Juan Cole * Informed Comment *

Saturday, April 03, 2004

Thousands Protest Newspaper Closure in Baghdad

Some 5,000 followers of Muqtada al-Sadr marched through largely Shiite East Baghdad on Saturday, protesting the closure of his al-Hawzah newspaper. The building demonstrations come against a backdrop of continued violence in Iraq.

The night before, heavy fighting had broken out in Kufa, a town of about 120,000 near Najaf south of Baghdad, acorrding to The Washington Post It involved rocket propelled grenade fire. It is murky who was fighting whom. Kufa is the headquarters of Muqtada al-Sadr, the young, radical leader of militant ghetto Shiism in Iraq. In the past his followers have clashed with the militia of the Badr Corps, associated with the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, headed by Abdul Aziz al-Hakim. On two occasions last fall, Sadrists clashed with US military forces.

Several thousand Shiite protesters had gathered outside the headquarters of the American administration of Iraq in downtown Baghad on Friday. Press accounts differ on the size of the crowds, with The Washington Post, presumably relying on Coalition Provisional Authority sources, putting them at only 1500, while Carol Rosenberg of the Miami Herald says that called it the largest protest rally yet assembled outside the Coalition HQ, some 20,000 strong. The throngs objected to the the closure last Sunday of the al-Hawzah newspaper of Muqtada al-Sadr.

Muqtada's Baghdad representative, Sayyid Hazim al-Araqi, gave a speech to the crowd, saying that ' the U.S. and proxy Iraqis have created "streets full of thieves, carjackers and rubbish," encouraged adultery by trying to crack down on so-called honor killings and flirted with reconciliation of the reviled Baath Party by only dismissing from jobs top tier workers who swore allegiance to Saddam's movement. "We fought Saddam, and now we're fighting the Americans," the sheik said. "Listen America, Britain and Israel, there's a man named Muqtada Sadr and he gives resistance fighters their courage." '

If Muqtada did indeed get out a crowd ofso many thousands on Friday in Baghdad, it is a sign of new influence. In some instances when he called for protests, only a few hundred came out. Clearly the closing of the newspaper has struck a raw nerve in the Iraqi Shiite community.

Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, a rival of Muqtada's was able to put 100,000 protesters in the streets of Baghdad in mid-January, but they were not just outside the CPA headquarters. It seems to me clear that Shiite protesters are coming out who are not necessarily loyal to Muqtada, but just mind the idea of the American military occupation authorities telling them what they can and cannot read.

Naomi Klein of the Guardian explains some of the discontents with Paul Bremer in Iraq, especially with regard to closing Muqtada's newspaper.

posted by Juan Cole at 4/3/2004 09:20:20 AM

Gypsy Town Razed by Militant Sadrists as Den of Iniquity

The Financial Times reports, a little belatedly, that Muqtada al-Sadr's Army of the Mahdi militia raided and destroyed the town of Kawlia near Diwaniyah about 3 weeks ago.

Kawlia was a center of Iraqi "gypsies," dancing girls and prostitutes, and was a concern to the people of Diwaniyah as a place to where wives were running off to make money and sex tourism was flourishing, along with some kidnaping of girls to make them work there. The Army of the Mahdi in Diwaniyah, loyal to Muqtada al-Sadr, assaulted the town and reduced it to rubble.

In Diwaniyah the Army of the Mahdi appears to provide security in the streets, and runs informal courts and even jails.

posted by Juan Cole at 4/3/2004 09:15:42 AM

Kaplan: Is Fallujah Mogadishu?

See Fred Kaplan's suggestive comparison of Fallujah to Mogadishu at the Slate weblog.
posted by Juan Cole at 4/3/2004 09:10:08 AM

Friday, April 02, 2004

Deaths of Americans in Fallujah: In revenge for Sharon's Murder of Sheikh Yassin?

There is increasing evidence that the brutal attack on the American security guards in Fallujah, and the desecration of their bodies, was the work of Islamists seeking vengeance for the Israeli murder of Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. Leaflets found at the scene said the operation was in the name of Yassin. al-Hayat reports in its Friday edition that responsibility for the attack has been taken by a group called Phalanges of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. The group said the deaths were a "gift to the Palestinian people."

