Today's Obamameter: The Latest on US Foreign Policy (6 February)

Latest Post: Decoding the Political Challenges of the Iraqi Elections
Latest Post: Obama and Blair - The Symbolism of Loyalty
Latest Post: US Economy Saved - Dunking Dick Cheney
Latest Post: Red Alert - Fox "News" Launches Comrade Update

Current Obamameter Reading: Murky

9:25 p.m. We'll need time to decode Iranian Speaker of the Parliament Ali Larijani's speech at Munich today but, on first reading, it appears to be the line of "we will talk to the US if it unclenches its fist". Calling on Washington to change its tactics "to a chess game from a boxing match", Larijani invoked the history of US challenges to Iran, including Washington's support of Iraq in the 1980s during Baghdad's war with Tehran, but said a new relationship was possible if the US "accepts its mistakes and changes its policies". In a world where Israel was allowed to have more than 200 nuclear weapons, "the dispute over Iran’s nuclear issue is by no means legal”.

Simple translation? Iran talks formally but only if the US not only refrains from preconditions but eases existing economic restrictions.

9:20 p.m. You have to admire Poland, either for being completely out of it or having no shame in sucking up to Washington or both. Apparently missing the news that the Obama Administration is walking away from missile defence, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk "will definitely tell Vice President Biden tomorrow in Munich we are ready to participate in this project, a U.S. project".

Evening Update (8:30 p.m. GMT): We've just posted a separate entry "Decoding the Political Challenges of the Iraqi Elections" with Juan Cole's detailed breakdown and incisive consideration of the results.

The Russian Paradox. As Moscow tries to assert political and military influence in Central Asia and on its western borders, attempting to negotiate with the US from a position of strength, it faces financial and economic crisis at home. We'll have an analysis this weekend, but The Daily Telegraph has just posted Russian President Dmitri Medvedev's warning of unrest:

We are falling under the influence of the global crisis – a worsening problem of unemployment and other social issues. At such a time one encounters those who wish to speculate, to use the situation. One cannot allow an already complicated situation to deteriorate.

In the latest diplomatic move, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov told the Munich Security Conference that the Obama Administration offered a "window of opportunity" for positive resolution of the issue of missile defence in Europe.



2:15 p.m. Pakistan authorities claim 52 militants have been killed by army helicopters in fighting south of the Khyber Pass.

1:15 p.m. Today's Russia Reading: Gusting in Your Face. Abhkazia, the region in Georgia which Russia recognised as independent last summer, has announced that it will host a Russian naval base and an airbase. The Abhkaz Deputy Foreign Minister said a 25-year military treaty could be signed.

10:40 a.m. Watching the World Turn. McClatchy News Services has an illuminating article on how Iran is promoting its aims through "soft power" in Latin America, providing millions of dollars in aid to Bolivia.

10:10 a.m. The Guardian of London, amidst the mix of developments on US-Iran relations, offers what I think is sensible advice:

Instead of concentrating narrowly on preventing Iranian nuclear weapons, the better way would be to proceed incrementally, by way of small concessions and bargains, recognising that the gulf between the Iranian and American understanding of history is a very wide one. More fundamental progress is unlikely unless there is movement toward a settlement between Israelis and Palestinians, and an acceptance that the Israeli nuclear monopoly cannot be left out of the equation when urging nuclear restraint on other states. There are no magic wands in the Middle East.

9 a.m. After a bomb killed at least 27 people at a Shi'a mosque in Central Pakistan, hundreds of Shi'a have set fire to a police station.

8 a.m. US-led raid in Zabul province in southern Afghanistan kills 6 people; council member says they are civilians.

Morning Update (6:30 a.m. GMT; 1:30 a.m. Washington): Important clues to President Obama's position in his battle with the US military over strategy in Afghanistan. Speaking to Democratic Congressmen last night, he emphasized the US cannot win the war in Afghanistan by military means alone. The military "needs a clear mission", as there is a danger of "mission creep without clear parameters".

Translation? Obama is not happy with the military's suggestion that the US hand off non-military activities and "nation-building" to European allies and NATO and believes that the proposed buildup of US forces lacks an "exit strategy" with a political as well as military resolution.

