Category Archives: war in Iraq

Iraq on the edge

Iraq on the edge
By Joost R. Hiltermann, The New York Review of Books, November 19, 2009

Iraqis prefer checkpoints manned by Iraqis—as I observed time and again, they have learned how to navigate them. They often appear to know one of the security men—perhaps a distant relation or a friend of a friend. They know how to butter up the checkpoint guards with a kind word or humorous turn of phrase, and get past them even if they lack official permission. By contrast, they find American (or Peruvian) checkpoints, with their large signs in hortatory English and poorly rendered Arabic, bewildering, arbitrary, and humiliating. Over the years, many an altercation has occurred in these places owing to misunderstandings, impatience, or simply ill will.

Conversely, many Americans dislike, distrust, and resent Iraqi checkpoints. In a recent incident reported by Anthony Shadid in The Washington Post, Iraqi soldiers allegedly beat four American DynCorps contractors who refused to follow their orders at one of the entrances to the Green Zone[1] —a reminder that the tables are turning. I had flashed only two pieces of ID on my first visit to the Green Zone. But on my second day, Iraqi soldiers at the checkpoint one encounters when entering the Green Zone from the 14th of July Bridge insisted that I also produce an official bahtch or, failing that, procure a US Department of Defense escort, since I had told them I was on my way to meet General Raymond Odierno, who has succeeded David Petraeus as the US commanding officer in Iraq.

An American soldier lingering nearby, with no apparent mission other than to monitor the Iraqi soldiers, sauntered up to find out why I was being denied access to the Green Zone. After listening to my explanation that the Iraqis, now joined by an officer, required that I have an escort, he launched a verbal offensive that was as deeply insulting to the Iraqis’ national self-esteem (“This is why we were able to defeat them in two days”) as it was disrespectful and crude (“We could easily kill them all”).

The Iraqis, while knowing no English, could not possibly have misinterpreted the soldier’s abrasive body language, and I ended up trying to calm them down in the row that followed. When a DOD escort arrived, the American wandered off, leaving in his wake injured pride and burning anger over a relationship that had never worked. [continued…]

Fort Hood suspect was ‘mortified’ about deployment

Fort Hood suspect was ‘mortified’ about deployment
By James Dao, New York Times, November 6, 2009

Born and reared in Virginia, the son of immigrant parents from a small Palestinian town near Jerusalem, he joined the Army right out of high school, against his parents’ wishes. The Army, in turn, put him through college and then medical school, where he trained to be a psychiatrist.

But Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the 39-year-old man accused of Thursday’s mass shooting at Fort Hood, Tex., began having second thoughts about a military career a few years ago after other soldiers harassed him for being a Muslim, he told relatives in Virginia.

He had also more recently expressed deep concerns about being sent to Iraq or Afghanistan. Having counseled scores of returning soldiers with post-traumatic stress disorder, first at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington and more recently at Fort Hood, he knew all too well the terrifying realities of war, said a cousin, Nader Hasan. [continued…]

Editor’s Comment — A few thoughts:

1. I’m a firm believer in the Occam’s-razor-school of journalism (if only it existed!), so the most obvious explanation for why this happened is also the most credible explanation — absent further evidence to the contrary.

2. Hasan, as reported above, desperately wanted to avoid being sent to Iraq or Afghanistan. He had multiple compelling reasons not to want to go, but probably highest among those reasons was the fact that he’d spent a great deal of time counseling war casualties. Just imagine how many recruits the US military would get if every kid walking into a recruitment office was first told to spend a few weeks talking to victims of post-traumatic stress disorder as they recounted their fresh experiences of war!

3. Just as is the case with a guy who goes on a shooting spree after being ignored for a promotion or getting fired, this is not rational behavior. Even the rationale that he hoped to get killed in the process seems questionable. Hasan’s behavior suggests he flipped out, which is to say, his capacity to make rational judgments was overwhelmed by extraordinarily intense emotions.

4. It’s incredibly unfortunate that he happened to be a Muslim. Had he been a Southern Baptist, I don’t imagine the blogosphere would now be busy attempting to ascribe his behavior to his religious beliefs. Timothy McVeigh, while awaiting trial, said in an interview with Time that he was raised Catholic and maintained its core beliefs. No one has suggested that might account for what he did. In Hasan’s case, the existence of web postings by a “NidalHasan” reveal nothing unless it can first be established that they were indeed written by the shooter.