You put yourself in the shoes of an American military commander in Fallujah. He treats with the local clan leaders and Sunni clergy. He tries to get them on the side of the US. He faces hostility, but he is making some progress. And then Ariel Sharon sends US-made helicopter gunships to Gaza and has them fire missiles at people coming out of a mosque, killing 8 and wounding 24. One of the dead is a half-blind paraplegic Islamist named Sheikh Yassin. He could have easily been arrested, and had been in the 1990s. But he was incinerated in a piece of state terror instead. And all of a sudden the people of Fallujah in Iraq are pointing their fingers at the American troops and saying, 'you did this. You gave Sharon the green light.' And all the commander's hard work in building bridges collapses over night. And four US security personnel are dead, and 5 US troops are dead, and the fighting flares up. Thanks, Prime Minister Sharon. Thank you very much.

posted by Juan Cole at 4/2/2004 08:42:02 AM

Kimmitt: Fallujah will be just like Baqubah

On the killing of the US security personnel in Fallujah on Wednesday: ' GEN. KIMMITT: What I'm suggesting is that there is an incident that happened yesterday. It's going to color the way that the town of Fallujah is looked at by the military authorities responsible for that region. They're going to sit down, they're going to plan the appropriate actions. It will be a combination of what we call kinetic and non-kinetic options. Kinetic -- combat operations. Non-kinetic -- rebuilding, civil military operations. They're doing that planning now. I don't know at what point, and it probably doesn't matter at what point in the near future that goes in -- they go in, but they will go in, and just as they have done in so many other towns like Fallujah -- six months ago Samarra was a hotspot, Tikrit was a hotspot, Baqubah was a hotspot, and patient application of kinetic and non-kinetic combat power over time has proven to be the best measure for bringing these cities along. '

Baqubah? Pacified? Just a quick Lexis search turned up some evidence to the contrary.

Bloomberg Mar. 31: ' Two bodyguards for the governor of Diyala province and three bystanders were hurt in Baqubah in a car bombing today that killed the attacker, the U.S. said. The governor wasn't hurt, when the bomb went off next to his vehicle. '

AP Mar. 27 ' On Friday the Pentagon announced that Spc. Adam D. Froehlich, 21, of Pine Hill, N.J., died Thursday in Baqubah from injuries sustained when his patrol was hit by such a bomb, which the military calls an improvised explosive device. '

Wire Services Mar. 18 ' Meanwhile north of Baghdad in Baqubah, an unidentified group killed three Iraqi journalists working for the new television channel created by the U.S. occupation forces '

AP Feb 26: ' A bomb planted in a police vehicle that was parked outside a restaurant killed an Iraqi police officer and wounded eight other people north of Baghdad on Thursday, the latest deadly attack on Iraqi security forces. A group of policemen were having lunch in the restaurant in the city of Baqouba, 50 kilometers north of Baghdad when the explosive was apparently slipped into the vehicle. '

AP Jan. 29: ' A roadside bomb exploded Thursday in a central Iraqi city in the volatile Sunni Triangle, wounding five people, police said. The bomb was placed on a road near a sports stadium in Baqouba and exploded during the morning rush hour, Iraqi police Capt. Mohammed Saleh said. He said five Iraqi civilians were wounded. '

posted by Juan Cole at 4/2/2004 08:32:16 AM

3 US Troops Wounded, 6 Iraqis Killed

Wire services report that guerrillas near Fallujah wounded three US troops with a roadside bomb on Thursday. Also yesterday, guerrillas in northern Baghdad wounded at least one Iraqi when they set off two explosions near a US-escorted fuel convoy.

