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.
Over the last two years, we paid a good deal of attention to the story of five Iranian officials seized in March 2007 by US forces in Erbil in northern Iraq. It is a measure of how far the world has moved away from the Iraq story, and indeed of how much internal developments in Iran have come to the fore, that the release of the five by the Americans last week received so little attention (apart from Iranian state media, which eagerly featured the return of the men, pictured at left, this weekend).
That’s a mistake because this complex tale leaves two long-lasting lessons. The first is that, despite the tensions of Iran’s post-election crisis, there are officials in the Obama Administration who want to remove obstacles to long-term negotiations. The second is even more important: as Gareth Porter outlines below in a story for Inter Press Service, the release of the five Iranians points to the emergence of an Iraqi Government that is no longer subject to the demands of the US military:
Behind Detainee Release, a US-Iraqi Conflict on Iran
WASHINGTON – The release Friday of five Iranians held by the U.S. military in Iraq for two and a half years highlights the long-simmering conflict between the U.S. and Iraqi views of Iranian policy in Iraq and of the role of its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) there. Read the rest of this entry »
On Friday the Associated Press put the news, “April deadliest month for US in Iraq in 7 months”, in numbers: 18 American troops died, compared to nine in March; 13 were killed in combat, compared to four the previous month.
Those numbers, however, didn’t begin to tell the story. One might note, for example, that it’s not just (or even primarily) an American issue: 371 Iraqs and 80 Iranian pilgrims were killed in violence, mainly in bombings, during the month, an increase from 335 Iraqis in March, 288 in February, and 242 in January. (The figures are certainly underestimates, given that other deaths go unreported.) Read the rest of this entry »
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.
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.
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.
For months, I’ve put forth the paradox surrounding the proposed Status of Forces Agreement between the US and Iraqi Governments. As Washington grows increasingly desperate to get the fig-leaf of the Agreement to underpin its military presence, the political fight over that agreement highlights the mounting irrelevance of US forces.
This week could highlight that paradox. Today the New York Times, close to disgracefully, parades a series of experts (Frederick Kagan, General David Petraeus’ former executive officer Peter Mansoor, Petraeus worshipper Linda Robinson, and — in an act that defines chutzpah — Donald Rumsfeld) urging us to “stay the military course”. James Glanz’s Sunday puff-piece in the paper is “In Ramadi, With A Fresh Coat of Paint” .
In Baghdad, however, folks aren’t taking their leads from the Times. And I suspect many in the Bush Administration — though not the President, who is blissfully tripping towards the exit door — are worrying they aren’t taking direction from the US.
On Wednesday, the Iraqi Parliament was convened to support the second reading of the Agreement but was suspended amidst shouting and scuffles. The scene was repeated on Thursday. On Friday, the cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and his supporters made their show of political force after prayers, as thousands took to the streets to denounce the agreement. A stream of Parliamentarians let it be known that they would be absent from Baghdad this week, as they had decided to fulfil their once-in-a-lifetime obligation to make the pilgrimage to Mecca.
Perhaps most importantly, the leading clerical figure in Iraq, Ayatollah Sistani, declared that he would not support the agreement unless there was a national consensus behind it. Now, as the leading Shi’a parties — the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq and Daw’a — seemed to have swung behind ratification, leading to the Cabinet’s vote in favour last weekend, Sistani’s statement pointed to the worry that the key Sunni parties would not offer their support.
In mid-week Juan Cole, with his specialist reading of the Arab press and other signs from Iraq, was still predicting that Parliament would narrowly ratify the Agreement; however, he also noted that without clear Sunni backing, Sistani’s condition for consensus would not be met. By today, he was being notably cautious. With the Iraqi Parliament postponing the vote again, this time from Monday to Wednesday, Cole wrote, “It is still not clear how the Sunni Arab MPs will vote; without their support, the agreement would likely be seen as a joint Shiite-Kurdish conspiracy.”
Absolutely. Here’s the twist in the surge that almost no one in the mainstream US media has picked up. The well-trumpeted wonder of the Petraeus strategy was the bolstering of local and regional Sunni groups, the Awakening Council, in provinces outside Baghdad. The unnoted but always-lurking questions was the relationshp of those groups to the national government.
