nouri Nouri, without providing an explanation.
Sunni political leaders charge that similar incidents of torture are occurring at other Interior Ministry detention facilities and have identified some of the sites by name.
Shiite political leaders say the U.S. military frequently visits the facilities and suggest that American authorities would know about any abuse.
Last week, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld ordered military commanders to come up with clear rules for how U.S. forces should respond if they witness detainee abuse. The order followed an exchange between Rumsfeld and Marine Gen. Peter Pace, the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, at a news conference Nov. 29.
Pace said then that it was “absolutely the responsibility of every U.S. service member if they see inhumane treatment being conducted to intervene to stop it.”
Rumsfeld said, “I don’t think you mean they have an obligation to physically stop it; it’s to report it.”
Pace responded, “If they are physically present when inhumane treatment is taking place, sir, they have an obligation to try to stop it.”
U.S. officials have said the FBI and the U.S. military are aiding the prison investigation. Authorities have identified more than 1,000 detention centers across Iraq.

How many? 1,000? Good God almighty.

I’ve been meaning for some time now to write something about the very interesting and wel-informed study that Marina Ottaway of the Carnegia Endowment published three weeks ago about the prospects for stability in Iraq. The study is called Back from the brink: A strategy for Iraq, and you can read the PDF version here
One reason I think the study’s very valuable is that Marina is a very level-headed, non-ideological person who’s done a lot of studies of deep-rooted political transitions elsewhere, particularly in South Africa and elsewhere in Africa. For the past few years she’s been helping to run the Carnegie Endowment’s “Democracy and the Rule of Law Program”, which has focused very heavily on the Middle East, and which publishes the generally calm and informative Arab Reform Bulletin.
Anyway, in Back from the Brink Marina argues, basically, that the constitution/reform process that Iraq has gone through so far has left the country in a very perilous condition:

The political system that the United States has helped set up in Iraq—not the one it envisaged, to be sure, but the one that is emerging as a result of Iraq’s realities and poor U.S. policy choices—is a house of cards. Iraq could easily splinter, with Kurds and Shias focusing inward on their own regions and abandoning Sunni provinces to turn Iraq into the equivalent of a failed state where nobody is in control and civil war and ethnic cleansing escalate. Before withdrawing its troops, the United States must do what it can to ensure that the political system of weak federalism that has emerged, while not ideal, is at least workable. That means helping to form a viable Sunni region.

She notes that,

Since 2003, Iraq has undergone a process that has unfortunately become quite common in multiethnic or multireligion countries when an authoritarian regime is removed. Politics becomes not competition among parties advocating different ideas and programs, but conflict among ethnic or confessional groups.

She argues that, whatever you think of this phenomenon, you need to accept it as, now, an existing fact of political life in Iraq– but that its negative consequences (especially for the Sunnis) need to be minimized. In particular, she argues for a strong US role in helping the Sunnis to set up their own viable “super-region” within the emerging “federal” (i.e. highly decentralized) political system in Iraq.
She identifies two critical areas in which the US needs to exert political pressure to this end. One is to encourage Iraqis to revise the approach the present (interim) constitution adopts to the division of of revenues from new (as opposed to existing) oil and gas fields. At present, the constitution gives the newly emerging “regions” control of new oil revenues, while the central government retains control only of revenue streams from the existing– in some cases nearly pumped-out fields.
Ottaway writes:

The U.S. needs to promote broad negotiations on the issue now so that Sunnis can form their own region and strengthen their autonomy. The issue is too important to be discussed by a small committee or decided by the parliament by a simple majority vote. All Iraqis need to understand the implications of not reaching an agreement on the issue of the distribution of oil
revenue. Without contravening the newly approved constitution, the United States should encourage the Iraqi government to set up immediately a broad-based advisory commission to discuss the issue and make recommendations to the parliament. The new parliament will eventually make the decision, but the discussion needs to start as soon as possible and be as broad as possible. (p.5)

