Arab News Blog

Aswat al-Iraq reports on reactions to the withdrawal of US combat brigades from Iraq in the southern Iraqi city of Basra.

The head of the Basra Provincial governing council, Jabbar Amin, said that the American combat forces had withdrawn at dawn on Thursday, which would charge the Iraqi forces with their true mission, in strengthening security and stability. He pointed out that the Iraqi army had taken over the major combat role from American troops a year ago, and had principally been doing training since then. (Amin is from Islamic Mission Party = Iraq Organization, [Da'wa Tanzim al-Iraq], a branch of the party of caretaker prime minister Nuri al-Maliki). This point of view, representative of the current government of Iraq, stresses the ability of the Iraqi military and other security forces to keep order in the wake of the American departure.

Husain Talib, a member of the Ahrar Party that supports Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, said that “The withdrawal of American troops from Iraqi soil, if it happens, is a tiding of good news for for all Iraqis.” He said that all the tragedies and the difficulties in getting services and the deterioration of the security situation were because of the US forces. He added that the security forces of Iraq would have forced an American withdrawal had they not been foreign agents or Baathists. (This is a slam at the Iraqi government of Nuri al-Maliki). This point of view, common among strong Iraqi nationalists, blames US forces for all of Iraq’s problems and so sees the departure of American troops as offering a better situation in and of itself.

Abu Muhammad, an official of the Iraqi Communist Party in Basra said, “In general, we are with the withdrawal of the American forces and Iraq’s achievement of complete sovereignty.” “But,” he added, “the withdrawal must be orderly and must be undertaken in coordination with the Iraqi security forces and especially the ministry of defense, especially since a withdrawal at this juncture, which is characterized by political problems, could send the wrong message to the terrorists.”

Note that an official of the Communist Party of Iraq is worried that the US is withdrawing too fast!

Aljazeera English reports on Iraqi reactions to the withdrawal of US combat troops, and finds the same anxiety and caution expressed by Abu Muhammad in a Sunni Arab woman of Adhamiya in Baghdad, who thinks it is irresponsible for US troops to depart before the Iraqi political crisis is resolved and a new government formed.

Liz Sly of the LAT in Baghdad says that many Iraqis have misgivings about the timing of the US withdrawal and fear a descent into chaos, as their political elite proves still unable to form a new government months after the March 7 elections. She says there was no dancing in the streets at Thursday’s announcement. She does not quote the Sadrists or the Sunni nationalists, who are the groups most likely to be delighted, though also the groups most likely to entertain doubts about the reality of the withdrawal.

Al-Hayat reporting in Arabic stresses that the anxiety about the combat troops leaving is especially severe in the northern, disputed city of Kirkuk. Kurds want to add it to their semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan but Arabs and Turkmen are resisting this move. Al-Hayat quotes some Kirkuk officials who plead for the US to make an exception and keep combat troops in the city.

Print

Go to Source

‘Iyad ‘Allawi’s ‘Iraqiyya Bloc in Iraq has suspended talks about a coalition government between itself and Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s State of Law Alliance, after Maliki reportedly called ‘Iraqiyya a Sunni bloc. It insists it is multi-sectarian (‘Allawi is a Shi‘ite).

After five months of stalemate, the failure to form a coalition threatens to cast a shadow over the US effort to emphasize the end of its combat role in Iraq by the end of August. (Of course the distinction between “combat troops” and training troops is a fine one, but it allows the US President to claim he has fulfilled a campaign promise.)

‘Allawi’s bloc one 91 seats in Parliament, Maliki’s 89.

