The "New Iraq", Up Close and Ugly: A Report from Fallujah

Since the 2003 Iraq War, Dahr Jamail has offered outstanding, provocative first-hand reports. For those who like simple outcomes, Jamail's work is a nuisance, as it doesn't fit the easy narratives of 1) Free, Happy, Prosperous Iraq or 2) Iraq Going to Hell in a Handbasket. For the rest of us, his accounts are invaluable.

Jamail's latest article, in TomDispatch, is a tour of today's Fallujah, a former Sunni stronghold and site of protracted battles between Iraqis and Americans from April 2003:

At least 70% of Fallujah's structures were destroyed during massive US military assaults in April, and again in November 2004, and more than four years later, in the "new Iraq", the city continues to languish....Unemployment is rampant, the infrastructure remains largely in ruins, and tens of thousands of residents who fled in 2004 are still refugees.

The New Fallujah Up Close and Still in Ruins
By Dahr Jamail

FALLUJAH - Driving through Fallujah, once the most rebellious Sunni city in Iraq, I saw little evidence of any kind of reconstruction underway. At least 70% of that city's structures were destroyed during massive US military assaults in April, and again in November 2004, and more than four years later, in the "new Iraq", the city continues to languish.

The shells of buildings pulverized by US bombs, artillery or mortar fire back then still line Fallujah's main street, or rather, what's left of it. As one of the few visible signs of reconstruction in the city, that street - largely destroyed during the November 2004 siege - is slowly being torn up to be repaved.

Unemployment is rampant, the infrastructure remains largely in ruins, and tens of thousands of residents who fled in 2004 are still refugees. How could it be otherwise, given the amount of effort that went into its destruction and not, subsequently, into rebuilding it? It's a place where a resident must still carry around a US-issued personal biometric ID card, which must also be shown any time you enter or exit the city if you are local. Such a card can only be obtained after US military personnel have scanned your retinas and taken your fingerprints.

The trauma from the 2004 attacks remains visible everywhere. Given the countless still-bullet-pocked walls of restaurants, stores and homes, it is impossible to view the city from any vantage point, or look in any direction, without observing signs of those sieges.

Everything in Fallujah, and everyone there, has been touched to the core by the experience, but not everyone is experiencing the aftermath of the city's devastation in the same way. In fact, for much of my "tour" of Fallujah, I was inside a heavily armored, custom-built, $420,000 BMW with all the accessories needed in 21st century Iraq, including a liquor compartment and bulletproof windows.

One of the last times I had been driven through Fallujah - in April 2004 - I was with a small group of journalists and activists. We had made our way into the city, then under siege, on a rickety bus carrying humanitarian aid supplies. After watching in horror as US F-16s dropped bombs inside Fallujah while we wound our way toward it through rural farmlands, we arrived to find its streets completely empty, save for mujahideen checkpoints.

To say that my newest mode of transportation was an upgrade that left me a bit disoriented would be (mildly put) an understatement. The BMW belonged to Sheik Aifan Sadun, head of the Awakening Council of Fallujah. Thanks to the Awakening movement that began forming in 2006 in al-Anbar province, then the hotbed of the Sunni insurgency - into which American occupation forces quickly poured significant amounts of money, arms and other kinds of support - violence across most of that province is now at an all-time low. This is strikingly evident in Fallujah, once known as the city of resistance, since the fiercest fighting of the American occupation years took place there.

Today, 34-year-old Sheik Aifan may be the richest man in town, thanks to his alliance of self-interest with the US occupation forces. Aifan's good fortune was this: he was the right sheik in the right place at the right time when the Americans, desperate over their failures in Iraq, decided to throw their support behind the reconstitution of a tribal elite in the province where the Sunni insurgency raged with particular fierceness from 2004-2006.

In the 'construction business'

Don't misunderstand. This wasn't a careful, strategically laid, made-in-the-USA plan. It was a seat-of-the-pants, spur-of-the-moment quick fix. After all, by the time US planners decided to throw their weight behind the Awakening Movement, it was already something of a done deal.

