Zawahiri: Obama is the anti-Malcolm X

Ayman al-Zawahiri attacked Barack Obama in a video released on the internet on Tuesday. Fox News reprinted the whole transcript here. I'm a little bit confused by this step, since I thought the US networks had agreed under pressure from Bush only to carry excerpts from al-Qaeda, and the US elite has been deeply critical, to say the least, of Aljazeera for carrying 2-minute clips. (Of course, all this brouhaha is hypocritical, since Rupert Murdoch's satellite service in Asia carries both Aljazeera and Aljazeera English; Murdoch owns Fox News). Fox seems to be the only network carrying the full English text (which was provided by al-Sahab, the al-Qaeda video production company (see the videos below).

The headline in most comments on the video was that al-Zawahiri used a racist slur against Obama, calling him a "house Negro" and referring to the distinction Malcolm X made between pro-white slaves who lived next to the mansion, and the "field Negros" who toiled beneath the whip and hated their master.

In the video, al-Zawahiri does pointedly refer to Malcolm X's distinction. But he speaks in Arabic of "`abid al-bayt," "the house slave," and does not use the word "Negro" (which the al-Sahab translators are rendering 'zinji.') The connotations and implications are much the same, but it is not exact to say that al-Zawahiri used the phrase "house Negro" himself.

The Egyptian physician and mass murderer made a key error in his analysis, however, since if we were to take Malcolm X's parable seriously, Barack Obama would have to be assigned the role of the master.

In the past 50 years, the United States has, by dint of enormous daily ethical struggle, altered the dynamics of race. It is no longer the case that African-Americans only have a choice of serving under a white elite or rebelling against it. They can enter the elite in their own right. There is still a great deal of economic and educational inequality, and one election will not suddenly change that, but America's Apartheid days are gone. Al-Zawahiri, formed intellectually in the late 1960s, is stuck in a paradigm, of a worldwide revolution of people of color against the white global ruling class, which is nonsensical when Japan and China have the second and fourth largest economies, respectively, and when the United States has an African-American president.

Ironically 89 percent of the true heirs of Malcolm X, the contemporary American Muslim community, voted for Obama; and they had a 95 percent turnout, the highest in their history.

Al-Zawahiri celebrates what he sees as the US admission of defeat in Iraq (insofar as it has committed to leave by 2011). That al-Zawahiri can gloat about the withdrawal in this way underlines how foolish Bush and his cronies were to attempt to militarily occupy, over a period of several years, a major Arab Muslim country with a strong history of popular resistance to imperialism. Bush by his arrogance and ignorance granted this talking point to al-Qaeda.

Still, it has to be said that radical Sunni fundamentalism was never a majority tendency among Iraqi Sunnis, and appears to be spiralling down into insignificance. The real victor in Iraq is not al-Qaeda and its ideological soul mates, but rather the pro-Iranian Shiite government of Nuri al-Maliki. Al-Zawahiri viciously attacked Iran in his last video, and spoke darkly of an Iranian alliance with the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan.

So if Bush was defeated in Iraq, so was al-Zawahiri and al-Qaeda.

Al-Zawahiri complains about Barack Obama's warm feelings for Israel and his willingness to pray alongside Jews, characterizing that gesture as a declaration of enmity toward Muslims. But Egypt and Jordan are majority-Muslim and they have peace treaties with Israel; and 65 percent of American Muslims believe that a peace settlement can be reached with Israel that is also fair to the Palestinians. So the issue cannot be one of simply enmity toward Islam (are Egyptians and Jordanians self-hating Muslims?)

The terrorist mastermind is even more scathing toward Obama's hopes of talking to Iran and of sending more troops to fight in Afghanistan. "That has failure written all over it," al-Zawahiri pronounced.

It is absolutely clear toward the end of the video that al-Zawahiri is petrified of Obama's popularity and is very afraid that he will be a game-changer in relations between the Muslim world and the United States. Hence his flailing around talking about house slaves, as though Obama were not (as of Jan. 20) himself the most powerful man in the world, catapulted into his position by nearly half of American whites (who voted for him in higher proportions than they did for Clinton, Bush and Kerry).

Al-Zawahiri has seen a lot of Muslim politics, and if he is this afraid of Obama, it is a sign that the new president has enormous potential to deploy soft power against al-Qaeda, and al-Zawahiri is running scared, trying to pretend it is still the 1960s, when it just isn't.

Hassan al-Subaihi argues that before the election, Arabs overwhelmingly supported Obama, but that his appointment of Israeli-American Rahm Emanuel as White House Chief of Staff has divided them into a number of camps, each with a different view of the new president. Ironically, he finds that Palestinian intellectuals are among the most realistic and yet positive about Obama. The least hopeful are the radical fundamentalists (e.g. Hamas) and the poorly educated.

Obama has the opportunity to be the most popular US president in the Middle East since Eisenhower. If he is wise, he will defeat al-Zawahiri not just by military means but by stealing away al-Zawahiri's own intended constituency. Obama is about building communities up; al-Zawahiri is about destroying them. If Obama can convince the Arab publics of this basic fact, he will win.

The Zawahiri video is subtitled in English:

The Zawahiri video, Part I:



And, here is Part II:

Security Agreement Requires all US Troops Out of Iraq by 2011; Blocs in Parliament Maneuver to Defeat It

McClatchy has published an English translation of the draft security agreement between the Iraqi government and the Bush administration.

