Arab News Blog

Voting in Iraq began early Sunday, and turnout appeared to be heavy. The BBC analysis is that Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s State of Law coalition will do well enough at the polls to again form the government, partnering with other religious Shiite parties. According to the Iraqi constitution, the party or coalition list with the largest number of seats, even if it is not a majority, will be given the first opportunity to form a government.

Al-Maliki, however, may well have to pay a price for remaining prime minister, if he can manage to do so, since that outcome would certainly require that he make a post-election coalition with the Shiite religious parties of the National Iraqi Alliance. The latter include the Sadr Movement and the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq. Muqtada al-Sadr, leader of the Sadr movement, said Saturday on the Iran-based al-Alam satellite channel that he would only support a prime ministerial candidate who agreed to accelerate the departure of the US from Iraq. Based on its performance in last year’s provincial elections, the Sadr Movement could well get half of the seats gained by the National Iraqi Alliance; if Sadrists did that well, they could be essential to putting together the 51 percent al-Maliki (or any other prime minister) would need to govern. Scroll down to see a translation of Sadr’s remarks, which are the first entry for Sunday below.

Moreover, it is not just al-Sadr. I detect a change in the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, now led by Ammar al-Hakim after the death from lung cancer of his father, Abd al-Aziz. The father had been sanguine about the presence of US troops in Iraq, and called for them to stay in the country, seeing them as a guarantor against the return of the Baathists (the secular Arab nationalists led by Saddam Hussein before his overthrow in 2003). Ammar al-Hakim was brought up in Iran and is close to Iranian hard liners. The US military once arrested him as he was sneaking across the border from Iran after a secret visit to Tehran that appears not to have involved any visas or border stations. In Ankara last winter, he referred to the US military as “occupation forces” and gave partial credit to ISCI for forcing them to withdraw on a timetable. But as late as January, even he was saying that the US presence in Iraq is not a major issue, since it has departed and the bases are being closed (he probably meant that it has decided to depart). He also, however, praised armed resistance to Israeli occupation and, on a trip to Beirut, laid a wreat at the tomb of Imad Mughniya, a radical Shiite whom the US and Israeli categorized as a terrorist.

Ammar has a say in who serves as the Friday Prayer leader and sermonizer at the mosque of the shrine of Ali in the holy city of Najaf, a position of great influence. It is now held by Sayyid Yasin al-Musawi. Al-Musawi’s sermon on last Friday in Najaf contained a number of themes that suggest that ISCI may be returning to its Khomeinist roots. Al-Musawi praised political obedience to the Shiite grand ayatollahs, not just spiritual obedience. That sounded close to the Khomeinist principle of the guardianship of the jurisprudent, or rule of the ayatollahs, which prevails in Iran. And he warned of conspiracies against Iraqi independence, saying that these conspiracies were launched by ‘global arrogance and the secularists.’

Now, ‘global arrogance’ is a technical term in political discourse among hard liners in Iran, and refers to the United States. I never heard an ISCI preacher use this phrase while Abd al-Aziz al-Hakim was leading the movement. Al-Musawi was warning of a US alliance with the secular National Iraqi List of Iyad Allawi aimed at keeping Iraq a colony of Washington.

(In fact, Karen DeYoung of WaPo reports that the Obama administration came to the conclusion that Washington had little chance of influencing the outcome of the election.)

That was the other change in terminology. Al-Musawi urged voters in Najaf to cast their ballots for those who will work for Iraqi independence and against ‘colonialism’ (al-isti`mar). Again, this term was not publicly foregrounded among leaders of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, since they had a rough alliance of convenience with Washington in overthrowing and marginalizing the Baath Party. But now the Friday prayers preacher of Najaf is denouncing global arrogance and openly calling Iraq a colonized country that must regain its independence. This point of view had more commonly been found among Iraqi Sunni Arabs or in the Sadr Movement, as well as among hard liners across the border in Iran.

