Middle East: sad news from Iraq - Sistani ducks out of politics - and other shit that happens

1. Iraq loses its voice of reason -- by Sami Moubayed

DAMASCUS - The saddest news coming from Iraq is the decision of the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani to cease all political activity and restrict himself to his religious duties in Shi'ite Islam. He said this weekend: "I will not be a political leader anymore. I am only happy to receive questions about religious matters."

If Sistani lives up to his word, this means silencing the loudest - and only - remaining voice of reason and moderation in Iraqi politics. This is the same man who used his paramount influence to silence the guns of two Shi'ite insurgencies in 2004. He then wisely ordered his supporters to vote in last years national elections, claiming that it was a "religious duty" to join the political process and jump-start democratic life in Iraq.

This same wise man, who is a democrat at heart, insisted that women, too, must have their say in politics and that they should vote in elections. If their husbands, brothers or fathers forbade them from voting, then it was their right (as authorized by Sistani) to say no and to head to the ballots without approval (something frowned on among conservative Muslims).

Never supportive of the US occupation of Iraq, he nevertheless decided to cooperate honorably with the Americans (in anticipation of their eventual withdrawal), knowing that violence would not defeat them or make them go away.

Honorable cooperation, to a Ghandian leader like Sistani, was certainly more rewarding - and less costly - than a military insurgency. His political endorsement was all that was needed for any politician to win the parliamentary elections of 2005 and 2006, and he is considered the guiding force behind the broad coalition of religious Shi'ites known as the United Iraqi Alliance (UIA) that has been in power for the past two years.

Recently, however, Sistani has been both angry and disappointed at the UIA for failing to bring law, order and security to Iraq. He is appalled by the rising power of Shi'ite militias in the streets of Baghdad.

In July alone, more than 3,000 Iraqis were killed by rival militias from the Sunni and Shi'ite communities. A report released by the Pentagon on Friday showed that the real problem in Iraq is no longer an armed al-Qaeda- and Ba'athist-led insurgency fighting the Americans and the Iraqi government. It is now Iraqi Sunnis fighting against Iraqi Shi'ites - meaning, Iraq is now in civil war.

The Pentagon report noted that the attacks had risen to 792 per week and casualties were almost 150 Iraqis killed per day. Such startling facts are troubling for someone like Sistani, who hates violence and has repeatedly called for it to stop.

But his calls are falling on deaf ears. The biggest example was when fighting broke out on August 28 between Iraqi soldiers and the supporters of Shi'ite leader Muqtada al-Sadr in Diwaniyya, 160 kilometers south of Baghdad. Sistani called for calm. Nobody listened to him, and as a result 73 people were killed.

The other reason Sistani has decided to retreat from political life is that he is being greatly overshadowed by the younger, more populist Muqtada, who is 42 years his junior. Hailing from a strong dynastic family that once worked in opposition to Saddam Hussein, Muqtada rose to fame after the US invasion of 2003 as a loud anti-American leader.

He created a militia of his own, the Mehdi Army, and waged war on the Americans and the pro-US cabinet of prime minister Iyad Allawi in 2004. Under Sistani's mediation, the conflict came to an end and Muqtada was allowed to live in peace, while a warrant for his arrest was dropped.

Muqtada has since entered the political process with astounding success and holds 30 seats in parliament, as well as four portfolios held by his supporters in the cabinet of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.

Muqtada meets his supporters every day and distributes favors to all those around him. He operates a strong charity network, cares for the families of those who are wounded or killed in combat, and has build a name for himself as an uncorrupted leader who lives a monastic life.

He uses - with great skill - the "patron-client" system of Arab politics, offering the masses his protection in exchange for their allegiance. As a man of religion who should appeal to all Shi'ites, and not only his supporters, Sistani cannot do that.

When Iraqis come to Sistani telling them that a Sunni militant murdered one of their family, the grand cleric tells them to go to the police. Muqtada, however, promises revenge. He then sends out his own militiamen to avenge the killing, further endearing him to the masses.

Sistani is well connected to the older generation of upper-middle-class Iraqis in the Shi'ite community. He also has friends and followers among the rich urban elite. He is well connected to Iran.

Muqtada, however, is popular in the slums of Baghdad and among the unemployed youth who see salvation in Muqtada and the Mehdi Army. The reason is simple: when lawlessness prevails, the masses search for people who can protect them.

In a country like Iraq, Sistani means guidance, while Muqtada means protection. Life to the Iraqis is more important than wisdom.

The Independent quoted one of his aids when asked whether Sistani could prevent civil war in Iraq: "Honestly, I think not. He is very angry, very disappointed." He was further quoted saying: "He [Sistani] asked the politicians to ask the Americans to make a timetable for leaving [Iraq] but they disappointed him." He added: "After the war, the politicians were visiting him every month. If they wanted to do something, they visited him. But no one has visited him for two or three months. He is very angry that this is happening now. He sees this as very bad."

Saddam dreaded Sistani because the cleric had backed a Shi'ite rebellion against him in 1991. Inasmuch as he would have loved to assassinate Sistani, Saddam could not do that because this would have created certain civil war in Ba'athist Iraq. This was something Saddam could not afford, coming out of eight years of the Iran-Iraq War and the fiasco of invading Kuwait and then being defeated by the Americans in 1991.

Nor could Saddam make Sistani disappear in the way Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi did to Imam Musa al-Sadr, another Shi'ite cleric, in 1978. Instead, Saddam put Sistani under house arrest, shut down his mosque and forbade him from preaching.

The Shi'ite leader remained in seclusion until Saddam was toppled in March 2003. He has since reinforced his authority over Shi'ites throughout the region, sending emissaries to Iran to meet with the clergy, and relying on state-of-the-art technology to market his leadership through the Internet.

This is mainly done through a multi-language website called Sistani.org, which attracts more than 3 million people from Iran alone every month. Sistani receives hundreds of visitors at his home in Najaf every day, but does not go out, rarely gives interviews and rarely poses for the cameras. His office is Internet-wired and his aides are often on Google, surfing the 'Net to brief him on the latest updates taking place around the world.

Still, however, the difference between Muqtada and Sistani is great. Although Sistani's "honorable cooperation" is no longer popular among grassroot Shi'ites, he is still looked up to as an ultimate authority on religious affairs, even by Muqtada.

Muqtada does not match him in religious legitimacy, although some of his supporters have recently started to call him "Sayyed Muqtada" to give him an honorary religious title. He remains, however, a nobody in religious affairs, while Sistani is the supreme master, not only in Iraq but throughout the Muslim World.

Sistani is one of the brains of Shi'ite Islam, matched only by the Iranian Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Ali Akbar Mohtashemi, the other grand ayatollah of Iranian politics who had been the chosen successor to the Islamic Republic's founder Ruhollah Khomeini.

Sistani, who is an Iranian living in Iraq, was seen by Iraqis as a foreigner because he speaks Arabic with a Persian accent, and does not even hold an Iraqi passport. When people say, however, that Sistani is a follower of Iran, this is not very correct. The truth is that Iran follows Sistani, because of his paramount standing as a religious authority on Shi'ite Islam.

Sistani and Muqtada stand on different ground when it comes to Iran and the status of the Shi'ite community in Iraq.

Muqtada is greatly opposed to creating an autonomous Shi'ite district in southern Iraq, something that has been lobbied for by Abd al-Aziz al-Hakim of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq. Hakim is a creation of Iran and an ally of Sistani. His family is also the historical contender to Shi'ite leadership in Iraq against the family of Muqtada.

