Informed Comment

According to Agence France Presse’s Arabic service, Ali Moussawi, the spokesman for the office of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, is now denying that he told the New York Times that the Iraqi government had repeatedly suggested to Syrian President Bashar al-Asad that he resign. He gave a similar interview denying the remarks to a Kurdish news service, castigating the quotes ascribed to him as “imprecise” and “fabricated.”

Moussawi said that the article misquoted him, emphasizing that “It is not the character nor the procedure of this government to intervene in the affairs of other states, in addition to which it simply has not issued to this or that quarter any requests that anyone resign.” He said that all Baghdad had done was to suggest that President al-Asad institute some reforms. Likewise, speaker of the Iraqi parliament Usamah al-Nujayfi had requested that the Syrian government cease spilling blood.

I’m sure Michael Schmidt at the Times would not have gone to press with those quotes unless Moussawi really did supply them.

But clearly Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, and very possibly his Iranian backers, were dismayed to see the story on the front page of the New York Times. It is possible that al-Maliki was more critical of al-Asad last spring, but rethought his position as it became clear that a violent overthrow of the Syrian elite (drawn disproportionately from the Allawite branch of Shiite Islam) might ensconce the Muslim Brotherhood or other Sunni elements who are sympathetic to the Sunni insurgency in Iraq.

It is also possible that Moussawi himself had not gone along with the new, positive orientation toward the al-Asad government adopted by al-Maliki from mid-summer this year, apparently in part under pressure from the Iranian government and in part out of fear of a Sunni deluge in Syria. He would not be the first government spokesman to try to sabotage a policy with which he disagreed.

So maybe Moussawi is behind the curve, or maybe he is a dissident on Syria policy. But he is after all just a spokesman, and what matters is what al-Maliki says. And al-Maliki has been clear that he fears the turmoil in Syria, and he even warned that the Israelis might take advantage of it, which sounds more like an Iranian speech writer than a contemporary Iraqi one. Presumably al-Maliki called him on the mat and sent him out to retract the interview.

Iraq, of course, is being pulled in different directions over Syria by its Iranian and American allies. The Obama administration has slapped increasingly severe financial sanctions on Iran.

In other news, the Iraqi government is rejecting that idea that any US combat troops might remain in the country after December 31 of this year. But it is considering a relatively small number of trainers (the Obama administration appears to be offering 3,000 – 5,000), who will be necessary to drill Iraqi personnel on the operation of military equipment and aircraft. Most political forces in the country could live with trainers, they say. But the Muqtada al-Sadr group wants all US troops out altogether, and has threatened violence if they try to stay.

Posted in Iraq, Syria | 7 Comments

I cover questions about Iraq, Afghanistan, al-Qaeda and the Arab Spring in this recent interview at AskM (a program of the University of Michigan News and Information Service)

Posted in Afghanistan, al-Qaeda, Democracy, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Iraq War, Libya | 5 Comments

My interview on Middle Eastern affairs with the O Globo television network’s “Milenio” program in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, is now on line here. (After the short intro it is in English with Portuguese subtitles). Many thanks to Simone Delgado of O Globo‘s New York office for setting it up, and to Elizabeth Carvalho, the interviewer and executive editor of “Milenio.”

Posted in Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Saudi Arabia | 3 Comments

One of the major consequences of the September 11 attacks ten years ago was that members of the Bush administration decided to “take advantage” of the resulting passions to pursue their long-planned vendetta against the government of Saddam Hussein. There followed the greatest US foreign policy disaster since the British occupied Washington, DC and burned the White House in 1814. I opposed the Bush invasion and occupation, since it violated the UN Charter, and I warned that “I have a bad feeling about this,” quoting Harrison Ford’s character in Star Wars. I warned that it would be seen as neo-imperialism, would revivify al-Qaeda, would throw the Shiites into the arms of Iran and would anger Turkey with regard to the Kurdistan Regional Government. Now, the US has an opportunity finally to extricate itself from the nightmare, but powerful forces in Washington are trying to ensure that the US keeps a significant troop presence in Iraq.