Go to Source

Politico/ here

“… The vice president has one big mission here: to NUDGE Iraq’s top politicians to resolve the standoff they’ve had since their March 7 elections. He’s meeting with Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and Ayad Allawi in hopes that they’ll form a coalition ahead of Aug. 31 – the date President Obama decreed, back in his Camp Lejeune speech of February 2009, that “our combat mission in Iraq will end.” The next day, as a way of signaling that Obama has kept his promise, the mission’s name will change from ‘Operation Iraqi Freedom” to “Operation New Dawn.” …”

Go to Source

The London pan-Arab daily al-Hayat [Life] reports in Arabic that the appeals court will issue its judgment on the coming Monday, May 3, concerning whether 9 candidates should have been allowed to run for parliament and whether they should now be disqualified, as urged by the Justice and Accountability Committee (formerly the Debaathification Committee). So says Ali al-Lami, the executive director of the committee. Those singled out for disqualification are accused of links to or sympathies with the deposed Baath Party that ruled Iraq 1968-2003. But the criteria for disqualification appear to be less than rigorous; even publically questioning the wisdom of excluding so many ex-Baathists from public office is apparently sufficient.

Since 7 of the 9 ran on the Iraqiya List of former interim prime minister Iyad Allawi, the ruling could well have an impact on the shape of the next Iraqi government. It had earlier been asserted that parties with disqualified candidates would not lose the seat that was won, and so would be enabled to appoint a substitute who would serve in the same party. But recently the appeals court and al-Lami have begun insisting that the seat itself would be lost and the votes thrown out, of voters who cast their ballots for a subsequently disqualified candidate.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Wednesday urged all parties to respect the results of the March 7 election.

Allawi’s secular, Arab nationalist list currently has 91 seats out of the 325 in parliament, and by the constitution would be asked first to try to form a government, since his is the largest single party. If his party loses 7 seats, it would fall to only 85, less than the Shiite fundamentalist State of Law coalition headed by incumbent Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, which currently has 89 seats. In this case, Allawi would get first shot at forming a government, which is what al-Lami is apparently angling at with these disqualifications. Al-Lami is himself a member of the fundamentalist Shiite Iraqi National Alliance and is close to Iran, which would like to see the two major Shiite parties form a coalition, in alliance with the Kurds. He is supported by Ahmad Chalabi, who was once convicted of embezzling $300 million from his own bank in Jordan, and fed the US phony intel on Iraq to get up the war. He is close to Iran.

The Iraqiya party, in response to these maneuvers, issued a statement calling for ‘responsible officials to cease procedures that aim at changing the outcome of th elections and stealing the votes of voters via political purges, incarceration, and sly accusations that insult the candidates and the supporters of the Iraqiya list.” It called for Iraqiya members who had been arrested to be freed immediately and rejected any “tampering with the results of the election.” The statement said that the Iraqiya Party would now go to the Security Council of the United Nations, to the European Union, and to the Arab League to demand that a caretaker government be installed and that the parliamentary elections be held all over again. It called upon the three-man presidency council, as the guardian of the constitution, to instruct the present parliament to continue its duties until the new one is seated. (The Council consists of president Jalal Talabani and his two vice-presidents, Adil Abdul Mahdi of the Shiite fundamentalist Iraqi National Alliance and Tariq al-Hashimi of Allawi’s Iraqiya party.)

Al-Zaman reports in Arabic that the State of Law coalition issued a counter-statement saying that installing an interim government would be unconstitutional. In recent Iraqi practice the old government stays in power until replaced by a new one.

This party communique indicates that Allawi and his Sunni Arab and secular Shiite backers are now convinced that the effort to marginalize them and ensure that their achievement of a slight plurality in the voting will be set aside.

I have said that I don’t think this wrangling will reignite the civil war. But it could give Sunni insurgents renewed credibility. (If the new government is the result of tampering, wouldn’t it be legitimate to take up arms against it?)

Both the Shiite-dominated judiciary and Allawi are being highly irresponsible, and risking further destabilizing Iraq.

Go to Source

McClatchy/ CSM reporters Jane Arraf and Mohammed al-Dulaimy cover the decision of an appeals court to uphold the disqualification of 52 Iraqi politicians. The exclusion had been ordered by the ‘Justice and Accountability Committee’ headed by Ahmad Chalabi and Ali al-Lami, themselves candidates on the fundamentalist Shiite list.