The young Muqtada believes in a united and Arabist Iraq. He pays little more than lip service to the mullahs of Tehran, arguing that they should not interfere in domestic politics. Both men have an ultimate goal of creating an Iran-style theocracy in Iraq. Sistani wants it influenced and controlled by Iran, while Muqtada wants it to be independent from Tehran. This brings the two men further apart when added to how they view the US occupation of Iraq. While both may be equally opposed to it, each deals with this occupation in a very different manner.

Historically, one must remember that it was Sistani who saved Muqtada from the hangman's noose in 2004. Muqtada went to war in April 2004 and Sistani ordered a ceasefire that went into effect in May. That August, however, Sistani went to London for surgery and before reaching Heathrow Airport, fighting had resumed between the Americans and the Sadrists.

Some speculated that Sistani's journey to London at such a time was deliberate: a green light to the Americans to launch a full assault on Muqtada. If the Americans won, then Sistani would have rid himself of a noisy challenger in Shi'ite politics. If they lost (which was impossible) then he would get rid of the Americans.

What happened was a different story. During Sistani's absence, more fighting broke out. On his return, when Muqtada and his men were stranded in combat, Sistani stepped in at the last moment to end the crisis. He secured another ceasefire, a pardon for Muqtada, and his continuation in the political life of Iraq.

Sistani was sending Muqtada a message: "I saved you in a minute, and if I wish, I can also destroy you in a minute. Do not get too strong or overambitious. I am No 1 in the Shi'ite community of Iraq."

This message reached Muqtada loud and clear in 2004. Fate - and US mishandling of Iraq - which leaves no room for "honorable cooperation" anymore, played directly into the hands of Muqtada, making him "No 1" in the Shi'ite community of Iraq.

Postscript : This author submitted a question by e-mail to Sistani.org, asking the ayatollah whether, if history repeats itself, he would step in to save Muqtada again, the way he did in 2004. In other words, did he regret his "wisdom" in 2004? To date, there has been no answer.

(Sami Moubayed is a Syrian political analyst.)


2. Shiites submit law to separate Iraq into rival regions -- by Sabah Jerges

BAGHDAD (AFP) - Iraq 's dominant Shiite alliance submitted a draft of a new law to govern the division of the country into autonomous regions, as unabated violence left at least 18 people dead and the authorities said 27 "terrorists" had been executed.

"Twenty-seven terrorists were hanged today in Baghdad. Most of them were Iraqis," interior ministry spokesman Abdul Karim Khalaf told AFP.

He said they were convicted for attacks on civilians and sentenced to death, in an execution order signed by an Iraqi vice president.

Meanwhile British forces in the restive southern city of Basra said they would bring in hundreds of new troops to provide additional protection for reconstruction projects.

Iraq also announced that the ceremonial start of the handover of military command from US forces to domestic forces would take place Thursday after it was abruptly cancelled last Saturday.

The United Iraqi Alliance, the dominant Shiite parliamentary bloc, is promoting a "law of regional formation" so that the oil-rich Shiite southern Iraq can win self-rule on the model of the autonomous Kurdish north.

"The law will define how the regions are formed and whether it will be done by the governing council or through popular referendum," said party member Hamid Mualla al-Saadi.

Sunni lawmakers have vociferously opposed the draft law on autonomous regions, saying it is a prelude to a carve-up of the country, which would leave them with just the resources-poor center and west of Iraq.

But in recent days they appear to have softened their opposition, saying they would support the "administrative application of federalism" as long as a strong central government remains.

In Basra, British forces confirmed they were reinforcing their 7,200-strong force with 360 additional troops, primarily to beef up their presence during an upcoming troop rotation.

The additional troops, who include engineers and Royal Marine commandos, will then be held over for several more weeks to assist in reconstruction work.

Two British soldiers were killed on Monday by a roadside bomb while escorting a reconstruction unit north of Basra.

British Foreign Minister Margaret Beckett visited Basra on her second day in Iraq and stressed that peace in the south depended a lot on Iraqi security forces and not just "the British and coalition troops".

At least 18 people were killed across the country in rebel attacks Wednesday.

Six Iraqis were killed and 46 more wounded in a pair of bombings at a bus stop in Baghdad during the morning rush-hour.

Six Iraqi border policemen were killed and another six wounded in a suicide car bomb attack in the town of Sinjar near the Syrian border.

Elsewhere six Iraqis were killed, including a representative of Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.

An officer in the oil protection force and his two bodyguards were kidnapped between Tikrit and Kirkuk, police said, while in the flashpoint Diyala province, Iraqi forces succeeded in rescuing three women abducted by gunmen.

Police also found 24 bodies of men shot dead in apparent sectarian-related killings, 19 of them in Baghdad.

Iraq's parliament, meanwhile, passed a law permitting private companies to import and distribute petroleum products, in a move that could end the country's severe fuel shortage.

Despite Iraq's massive oil reserves, the second largest in the world after Saudi Arabia, the country suffers from a severe shortage of refined products, including gasoline, and motorists often line up for hours at petrol stations.

Iraq also announced that it and the US military would sign a delayed accord Thursday under which coalition forces will hand command of Iraqi armed forces to the government.

The agreement was initially due to be signed on September 2, but the handover ceremony was abruptly cancelled after disagreements on the Iraqi side over who should sign on the government's behalf.

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki is now expected to name a senior official to sign the agreement.

The accord means setting up a joint military command for the Iraqi army, navy and air force that will gradually take full operational control of the forces, including 115,000 US-trained ground troops.

"If you go back and you map out some major events that have occurred in this government's formation and taking control of this country, tomorrow is gigantic," said coalition spokesman Major General William Caldwell.

"It's the one event that puts the prime minister directly in operational control of his military forces as his role as commander in chief."

On Thursday Maliki will gain command of the 8th Iraqi Army Division, stationed in Najaf, with two new divisions every month afterwards, Caldwell said. The Iraqi army has 10 divisions.


3. The Year of Living Fearfully
Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has gone from being an obscure and not-so-powerful politician to a central player in the Mideast, simply by goading the United States.
By Fareed Zakaria (from Newsweek)

It's 1938, says the liberal columnist Richard Cohen, evoking images of Hitler's armies massing in the face of an appeasing West. No, no, says Newt Gingrich, the Third World War has already begun. Neoconservatives, who can be counted on to escalate, argue that we're actually in the thick of the Fourth World War. The historian Bernard Lewis warned a few weeks ago that Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, could be planning to annihilate Israel (and perhaps even the United States) on Aug. 22 because it was a significant day for Muslims.

Can everyone please take a deep breath?

To review a bit of history: in 1938, Adolf Hitler launched what became a world war not merely because he was evil but because he was in complete control of the strongest country on the planet. At the time, Germany had the world's second largest industrial base and its mightiest army. (The American economy was bigger, but in 1938 its army was smaller than that of Finland.) This is not remotely comparable with the situation today.

Iran does not even rank among the top 20 economies in the world. The Pentagon's budget this year is more than double Iran's total gross domestic product ($181 billion, in official exchange-rate terms). America's annual defense outlay is more than 100 times Iran's. Tehran's nuclear ambitions are real and dangerous, but its program is not nearly as advanced as is often implied. Most serious estimates suggest that Iran would need between five and 10 years to achieve even a modest, North Korea-type, nuclear capacity.