In late 2006, roughly speaking, months before George W Bush's "surge" strategy sent 30,000 more American troops into Baghdad and surrounding areas, the US began making downpayments on the cooperation of local al-Anbar tribal sheiks and started funding and arming the Sunni militias they were then organizing. As a result, the number of insurgent attacks quickly began to drop, and so the Americans widened the program to other provinces. It grew to include nearly 100,000 Sunni fighters, most of whom were paid $300 a month - a sizeable income in a devastated city like Fallujah with sky-high unemployment rates.

The program was soon hailed as a success, and the groups were dubbed anything from The Awakening, to Sons of Iraq (al-Sahwa), or as the US military preferred for a time, Concerned Local Citizens. Whatever the name, most of their members were former resistance fighters; many were also former members of Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath Party; and significant numbers were - and, of course, remain - both.

There was an even deeper history to the path the Americans finally chose to tame the insurgency and the homegrown al-Qaeda-in-Iraq (AQI) groups that had spun off from it. In an interview with David Enders and Richard Rowley, colleagues of mine, in the summer of 2007, Sheikh Aifan laid this out quite clearly: "Saddam Hussein supported some tribes and some sheiks. Some of those sheiks, he used their power in their areas. The first support came by money. He supported them by big projects, by money, and he made them very rich. So you see, they can deal with anyone in Iraq with money. The Americans, they made the same plan with all the sheiks."

The main goal of the Americans was never the reconstruction of devastated al-Anbar province. That was just the label given to a project whose objective - from the US point of view - was to save American lives and to tamp down violence in Iraq before the US presidential election of 2008.

Today, leading sheiks like Aifan will tell you that they are in "the construction business". That's a polite phrase for what they're doing, and the rubric under which a lot of the payouts take place (however modest actual reconstruction work might be). Think of it this way: every dealer needs a front man. The US bought the sheiks off and it was to their immediate advantage to be bought off. They regained a kind of power that had been seeping away, while all the money and arms allowed them to put real muscle into recruiting people in the tribes they controlled and into building the Awakening Movement.

The reasons - and they are indeed plural - why the tribal leaders were so willing to collaborate with the occupiers of their country are, at least in retrospect, relatively clear. Those in al-Anbar who had once supported, and had been supported by, Saddam, and then had initially supported the resistance became far keener to work with occupation forces as they saw their power eroded by al-Qaeda-in-Iraq.

AQI proved a threat to the sheiks, many of whom had initially worked directly with it, when it began to try to embed its own fierce, extremist Sunni ideology in the region - and perhaps even more significantly, when it began to infringe on the cross-border smuggling trade that had kept many tribal sheiks rich. As AQI grew larger and threatened their financial and power bases, they had little choice but to throw in their lot with the Americans.

As a result, these men obtained backing for their private militias, renamed Awakening groups, and in addition, signed "construction" contracts with the Americans who put millions of dollars in their pockets, even if not always into actual construction sites. As early as April 2006, the Rand Corporation released a report, "The Anbar Awakening", identifying America's potential new allies as a group of sheiks who used to control smuggling rings and organized crime in the area.

One striking example was Sheik Abdul Sattar Abu Risha, who founded the first Awakening groups in al-Anbar and later led the entire movement until he was assassinated in 2007, shortly after he met with president George W Bush. It was well known in the region that Abu Risha was primarily a smuggler defending his business operations by joining the Americans.

Not surprisingly, given the lucrative nature of the cooperative relationship that developed, whenever an Awakening group sheik is assassinated, another is always there to take his place. Abu Risha was, in fact, promptly replaced as "president" of the Anbar Awakening by his brother Sheik Ahmad Abu Risha, also now in the "construction business".

Dreaming of the new Dubai
When Bush visited Iraq in September 2007, my host on my tour of Fallujah, Sheik Aifan, was delighted to meet him. Bush, he claimed, was "very smart and a brother". During the summer of 2008, he would meet Barack Obama as well. When asked what he thought of Obama, he told Richard Rowley, "US foreign policy tends not to change with a new president." A photo of him with Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki is proudly displayed, among many others, at his home in Fallujah.

To fully understand why tribal leaders like Aifan began working so closely with American forces, you also have to take into account the waves of staggering sectarian violence that were sweeping across Iraq in 2006. As Sunni suicide and car bombings slaughtered Shi'ites, so, too, Shi'ite militias and death squads were murdering Sunnis by the score on a daily basis.