In Ramadi, guerrillas detonated a car bomb at the market Wednesday evening, killing 6 Iraqi civilians and wounding 4.

posted by Juan Cole at 4/2/2004 08:15:53 AM

Tomdispatch: "Rice and Beans"

Tom Engelhardt of Tomdispatch.com discusses the odd maneuvering of the Bush administration around the testimony of National Security Adviser Condi Rice and the president and vice president before the September 11 Commission. Rice will now testify in public and under oath, but Bush and Cheney will testify in private, together, with no official transcript. Bush and Cheney act suspiciously as though they have something to hide and are afraid that if they testify separately, they won't be able to keep their story consistent. It is like two wise guys in police interrogation; the best way to trip them up about their alibis is to get them in separate rooms talking on their own, and then compare the two stories for discrepancies. Bush and Cheney are attempting to avoid such a potential debacle, one supposes. But if you have to stay together to keep your story straight, then the story is unlikely to be an account of the actual events.

posted by Juan Cole at 4/2/2004 08:08:52 AM

Thursday, April 01, 2004

9 Americans Killed in and around Fallujah; Bodies Desecrated

The amount of violence against Americans on Wednesday was remarkable, with 5 US soldiers killed by a roadside bomb and four civilian security men killed in Fallujah. But what was really striking was the quality of the violence.

An angry crowd dragged the bodies of the dead security men from their gutted vehicle and spent energy and time to inflict various indignities on the corpses, beating them, tying some of them up under a bridge over the Euphrates, and then dragging them behind cars.

Although we are calling them security, the four American civilians killed were very likely ex-US military, most probably from special operations units like the Navy Seals. The special ops units have been losing men to the private security firms, who pay between $100,000 a year and $200,000 a year, rather more than do the US armed services. And, it seems to me likely that the people in Fallujah knew that they had hold of US military men.

What would drive the crowd to this barbaric behavior? It is not that they are pro-Saddam any more, or that they hate "freedom." They are using a theater of the macabre to protest their occupation and humiliation by foreign armies. They were engaging in a role reversal, with the American cadavers in the position of the "helpless" and the "humiliated," and with themselves playing the role of the powerful monster that inscribes its will on these bodies.

This degree of hatred for the new order among ordinary people is very bad news. It helps explain why so few of the Sunni Arab guerrillas have been caught, since the locals hide and help them. It also seems a little unlikely that further US military action can do anything practical to put down this insurgency; most actions it could take would simply inflame the public against them all the more.

It seems likely to me that the guerrilla violence will continue for years, since it has a firm class base in the Sunni Arab rentiers who had benefitted from Sunni dominance in the Baath, and to whom the best jobs, infrastructure and most power had been thrown. They are not going to be quietly reduced to a small powerless and much less wealthy minority.

The only hope is political. The Sunni Arabs have to be convinced that they are not playing a zero-sum game. A zero-sum game is one where there is only one pie, and it always stays the same size. In a zero-sum game, if your rivals get a bigger piece of the pie, then your piece will inevitably shrink.

But politics does not have to be a zero-sum game. The Iraqi economy has the potential to expand greatly. So the pie won't stay the same size, and Shiites could get richer without robbing the Sunni Arabs. Likewise, in a parliamentary system, the Sunni Arabs could make coalitions with Kurds and moderate Shiites in such a way as to be a key player and to retain a great deal of political power and to forestall the radical Shiites from taking over. A minority can leverage its power by being a swing vote.

Unless the Sunni Arabs are drawn into parliamentary politics and convinced that the new game is not a zero-sum game, the bombs will continue to go off.

AFP adds:

' In Baaquba, north of Baghdad, four policemen and six civilians were wounded in a car bomb explosion that shook residents awake early Wednesday, police said.

In the northern city of Mosul, mortar fire targeted a US military base during the night, according to an officer of the Iraqi Civil Defence Corps (ICDC) paramilitary forces.

There was no confirmation from the US military.

And in the central Shiite holy city of Najaf, about 200 students demonstrated outside city hall to protest recent police "repressive acts". '

posted by Juan Cole at 4/1/2004 08:58:31 AM

Thousands of Shiites Protest in Downtown Baghdad

It wasn't in the headlines in US media because of the violence in Fallujah, but several thousand angry Shiites demonstrated in downtown Baghdad on Wednesday, protesting the closure of the al-Hawzah newspaper of Muqtada al-Sadr by the Coalition Provisional Authority. The young radical cleric, Muqtada, has only occasionally in the past been able to stage demonstrations of that size; sometimes only a few hundred come out when he calls for rallies.