Washington has a long habit of painting its enemies 10 feet tall—and crazy. During the cold war, many hawks argued that the Soviet Union could not be deterred because the Kremlin was evil and irrational. The great debate in the 1970s was between the CIA's wimpy estimate of Soviet military power and the neoconservatives' more nightmarish scenario. The reality turned out to be that even the CIA's lowest estimates of Soviet power were a gross exaggeration. During the 1990s, influential commentators and politicians—most prominently the Cox Commission—doubled the estimates of China's military spending, using largely bogus calculations. And then there was the case of Saddam Hussein's capabilities. Saddam, we were assured in 2003, had nuclear weapons—and because he was a madman, he would use them.

One man who is greatly enjoying being the subject of this outsize portraiture is Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He has gone from being an obscure and not-so-powerful politician—Iran is a theocracy, remember, so the mullahs are ultimately in control—to a central player in the Middle East simply by goading the United States and watching Washington take the bait. By turning him into enemy No. 1, by reacting to every outlandish statement he makes, the Bush administration has given him far more attention than he deserves. And so now he writes letters to Bush, offers to debate him and prances about in the global spotlight provided by American attention.

Ahmadinejad strikes me as less a messianic madman and more a radical populist, an Iranian Huey Long. He has outflanked the mullahs on the right on nuclear policy, pushing for a more confrontationist approach toward Washington. He has outflanked them on the left on women's rights, arguing against some of the prohibitions women face. (He wants them to be able to attend soccer matches.) Almost every week he announces a new program to "help the poor." He uses the nuclear issue because it gives him a great nationalist symbol. For a regime with little to show after a quarter century in power—Iranian standards of living have actually declined since the revolution—nuclear power is a national accomplishment.

Even Ahmadinejad's most grotesque statement, implying the annihilation of Israel, is likely part of this pattern. Iran is seeking leadership in the Middle East, and what better way to do so than by appropriating the core grievance of the Sunni Arabs: Israel. By making his dramatic statements, he is taunting the regimes of the Arab world, using rhetoric they dare not, for fear of Washington. His rhetoric is not so new; the Iranian "moderate" Ali Hashemi Rafsanjani said similar things. The real shift that has taken place in the Middle East is that 30 years ago most Arab regimes would have made statements like Ahmadinejad's. Today his "rejectionism" stands alone.

Iran is run by a nasty regime that destabilizes an important part of the world, frustrates American and Western interests, and causes problems for allies like Israel. But let's get some perspective. The United States is far more powerful than Iran. And, on the issue of Tehran's nuclear program, Washington is supported by most of the world's other major powers. As long as the alliance is patient, united and smart—and keeps the focus on Tehran's actions not Washington's bellicosity—the odds favor America. Ahmadinejad presides over a country where more than 40 percent of the population lives under the poverty line; his authority is contested, and Iran's neighbors are increasingly worried and have begun acting to counter its influence. If we could contain the Soviet Union, we can contain Iran. Look at your calendar: it's 2006, not 1938.


4. Bush, Abu Zubayda and the End of Trust – by Prof Juan Cole (from juancole.com)

Bush has lied so often, and about absolutely crucial matters of national security, that I do not trust him any more. This is a sadder commentary than anyone can know. On the War on Terror, I don't prefer a partisan approach. After September 11, I felt we all had to pull together, left right and middle, to beat down this challenge.

But I saw our president taking unseemly advantage of the terror threat. I saw him take short cuts in the law. I saw him repeatedly mischaracterize the facts. I saw him hang pre-existing projects on this new peg. I saw him try to make Americans-- always before a proud, free people--live in fear, so as to aggrandize his own power and prevent criticism of his policies. Now members of his cabinet have been so emboldened by their megalomania that they are likening critics of the Iraq War to Hitler-lovers.

Bush did it again on Wednesday. He continues to peddle the Abu Zubayda myth:

' Within months of September the 11th, 2001, we captured a man known as Abu Zubaydah. We believe that Zubaydah was a senior terrorist leader and a trusted associate of Osama bin Laden. Our intelligence community believes he had run a terrorist camp in Afghanistan where some of the 9/11 hijackers trained, and that he helped smuggle al Qaeda leaders out of Afghanistan after coalition forces arrived to liberate that country. Zubaydah was severely wounded during the firefight that brought him into custody -- and he survived only because of the medical care arranged by the CIA. '

This whopper may seem a minor thing in the context of the changes announced on US government torture policy, which clearly seemed aimed at keeping Administration officials out of jail (on the grounds that they changed their procedures as soon as the Supreme Court told them to do, and can't be held responsible for winging it in the absence of such instruction. Uh, they could have followed the Constitution.) But when you cannot trust your elected leaders not to tell you bald-faced lies about so crucial a matter as national security, then you do not truly live in a democracy with a rule of law and political accountability. You live in the Orwellian State. Every time Americans give up elements of basic civic governance at Bush's wheedling, Bin Laden wins a little bit more. Bin Laden cannot win, but Americans like Bush can grant him victory.

Abu Zubayda was captured in a shoot-out in Karachi in March of 2002. Bush has repeatedly characterized him as a high-level al-Qaeda leader, and on Wednesday he implied that the information supplied by Abu Zubayda was crucial to the capture of Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, a genuine 9/11 mastermind.

Already on April 7, 2002, the WP reported that Abu Zubayda "was described by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld as "a very senior al Qaeda official who has been intimately involved in a range of activities for the al Qaeda." and that ' White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said the administration considered his capture "a very serious blow to al Qaeda." ' On April 13, 2002, the Washington Post was reporting on his significance in Rumsfeldspeak:

' Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld was the first administration official to disclose publicly that Abu Zubaida, who was acting as the field operations coordinator of the al Qaeda network, was answering questions. Rumsfeld told reporters that Abu Zubaida "talked when people asked him questions and he said this, that and the other thing." '

What?

But the information attributed to Abu Zubayda is that he identified Khalid Shaikh Muhammad's nickname and gave details helpful in tracking him down. In fact the CIA knew the nickname from August, 2001. And he was captured near Islamabad in the house of a relative of a major Jama'at-i Islami leader based on a tip. The tipster was paid $25 million. When confronted with this, the Bush administration said it was true but that Abu Zubayda's information was also helpful. But how? If we knew the nickname from other sources, and if we knew the location from a tipster, what value added does Abu Zubayda supply? None.

There is in fact reason to question whether he was capable of providing solid information, because he is not a well man.

Ron Suskind's One Percent Solution discusses Abu Zubayda. His sources in the intelligence community revealed to him that Abu Zubayda turned out not to have been a high level planner, as Rumsfeld had announced. He was more like a low level travel agent for the families of al-Qaeda operatives.

And he could barely pull off that basic job, since he seems to suffer from multiple personality syndrome. The CIA captured his diary. The entries were by his three distinct personae, Hani-1, Hani-2 and Hani-3 (a boy, a young man, and a middle-aged man).

The entries contained exhaustive detail about making travel arrangements for his clients. It was useless, junk detail, compulsive in nature and completely unhelpful. It went on forever. Dan coleman, then the FBI's lead man in fighting al-Qaeda said the diary was about "what people ate, or wore, or trifling things they said. . . This guy is insane, certifiable, split personality."

Suskind says that the agents briefed Bush and Cheney about all this, how Abu Zubayda was a small looney fish, not a big clever one. And the agents were shocked to see Bush and Cheney nevertheless continue to mischaracterize Abu Zubayda as a major al-Qaeda leader to the American public. How shocked they must be to see Bush go on this way even after the appearance of Suskind's book !