You know Kyrgyzstan must be important, even if I still can't pronounce it, because CNN leads with Hillary Clinton's denunciation of the Kyrgyz Government's decision to close the US airbase as "regrettable". Notable, however, that she did not criticise Russia, who helped Kyrgryzstan on its way with promises of financial and economic support.

The Kyrgyz Government is insisting that its decision is final: "The U.S. embassy and the [Kyrgyz] Foreign Ministry are exchanging opinions on this, but there are no discussions on keeping the base." The Kyrgyz Parliament votes on the decision next week.

A suicide bomber killed himself and wounded seven at a checkpoint on Pakistan's Khyber Pass. Security forces suspect he was trying to get to a bigger bridge, which army engineers are repairing after it was damaged by a bomb earlier this week.

Judge Susan Crawford, overseeing the military commissions process at the Guantanamo Bay detention centre, has halted the last ongoing trial. She overruled a judge who ordered the continuation of hearings over a suspect in the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole.

Decoding the Political Challenges of the Iraqi Elections

Four days after the provincial elections in Iraq, the political complexities are beginning to emerge. While many are still caught up in the two-dimensional narrative of "victory for the secularists, defeat for Iran", this  is at best a diversion which does not appreciate the complexities of politics and society after Saddam.

Consider and contrast, for example, the fatuous cheerleading of the Kagan spin machine (Kimberly and Frederick in the Wall Street Journal) with Juan Cole's simple, effective correction: "Iran did not Lose the Provincial Elections". And, for the less onerous but still simplistic readings of "Big Win for Prime Minister al-Maliki", Cole has a more detailed breakdown today (which we reprint below) and an incisive conclusion:

Although Nuri al-Maliki's Da'wa Party got over a third of the votes in Baghdad and Basra, they clearly did not achieve a commanding position, and its share in the more rural Shiite provinces was signifcantly less..

The big story here is that the Shiite religious parties (and yes, the Da'wa or Islamic Mission Party is among them) again swept the Shiite south. However, those Shiite parties that won out this time want a strong central government, not a Shiite mini-state.



The irony, which is deliberately missed by those who want to twist the election into a simple "victory for America, defeat for Al Qa'eda, defeat for America's enemies" narrative, is that less than a year ago, the US was working against a strong Baghdad and in favour of stronger local Sunni movements. Then, however, al-Maliki asserted himself in the battles for Sadr City and Basra and Washington swung behind him as the most effective Iraqi leader.

But, of course, those local Sunni movements that had been courted by the US in the "surge" are still around --- indeed, up to 48 hours ago they were threatening a mini-war with Baghdad --- and so are the other parties in al-Maliki's coalition. As we said last summer and will say again, Iraqi politics is now beyond Washington, and the US military is marginal, not central, to the complex processes that will play out beyond any simple invocation of "democracy".

Religious Parties Sweep Shiite South; Sunni Arabs fragmented, mainly Secular
JUAN COLE

The Iraqi provincial election results are out. They confirm what I said last Monday, that the parties who want a strong, united Iraq have come to the fore in these elections. Although Nuri al-Maliki's Da'wa Party got over a third of the votes in Baghdad and Basra, they clearly did not achieve a commanding position, and its share in the more rural Shiite provinces was signifcantly less..

The big story here is that the Shiite religious parties (and yes, the Da'wa or Islamic Mission Party is among them) again swept the Shiite south. However, those Shiite parties that won out this time want a strong central government, not a Shiite mini-state.

There is nothing here to give comfort to those Americans who fear Iranian influence in Iraq. The Islamic Mission Party or Da'wa is just as committed to warm relations with Tehran as is the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq. The Da'wa leaders were in exile in Tehran for years just like ISCI. Da'wa is more "lay" and less clerical than ISCI, but being "lay" means non-clerical, not secular. Da'wa wants an Islamic State.

These election results raise severe questions about the viability of the Biden plan, which foresaw three decentralized super-provinces overseen by a weak central government. Most of the victors in this election are strong believers in a centralized civil bureaucracy.

On the whole, I think these results are encouraging for Obama. The Sunni Arab ex-Baathist secular elites have reentered polities in the Sunni Arab areas. These election results put paid to the fantasies of Dick Cheney and John McCain that Sunni Arab Iraqis are pro-"al-Qaeda." Most of them would not even vote for a religious party, much less for a radical fundamentalist terrorist group. Cheney said that if the US left, al-Qaeda would take over Sunni Arab Iraq. That is highly unlikely given these election results.