Such protests can either peter out over time, or they can grow to dangerous proportions. I think it is fair to say that closing the newspaper was an unpopular move among most Iraqis, for whom it seemed redolent of Saddam's techniques. Even secular journalists protested the move.

Mohamed Bazzi argued that the closure of his newspaper would give Muqtada new prominence and visibility after several months in which he had been increasingly eclipsed by Grand Ayatollah Sistani. Bazzi thinks that Muqtada had been losing popularity, even in the slums of Sadr City in East Baghdad, but that religious Shiites are unanimous in condemning the closing down of al-Hawzah.

Bazzi's analysis seems borne out by Muqtada's ability to get out several thousand protesters on Wednesday.

posted by Juan Cole at 4/1/2004 08:34:01 AM

Zubaidi: No right of Return, Compensation for Iraqi Jews

The Iraqi minister of Housing and Rebuilding, Bayan Baqir al-Zubaidi, denied Wednesday that the current Iraqi governing council had passed laws giving Iraqi Jews the right to return and to reclaim their lost property.

(Until 1948 there was a large Iraqi Jewish community, and in the twentieth century, Baghdad was a third to a half Jewish. Jews were disproportionately well off, and played a multitude of central roles, from novelist to jeweler. After the state of Israel was formed in 1948, Iraqi Jews increasingly became the target of Arab anger because of massacres of Palestinians, razing of villages, and the brutal expulsion of 750,000 or so Palestinians from Palestine by the Israelis. The Israelis have never paid any compensation to the Palestinians for the property usurped from them. It was grossly unfair that the Iraqi Jews were punished for what happened in Palestine; most of them had been uninterested in Zionism and were unconnected to those event. Many felt discriminated against once they went to Israel, which was dominated by Ashkenazim or European Jews)

Al-Zubaidi pointed out that the interim constitution only promises the right of return and of compensation for expropriated property to Iraqis who suffered persecution under the Baath government. (The Jews were chased out of the country in the early 1950s under the monarchy, which lasted until 1958. The Baath did not come to power to stay until 1968). He also suggested that if US soldiers and civilians, with all their security, were not safe in Iraq, then it would be hard for Iraqi-Israeli Jews to wander freely about the country buying up real estate (as is falsely rumored).

Actually, I think Iraqi Jews should have the right to return, and to be compensated for their losses. But I think that right should be negotiated by the UN or the Arab League and should be made dependent on the Palestinians receiving compensation for their losses, and given the same rights with regard to returning to Israel as are offered to Iraqi Jews with regard to Iraq.

Here is part of a transcript of a recent CNN report on Iraqi anti-semitism:

' IRAQ UPDATE AND ANTI-SEMITISIM (CNN INTERNATIONAL, 05:30 (GMT+2), MARCH 30, 2004)

Iraq Update:

REPORTER: A fire-breathing Muslim cleric leads believers in a chorus of 'Down with Israel.'

In Iraq, hatred of Israel, Zionists and Jews has become more -- not less -- poisonous since the American occupation. Many Iraqis now see last year's war as an Israeli-American plot to keep Iraq weak and divide the nation into separate Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish enclaves. Even Iraqi intellectuals believe it.

SAAD JAWAD: Whatever is happening here in Iraq is not in the interest even of the United States -- this chaos and instability and security.

In fact it's in the interest of Israel.

REPORTER: Israel's assassination of Palestinian Sheikh Ahmad Yassin in Gaza fueled the hatred. And any tragedy like this recent car bomb is suspected of being a Jewish plot on Baghdad's streets.

DR. OMAR AL-RAWI: They are kill the Muslims. They are destroy the Muslims' country.

They're -- all the war that happen here in Iraq or in Palestine or anywhere, this is directed and pushed through the Jewish people.

REPORTER: Iraqi newspapers fan the anti-Semitism. One recently published these allegations --

Israel has 560 spies here, some disguised as American soldiers.

200,000 Israeli Jews buying up prime real estate to re-colonize Iraq.

Another claim -- that Israel and the United States plan to expand the Jewish state into Iraq.

WOMAN (VIA TRANSLATOR): How can they come back with all the blood on their hands? We know they're buying houses here . . .