Two of those disqualified actually did run and win. Lami seems to say that the votes for them will simply be invalidated and those MPs disqualified would not be replaced or the seats returned to their parties. If that allegation were true, it would reduce the seats held by the Iraqiya list of Iyad Allawi to only 90 (one of the victorious excluded candidates is Ibrahim Mutlak, who stood in for his brother Salih, on the Iraqiya list, when the latter was disqualified before the election). It is also not clear, as the discussion at Reidar Visser’s site noted, whether the decision would therefore reduce the number of seats in the Iraqi parliament from 325 to 323.

The party with the single largest number of seats in parliament is asked to make the first go at forming a government, and Iyad Allawi is convinced that he can in this way return to the prime minister’s palace. It is not clear, however, that he or any of the other most likely candidates for PM, can actually attract enough coalition partners to make it possible to form a government (163 votes are needed in an Iraq of 325 seats).

The judicial appeal allowed to the excluded two candidates will take at least a month, so that the final certification of the election results will be further put off. In the absence of final results, the four major parties are reluctant to go forward with forming political coalitions, since they do not know exactly where they stand with one another. The results were already delayed by a manual recount of votes in Baghdad province, ordered at the instance of current Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, who alleged fraud.Members of the Iraqiya list have now begun saying that if the Baghdad recount were to substantially alter the outcome of the election (in which Allawi’s Iraqiya received 91 votes, the single highest number)– then there might well be a groundswell of support in the Iraqi public for voiding the entire election and holding a new one.

US Ambassador Christopher Hill said Monday that he is concerned that the process of forming a government is taking too long, and that elements of disorder may take advantage of the power vacuum to destabilize the country.

Go to Source

AP reports that guerrillas set off at least 4 car bombs in Baghdad on Friday, killing at least 69 persons and wounding hundreds. The target of four of the attacks was Shiite Muslim mosques or religious centers. Sunni Arab insurgents have lost the war in Iraq, but they have turned to occasional campaigns of massive bombings in a bid to act as spoilers.

There was also renewed violence in al-Anbar province.

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki schizophrenically alleged that the bombings were a reprisal for the killing of two leaders of “al-Qaeda” in Iraq in recent days, but then went on to warn of the dangers still posed by the Baathists (secular Arab nationalists).

The most serious attack was on a mosque in the vast Shiite slum of East Baghdad, Sadr City, killing 36 persons and wounding some 200. In the wake of the bombings, Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr for the first time in two years tried to deploy his paramilitary. He asked that the Mahdi Army mobilize to protect mosques “in cooperation with” the state security forces. Another Sadrist spokesman, Baha’ al-A’raji, told Al-Hayat [Life] that the Mahdi Army had only been mothballed in hopes that the central government would strengthen and would provide security. He observed that that development had not yet taken place.

Iraq is still in the midst of attempting to form a government, and this sectarian violence is intended to disrupt that process.

The militia has been under severe pressure for the past two years, and its leader, Muqtada al-Sadr, was forced into exile from Iraq in the holy city of Qom, where he is said to be acquiring the credentials that would lend him respect in the eyes of the world Shiite community. dozens of his top commanders have been arrested and put behind bars by the al-Maliki government.

Al-Hayat says that bombings targeted two other Shiite houses of worship. One was founded by the father of fraudster Ahmad Chalabi. The other mosque is associated with the US via the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq. This mosque is that of Muhsin al-Hakim, grandfather of the leader of ISCI nowadays, Ammar al-Hakim. Muhsin al-Hakim had been the preeminent Shiite religious authority in the 1960s. Eight persons were killed and 26 wounded at the latter site.

Sadrist spokesman Salah al-Ubaidi blamed the poor procedures of Iraq’s 11th Army Division for the security breech. He contrasted them with those of the police.

Aljazeera English has a video report:

Go to Source

The announcement of the discovery of a secret prison in Baghdad where Sunni Arabs suspected of involvement in guerrilla activities were held and sometimes tortured may have an effect on the shape of the next Iraqi government. Over 400 Sunnis were held at the facility. The revelation starts one thinking about the true character of Iraq’s ‘democracy.’