Leila Fadel of McClatchy's reads the agreement as calling for all US troops to be out of Iraq by the end of 2011:

' If Iraq's parliament endorses the agreement, in six weeks American forces would have to change the way they operate in Iraq, and all U.S. combat troops, police trainers and military advisers would have to leave the country by Dec. 31, 2011. President-elect Barack Obama's campaign plan to leave a residual force of some 30,000 American troops in Iraq would be impossible under the pact. Unless the agreement is amended, which would require the formal written approval of both sides, in three years there no longer would be any legal basis for U.S. armed forces or civilian contractors of the Department of Defense to remain in Iraq. If Iraq wants American forces to leave earlier, it could terminate the agreement with one year's notice. The United States has the option to do the same. '

Also, of course, the agreement can be immediately altered if both sides mutually agree to do so.

PM Nuri al-Maliki went on Iraqi t.v. to push for passage of the security agreement. The problem with t.v. in Iraq is that the electricity is off so much of the day that a lot of people cannot see any particular such program.

Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that controversy rages in raging in Baghdad over the security agreement with Washington that was passed by the Iraqi cabinet on Sunday. The Kurdistan Alliance, the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI), and the Islamic Da'wa (Missionary) Party were all attempting to line up the votes in parliament to pass it. In contrast,the Sadr Movement was seeking to put together a coalition of parties to oppose the agreement and stop it from being passed by parliament.

The Iraqiya Party of Iyad Allawi has announced that it has severe reservations about the agreement, and would prefer that Iraq go back to the UN Security Council for an extension of its mandate to the multinational forces rather than signing a bilateral treaty with the US.

The Sunni fundamentalist Iraqi Accord Front also announced that it had reservations about the agreement on Tuesday. Adnan Dulaimi demanded that the remaining thousands of Iraqi Sunnis in US custody be released as part of the price for IAF support of the measure.

The Sadrists have 30 seats in parliament, the Iraqiya has 25, and the Iraqi Accord Front has 44, for a total of 99. They need 138 of 275 (though since not all the MPs are likely to show up, they need 51 percent of the quorum of MPs that does attend the session). It is not clear to me where the Iraqi Dialogue Front, with 11 seats, stands (ex-Baathist secular Sunnis). If they reject the agreement, that would bring the opposition to 110. They would need to pick up 28 Shiite independents in order to block the agreement.

But if ISCI and Da'wa strongly support the agreement, these two powerful parties may well be able to sway the independent Shiites to vote for it..

Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani's office announced that he is studying the text and will only grant his approval once he is satisfied that it preserves national sovereignty and that a national consensus forms around it. He charged the Iraqi parliament with investigating whether it met those two conditions.

The text of the announcement said, "Sistani informed various political leaders in past days and weeks of the necessity that any agreement must aim at ending the foreign presence in Iraq and removing the country from Chapter 7 of the United Nations Charter, on two bases. The first is that it must preserve the highest interests of the Iraqi people, past and future, recover for Iraq its complete sovereignty, and bring security and stability. The second is that there must be a national consensus about it. Without these two, no such agreement can be acceptable."

Meanwhile, the speaker of the Iranian parliament, Ali Larijani, came out against the agreement. (The rest of the Iraqi establishment seems happy with the 2011 deadline for withdrawal of all US troops. Larijani will probably run for president next spring-summer, and he may be adopting a hard line stance on this issue in hopes of gaining propularity with the Iranian voters.

Al-Hayat also says that in advance of the provincial elections in Iraq now scheduled for 31 January, a conflict has broken out among Shiite parties in the south. The struggle was provoked by the High Electoral Commission, which granted the request of MP Abd al-Latif al-Wa'ili (Independent, supported by Fadhila or Islamic Virtue Party) that a referendum be held on whether Basra should be transformed into an autonomous Federal Region. This move is opposed by the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, led by Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, who wants all 9 of the southern provinces to become a Federal Region or confederacy.

The Da'wa (Islamic Mission) Party of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki is genrally opposed to the creation of any new Federal Regions that would detract from the authority of the central government. Al-Maliki is currently embroiled in a struggle with the Kurds insofar as he is attempting to reduce the prerogatives of the Kurdistan Regional Government.

The fourth major Shiite group, the Sadrists led by Sayyid Muqtada al-Sadr, rejects all federal regions, insisting on the primacy of the central government. They sent a letter to the Arab League detailing the points in the agreement that they believed to be unlawful.

In the Iraqi constitution, federal regions are provincial confederacies that enjoy semi-autonomy and have complete ownership of any new natural resource finds (including oil and gas).

Another plan against which the Basra scheme is competing envisions a union of Basra, Nasiriyah and Amara, for which a campaign has been launched to gather signatures from at least 2 percent of the voters in those three provinces.

In other news, a recently retired senior law lord in the UK has blasted the Iraq War as a serious violation of international law.

Ghoul's Glossary: Vice President

Vice President: n. Political chief in charge of committing vice.

The official can fulfill his public duties by committing a wide range of sins or crimes, including murder and treason (see Burr, Aaron and Breckenridge, John). Lazier and greedier incumbents have satisfied themselves with mere extortion, tax evasion, bribery, and conspiracy (see Agnew, Spiro). Energetic and conscientious vice presidents have engaged in the whole range of vice, including subverting the constitution, committing war crimes, engaging in treason through betrayal of covert intelligence operatives, or owning shares in abusive private prisons. (See Cheney, Richard Bruce). Some holders of the office have misunderstood its requirements, neglecting to distinguish themselves by any form of criminality and so dooming themselves to complete oblivion rather than the profound obscurity that is generally granted their more venal counterparts.

Is al-Maliki Creating a Personal Militia in Iraq?