Note that Kanan Makiya had also, in his NYT piece that I blogged about earlier today, argued for the deletion of present Article 109, the one that allocates new (not, as he wrote “extra”) oil revenues to the regions, rather than the central state. As he argued there, “There is no defensible case for imposing special reparations on the Sunni populace for the crimes of Iraq’s former leaders.”
Marina Ottaway, in Back from the Brink, also very helpfully reminds us of the procedure that the interim constitution decreed for the inclusion of any amendments to its existing text:

The constitution approved on October 15, 2005, is difficult to amend for several reasons. First, amendments must be approved by two-thirds of the Council of Representatives (the parliament) and by the majority of citizens in a referendum and signed by the president. Second, the sections on Fundamental Principles and Rights and Liberties cannot be amended at all for a period of two successive electoral terms—a minimum of eight years. Third, amendments that take away power from the regions can only be amended with the approval of the legislative authority of the region and with the approval of the majority of the region’s citizens in a referendum.
An agreement reached on the eve of the referendum, however, creates a temporary exceptional process to amend the constitution after the December 15 election. On a one-time basis, the new Council of Representatives will be able to set up a committee to draft amendments within four months. The amendments must be approved by a simple rather than a two-thirds majority of the council and then submitted to another national popular referendum.

So basically, for the first four months– after the election? or after the formation of the post-election government? does anyone know?– amendments will need only a simple majority in parliament plus a simple majority in a nation-wide referendum. After that, it becomes harder.
The other key obstacle she sees, in addition to the new-oil-$$ issue, to the emrgence of a viable Sunni “region” is, “the lack of clearly recognized leaders among Sunnis.”
She says, quite realistically, that, “This is not a problem the United States can address directly. In fact it is one that Washington could worsen by embracing—and thus discrediting—particular
leaders and organizations.” But she suggests that the Bush administration could help indirectly by relaxing its attitude toward de-Baathification,

and by putting pressure on the Iraqi government to do the same…
The line of exclusion needs to be clearly and rather narrowly defined. And if the prospect of a Sunni region where Baathists are influential is unappealing, it is worth considering that the alternative is even more unappealing—that Sunnis would continue to oppose the federal solution or, worse, to directly support the insurgency.

Her bottom line is this:

The only policy option now is to convince Sunnis to accept federalism and Shias and Kurds to accept that federalism will only work if there is a viable Sunni region.

Then comes this very interesting argument:

By announcing a timetable for withdrawal, the United States would apply some leverage on Shias and Kurds to make the concessions needed to develop a viable Sunni region. The present Shia–Kurdish government can afford to be intransigent as long as it is assured of U.S. protection. If the prospects for U.S. withdrawal were clearly spelled out, Shias and Kurds would have a greater incentive to make concessions to achieve a political solution.
From a military point of view, announcing a timetable for withdrawal has substantial disadvantages. This is not, however, a traditional conflict but a struggle in which political and security goals are inextricably linked and in which political actions are at least as important as the use of force. Politically, a withdrawal timetable could help divide Sunnis and weaken the insurgency, particularly if it is accompanied by clear support for a viable Sunni region and a new policy on de-Baathification. Sunni politicians would be forced to develop a policy that goes beyond opposing U.S. occupation and to focus instead on how to find their place in the new, decentralized Iraq. Former Baathists and many ordinary Sunnis who lean toward the insurgency
because they do not see a future for themselves in the new Iraq might also be enticed toward a more constructive, forward-looking position.
…Using the leverage of an announced timetable for withdrawal, the United States may be able to push Iraqis to use the agreed upon additional period of negotiating to address the issue of how Iraq can be made viable as a weak federal state. It will not be easy, but there are no other options left.