The London Daily ash-Sharq al-Awsat points out that the prison was administered by the ‘military office’ of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, who is presently attempting to form a government so as to enjoy a second term as the Iraqi head of state.

Baha al-A’raji, a Sadrist spokesman, confirmed that the movement has decided that not only will it reject the candidacy for prime minister of Nuri al-Maliki, but they do not want a prime minister from the Islamic Mission (Da’wa) Party at all.

The prison torture revelations may make it more difficult for al-Maliki to form an alliance with another potential partner, the Iraqi National List. That list had strong Sunni support. And, supporters of the Iraqiya list are already upset the recount of ballots in Baghdad province, which they fear al-Maliki will manipulate to his advantage.

One possibility is that the Shiite religious coalition will split, with a majority following Iraqi Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. That division would allow al-Maliki to ally with the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, headed by cleric Ammar al-Hakim. If the two of them could do a deal with the Kurdistan Alliance, they could form a government.

But the price of going for broke with another Shiite-Kurdish alliance is that it would be unacceptable to the Sunni Arabs. The Iraqi National List of Allawi is already threatening to boycott any such government and to instead sit in the opposition and to refuse to join in a government of national unity.

Go to Source

In a guest opinion piece for Informed Comment, Christopher Anzalone asks if the Reported Killings of the Islamic State of Iraq’s two senior Leaders spell the end of the Self-styled Jihadi State.

Abu ‘Umar al-Baghdadi, the head of the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI), and Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, the head of al-Qa ‘ida in the Land of the Two Rivers/Iraq (AQI), were both reportedly killed early in the morning Sunday (April 18) in battle with U.S. and Iraqi security forces 10 kilometers southwest of Tikrit. The killings were confirmed on Monday by General Ray Odierno, the commander of U.S. military forces in Iraq, in a press release , and Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki held up photographs said to be of the two before and after death at a press conferece (warning: graphic ).

Al-Muhajir’s assistant and al-Baghdadi’s son were also reportedly killed, along with a U.S. soldier, and sixteen other suspected militants were arrested. The ISI has, as of this writing, not confirmed or denied the deaths of its two senior leaders. Nonetheless, reports of their deaths, which have traveled fast, call into question the level of impact the demise of al-Baghdadi and al-Muhajir, if true, will have on the ISI, a self-styled jihadi state. Will their deaths effectively mark the end of the jihadi state experiment in Iraq?

The ISI is an umbrella organization for several of the most violent jihadi-takfiri insurgent groups operating in the country, the largest of them being AQI. (“Jihadi” because they foreground a supposed duty of the individual to wage holy war, contrary to normative teachings of Islam; and ‘takfiri’ because they excommunicate all those with whom they disagree, making them ‘kafirs.’) The “founding” of the ISI was announced in a video statement released online in October 2006, and it replaced an earlier umbrella, the Mujahideen Shura Council. Al-Baghdadi, who real name the U.S. and Iraqi government say is Hamid Dawud Muhammad Khalil al-Zawi, has been designated the jihadi “commander of the faithful” (amir al-mu’mineen), a title reserved by Sunni Muslims for the caliph, the rightful head of an (ideally) unified Islamic state. The ISI claims that he is a member of the Prophet Muhammad’s tribe, the Quraysh, and his specific clan within the tribe, the Hashemites.

Al-Baghdadi was addressed by senior al-Qa‘ida Central (AQC) leaders as a proto-caliph of the unified Islamic state that the group and its regional allies and affiliates hoped to establish across the Muslim world, from Morocco to Indonesia. AQC’s chief ideologue and deputy commander, Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, urged other Iraqi jihadi-insurgent groups, such as Ansar al-Islam, to join the ISI under al-Baghdadi’s leadership, to no avail, in order to unify the “forces of monotheism” under a single banner. A series of audio messages from al-Baghdadi have been released over the past several years, the last being two concerning Iraq’s March parliamentary elections. He has never appeared on film. Al-Baghdadi’s condemnation of the elections and call for their rejection was largely ignored, as was a “curfew” announced by the ISI days before the elections were held. I previously argued that this marked the ISI’s continuing decline.