REPORTER: The American experiment in Iraq was not supposed to work like this. A year ago the Bush administration openly envisioned a new, more liberal and tolerant Iraq.

Instead Iraqis seem more xenophobic now. And there are growing fears one possible outcome here might just as easily be an Islamic state as a democracy.

Walter Rodgers, CNN Baghdad.
'
posted by Juan Cole at 4/1/2004 08:08:27 AM

Wednesday, March 31, 2004

Wolfowitz of Baghdad?

Rumors are flying around official Washington that the new US ambassador in Iraq as of July 1 will be Paul Wolfowitz. He is currently deputy Secretary of Defense, but probably could not have continued into a second Bush term. He is associated with the worst mistakes of Iraq-- concentrating in 2001 on Saddam rather than on al-Qaeda, hyping Saddam's supposed weapons of mass destruction, insisting that Iraqis would welcome a US occupation with garlands, thinking Iraqi Shiites were "secular" and had no sensitive holy cities in that country, and backing the corrupt financier Ahmad Chalabi and his militia as successors to Saddam and the Baath. He is probably already a liability to Bush in this election. There were earlier rumors that he might step down this spring.

Sending him to Baghdad as ambassador would solve a problem for Bush domestically, perhaps. But having a Likudnik* run the US embassy in Baghdad would be a complete disaster for US policy in Iraq and in the whole region. It would be proof positive to the insurgents in Iraq that the US intends to reshape the country in accordance with a Zionist agenda and make Iraqis the bitches of Ariel Sharon [Mind you, I think this conspiratorial way of thinking illegitimate, but it is already a theme in Iraqi popular political discourse]. It seems unlikely to me that Wolfowitz could get the cooperation of the Shiite clerics.

You also wonder whether Wolfowitz could be a successful ambassador, given the way he has sidelined and badmouthed the State Department. Wouldn't the foreign service officers find ways to sabotage him?

-----------

*the objection to calling Wolfowitz a Likudnik is often raised, that he believes in a Palestinian state. But even Sharon says that. Wolfowitz is probably closer to the Sharansky faction in Israeli politics (which is in coalition with Likud) than to Sharon, but he is still on the Right and would not exactly vote Labor. It is a little unlikely that the Arab street will be interested in these distinctions.

posted by Juan Cole at 3/31/2004 06:50:24 PM

8% of Iraqi academics have Fled, 1000 Professionals Assassinated in past Year

Ahmad Janabi reports that

' More than 1000 leading Iraqi professionals and intellectuals have been assassinated since last April, among them such prominent figures as Dr Muhammad al-Rawi, the president of Baghdad University. The identity of the assailants remains a mystery and none have been caught. '

Political scientist Dhafir Salman is quoted as saying that although many Iraqi intellectuals fled the country during the sanctions regime in the 1990s, ' under the occupation the rate of emigration has increased. "Iraqi universities have lost 1315 scientists who hold MA and PhD degrees," al-Ani said. "This number constitutes eight per cent of the 15,500 Iraqi academics. "Up until now, 30% of those who were sacked as result of the [de-baathification] campaign have left Iraq." '

In my view, a lot of the assassinations have been carried out by individuals with Baath-era grudges or by radical Shiite militiamen. But some of them could just be personal grudge-settling. (I saw this phenomenon--of personal grudge-settling, not with regard to academic--in Beirut during the Civil War. When there is social chaos, neighbors with rifles who don't like another neighbor sometimes just take a pot shot at him through his kitchen window. It is a little unlikely that the shooter will be caught when there are few effective police and bigger fish to fry).

There has been a struggle during the past year over de-Baathification. Party membership was forced on a lot of capable people. Ahmad Chalabi wants to do massive de-baathification, which means even minor party members would be blackballed. This is apparently what is happening in the universities. Others have suggested only banning or conducting reprisals against the people who committed crimes or held fairly high party or military posts. My impression is that the latter policy was followed in post-war Germany, and that the Nazi high school teachers just went on teaching. Likewise professors like Martin Heidegger were not locked up or killed, even though Heidegger fired his Jewish colleagues and was certainly a fellow traveler of the Nazi regime.