Before the US invasion in 2003, Sunnis had been nearly a majority in Baghdad, the Iraqi capital. By 2006, they were a rapidly shrinking minority, largely driven out of the many mixed Sunni-Shi'ite neighborhoods that dotted the city and some purely Sunni ones as well. Hundreds of thousands of them were displaced from homes in Baghdad alone.

At his Informed Comment blog, Juan Cole reports that Sunnis may now make up as little as 10%-15% of the population of the capital. No wonder their tribal leaders, outnumbered and outgunned on all sides, felt the need for some help and, with options limited, found it by reaching out to the most powerful military on the planet. With their finances, livelihoods and even lives threatened, they resorted to a classic tactic of the beleaguered, summed up in the saying, "The enemy of my enemy is my friend."

The result today? Sheik Aifan is a millionaire many times over. And his dreams are fittingly no longer those of a local smuggler. He wants to "make Anbar the next Dubai", he told two of my colleagues and I as we powered down the battered streets of Fallujah in reference to the glittering city that has grown out of the desert in the United Arab Emirates.

His house is a fittingly massive, heavily guarded mansion complete with its own checkpoint near the street, two guard towers, and even two heavy machine guns emplaced near the door to his office. A bevy of guards surround him at all times and live in the mansion full-time for his protection.

During our first visit to his home, my companions and I ended up spending the night, since we had not completed our interviews by the time the sun began to set. It was just days ahead of the recent provincial elections in which the list of Awakening members of which he was a part would take second place. As we munched on delicious kebabs, he proudly discussed his own campaign that he hoped would land him high in the city council. "I'm running," he insisted, "because if I don't, the bad people will keep their seats. We can't change things if we don't run."

With most Sunni groups boycotting the 2005 election, the Iraqi Islamic Party (IIP), a heavily religious group, took control of the seats of power in Fallujah. While I was with Aifan, he was visibly anxious and angered by rumors that the IIP was attempting to pressure voters and rig the elections. "We will fight with any means necessary if they win by fraud," he said adamantly - and, as I would soon find out, he was already taking the fight to the IIP.

John Gotti in Iraq

As the night grew late, Aifan suddenly decided that we should accompany him on a quick visit to the provincial capital, Ramadi. He wanted to consult with a compatriot, Sheik Abu Risha, in order to file a joint letter of complaint about the alleged fraud the IIP was conducting in the run-up to the elections. It was interesting to note that, only two years and a few months after the Awakening Movement was formed, the two sheiks feared a Sunni electoral party far more than al-Qaeda-in-Iraq.

En route he proudly showed off the BMW's extras, including its two-inch thick bulletproof windows (so useful if you fear assassination), the handy flip-out whisky compartment that held Johnny Walker and some sodas, and a top-of-the-line music system. As he drove, his cell phone in one hand and a walkie-talkie beside him a constant link to his security guards in SUVs which had us sandwiched front and back, he continued to talk enthusiastically with us. Riding in the front, I couldn't help but be exceedingly aware of the pistol that rested conveniently near him on the seat. In the back on the floor were a shotgun and an AK-47 assault rifle.

Abu Risha's compound in Ramadi was even larger than Sheik Aifan's mansion - and even more heavily guarded. We arrived to find an election official already waiting to take Aifan's written complaint on the rigging charges. The chief of police for the province was in attendance too, a sign of the power and influence of these two men who share a bond of power and money. (Abu Risha even owns a camel farm.)

Once the visit was concluded, we headed back for Fallujah and had a late night snack at Sheik Aifan's place before settling in for a night's sleep as his guest. His daughter, a shy girl of perhaps seven years of age, sat beside him as we ate. At one point, he suddenly peeled a crisp US $100 bill off a wad of bills that would have stunned any movie mafia boss, smiled benevolently, and added that she shouldn't let her mother know about the gift.

The sheik, of course, had $100 bills to spare, as millions of dollars for so-called construction projects have been funneled his way. It's how he pays the roughly 900 men that he estimates make up his private militia. For all of this he can thank the US military, which delivers regular installments of money - shrink-wrapped bricks of those $100 bills - because post-invasion Iraq remains largely a cash-only economy.