Testy denunciations of Suskind's findings by anonymous "intelligence sources" are to be expected, and are irrelevant as long as we don't know who and why. The problem is that Zubayda's information was in some cases extracted while he was suffering from three gunshot wounds , and was denied painkilling medication as a way of making him talk. Zubayda's information has to be high quality, you see, to make the agents and the Bushies feel right about doing that.

Bush had the gall to say on Wednesday that Abu Zubayda's life was saved by the agents who captured him. That is true. But it was Bush's way of making sure the press didn't ask about the torture.

The other problem is that there are active cases hanging on the validity of Abu Zubayda's testimony.

Apparently the bizarre allegations surrounding Jose Pedilla, derived from Abu Zubayda's fevered mind. I would not be surprised to see that case collapse. There are others:

The Gazette (Montreal)
October 23, 2004 Saturday
BYLINE: ANDREW DUFFY, CanWest News Service
DATELINE: OTTAWA

The lawyer for Mohamed Harkat of Ottawa will attempt to establish in Federal Court that an Al-Qa'ida lieutenant was tortured into giving evidence against his client.

Abu Zubaida, an Al-Qa'ida operational planner in U.S. custody since March 2002, has been a key source of information for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service in building a case against Harkat.

Harkat is accused of being part of the Al-Qa'ida terrorist network.

Harkat, 35, faces deportation to his native Algeria if a judge accepts that the security service's case against him is "reasonable."

His lawyer, Paul Copeland, wants CSIS to acknowledge that the information they received from Zubaida came as the result of his being denied medical treatment for gunshot wounds.

Zubaida was handed over to U.S. officials after being arrested in a violent raid on a guest house in Faisalabad, Pakistan, during which he was shot in the groin and thigh.

Both the Washington Post and New York Times have reported that Central Intelligence Agency interrogators denied him painkillers as a means of gaining his co-operation.

Copeland will contend in a Federal Court hearing next week that whatever evidence he has provided against Harkat should be discounted.

Next week's hearing will be Harkat's first chance to officially answer the terrorist allegations levelled against him in December 2002.

Justice Eleanor Dawson must decide if a decision to issue a security certificate against Harkat was reasonable.

The certificate allows Harkat to be deported as a national security threat.

CSIS claims Zubaida identified Harkat as operating a guest house in Peshawar, Pakistan, for mujahideen travelling to Chechnya.

Harkat, who has lived in Ottawa since 1995, insists he has never been to Afghanistan.

He says he never met Zubaida and that he has nothing to do with Al-Qa'ida. '

THIS Montreal Gazette STORY SHOWS the dangers of torture to the judicial process, now that there is going to be one for at least some al-Qaeda prisoners.

But the main problem is that Suskind's account brings into question Abu Zubayda's reliability. His obsessiveness about detail may have thrown up something useful to forensics. But if Abu Zubayda has a split personality and sometimes thinks he is a young boy, then his testimony isn't actually worth much.

And no, he wasn't a "senior terrorist leader," Mr. Bush.


5. Which Iraqi Army? (NY Times Editorial)

Iraq’s prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, has a problem. His power depends on two armies. One is Iraq’s national army, trained and supported by the United States. The other is the Mahdi Army, a radical Shiite militia loyal to Mr. Maliki’s most powerful political backer, Moktada al-Sadr.

This week, open warfare broke out between these two armies. Mr. Maliki can no longer put off making an essential choice. He can choose to be the leader of a unified Iraqi government, or he can choose to be the captive of a radical Shiite warlord. He can no longer pretend to be both.

The issue came to a head in the southern city of Diwaniya. The fighting began when the Mahdi Army took to the streets to protest the arrest of several Sadr loyalists. At one point, according to an Iraqi general, Mahdi fighters killed a group of Iraqi soldiers in a public square. After hours of fierce fighting, Shiite politicians worked out a cease-fire with Mr. Sadr. But no one sees this as an isolated incident or imagines it will not soon be repeated.

Iraq’s national army is the very fragile reed on which White House hopes for an eventual American withdrawal now rest — as President Bush made clear yesterday in a speech about Iraq in which he heaped praise on Mr. Maliki but painted a picture of the Iraq war that had only the most tenuous connections to reality. The Iraqi Army was already demoralized and fragmented. Its soldiers and officers, including some courageous Sunnis who have defied the insurgency to stand with their Shiite and Kurdish countrymen, cannot be expected to go on risking their lives indefinitely unless Prime Minister Maliki stands up to Mr. Sadr’s attacks.

But thus far, the prime minister has conspicuously stood aside, recently denouncing Washington for supporting an Iraqi Army attack on a Sadr stronghold in Baghdad. Mr. Maliki’s refusal to go after the main stronghold — Sadr City — helps explain Baghdad’s continued high level of violence despite the prime minister’s endlessly repeated announcements of a security crackdown in the capital.

The underlying political reality is that Mr. Maliki owes his job to an alliance between his own Islamic Dawa Party and Mr. Sadr’s faction. (If you see a parallel to the way Hezbollah has shielded itself from being disarmed by the Lebanese government, so does Mr. Sadr. A few weeks ago he rallied tens of thousands of his supporters in Baghdad to cheer Hezbollah’s rocket attacks against Israeli cities.)

The White House and the Pentagon keep assuring Americans that despite the obvious problems, the Iraqi Army is becoming increasingly capable of taking over basic defense responsibilities. But evidence continues to mount that it is not.

In Anbar Province, the western heart of the Sunni insurgency, army desertion rates in some units have run as high as 40 percent. In Maysan, in the Shiite southeast, 100 Iraqi soldiers defied orders to deploy for Baghdad, in part out of concern they would be asked to fight Shiite militias. Days before, a former British base in Maysan that had been turned over to the Iraqi Army was overrun by looters as Iraqi soldiers and the police stood watching.

Instead of standing up to take over the defense of Iraq, the Iraqi Army is in danger of crumbling. Now, government-backed Shiite militiamen have publicly killed Iraqi soldiers and fought an army unit to a humiliating draw. And Mr. Maliki still hasn’t decided where his military loyalty lies.


6. Seven Facts You Might Not Know about the Iraq War -- by Michael Schwartz

With a tenuous cease-fire between Israel and Lebanon holding, the ever-hotter war in Iraq is once again creeping back onto newspaper front pages and towards the top of the evening news. Before being fully immersed in daily reports of bomb blasts, sectarian violence, and casualties, however, it might be worth considering some of the just-under-the-radar-screen realities of the situation in that country. Here, then, is a little guide to understanding what is likely to be a flood of new Iraqi developments -- a few enduring, but seldom commented upon, patterns central to the dynamics of the Iraq war, as well as to the fate of the American occupation and Iraqi society.

1. The Iraqi Government Is Little More Than a Group of "Talking Heads"

A minimally viable central government is built on at least three foundations: the coercive capacity to maintain order, an administrative apparatus that can deliver government services and directives to society, and the resources to manage these functions. The Iraqi government has none of these attributes -- and no prospect of developing them. It has no coercive capacity. The national army we hear so much about is actually trained and commanded by the Americans, while the police forces are largely controlled by local governments and have few, if any, viable links to the central government in Baghdad. (Only the Special Forces, whose death-squad activities in the capital have lately been in the news, have any formal relationship with the elected government; and they have more enduring ties to the U.S. military that created them and the Shia militias who staffed them.)

