Arab News Blog

The LAT says that at least 41 persons were killed and 237 were wounded by three suicide bomb attacks targeting the Iranian and German embassies and the Egyptian consulate. Most of those killed or injured were civilians who happened to be in those areas.

The bombings likely are aimed at hurting the chances of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki for a second term. His claim to fame had been that he restored some security to Basra and Baghdad. His rival, the Iraqi National Movement of Iyad Allawi, immediately took advantage of the bombings to complain about poor security measures. But an official quoted in the al-Hayat article below pointed out that the bombers had hoped to drive their vehicles into the embassies, and had been prevented from doing so by Iraqi security, thus foiling what would have been a major blow against the Iraqi government’s standing with the outside world. Another Iraqi observer is quoted by Sawt al-Iraq as saying that the bombers were sending a message to the outside world that Iraq is still too dangerous to open an embassy there.

The pan-Arab London daily Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that actually the third bomb was set off between a residence used by the German embassy and the Syrian embassy. Correspondent Jawdat Kadhim in Baghdad says that the Egyptian government confirmed that four consulate employees were injured in the blast, which it roundly condemned. He says that an off-duty guard for the German establishment is also reported killed.

An eyewitness to the attack on the Egyptian consulate in the western district of al-Mansur said, “The suicide bomber was alone, driving a small Kia truck. He headed toward the building housing the Egyptian consulate. When the guards requested that he stop, he continued even faster. When they opened fire on him, he immediately detonated his vehicle.

The Iranian ambassador to Iraq, Hasan Kazemi Qomi, condemned the attack in Karrada near his embassy as an act of terrorism. He added, “We are not positive that our embassy was the target.” He said that none of his employees had been injured.

The attacks are the most deadly since January 25, when bombers killed 36 and wounded around 70. Two one-day bombing campaigns in August and October 2009 were also similar, though they demolished government buildings attached to ministries.

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Ahmad Mansur is interviewing Amin Gemayyel: and Mansur is a tough interviewer unless he is interviewing Amin Gemayyel or Gihad Sadat or a Hariri family member. He then turns into Larry King when he interviewed Frank Sinatra (why do we love you so much, Frank?). Those kind of questions. A guy called: he said he is from Karantin-Maslakh area in East Beirut where Phalanges committed massacres. The caller said: you have committed massacres against members of my family, and at that point, Mansur cut him off.

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AP reports that guerrillas drove a car bomb into an Interior Ministry crime lab in the Karrada district of Baghdad on Tuesday, only a day after a coordinated bombing attack on the city’s hotel district, killing 22.

Al-Zaman says that a number of high-ranking officers are among the dead, and that some 80 are wounded. Many Iraqi politicians live in Karrada, an upscale Shiite neighborhood. Haydar al-Jurani, a member of parliament in the Islamic Mission Party (Hizb al-Da’wa) to which Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki belongs, was walking near the building and was taken to hospital with a mild head wound.

If the attacks were meant to demoralize, they seem to be succeeding. Al-Zaman reports that many in Baghdad blame the security forces for either being incompetent, or for being actively complicit (e.g. taking bribes to allow cars through checkpoints) in the bombings.

The crime lab, which had been recently renovated with American aid funds, was almost completely destroyed. Obviously, a terrorist group would want to disrupt the forensics capabilities of the Iraqi security forces.

The Australian Broadcasting Co. has a video report:

AP’s Brian Murphy also quotes Gen. Ray Odierno, the US commander in Iraq, to the effect that the explosives used in the past two days appear to have been less powerful than in the August and December attacks, but that guerrillas have developed new tactics– having an armed band shoot it out with building security forces, e.g., clearing the way for a car bomb to be driven into the building. The US military suspects that there are bomb-making factories in the semi-rural areas just outside Baghdad, from which the payloads are driven into the capital. The guerrillas’ strategy has also shifted, Odierno, said, from a attempt to mount a popular insurgency to overwhelm the capital [in 2004-2005] to a rearguard set of small terrorist actions aimed at destabilizing the Shiite-dominated government. [Cole would add that the reason for this shift is that the Sunni Arabs have been largely ethnically cleansed from Baghdad, so that it is no longer plausible for them to take over the capital using their old demographic base in e.g. al-Mansur. Thus the spoiler actions of bombing downtown buildings, which cannot change the government but can keep it weak.]

Muhammad A. Salih reports for IPS that the Accountability and Justice Commission, which excluded some 500 candidates from running in the March 7 parliamentary elections, may be softening. It recently reinstated 59 candidates. The ostensible reason given for the exclusions was that the candidates were too closely linked to the banned Baath Party. But among those excluded was Salih al-Mutlak, who had sat in parliament as leader of the 11-seat National Dialogue Bloc and who had left the Baath Party in 1977. I am quoted saying that this move by the committee comes as too little, too late, and that the goal of the exclusions seems to be to make sure that the Shiite religious parties retain control of parliament, whichthey have had since January 2005.

Carnegie has a good overview of the politics of the exclusions. The authors maintain that Shiite ex-Baaithists were also banned, and that most of the 500 were minor political figures, but that the more prominent of them were Sunni Arabs, creating an impression of sectarian bias. The head of the Commission is a fundamentalist Shiite also running for parliament, a situation many have decried as inherently unfair.