5. The idea that a human being can snap like this is profoundly disturbing to most people and the need to rationalize it in some way so that its recurrence appears less likely caters to our collective desire to live in a world that is more predictable than it actually is.

6. Assuming this guy recovers, whatever he has to say should prove more illuminating than anything that’s been said so far.

An ugly peace in Iraq

An ugly peace
By Nir Rosen, Boston Review, November/December, 2009

In December 2008 I flew Royal Jordanian from Amman to Iraq’s southern city of Basra. Because of the Muslim holiday of Eid, embassies were closed; a contact in the British military promised to obtain visas for me and a colleague upon arrival. The Iraqi customs officials were offended that we did not follow procedure, but a letter from the British commander got us in. It might not have been necessary: when the five Iraqi policemen who examined luggage at the exit saw my colleague’s copy of Patrick Cockburn’s excellent book on the Shia cleric Muqtada al Sadr, they turned giddy. One of them kissed the picture of Muqtada’s face on the cover and asked if he could keep the book. It was not their sentiment that surprised me, but rather their comfort expressing it publicly.

Since the occupation began, Muqtada has been the most controversial public figure in Iraq. A populist anti-American leader, he came from a lineage of revolutionary Shia clerics who opposed the Saddam’s regime and who gave voice to Iraq’s poor Shia majority. Capitalizing on his slain father’s network of mosques and the family name, Muqtada and his followers, called Sadrists, seized control of Shia areas in Iraq when Baghdad fell, especially the slums of Basra and the capital. He rallied marginalized Shias against the occupation, its puppet government, and eventually against Sunni extremists as well. His movement provided social services, and his militia, Jeish al Mahdi—the Mahdi Army or JAM—fought the Americans and defended Shias from extremist Sunni terrorism.

But the Mahdi Army and its rivals eventually propagated sectarian violence, fighting in the civil war and expelling or killing innocent Sunnis. After the February 2006 bombing of the Samarra shrine, a Shia holy site, the two-year-old civil war intensified. With attacks against Sunnis escalating, the largely Shia Iraqi police often looked the other way. The bloodshed was indiscriminate. [continued…]

Iraq ministries targeted in car bombings; over 130 dead

Iraq ministries targeted in car bombings; over 130 dead
By Timothy Williams, New York Times, October 25, 2009

For the second time in two months, synchronized suicide car bombings struck at the heart of the Iraqi government, severely damaging the Justice Ministry and Provincial Council complexes in Baghdad on Sunday, killing at least 132 people and raising fresh questions about the government’s ability to secure its most vital operations.

The bombers apparently passed through multiple security checkpoints before detonating their vehicles within a minute of each other, leaving the dead and more than 520 wounded strewn across a busy downtown district. Blast walls had been moved back off the road from in front of both buildings in recent weeks.

It was the deadliest coordinated attack in Iraq since the summer of 2007 and happened just blocks from where car bombers killed at least 122 people at the Foreign and Finance ministries this August. [continued…]

Awakening leader’s tale illustrates Iraq’s volatility

Awakening leader’s tale illustrates Iraq’s volatility
By Ned Parker, Los Angeles Times, October , 2009

The Sunni Muslim paramilitary leader’s campaign slogan holds the promise of imminent rescue: “Hold on, we are coming.”

But the aspiring parliamentary candidate, Mustafa Kamal Shibeeb, may not be in a position to deliver on his slogan: He’s a fugitive, with murder charges hanging over his head from events at the height of the U.S. troop buildup two years ago.

Already, police commandos have tried to grab him twice, only to be blocked by an Iraqi army unit, with tacit support from U.S. forces.