Administratively, the Iraqi government has no existence outside Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone -- and little presence within it. Whatever local apparatus exists elsewhere in the country is led by local leaders, usually with little or no loyalty to the central government and not dependent on it for resources it doesn't, in any case, possess. In Baghdad itself, this is clearly illustrated in the vast Shiite slum of Sadr city, controlled by Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army and his elaborate network of political clerics. (Even U.S. occupation forces enter that enormous swath of the capital only in large brigades, braced for significant firefights.) In the major city of the Shia south, Basra, local clerics lead a government that alternately ignores and defies the central government on all policy issues from oil to women's rights; in Sunni cities like Tal Afar and Ramadi, where major battles with the Americans alternate with insurgent control, the government simply has no presence whatsoever. In Kurdistan in the north, the Kurdish leadership maintains full control of all local governments.

As for resources, with 85% of the country's revenues deriving from oil, all you really need to know is that oil-rich Iraq is also suffering from an "acute fuel shortage" (including soaring prices, all-night lines at gas stations, and a deal to get help from neighboring Syria which itself has minimal refining capacity). The almost helpless Iraqi government has had little choice but to accept the dictates of American advisors and of the International Monetary Fund about exactly how what energy resources exist will be used. Paying off Saddam-era debt, reparations to Kuwait from the Gulf War of 1990, and the needs of the U.S.-controlled national army have had first claim. With what remains so meager that it cannot sustain a viable administrative apparatus in Baghdad, let alone the rest of the country, there is barely enough to spare for the government leadership to line their own pockets.

2. There Is No Iraqi Army

The "Iraqi Army" is a misnomer. The government's military consists of Iraqi units integrated into the U.S.-commanded occupation army. These units rely on the Americans for intelligence, logistics, and -- lacking almost all heavy weaponry themselves -- artillery, tanks, and any kind of airpower. (The Iraqi "Air Force" typically consists of fewer then 10 planes with no combat capability.) The government has no real control over either personnel or strategy.

We can see this clearly in a recent operation in Sadr City, conducted (as news reports tell us) by "Iraqi troops and US advisors" and backed up by U.S. artillery and air power. It was one of an ongoing series of attempts to undermine the Sadrists and their Mahdi army, who have governed the area since the fall of Saddam. The day after the assault, Iraqi premier Nouri Kamel al-Maliki complained about the tactics used, which he labeled "unjustified," and about the fact that neither he, nor his government, was included in the decision-making leading up to the assault. As he put it to an Agence France-Presse, "I reiterate my rejection to [sic] such an operation and it should not be executed without my consent. This particular operation did not have my approval."

This happened because the U.S. has functionally expanded its own forces in Iraq by integrating local Iraqi units into its command structure, while essentially depriving the central government of any army it could use purely for its own purposes. Iraqi units have their own officers, but they always operate with American advisers. As American Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad put it, "We'll ultimately help them become independent." (Don't hold your breath.)

3. The Recent Decline in American Casualties Is Not a Result of Less Fighting (and Anyway, It's Probably Ending)

At the beginning of August, the press carried reports of a significant decline in U.S. casualties, punctuated with announcements from American officials that the military situation was improving. The figures (compiled by the Brookings Institute ) do show a decline in U.S. military deaths (76 in April, 69 in May, 63 in June, and then only 48 in July). But these were offset by dramatic increases in Iraqi military fatalities, which almost doubled in July as the U.S. sent larger numbers of Iraqi units into battle, and as undermanned American units were redeployed from al-Anbar province, the heartland of the Sunni insurgency, to civil-war-torn Baghdad in preparation for a big push to recapture various out-of-control neighborhoods in the capital.

More important, when it comes to long-term U.S. casualties, the trends are not good. In recent months, U.S. units had been pulled off the streets of the capital. But the Iraqi Army units that replaced them proved incapable of controlling Baghdad in even minimal ways. So, in addition, to fighting the Sunni insurgency, American troops are now back on the streets of Baghdad in the midst of a swirling civil war with U.S. casualties likely to rise. In recent months, there has also been an escalation of the fighting between American forces and the insurgency, independent of the sectarian fighting that now dominates the headlines.

As a consequence, the U.S. has actually increased its troop levels in Iraq (by delaying the return of some units, sending others back to Iraq early, and sending in some troops previously held in reserve in Kuwait). The number of battles (large and small) between occupation troops and the Iraqi resistance has increased from about 70 a day to about 90 a day; and the number of resistance fighters estimated by U.S. officials has held steady at about 20,000. The number of IEDs placed -- the principle weapon targeted at occupation troops (including Iraqi units) -- has been rising steadily since the spring.

The effort by Sunni guerrillas to expel the American army and its allies is more widespread and energetic than at any time since the fall of the Hussein regime.

4. Most Iraqi Cities Have Active and Often Viable Local Governments

Neither the Iraqi government, nor the American-led occupation has a significant presence in most parts of Iraq. This is well-publicized in the three Kurdish provinces, which are ruled by a stable Kurdish government without any outside presence; less so in Shia urban areas where various religio-political groups -- notably the Sadrists, the Supreme Council of Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), Da'wa , and Fadhila -- vie for local control, and then organize cities and towns around their own political and religious platforms. While there is often violent friction among these groups -- particularly when the contest for control of an area is undecided -- most cities and towns are largely peaceful as local governments and local populations struggle to provide city services without a viable national economy.

This situation also holds true in the Sunni areas, except when the occupation is actively trying to pacify them. When there is no fighting, local governments dominated by the religious and tribal leaders of the resistance establish the laws and maintain a kind of order, relying for law enforcement on guerrilla fighters and militia members.

All these governments -- Kurdish, Shia and Sunni -- have shown themselves capable of maintaining (often fundamentalist) law and (often quite harsh) order, with little crime and little resistance from the local population. Though often severely limited by the lack of resources from a paralyzed national economy and a bankrupt national government, they do collect the garbage, direct traffic, suppress the local criminal element, and perform many of the other duties expected of local governments.

5. Outside Baghdad, Violence Arrives with the Occupation Army

The portrait of chaos across Iraq that our news generally offers us is a genuine half-truth. Certainly, Baghdad has been plunged into massive and worsening disarray as both the war against the Americans and the civil war have come to be concentrated there, and as the terrifying process of ethnic cleansing has hit neighborhood after neighborhood, and is now beginning to seep into the environs of the capital.

However, outside Baghdad (with the exception of the northern cities of Kirkuk and Mosul, where historic friction among Kurd, Sunni, and Turkman has created a different version of sectarian violence), Iraqi cities tend to be reasonably ethnically homogeneous and to have at least quasi-stable governments. The real violence often only arrives when the occupation military makes its periodic sweeps aimed at recapturing cities where it has lost all authority and even presence.

This deadly pattern of escalating violence is regularly triggered by those dreaded sweeps, involving brutal, destructive, and sometimes lethal home invasions aimed at capturing or killing suspected insurgents or their supporters. The insurgent response involves the emplacement of ever more sophisticated roadside bombs (known as IEDs) and sniper attacks, aimed at distracting or hampering the patrols. The ensuing firefights frequently involve the use of artillery, tanks, and air power in urban areas, demolishing homes and stores in a neighborhood, which only adds to the bitter resistance and increasing the support for the insurgency.

These mini-wars can last between a few hours and, in Falluja, Ramadi, or other "centers of resistance," a few weeks. They constitute the overwhelming preponderance of the fighting in Iraq. For any city, the results can be widespread death and devastation from which it can take months or years to recover. Yet these are still episodes punctuating a less violent, if increasingly more run-down normalcy.