The USG Open Source Center translates an article from the Kurdish press complaining that Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has been busily creating his own tribally based private militias, called 'Isnad,' and is using them to project his authority through brute force in various parts of Iraq.

Iraq: What after Al-Maliki's (Support) Councils?
Kurdistani Nuwe
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Document Type: OSC Translated Text

Iraq: What after Al-Maliki's (Support) Councils?

Text of report by Iraqi Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) newspaper Kurdistani Nuwe on 12 November

Article by journalist Latif Fatih Faraj: Kirkuk, Militia and Al-Maliki

Throughout its own history, Kirkuk has never had so much police force. For it has 11,000 policemen, apart from the army and different sorts of security forces and other institutions. Instead of opening special courses and workshops in military awareness, how to deal with the citizens and in the field of activities, instead of strengthening them with advanced and modern weapons and arsenals, instead of reminding them that they are the servants of the people and not impediments and obstacles before the freedom of the citizens, instead of cooperation, organization and deepening the spirit of brotherhood and peaceful compatibility amongst them, efforts are made on dividing them, turning them into party members and destroying the relations among them.

Not only that, the prime minister of Iraq has been for a long time busy creating his own special militia named (Isnad) 'Support'. The Isnad force, which nobody knows what Maliki wants it for, he wishes to deploy it everywhere in this country without calling it a militia. This will turn into an absolute question for all of us when Al-Maliki and without taking into account the change in Iraq as well as the role of the other political, ethnic and religious components in Iraq speaks in a rough manner of the centre's gaining strength. As if that were not enough, he has a project for the reoccupation of the severed regions and only God knows where else he has project so as to expel the Kurds from the delicate places, or, at least, to take back authority from the Kurds and enfeeble them, Al-Maliki is trying all methods of harassment. This is while we are still determined to take the dilapidated ship 'Iraq' to the shores of security. I know that more than any other time now Al-Maliki should be ousted and expelled from power, if he does not deal with the conditions carefully.

Al-Maliki's threats in the formation of the 'Support' council, picking on Kirkuk and his constant threatening looks are not solely directed towards Kurds. Therefore a council for the confrontation of the crisis has to be thought of, a council that can set limits to Al-Maliki and contain him. In these new circumstances, they make us forget one fight for the sake of another fight, neglect one question for another. Presumably, this is what Al-Maliki wishes. In the game of trimming Khanaqin's wings, he put back Jalawla, Sa'diyah and their neighbouring regions under the Iraqi army's control. And now he is coveting for Jabara. All this and the naive Kurds are against each other in many issues. This is conspicuous in our policies and measures here and there and even the blind can perceive them.

Today the preliminaries of the same policy of trimming are in sight, particularly what is taking place in Khurmatu, Daquq, Huwayjah and the other places. Efforts are incessantly being made to make the components of these places look dubiously at each other. At present, Al-Maliki's activities cannot be disregarded. Besides, approximately one month ago, Dr Adil Abd-al-Mahdi candidly and openly pointed to the threats.

At the time, I expressed very early my own observations on Article 140. Now that Al-Maliki's dream in passing that period of time came true and the election law for the governorates' councils is on the right track, the beginning of a division is appearing in the horizon and Maliki is busy experimenting with the other paths, it is time we asked, then who can identify the differences between Saddam's Al-Quds Army and Dr Nuri al-Maliki's the 'Support Councils'? It is a simple question, is it not?

(Description of Source: Al-Sulaymaniyah Kurdistani Nuwe in Kurdish -- daily newspaper published by Iraqi Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK))

Bakshi: Is No News Really Good News?: On the road to peace between Israel and Palestine

Gitanjali Bakshi writes in a guest op-ed for IC:

After months of slow but substantive progress, recent developments in Occupied Palestine, Israel and the U.S. have been largely unproductive. If we continue along this path in 2009, it will lead to a collapse in the on-going Israel-Palestine peace process.


There are currently three main obstacles in the way of an Israel-Palestine roadmap to peace – A factional split within the Palestinian administration, the instability currently plaguing Israeli politics and the uncertainty of the future U.S. administration’s stance on what many consider to be the central tenet of Mid-East peace. The last few weeks have witnessed some disappointing developments in all three of these areas, leading to a rather moribund picture of future peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian entity.

To begin with, conciliatory talks between the Hamas and Fatah factions within Palestine have come to what seems to be a screeching halt. Despite insistent remarks by both sides that peace talks have not collapsed but have simply been deferred, the fact remains that Egyptian brokered negotiations have been postponed twice already due to obvious disagreements. The two rival Palestinian blocs have voiced their discontent in the media about recent political prisoner exchanges, they have bickered over the extension of Mahmoud Abbas’ presidential term and they have both accused each other of being funded and influenced by external actors.

The peace proposal produced by Cairo aimed to create a transitional government acceptable to all parties as well as restructure the Palestinian security forces under Arab oversight – thereby dealing with contentious issues that led to the Gaza-West Bank split in the first place. However negotiations based on this proposal, last set for November 9th, have been postponed indefinitely. Who knows if Fatah and Hamas will meet before the year end and whether the Egyptian proposal will stand the test of time.

One thing is certain however – President Mahmoud Abbas’ four year term technically expires on the 8th of January 2009 and unless the two most important parties currently in Palestinian politics agree upon an extension and subsequent synchronization of Presidential and Legislative elections in 2010, there will be utter pandemonium in the occupied territories.

Overall the situation for reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah does not look promising but without a unity government at the helm of affairs in Ramallah it will be impossible to mount any considerable effort against continued Israeli occupation and the crippling blockade over Gaza.

