1220 GMT: The excellent analyst Marc Lynch has just made the immediate point, “All the Iraqi lists appear to be claiming victory. I’d wait for official results, which will be a while.” His comment comes a few hours after a CNN correspondent pondered, “Each TV station corresponding to each political bloc saying that they are the winners…hmmm….”
This is the real politics of Iraq, a day after the headlines of bombings and “democracy”. With no party in the position to establish a national majority and indeed, outside Kurdistan, even a regional dominance, the negotiations, coercions, and manipulations take over, even before the preliminary results are announced on Thursday.
In Kurdistan, there is an intriguing contest between the Kurdistan List — made up of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, led by Kurdish Prime Minister Masoud Barzani and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan led by Iraq President Jalal Talabani — and the Gorran Party, established to break the stranglehold of the KDP and PUK on Kurdish politics. An activist says that Gorran narrowly won in the city of Suleymaniyah and lost in province of the same name; however, Gorran is claiming fraud in the provincial vote. Another activist says that Gorran has also secured seats in Diyala, Mosul, and Salahaddin; however, the Kurdistan List has triumphed by a 2:1 margin in Erbil.
Responding to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s declaration that he was prepared to meet with Syrian President Bashar Assad immediately and without preconditions, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem told the pan-Arab newspaper al-Sharq al-Awsat that Israel must first declare its intention to withdraw to the 1967 borders before any Syrian-Israeli talks can take place.
The Syrian foreign minister said that there is no point in “putting the cart before the horse” and that “Israel must withdraw from the occupied territories before Syria and Israel can meet”.
Despite the exchange of threats between Damascus and West Jerusalem last month and the trilateral meeting of Hezbollah’s Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and Assad in Syria on 25 February, Israel’s training exercise “Firestones 12″, which took place in northern Israel last week, conspicuously omitted simulations of war with Syria. Instead, the Israel Defense Forces fought mock battles in preparation for clashes with Hezbollah in Lebanon or Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The army also cancelled emergency call-up drills for large numbers of regular forces and reserves, fearing Syria might mistake such a move as mobilization for war.
But in line with Haaretz’s Gideon Levy’s article “Israel Does Not Want Peace,” it can be said that Israel seeks no talks to resolve the problem; instead, it suspends this possibility while never missing any chance of upholding Damascus’s hostility. At the end of the day, Syria is bound to play the “bad guy” for Israeli officials, isn’t it?
As early voting begins in Sunday’s national elections, Iraq has been beset by bombings: the toll from three suicide attacks in Baquba on Wednesday is now 33 dead and 42 injured, and a suicide bomber has killed three and injured 15 today at a Baghdad polling station.
Al-Sharq al-Awsat says that it has gotten hold of an American intelligence document detailing undue Iranian influence in Iraq and in the Iraqi elections. The document says that Ahmad Chalabi and Ali al-Lami, influential members of the ‘Jusice and Accountability Committee’ in charge of purging Baathists from public life, met repeatedly with Iranian officials last fall. Among those they met were Qasim Sulaimani, head of the special forces Jerusalem (Quds) Brigade and the Iranian foreign minister. US Commanding General in Iraq, Ray Odierno, charged that Iran was behind the campaign to disqualify over 500 alleged Baathists from running in Iraq’s March 7 parliamentary, and this document seems to lend some credence to the allegation.
Five large bombs were detonated throughout Baghdad on Tuesday, killing 127 persons and wounding 500, and damaging important government buildings. Three of the five were suicide bombs.
Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that the bombings targeted the ministries of the interior and of finance, as well as a popular market and a court house. They hit on either side of Karkh and Rusafa districts. The first bombing struck at the gates of a Technical Institute in Dora, about 10:05 am, and then a courthouse in Karkh. The final bombing occurred in the Western Sunni district of Mansur, striking near a federal police building and a publicity office of the US military. The Ministry of Finance building hit on the edge of a market was the one employees moved into when the original Finance offices were destroyed by a massive bombing in October. Over-all, many of the dead were police or officers.
The streets were eerily empty in the aftermath of the attacks, and American helicopters hovered above the sites that had been bombed, according to al-Zaman. Al-Sharq al-Awsat says that security at checkpoints was redoubled after the bombings.
Parliament’s Security Committee announced that it would question security-related cabinet ministers on December 17 as to how this serious lapse in security occurred. Hadi al-Amiri, chair of that committee, is head of the Badr Organization, a Shiite paramilitary related to the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, a pro-Iran, fundamentalist Shiite party. ISCI took a bath in last January’s parliamentary elections, facing a strong challenge in Baghdad and Basra from Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s Dawa or Islamic Mission Party. Some of the outrage directed at the government is probably related to the upcoming parliamentary elections, in which attempts will be made to depict al-Maliki and Dawa as ineffective in providing security. Al-Zaman, reporting in Arabic, says that Baha’ al-A’raji, a Sadrist MP, also slammed the government for failing to stop the bombings….
Did the recent Israeli air strike against Sudan actually benefit Hamas and Iran? Did it elevate Sudan’s president to honored Arab leader? And worst of all, did it exacerbate the crisis in Darfur?
1220 GMT: The excellent analyst Marc Lynch has just made the immediate point, “All the Iraqi lists appear to be claiming victory. I’d wait for official results, which will be a while.” His comment comes a few hours after a CNN correspondent pondered, “Each TV station corresponding to each political bloc saying that they are the winners…hmmm….”
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