So if ISCI has decided that it is now in its interest to push the US out on a shorter timetable, and is allied with Sadrists who think the same way, then they could make that acceleration of the withdrawal a precondition for joining al-Maliki’s coalition. Al-Maliki would not have many alternatives. He is unlikely to pair himself with Allawi, whom he sees as a dusted-off Baathist (al-Maliki campaigned against what he warned was resurgent Baathist influence in Iraq, though by that he seems to have meant simple Arab nationalism that threatened the dominance of the Shiite religious parties, including his Islamic Mission (Da`wa) Party). That stance will make it hard for him to get cooperation from the National Iraqi List. Al-Maliki is also too much of an Iraqi nationalist to have really warm and close relations with the Kurdistan Alliance, which wants to add Kirkuk to its holdings, a step that al-Maliki has generally opposed. Moreover, al-Maliki may not need much pressure to call for a quicker US departure. He has for some time insisted that the Iraqi military is perfectly capable of keeping order in the country, and he clearly chafed when Vice President Joe Biden attempted to intervene to reverse the disqualification of over 500 allegedly Baath-linked candidates.

Although some observers are hailing the possibility that ex-Baathist secularist Iyad Allawi could become prime minister, in part based on Sunni support, that scenario seems unlikely to me. In the early 2009 provincial elections, Allawi’s list only got 3 percent in the major southern Shiite province of Basra, and in most of the other 8 provinces with heavy Shiite populations it did equally poorly or was almost invisible in the returns; Qadisiya Province was the outlier, where Allawi gained about 8 percent of the vote, as he did in Baghdad. (For the provincial election returns, see my analysis of a little over a year ago.)

While it is true that Allawi has a bigger coalition this time, having been joined by secular Sunni Arabs, that won’t help him in the Shiite south. In December, 2005, his list got 9 percent of the vote, in part because of popularity in Basra, which seems to have substantially declined. His list only got 14 percent in the provincial elections in the Sunni province of Salahuddin, and 8 percent in al-Anbar, though admittedly he has more Sunni partners this time. The only way his list will be the largest in parliament is if virtually all the Sunni Arabs swing behind it and there has been a sea change in Basra, Baghdad and Diwaniya so that he does unexpectedly well among the urban Shiite middle classes (his major likely constituents in the Shiite south).

Since there is a ban on driving vehicles, guerrillas will not be able to use car bombs to disrupt the voting. They have therefore fallen back on firing mortar shells, as they did in January 2005. By 10:30 am Iraq time, some 24 dead were being reported in these attacks in north Baghdad and in Salahuddin Province, and the Green Zone that houses the US embassy and the Iraqi parliament had also been targeted.

Journalist Nir Rosen, who has spent a lot of time on the ground in the Red Zone in Iraq talking to real people, warns against the meme that the elections could bring a return of civil war or very major violence. I concur. My interviews with Sunni Arab Iraqis in Jordan suggest to me that that community is dejected and feels defeated, and is not looking foward to more violence.

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Iraqi politics and the conduct of the March 7 elections has been thrown into turmoil by the reversal on Wednesday by a judicial appeals panel of the exclusion of over 500 candidates for parliament out of several thousand.

The decision of the appeals panel evoked outrage among the Shiite religious parties, including the State of Law coalition of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and the Iraqi National Alliance (which groups the Sadr Movement and the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, among others). The INA condemned what it called the interference of the USA in the appeals panel decision and called the decision “unconstitutional.” It warned that any step to rehabilitating Baathists and allowing them to serve in the front ranks of the government would doom Iraq’s nascent democracy.

The original decision to disqualify the candidates was made by the Justice and Accountability Commission. Technically it falls under the authority of the Central Criminal Court of Iraq, since the Baath Party is illegal and therefore continued connections to it are a crime. It is for this infraction against the law, i.e., continued ties to Baathism, that the Justice and Accountability Commission excluded those hundreds of candidates. Its decisions could therefore be appealed to the appellate panel of the CCCI.