Iraq voted as several distinct demographic zones.

In the two provinces with very large Shiite cities, the Islamic Mission Party (Da'wa) of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki took over a third of the vote. Another 15-20% of the vote went to Shiite fundamentalist parties such as the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq or the Sadrists. Contrary to what a lot of observers are saying, the Da'wa Party is not secular and it is not anti-Iran. It is Iraq's oldest Shiite fundamentalist party, founded in the late 1950s, and it explicitly works for an Islamic republic. Its leaders consult with and tend to defer to Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani. Since these parties will have to make post-election coalitions to rule, given that none gained a majority, the resulting provincial governments will resemble those formed by the United Iraqi Alliance, which grouped as allies these same Shiite religious parties. The major difference in this election in the big urban areas is that in Baghdad, the Shiite middle class gave the Iraqi List of Iyad Allawi nearly 10% of the vote, and the Sunni fundamentalists got a similar percentage. Of course, some Sunnis may have voted for Allawi's Iraqi List. But the election returns suggest that Sunnis are no no more than ten to fifteen percent of the Baghdad population, and that Iraq's capital is now a largely Shiite city. In Basra province, the Sunni proportion seems even smaller, tiny, even. This is odd because Zubayr near Baghdad is a largely Sunni city of 300,000. The Basra middle classes, once fairly secular, returned the big religious parties overwhelmingly.

The second zone is the medium and smaller Shiite cities of the south. There, Da'wa did not do nearly as well, receiving between ten and twenty-three percent of the vote. The other 90 to 77 percent of the seats went to other fundamentalist Shiite parties in the main. The Sadrists showed substantial strength in some provinces, garnering 14% and 15% of the vote. Although the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq suffered a massive reversal, insofar as it had dominated the provinces of the south from 2005, it still often ranged from 8% to 15% of the seats in these provincial councils. Other small Shiite parties, including former PM Ibrahim Jaafari's National Reform Trend and the Islamic Virtue Party, both small Shiite fundamentalist parties, often got between three and eight percent of the vote.

The final zone is the four Sunni Arab provinces, which did not vote similarly to one another.

The ethnically mixed Diyala Province in the east split its vote, with about a quarter going to secular parties with a Baathist background; about a fifth going to the Sunni fundamentalist bloc; a fourth going to the Kurdistan alliance, and about 15 percent going to Shiite fundamentalist parties.

In al-Anbar, the secular and tribal parties won big, with the religious parties marginalized (15% of the vote).

In Ninevah, a big, secular, centralizing party, al-Hadba', got nearly 50% of the seats, sweeping away the Kurdish representatives that were once prominent on this provincial council.

Salahuddin returned so many small parties that seeing a trend thare is beyond me. The over all picture of the Sunni ARabis is that contrary to the last administration in Washington, the Sunni Arabs of Iraq are mostly secular nationalists and are uninterested for the most part in fundamentalists or "al-Qaeda."

Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that the Iraqi High Electoral Commission announced 90 percent of the results in the provincial elections held Jan. 31. More results are given in Arabic in this al-Hayat article. The New York Times has a fairly complete list of results in English.

Below, I list the major results, though I'm leaving out the very small parties. I will use the names of the leading parties rather than the names of their coalitions, since they aren't really much of a coalition and typically there is a strong party core. So the Islamic Mission Party or Da'wa of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki ran with others as the Coalition for a Government of Laws. The Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI) of Abdul Aziz al-Hakim (which is especially close to Iran) ran with some other closely allied small parties as the Martyr of the Prayer Niche Alliance. And the Sadrists, followers of Sayyid Muqtada al-Sadr, ran as "The Free Independent Movement." But I'll just call them Sadrists. Likewise, among Sunnis the National Dialogue Front of Salih Mutalk (secular, Sunni, ex-Baathist) ran in a coalition called "the Iraqi National Plan." Iyad Allawi's Iraqi National List kept its name. Former Prime Minister Ibrahim Ja'fari ran a party called the National Reform Trend.