As for the Israeli side of the peace-coin, all efforts towards a possible land for peace proposal were flung out the door when foreign minister Tzipi Livni and her center Kadima party failed to form a sizeable coalition government in October. This development has brought Israeli politics back to the drawing board, with 2009 elections ushering in a period of pandering to the public whim. It has been a proven fact in past Israeli politics that any talk of compromise on the Palestinian territories is strictly taboo during the campaign process. Peace deals have worked more for outgoing heads of state in Israel, rather than incoming ones.

Besides, two out of three contenders for the post of PM in the upcoming elections do not have the best records when it comes to the peace process. Likud party head Benjamin Netanyahu will never stand for a division of the occupied territories, especially not Jerusalem, thus dashing all hopes of a two-state solution and his last term in office has been categorized as the period in which the “Oslo agreement received its mortal blow.” In addition, Israeli polls conducted in May 2008 portend a bleak future for peace negotiations between Israel-Palestine with Netanyahu’s hard-line Likud party winning a clear majority of seats in parliament during these polls.

Our next contender Ehud Barak is known for his hawkish position in the three decade long conflict between Israelis and the Palestinians and his recently orchestrated incursion into the Gaza strip when the rest of the world stood focused on the US presidential elections displays him in a less than favorable light when it comes to the future peace processes.

Even foreign minister Tzipi Livni refrained from any bold statements in favor of the peace process during recent negotiations held in Sharm El Sheikh. Livni made it very clear in interviews to the Israeli press that she would not be presenting any dramatic reports on progress and that her main aim was to keep international pressure off Israel as the elections approached. Perhaps the only beacon of peace in current Israeli politics is President Shimon Peres but whether he will be able to carry the newly elected parliament towards a possible peace deal with the Palestinians, yet remains to be seen.

Finally the last hurdle in the pathway of Israel-Palestine peace negotiations is the current U.S. President elect and his administrations’ approach to the Middle East. With the U.S. as the top facilitator and sponsor of the peace process, the region waits with bated breath, refusing to move forward without the U.S. at the helm. The current appointment of Rahm Emanuel as chief of staff was surprisingly faced with skepticism within both Arab and Jewish quarters. Although Rahm is the son of an ex-Irgun militia supporter and has voiced his opposition towards Hezbollah and Hamas as totalitarian entities, he is considered to be a skeptic by his Jewish counterparts in Israel and during his time under the Clinton administration he forged ties with Rabin’s aides…not Netanyahu’s. In any case the chief of staff was chosen for his expertise on domestic issues in order to deal with the current financial crisis.

The two most important posts that we need to look at as indicators to future US-Middle East policy are the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense currently held by Condoleezza Rice and Robert Gates respectively. Some of the popular candidates for Secretary of State include Sen. John Kerry who propounded a theory of negotiation during his own presidential run, Sen. Chuck Hagel who follows a Reaganist theory of international politics but was one of the outspoken Republicans against the war in Iraq, Governor Bill Richardson a Nobel Peace Prize nominee and Sen. Richard Lugar who supports the down-sizing of military troops in Iraq and has extensive expertise in the field of nuclear disarmament.

Candidates for the Secretary of Defense position include Robert Gates himself although his reluctance towards unfettered negotiations with Iran seems incongruent with Obama’s message of change and dialogue, John Hamre who is currently president of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and wields much experience in war budgeting and rehabilitation efforts and Sen. Jack Reed who has made extensive trips to assess the situation in Iraq and was one of Obama’s close advisors on his trip to the Middle East.

All these choices seem reasonable but the point remains that whatever the outcome, we will still have to wait till January 20th 2009 before the new administration even comes into power let alone starts taking decisions that will influence the region. Secondly we all know that the financial crisis currently stands as the top most priority on the U.S. ‘to do list’ right now. With over 240,000 jobs lost in October alone pushing the unemployment rate to 6.5%, it comes as no surprise that the Middle East will just have to wait in line.

The end of 2008 marks the end of a benign and desperate endeavor for peace in the Middle East, known as Annapolis and resumption of hostilities between Hamas and Israel. So what do we have to look forward to? - Further friction between Hamas and Fatah, a potential regression in peace efforts in Israel and a cautious and frankly terribly busy US administration? If we continue along this trajectory in 2009 it could be detrimental to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and the potential for a two-state solution.

Gitanjali Bakshi
Strategic Foresight Group
C-306 Montana Bldg.
Lokhandwala Complex
Andheri (W)
Mumbai, India

Daily Beast

Check out the terrific new politics and news site The Daily Beast.

Iran's Sudden Support for Iraq-US Security Pact

Omid Memarian explains Iran's turnaround on the Iraqi-US security agreement, which it was rejecting only last month:

'Obama's victory disarms leaders such as Ahmadinejad, who for decades have used inefficient American foreign policies as excuses to justify their own failures, mismanagement and corruption. Earlier this year, Ahmadinejad said that the "U.S. (political) establishment will not let Obama win the presidential election." This was believed because in none of the Muslim countries, including Iran, does a man of a minority ethnicity like Obama have even a slim chance of getting a position in a high office. But American democracy allow this.'

McClatchy has more: "Reports from Iran's state news agency called an Iraqi Cabinet vote that advanced the security compact a "victory for the ruling party and its Kurdish partners," referring to the Shiite lawmakers who supported the agreement."

Me, I agree with Memarian that the turning point was the election Obama. The Iranians would never have trusted McCain enough to hope for any good outcome from a security pact. But I think they are convinced that Obama really does want US troops out of Iraq, and that he wants to talk to Iran.