Shibeeb’s story reveals the volatility of today’s Iraq, where Sunni-Shiite tensions are just one of the conflicts at play. His vulnerability illustrates how the Iraqi government and security forces remain subject to competing political and tribal pressures, and score-settling, that risk igniting new violence. [continued…]

More US troops deployed overseas under Obama than Bush

More US troops deployed overseas under Obama than Bush
By Ann Scott Tyson, Washington Post, October 13, 2009

President Obama announced in March that he would be sending 21,000 additional troops to Afghanistan. But in an unannounced move, the White House has also authorized — and the Pentagon is deploying — at least 13,000 troops beyond that number, according to defense officials.

The additional troops are primarily support forces, including engineers, medical personnel, intelligence experts and military police. Their deployment has received little mention by officials at the Pentagon and the White House, who have spoken more publicly about the combat troops who have been sent to Afghanistan.

The deployment of the support troops to Afghanistan brings the total increase approved by Obama to 34,000. The buildup has raised the number of U.S. troops deployed to the war zones of Iraq and Afghanistan above the peak during the Iraq “surge” that President George W. Bush ordered, officials said. [continued…]

Rushed training ‘risks turning Afghan troops into cannon fodder’
By Martin Fletcher, The Times, October 13, 2009

Recruits to the Afghan Army are being rushed into combat with a barely acceptable level of training, according to senior British officers closely involved in the programme.

With US and Nato leaders pressing for a rapid expansion of the army to relieve pressure on their own forces and facilitate their eventual departure, the recruits are becoming “cannon fodder”, another coalition official said.

Courses are being shortened, class sizes are swelling and there is a serious shortage of Afghan instructors and Western mentors. [continued…]

Resignation of Afghan election official raises anxiety level
By Laura King, Los Angeles Times, October 13, 2009

The disarray surrounding Afghanistan’s presidential election deepened Monday when an Afghan member of the vote-reviewing commission quit, citing “foreign interference.”

The resignation of Mustafa Barakzai from the Electoral Complaints Commission was not expected to affect the panel’s work of sifting through allegations of massive vote-rigging in the Aug. 20 balloting, officials said. But it added an acrimonious new element to a vote that has already become an exercise in recrimination — and has left Afghanistan in political limbo at a time when crucial decisions about the course of the conflict are being made in Washington. [continued…]

Bombings outside Iraq reconciliation meeting kill 23

Bombings outside Iraq reconciliation meeting kill 23
By Timothy Williams, New York Times, October 12, 2009

A series of apparently coordinated bombings aimed at a meeting for national reconciliation killed 23 people and wounded 65 others in western Iraq on Sunday, but they did not injure the officials who were at the gathering, the authorities said.

The bombings, which occurred in Ramadi, the capital of Anbar Province, were the latest in a string of deadly attacks in the province during the past few months that have focused on tribal leaders and members of Iraqi security forces and Awakening Councils.

The province had been among the more peaceful in Iraq during the past two years after many tribal leaders dropped allegiances to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, an extremist Sunni Arab group, and joined Awakening Councils that linked with the American military and the Iraqi government. [continued…]

Former US diplomat holds secret stake in Kurdish oil field

Former US diplomat holds secret stake in Kurdish oil field
By Reidar Visser, historiae.org, October 10, 2009

I Peter W Galbraith t is widely known that the former US diplomat Peter Galbraith has been one of the most prominent figures in shaping the state structure of Iraq in the period after 2003, especially with his vocal advocacy of various forms of radical decentralisation and/or partition solutions for Iraq’s political problems that are reflected in his books and numerous articles in the New York Review of Books, especially in the period from 2004 to 2008. Until now, though, it has generally been assumed that Galbraith’s fervent pro-partition propaganda was rooted in an ideological belief in national self-determination and a principled view of radical federalism as the best option for Iraq’s Kurds. Many have highlighted Galbraith’s experience as a former US diplomat (especially in the Balkans in the 1990s) as key elements of his academic and policy-making credentials.