LARGE SHIITE PROVINCES:

Baghdad: Da'wa won 38%; the Sadrists won 9%; the (Sunni) Iraqi Accord Front won 9%; The Iraqi List won 8.6%; the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI) won 5.4%; The National Reform Trend won 4.3%

Basra: Da'wa won 37%; ISCI won 11.6% the Gathering of Justice and Unity won 5.5%; the Sadrists won 5%; the Iraqi Accord Front won 3.8%; the Islamic Virtue Party won 3.2%; the Iraqi List won 3.2%; the (Shiite fundamentalist) National Reform Trend won 2.5%

SMALLER SHIITE PROVINCES

Dhi Qar: Da'wa won 23.1%; Sadrists won 14.1%; ISCI won 11.1%; National Reform Trend won 7.6%; Islamic Virtue Party won 6.1%

Qadisiya: Da'wa won 23.1 %; ISCI won 11.7%; the National Reform Trend won 8.2%; the Iraqi List won 8%; the Sadrists won 6.7%; Islamic Loyalty won 4.3%; the Islamic Virtue Party won 4.1%

Maysan: Da'wa won 17.7%; Sadrists won 15.2%; ISCI won 14.6%; National Reform Trend won 8.7%; Islamic Virtue Party won 3.2%

Najaf: Da'wa won 16.2%; ISCI won 14.8%; Sadrists won 12.2%; Loyalty to Najaf won 8.3%; the National Reform Trend won 7%

Wasit: Da'wa won 15.3%; ISCI won 10%; Sadrists won 6%; Iraqi List won 4.6%; Constitutional won 3.9%; National Reform Trend won 3.2%

Babil: Da'wa won 12.5%; ISCI won 8.2%; Sadrists won 6.2%; the National Reform Trend won 4.4%

Muthanna: Da'wa won 10.9%; ISCI won 9.3%; Republicans won 7.1%; National Reform Trend won 6.3%; Sadrists won 5.1%; the National List won 5%; the Gathering of Muthanna won 4.9%;
Academics won 4.4%; the Middle Euphrates won 3.9%; the Islamic Virtue Party won 3.7%; the Iraqi List won 3.5%

Karbala: Yusuf Majid al-Hububi won 13.3%; the Hope of Mesopotamia won 8.9%; Da'wa won 8.5%; the Sadrists won 6.8%; ISCI won 6.4%; Justice and Reform won 3.6%; the
National Reform Trend won 2.5%; the Islamic Virtue Party won 2.5%

SUNNI PROVINCES

Salahuddin: Iraqi Accord Front won 14.5%; the Iraqi List won 13.9%; the Iraqi National Plan won 8%; the Kurdistan Alliance won 4% (plus many, many small parties)

Diyala: Iraqi Accord Front won 21.1%; the Kurdistan Alliance won 17.2%; and the Iraqi National Plan won 15%; The Iraqi List won 9.5%; Da'wa won 6%; the Coalition of Diyala won 5.3%; the National Reform Trend won 4.3%; the Sadrists won 3.1%; the National Movement won 2.6%; the Islamic Virtue Party won 2.3%

Ninevah: al-Hadba' won 48.4%; the Kurdistan Alliance won 25.5%; the Iraqi Accord Front won 6%; the Iraqi Islamic Party won 6.7%; the Turkmen Front won 2.8%; the National Iraqi Plan won 2.6%; ISCI won 1.9%

al-Anbar: the Iraqi National Plan won 17.5% ; the Awakening of Iraq won 17.1%; Iraqi Accord Front won 15.9%; the National Movement for Reform and Development won 7.8%; the Iraqi List won 6.6% (plus small parties)

Why the US Surge Will Fail in Afghanistan: The Joint Chiefs of Staff Leave Clues

Admiral Mike Mullen, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, spoke to the Reserve Officers Association yesterday about Afghanistan. In the process he --- inadvertently of course --- exposed two flaws in perception which could undo any US "surge" this year.

Mullen, like Secretary of Defense Robert Gates last week, framed the US mission in Afghanistan as one against Osama bin Laden's boys: "We cannot accept that al-Qaida leadership which continues to plan against us every single day — and I mean us, here in America — to have that safe haven in Pakistan nor could resume one in Afghanistan." That outlook seems to miss the point that the actual US military confrontation is with Afghan insurgent groups such as the Taliban and that the political challenge has nothing to do with Al Qa'eda.