The Iranians haven't changed their minds about the goal,of getting US troops out of Iraq,but they can now afford to be a little patient.

Somali Pirates Take Saudi Tanker

Somali pirates have hijacked a Saudi oil super-tanker off the coast of Kenya and are steering it toward a Somali port.


Somalia


Riyadh

Is Obama Wise to Make getting Usamah bin Laden so Central to his Public Policies?

My column at Salon.com is out:

"Should Obama chase Osama?

On Sunday the president-elect told "60 Minutes" he wants to capture or kill bin Laden. Is he setting himself up for failure?"

I argue that while actually stepping up pressure on al-Qaeda and quietly going after Bin Laden more vigorously would be all to the good, speaking so publicly and frequently about this goal is unwise.

If Bin Laden cannot be found, Obama will be blamed for not living up to his own rhetoric.

And, trying to get at Bin Laden may backfire if US air strikes and incursions further dismay the Pakistani public, the support of which is important to the US fight against extremists. (Pakistanis largely voted for the center-left, secular-leaning Pakistan People's Party in February's election).

So this is an instance in which 'speak of it seldom and wield a big stick behind the scenes' is the better policy.

Read the whole thing.

New Regional Struggle between Iran & al-Qaeda?

Some observers are speculating that the abduction of an Iranian diplomat in Peshawar, northern Pakistan, may signal a new conflict between Iran and al-Qaeda or the Taliban.

In the growing diplomatic tiff between Pakistan and Iran over the kidnapping in Peshawar of an Iranian diplomat, Hishmatullah Atharzadeh, the Pakistani authorities have blamed the Tehrik-i Taliban of Baitullah Mahsud. This is the group, based in the tribal agencies, that is known as the "Pakistani Taliban."

Meanwhile, the Italian AKI news service reports a senior al-Qaeda militant as saying that the abduction was payback in reprisal for Iran's hostile actions against al-Qaeda and the Taliban:

' The militant said Atharzadeh's abduction was due to "the arrest of top Al-Qaeda leaders in Iran, for facilitating the US invasion on Iraq through pro-Iran militias and last but not the least for waging the war on the Taliban in Pakistani Khurram agency where Iran provided arms and ammunition to the Shia tribal groups to fight against the Taliban," '

h/t In One Ear . . .

Taliban: Obama same as Bush

A Taliban suicide bomber detonated his payload at the entrance of a government building in Dand near Qandahar, killing 2 policemen and a civilian.

Aljazeera English reports on Taliban activities near Qandahar and speculates that the movement is aiming to come back into the city of its birth. The report quotes a member of the Taliban saying that Obama is no different than Bush and that both are longstanding enemies of his group. The piece also alleges that the Taliban in that area are making over $300 million a year from drug smuggling. $1.5 billion worth of poppy seeds that were to become heroin were seized on Monday.

Iraqis View Security Agreement as having a Flexible Timetable

Al-Zaman reports in Arabic that the Iraqi cabinet approved the security agreement between the Bush administration and the Iraqi government. It will now go to the Iraqi parliament, where it will be voted on on November 24. Out of 36 cabinet members, 28 were present for Sunday's vote (a lot of Iraqi politicians actually live in Amman or London because of the poor security situation). Of the 28, 27 voted in favor.

Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, leader of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI) was in Tehran. He sent word back that ISCI cabinet secretaries should vote for the agreement. Iran had earlier opposed the agreement, but appears to have been persuaded to cease lobbying Shiite members of parliament against it. Al-Hakim's group, along with the Islamic Mission (Da'wa) Party of the prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, controls many of the Shiite votes in parliament.

Despite some reservations, the Kurdistan Alliance also voted for the agreement. Kurds were afraid it would limit their quest for semi-autonomy and control of more of Iraq. On the other hand, they very much want the US troops to stay, since they see them as protectors against Arab dominance.

Typically, the Kurdistan Alliance and the major Shiite parties can put together a parliamentary majority, so the agreement looks likely to pass.

Two members of the Sunni Arab fundamentalist coalition, the Iraqi Accord Front also voted for the agreement. (Update: Time says 2 IAF members voted for it, one against, and 3 were absentees.) One of the three parties in that coalition, the Iraqi Islamic Party, wants the agreement to go not only to parliament but also to a national referendum. Al-Zaman says that the leader of the IIP, Tariq al-Hashimi, is asking for the referendum because Shaikh Abdul Karim Zaydan, the spiritual counselor of the Muslim Brotherhood of Iraq, has given a fatwa against the agreement. The Iraqi Islamic Party is a branch of the Iraqi Muslim Brotherhood, and al-Hashimi is therefore in the uncomfortable position of defying his own party's spiritual guide. If the measure went to a referendum, the IIP would be off the hook.

There is a dispute among Iraqi parliamentarians as to whether the agreement can be passed by a simple majority (i.e. 51% of those MPs present, assuming there is a quorum) or by a supermajority of 2/3s. Some are saying that they should pass legislation specifying which it is. The al-Maliki government maintains that this issue is decided by the president.

Al-Zaman says that President-Elect Barack Obama was shown the agreement and agreed to be bound by its provisions.

In contrast, the secretary-general of the Arab League, Amr Moussa, expressed dismay that he was not shown the agreement before the cabinet vote. Iraq is a member of the Arab League, and the latter feels that any treaty that affects the sovereignty of one of its members is in its purview.

Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that Iraqi government spokesman Ali Dabbagh said that as soon as the agreement is passed, Iraq will go to the United Nations Security Council to ask to be removed from Chapter 7 of the UN Charter and for permission to abrogate Order 17 issued by US viceroy Paul Bremer.