The next big security challenge comes this weekend, with the advent of the 40th day commemoration of the martyrdom of Imam Husayn, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, at his shrine in the holy city of Karbala south of Baghdad. Some 20,000 army troops, police and other security men have been positioned through the city to forestall bombings of the pilgrims or the shrine, which would have the potential to throw Iraq back into intense ethno-sectarian conflict between Sunnis and Shiites. Pilgrims are being forbidden to wear burial shrouds, which some do to symbolize their willingness to be martyred along with Imam Husayn for the truth. I suppose authorities feel that the loose shrouds could too easily hide a belt bomb.

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I have always argued that all of Israel’s friends in the Arab world (who can be counted on the toes of one foot or two) are essentially rabid anti-Semites: from the King Hasan II of Morocco to Anwar Sadat to the holocaust-denying, Mahmoud Abbas. Sadat’s chief adviser and favorite propagandist, Anis Mansur, has been a big supporter of Israel. Yet, his articles are full of anti-Semitic fulminations that never get translated by MEMRI. MEMRI and other Zionist propaganda outlets, forgive and ignore anti-Semitism when expressed by supporters of Israel. Here, Mansur says that “Jews are ill-tempered by their very constitution and full of anxieties.”

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Five large bombs were detonated throughout Baghdad on Tuesday, killing 127 persons and wounding 500, and damaging important government buildings. Three of the five were suicide bombs.

Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that the bombings targeted the ministries of the interior and of finance, as well as a popular market and a court house. They hit on either side of Karkh and Rusafa districts. The first bombing struck at the gates of a Technical Institute in Dora, about 10:05 am, and then a courthouse in Karkh. The final bombing occurred in the Western Sunni district of Mansur, striking near a federal police building and a publicity office of the US military. The Ministry of Finance building hit on the edge of a market was the one employees moved into when the original Finance offices were destroyed by a massive bombing in October. Over-all, many of the dead were police or officers.

The streets were eerily empty in the aftermath of the attacks, and American helicopters hovered above the sites that had been bombed, according to al-Zaman. Al-Sharq al-Awsat says that security at checkpoints was redoubled after the bombings.

Parliament’s Security Committee announced that it would question security-related cabinet ministers on December 17 as to how this serious lapse in security occurred. Hadi al-Amiri, chair of that committee, is head of the Badr Organization, a Shiite paramilitary related to the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, a pro-Iran, fundamentalist Shiite party. ISCI took a bath in last January’s parliamentary elections, facing a strong challenge in Baghdad and Basra from Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s Dawa or Islamic Mission Party. Some of the outrage directed at the government is probably related to the upcoming parliamentary elections, in which attempts will be made to depict al-Maliki and Dawa as ineffective in providing security. Al-Zaman, reporting in Arabic, says that Baha’ al-A’raji, a Sadrist MP, also slammed the government for failing to stop the bombings.

What I remember is that bombings were a feature of Baghdad life when the US was actively patrolling

Aljazeera English reports on the dilemma created for Washington by the security challenge in Baghdad.

Aljazeera notes that some US media outlets did not bother to cover these attacks in Iraq, and wonders if the story will return. I think the answer depends on the journalistic integrity of the outlet. For many, the answer will be no. Many US media are nationalist media, and cover stories having to do with US national projects. Americans have already decided that Iraq was a mistake, and they know the US military is leaving, and so what happens there is not “news” as much of the corporate media defines it (i.e. a story that generates profits because of wide public interest in it).

CBS, to its credit, did cover the story:

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Ministerial responsibility is a concept accepted in theory in most of the Middle East, but only rarely experienced in practice. We have one of the exceptions: the Egyptian Minister of Transportation has resigned over a train wreck that (officially, so far) killed 18 and injured 36. Another account here. (But the Egyptian rumor mill puts the death toll as high as 150! Though the coffeehouse gossip is not necessarily any more reliable — or necessarily any less — than the official account, something somewhere in between may prove to be true.) Apparently (the reports are a bit vague) the resignation has been accepted.

It was one of those Egyptian train wrecks that happen more often than they should: train one stops due to a water buffalo (gamusa) on the tracks; train two hits it from behind.

The Minister says he’s responsible but won’t resign. When Gamal Mubarak does a public discussion online, he says nothing about it, and he gets criticized for it. (He’s not figured out how to campaign like a real politician, but then he doesn’t have to.) Something then pushes the Minister to resign.

Apparently Minister Mansur is indeed out, but there’s a bit of chaos at the Ministry since Ministers don’t usually resign precipitously in Egypt.

Apparently there’s an online joke rolling around Egyptian websites that this is the first time a gamusa (water buffalo) brought down a wazir (Minister). I’ll try to find a link.

As the Al-Masry al-Youm link I linked to above notes, Mansur was, before becoming a Minister, head of the Mansour Group, a company with a billion-dollar turnover and, surprise, surprise, Mansur has close links with another youngish Egyptian entrepreneur, one Gamal Mubarak. I’m sure he’s one of those who know him well enough to call him “Jimmy,” as his friends do, and I suspect, that the fact that the National Democratic Party , the ruling party, starts its Annual Conference at the end of the week means it’s not a good time to have a tragedy, especially one that generates criticism of Gamal for his silence, or his closeness to the Minister. Maybe that’s why he first said he wouldn’t resign, then did.

Usually ministers in Egypt who need to be scapegoated are fired; this one resigned. Could the closeness to Gamal have something to do with it? And the criticism of Gamal for having an online/televised dialogue (which I didn’t blog about) a few days ago and not even mentioning the train wreck have influenced the outcome?

Or did the Gamal train just hit a gamusa on the tracks? This is interesting.

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