Today, however, it has emerged that the realities were probably rather different. For some time, Norway’s most respected financial newspaper, Dagens Næringsliv (DN), has been focusing on the operations of DNO, a small Norwegian private oil company in Kurdistan, especially reporting on unclear aspects concerning share ownership and its contractual partnerships related to the Tawke field in the Dahuk governorate. One particular goal has been to establish the identity of a hitherto unknown “third party” which participated with DNO in the initial production sharing agreement (PSA) for Tawke between 2004 and 2008, but was squeezed out when this deal was converted to a new contract in early 2008, prompting a huge financial claim of around 500 million US dollars against DNO which has yet to be settled. Today, DN claims to present proof that one of the two major “mystery stake-holders” involved in the claim was none other than Peter Galbraith, who allegedly held a five-percent share in the PSA for Tawke from June 2004 until 2008 through his Delaware-based company Porcupine. Galbraith’s partner was the Yemenite multi-millionaire Shahir Abd al-Haqq, whose identity was revealed by the same newspaper earlier this month. DN has published documents from Porcupine showing Galbraith’s personal signature, and today’s reports are complete with paparazzi photographs of Galbraith literally running away from reporters as they confront him in Bergen, where he is currently staying with his Norwegian wife. He refused to give any comment citing potential legal complications. [continued…]
(H/t to Helena Cobban.)

Barack Obama to follow in Shimon Peres’ footsteps

Barack Obama to follow in Shimon Peres’ footsteps
By Paul Woodward, War in Context, October 9, 2009

Nobel Peace Prize winner, Barack Obama and Nobel Peace Prize laureate and President of Israel, Shimon Peres

“Very few leaders if at all were able to change the mood of the entire world in such a short while with such profound impact. You provided the entire humanity with fresh hope, with intellectual determination, and a feeling that there is a lord in heaven and believers on earth.

“Under your leadership, peace became a real and original agenda. And from Jerusalem, I am sure all the bells of engagement and understanding will ring again. You gave us a license to dream and act in a noble direction.” Nobel Peace Prize laureate and President of Israel, Shimon Peres.

_____

It’s important not to rush to judgment on Obama — unless the judgment is glowing, then it’s full steam ahead.

If the so-called “reality-based community” still existed, then the very same people who have been suggesting that Obama critics hold their fire should now be insisting the Nobel committee jumped the gun.

Unfortunately that isn’t happening as much as it should. Why? Obama loyalists feel personally embattled. The impulse to grasp on to this fleeting object of relief is for some, irresistible. It’s a quick salve to those whose own unflinching loyalties portend humiliations that lurk down the road.

Realists can’t indefinitely remain true believers. True believers eventually abandon realism.

European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said: “The award of the prize to President Obama, leader of the most significant military power in the world, at the beginning of his mandate, is a reflection of the hopes he has raised globally with his vision of a world without nuclear weapons.”

There’s a note of realism there — this is about hopes raised, not accomplishments. The problem is, hope can only be raised so far and for so long. It’s power and durability depends on a strengthening conviction that hope is on a trajectory that leads to actuality. The longer that trajectory remains unclear, the more likely it will be that hope has instead provided the foundation for disappointment, cynicism and bitterness.

Obama traded on hope as a path to power but now he has the power he has to dispense with a large measure of hope. Governance is about deliverables.

It’s not surprising that the Nobel Peace Prize committee have chosen to endorse Obama’s nuclear disarmament initiative. But whether that goal has actually raised hopes globally is something I’m skeptical about. Disarmament is on Obama’s wish-list, but since — in the name of realism — he warned that this might not be accomplished in his lifetime, and since a goal is a dream with a deadline, thus far Obama has merely inspired hope in a dream. Ronald Reagan had that dream too.

Is there a sliver of a silver lining here? Maybe. It’s possible that the Nobel Peace-Prize winning president might feel inhibited from using the Pentagon’s newly-ordered 30,000lb Massive Ordnance Penetrator for destroying nuclear facilities in Iran. On the other hand, he might be persuaded that the destruction of Iran’s nuclear program is a necessary step on the path to nuclear disarmament.

* * *

A few other responses.

Mickey Kraus:

Turn it down! Politely decline. Say he’s honored but he hasn’t had the time yet to accomplish what he wants to accomplish. Result: He gets at least the same amount of glory–and helps solve his narcissism problem and his Fred Armisen (‘What’s he done?’) problem, demonstrating that he’s uncomfortable with his reputation as a man overcelebrated for his potential long before he’s started to realize it. … Plus he doesn’t have to waste time, during a fairly crucial period, working on yet another grand speech. … And the downside is … what? That the Nobel Committee feels dissed? … P.S.: It’s not as if Congress is going to think, well, he’s won the Nobel Peace Prize so let’s pass health care reform. But the possibility for a Nobel backlash seems non-farfetched.