In the meantime, the Independent High Electoral Commission confirmed the disqualifications. This Commission was created by parliament and therefore is technically under the legislature.

The appellate panel agreed that the over 500 figures disqualified should be further investigated, but said that the investigations should be carried out after the election. This scenario is potentially nightmarish, since it could lead to the removal of members of parliament and an alteration of its balance of power, after the people had spoken.

Ali al-Lami, the head of the Accountability and Justice Commission, denied that the appeals panel had any standing to intervene in the issue.

The Independent High Electoral Commission made a different argument, suggesting that the appeals panel only had the prerogative of deciding guilt or innocence. But it simply postponed that judgment and allowed the accused to run anyway. The IHEC insisted that deciding whether a candidate could run was its own prerogative and that the appeals panel could only decide guilt or innocence, which it had declined to do. Its decision was therefore irrelevant and the High Electoral Commission ruling should therefore be unaffected (i.e. the disqualified candidates should remain disqualified).

Al-Sharq al-Awsat reports in Arabic that the al-Maliki government is combatting the appellate panel reversal in two ways. It is appealing the ruling to the Federal Supreme Court. And, on Sunday, it is calling a special session of parliament to discuss the issue.

The Independent High Electoral Commission has also sent a letter to the Federal Supreme Court about the reversal, asking for a clarification of the authority of the appeals court reinstatement of the secular candidates. In the meantime, the IHEC has postponed the beginning of the campaign season from 7 February to 12 February to give the Supreme Court time to rule first.

Riz Khan of Aljazeera English interviews Salih Mutlak, the secular Sunni Arab leader of the 11-seat National Dialogue Bloc in parliament, who was among those disqualified to run on March 7:

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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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 Guest Post by Brian Katulis, Center for American Progress

In advance of Iraq’s elections in March, several Iraqi leaders are coming to Washington to meet with Obama administration officials, and Vice President Joe Biden is rumored to be preparing a series of meetings on the subject with the national security principals later this month.  Yesterday, the White House hosted Iraqi Vice President Adil Abdul Mehdi, one of two vice presidents and a leading figure in the Shia party Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, in a meeting that didn’t attract any media attention. 

The Iraqi embassy invited me to a small meeting at DC’s Ritz Carlton with Abdul Mehdi, and he said he had just come from the White House meeting with President Barack Obama and Vice President Biden.  The conservation, attended by a small number of the usual Iraq policy nerds from think tanks, was wide-ranging.  Here are two key points, not including one tantalizing tidbit about Iraq’s elections that Abdul Mehdi pulled off the record.   

Wants U.S. disengagement and more mature, but privileged, relationship with U.S. 
Abdul Mehdi said that the bilateral relations were moving towards a “more mature” phase, andhe stressed that the Obama administration’s “disengagement policy corresponds to exactly what we want.”  This probably disappointed some of the policy analysts in the room, some of whom have advocated an extended, years-long U.S. presence that goes beyond troop withdrawal timelines agreed to in the U.S.-Iraq security agreement.  Iraqi leaders have been reasserting their sovereignty for years now, and too many Beltway analysts still ignore the reality that Iraqis want control of their country back. They still delude themselves that the United States can constructively direct Iraqi politics through foreign military sales and security force training programs.   

Abdul Mehdi did make the customary pitch that Iraq is a strategic country for the United States in the region, and he also expects “we both will need privileged relations
with each other.”  When asked about the size of the U.S. embassy
in Baghdad – with reports of expansion plans not receiving much attention – the vice president said he “can’t imagine just a simple
U.S. embassy in Iraq.”   

The vice president also raised the importance of economic ties between Iraq and the United States and expressed disappointment that U.S. firms have not invested more in Iraq. 
“I wish oil companies would have been more aggressive than Chinese companies,” he said.  This concern – that the United States isn’t moving quickly enough to build more comprehensive economic and cultural ties with Iraq in addition to the military-to-military relationship as outlined in the bilateral strategic framework agreement – is becoming a common refrain from Iraqi leaders I’ve met recently. 