6. There Is a Growing Resistance Movement in the Shia Areas of Iraq

Lately, the pattern of violence established in largely Sunni areas of Iraq has begun to spread to largely Shia cities, which had previously been insulated from the periodic devastation of American pacification attempts. This ended with growing Bush administration anxiety about economic, religious, and militia connections between local Shia governments and Iran, and with the growing power of the anti-American Sadrist movement, which had already fought two fierce battles with the U.S. in Najaf in 2004 and a number of times since then in Sadr City.

Symptomatic of this change is the increasing violence in Basra, the urban oil hub at the southern tip of the country, whose local government has long been dominated by various fundamentalist Shia political groups with strong ties to Iran. When the British military began a campaign to undermine the fundamentalists' control of the police force there, two British military operatives were arrested, triggering a battle between British soldiers (supported by the Shia leadership of the Iraqi central government) and the local police (supported by local Shia leaders). This confrontation initiated a series of armed confrontations among the various contenders for power in Basra.

Similar confrontations have occurred in other localities, including Karbala, Najaf, Sadr City, and Maysan province. So far no general offensive to recapture the any of these areas has been attempted, but Britain has recently been concentrating its troops outside Basra.

If the occupation decides to use military means to bring the Shia cities back into anything like an American orbit, full-scale battles may be looming in the near future that could begin to replicate the fighting in Sunni areas, including the use of IEDs, so far only sporadically employed in the south. If you think American (and British) troops are overextended now, dealing with internecine warfare and a minority Sunni insurgency, just imagine what a real Shiite insurgency would mean.

7. There Are Three Distinct Types of Terrorism in Iraq, All Directly or Indirectly Connected to the Occupation

Terrorism involves attacking civilians to force them to abandon their support for your enemy, or to drive them away from a coveted territory.

The original terrorists in Iraq were the military and civilian officials of the Bush administration -- starting with their "shock and awe" bombing campaign that destroyed Iraqi infrastructure in order to "undermine civilian morale." The American form of terrorism continued with the wholesale destruction of most of Falluja and parts of other Sunni cities, designed to pacify the "hot beds" of insurgency, while teaching the residents of those areas that, if they "harbor the insurgents," they will surely "suffer the consequences."

At the individual level, this program of terror was continued through the invasions of, and demolishing of, homes (or, in some cases, parts of neighborhoods) where insurgents were believed to be hidden among a larger civilian population, thus spreading the "lesson" about "harboring terrorists" to everyone in the Sunni sections of the country. Generating a violent death rate of at least 18,000 per year , the American drumbeat of terror has contributed more than its share to the recently escalating civilian death toll, which reached a record 3,149 in the official count during July. It is unfortunately accurate to characterize the American occupation of Sunni Iraq as a reign of terror.

The Sunni terrorists like those led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi have utilized the suicide car bomb to generate the most widely publicized violence in Iraq -- hundreds of civilian casualties each month resulting from attacks on restaurants, markets, and mosques where large number of Shia congregate. At the beginning of the U.S. occupation, car bombs were nonexistent; they only became common when a tiny proportion of the Sunni resistance movement became convinced that the Shia were the main domestic support for the American occupation. (As far as we can tell, the vast majority of those fighting the Americans oppose such terrorists and have sometimes fought with them.) As al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri wrote , these attacks were justified by "the treason of the Shia and their collusion with the Americans." As if to prove him correct, the number of such attacks tripled to current levels of about 70 per month after the Shia-dominated Iraqi government supported the American devastation of Falluja in November 2004.

The Sunni terrorists work with the same terrorist logic that the Americans have applied in Iraq: Attacks on civilians are meant to terrify them into not supporting the enemy. There is a belief, of course, among the leadership of the Sunni terrorists that, ultimately, only the violent suppression or expulsion of the Shia is acceptable. But as Zawahiri himself stated, the "majority of Muslims don't comprehend this and possibly could not even imagine it." So the practical justification for such terrorism lies in the more immediate association of the Shia with the hated occupation.

The final link in the terrorist chain can also be traced back to the occupation. In January of 2005, Newsweek broke the story that the U.S. was establishing (Shiite) "death squads" within the Iraqi Ministry of Interior, modeled after the assassination teams that the CIA had helped organize in El Salvador during the 1980s. These death squads were intended to assassinate activists and supporters of the Sunni resistance. Particularly after the bombing of the Golden Dome , an important Shia shrine in Samarra, in March 2006, they became a fixture in Baghdad, where thousands of corpses -- virtually all Sunni men -- have been found with signs of torture, including electric-drill holes, in their bodies and bullet holes in their heads. Here, again, the logic is the same: to use terror to stop the Sunni community from nurturing and harboring both the terrorist car bombers and the anti-American resistance fighters.

While there is disagreement about whether the Americans, the Shia-controlled Iraqi Ministry of Defense, or the Shia political parties should shoulder the most responsibility for loosing these death squads on Baghdad, one conclusion is indisputable: They have earned their place in the ignominious triumvirate of Iraqi terrorism.

One might say that the war has converted one of President Bush's biggest lies into an unimaginably horrible truth: Iraq is now the epicenter of worldwide terrorism.

Where the 7 Facts Lead

With this terror triumvirate at the center of Iraqi society, we now enter the horrible era of ethnic cleansing, the logical extension of multidimensional terror.

When the U.S. toppled the Hussein regime, there was little sectarian sentiment outside of Kurdistan, which had longstanding nationalist ambitions. Even today, opinion polls show that more than two-thirds of Sunnis and Shia stand opposed to the idea of any further weakening of the central government and are not in favor of federation, no less dividing Iraq into three separate nations.

Nevertheless, ethnic cleansing by both Shia and Sunni has become the order of the day in many of the neighborhoods of Baghdad, replete with house burnings, physical assaults, torture, and murder, all directed against those who resist leaving their homes. These acts are aimed at creating religiously homogeneous neighborhoods.

This is a terrifying development that derives from the rising tide of terrorism. Sunnis believe that they must expel their Shia neighbors to stop them from giving the Shiite death squads the names of resistance fighters and their supporters. Shia believe that they must expel their Sunni neighbors to stop them from providing information and cover for car-bombing attacks. And, as the situation matures, militants on both sides come to embrace removal -- period. As these actions escalate, feeding on each other, more and more individuals, caught in a vise of fear and bent on revenge, embrace the infernal logic of terrorism: that it is acceptable to punish everyone for the actions of a tiny minority.

There is still some hope for the Iraqis to recover their equilibrium. All the centripetal forces in Iraq derive from the American occupation, and might still be sufficiently reduced by an American departure followed by a viable reconstruction program embraced by the key elements inside of Iraq. But if the occupation continues, there will certainly come a point -- perhaps already passed -- when the collapse of government legitimacy, the destruction wrought by the war, and the horror of terrorist violence become self-sustaining. If that point is reached, all parties will enter a new territory with incalculable consequences.

(Michael Schwartz, Professor of Sociology and Faculty Director of the Undergraduate College of Global Studies at Stony Brook University, has written extensively on popular protest and insurgency, and on American business and government dynamics. His work on Iraq has appeared on numerous Internet sites, including Tomdispatch, Asia Times, Mother Jones.com, and ZNet; and in print in Contexts, Against the Current, and Z Magazine. His books include Radical Protest and Social Structure, and Social Policy and the Conservative Agenda (edited, with Clarence Lo). His email address is Ms42@optonline.net)


7. The Situation in Iraq -- by Gilbert Achcar (from juancole.com)

[The following excerpt is from the Epilogue to Perilous Power: The Middle East and U.S. Foreign Policy, by Noam Chomsky & Gilbert Achcar, edited with a Preface by Stephen R. Shalom, to be published by Paradigm Publishers September 15, 2006.]