The Taliban:

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said it was absurd to give a peace award to a man who had sent 21,000 extra troops to Afghanistan to escalate a war.

“The Nobel prize for peace? Obama should have won the ‘Nobel Prize for escalating violence and killing civilians’,” he told Reuters by telephone from an undisclosed location.

“When Obama replaced President Bush, the Afghan people thought that he would not follow in Bush’s footsteps. Unfortunately, Obama actually even went one step further.”

Gideon Rachman:

The prize is clearly an award of huge significance, awarded after only the deepest reflection, and won only by demi-Gods.

Maria Farrell:

President Obama has changed how the world feels about America. He’s lifted the planet’s mood. This guy is global Prozac.

After six years, ‘we’re worthless’

After six years, ‘we’re worthless’
By Ernesto Londoño, Washington Post, October 8, 2009

Weeks after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in the spring of 2003, as parts of the capital were still smoldering, American soldiers and diplomats turned to men like Hassan Shama and Omar Rahman Rahmani in their quest to plant the seeds of representative democracy.

In Baghdad, Iraq’s capital, they held impromptu neighborhood caucuses to appoint district and neighborhood advisory councils. The local government bodies were given no official charter, lawmaking power or public budget. In the years that followed, as the capital became a bloody battleground and the country descended into near-anarchy, council members were among the U.S. military’s staunchest allies. They provided information about extremists, offered insight into Iraqi society and gave American-imposed security measures a veneer of Iraqi legitimacy.

As U.S. troops have sharply disengaged from Baghdad in recent months, local representatives say they are feeling powerless and abandoned. The Iraqi government has taken no steps to hold elections for the councils, and the Baghdad provincial council is culling them of members it deems unqualified or unfit for service.

The looming demise of the local councils — at least as the Americans established them — is an ominous sign of the brand of democracy that is likely to reign in Iraq as the Americans depart, council members say. They worry that constituents will no longer have grass-roots representation and that power will become far more centralized in the hands of a few. [continued…]

General says Iraq troop reductions may quicken

General says Iraq troop reductions may quicken
By Thom Shanker, New York Times, September 29, 2009

The senior American commander in Iraq said Tuesday that he could reduce American forces to 50,000 troops even before the end of next summer if the expected January elections in Iraq went smoothly.

That could ease the strain across the American armed forces and free up extra combat units for duty in the Afghanistan war, which has become a priority for the Obama administration.

In an interview at the Pentagon, the commander, Gen. Ray Odierno, said he had already ordered some service members and equipment diverted from the Iraq mission to Afghanistan, in particular surveillance aircraft and units known as “combat enablers,” which include engineers for clearing roadside bombs and military police officers for training Afghan forces. [continued…]

Why I threw the shoe

Why I threw the shoe
By Muntazer al-Zaidi, The Guardian, September 17, 2009

I am free. But my country is still a prisoner of war. There has been a lot of talk about the action and about the person who took it, and about the hero and the heroic act, and the symbol and the symbolic act. But, simply, I answer: what compelled me to act is the injustice that befell my people, and how the occupation wanted to humiliate my homeland by putting it under its boot.

Over recent years, more than a million martyrs have fallen by the bullets of the occupation and Iraq is now filled with more than five million orphans, a million widows and hundreds of thousands of maimed. Many millions are homeless inside and outside the country.

We used to be a nation in which the Arab would share with the Turkman and the Kurd and the Assyrian and the Sabean and the Yazid his daily bread. And the Shia would pray with the Sunni in one line. And the Muslim would celebrate with the Christian the birthday of Christ. This despite the fact that we shared hunger under sanctions for more than a decade.

Our patience and our solidarity did not make us forget the oppression. But the invasion divided brother from brother, neighbour from neighbour. It turned our homes into funeral tents. [continued…]

Letter from Baghdad: In checkpoint scrawl, reality’s counterpoint

In checkpoint scrawl, reality’s counterpoint
By Anthony Shadid, Washington Post, September 16, 2009

The writing on the walls of Baghdad’s checkpoints have little to do with reality. Grim as life is here, with everything from buildings to desiccated orchards shaded in a dull ocher, no one needs testament to that. More often, the slogans penned in graceful Arabic say what leaders of a state threatening to fail want, or what they lack.