On Iran. 
Abdul Mehdi, who noted that on his way back to Iraq he will go via Iran as he often does, said that the United States and Iran were “in many cases, the only two countries that supported Iraq.”   

He highlighted his personal involvement in arranging direct meetings between the United States and Iraq, a “mediation” role he has talked
about publicly before.  Many forget that the Bush administration allowed direct
engagement between U.S. and Iranian diplomats in Iraq.   

The diplomatic impasse with Iran over its nuclear program continues, and Abdul Mehdi offered little on what he thought regarding Iran’s internal fights.  He noted that for decades, Iran was not a “friendly part of regional policies,” and that it was important to try to “domesticate Iran within the rules of the game.”  He also noted that “if Iran wants to make the days of U.S. troops in Iraq a hell, they can do so.” 

Much more was said, in particular about the upcoming elections and recent barring of nearly 500 candidates from the elections as well as the continued swirling rumors about the possibility of a military
coup in Iraq.  Iraq has faded from the headlines recently, but as I’ve noted in recent pieces including this one, many issues remain unresolved and Iraq is bound to jump back up higher on the priority list in 2010. 

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Adam L. Silverman writes in a guest op-ed for Informed Comment:

Politics and Politicking: Iraqi Elections, the Failure of Reconciliation, and the Consolidation of Power

Adam L. Silverman, PhD[1]

The politics surrounding Iraq’s national election law is eerily reminiscent of the Faulkner quote that “the past is never dead, it’s not even past”. While the Iraqi Parliament has finally passed an election law for the 2010 parliamentary (national) elections[2], the extended impasse over the measure[3] is a replay of the events that preceded the provincial elections in the late Summer and Fall of 2008. At that time Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, in conjunction with Vice President Adel Abdul Mahdi, vetoed the provincial election law.[4] The veto was issued concerning the status of Kirkuk, the city that was one of the major grievances between Iraqi Kurds and Arabs, as well as the proposed format for the elections. Tensions were so high that the Kurdistan Alliance actually walked out of parliament to prevent a vote, an action that failed and led to the veto.

The entire episode highlighted the unreconciled fault lines and cleavages between the various ethno-linguistic and ethno-religious factions in Iraq. The wrangling clearly demonstrated that Dawa, the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI) and its Badr Corps paramilitary, and the Kurdistan Alliance were trying to consolidate and enhance control to pursue their own agendas.

The most recent holdup, the veto issued by Iraqi Vice President Tariq al Hashimi also centered around the fault lines of Kurdish versus Arab and Sunni versus Shi’a. Vice President al Hashimi’s veto appears to have been an attempt to preserve as much political representation, and consequent power, for the Sunni minority as possible. The opposition he and the Sunnis face, the Kurds and the Shi’a Arabs, seek to reallocate the representation to more fully reflect their own higher proportion of the Iraqi population.

The overall problem here, however, is that the Kurds and the Shi’a Arabs, as represented by the Kurdistan Alliance, Dawa, and ISCI, have demonstrated that their views of Iraq are clearly sometimes sectional rather than nationalist: they seek to either a partial or complete de facto secession (the Kurds and Kurdistan, ISCI and Southern Iraq) or–in the case of ISCI and to some extent Dawa– they represent the interests of their Iranian benefactors. Moreover, by consolidating their power through the politics of the election law these parties and the movements they represent are deepening the divide between those that have power and those who are perpetually locked out of power.

Vice President al Hashemi’s November 8th veto and his subsequent threats to issue another veto if his demands for greater Sunni representation were not met created an impasse. The resolution of the stalemate allowed the Sunni minority to achieve slightly greater representation while also providing the Shi’a majority and the Kurds significant enough concessions that everyone could save face and the election could be scheduled.[5] The new election law does, however, push two important grievances farther down the road: talks to resolve the dispute between Arabs and Kurds over Kirkuk and oil and conducting a long overdue census – both of which will supposedly happen next year. The real question that those interested in Iraq need to be focused on at this point is what will the effects of the election, as well as these two other problem sets, have on the fault lines between the various communities in Iraq?