I have argued, too, that the prospect of an imminent withdrawal of the US troops can do a lot to encourage Iraqis to start think clearly about how they will start to deal with each other once the excuse/distraction/shield of a US presence is absent.
One thing that’s interesting about Marina’s argument, in comparison with the generally fairly parallel one laid out today by Kanan Makiya, has to do with the question of agency. Marina– writing for a primarily US-policy audience– is arguing for a high degree of US agency in trying to shift Iraqi politics in the direction she seeks. Kanan– writing for an undefined audience– is arguing that the existing Iraqi politicans need to take the lead in pioneering these shifts.
But here’s the interesting part: Marina is arguing for this robust US political role very rapidly, in the lead-up to the announced US troop withdrawal that she advocates. But Kanan is much more “resigned to” (or perhaps, desirous of?) a lengthy US troop presence. He writes about a period of ten years being “the time necessary to crush the insurgency, establish properly accountable institutions of law and order and ensure that those applying for such status have met the criteria.”
In other words, though ostensibly he’s arguing for the agency of the Iraqi pols, in actuality he’s envisioning that they’ll be acting from behind the shield of a large continued troop presence, one of whose tasks will be to “crush the insurgency.” Obviously, that is a much more militarized– and pessimistic– course than the one that Marina advocates.
And in Kanan’s model, too, the entire restructuring of Iraq’s legal and political institutions would be carried out under US tutelage.
What I got from reading Marina’s paper is a sense not that she supports what she calls the “ethnicization” of Iraqi politics, but rather, that she recognizes that it has happened; sees it as to a large extent irreversible (which I’m not so sure about); and sets out a fairly intelligent policy that seeks to minimize the damage from it.
Oh, there is one huge additional problem in this whole business, however… namely, the question of the national capital, Baghdad. In a side-box titled “What about Baghdad?” she writes this:

The constitution states that Baghdad cannot be annexed by any other region but makes no provisions on how it should be governed. If Iraq is divided into a Kurdish, a Shia, and a Sunni region, Baghdad is bound to become a self-governing entity.
It will not be an easy entity to govern. It has more than six million inhabitants, of which an estimated 35 percent are Shia and the rest is divided between Sunni Kurds and Sunni Arabs. In the October 15 referendum, 78 percent of Baghdadis voted in favor of the constitution, showing they accept the idea of decentralized government even if they do not know what it will mean for the city.
With its mixed population, Baghdad could easily turn into the flash point for largescale civil conflict. Or it could become a model of coexistence, if some security can be achieved and some real thought is given to how to govern it—which, so far, is an utterly neglected issue.

H’mm, that means that actually, the population of the city would be almost evenly divided among the Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds. Personally, I doubt the Kurds make up that big a proportion of the city. I would say the city’s population is likely to have a larger Shiite population much larger than 35%.
But anyway, with six million inhabitants and with its enormous historic and symbolic role, Baghdad can’t just be shunted to one side in this whole discussion of “federalization” (which, as I’ve pointed out many times, is quite the incorrect term term to us…. What’s happening is “decentralization”, “breakup”, or “devolution” of the powers of a central state; not the “federation” of a number of pre-existing smaller entities.)
But now, I see that I need to make the rest of this discussion about Baghdad into yet another new post here…

AP’s Hamza Hendawi has a good piece on Moqtada Sadr today. (Read it in conjunction with Gilbert Achcar’s recent piece, on JWN here.)
Hendawi writes:

“We had a choice to make,” said Abbas al-Robaie, al-Sadr’s chief political aide. “Either wait for 10 years, or maybe longer, for the Americans to leave and then join the political process or take our place in the process now and try to influence policy.”
Al-Sadr’s followers decided to contest a general election in January as part of a Shiite coalition that included some of his political foes. The coalition emerged as parliament’s largest bloc, with al-Sadr supporters winning nine seats and taking three Cabinet posts in Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari’s coalition.
Conscious of their large support base in Baghdad and across the south, al-Sadr’s followers insisted that the coalition guarantee them more seats in the next parliament by promoting their candidates in areas where the Shiite bloc is likely to win.
“Having them inside the coalition could cause us problems because they are strong headed and not disciplined, but leaving them out could cause even greater problems,” said Redha Jawad Taqi, a senior Shiite official. “Bringing them in achieves a measure of political calm.”
The Sadrists also have proven to be good politicians. Their three Cabinet members — running the health, transport and civil society ministries — are widely thought to have been among the better Cabinet performers, gaining a reputation for integrity and hard work.
Al-Sadr’s movement has broadened its support among Iraq’s Sunni-dominated Arab nationalists by opposing the introduction of a federal system of government in Iraq’s new constitution that will let provinces cluster in self-rule regions. Nationalists believe that federalism could lead to the breakup of Iraq.
His group also has set itself apart from traditional Shiite parties by advocating against the U.S. occupation, which some Shiite leaders have tolerated. The militia that fought the Americans remains in existence and is perhaps better organized after months of ideological indoctrination and the dismissal of members with suspect loyalty.
Some fear al-Sadr’s popularity could lead to a less secular government. Al-Sadr repeatedly has expressed his desire for an Islamic-oriented society in Iraq and has often praised groups like Hezbollah in Lebanon.
In Baghdad’s Sadr City neighborhood, his movement’s stronghold, strict Islamic dress code for women has been in force since the fall of Saddam. Liquor stores have been shut and schoolgirls, some as young as 5 or 6 years, wear Muslim headscarves.
Al-Sadr is the son of Ayatollah Mohammed Sadiq al-Sadr, a senior cleric gunned down with two of his sons in 1999 by suspected Saddam agents. The late al-Sadr’s followers form the circle of close aides surrounding his son, who has on occasion shown subtle irreverence toward Iraq’s top clerics, like Iranian-born Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani…

Today’s NYT had an important article by Kanan Makiya, who was the most significant Iraqi to be an intellectual father of the whole 2003 US invasion of Iraq. Writing nowadays with a dateline of “London”, not “Baghdad”, Makiya comes the closest he has ever come yet to articulating a “mea culpa” regarding his role instigating the invasion of his homeland.
Makiya was the self-exiled Iraqi intellectual who in 1989 published in the US– under the pen-name Samir al-Khalil– a searing criticism of the totalitarian ways of Saddam Hussein’s rule. The book was very emotional, ill-organized, and departed in many ways from the norms of a political-science study. (Not surprising, since Kanan had never trained as any kind of a social scientist. He was an architect, educated in the west on the profits his father–also an architect– made designing massive palaces for Saddam.) But given the book’s target, and the gossipy insider-y feel Makiya was able to give it, it became a smashing hit. Especially, of course, the year after its publication when Saddam invaded Kuwait and suddenly anti-Saddamism flew to the top of the US political agenda.
Throughout the whole period 1990-2003 Makiya became increasingly influential– within the US political discourse, as well as in the growing international “community” of Iraqi political exiles. He was one of the early, or perhaps even founding members of Ahmad Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress, which got large amounts of funding from the US during the 1990s. But in the US, Makiya always had much more appeal than Chalabi to people on the pro-human-rights-y “left” of the political spectrum. He became the most powerful and credible Iraqi figure able to swing large portions of the US “left” behind the idea of regime change in Iraq.
He was very active in Iraqi-oppositional circles as well. In 1992, he (and I think also Chalabi) took part in the inaugural meeting of the Kurdish “parliament”, a gathering that was held in Salahuldin, in the portion of northern Iraq that was protected from Saddamist power by the close and constant overflight of US (and British) war-planes.
In today’s NYT piece, Makiya offers a warning of almost jeremiad-like proportions about the prospects of an imminent breakup in Iraq and the chaos and civil strife that, he argues there, would almost certainly follow. (I’ll come back to that later.) He notes that this situation has come about because of the way that the country’s current Iraqi leaders have approached the idea of “federalism”. And he makes some fairly sane-sounding– though actually, at this point, not very realistic– suggestions about how a workable “federal system” might yet be salvaged for the country.
So it is not federalization itself that he’s criticizing, but the way that the current (still-unfinished) Iraqi constitution proposes doing it.
He writes this:

Continue reading “Kanan Makiya: mea culpa and more”