As we noted yesterday, the Sunday vote in Iraq now gives way to party propaganda and behind-the-scenes haggling and power plays, although a lot of the manoeuvres will be reshaped by the preliminary outcome when it is announced later this week.
Yesterday Iraq’s electoral commission reported that 62.4 percent of eligible voters had cast ballots, with rates of 50 to 80 percent across the provinces. Still too early to tell where the outcome is heading, amidst conflicting (and self-serving) claims from the parties.
On Monday, Marc Lynch offered this sharp, incisive reading, which I think holds for the post-election period as well as for the vote. This line jumped out at me — “[A] headline of the Iraqi election campaign has to be the overwhelmingly nationalist tone of all major politicians and the marginal American role in the process”:
At the main Bazzar inside the city of Kirkuk, three languages are heard simultaneously, Kurdish, Arabic and Turkmani, not in that or any order. Here is the alleged site of the tomb of prophet Daniel, there is a Chaldean Church, here is the Talabani Takiyah and there is the ancient Citadel, here is the Shorjah neighborhood and there is the Rahimawah and Rashidawah neighborhoods and underneath it all 160 billion barrels of proven oil reserves, enough to supply the whole world for 160 years!
While the security situation seems to be slightly better in Kerkuk these days, one still gets the feeling that this city is constantly awaiting its next bombing, everywhere you go, you see heavily armed policemen, wearing bullet-proof vests. On top of each and every police truck, a man in a helmet has his index finger on the trigger of a machine gun, waiting for an order from the officer in the front passenger seat to say “start fire.” Police trucks penetrate through traffic with annoying sirens and occasional multilingual commands over loud speaks, ordering the cars immediately before them to make way or else…
There are no Americans to be seen, per the terms of the Status of Forces Agreement, SoFa, the Americans have retreated back to their bases and are called to duty only at the request and under the command of the Kerkuk police department, officially known as the Directorate of Kerkuk Police. Unlike the other police departments in Iraq, Kerkuk’s is in charge of not only the city center but also the districts (in the rest of Iraq, the Iraqi military handles security in the outer districts). Kerkuk’s outer districts includes the Sunni Arab district of al-Hawijah, which, despite the presence of an awakening council, continues to be, for the most part, a no man’s land. Fighters of al-Hawijah awakening council have had their salaries cut after the security file was transferred to the Iraqis and according to one awakening council leader, the funds have not come in for two months! I could not help but wonder whether the Maliki government is intentionally irritating members of Kerkuk’s awakening councils in order to stir things up ahead of the upcoming elections of which Kerkuk will take part. So I asked whether the al-Anbar awakening council members’ salaries have also been reduced and the negative response confirmed my fears.
I sat there, puzzled: “Is this Kurdistan? Is this the heart of Kurdistan?” The Kurdistan I know and love has no terrorists, nobody wears an armored vest, nobody’s church or mosque is protected by heavily armed policemen. The Kurdistan in which I live has no ethnic tensions, the Kurdistan in which I live, foreigners hail cabs as freely as they would in London or New York, they attend concerts, they even watch baseball and American football on large HDTV sets in Erbil’s newly built T-Bar and Speed Center.
The naive person in me, the idealist person in me started to wonder, why would a Turkman or an Arab NOT want to be part of this prosperous and safe region and instead opt for this oh-so-tense status quo?
With that thought and with the bright flames of the Baba Gurgur oilfield behind me, I sped through the Kerkuk-Erbil highway and came back to Erbil, just in time to catch Dolphins-Patriots game, in which Patriots were, of course victorious!
SECRETARY CLINTON: Let me begin, though, by echoing the President’s statement yesterday concerning his approval of the recommendations not only of the Pentagon, but of his entire national security team to deploy a stronger and more comprehensive missile defense system in Europe. This decision came after a lengthy and in-depth review of our assessment of the threats posed, particularly the threat posed by Iran’s ballistic missile program, and the technology that we have today, and what might be available in the future to confront it. We believe this is a decision that will leave America stronger, and more capable of defending our troops, our interests, and our allies. Read the rest of this entry »
Iraq continues to be a violent and unstable country. Yesterday, bombs exploded near five Shi’a mosques in Baghdad, killing 29 people. British forces have finally been forced to complete their withdrawal, with the Iraqi Parliament refusing to extend an agreement for their stay, leaving the US as a “Coalition of One”. Political tension over the future of Kirkuk, the key city in the middle of Iraq’s oil-producing region, is escalating.