Al-Muhajir, who is also known as Abu Ayyub al-Masri, succeeded Abu Mus‘ab al-Zarqawi as head of AQI when the latter was killed in a U.S. air strike in June 2006. He has rarely appeared on film and has communicated with his followers largely through audio messages released on the Internet. These messages have covered a number of topics, including a series of lectures on the jurisprudence of jihad in its military form and the importance of Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting, for sacrifice and armed struggle against the “enemies of Islam.”

Al-Muhajir was most recently featured in the video Ghazwat al-Asir 1, released on March 29, the first video in presumably a series produced by the ISI to highlight its “Expedition of the Prisoner” bombing campaign in Baghdad. The group has targeted a number of Iraqi government ministries and buildings, along with hotels and the Iranian, Egyptian, and German embassies. The video painted the first series of attacks in the campaign, which targeted the Ministries of Finance and Foreign Affairs, as revenge for the arrest, torture, and murder of Iraqi Sunnis by the Shi‘i-dominated Iraqi central government. The killings of al-Baghdadi and al-Muhajir, the senior leaders of the al-Qa‘ida vein of the Iraqi insurgency, if confirmed, are a significant blow to the jihadi-takfiri state project in Iraq.

General Odierno has said, “The death of [al-Baghdadi and al-Muhajir] is potentially the most significant blow to al-Qaeda in Iraq since the beginning of the insurgency.” While their deaths, if confirmed, are a significant achievement, their importance should not yet be overestimated. To put the issue into historical context, it should be remembered that the killing of al-Zarqawi, the founder of AQI and public face of the Iraqi insurgency from 2003 until his death in June 2006, did not end either his organization or the wider insurgency. Indeed, AQI, the MSC and then the ISI continued to enjoy a “golden age” well into 2007. It was not the death of al-Zarqawi that marked the beginning of AQI’s decline. Rather, it was the group’s own mistakes, namely overstepping its bounds by targeting members of Iraq’s Sunni Arab tribes and arrests of ISI leaders and media personnel, such as its “minister of information” Khalid al-Mashhadani in July 2007, combined with the presence of tens of thousands of additional U.S. soldiers due to the “surge” that led to AQI’s severe reversal of fortunes in mid to late 2007 and into 2008.

The long-term importance of al-Baghdadi’s and al-Muhajir’s deaths depends a great deal on the level to which the ISI still remains a viable social movement in Iraq. While it has never enjoyed widespread active support per se in the country, the ISI nonetheless remains a potent force in the insurgency, and indeed it is the country’s most lethal. It carried out some of its most deadly attacks, in terms of casualties, after al-Zarqawi’s death. Since last August, the ISI has carried out a number of highly-coordinated and massive kamikaze vehicle bombings against Iraqi government targets and foreign embassies in Baghdad, making a strategic decision to forgo frequency for potency in its attacks. The latest round of its “Expedition of the Prisoner” bombing campaign struck the Iranian, German, and Egyptian embassies in the Iraqi capital.

On the other hand, the ISI lacks the deep social roots enjoyed by many religious-nationalist groups in the Middle East, such as the Lebanese Twelver Shi‘i movement Hezbollah and HAMAS in Palestine. Both of these groups have also suffered the killings of senior leaders, Hezbollah the assassination of Shaykh ‘Abbas al-Musawi by Israel in 1992 and HAMAS the assassination, also by Israel, of many of its founders between 2002 and 2004 including Shaykh Ahmad Yassin and Dr. ‘Abd al-‘Aziz al-Rantissi. However, unlike the ISI, both Hezbollah and HAMAS had and continue to have extensive roots in their respective societies and command sizeable constituencies among the Lebanese and Palestinian publics. Thus, both groups were equipped with the necessary social resources and support to survive the killings of senior leaders. In the case of Hezbollah, the killing of its leader actually brought on the group’s “golden age” under the guidance of a new, more charismatic leader, al-Sayyid Hasan Nasrallah.