As Nir Rosen has documented the Shi’a have won the dispute with the Sunnis.[6] The Shi’a have won the war for control of political power and resources. Although that dispute has been termed a Sunni/Shi’a Civil War, and has often been incorrectly seen as a purely religious and theological dispute, in fact the two parties sought to stake control of money, water, electrical power, oil, and political power.[7]

The issue, however, is how the Sunnis will respond to ever their ever diminishing influence over Iraq at a national, provincial, and local level. If PM Maliki and his Dawa Party continue to consolidate power in an attempt to further entrench themselves and secure their positions, the Sunnis are likely to respond in very negative ways, despite being heavily outnumbered. Moreover, many rural and more traditional Shi’a are not thrilled with the behavior of Dawa or the second most powerful Shi’a party ISCI. It is important to remember that Iraqis, both Sunni and Shi’a, know who escaped and lived in exile (the leaders of Dawa, ISCI, and the Badr Corps) and who did not. Moreover, they are incredibly sensitive to the idea that Iran is meddling in Iraqi affairs or unduly influencing Iraqi politics.

Many Sunnis, and even the more rural Shia, fear that Iranians will move in and dominate Iraq, or remake the demographic balance. Arab Iraqis are anxious that the Kurds will grab more land and then break away. These tensions will be played out in the elections. If the turnout is high even in Sunni-dominated areas, but Sunnis do not perceive that they have done well, their grievances over representation, resource allocation, and distribution will be inflamed. Similar outcomes will occur if the census is not handled correctly in both its conduct and in selling the idea to Iraqis who are rightfully distrustful of governmental activities, as well as the negotiations regarding Kirkuk and oil.

In order to give all three of these important initiatives a chance to bind up Iraq’s wounds rather than make them worse, three things have to be done and all of the steps taken in this regard have to be very, very transparent.

The management of the issue of Kirkuk and oil is the final piece of the electoral legislation compromise. As is the case with the actual election and the census, the incorrect handling of this issue will go a long way to further destabilizing Iraq as opposed to resolving problems. When out interacting with Iraqis in our Operating Environment my teammates and I often heard from both Sunnis and Shi’a regarding the issue of Kirkuk–even though it is several hundred miles away from where they live. We were usually told that the city had always been Arab, that the Kurds are just trying to steal more oil wealth and land from the Arab Iraqis to solidify Kurdistan, and that if it is given over to the Kurds it will further weaken Iraq, through fragmentation, and strengthen Iran (Iran is a consistent bogey man for many Iraqis. There was a sense of outrage that the Kurds, who already have so much, were trying to take more from the Arabs, and among the Sunni Arabs that they would lose even more opportunities to profit from oil revenue. In order for the Kirkuk talks to lead to progress in Iraq, both sides are going to have to come away with something. Most likely this means greater Kurdish control over Kirkuk with guarantees that Arabs will not be politically disenfranchised or have their potential oil revenue diminished.

The key to forward movement and progress for Iraqis, whether related to the 2010 elections, the census, or the negotiations of Kirkuk and oil revenue is that those who have lost the most in the reordering of Iraq since the 2003 invasion must not feel as though they are being further disenfranchised. If the Sunnis, who have clearly lost the power struggle, feel as if they are having their noses rubbed in their defeat they are more likely, no matter how futile it might be, to take up arms and seek to reclaim honor and status through the use of force. Additionally, those who feel that the Kurds have gotten too sweet a deal as a result of the remaking of the Iraqi state and society are likely to use force if they perceive that the issues regarding Kirkuk and oil are being manipulated in favor of the Kurds. This final issue, which lies close to the heart of the Arab/Kurdish dispute that now dominates the sectarian landscape in Iraq, has the potential to eclipse the previous violence– since the Iraqi Army is largely divided between Kurdish units (many of which are former Peshmerga) and Arab units (many of which are former Badr Corps).