Q: The past few months in Iraq have seen widespread sectarian attacks. How do you assess the evolution of the situation? In particular, do you believe that a civil war is going on? Is the sectarian turmoil a reason to extend the stay of U.S. troops?

Gilbert Achcar: In the past six months, the situation in Iraq has deteriorated in a truly frightening manner, proceeding inexorably toward the actualization of the worst-case scenario -- the worst for Iraq, that is, which is not necessarily the worst for Washington, as I shall explain.

The outcome of the December 2005 parliamentary election was quite bad for U.S. plans in Iraq. The official results confirmed that the United Iraqi Alliance (UIA) once again secured a major voting bloc in the parliament (128 seats out of 275), although they did not get the majority that they enjoyed in the previous assembly. That was foreseen, however, as the January 2005 election had been boycotted by most Arab Sunnis and its outcome was accordingly quite exceptional. Nevertheless, the loss of 12 seats by the UIA was rather less than the 22–seat loss by the Kurdish Alliance, while the coalition list headed by Washington's henchman, Iyad Allawi, suffered a very serious decline, falling to 25 seats from 40, which had already been a poor showing.

These results meant that, had any of the "Sunni" coalitions -- whether the Iraqi Accord Front (44 seats), which is a coalition between the Islamic Party (i.e., the Iraqi "moderate" branch of the Muslim Brotherhood [the Association of Muslim Scholars being the "hard-liners" originating in the same tradition]) and traditionalist Arab Sunni tribal forces; or the Iraqi National Dialogue Front alone (11 seats), a motley Arab nationalist coalition including present or former Baathists who disavow Saddam Hussein's leadership -- agreed to join an alliance with the UIA, they would have secured together an absolute majority in the parliament. For that, the UIA needed only 10 more votes, or even fewer if one takes into account the 2 seats won by a small Shiite grouping close to the Sadrists, which joined the UIA. Such an extended cross-sectarian bloc would thus have been able to counter political pressure exerted by Washington through its Kurdish allies and Allawi's group and whoever else might have joined with them.

Yet, both "Sunni" coalitions proved more interested in doing business with Washington, believing that getting U.S. support against the Shiite UIA would put them in a better overall position than allying with the latter. They were thus keener on playing a petty sectarian political game than on speeding national liberation from the occupation. On the other hand, many Arab Sunnis consider Iran's hegemony -- of which, they believe, the UIA is but a tool -- to be a greater threat than U.S. hegemony, thus justifying politically that kind of behavior.

The Arab Sunni parliamentary coalitions entered into an alliance with Allawi to dispute the electoral results. Last January, I commented that their objections to the election results were not sincere, but aimed only at exerting political blackmail on the UIA. What happened afterward proved this assessment correct: When they -- and U.S. proconsul Zalmay Khalilzad -- got what they wanted with regard to the government, they just ended all their clamoring about "rigged elections."

In the meantime, intensive tugs-of-war took place in Iraq between several forces. The main contest pitted, on one side, the UIA, backed by Iran, and on the other side, a broad coalition of the Kurdish Alliance, the "Sunni" electoral parties, and Allawi, backed by Khalilzad and by regular statements and high-ranking visitors from Washington insisting hypocritically on the need to give Arab Sunnis an important share of power. As after the January 2005 election, the Bush administration tried to dictate not only its own conditions on the UIA but also Allawi's participation in the government, despite Iran's and the UIA's red line. Washington finally conceded this last point, but only after they managed to get rid of the candidate designated by the UIA to head the first "regular" Iraqi government under the new constitution -- the same man who headed the provisional government based on the Constituent Assembly: Ibrahim al-Jaafari.

The other major contest took place within the UIA itself, pitting against one another the two major blocs: the SCIRI and the followers of Muqtada al-Sadr. The SCIRI wanted the premiership for their own man, Adel Abdel- Mahdi, an ex-Maoist turned fundamentalist in both Islamic and neoliberal religions. Despite the fact that the SCIRI is the closest of all Iraqi groups to Iran and despite its advocacy of a super-federal state in southern Iraq, an idea that is resented by the United States (and rejected by all other Arab Iraqi forces, including Muqtada al-Sadr's followers), Washington backed Abdel-Mahdi, hoping that he would help the United States lay its hands on Iraq's oil in the name of free marketeering. Khalilzad, chiefly obsessed with reducing Muqtada al-Sadr's clout, was also trying in this way to fan the dissension within the UIA. For his part, Sadr strongly backed his friend and leader of the Dawa Party, Jaafari, whom he deemed closer to his political stance (Jaafari had subscribed without reservation to the "Pact of Honor" that Sadr tried to get all major Iraqi forces independent of Washington to sign [1]) and more open to his pressure.

Tension might have arisen between the two factions, but Tehran -- which invited Muqtada al-Sadr for a visit after the December election -- was certainly instrumental in preventing the UIA from splitting and urging the SCIRI to consider the UIA's unity as a priority. The issue of the UIA's candidate for premiership was thus decided democratically by a vote within the alliance, which gave a narrow majority to Jaafari. Washington's "democracy promoters" did their best thereafter to prevent the constitutional mechanism from getting under way: Normally, the Assembly would have convened and elected among others a president who would have been required to designate the candidate put forward by the largest bloc in parliament -- Jaafari, in this case -- to try to form a government. This position would have enabled Jaafari to maneuver between the other blocs and try to win over enough Arab Sunni representatives to secure a parliamentary majority, thus forcing the Kurdish Alliance to join lest they be excluded from the government.

Obviously, such a scenario was out of the question for Washington: The result was a very tense and highly dangerous standoff, until a compromise was reached whereby Jaafari agreed to be replaced with his second-in-command in the Dawa Party, Nouri al-Maliki. The latter was presented as being less sympathetic to Iran and more flexible and amenable than Jaafari. As a matter of fact, Maliki seems more compliant than Jaafari in his relations with the United States. The difference between the two men, leaders of the same party, was nonetheless not such as to warrant Washington's and London's indecent self-congratulation after Maliki's designation, as if Allawi himself had been anointed again prime minister of Iraq.

The whole situation was clearly a setback for Sadr, however. As I mentioned earlier, he had tried hard to convince the Sunni Arab parliamentary and extra-parliamentary groups to join in an anti-occupation alliance. He failed totally in that respect: The Arab Sunni parliamentary groups rejected his advances, and stuck to their alliance with the Kurdish parties and Washington's proconsul. On the other hand, the Association of Muslim Scholars, which is very close to the Arab Sunni insurgency, disappointed Sadr bitterly: He couldn't get them to condemn Zarqawi and his al-Qaeda branch in strong terms (Sadr even wanted them to excommunicate Zarqawi's group), and his radical anti-Baathist attitude was equally a stumbling block in his relations with Sunni Arab nationalists. He has complained that of the Sunni groups he approached before the December election and asked to adhere to his "Pact of Honor," none have signed it.