There is a contrast to be made here in revolutionary situations. In 1949 when the Chinese Communists came to power, they actively tried to keep entrepreneurs and professionals in the country, and made special arrangements to allow that. In contrast, in 1979 when Khomeini carried out the clerical revolution in Iran, the hardliners chased most of the really talented professionals out of the country. Iran suffered horribly as a result.

So, the Coalition Provisional Authority and the Interim Governing Council can do things the Chinese way, or the Khomeini way. It looks as though Chalabi is taking them in the Khomeini direction. It can't be good for the future of Iraq to lose nearly 10% of its academics. Some of those may have been involved in Baath Party dirty tricks, but were all? And, the campaign of assassination makes a mockery of the rhetoric about democratization.

posted by Juan Cole at 3/31/2004 02:48:13 PM

UN Excluded from Overseeing Elections

Al-Hayat reports that the Interim Governing Council (IGC) is rejecting any role for the United Nations in overseeing Iraqi elections save that of "help and consultation). Iraqi National Congress spokesman Intifadh Qanbar said that the UN delegation was told by the IGC that elections would have to be a purely Iraqi affair,
that Iraqis would have to take the leading role in them, and that there would be no UN role in administering elections. He also said that no interference would be brooked from Iraq's neighbors.

Qanbar and the INC sharply criticized UN special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi for having opposed the first Gulf War (which aimed at forcing Saddam back out of Kuwait), and blamed him for meeting with Saddam in 1998. He also criticized Brahimi's statement that Iraq might face a civil war. Muhammad Bahr al-Ulum, a cleric now in the last days of his temporary presidency of the IGC, had also complained two days ago in Kuwait that Brahimi's report on Iraq had lacked balance.

Ahmad Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress has rejected charges that he had misused American funds, saying that such charges derived from the CIA and that they were false.

Chalabi was supported by the CIA and the State Department around 1992 to 1996 or so, when they dropped him because he could not give an accounting of the millions of dollars they had given him to overthrow Saddam. He was then picked up by the Pentagon instead, and especially once the Bush administration came to power.

The attempt by the INC to marginalize Brahimi and the United Nations reflects Chalabi's fear that he would not be able to win a fair, UN-supervised election. One fears he plans on vote-buying and other corrupt acts to be elected or appointed to a high Iraqi governing post, possibly as Prime Minister. Although the al-Hayat story says that the IGC wants to limit the UN role, if one looks carefully this move seems to be coming mainly from Chalabi and his people.

posted by Juan Cole at 3/31/2004 07:31:49 AM

Sistani: Elections must be Held soon

az-Zaman/Wire Services:

A spokesman for Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani says that elections must be held as soon as possible, and that anything done before the people have spoken is illegitimate. He is quoted as saying that "the principal political forces are not calling for an Islamic republic." He said that Iraqis are well aware of the dangers of ethnic conflict and that they "do not call for the establishment of religious government. "

Sistani just wants a government that will respect the universally acknowledged Islamic principles. The state should respect the rights of minorities, he said.

Sistani is portrayed in some quarters as a Khomeini wannabe and as indistinguishable from Muqtada al-Sadr.

Going on what he says, though, he envisages a situation in Iraq analogous to that in Ireland for most of the 20th century. That is, the Catholic church did not rule; there was a secular parliament for that purpose. But the church effectively weighed in on legislation it thought affect it. Likewise, Sistani says he doesn't want ayatollahs actually running the government. But they should intervene with fatwas or rulings when legislation arises that affects Islamic issues.

posted by Juan Cole at 3/31/2004 07:30:39 AM

Is the failure of the Arab Summit a Failure of Bush's Democratization Plan?

Rob Collier of the San Francisco Chronicle examines the issues around the collapse of the Arab League summit that had been planned for Tunis, asking if the "Greater Middle East" plan of the Bush administration, which pushes democratization, is having any effect.

' U.S. officials hoped that the summit would set the region on a path toward Western-style free elections and free markets. But commentators in the United States and the Middle East say the administration has instead made matters worse by appearing to shove democracy down the throats of reluctant Arab leaders.

