Arab News Blog

Al-Zaman reports in Arabic on Monday’s string of bombings in Baghdad, in which late reports say 37 persons were killed and more than 100 wounded. The bombings especially targeted the Jadiriya district, where many foreigners, diplomats, and Iraqi policiticians reside. Al-Zaman says that most leaders of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, including Ammar al-Hakim and parliamentarian Humam al-Hamudi, live there and there is a presence as guards of the Badr Corps, the paramilitary of ISCI.

Two car bombs targeted the Palestine Meridien and the Babil hotels.

Other bombings sought to damage Al-Zuhur Hotel in a complex of hotel buildings that includes the al-Hamra’ and the Qurtaj.

Al-Hayat says that an Interior Ministry official alleged that all the bombings were suicide bombings. A Baghdad security official was quoted as saying that the suicide bomber who targeted the al-Hamra Hotel was accompanied by a band of armed men who shot it out with the hotel guards before the bomber ran his car into the building and detonated its payload.

Al=Zaman says that three katyusha rockets also targeted the US embassy in the green zone downtown. Parliament abruptly ended its session, with parliamentarians and their guards shouting that the katyushas falling on the green zone could target their session at any moment, and hurrying out of the hall.

In other violence on Monday, 7 were killed in political attacks in Mosul and two policemen were attacked in the northern contested city of Kirkuk.

AP has video:

The bombings are similar to those in August and December, so that it is probably not accurate to tie them to the upcoming parliamentary elections as some observers. including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, are doing. They are not connected to specific events, but rather the manifestation of a still-powerful Sunni Arab guerrilla insurgency unreconciled to the emergence of a Shiite- and Kurdish-dominated Iraq, and which is determined to destabilize and overthrow this new ruling government.

Sawt al-Iraq transmits analysis from the Kuwaiti al-Qabas that points out that the attacks demonstrate the existence of a sophisticated intelligence and planning cell within the insurgency that is capable of gathering the detailed information necessary for such an attack and coordinating multiple field officers. The piece also laments that Iraqi government security forces seem still to be relatively incompetent at forestalling these periodic big assaults on Baghdad’s landmarks. Those security forces are at the moment a laughingstock because of their preference for phoney ‘bomb-detecting devices’ that are just a scam of some British company, which the UK government has now forbidden to export to Iraq.

Al-Qabas also argues that the attacks on fancy hotels were clearly aimed at hurting foreign investment in Iraq, at discouraging foreigners from visiting the country (and thus isolating it) and in hurting public confidence. The hotels also have the advantage of being relatively soft targets with regard to security, as compared to Iraqi military installations. Since so many journalists stay in those hotels, the attacks were sure to get a lot of publicity and to send the signal that the new Iraq is unstable and perhaps unsustainable.

But if the bombings are not necessarily motivated by upcoming elections, the article says, they are nevertheless likely to have an effect on them. They come after 500 mostly Sunni Arab candidates were disqualified from running in the March 7 parliamentary elections, and at a time when rumors are rife that high-ranking Sunni Arabs will be purged from the military and security agencies.

These steps derive in part from Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s preoccupation with the threat of a Baathist comeback, but the purges he backs risk further alienating ordinary Sunni Arabs who had joined the party for instrumental rather than ideological reasons. The party after all ruled for 35 years, and few Iraqis had nothing at all to do with it.

And the attacks came on the day that the Iraqi government executed Ali Hasan al-Majid al-Tikriti, a cousin of Saddam Hussein, who used poison gas to repress the Kurds in 1988 (killing 5000 at Halabja), and who brutally put down a Shiite rebellion in spring, 1991, after the Gulf War. Aljazeera English has his obituary:

Iraqi Kurdistan erupted with joy at the news of the execution, though some Kurds expressed disappointment that it was not televised. The Iraqi government took pride in the execution having not been marred by the taunting and use of cell phones to record it that marred the execution of Saddam Hussein, and Kurdistan officials concurred. One regret many Kurds had was that the judgment against “Chemical Ali” had condemned him for “crimes against humanity” rather than, as they had wanted, for “genocide.”