Before our journey to Ramadi, a patrol of US Marines had paid Sheik Aifan a visit. As the soldiers climbed the stairs to his meeting room, they took clips of ammunition away from the sheik's security team, and kept them until they left his compound. It was a gentle reminder of who still has the final say in this part of Iraq and of just how far the trust extends between these partners of necessity.

Sheikh Aifan offered a warm greeting to the marine commander, and the two men sat down to talk. Each was visibly distracted, anxiously looking around. Sheik Aifan toyed anxiously with his prayer beads, wiggling his legs like a nervous schoolchild, while telling his guest how well everything was going. The meeting was repeatedly interrupted by cell phone calls for the sheik who, at one point, left briefly to welcome another visitor.

After the meeting, platters of food were brought in and everyone feasted. As they were leaving, I asked one of the marines if meetings like these happened regularly. "This is our job," he replied. "We visit sheiks. And this guy is like John Gotti." (Gotti, labeled the "Teflon Don", ran the Gambino crime family in New York City before being jailed.)

I wasn't eager to stay the night, but the alternatives - at least the safe ones - were nil. Though in luxurious circumstances, we caught something of the newest Iraqi dilemma: we had "security" of a sort, but no freedom.

Outside the gates of Sheik Aifan's well-guarded compound, generators hummed in the night providing electricity in a land where, if you can't pay for a generator of your own or share one with your neighbor, you are in trouble. In Fallujah, like Baghdad, four hours of electricity delivered from the national grid is considered a good day. Generally, a self-imposed curfew kept the streets relatively traffic free after total darkness settled in.

The city in which Sheik Aifan lives, of course, still lies in rubble, its people largely in a state of existential endurance. The Awakening groups have earned the respect of many Iraqis by providing "security", but at what price?

Reconstruction has yet to really begin in Sunni areas and the movement, sheiks and all, only works as long as the US continues funneling "reconstruction funds" to tribal leaders. What happens when that stops, as it surely must with time? Will the people of Fallujah be better served? Or has this process merely laid the groundwork for future bloodshed?

Exclusive: How Iran is Taking Over America

Once it was Reds under the Bed. Now it's the Mullahs Hiding behind the Curtains.

Human Events sounds the warning, exposing all the pseudo-Americans who are actually working for Tehran. Our only qualm with this article is that --- as it outed Trita Parsi, Juan Cole, and Gary Sick, all of whom we have featured on this website --- somehow it forgot to mention Enduring America amongst the threats to Mr and Mrs USA.

Why U.S. Policy Leans Too Close to Terrorist Appeasement
Clare M. Lopez

The Obama administration has lost no time extending an outstretched hand to Iran’s terrorist regime, just as promised during the election campaign. The president assured the mullahs of his pacific intentions in a January 2009 interview on al-Arabiya TV, asking nothing more than that Iran unclench its fist.

Secretary of State Clinton echoed Obama after an early February 2009 meeting with British Foreign Secretary David Miliband. Absent from either of their comments was any mention of Tehran’s obligations before the world community to comply with United Nations resolutions to immediately and verifiably suspend all nuclear enrichment activity. Also missing was any criticism of Iran’s massive support for terrorist organizations such as Hamas, Hizballah, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad -- not to mention its long-standing affiliation with al-Qa’eda.

As for introduction of a U.N. resolution to condemn Iran for repeated incitement to genocide of a fellow U.N. member state -- the State of Israel -- somehow that didn’t come up either. Holding to account a regime that stones girls to death for being raped, hangs gays from construction cranes, and executes juveniles also doesn’t seem central to the new agenda. Perhaps we missed it and the United States actually signed on to the Cairo Declaration. For those who don’t remember that ignominious piece of paper, it is the 1990 opt-out by Muslim states from the U.N. Declaration on Human Rights.

An 8 February 2009 speech by Vice President Joe Biden (in Munich, of all places) did note U.S. readiness to take pre-emptive action against Iran if it does not abandon its nuclear ambitions and support for terrorism, but also repeated that the U.S. is open to talks. This is what your mother always warned you against: mixed signals.

Under the Bush administration we had no Iran policy. Now, our policy leans too close to appeasement. How did it get this way?