[1] Adam L. Silverman, PhD was the Field Social Scientist and Team Lead for Human Terrain Team Iraq 6 (HTT IZ6) assigned to the 2BCT/1AD from October 2007 through October 2008. Upon his redeployment from Iraq he then served as the Strategic Communications Advisor for the US Army’s Human Terrain System through 2009. The ideas expressed herein are his alone and do not necessarily reflect those of HTT IZ6, the 2BCT/1AD, the US Army’s Human Terrain System, or the US Army.

[2] http://www.salon.com/wires/ap/2009/12/06/D9CE4KNO0_us_us_iraq

[3] http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/29/weekinreview/29myers.html?_r=2&hpw

[4] daralhayat.com/arab_news/levant_news/07-2008/item-20080726-6074ce15-c0a8-10ed-0007-aebdbaclcc57/story.html, english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2008/072008723122314106521.html

[5] http://www.mcclatchydc.com/251/story/80151.html

[6] http://www.bostonreview.net/BR34.6/rosen.php

[7] http://www.bostonreview.net/BR34.6/rosen.php

[8] http://www.ihec.iq/English/about_ihec.aspx

[9] Parker, Sam (as “Iraqologist”). Not So Open; abumuwaqamma.com, 25 SEP 2008

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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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Two massive blasts shook central Baghdad on Sunday, killing at least 136 people and wounding 500, and destroying three government ministry buildings, according to the Times of London’s Oliver August reporting from Baghdad. It was the most destructive attack of 2009. August notes that the likely perpetrators were either Baathists from the old regime or Sunni Muslim extremists, both of whom want to stop a new, Shiite- and Kurdish- dominated status quo from settling upon Iraq.

AFP Arabic service says that the first car exploded at 10 am Baghdad time at a crowded intersection near the ministry of justice and the ministry of municipalities. The second was detonated ten minutes later on Salihiya St. in front of the Baghdad Province administrative office. Many dead bodies are suspected of still being beneath the rubble of the ministries of justice and public works buildings, which collapsed on the employees.

The ministries were protected by blast walls and the truck bombs could not get that close, but the explosives used were so ungodly powerful that they swept the blast walls away. I have no pretensions to forensics expertise, but that sounds like a clue to me; where are the guerrillas getting such remarkable high explosives?

Aljazeera English has video:

The particular ministries that were struck may be significant, since Iraq operates on a spoils system and ministries tend to be dominated by political parties and ethnic groups. The Minister of Public Works is Riyadh Gharib, a prominent member of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, which is close to the clerics in Tehran. Public Works as a ministry would thus have a lot of ISCI party members as employees and it is also a huge source of political patronage. Baathists or Sunni extremists would have every reason to hit it.

The Ministry of Justice had been less politicized, but from 2007 was in the control of the Shiite United Iraqi Alliance. The Minister of Justice from last February is Judge Dara Nur al-Din, an independent Kurd. He had been a member of the Interim Governing Council under Paul Bremer, for which some groups in Iraq may not have forgiven him. The ministry of justice also oversees court cases and executions, including of prominent Baathists, executions that Nur al-Din has defended, and which have angered the anti-government guerrillas.

As for the Baghdad Provincial government (it is both a province and a city), it has been dominated since the January, 2009, provincial elections by the State of Law coalition of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, the leading element of which is the Shiite Islamic Mission Party (Da’wa).

So if the guerrillas who set these bombs were trying to kill party cadres attached to ministries, you’d have to conclude they were trying to kill those of the ruling Shiite religious parties, and also to take revenge on the new regime for the Ministry of Justice’s executions of Baathists and Sunnis.