The next major blow to Sadr's strategy of trying to build an anti-U.S. alliance with anti-occupation Arab Sunni forces was the single event that contributed most to fueling the sectarian tension between Arab Shiites and Sunnis in Iraq -- I mean, of course, the attack against the Al-Askari Mosque in Samarra on February 22, 2006. This sectarian attack unleashed reprisals on a large scale by Shiite militants infuriated by the unending series of murderous sectarian attacks to which their community had been subjected ever since the occupation started. In these reprisals, Sadr's ragtag "Mahdi Army" was apparently very much involved. Not that Sadr gave a green light for this -- on the contrary, like most other Shiite leaders, he tried his best to cool things down -- but since his militias are much less centralized than the quasi-military SCIRI Badr militia, Sadrist militiamen obeyed their impulses before considering any other option and before getting to listen to the voice of political rationality.

At any rate, these unfortunate events were hugely exploited by an odd array of forces -- including U.S. friends, pro-Zarqawi Sunni fundamentalists, and pro-Saddam Baathists -- in order to discredit Muqtada al-Sadr among Arab Sunnis and to destroy any appeal he might have had for both his uncompromising anti-occupation stance and his reputation for being very much independent of Iran. All that Sadr had achieved politically in the previous period, in terms of building his influence on a pan-Arab (Sunnis and Shiites) Iraqi basis, was thus shattered along with the dome of the Al-Askari Mosque. To be sure, he retains formidable clout among the Shiites -- above all, among the downtrodden layers of the Shiite community, a clout that very likely has been enhanced by the role of his "army" in embodying the armed wing of the community more than any other group. But the fact remains that he is further from imposing himself as a leader of both Arab nationalist Shiites and Sunnis than he has ever been since he clashed with occupation troops in 2004.

Despite these developments, Iraq has not yet reached a state of full-fledged civil war. Indeed, what I characterized a year ago as a "low-intensity civil war" [2] had not ceased increasing in intensity throughout 2005 and early 2006, even before the sudden and most serious flare-up provoked by the Samarra attack. Nevertheless, drawing on my own Lebanese experience, I would say that there are two elements that at this moment still stand between the present situation in Iraq and a full-scale civil war. The first is the persistence of a unified Iraqi government and the existence of still-unified Iraqi armed forces: In Lebanon, it was the split-up of the government in early 1976 and the disintegration of the Lebanese army that signaled the shift to a full-fledged civil war. The second element is the existence of foreign armed forces playing the role of deterrent and arbiter, like the role that the Syrian army used to play -- but only intermittently -- in Lebanon from 1976 onward.

To say this is to point to what I hinted at already, namely that the slide of Iraq toward the worst-case scenario for its population does not necessarily represent the worst-case scenario for Washington. Actually, most of what has happened in recent months in Iraq, except for the publicity surrounding U.S. troops' criminal behavior, has suited Washington's designs. The sharp increase in sectarian tensions as well as the defeat of Muqtada al-Sadr's project played blatantly into Washington's hands. Along with many others, I have warned for quite a long time that, when all is said and done, Washington's only trump card in Iraq is going to be the sectarian and ethnic divisions among Iraqis, which the Bush administration is exploiting in the most cynical way according to the most classical of all imperial recipes: "Divide and rule." This is what Washington's proconsuls in Baghdad, from L. Paul Bremer to Khalilzad, have tried their best to put in place and take advantage of.

Seen in this light, the present flare-up in sectarian tensions is a godsend for Washington, to the point that many Iraqis suspect that U.S. and Israeli intelligence agencies stand behind the worst sectarian attacks. Note how the occupation seems now "legitimized" by the fact that many Arab Sunnis in mixed areas, who feel threatened, request the presence of foreign troops to guarantee their safety as they have no confidence in Iraqi armed forces. [3] What a paradox, when you think of the fact that Arab Sunnis were and are still the main constituency of the anti-occupation armed insurgency -- though surely not the only one: There has been a growing pattern of anti-occupation armed actions in southern Iraq that is hardly reported, if at all, in the Western media, or even in the Arab media for that matter.

However, Washington is playing with fire: The sectarian feud suits its designs, but only provided that it is kept within limits. It is not in the United States' interests for Iraq to be carved up into three separate parts, as has been advocated cynically in the U.S. media by self-proclaimed "experts" and as neocons and friends believe is the second-best outcome, short of safe U.S. control over a unified Iraq. Not only would that actually be a recipe for a protracted civil war, but it would make U.S. control over the bulk of Iraqi oil that is located in the Shiite-majority South even more uncertain. Washington's best interest is therefore to foster the sectarian feud at a controllable level that suits its "divide and rule" policy, without letting it get out of control and turn into a most perilous civil war. A federal Iraq, with a loose central government, could fit neatly with this design, provided it were accepted by all major Iraqi actors (which is quite difficult), but an Iraq torn apart could be a disaster -- all the more so that it could trigger a dangerous regional dynamic. (Think of the Shiite-populated eastern province of the Saudi kingdom where the bulk of oil reserves is concentrated.)

Now, if U.S. forces in Iraq are to be compared to a firefighting force, the truth of the matter is that they are led by highly dangerous arsonists! Ever since the occupation started, the situation in Iraq has steadily and relentlessly deteriorated: This is the undeniable truth, which only blatant liars like those in Washington can deny, insisting that the situation is improving in the face of glaring evidence to the contrary. Iraq is caught in a vicious circle: The occupation fuels the insurgency, which stirs up the sectarian tension that Washington's proconsul strives to fan by political means, which in turn is used to justify the continuing occupation. The latest major way in which U.S. occupation authorities are throwing oil on the Iraqi fire, according to Shiite sources, is by helping the Islamic Party -- the Iraqi Arab Sunni group closest to Washington and to the Saudis -- build an armed wing that is already taking part in the sectarian feud.

There is no way out of this burning circle but one: Only by announcing immediately the total and unconditional withdrawal of U.S. troops can a decisive step be taken toward putting out the fire. This would cool down the Sunni insurgency that the Association of Muslim Scholars has repeatedly pledged to call to a halt as soon as a timetable for the withdrawal of occupation troops is announced. It would dampen as well the sectarian tension, as Iraqis will then look squarely at their future and feel compelled to reach a way to coexist peacefully. And if ever they came to the conclusion that they needed a foreign presence for a while to help them restore order and start real reconstruction, it should definitely not be one composed of troops from countries that harbor hegemonic ambitions over Iraq, but one that is welcomed by all segments of the Iraqi people as friendly and disinterested help.

Notes:
1. See Gilbert Achcar, "A Pan-Iraqi Pact on Muqtada Al-Sadr's Initiative," ZNet, December 9, 2005.
2. "The only hope one could have of avoiding the slide into a full-blown, devastating civil war -- if Sistani were to be assassinated -- is [not the presence of U.S. troops, but] if the forces involved in the political process, i.e. those not already involved in the low-intensity civil war going on in Iraq, were successful in achieving control over their constituencies after an inevitable first outburst of anger, by emphasizing that the perpetrators are either the Baathists or Zarqawi's followers or the like, that their objective is exactly to ignite a civil war, and that the best reply to that is precisely to pay heed to Sistani's insistence on the necessity of avoiding any kind of sectarian war." See "Achcar on Cole Proposals for Withdrawal of US Ground Troops," posted on August 23, 2005, on Juan Cole's blog, Informed Comment, and on ZNet.
3. This analysis was confirmed by Edward Wong and Dexter Filkins's edifying story published in the New York Times on July 17, 2006, under the title "In an About-Face, Sunnis Want U.S. to Remain in Iraq." '