Of order 17, , Tom Engelhardt wrote:

' Order 17 is a document little-read today, yet it essentially granted to every foreigner in the country connected to the occupation enterprise the full freedom of the land, not to be interfered with in any way by Iraqis or any Iraqi political or legal institution. Foreigners--unless, of course, they were jihadis or Iranians--were to be "immune from any form of arrest or detention other than by persons acting on behalf of their Sending States," even though American and coalition forces were to be allowed the freedom to arrest and detain in prisons and detention camps of their own any Iraqis they designated worthy of that honor.'

The Iraqi government believes it can by signing this bilateral agreement with Bush get back its full sovereignty and escape the humiliation of being in receivership to the United Nations and having Bremer's law give foreign carpetbaggers the run of Iraq. This belief explains why even the proud Nuri al-Maliki is willing to sign on the dotted line.

Dabbagh was emphatic at a news conference that "The Iraqi government has the right to request the abrogation of the agreement when its own security forces are ready, even if it is before the end of the stipulated timetable."

Some Western observers have assumed that the 2011 date is non-negotiable once the agreement is signed, but that is not true. Insisting on a provision that any side could bring certain articles of the agreement to a premature close was one reason the Iraqis sent the agreement back to the US a month ago.

In other news, the Iraqi High Electoral Commission has permitted the placing on the ballot of a measure that would amke Basra a regional government in its own right, analogous to Kurdistan. If this measure went through, Basra would own all new oil fields that are discovered and developed.

Obama 'Commander-in-Chief' on Fox?

Since Bush was elevated by the Supreme Court in 2000, we've heard Fox Cable News (a failed conspiracy of media billionaire Rupert Murdoch to move the US public to the far right) refer to George W. Bush ad infinitum as 'commander-in-chief.'

In fact, Bush was just the president; the Constitution did not envisage that there would be a standing army, and 'commander-in-chief' is a subsidiary, occasional function of the president, not a title. There is something deeply fascist about calling the civilian president the CINC all the time. But at least they should be consistent.

Aside from Sean Hannity complaining that Obama will be commander-in-chief, we haven't heard so much of that epithet applied to the new president.

So how about, it Fox Cable News? Are we going to hear that "Commander-in-Chief Barack Obama ordered US troops in Afghanistan to find terrorist mastermind Usamah Bin Laden today?' Will that sentence be broadcast by the unfair and unbalanced network?

Or are only some presidents commanders-in-chief?

Maybe some people are part-time patriots?

If Fox won't use this diction, shouldn't we send them emails complaining about the inconsistency? If they call a Euro-American president "Commander-in-Chief" and not an African-American one, wouldn't that be a form of racism?

Afghan article says US Bin-Ladin hunt phoney

The USG Open Source Center translates an article from the Persian Afghan press alleging that French troops were at one point close to capturing Usamah Bin Ladin in Afghanistan, but that American forces stopped them from doing so. It says that a forthcoming French documentary containing interviews with the French soldiers provides proof for the allegation. The argument is that the Bush administration needed Bin Ladin to be at large in order to justify its military expansionism.

Afghan article says US Bin-Ladin hunt phoney
Hasht-e-Sobh
Friday, October 3, 2008
Document Type: OSC Translated Text

Afghan article says US Bin-Ladin hunt phoney

Text of article, "Bin-Ladin on the run? The rumour which was fact", by Afghan independent secular daily newspaper Hasht-e Sobh on 29 September

So, the rumour was right: French soldiers trapped Usamah Bin-Ladin, but were not allowed by the Americans to arrest the apparent fugitive leader of Al-Qa`idah. A Bin-Ladin documentary just released by French documentary cinema examines this issue, an issue which has led to heated debate in the French media.

This French documentary shows how the Americans are interested in continuing the game, a bloody and expensive game whose victims are only the unprotected and local people of our dry and dusty country. It was last year that rumours spread about this report in Kabul, but it has not been taken seriously by the media. But watching this revealing French documentary changes the rumours into disturbing facts. "Bin Laden, the failings of a manhunt", produced by Emmanuel Razavi and Eric de Lavarene, two French filmmakers and reporters, assesses and confirms the claims of French soldiers that they could have killed Usamah within two operations, but the American forces prevented them. This film has not been broadcast publicly yet and is to be broadcast by Planet, a French network.

Even though French soldiers have insisted on this in the battlefield many times, the Elysees Palace in Paris and the White House in America have rejected this, and the Afghan leadership does not have any information about it yet!

The main question that arises is the extent to which the "Bin Laden on the run" project is a problem for America and Afghanistan. Seven years of suicide bombing and explosions, blood and violence, unmanned fighter planes, and old vehicles full of explosives, all to catch a long-bearded Arab whom America apparently hates? And an Arab who worked for the CIA in the name of Allah, and who now, also in the name of that same Allah, has conducted a jihad against that same CIA?

Facing the facts in this Usamah film is a bitter and disturbing experience and will make you nervous and wish that what it is that you are watching is just a baseless rumour, or a figment of Hollywood's imagination. But it is not. The pictures are real and you are facing a debate in documentary form. The only justification for the bloody presence of America in Afghanistan is the ambiguous existence of Usamah Bin-Ladin and the Al-Qa'idah terrorist network.

George Bush, with his "war on terror" project, has transformed the middle east and Afghanistan into an inflamed bomb ready to explode, but has not found out anything about his beloved lost Usamah Bin-Ladin so far.