"The Greater Middle East Initiative is going nowhere fast," said Andrew Apostolou, a Mideast analyst at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a conservative Washington think tank. "The problem is that Arab states are in no mood to agree to any form of externally generated freedoms, and I see no way out of this. I don't think the Bush administration has handled this well." '

I am quoted saying that I thought the war on terror and the invasion of Iraq have if anything caused severe setbacks for civil liberties and democratization in the region. Iraq's chaos is enough to scare anyone in the region into thinking maybe a little authoritarianism is better, as long as you don't have to worry about your kids being kidnapped or your mosque being blown up. The US has encouraged governments like Tunisia and Yemen to take Draconian measures because of the war on terror (it should be recognized that terrorists are mostly only conspirators before they pull off an operation, so the temptation, as in Egypt in the 1990s, is to put thousands in jail for thought crimes). The Iranian hardliners have encaged the reformers. I don't see any positive effect of Bush administration policies in the region. Positive views of the US in the region have fallen to like 10% a lot of places. The US vetoing UN SC condemnation of Sharon's government for firing helicopter gunship rockets at a paraplegic was probably the last straw for a lot of people. I doubt the Bush administration has any credibility anywhere in the region. That it is going to "reshape" anything when its HQ in Baghdad is under routine rocket attack seems to me a little unlikely.

posted by Juan Cole at 3/31/2004 06:36:08 AM

Tuesday, March 30, 2004

Changing Status of Shiites in Arab World

Hamza Hendawi of AP reports on the implications of a Shiite-majority Iraqi government for Arab world politics. He points to the Shiite majority in Bahrain (though the emir there is a Sunni), and the substantial Shiite populations in Lebanon, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.

Hendawi notes that Shiites have no legal right to practice their rituals publicly in Egypt. This fact is breathtaking. It would be as though Protestants could not open a church and worship in Italy or Ireland.

Hendawi interviewed me and others for this piece:

Excerpt:

' " As Iraq's majority Shiites emerge from a history of brutal repression under Saddam Hussein, free at last to speak their minds and practice their religious rituals in public, experts are busy assessing the impact.

''Iraq seems to me now to be creating the first officially multicultural country in the Arab world,'' said Juan R. Cole of the University of Michigan, a prominent American expert on Iraqi Shiites.

''It will be the first Arab country to have an elected Shiite majority in parliament ... if things work out as planned,'' he said.

Sunni Arabs and Kurds, however, point to what they see as sectarian behavior by some Shiite politicians. Shiites are divided among themselves and lack a unified leadership. The more secular among them worry that the clergy could turn Iraq into an Iranian-style theocracy. Iranian clerical influence is already keenly felt in the Shiite south of Iraq.

''If the empowerment goes relatively smoothly and the Shiites handle their new power and more significant role well, it can be a source of both the reassertion of Iraqi Shiism's leadership role and a source of pride for many Shiites, especially those in the Gulf,'' said John L. Esposito of Georgetown University. '
posted by Juan Cole at 3/30/2004 09:20:29 PM

Shape of Things to Come

UPI is reporting that the Interim Governing Council is considering the form of the Iraqi government to which sovereignty will be handed on June 30.

Previous plans had called for a more representative and expanded body, of 100 or more delegates, with more representation for tribal sheikhs and clerics who had been excluded from the 25-member body currently in place.

UPI reports that, instead, the IGC current thinking is to slim down to a 3-man presidency that will in turn appoint government ministers, presumably mainly from among the current IGC members. That is, the transitional government that will oversee Iraq until elections (scheduled for January 2005) will be no more representative than the current IGC, and power will be concentrated in even fewer hands. Corrupt figures like Ahmad Chalabi may well be in the 3-man presidency.

Such a transitional government will suffer from severe illegitimacy and unpopularity. There is also a danger that people like Chalabi will jerry-rig the election process.

Arnaud de Borchgrave speculates that the three presidents will be Adnan Pachachi, Abdulaziz al-Hakim, and Massoud Barzani, and that they will appoint Chalabi prime minister. He said everyone is afraid of Chalabi because the Pentagon allowed his militia to capture Iraqi intelligence documents that implicate lots of people in taking money from Saddam.

az-Zaman says that some rumors have Chalabi competing with Iyad Alawi for the prime ministership. But it says that its sources in the CPA and the Interim Governing Council assert that Alawi will be head of the national security council or of the interior minister (i.e. domestic intelligence).