The president of the Kurdistan super-province of Iraq, Massoud Barzani, is in Washington for consultations with President Barack Obama, another point of pride for Iraqi Kurds.

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Al-Hayat reporting in Arabic surveyed the reactions of Iraqi politicians to the massive bombings on Sunday. As with Prime minister Nuri al-Maliki, they blamed remnants of the former, Baath, regime and “al-Qaeda” (Sunni fundamentalist militants). I was struck by how they for the most part responded technocratically, by pledging a review and an improvement of security procedures.

As I predicted yesterday, some figures are already using the blasts for politics. Hadi al-Ameri, a member of parliament and a leader of the paramilitary hard line Shiite Badr Corps, implicitly came after al-Maliki. “We’ve heard a lot of brouhaha about successes on the security front,” he said. “Where are these successes?” The Badr Corps is aligned with its parent organization, the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI), which is running against al-Maliki’s State of Laws coalition in January.

Al-Zaman reports on some of the casualties. A woman member of parliament, Maha al-Duri, was wounded and two of her bodyguards were killed. The lieutenant governor of Baghdad Province was wounded. Several members of the Sadr Bloc were wounded as they were commemorating the anniversary of the death of Muhammad Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr in the Justice Ministry building.

Meanwhile, one of the more contentious issues in the upcoming parliamentary elections is how to deal with the contested province of Kirkuk. The USG Open Source Center translates an article from the Kurdish press in which major Kurdish parties threaten to boycott the elections if a special election law for Kirkuk is passed. (Kirkuk is by now probably majority Kurdish, so the Kurds will dominate its provincial council unless the Kurdish bloc is diluted by special provisions in the electoral law).

Iraqi Kurdish lists to boycott elections if consensus not reached
Patriotic Union of Kurdistan
Saturday, October 24, 2009
Document Type: OSC Summary

Iraqi Kurdish lists to boycott elections if consensus not reached

The Kurdistan Alliance and the Islamic Union of Kurdistan (IUK) lists have said they would boycott the Iraqi upcoming parliamentary elections if a special election law for Kirkuk is passed, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) media website reported on 24 October.

The alliance and the IUK’s representatives expressed their concerns in a press conference which was held today in the Iraqi parliament’s office in Arbil Governorate.

The deputy head of the alliance, Sa’di Barzinji, said in the press conference that there were elements in the Iraqi parliament who wanted to pass a special election law for Kirkuk, adding that such efforts were contrary to the country’s constitution.

We, the Kurds, work in accordance with the Iraqi constitution, and the country’s High Constitutional Court has rejected a special election law for Kirkuk, Barzinji said.

Barzinji said that no changes were made to the voter registration, referring to these elements’ demand for a special election law.

He said that the increase in Kirkuk’s voter registration was only 30 per cent, while in other parts of Iraq was 100 per cent. He added that the number of Kurds in the city was significantly reduced during the country’s former regime and thousands of them were killed in the area.

Barzinji said that they would not allow the special election law to pass, even if it is passed, Iraqi president Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, can veto it twice and that the law also needed 66 per cent of the parliamentary votes to be passed.
Barzinji said that the Kurds would not participate in the elections if such law is passed; and the Kurds wanted an open election system.

Meanwhile, the IUK’s MP in the Iraqi parliament, Zuhair Khoshnaw, said that his list would not allow a special election law to pass for Kirkuk, adding that the efforts to pass the law were contrary to the constitution.

Khoshnaw said that the Kurds wanted Kirkuk to be treated like other parts of the country. He added that if they did not reach an agreement with the other parties in the parliament, they would refer the issue to the Iraqi political council.

(Description of Source: (Internet) Patriotic Union of Kurdistan in Sorani Kurdish — Patriotic Union of Kurdistan media website)

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