The second error in Mullen's thinking is even more egregious. US involvement in Afghanistan will not repeat the Vietnam disaster because "we are not an occupying force". He might not think so, but his opinion isn't the important one here.

As Juan Cole points out, the US denied that it was an "occupying force" in Vietnam. But, in Vietnam and in Afghanistan, how do you think most of the local people regarded their American visitors?

Today's Obamameter: The Latest in US Foreign Policy (2 February)

Latest Post: Obama vs. the Generals on Iraq
Latest Post: No More War on Terror
Latest Post: Obama Outsourcing Torture?

Current Obamameter Reading: Cloudy with Signs of Thunder

7:45 p.m. "The Cable" reports that US intelligence analysts from the office of the Director of National Intelligence and the National Intelligence Council will hold a closed/Top Secret/Codeword briefing on Iran for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Thursday afternoon.

5:20 p.m. Complications and possibly worse from Sunday's provincial elections in Iraq. Tribal leaders in Anbar Province, upset at the apparent dominance of the Sunni religious Iraqi Islamic Party, have claimed widespread fraud and threatened violence if the results are upheld. The head of the Anbar Tribes List warned:

We will set the streets of Ramadi ablaze if the Islamic Party is declared the winners of the election. We will make Anbar a grave for the Islamic Party and its agents. We will start a tribal war against them and those who cooperate with them.

The turnout in parts of Anbar was as low as 25 percent.

5:15 p.m. More trouble in Somalia, only days after the election of a new President. Reports of 16 to 39 dead after a roadside bomb targeting African Union peacekeepers exploded, and the soldiers opened fire in response.



2:45 p.m. One to Watch This Afternoon. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates will brief President Obama on Monday afternoon about the plans to send up to 25,000 US troops to Afghanistan. Almost 4000 have been deployed already, 17,000 are in three brigades to be sent soon, and 5000 are support forces.

2:30 p.m. Following our weekend exclusive secret US-Iran talks, there is a further revelation today. Senior Obama Administration officials have told The Wall Street Journal that California Congressman Howard Berman planned to meet Iranian Speaker of the Parliament Ali Larijani in Bahrain in December. At the last minute, however, Larijani withdrew.

The meeting was brokered by the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, which had organised the Manama Dialogue on regional security in Bahrain.

11:40 a.m. Today's Country on Notice for Bad Behaviour: Turkey. We're not the only ones to notice Turkey's shifting foreign policy and the aftermath of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's criticism of Israel at the Davos Economic Forum. The Washington Post features an editorial by Soner Cagaptay which shakes a big finger at the naughtiness in Ankara:

The erosion of Turkey's liberalism under the AKP [Justice and Development Party] is alienating Turkey from the West. If Turkish foreign policy is based on solidarity with Islamist regimes or causes, Ankara cannot hope to be considered a serious NATO ally. Likewise, if the AKP discriminates against women, forgoes normal relations with Israel, curbs media freedoms or loses interest in joining Europe, it will hardly endear itself to the United States. And if Erdogan's AKP keeps serving a menu of illiberalism at home and religion in foreign policy, Turkey will no longer be special -- and that would be unfortunate.

It is purely coincidence that Cagaptay is a senior fellow at the stridently pro-Israeli Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

10:10 a.m. Juan Cole offers an overview of early returns from the Iraqi provincial elections. His interesting evaluation is that parties supporting a strong central government (such as Da'wa and some Sunni parties) have done better than those (Kurdish parties and Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq) favouring more power for provincial governments.

9:45 a.m. A senior United Nations official has been kidnapped in southwest Pakistan. He is John Solecki, an American who is head of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) office in Quetta.

9:40 a.m. A Taliban suicide bomber has killed 21 people in an attack on a police training centre in Uruzgan province in Afghanistan.

Morning Update (9 a.m. GMT; 4 a.m. Washington): The signs of thunder comes in the revelation, first set out by The Los Angeles Times on Saturday and analysed by Canuckistan in Enduring America today, of a complexity in President Obama's rollback of Dubya-era orders permitting unlimited detention and torture.

White House staffers are telling the media that "rendition", the practice in which detainees are transferred by the US to other countries who may or may not carry out the torture that Obama has banned, will continue. The leaks appear to be an assurance to the military and the CIA that they can continue to pick up enemy suspects and not worry about legal issues, provided they get the bad guys into the hands of foreign allies.