America’s foreign policy toward Iran did not reach this level of malleability overnight or by accident. A well-organized plan to infiltrate and influence U.S. policymakers at the highest levels has been operating on American soil for well over a decade. Conceived in Tehran under the direct authority of the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the plan set out to create a network of top U.S. academics, diplomats, journalists, NGOs, and think tanks that would advocate a policy of appeasement towards Iran. Iran’s top strategic objective has always been to buy time for its nuclear weapons program, which now is well along in developing the three critical components: enriched uranium, warhead weaponization, and a credible missile delivery system.

Beginning in the late 1990s, a de facto alliance between Muslim Brotherhood fronts in the U.S. (such as CAIR -- the Council on Islamic American Relations) and frank Tehran regime advocates like the American-Iranian Council (AIC) openly began to promote public support for a U.S. foreign policy based on the favored positions of the Islamic Republic. In 2002, a new pro-Iran group was formed by a young Swedish-Iranian immigrant named Trita Parsi. That group, the National Iranian-American Council (NIAC) quickly established itself as the nexus of a growing network of individuals and organizations that openly lobby for a U.S. policy of acquiescence, diplomacy, incentives, and negotiations with the Tehran regime -- while strongly opposing coercive diplomacy, sanctions, or threat of military action. Part and parcel of this advocacy on behalf of Tehran is a pattern of antipathy towards Israel that minimizes its security concerns and dismisses its legitimate defense needs.

Under Parsi, who is closely connected to the Tehran regime, the NIAC network has expanded to include a growing number of new groups. Some of them -- such as The Campaign Against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran (CASMII) -- are NIAC clones. CASMII was founded in December 2005 to oppose all forms of pressure on Iran. Others, such as the Center for a New American Security (CNAS, founded in February 2007) play the role of useful idiots. CNAS had Dr. Susan Rice, the Obama administration’s appointee as Ambassador to the UN, on its Board of Directors.

Dr. Vali Nasr, who has been named senior advisor to U.S. Afghanistan/Pakistan envoy Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, was one of the authors of a September 2008 CNAS publication called Iran: Assessing U.S. Strategic Options. Nasr’s chapter, "The Implications of Military Confrontation with Iran," urged the U.S. to take the military option for dealing with Iran off the table and instead focus on how best to accommodate Tehran’s rising power in the Middle East region. The Campaign for a New American Policy on Iran (CNAPI) launched its pro-Iran activities with a cross-country event called The Folly of Attacking Iran Tour, which crisscrossed the U.S. in February and March 2008.

The American Foreign Policy Project (AFPP) was founded in December 2008 with an “experts list” that reads like a remix of other CAIR and NIAC affiliates, including former Ambassadors Thomas Pickering, James Dobbins, and William Miller plus well-known academic figures such as Professors Gary G. Sick of Columbia University and Juan R. Cole of the University of Michigan. These groups’ interlocking Boards of Advisors, Directors, and Experts include many other nationally-known figures from public policy and international business arenas, including some big oil companies.

All are associated in one way or another with Trita Parsi and NIAC and all advocate a policy of accommodation with Iran.

The Iranian regime makes no attempt to disguise its links to this network. NIAC, for instance, was openly mentioned in the 7 December 2007 issue of the government-controlled Aftab News, where the NIAC network was called the regime’s “Iran lobby in the U.S.” In March 2007, the Fars News daily described NIAC as ‘a non-profit’ organization with headquarters in Washington, D.C. that was established to counter the influence of AIPAC [the American-Israeli Political Action Committee, a legal lobby group] and to enlist the support of Iranian expatriates living in the U.S. in order to ‘penetrate U.S. politics.’

Maneuvering behind Washington, D.C. policymaking scenes to exert influence on U.S. decision makers is pretty standard for a host of legitimate interest groups, including many foreign countries. Concern is indicated, however, when the guiding influence behind such maneuvering emanates from the top levels of a regime like Iran’s that holds top spot on the Department of State’s state sponsors of terror list, makes no secret of its hatred and enmity for the U.S. and our ally Israel, and acts in myriad ways to support those who have assassinated, held, kidnapped, killed, and tortured American civilians and military over a 30-year period. The expanding influence of this pro-Iran lobby on U.S. foreign policy attests to a determined and sophisticated operation that serves only the interests of regime implacably hostile to America’s own national security interests.

Ms. Lopez is the Vice President of the Intelligence Summit and a professor at the Centre for Counterintelligence and Security Studies.