Alawi, who has deep links to ex-Baathist officers, really should be kept away from internal security.

posted by Juan Cole at 3/30/2004 09:18:17 PM

Monday, March 29, 2004

Muqtada's Newspaper Closed, 1000 Demonstrate

AP is reporting that the Coalition Provisional Authority has closed the weekly newspaper of radical young Shiite cleric, Muqtada al-Sadr, al-Hawzah. It is charged with fomenting violence against US troops. The US military authorities seriously considered arresting Muqtada last October, but in the end decided that would cause more trouble than it was worth (wisely enough). They did however threaten him, and as a result he quietened down and became more conciliatory for a while. In the past two months he has become more and more vitriolic in his public statements, perhaps emboldened by the prospect of a return to Iraqi sovereignty this summer.

The newspaper has carried scurrilous stories accusing the US of being behind some of the bombings of Shiites. I know it is tempting for some analysts to suspect the US military of Machiavellian actions. But it simply is not true that the US is firing missiles into Shiite mosques. It makes no sense. The Shiites are among the few friends they have left.

About 1,000 Sadrists came out to demonstrate in front of the newspaper's offices, and one suspects that such demonstrations may well multiply as the date for the dissolution of the CPA draws near. There is a real question as to whether cracking down on the newspaper like this will make things better or worse. Since Muqtada has a tight network of mosque preachers throughout the south, he is perfectly capable of getting out his views without a newspaper, through the sermons of his lieutenants. Likewise, he gets quoted in Iran-based Arabic language television and radio broadcasts.

Although it is true that al-Hawzah has offered provocations, it is also likely the case that the US is seeking ways of taking away Muqtada's megaphone so that he doesn't do anything to ruin the hand-over of sovereignty on June 30.

Alissa Rubin of the LA Times reports that the CPA has also closed an informal court run by Muqtada in Najaf, and released prisoners who had been sentenced to being held and tortured in its basement. Muqtada's organization is said to maintain such courts and prisons all over the country.

posted by Juan Cole at 3/29/2004 07:28:48 AM

Clarke: Difference Between Clinton and Bush

For readers who don't scroll all the way down, just wanted to draw your attention to my posting late Sunday on what Clarke means when he says fighting terrorism was a more urgent consideration for the late Clinton administration than for the early Bush one. I argue that it isn't a matter of policy, but rather of specific cabinet-level procedures instituted by Clinton and abandoned by Bush.
posted by Juan Cole at 3/29/2004 07:25:54 AM

Mosul: Barwari Escapes Assassination; US MPs wounded, Western Security Guards Killed

Public Works Minister Nasrin Barwari narrowly escaped an assassination attempt while traveling to Mosul on Sunday, , according to AP. She is the only female minister appointed by the Interim Governing Council. She is a Kurd, and a feminist, and led the movement to prevent the abolition of civil personal status law in favor of Islamic codes last winter. Heavily Arab Mosul, where there are strong radical Islamist and Baathist currents, is inhospitable territory for her.

Reuters reports litany of mayhem in Iraq on Sunday.

In Mosul, as well, guerrillas sprayed machine gun fire at two US military police, wounding them. In a separate incident, they took out a Stryker transport vehicle, but did not cause any casualties.

Guerrillas in the city hit the car of two security guards, a Briton and a Canadian, with rpg fire, killing them. They were escorting civilian engineers to a power plant. Other guerrillas had earlier conducted a drive-by shooting against two employees of the US-run Iraqi media network.

Another guerrilla grenade attack wounded an Iraq policeman in the city center. Guerrillas fired an RPG at city hall, missed, and hit a boy's school; luckily the grenade was a dud and did not go off.

Five Iraqi civilians, including three children, were wounded when guerrillas set of a bomb near Baqubah that probably targetted an Iraqi contractor working for the Americans.

posted by Juan Cole at 3/29/2004 07:20:20 AM

Juan Cole's columns are Syndicated by Agence Global 1.336.686.9002 sales@agenceglobal.com

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