Just World News with Helena Cobban

I was so intrigued by Juan Cole’s (highly indirect) reference to the possibility
of Grand Ayatollah Sistani having adopted Gandhianism that I immediately
blogged
about it. Then I picked up the phone to speak to someone who, I was
confident, could give me further insight on this important topic. To
my happy surprise, my esteemed friend
Dr. Abdulaziz Sachedina
picked up the phone on the first ring.

I was surprised, because Sachedina travels a lot away from our common home-town,
Charlottesville, Virginia. Why, just last month, he made his third
visit to Iraq since the downfall of Saddam. (I felt foolish that
I had not called him earlier to say “al-hamdu lillah ala salaamtak” after
his safe return, and to ask him what he had learned on his trip.)

Sachedina, you see, is someone who knows his way around the world of Mesopotamian
Shi-ism pretty well. Born an “overseas Indian” in Tanzania in 1942,
he returned with his family to India after Tanzanian independence. He got
his first degree in India, then in 1967 he traveled to Mashhad, Iran, where
he spent four years getting a degree in Persian language and literature and
Islamic jurisprudence. While in Iran he made a broad network of friends
and colleagues in religious circles: those friends included people who are
now high up in the Iraqi and Iranian Shi-i institutional hierarchies.

“So Aziz, do you think Ayatollah Sistani has been directly influenced by
Gandhianism at all?”

Sachedina replied carefully. He said that in his contacts with Sistani,
the Ayatollah had mentioned a number of non-traditional sources for his thinking,
including what Sachedina described as “psychological tracts.” “But Gandhi’s
works? No, I don’t think so. He doesn’t believe in religious
pluralism, you have to understand that. He sees himself as speaking
for all Muslims, certainly– Sunni as well as Shi-i. But Gandhi? No,
I don’t think so… If his followers have been using Gandhian-style
tactics, then that would be more tactical than spiritual, I think.”

Sachedina and the Ayatollah go back a long way…

Continue reading “Sachedina on Sistani, etc.”

Two great pieces on Juan Cole today. The first quotes an un-named “European peace worker in Iraq” as having said:

“I

Here’s a question. Various news reports recently have spelled out that Bremer and the Bushies are now prepared to change just about any aspect of the infamous “Rube Goldberg” scheme to hold anti-democratic political “caucuses” in Iraq within the next few months– any aspect, that is, apart from the timing. Administration people across the board all seem quite adamant that the June 30 date for some kind of a political-transition “event” in Iraq is sacrosanct…
But why should everyone else in the world kowtow to that demand?
You should realize, folks, that you’re reading the words of a person who has argued here quite consistently that what the US should do is pull its troops out now, immediately, this instant, if not yesterday… I have no patience at all with people who bring forth some version of a “white man’s burden” argument that the US at least “owes it” to the poor benighted Iraqi people to stick around and do what it can to bring peace and security to their benighted country…

Continue reading “Controlling the timetable”

Robert McNamara, the man who as US Defense Secretary in the 1960s was the architect of the US escalation in Vietnam, has until now been reticent in criticizing George DUH-bya’s war on Iraq. This silence was all the more surprising because of the lengths the 87-year-old McNamara has gone to over the past decade to understand, excoriate, and apologize for the misdeeds he and his colleagues committed in Vietnam.
Now, he has spoken. Doug Saunders, a columnist for the Toronto Globe and Mail, called McNamara recently at his office in Washington DC and asked him to apply the lessons he learned about Vietnam to the present situation in Iraq.
(I found this story thru a comment “Munguza” left on Yankeedoodle’s “Today in Iraq” blog). Here’s how Saunders described McNamara’s response to his question:

“We’re misusing our influence,” he said in a staccato voice that had lost none of its rapid-fire engagement. “It’s just wrong what we’re doing. It’s morally wrong, it’s politically wrong, it’s economically wrong.”