US Engagement with Iran: Transcript of President Ahmadinejad's Speech

Related Post: Extract from Ahmadinejad Speech, Delegate Walkout at Durban Conference

Related Post: Obama Press Conference: Thumbs-Up for Iran and Russia, Slapdowns for Petraeus and Pakistan

Update: During a trip to Iraq on Wednesday, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said, ""We look positively on the slogan that Obama raised in the elections. The world has really changed. If the American administration wants to keep up with the changes, this will be happy news."

This is the transcript of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's speech on Tuesday at Tehran's Freedom Square, commemorating the 30th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution. The translation is provided by the US Government's Open Source Center via Juan Cole:

In the name of God, the Compassionate the Merciful. O God, hasten the reappearance of the Hidden Imam and grant him health and victory and make us his true companions and believers and those who testify to his rightfulness. . .

The new US government has announced that it wants to create change and follow the path of talks. It's very clear that true change should be fundamental and not tactical. It's clear that the Iranian nation will welcome genuine changes.


The Iranian nation is prepared to talk. However, these talks should be held in a fair atmosphere in which there is mutual respect.

They have said that they want to fight terrorism. The Iranian nation has been fighting terrorism for the past 30 years. If you truly want to fight terrorism come and cooperate with the Iranian nation, which is the main victim of terrorism, so that terrorism is uprooted. We can give you the addresses of terrorist dens in some European countries, the lands occupied by the Al-Quds occupying regime (Israel) and some other countries which in fact have good relations with you. Of course, we think that it's very unlikely that you don't have this information. If you want to dry the roots of aggression and murder, let's put those behind the recent wars in the Persian Gulf and the Middle East, on trial and sentence them together. Everyone knows that Saddam (Husayn) was not the only person who caused the wars. Since the attack by Mr Bush's government some one million people have been killed and a few million people have been displaced. In order to uproot insecurity, those behind these killings including Mr Bush, his allies and government, have to be put on trial and sentenced. (Chants of indistinct slogans from the masses in support of the president's comments)

If you want to uproot crime, join the Iranian nation and other nations and let's put the criminal leaders of the Zionist regime on trial and sentence them together (chants of indistinct slogans from the masses).

If you want to genuinely fight against the proliferation of atomic weapons and weapons of mass destruction, you have to join Iran and help it so that it can show you the right way. Yes, atomic weapons and weapons of mass destruction are a serious threat. They have to be destroyed. The Iranian nation is the victim of chemical weapons and weapons of mass destruction.

However, the only way (to counter them) is to implement justice and suitable planning. It's clear that the measures which have been taken up until now to destroy atomic weapons have been ineffective. If they are interested in destroying these weapons and if they genuinely want the world to become a peaceful place, they must resort to rational and just methods.

We told them that their behavior in Iraq was wrong but they didn't listen. As a result, these atrocities occurred and Mr Bush's government was humiliated. If they truly want to establish genuine security, let's reform the fundamentals of the UN's structure, which is the source of oppression and discrimination and is incapable of establishing security, together and establish justice there.

If you genuinely intend to uproot drugs, you should ask the Iranian nation, which has sacrificed more than 3,300 martyrs in its fight against drug smuggling. Of course, this development is in need of fundamental changes to their approach and behavior.

We hope that this happens. The world is not interested in the repetition of the dark ages created by Mr Bush. We don't even want the American nation to be humiliated and have a bad reputation. I believe that the fate of Mr Bush, who has the worst reputation in our contemporary history, should be a lesson to all of those who wish to dominate the world and impose themselves on other nations. Of course, some try to repeat that experience but in another shape, they must know that a fate worse than that of Mr Bush awaits them (chants of indistinct slogans).

The Iranian nation is the friend of regional nations and governments. Even though Iran is a great power, it is the brother of other nations, especially those in the region. Praise be to God, today the Iranian nation has brotherly and friendly relations with other regional nations.

The enemies don't like us to have such relations. They are determined to put some of the region's governments against other nations by imposing certain measures and behavior and humiliate and belittle them in the minds of other nations and make them an accomplice in their crimes. I would like to give them this friendly and brotherly advice and that is that some of them made the same mistake during the first decade of the revolution when Saddam was carrying out atrocities against the Iranian nation.