What is seen, and the film also emphases this, is that all these slogans, this fighting and killing are a game, a painful and prolonged game whose end even the players do not know and which is running out of control. Apparently, it is a game of cat and mouse, just like "Tom and Jerry", the famous cartoon. But it is a reality that the stubborn one from Texas does not want to catch the mouse - unlike credulous Tom - and that the long-bearded Wahhabi Arab does not want to hide - unlike the intelligent and roaming Jerry. Their prolonged game has made not only the audiences tired but has also transformed the playground into a big pool of blood.

There have always been questions that neither the politicians have been willing to answer, nor the independent western media to raise. If Usamah is not the lost one of the Americans, then who is? What are the Americans searching for in Afghanistan and who are they looking for? The main media in the West remained silent before the report of the Usamah Bin-Ladin arrest by French soldiers. And, through a news boycott, they reduced a certain fact to a rumour.

Certainly, they will do the same before this film, too. But instead they will try to complicate the scenario. More painful than anything else is the political fair in Kabul, a poor fair where everyone offers his despicable commodity - a combination of generous western customers and thankful sellers of the country. Everyone knows the fact, like "an obvious secret", but no one wants to irritate the delicate minds of their nervous guests, guests who will be staying at home until the new year.
Politicians try to forget such news in Kabul, and this is the advice they give to the people. Forgetting and ignoring such facts is possible, but how can we forget and ignore the bombs exploding next to our houses every day?

Bombs which sometimes rise from the ground and sometimes descend from the air.
(Description of Source: Kabul Hasht-e-Sobh in Dari Kabul Hasht-e Sobh in Dari - Eight-page secular daily launched in May 2007; editor-in-chief, Qasim Akhgar, is a political analyst and Head of the Association for the Freedom of Speech. )

A Quantum of Anti-Imperialism

The reviews of director Marc Forster's "Quantum of Solace" have complained about the film's hectic pace (reminiscent of Doug Liman's and Paul Greengrass's Bourne thrillers), about the humorlessness of Daniel Craig's Bond, and even about the squalid surroundings, so unlike Monaco and Prague, in which the film is set (with many scenes in Haiti and Bolivia). They have missed the most remarkable departure of all. Forster presents us with a new phenomenon in the James Bond films, a Bond at odds with the United States, who risks his career to save Evo Morales's leftist regime in Bolivia from being overthrown by a General Medrano, who is helped by the CIA and a private mercenary organization called Quantum. In short, this Bond is more Michael Moore than Roger Moore.

The plot of the film was developed by producer Michael G. Wilson during the filming of "Casino Royale." New York-born Wilson is from a show-business family (his father, Lewis Wilson, was the first actor to play Batman on screen, and his step-father, Albert Broccoli, was long the producer of the Bond films). But Wilson did a law degree at Stanford in the 1960s and worked for a while at a firm specializing in international law. Outrage at offenses against international law are as much at the heart of this film as the more personal vendettas of Bond and Camille (Olga Kurylenko).

Kurylenko, a Ukrainian, is the first Bond girl actually played by an actress from the former Soviet Union, and the St. Petersburg-based KPLO, a Communist group, denounced her, saying,

' "The Soviet Union educated you, cared for you, and brought you up for free, but no one suspected that you would commit this act of intellectual and moral betrayal." '

The KPLO then called James Bond "the killer of hundreds of Soviet people and their allies," which suggests why they are still Communists-- they have difficulty distinguishing between reality and fantasy.

The St. Petersburg Communists got the politics of the work all wrong. It is the closest thing to a progressive Bond film ever made, more Graham Greene (admittedly, Graham Greene on steroids) than Ian Fleming. Kurylenko, who grew up in a poor family headed by her mother, plays a Bolivian girl whose family was destroyed (and her mother and sister raped) by the haughty General Medrano. She is so organically a figure of the left that no distinction can be made between her private quest for vengeance on Medrano and the salvation of the pro-peasantry government of Bolivia.

The Bond films were never quite as rightwing as had been the novels. In "From Russia with Love," Ian Fleming had the Soviet assassination unit, SMERSH, deploy the crazed serial killer Red Grant for its nefarious purposes. The films instead made SPECTRE, a private terrorist organization, the villain, depicting it as working against both Soviet intelligence and MI6 or British international intelligence. (Admittedly, the films were reflecting the steps toward detente that in some ways began with Johnson). The films were prescient about the potential for the rise of private terrorist organizations such as al-Qaeda as major players in their own right, able to confound the intelligence agencies even of powerful states.

Still, East Bloc leaders and troops are often depicted as sinister. An example is the rogue Soviet General Orloff in "Octopussy," who conspires to set of an atomic bomb, made to look like an Amrican device, to give aid to the peace groups in Western Europe in their quest to make it a nuclear-free zone, thus setting the stage for a successful Soviet take-over. (That film implicitly configures the movement against having nuclear warheads in Europe, spearheaded by figures such as the leftist historian E.P. Thompson, as advocates of a surrender to Moscow. That is about as far right a position as you could take on the European peace groups of that time).

The present film takes, to say the least, a different view of popular movements of the left. Morales is not mentioned in the film, but his movement was in the headlines while "Casino Royale" was being shot, as he challenged the old "white" elite and was denounced by the US ambassador as an "Andean Bin Laden" and his peasant followers (many of them of largely native stock) as "Taliban." Morales's nationalization of Bolivia's petroleum and natural gas and his redistribution of wealth from the wealthy elite to villagers were among the policies drawing the ire of George W. Bush and his cronies.