“No to terrorism,” insists graffiti to a country still haunted by it. “Respect and be respected,” declares a motto of Iraqi soldiers, who habitually complain of disrespect. “No one is above the law,” intones a slogan to passersby, few of whom would concur.

No one disputes these days that the Americans are leaving Iraq, at least in their incarnation as an occupying power backed by more than 100,000 soldiers in a country that feels as wrecked today as it has at any time since the 2003 invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein. But no one is quite sure what kind of state they will leave behind.

The slogans of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s government give one sense, although they invariably speak with far more confidence than they inspire. Scrawled along the checkpoints, they are the words of authority. Law means obedience, as does patriotism. Allegiance is mentioned far more than democracy or freedom. [continued…]

Biden pushes Iraqi leaders on vote law, oil-bid perks
By Scott Wilson, Washington Post, September 17, 2009

Vice President Biden pressed Iraqi leaders Wednesday to approve as quickly as possible legislation that establishes rules for the planned January general election and to make the next round of bids to develop Iraqi oil concessions more attractive to foreign investors.

In a series of meetings in the Green Zone, Biden listened to the concerns of Iraqi leaders, now in the heat of an election season that Obama administration officials acknowledge will delay until after the vote any progress on such pressing issues as passing a law on the equitable distribution of national oil revenue among Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds.

A senior administration official said Biden also made his interests known on a variety of issues, such as the need for the Iraqi parliament to adopt laws to better protect foreign investment and leaving unchanged the terms of the timetable for the withdrawal of the 130,000 U.S. troops now in the country. [continued…]

Iraq’s vice president says Iraq should call on US for security help
By Jane Arraf, Christian Science Monitor, September 16, 2009

Iraq should consider calling for more help from US forces in the wake of August’s devastating suicide truck bombings in Baghdad, Vice President Adel Abul Madhi told the Monitor.

In an implicit criticism of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s reluctance to ask for help from the US following the June 30 pullback of combat troops, Dr. Abdul Mahdi called for a re-assesment of the role of US forces here that could result in more involvement for American troops sidelined by what he termed an over-optimistic view of security in Iraq.

“This should be reassessed once again – whether it was too early, whether it was adequate this should be assessed,” he said on Sunday when asked whether the withdrawal of combat troops from Iraqi cities has weakened security. [continued…]

Iraq burns its bridges with Syria

Iraq burns its bridges with Syria
By Sami Moubayed, Asia Times, August 27, 2009

Relations between Iraq and Syria plunged abruptly on Tuesday after Baghdad recalled its ambassador to Damascus over the recent bombings in the Iraqi capital in which 100 Iraqis were killed.

The attacks, which ripped through government buildings on August 19, were the worst in Iraq in over 12 months and came just a day after Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki wrapped up a state visit to Syria. While there he boosted political and economic relations with Syria and jump-started bilateral committees to see that security is strongly monitored on the Syrian-Iraqi border.

Since then, however, a tug-of-war has erupted within Iraq between those who blame al-Qaeda and the outlawed Ba’ath Party and those who blame Iran for the Black Wednesday attacks.

Maliki blames both, while Defense Minister Abdul Qadir Obeidi said the weapons used for the attacks had been “made in Iran”. Syria’s name emerged rather suddenly on Sunday, when a former policeman appeared on Iraqi state-run media, claiming responsibility for the attacks, saying they had been ordered by two Saddam loyalists based in Syria. [continued…]

Shiite power broker dies, in blow to Iraqi party
By Marc Santora, New York Times, August 27, 2009

One of the towering figures of post-Saddam Hussein Iraq, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, a Shiite who had longstanding ties with Iran but was also a supporter of the American invasion, died on Wednesday.

His death from cancer, at age 59, was a blow to the political group he led, the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council, which emerged from the war as the country’s dominant political party. But it has steadily lost support over the past year, and this week it announced a new alliance with the party loyal to the scion of another revered Shiite family, the anti-American cleric Moktada al-Sadr.