The number of US troops there is likely to be so small, however, that we risk a major attack on them, which could pull the US right back into Iraq. The only way to avoid this scenario is to get out altogether.

The Muqtada al-Sadr nativist Shiite movement in Iraq is planning a huge demonstration in downtown Baghdad on Friday, in favor of three demands. The first is that the Iraqi government announce an immediate jobs program that would put 50,000 Iraqis to work, from all ethnicities and religious groups. The second is that the Iraqi government give each Iraqi a royalty payment on Iraqi oil profits (ironically a suggestion once made by US viceroy in Iraq, Paul “Jerry” Bremer and modeled on a program in Alaska). The third is that there be no US troops at all in Iraq by the end of the year or earlier.

The Sadrists not only have a proven ability to put a lot of people in the streets, but their some 40 seats in parliament are key to the governing coalition of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, so that he ignores them to his peril. The Iraqi constitution allows for parliament to call for a vote of no confidence if 50 MPs sign off on it, and rivals of al-Maliki such as Ayad Allawi have been calling for early elections.

The Sadrists’ Tahrir-style demonstration is intended to forestall any backpedaling by the Iraqi government on the issue of keeping US troops in the country after the end of this year.

It is therefore a special provocation that the US State Department now uses the phrase “formal negotiations” for its discussions with the Iraqi government of al-Maliki about the possibility of some 3000 US troops remaining in Iraq after December 31. Previously the terminology was simply “informal discussions.” But US ambassador Jim Jeffrey now feels that there is enough of a consensus among the Iraqi political leadership on the desirability of some US troops remaining that it is legitimate to talk about negotiations.

This terminological upgrade follows on a controversy in Washington that broke out Tuesday when Fox Cable News reported that President Obama had over-ruled his generals and opted for keeping only 3000 US troops in Iraq after December 31.

The report brought howls of outrage from Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham, who say they want to keep 25,000 troops in Iraq. I am not sure why McCain and Graham believe that this decision is their own. The only legal document governing this issue is a Status of Forces Agreement signed by the Iraqi parliament and the Bush White House in late 2008, which stipulates that there must be no US troops in Iraq at all by December 31 of this year.

Al-Maliki is on record as saying that the SOFA cannot be amended. Rather, a new SOFA would have to be negotiated and approved by parliament, which might bring US troops back into the country. Personally, I am doubtful that if the issue goes to parliament, a US troop presence can be approved. The Kurds would want it, and maybe some members of al-Maliki’s coalition, and a few members of the Iraqiya List (now largely Sunni Arab in character). But I doubt the plan could get 163 votes or a majority in parliament.

The only way it could be done would be for the cabinet to make the decision and sidestep parliament. Then the Kurds, Allawi’s Iraqiya and al-Maliki could push it through if they wanted to. But al-Maliki has repeatedly said that the matter would have to go to parliament. Until he reneges on that commitment, my guess is that the plan is doomed.

Another possibility would be to reclassify US troops as trainers. This step would be legitimate insofar as Iraq has ordered a lot of military equipment, especially planes and helicopters, from the US, on which Iraqi crews will need substantial training.

But any way such a decision were made would provoke a backlash from the Sadrists, who have threatened to take back up arms if there are US troops in the country in 2012, and from nationalist or fundamentalist Sunnis. As Tom Ricks, among our most experienced Iraq correspondents, points out, 3,000 US troops aren’t troops, they are hostages waiting to be taken.

McCain and Lindsey play the Iran card in arguing for keeping a division in Iraq, saying that otherwise Iran will take over. But this argument is, as usual with Republican politicians regarding Iraq, a bewilderingly uninformed one. The US presided over the destruction of a Sunni-dominated secular Arab nationalist regime and the installation of a government led by fundamentalist Shiites, many of whom had lived in exile in Iran and had excellent relations with Tehran. That cow is out of the barn, and the presence of US troops is unlikely to be relevant to the budding Tehran-Baghdad-Damascus axis, which is a political reality.