Then they regretted it. Of course, the Iranian nation was gracious and never showed off to them. As a brother, I would like to say to them that it's to their advantage to be careful of satanic temptations and those created by the Zionists and imperialistic governments. It's in your interest to support your own people. The Iranian nation is by your side and supports you. You have to be in the service of your own people. You should have been by the side of your people during the Gaza incidents....

Update on Obama v. The Military: Where Next in Afghanistan?

Is President Obama preparing to stall out the military's request for 25,000 more US troops to Afghanistan?

The Times of London, in an article that is not replicated elsewhere, thinks so. It asserts, on the basis of an unnamed source:

The Pentagon was set to announce the deployment of 17,000 extra soldiers and marines last week but Robert Gates, the defence secretary, postponed the decision after questions from Obama.

The president was concerned by a lack of strategy at his first meeting with Gates and the US joint chiefs of staff last month in “the tank”, the secure conference room in the Pentagon. He asked: “What’s the endgame?” and did not receive a convincing answer.

On its own, that's not strong evidence that Obama is going to block the military's insistence on a "surge" to be announced before the NATO summit on 5 April. However, the excellent Juan Cole stacks up the reasons why Obama might want to pull the plug on Genius/General David Petraeus's plan.

As we've noted for weeks, the US is in a real logistical bind. With the closure of its main supply route from Pakistan, it has to find an alternative for all those extra forces. Russia, however, is playing a double game: while it says publicly it will allow the US to move supplies across its territory, it has encouraged Kyrgyzstan to close the US Manas airbase that is needed for the effort. Meanwhile Uzbekistan, which did host US bases after 9/11 but then evicted American forces in 2005, is only prepared to allow non-military supplies across its supplies.

Conclusion? The US is going to have pay a very high price --- economic and political --- to get full support for an alternative supply route. That is --- and here's a crazy thought --- unless it's prepared to supply Afghanistan from the west via Iran.

But, as good as Cole's analysis is, I think it misses the wider political point. It's pretty clear that Washington would prefer to see the back of President Hamid Karzai, its choice to lead Afghanistan in 2001 but a leader who --- depending on your point of view --- is too tolerant of corruption or too critical of the US approach to be a solid ally in this new surge.

However, unless the US is prepared to abandon the semblance of national government, it needs someone to play the political partner in Kabul. And Karzai, who is getting bolder even as his position is more and more tenuous, has made the process more difficult by suspending elections for the foreseeable future.

That means that, short of a coup, the Obama Administration is encumbered by a national leader who is now an opponent of its plans. And that means that, even if the US can find short-term military success against the insurgents, it has no political "endgame" in sight.

I'm wary of the V-word as an analogy but, for students of history, it might not be a bad idea to revisit Ngo Dinh Diem and Saigon 1963. Let's hope that Barack Obama chooses to take a glance, and draw any suitable lessons, this week.

Update: Unlikely Alliances Emerge from Iraqi Elections

Juan Cole has a very interesting revelation, via monitoring of Iraqi television, about post-election Iraqi politics:

Amir al-Kinani, head of the Independent Free People Trend, which is backed by the Al-Sadr Trend, revealed that his trend has agreed, in principle, with Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, in his capacity as head of the State of Law Coalition, to form an alliance in the governorate councils won by the two lists.

So the political followers of the cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, who have been stridently opposed to the American occupation since 2003 --- at times quite violently, are now linking up with the Prime Minister's Daw'a Party? That is quite a turnabout, given that al-Maliki risked his political future less than a year ago by working with US troops to push back the Sadrists in Baghdad's Sadr City and Basra.

Cole lays out a clear, effective explanation. Both Daw'a and the Sadrists are religious parties seeking an Islamic state. Al-Maliki, having established his authority, would like to see American forces drawn down as soon as possible, as do the Sadrists. The major disagreement between the two --- that al-Maliki has been seeking a legislative basis for the US withdrawal, while the Sadrists are opposed to any legal recognition --- was effectively put outside the political arena when the Status of Forces Agreement was pushed through at the end of December.

If I was a US military commander or political representative, I would be thinking very hard about any statement that Iraqis, or at least Iraqi political leaders, welcome a continued American presence. The alignment of coalitions isn't looking very promising for that assertion.