If Morales is not mentioned, Jean-Bertrand Aristide of Haiti is. The villain, Dominic Greene (Mathieu Amalric) remarks that while Aristide was president 2001-2004, he raised the minimum wage from 25 cents an hour to a dollar an hour. It was, he said, little enough, but caused the corporations that benefited from cheap Haitian labor to mobilize to have Aristide removed. (Aristide himself maintained that US and Canadian intelligence connived with officers at the coup against him and kidnapped him, taking him to southern Africa.) The Left analysis of American imperialism in the Western hemisphere is put in the mouth, not of a worker or ideologue, but rather of the collaborator in capitalist exploitation of America's poor neighbors. Aristide's story is a clear parallelism for the fate the CIA and Quantum are depicted as plotting for Morales.

Note that director Marc Forster's father was from conservative Bavaria, and that the family was forced to relocate to Davos in Switzerland because they were targeted by the radical Baader-Meinhoff gang after the father became wealthy on selling his pharmaceutical company. Forster's previous film, "The Kite-Runner," sympathized with the Afghans oppressed by the Soviet invasion and even shows one character refusing to be treated by a Russian-American physician. That is, Forster is no glib Third-Worldist. He and his screenwriters are simply performing the work of the intellectual, interrogating the way the wealthy and powerful in the Bush era casually overthrew (or tried to overthrow) foreign governments in the global south to get at the resources they coveted.

In the new film, Dominic Greene is a secret member of Quantum, a mercenary coup-making consulting firm. That is, it is represented as a private contractor to which the CIA is willing to farm out coup-making instead of doing it directly. Greene's cover is that of the head of a conservation organization that buys up land in poor countries to ensure it is preserved from despoilment. In fact, he despoils it. In a complicated and not very plausible plot twist, Greene appears to be buying up land under which he is convinced there is oil, but in fact is trying to corner the market on Bolivia's aquifers so as to overcharge the country for its water after the military coup unseats Morales.

The CIA is convinced to back Quantum both because it wants leftist governments in Latin America overthrown and because Quantum would re-privatize Bolivia's fossil fuels. Greene observes to CIA field officer Greg Beame that the way the Bush administration bogged the US down in the Middle East allowed several Latin American countries to move left (obviously, the referents are Venezuela, Bolivia and Brazil). Beame's partner, Felix Leiter (Jeffrey Wright) is uncomfortable with the coup plot and the collaboration with Quantum.

Britain's own elite comes in for a drubbing. Quantum has placed a man close to the British prime minister, who is thus duped. M tries to call off Bond, with no success, and she is pressured by her superiors to bow to the CIA plan. This plot element is a veiled reference to Blair's knee-jerk support for Bush. The notion of a mole from a mercenary corporation close to the PM recalls the allegations that far-right billionaire Rupert Murdoch was a spectral presence at every Blair cabinet meeting.

Of course, in real life the CIA did use a private set of organizations, the Mujahidin or Muslim holy warriors (Afghans and the Arab volunteers who became al-Qaeda) to overthrow the leftist government of Afghan leaders Karmal Babrak and later Najeebullah. CIA consultants with Hollywood have been careful, in films such as "Charlie Wilson's War," to play down the element here of 'blowback' (where a covert operation goes rogue and produces an attack on the sponsoring country).

But this Bond film is explicit that the United States under Bush has become the bad guy, that US intelligence is in league with rogue mercenaries and brutal, rapist-generals who plot coups against elected governments. Bond therefore has to take on the United States government (at one point, a SWAT team from the CIA Special Activities Division tries to capture Bond in a bar in La Paz, but fails because Leiter tips Bond off to their approach. The good American in this film is the one willing to betray the US government to a more virtuous MI6 field officer).

George W. Bush is a lurking presence in this film, and appears to have almost single-handedly pushed Bond into championing the indigenous peasants against the white-tie global elite. The plotting of millionaires at a performance in Bregenz in Austria of Puccini's opera, "Tosca," to devastate and brutalize for their own gain the poor of Bolivia half a world away, recalls the scene in Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" where Bush toasts his super-wealthy "base." He was implicitly promising that their enterprises will be deregulated and their taxes lowered and the costs of those things passed on to the middle classes and workers.

The original Bond began his education at Eton (he was thrown out) and was a member of the British elite, even if he exhibited its otherwise hidden rough edges and occasionally ruthless methods (deployed against still more ruthless opponents such as Soviet assassination squads). Still, he defended the interests of his social class against challengers.

With this film, Daniel Craig's Bond, who is from a considerably lower social class than Flemings', has chosen to defy the white-tie set, and the Bush administration's greed and lawlessness, and to stand up for the little people (including Camille, who symbolizes Morales's Indios). At one point the smarmy CIA man Beame rejects any criticism from Bond of US imperialism, given Britain's own long and sordid imperial history. But a country, and a people, always has a choice in each generation, of whether to do the right thing. They are not prisoners of their ancestors.

Craig's Bond is an intimation of the sort of Britain that could have been, if Tony Blair had stood up to Bush and refused to be dragged into an illegal war of choice, and into other actions and policies that profoundly contradicted the principles on which the Labour Party had been founded (and you could imagine Craig's Bond voting for Old Labour, while Flemings's was obviously a Tory). In a way, this Bond stands in for Clare Short, who resigned as a cabinet minister from Blair's government in 2003 over the illegitimacy of the Iraq War.

It is a sad state of affairs that Bush's America now appears in a Bond film in rather the same light as Brezhnev's Soviet Union used to. One can only hope that President Barack Obama can adopt the sort of policies that can get Bond back on our side.