Iraq’s parliamentary system regularly produces hung parliaments and governments can only be formed with outside mediation. The US played that role in 2005, but Iran played it in 2010, by pressuring Muqtada al-Sadr to join a governing coalition with his enemy, al-Maliki. Al-Maliki is thus beholden to both Sadr and to Iran politically, and has been pushed toward Tehran by the Sunni crackdown on the Shiites of Bahrain and the prospect of a Sunni overthrow of the Shiite-dominated Baath Party in Syria. That is, the Arab Spring has finally produced that Shiite crescent of which the Sunni Arab monarchs began being afraid in 2004. Nothing Washington does is likely to change this new and consolidating alignment. And it is this alignment that makes a long-term US troop presence so unlikely, since none of the regional principals want it. But were some US troops to stay, they would be in constant danger and if they were hit, it could provoke the Third American-Iraqi War.

Posted in Iraq | 20 Comments

Interview with me, mirrored from The United States Institute of Peace Iran Primer.

Q. What impact will the call by the United States and major European powers for Syrian President Bashar Assad to step down–followed by heightened U.S. and EU sanctions–have on Syria-Iran relations?

Cole: They will push Syria even more into the arms of Iran. Syria is being gradually cut off from Western finances and relationships. So if the regime is going to survive, it will want to look east to Iran and perhaps China. Syria seems to also be improving its relationship with Iraq.

Q. Why has Iraq opted to align with Syria and Iran in backing Assad?

Cole: It is not entirely clear. Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki does not state motivations. But it appears that two things are going on. There is a domestic reason; Maliki is worried about Bashar al Assad being overthrown. Assad belongs to the minority Shiite sect of Alawites. Many of Assad’s opponents are Sunnis- some of whom are Sunni fundamentalists. And some of those are the sort of people who were supporting the Sunni insurgency in Iraq. Maliki does not want them to come to power in Damascus and become his neighbors.

Another consideration that has been suggested is that Maliki owes his position as prime minister in this round [of elections held in 2010] to the support of Iran for coalition building of the Iraq Shiites. So he may be paying back a debt.

Q. Is this a new de facto alliance?

Cole: There seems to be a growing Tehran-Baghdad-Damascus axis for certain purposes. Iraq is a very complex place and it still is, in odd ways, an American ally. Though in this particular instance, Baghdad is siding with Iran and Syria against the stated U.S. position. The alliance appears to be over sectarianism and regional politics. There is nothing that Syria can do for Iraq, economically. Syria is potentially a trading partner but there is no economic carrot that Syria can offer Iraq. It is actually the other way around. According to one report-that Maliki has denied-the Iranians had pressured the Iraqi government to donate $ 10 billion to Syria to help Damascus get through its current crisis. The alliance is very much about who you will like to have in the capital of your neighbor.

Q. What are the factors behind the support of Iran and Iraq for Syria?

Cole: Iran is isolated and has very few allies in the Middle East-Lebanon and Syria being the primary ones. So it has every reason to act as patron to Syria. Syria forms a bridge between Iran and Hezbollah in Lebanon. So it is a way of protecting Iranian power and influence in the Levant. Iraq is not similarly isolated but it is in some ways being pushed into a Shiite set of alliances, both by the sectarian undertones to the uprising in Syria and by events in Bahrain, where the Shiite majority demanded the Sunni monarchy become a constitutional monarchy. [But the Shiites] were crushed with the help of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, who were essentially acting as Sunni powers in the Gulf. This crushing of Bahrain’s democracy movement by Sunni powers provoked large demonstrations in Iraq and angered a lot of Iraqi Shiites. Of course, Maliki is both the prime minister of Iraq and the main political leader of the Iraqi Shiites. So he is being pushed toward a kind of sectarian politics and a closer alliance with Iran and Damascus by the sectarian character of the Arab Spring in the Gulf region.

Q. How have Iran and Iraq reacted to unrest in Syria?

Cole: The Iranians have jumped up and down and been very vocal about the repression in Bahrain [and] they have [even] supported the Libyan uprising. In fact, they have supported all of the uprisings. They claimed that the uprisings are Islamic in character and inspired by Iran’s revolutionary founder Ayatollah Khomeini. But the Iranians do not say anything about what is going on in Syria. It is just like a blank slate and a point of clear hypocrisy on their part.