Continue reading “McNamara speaks, finally, on Iraq”

Edward Wong of the NYT has a generally pretty thin piece in Sunday’s paper, from Najaf, detailing how he failed to catch the ear of anyone particularly close to Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani.
It’s heavy on the “color”– donkey carts, etc., etc.– and fairly light on the news content. The most interesting little tidbit came from near the end, where he wrote:

Two weeks ago, a major battle for [Sistani’s] ear was joined, when it fell to Mr. Pachachi, of the Governing Council, to lead a delegation to discuss the issue of direct elections. Mr. Rubaie [also of the IGC], who accompanied the delegation, said the ayatollah sat on the floor of his home opposite them, wearing his customary black turban and black robes. Mr. Pachachi tried explaining that there was not enough time to organize direct elections by the June 30 deadline. He produced a letter from Kofi Annan, secretary general of the United Nations, saying as much.
“That didn’t cut the ice with him,” Mr. Rubaie said. “He had already been convinced that elections were possible.”
That had come about, Mr. Rubaie said, because the ayatollah had absorbed the opinions of Iraqi census experts, the minister of trade and a senior United Nations envoy acting unofficially, all of whom had made it known to the cleric that direct elections were feasible.

Continue reading “Sistani, Annan, the letter”

Sorry I haven’t been writing for a while… No, I was not at Davos (*chuckle*)… I was locked in a very intense drafting process in Washngton DC, with a couple of dear Quaker colleagues, for the past couple of days… I hope I can announce the results of that session here, soon…
Meanwhile, Iraq’s people have carried on making history, as I started to write about in my previous post here, written Tuesday.
Since Tuesday, I have tried to keep up-to-date with, at least, the WaPo and the NYT. Oh, I also spent a couple of great hours with Sir Brian Urquhart, the former Under-Secretary-general of the UN, but that’s another story.
So here are what I’ve noted as the seven most significant developments of the past few days:
(1) Sistani and his colleagues have been cleverly continuing to modulate, build, and orchestrate their political movement… Anthony Shadid, writing from Karbala in today’s WaPo, notes that Sistani aide Abdel-Madhi Salami: “urged his followers Friday to refrain from the kind of mass protests witnessed in Iraq’s two largest cities this month until a U.N. team determines whether nationwide elections are feasible.”
Shadid wrote that this suggested that Sistani feared the large-scale protests seen earlier in the week could get out of hand if continued. A more plausible (and not totally contradictory) analysis might be that Sistani and his people want to keep the popular movement disciplined in order to maximize its effectiveness. (Gandhi did the same, remember.)
Also, I’m sure that the Grand Ayatollah realizes that the show of popular force his people put on last Monday has already had a big effect, so it’s a good idea to keep that kind of a big “demonstration” in reserve, for when it’s next needed.
You could call this a civilian-mass-organizing version of the theory of “shock and awe”…. That is, an exemplary show of force that “persuades” the opponent to change his plan drastically in the way you want him to.

Continue reading “Sistani, Clausewitz, the world”

Friends, mark your calendars. Iraq’s people are these days, finally, becoming the subjects of their own history. It now seems clear that in the process they will strike fateful blows not only to the ridiculous “Rube Goldberg election plan” proclaimed by Washington and its quasi-puppets of the IGC in November but also, beyond that, to George W. Bush’s entire concept for a US-dominated Iraq that would lead the rest of the Middle East into a relationship of long-term servitude to US commercial interests.
Such are my conclusions after reading a wide range of reporting of yesterday’s 100,000-strong, Sistani-led demonstrations in the heart of Baghdad.
Anthony Shadid’s account in the WaPo has been by far the best reporting that I’ve seen so far. What he makes clear are four key aspects of the demonstrations:

(1) The impressive organization behind them. They were announced thru the speaker systems of mosques around the city only one day before, yet they succeeded in bringing out those kinds of numbers, and from Shi-ite groups spanning many different trends.
(2) The discipline of organizers and participants. I guess that if, as a Shi-ite religious organization you have succeeded in surviving 30 years of Saddamist rule including numerous anti-Shi-ite pogroms and other genocidal campaigns, then you know a thing or two about the need for strong internal discipline…

Continue reading “Iraqis making history”