The attacks inevitably had implications for the January, 2010, parliamentary elections, insofar as they make Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and his ascendant Islamic Mission Party look incompetent in providing security. Since al-Maliki has done a fair job of restoring security to cities such as Basra, this success is a campaign talking point for him, which the guerrillas are attempting to deflect.

There are two dangers here. One is that US hawks will make such attacks a pretext for delaying US troop withdrawal. These sorts of attacks happened all the time when the US troops were patrolling Baghdad, and they only ever were stopped by extreme measures that were impractical for the long run, such as walling off whole neighborhoods and producing 80 percent unemployment.

The second is that Nuri al-Maliki will attempt to deflect any blame for the blasts onto Syria, which he views as harboring Baathist elements who plan these attacks out. Shaky revolutionary regimes like that of Baghdad often go to war to shore themselves up, and Iraq-Syria border clashes are not impossible.

The US Republican Party’s avaricious and illegal war on Iraq destabilized the eastern Mediterranean, perhaps for decades, creating long-term challenges to US and global security of which the Baghdad blasts are very possibly only minor omens.

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Mortars were fired in Baghdad, killing 7, and three bombs went off in the Shiite holy city of Karbala, killing 4 and wounding 48. The bombings were near to holy Shiite shrines, which is extremely dangerous. The bombing of the golden dome at Samarra in February of 2006 set off a vicious Sunni-Shiite civil war that killed thousands each month. The shrine of Imam Husayn, the Prophet’s martyred grandson, in Karbala is among the holiest sites of Shiite Islam.

Al-Zaman reports in Arabic that Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has ordered the closing for one week of Mustansiriya University in downtown Baghdad and the banning of partisan political activity on campus. The moves alarmed the PM’s critics, who worry that he is gradually abolishing the freedom of speech in the new Iraq and making himself a strongman.

Aljazeera English has video:

Mustansiriya’s student government and administration has been dominated by the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI) and by the Sadr Movement, two Shiite religious parties that are rivals of the Islamic Mission (Da’wa) Party of PM al-Maliki. Although Western reporters for some odd reason want to depict Da’wa as more secular than the others, it is not. It is, however, less puritanical than the Sadrists and led by lay fundamentalists rather than by clerics, in contrast to ISCI. Since ISCI and the Sadrists are part of the National Iraqi Alliance coalition contesting the upcoming parliamentary elections, and Maliki’s Da`wa is running against them on the Government of Laws slate, there is bad blood among the Shiite fundamentalist parties at the moment.

Mustansiriya U.’s president was Imad al-Husayni of the Islamic Supreme Council of iraq. Then Minister of Higher Education Abd Dhiyab al-`Ujayli dismissed al-Husayni and appointed Taqi al-Musawi as university president. But al-Husayni refused to step down. So Mustansiriya U. limped along with two administrations that were constantly fighting with one another.

Then PM al-Maliki stepped in and appointed a third man, a professor in the School of Education, as leader of the university. But that only produced three rival administrations. But beyond personality conflicts, the religious parties and the student unions they dominate were jockeying with one another.

When al-Maliki appointed a personal friend as president, it set off two days of student demonstrations and protests, on Monday and Tuesday, demanding al-Husayni’s reinstatement (i.e. the student unions controlled by ISCI were attempting to flex their muscles). In Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein, institutions of higher education have often come to be controlled by fundamentalist political parties, who then give preference to student party members from their party in the admissions process and also favor party members for faculty posts. That is, universities are often part of the same spoils system that operates in government ministries. Having control of a university has many benefits for a party, since it provides it with opportunities for patronage, and gives it a large, visible social space and lots of potential campaign workers.

So al-Maliki was perceived as shifting Mustansiriya out of the ISCI column and making an attempt to put it under the control of his Islamic Mission Party.

Al-Maliki has reacted to the strikes and demonstrations by closing the university down for a while and dissolving the party-based student organizations, attempting to depoliticize student activism. It remains to be seen whether the closing will have much effect, and whether it is really possible to stop politics on campus by fiat.