Tehran does not admit that there are protestors in Syria. They do not say anything about the movement in Syria. They do not deplore the violence used against peaceful non-combatants in a way that they have in other countries. They just do not talk about it. The Persian press is silent– a big contrast to their vocal position on the other Arab Spring revolts. With regard to Iraq, Nouri al Maliki gave a speech [in late August] in which he warned that too much pressure on the Assad regime could get to a point where Israel would be able to take advantage of the situation. [link here] This is a remarkable statement on Maliki’s part. He has not typically talked much about Israel, although he did take a stand for Hezbollah in 2006 and was angry about the Gaza war in 2008-9.

The discourse Maliki used [on Israel] may have well been coming out of Tehran. And it seems to be a sign again that Maliki is being pushed [away] from the kind of American-sponsored states of the eastern Arab world and their discourse-[namely] Jordan and Egypt [which] have peace treaties with Israel. He is starting to sound much more like Iran or Lebanon, even Damascus, when it comes to Israel. It is a new and different discourse for[mainstream] Iraqi politics in the post-Saddam era.

Read Juan Cole’s chapter on Iran and Islam in “The Iran Primer”

Juan Cole is professor of history at the University of Michigan and runs the Informed Comment weblog. He has authored many books on the Middle East. His latest is “Engaging the Muslim World” (2010).

Posted in Iran, Iraq, Syria | 23 Comments

The illegal American invasion of Iraq and subsequent occupation was so epochal a catastrophe that it spawned a negative phrase in Arabic, “to Iraqize” or `arqana. Tonight I heard an Alarabiya anchor ask a spokesman for the new government in Libya whether there as a danger of the country being “Iraqized.” He was taken aback and asked her what she meant. Apparently she meant chaos, civil war, no services, etc. (Those Neoconservatives who trumpet their Iraq misadventure as a predecessor to the Arab Spring should take a lesson; no one cites Iraq among the youth movements except as an example of what must be avoided). The Libyan intervention was legal in international law, authorized by the UN Security Council, and so can hope to have a better outcome. So how can Libyans and the world avoid the Iraqization of Libya?

1. No Western infantry or armored units should be stationed in the country. Their presence would risk inflaming the passions of the Muslim fundamentalists and of the remaining part of the population that is soft on Qaddafi. The presence of Western troops in Muslim lands creates terrorism, which then produces calls in the West for more Western troops, which creates more terrorism. It is the dialectic of a horror movie. The hawks who believe people can be bludgeoned into acquiescence have been proven wrong over and over again, in Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq, etc. If large numbers of Western troops could always prevail, the Algerian Revolution of 1962 could never have succeeded.

The Qaddafi government collapsed in the east of the country in February, and Benghazi, al-Bayda, Dirna and Tobruk have been tolerably stable. There is no reason to believe that the west of the country need be less so once the fighting subsides. Security is not perfect, but let the Libyans supply it. Already in Tripoli, neighborhood watch groups have been formed to supply local security, and aside from the hated Bab al-Aziziya compound, there has been little looting.

2. As much as possible of the current bureaucracy, police and army should be retained. Only those with innocent blood on their hands or who were captured rather than surrendering or switching sides should be fired. The EU is doing the right thing in trying to ensure the bureaucrats get paid their salaries in the aftermath of the fall of Tripoli. The descent of Iraq into looting under Rumsfeld in spring of 2003 marked the beginning of a long gap in security. In Iraq, Ahmad Chalabi fired tens of thousands of capable Sunni Arabs who had been mid-level Baath Party members, thereby depriving the country of the people who knew best how to accomplish things and deliver government services, and driving them into violent opposition instead.

3. Some Libyans are complaining about the prospect of retaining the same police as in the old regime, and want local security committees instead. A compromise would be to establish a strong civilian oversight over police.