Still, Supreme Council members hold positions atop important ministries and in Parliament. The group runs charitable organizations, libraries and schools and has a large network of support that stretches back to when Mr. Hakim’s father, Grand Ayatollah Mohsen al-Hakim, was one of the top Shiite spiritual leaders in the world. [continued…]

Iraq’s Iranian connection

Iraq’s Iranian connection
By David Ignatius, Washington Post, August 25, 2009

As security deteriorates in Baghdad, there’s a new cause for worry: The head of the U.S.-trained Iraqi National Intelligence Service (INIS) has quit in a long-running quarrel with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki — depriving that country of a key leader in the fight against sectarian terrorism.

Gen. Mohammed Shahwani, the head of Iraqi intelligence since 2004, resigned this month because of what he viewed as Maliki’s attempts to undermine his service and allow Iranian spies to operate freely. The CIA, which has worked closely with Shahwani since he went into exile in the 1990s and has spent hundreds of millions of dollars training the INIS, was apparently caught by surprise by his departure.

The chaotic conditions in Iraq that triggered Shahwani’s resignation are illustrated by several recent events — each of which suggests that without the backstop of U.S. support, Iraqi authorities are now desperately vulnerable to pressure, especially from neighboring Iran.

An early warning was the brazen July 28 robbery of the state-run Rafidain Bank in central Baghdad, apparently by members of an Iraqi security force. Gunmen broke into the bank and stole about 5.6 billion Iraqi dinars, or roughly $5 million. After a battle that left eight dead, the robbers fled to a newspaper run by Adel Abdul Mahdi, one of the country’s vice presidents.

Abdul Mahdi, once an American favorite, has admitted that one of the robbers was a member of his security detail but denied personal involvement, according to Iraqi news reports. Some of the money has been recovered, but the rest is believed to be in Iran, along with some members of the robbery team. [continued…]

U.S. anxious over Shiite-Sunni relations in Ira

U.S. anxious over Shiite-Sunni relations in Iraq
By Julian E. Barnes, Los Angeles Times, August 24, 2009

Military officials are anxiously watching the brittle partnership between Sunni and Shiite Muslims in Iraq as U.S. analysts warn that renewed waves of violence have put the country at a crucial crossroads.

Sunni militants are widely thought responsible for bombings in Baghdad last week that left 95 dead. But a key question being debated in Washington is whether the larger Sunni community has begun implicitly supporting the attacks.

For the moment, military officers and American analysts do not believe that a new sectarian war has broken out. But the U.S. withdrawal from Iraqi cities June 30 has unnerved Sunnis who saw the American presence as protection against Shiite oppression, and experts hope Prime Minister Nouri Maliki finds a way to quickly calm Sunni fears. [continued…]

Iraq military broadcasts confession on bombing
By Steven Lee Myers, New York Times, August 24, 2009

Iraq’s military showed on Sunday what it called the confession of a mastermind of last week’s deadly attacks on two government ministries, and it announced the arrests of police and army officers the man said had been bribed to allow a huge truck bomb through checkpoints into Baghdad.

In brief, edited excerpts of videotaped remarks, the man, identified as Wisam Ali Khazim Ibrahim, calmly explained how he had organized one of the two bombings, which killed almost 100 people on Wednesday and wounded hundreds more. He said he did so on the orders of a man in Syria who wanted the attacks “to shake the administration.”

He described himself as a former police officer in Diyala Province and a member of Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party, which is banned in Iraq and which officials in Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki’s government routinely blame for much of the violence in the country. [continued…]

Iraqi Shi’ite groups form new alliance without PM
By Suadad al-Salhy and Muhanad Mohammed, Reuters, August 24, 2009

Allies of Iraq’s Shi’ite Muslim Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said on Monday they have formed a new alliance to fight January’s general election, but the increasingly influential Iraqi leader has not joined the bloc.

The new alliance will be headed by the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (ISCI), one of Iraq’s most powerful Shi’ite groups, and will also include followers of Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and other smaller groups and influential individuals.