As for the charge that al-Maliki is acting unconstitutionally in forbidding partisan political activities on campus, it has merit. It would be as though US universities were forbidden to host the Young Republicans or the Young Democrats. Iraq may or may not regain political stability any time soon, but the likelihood that it will have democratic government is low.

Ominously, Iraq has had to slash its government budget and is running a substantial budget deficit this year which is impeeding both spending on civilian infrastructure and the purchase of military equipment.

And, the Kurdistan Regional Government and al-Maliki’s Baghdad are sparring over oil exports. The Kurds are on strike, refusing to export the 100,000 barrels a day their region typically had been sending out through federal government pipelines. A deep Kurdish-Arab divide could end the alliance Kurdish parties have had with the Shiites in parliament, and set the stage for one more civil war.

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” ……. At stake is Iraq’s nascent democracy and the prospects of a smooth American withdrawal from Iraq. If elections are postponed for any reason beyond January, Iraq will be operating in a constitutional vacuum that could very well contribute to broad-based political instability. Iraq’s Independent High Election Commission has stated that unless the bill is passed within a few days of the October 15 deadline, it will be forced for technical reasons to carry out the elections under the previous law that governed the 2005 elections. This is not a solution, however. The 2005 law was profoundly flawed as it included a blind, closed-list system that limited voters to a choice between party names. Only after the election results were known did the party leadership determine who would actually fill the seats. Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani has reportedly indicated that he would urge a boycott of the elections if they were held under this law.

Since Sistani’s admonition, most political party leaders, including the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq’s (ISCI) new leader Amar al-Hakim, have dutifully come out in favor of an open list. But their claim of support rings hollow. An open list system makes it much easier for broad coalitions, such as the coalition being put together by Prime Minister Maliki, to form and flourish. It also allows such coalitions to squeeze as many votes out of individual communities as possible since people are much more likely to vote for individuals they know and respect from within their communities. Deeply unpopular parties like ISCI prefer the archaic provisions of the 2005 law so that they can hide behind a popular “brand”—e.g. United Iraqi Alliance—that will hopefully allow them to retain more seats in the subsequent parliament than they could have possibly achieved if voters actually knew for whom they were voting.

The Kurds are also a challenge, however. They risk holding up the entire election process over the question of how elections are conducted in Tamim province, the capital of which is Kirkuk. In the past, the United States, Iraqi politicians and the international community as represented in the UN have all “kicked the can down the road” on Kirkuk, hoping for more propitious circumstances to settle the problem later. In January, for instance, provincial elections were not held in Kirkuk. It would be a shame not to hold parliamentary elections in Kirkuk as well, but vastly preferable to the alternative proposed by various nationalist groups that would introduce a Lebanese-like ethno-religious quota for the province…..

With time so short, it is difficult to envision what the Obama administration can do, except cross it collective fingers and hope for the best……

Still, as the rueful experience in Afghanistan teaches, it is important to get the process right. If the choice is between a constitutional crisis and taking the time necessary to establish a transparent electoral law framework so that the elections can be conducted in a manner likely to be seen as legitimate by the people, the latter is clearly preferable. The United States should lean heavily on Maliki and the Kurds to agree a compromise on Tamim and get an amended law through the parliament. If the Kurds and Maliki agree, ISCI will be isolated and the Iraqi people—and Ayatollah Sistani, it seems—will take care of the rest.”

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Within only a few days of the creation of a new Iraqi Shi‘ite front, the leader of the most powerful movement in that front, ‘Abd al-‘Aziz al-Hakim of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI) has died in Tehran of lung cancer.

As the heir of the powerful Hakim clerical clan and a major figure in Iraqi politics, Hakim’s passing will clearly have an impact. If it means that the new National Iraqi Alliance is thrown into temporary disarray, that may strengthen the hand of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and his Da‘wa Party.

Juan Cole’s take here; Reidar Visser’s here. The BBC’s here. And Al-Jazeera English.

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