In contrast, the ISI and AQI lack the long historical ties to other social groups within the society in which they operate and they do not enjoy widespread public support. Indeed, AQI and the ISI were founded and have been led since their inception mostly by foreigners who lack strong ties to important social groups in Iraqi society. Although AQI was able to survive the death of its founder, in large part due to the prevailing social conditions of the time, namely a raging civil war between Iraqi Sunni and Shi‘i Arab militias, the killing of both al-Baghdadi and al-Muhajir may speed up the jihadi state’s ongoing decline.

The potential for this result is increased due to the fact that al-Baghdadi was not just the head of the ISI but also viewed by both top jihadi-takfiri leaders like al-Zawahiri and the transnational jihadi-takfiri movement at large as a proto-caliph. Reports of his and al-Muhajir’s death was first met by blustery disbelief and denial on many of the jihadi-takfiri web forums, but this has slowly begun to give way to mournful acceptance by some users, who pray that the two are “granted the highest level of Paradise (Jannat al-Firdaws),” if the reports turn out to be accurate. While it will take some time both to see if the reports of al-Baghdadi’s and al-Muhajir’s deaths are true and, if so, what impact they will have on the ISI, it is clear that the “golden age” of the self-styled jihadi state has passed. Although it is still capable of carrying out deadly attacks, it can no longer operate with impunity as it did and AQI did from 2003-2007. The al-Qa‘ida-style transnational jihadi-takfiri state experiment in Iraq has failed.

Christopher Anzalone
Graduate Program
Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures
Indiana University
Bloomington, IN

Go to Source

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.

End/ (Not Continued)

Go to Source

The Justice and Accountability Commission (formerly the Debaathification Commission), headed by Ahmad Chalabi, is moving to disqualify 6 elected candidates in the March 7 election for their ties to the banned Baath Party of Saddam Hussein. Three of those to be banned are from the Iraqiya list of Iyad Allawi, which would reduce his seat total from 91 to 88, making his list second in number of seats after Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s State of Law coalition, which has 89 seats. The move, by commission head Ahmad Chalabi (himself an elected MP on the fundamentalist Shiite list, the Iraqi National Alliance), will cause a lot of anger among Sunni Arabs, the main backers of Allawi’s list, along with secular middle class urban Shiites.

Were the Iraqiya list to be altogether excluded from the government as a result of this move, I would worry about a resort to violence on the part of the list’s voters, even though I do not think a revival of a full-scale Sunni-Shiite civil war is very likely.

This further wrinkle in the Iraqi election outcome underlines how unwise is the rush among American pundits, mainly on the political Right, to declare the election a vindication of George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq. Hey, warmongers: get it through your heads. You went to war on the grounds that Iraq was a grave danger to the US and might even nuke us. That was untrue and ridiculous. You don’t get any mulligans in the invasion game. Nothing would vindicate Bush save proof that Saddam Hussein’s regime was really dangerous to the US. It wasn’t. It had bupkes in the way of WMD. Iraqis will eventually live normal lives and get rich. That won’t vindicate Bush either. He lied to us repeatedly and illegally invaded another country, contravening the UN charter and a whole slew of international and even domestic US laws. There is no vindication. But the unseemly backstabbing and maneuvering of fundamentalists, ex-Baathists, Iranian double agents and CIA assets in Iraq now is certainly not it.

Al-Hayat writing in Arabic reports that commission official Ali al-Lami let it slip that one of those to be disqualified is Hamdi Najm, leader of the National Dialogue Front in Diyala Province, who is currently in prison on terrorism charges. His party forms part of the Iraqiya list of Iyad Allawi. The disqualifications will be taken to court. But the courts sided with the Justice and Accountability Commission when it excluded candidates on these grounds in the lead-up to the election, so that avenue does not appear very promising.