Paradoxically, however, six years after the “liberation” of Iraq, the campaign by some in the US military to turn instability into a rationale for a continued US presence persists. So this leaked memorandum for a high-ranking US officer in Baghdad, published in The New York Times, has caused a stir within Iraq, even if it has not been picked up by many in the “mainstream” media. The official response from the US military is that “the author is conveying that the problem is too hard, and therefore we should quit”; Juan Cole offers his own analysis of the issues for the American occupation:
As the old saying goes, “guests, like fish, begin to smell after three days.” Since the signing of the 2009 Security Agreement, we are guests in Iraq, and after six years in Iraq, we now smell bad to the Iraqi nose.
Today the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) are good enough to keep the Government of Iraq (GOI) from being overthrown by the actions of Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), the Baathists, and the Shia violent extremists that might have toppled it a year or two ago. Iraq may well collapse into chaos of other causes, but we have made the ISF strong enough for the internal security mission. Perhaps it is one of those infamous paradoxes of counterinsurgency that while the ISF is not good in any objective sense, it is good enough for Iraq in 2009. Read the rest of this entry »
CLINTON: Shortly before I started at the State Department, a former Secretary of State called me with this advice: Don’t try to do too much. And it seemed like a wise admonition, if only it were possible. But the international agenda today is unforgiving: two wars, conflict in the Middle East, ongoing threats of violent extremism and nuclear proliferation, global recession, climate change, hunger and disease, and a widening gap between the rich and the poor. All of these challenges affect America’s security and prosperity, and they all threaten global stability and progress.
But they are not reason to despair about the future. The same forces that compound our problems – economic interdependence, open borders, and the speedy movement of information, capital, goods, services and people – are also part of the solution. And with more states facing common challenges, we have the chance, and a profound responsibility, to exercise American leadership to solve problems in concert with others. That is the heart of America’s mission in the world today. Read the rest of this entry »
HOST GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: Major milestone this week here in Iraq with the American troops pulling out of the cities. And I wonder if you can put the broader American mission in context. Are we in the process of securing victory or cutting our losses to come home?
BIDEN: Securing victory. Look, the president and I laid out a plan in the campaign which was twofold. One, withdraw our troops from Iraq in a rational timetable consistent with what the Iraqis want. And the same time, leave behind a stable and secure country.
And one of the reasons I’m here, George, is to push the last end of that, which is the need for political settlement on some important issues between Arabs and Kurds and among the confessional groups. And I think we’re well on our way. 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 »
NBC Pentagon correspondent Jim Miklaszeswki: “Military commanders, despite this Status of Forces Agreement with the Iraqi government that all U.S. forces would be out by the end of 2011, are already making plans for a significant number of American troops to remain in Iraq beyond that 2011 deadline, assuming that Status of Forces Agreement agreement would be renegotiated. And one senior military commander told us that he expects large numbers of American troops to be in Iraq for the next 15 to 20 years.”
The Washington Post: “[Obama] promised to ‘proceed carefully’ and ‘consult closely’ with military commanders and the Iraqi government, and he said ‘there will surely be difficult periods and tactical adjustments’. Does that mean Mr. Obama is open to altering his plan if al-Qaeda or Iranian-backed militias rebound as U.S. troop levels decline?”
As we noted yesterday, the Sunday vote in Iraq now gives way to party propaganda and behind-the-scenes haggling and power plays, although a lot of the manoeuvres will be reshaped by the preliminary outcome when it is announced later this week.
HOST GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: Major milestone this week here in Iraq with the American troops pulling out of the cities. And I wonder if you can put the broader American mission in context. Are we in the process of securing victory or cutting our losses to come home?
On Friday 
NBC Pentagon correspondent Jim Miklaszeswki:
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