4. Avoid being vindictive toward former Qaddafi supporters, and avoid purging all but the top officials from the body politic. Egypt perhaps hasn’t gone quite far enough in removing Mubarak cronies, which provoked the July demonstrations. And it is important to prosecute secret police and others with blood on their hands. But moderation and wisdom should be used, in hopes of knitting the body politic back together. Note that once the Anglican Church in the United States renounced allegiance to the British king, it was given full rights in the new American republic, even though Anglicans in general had opposed the revolution.

5. Avoid a rush to privatize everything. Oil countries anyway inevitably have large public sectors. Impediments to entrepreneurship should be removed, but well-run state enterprises can have their place in a modern economy, as some of the Asian nations have demonstrated. Rajiv Chandrasekaran demonstrated in his Imperial Life in the Emerald City how the US fetish for privatization destroyed state factories that could otherwise have been revived and that could have supplied jobs.

6. Consult with Norway about how it is possible for an oil state to remain a democracy. The petroleum income can make the state more powerful than civil society, and there is [pdf] a statistical correlation between have a state that depends heavily on a single primary commodity and a tendency to despotism (as well as a tendency toward violence, since such commodities can be smuggled and cartels emerge to fight over smuggling rights). These problems of dependence on a high-priced primary commodity can be seen in Iraq, where the prime minister has increasingly become a soft strong man, in part because of government petroleum revenues.

7. Use the Alaska dividend system to share the oil wealth with Libya’s 6.5 million people. This model was often discussed with regard to Iraq but was never implemented.

8. Democratization and economic growth cannot be attained through oil exports alone. Having a pricey primary commodity like petroleum causes a country’s currency to harden. A harder currency means that manufactures, handicrafts, and agricultural produce from that country artificially cost more to countries with softer currencies. This effect is called the “Dutch disease” because the Netherlands developed natural gas in the late 1960s and found it actually hurt some parts of their economy. The cure is to diversify the economy. The most clever way to do so is to use the petroleum receipts to promote other industries and services. Libya has a high literacy rate and could potentially attract investors to put its population to work in other sectors.

9. Recognize Berber as a national language. The TNC has stress that the new Libya will be pluralist and multicultural, and the new constitution does not assert that Libya is an Arab state, as the intrepid Brian Whitaker has pointed out. There is no reason for which the important Berber minority should not be given its due. It is obviously important for national unity there be a strong Arabic component in the schools.

10. Once it gets on its feet socially and economically, Libya should go forward with bruited plans to get into solar and wind energy big time. Petroleum will always have value in petrochemicals, but burning it is bad for the earth because extra carbon in the atmosphere causes global warming, which will hit Libya especially hard. It is a delicious irony that the petroleum revenues could make it possible to ease the transition to solar power. Libya’s big desert is ideal for photovoltaic panels. Transitioning away from petroleum exports as the major industry would help economic diversification and increase the likelihood of a retention of democracy, as well as likely contributing to social peace. Not to mention that you don’t want it hotter in Libya in the summer than it already is.

Posted in Iraq, Libya | 39 Comments

Some 80 people were killed and over two hundred wounded on Monday in a clearly coordinated set of bombings and attacks in 17 Iraqi cities. The prime suspect is radicalized Sunni Arabs who are typically called “al-Qaeda” in Iraq even though they likely have little connection to the original. The biggest toll came from two bombings in the southern Shiite city of Kut, though there were also attacks in the Shiite holy cities of Najaf and Karbala. In the Sunni center, west and north, the attacks focused on police and military officers loyal to the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. An attack in largely Sunni Mansour district of west Baghdad targeted the convoy of the minister of higher education. In Tikrit and Ramadi, security officials were the focus. Thus, the targets were ordinary Shiites in the south, but security or other government personnel in the Sunni areas to their north and northwest.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki denounced the attacks as the work of “criminals” and pledged to bring them to justice.

Despite the lost and blighted lives victimized by these bombings and attacks, the terrorism cannot transcend mere terror and is unable to bring about significant political change. You can’t overthrow the government of an oil state with a few scattered bombings and low level assassinations. So what does an operation like Monday’s accomplish for the radicals? It might delay Western investment in the Iraqi oil sector and so ensure that the government is denied substantial new resources (though likely it will be 2017 before much new pumping capacity is achieved in any case). It cannot actually terrorize Shiites into ceasing to be politically active, nor can it stop Sunni Arabs from joining the police force and the army. It is a kind of “haunting” of the body politic in Iraq by ghosts of those defeated and perhaps a postponement of Iraq’s reemergence as a political and military power to be reckoned with in the Gulf region.