But the move is not decisive in deciding the next prime minister, because who can form a government depends not on who has a plurality but on who can put together a governing coalition. It is true that the constitution requires the president to ask the leader of the single largest bloc to form a government. But if that person cannot, then another party leader would get the chance. The best analogy for Iraqi politics at the moment is Israel or Lebanon. In the 2009 parliamentary elections in Israel, Tzipi Livni’s Kadima gained 28 seats and Binyamin Netanyahu’s Likud only got 27. But you will note that Netanyahu is prime minister, because Shas, Yisrael Beitenu and others preferred to ally with him rather than with Ms. Livni. (There is no accounting for tastes.)

I admit to a good deal of frustration with the corporate media in the United States that keeps talking about Iyad Allawi having “won” the Iraqi parliamentary elections. It just is not true. Apparently even some well informed and intelligent Americans can’t understand the difference between achieving a slight plurality and winning a parliamentary election. And, it is dangerous to say these things because the US press is read in Iraq and expectations are being created among Iraqis that are likely to be disappointed.

You need 163 seats to have a majority in the 325-member Iraqi parliament, so neither 91 nor 89 is a “win.” Rather, 163 is a win. Allawi did not win and has not won and probably won’t win.

The reason is that it is difficult to see how he gets to 163. He needs 72 more seats (or maybe 75 if the disqualifications go through). It is easier for al-Maliki’s list, if not al-Maliki himself, to get to 163 seats than it is for Allawi, since the fundamentalist Shiites have 70 seats and they under normal circumstances will find it easier to ally with Maliki’s Islamic Mission Party (Da’wa) than with the secular Arab nationalists and Sunnis that back Allawi.

Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that ‘informed sources’ told its reporters that Ali al-Adib, a leader of al-Maliki’s State of Law coalition, recently met Muqtada al-Sadr in Qom, Iran, though they have not yet closed a deal. Al-Sadr has 38 seats in parliament and his bloc is the largest single group of seats in the Shiite fundamentalist Iraqi National Alliance, which has 70 seats. Then, al-Maliki is said to have returned to Baghdad from Tehran, accompanied by al-Adib and Abdul Hamid al-Zuhairi (both from the State of Law list) and Jalal al-Din al-Saghir and Hadi al-Amiri of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq.

Al-Maliki is said to have been among a big party of Iraqi officials in Tehran the day before yesterday. They went there, al-Hayat said, because there was too much danger of being listened in on in Iraq. Presumably what is actually being asserted here is that the US has sophisticated signals intelligence and has widely tapped phones, so that in Baghdad any attempt at coalition-formation would be immediately picked up by US intelligence. Since the US is widely thought to be backing Allawi’s secular Iraqiya list, it would be undesirable from al-Maliki’s point of view for them to overhear his negotiations with other lists. Thus, they went off to Iran.

Al-Hayat’s source says that Muqtada al-Sadr demonstrated flexibility, and demanded in return for dropping his objection to al-Maliki the release of all prisoners from his movement, and undertakings that al-Maliki would not attempt to rule single-handedly. He also wanted an agreement that al-Maliki would be fired if he attempted to overstep the decided-upon course of action of the party. A Sadrist leader, Qusay Suhail, refused to comment on the Iran story, but did allow as how the Sadrists had met with representatives of al-Maliki’s State of Law. The source said that so far in the negotiations the Kurdistan Alliance and the Sadr Movement have declined to put forward an alternative candidate for prime minister. So far al-Maliki is the only candidate from the Shiite parties, “and we did not sense any opposition to him.” In contrast, cleric Jalal al-Din Saghir of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq insisted that ISCI would definitely put forward a prime ministerial candidate. (ISCI is actually too small to follow through on Saghir’s bluster.)

Al-Sharq al-Awsat reports that Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi, a Sunni, is expressing anxiety and concern over the meetings in Tehran, denouncing them as naked interference by a neighbor in Iraq’s internal affairs. He is also arguing that the next president of Iraq should be an Arab and not a Kurd. Al-Hashimi is a member of Allawi’s Iraqiya list, and his denunciation of the Shiites as cat’s paws of Iran and his urging that the Kurds be marginalized will have the unintended effect of making it much more difficult for Allawi to form a government, since he would need pro-Iran Shiites as well as Kurds to do so.

End/ (Not Continued)

Go to Source