Well, now we’re getting the answer. Sunni parties have the perception that, with its desperation to get an Agreement before the UN mandate for the occupation expires on 31 December, Washington has swung again into backing of the Shia-dominated government. It’s a cycle that has recurred periodically since 2003, for example, in the debates over the Iraqi constitution in 2005. Meanwhile, there’s a minority but very significant Shi’a faction, embodied by but not exclusive to the “Sadrists”, who are ready to fight this Agreement to the end, inside Parliament and possibly on the streets.
Which is why the political process had reached the point on Saturday where the Defence and Interior Ministers called a press conference and invoked “the specters of a reborn insurgency, foreign attack and even piracy” if ratification did not occur. This in turn followed a Thursday speech from Prime Minister al-Maliki and, according to some press reports, his threats to resign if Parliament did not act appropriately.
Let’s call it forthrightly: if the current Government does not get ratification, it will collapse. And even if it gets a narrow victory, it faces the prospect of a renewed sectarian conflict, at best one of protracted political tension and at worse a return to violence. Hey, even supposed allies may be suspect — it was reported this weekend that planeloads of weapons from Bulgaria were arriving in Kurdish territory.
Where is the US military in all this? Well, an inadvertent black comedy illustration came in a Thursday story in the Washington Post. The headline portended another good-news surge tale: “U.S. Troops in Baghdad Take a Softer Approach Focus Shifts to Reconciling Factions” . The opening paragraph offered a more pertient, off-script message:
It was billed as a peace concert in war-scarred Baghdad. But after 30 minutes of poetry and patriotic songs, only a scattering of tribal leaders and dark-suited bureaucrats were sitting in the vast expanse of white plastic chairs before a stage painted with doves.
Well, that’s that, then. Americans can prepare for all their boys coming home by the end of 2011. Iraqis can bask in their freedom. Richard Beeston in The Times can even celebrate this great achievement of Bushian foreign policy: “This is a triumph in that it is precisely what the Bush Administration wanted in Iraq – a viable, democratic and independent government capable of making its own decisions and taking on greater responsibility for security.”
Hmmm….Why am I a bit hesitant about such a triumph?
Well, a beginning might be to ask why, after so many months of negotiation, the al-Maliki Government has come off the fence and backed the Status of Forces Agreement. Of the reports I read this morning, only The Guardian of London — drawing on an Associated Press account — picked up on the catalyst:
On Saturday the leading Shia cleric, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani dropped his opposition to the deal, in a shift that some observers believe paved the way for a Shia bloc in the cabinet to vote in its favour.
Al-Jazeera adds that al-Malaki “dispatched Khalid al-Attiyah and Ali al-Adeeb, two senior Shia legislators to Najaf to secure the support” of Sistani.
As late as Friday, it was reported that the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq — the largest party in the al-Maliki coalition — was holding back on approval. Meanwhile, Moqtada al-Sadr at Friday prayers was telling supporters to prepare for resistance against US troops.
Could al-Sadr’s open call have pushed Sistani into public acceptance of the deal? Did the Islamic Supreme Council move first, or did they follow Sistani? And what of the nine ministers of the 37-member Cabinet who absented themselves from Sunday’s meeting rather than give approval: are they from Sunni factions who now worry about a renewed US-Shi’a alliance against their interests?
I can’t answer any of these questions yet. I do know, however, that there’s an even bigger one that no one has broached today.
Is the United States really going to abandon more than dozen permanent bases, representing billions of dollars of investment, by the end of 2011? Or will there be interpretations and re-interpretations of the agreement to allow US units — “trainers”, “advisors”, “mobile forces” — to remain in Iraq?
Kroft: Can you give us some sense of when you might start redeployments out of Iraq?
Mr. Obama: Well, I’ve said during the campaign, and I’ve stuck to this commitment, that as soon as I take office, I will call in the Joint Chiefs of Staff, my national security apparatus, and we will start executing a plan that draws down our troops.
Once more, drawdown is not full withdrawal. As far as I am concerned, the best statement of near-future US policy in Iraq is the report of December 2006 by the Iraq Study Group (member Robert Gates, the current and likely near-future Secretary of Defense), which proposed the retention of 50,000 troops in various guises in the country.
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.
Over the last two years, we paid a good deal of attention to the story of five Iranian officials seized in March 2007 by US forces in Erbil in northern Iraq. It is a measure of how far the world has moved away from the Iraq story, and indeed of how much internal developments in Iran have come to the fore, that the release of the five by the Americans last week received so little attention (apart from Iranian state media, which eagerly featured the return of the men, pictured at left, this weekend).
On Friday 
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