It is not clear whether the turmoil in Bahrain and Syria had any impact on the forces behind the bombings. Were the radical Sunnis galvanized by the Shiite al-Maliki government’s support for the Shiites of Bahrain and criticism of the Sunni monarchy’s crackdown on the democracy movement there? Are the Sunni-Shiite tensions latent in the Syrian struggle spilling over onto Iraq (al-Maliki has been forebearing toward fellow Shiite Bashar al-Asad’s repression of protesters, some of whom — and only some– are Sunni fundamentalists).

As usual with such bombing campaigns, this one provoked many journalists and commentators to wonder about their impact on the planned withdrawal of US troops from Iraq. But as I have said before, the US presence is largely irrelevant. If 47,000 US troops in country cannot prevent such coordinated bombings, then how could a much smaller contingent do so? And as Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi has pointed out on several occasions recently, the very presence of US troops would provoke terrorist attacks and be destabilizing.

I think the likelihood of a Status of Forces Agreement being forged that would allow, say, 5,000 to 10,000 US troops to remain in Iraq after Dec. 31 of this year is low. PM al-Maliki has declined to push it through as an executive decision, and is insisting on a vote of parliament. Even US officials seem now to realize that an act of parliament would be necessary if US troops were to be held legally harmless from military actions in Iraq that left Iraqis wounded or dead. Parliament is just highly unlikely to vote for keeping US troops in the country.

Iraq is a wounded civilization, wounded by internal divisions that produced the great massacre of spring, 1991, of Shiites by the Baath military, and a wound that was given a roaring staph infection by the Bush administration’s illegal invasion and occupation. Until its Shiite-dominated government finds a way to mollify enough Sunni Arabs to drain support for radical action, such low-grade guerrilla actions will likely continue. The Sunni-Shiite polarization in the Gulf region as a whole that has marked the Arab Spring there has only exacerbated tensions in Iraq, unfortunately.

Posted in Iraq | 6 Comments

As Syria passed another bloody Friday of protests, Arab journalists and now the New York Times are noting that the Iraqi government of PM Nouri al-Maliki has declined to withdraw its ambassador from Damascus or to put any significant pressure on Syria with regard to the suppression of protests. The NYT speculates that Baghdad has succumbed to pressure from Iran, Syria’s chief ally and the broker of al-Maliki’s own parliamentary majority.

In contrast, Agence France Presse attributes the Shiite government’s reluctance to take a stand against Bashar al-Asad to fears that hard line Salafi Sunnis might come to power in Damascus if al-Asad falls, and to feelings of solidarity with a fellow Shiite (al-Asad belongs to the folk-Shiite Allawite sect, which differs substantially from the bookish Twelver Shiism of Iraq and Iran, but which is closer to them than it is to Sunnism).

Al-Maliki has called for reforms in Syria, and a foreign ministry official has urged the regime to compromise with protesters, careful to condemn violent dissidents as well as government crackdowns. But recently he has warned the protest movement against undermining the Syrian government.

In contrast to the Iraqi executive, the parliament has recently strongly deplored the government’s use of violence against protesters. Two major blocs in parliament, the Kurdistan Alliance and the Sunni-dominated Iraqiya Party, are not Shiite and have ties to protesters in Syria, whether Kurds or Sunni Arabs. The Speaker of parliament is a Sunni Arab from Mosul who has strongly condemned the Baath government’s repression.

For its part, Iran denies having pressured Iraq to support Syria with a grant of $10 billion.

Patrick Seale, one of our great experts on the region, explains how the Middle East region appears in turmoil or hostile from Baghdad’s point of view.

At a time when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is calling on US allies to withdraw their ambassadors from Damascus and to impose trade sanctions on Syria, al-Maliki’s maverick political line is surely an embarrassment to Washington.

Posted in Iraq | 12 Comments