It has been named the Iraqi National Alliance (INA). [continued…]

After Sadr–Badr compromise in Tehran, the Iraqi National Alliance (INA) is declared
By Reidar Visser, historiae.org, August 24, 2009

The idea of a “revived” Shiite alliance with a more “national” orientation was first introduced publicly by Muqtada al-Sadr in Qum, Iran, in mid-February 2009, when he requested a full makeover of the UIA which in the future should be referred to as the “United National Iraqi Alliance”. Sadr was responding to the results of the January local elections, in which the Daawa party of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki was rewarded by voters for a rhetoric in which the sectarian agenda was pushed in the background and the focus on national and centralist values was strengthened. After Sadr’s initiative, other forces in the old UIA, including the pro-Maliki independent Abbas al-Bayati as well as Ahmad al-Chalabi, soon offered their support, but it was not until May that the project got going in earnest. By that time, ISCI – which had been punished particularly hard by voters in the January polls – had taken over the initiative, and within weeks several dozen key UIA members paid their visits to ISCI’s ailing leader Abd al-Aziz al-Hakim at a convalescent home in Tehran where details of the new alliance were discussed. Reportedly, Muqtada al-Sadr also made the journey from Qum to reconcile with Hakim, a long-time opponent, apparently seeing the symbolic change of name as a “Sadrist demand” that could justify their return to the UIA. [continued…]

Iraq bombs are a warning to Maliki

Iraq bombs are a warning to Maliki
By Jonathan Steele, The Guardian, August 20, 2009

No one has taken responsibility for the horrendous bombs that shattered the foreign and finance ministries in Baghdad and took more than a hundred lives yesterday but the finger must point to Sunni Arab radicals. The foreign ministry is run by Hoshyar Zebari, a prominent Kurdish politician, while the finance ministry is in the hands of the Shia hardliner Bayan Jabr, who represents the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq and infuriated Sunnis during his previous post as interior minister. He was moved from that post after death squads operating directly or indirectly under cover of the ministry were revealed four years ago to have held and tortured hundreds of Sunnis. That brutality helped to start the sectarian revenge killings that so disfigured Iraq in 2006 and 2007.

The bombings may therefore have been meant in part as a Sunni Arab warning to the Kurds. Tensions and armed clashes between Kurds and Arabs are the biggest danger currently facing Iraq. Until now they have centred on the disputed city of Kirkuk as well as the land surrounding Mosul in the northwest, which Kurds also claim. Bombings in Kirkuk and Mosul have been frequent in recent months. Yesterday’s blast in Baghdad could be a way of showing Kurds that their positions in Baghdad are also vulnerable and that Sunni Arabs can hit them in the capital.

But they are also a warning to Shia hardliners, and by extension the whole of prime minister Nouri al-Maliki’s Shia-dominated Iraqi government, that its policies are still not giving Sunnis a fair share of power. The disbandment of the Sunni Arab militias known as the Awakening movement, which successfully confronted al-Qaida in Iraq in 2007 has angered many Sunnis who felt they deserved more in gratitude and reward. It took courage for Iraqi Sunnis to challenge al-Qaida, and this should have been recognised by Shia leaders. Instead, the government has been slow to honour promises to take former Awakening members into the national army and police. [continued…]

Damascus agrees to help monitor Iraqi border

Damascus agrees to help monitor Iraqi border
By Jay Solomon and Julien Barnes-Dacey, Wall Street Journal, August 19, 2009

The Obama administration and Damascus tentatively agreed to establish a tripartite committee, with Baghdad, to better monitor the Syrian-Iraqi border as the Pentagon draws down American troops from Iraq in coming months, said senior U.S. officials.

The proposed three-way border-control assessments could boost Iraqi security and patch one of the region’s most volatile fault lines. The initiative was made by a team of U.S. Central Command officers and their Syrian counterparts last week in Damascus.

The pact awaits the green light from Baghdad, which expressed frustration at being excluded from the U.S.-Syrian talks, saying they violated Iraqi sovereignty on security matters.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki met Syrian President Bashar Assad in Damascus on Tuesday. A statement issued late in the day by the Iraqi prime minister’s office in Baghdad said only that the two sides “discussed the expansion of the Iraqi and Syrian cooperation” in border control. [continued…]