[Notebook for shorter news items. New entries are added intermittently but these very short and often highly speculative notes are not part of the subscription service at historiae.org.]

8 October 2008: Maliki’s Awakening in the South

The reports keep getting more persistent: Nuri al-Maliki is apparently building ties to southern tribes at the expense of – and sometimes to loud protests from – ISCI and Badr. The latest case to receive some attention in the Iraqi press is Nasiriyya and Dhi Qar. Today, leaders of the recently-formed “support councils” (majalis asnad) of Dhi Qar will meet with local security officials, including the police chief (who was appointed by the Iraqi interior ministry and with the support of the Daawa but to strong protests from ISCI in Nasiriyya). At least one Iraqi press report suggests this is an attempt by Maliki to weaken ISCI's local support base in the forthcoming provincial elections. Others who are unhappy about Maliki's scheme include members of the “Council of the shaykhs of the Dhi Qar tribes” which was pro-government back in 2006. Individuals participating in that council include tribal leaders of Bani Hujaym, which also is represented on the provincial council through a shaykh who is an ISCI member.

Maliki is supported in his effort by Muhammad al-Uraybi, minister of state, who has ties to the Al Bu Muhammad tribe of Maysan and also has a Wifaq connection.

6 October 2008: A Constructive Element in Democratic Iraq Policy

There are numerous problems when it comes to Democratic policy for Iraq, but a very useful article in the NYT has highlighted one feature of Barack Obama’s thinking on Iraq that both Democrats and Republicans should take into more consideration. According to the article, which was based on an interview with Obama, “Mr. Obama said he would end efforts to train the Iraqi military if Mr. Maliki’s Shiite-dominated government did not take adequate steps to integrate the largely Sunni members of the Awakening movements into Iraq’s security forces.” Conversely, John McCain had argued that “threats to cut off American training or deadlines for removing combat brigades, …would only prompt Iraq to become more dependent on Iran or turn to militias for security. ‘For a long time, people have said threaten them with this, threaten them with that,’ Mr. McCain said.”

While Obama may be wrong when it comes to the characterisation of the conflict in Iraq as essentially a sectarian one, he is certainly right in thinking in terms of conditionality with regard to US support. A large majority of Iraqis, Shiites and Sunnis, want national reconciliation and constitutional changes, but if the United States does not put pressure on Maliki, he will prefer the more leisurely option of arming the state to deal with dissidents.

Also, in relation to the federalism debate, Maliki’s office today issued a statement to the effect that “federal regions should not be stronger than the central government”, although he was magnanimous enough to concede that “federal regions and governorates will not be abolished or rendered ineffectual”…Surely this debate on state structure has changed over the past year or so.

29 September: More Tension between the Iraqi Security Forces and the Badr Brigades, This Time in Hilla

Contrary to the standard image of the Iraqi security forces as lightly camouflaged members of the Badr brigades, tension between those forces and Badr actually seems to be on the increase. In a recent episode in Hilla, Iraqi security forces carried out a surprise search of the headquarters of the Badr brigades, and according to some reports confiscated both rockets and explosives. The ISCI governor of Babel claimed that only Kalashnikovs were taken and that these were for the “personal use” of the Badr members.

Assuming that the reports are genuine and that this was not a staged event of some kind, the episode is interesting because it seems to add to a more general trend. Earlier this year in Maysan, posters of Hakim were torn down during operations carried out by the security forces. Some months ago, ISCI protested strongly against the interior ministry’s appointment of a new police chief in Nasiriyya. Some reports claim that the notorious “Scorpions” of the Iraqi security forces took part in the recent Hilla operation, even in cooperation with US forces. Earlier, the late police chief in Babel, Qays al-Mamuri, had fought Badr with determination.

Moreover, the incident throws into question the true degree of demilitarisation as regards the Badr forces and other pro-ISCI elements. It is worth recalling that as late as 2007, the leader of “Hizbollah in Iraq”, an integral part of ISCI, made a public request to Maliki to have his “30,000 militiamen” integrated into the Iraqi security forces and complained that no action had been taken.

In other news, Wifaq and al-Hiwar al-Watani have decided to contest the local elections on a joint ticket, with Hiwar’s leadership specifically rejecting an alliance with (Sunni-dominated) Tawafuq on the grounds that they found it “too sectarian”. That’s a step in the right direction, but where are Fadila, Jaafari's Islah, the UIA independents and the tribal leaders?

25 September: More on the Elections Law

The Iraqi parliament has now published what is supposed to be the final version of the elections law. One remaining caveat concerns the discrepancy between some of the articles in the published version and those quoted in yesterday’s official press release from the parliament, especially concerning articles 32 and 35. The second point about a permission to use symbolism related to non-candidates except “religious authorities” (maraji‘ al-din) has been omitted in the complete version of the law, and article 35 sounds altogether different from the original: the press release referred to a permission to use public buildings and mosques for “information purposes” related to the electoral process but not for political campaigning as such, whereas the newly released text bans the use of government offices for campaigning purposes but expressly allows it in mosques and places of worship. While the “change” to article 32 may be a case of an oversight by the website staff, the differences between the two versions of article 35 are substantial. It could be simply the case of a wrong draft having been used, but it might also reflect some last-minute changes to the law that have not yet received the attention they deserve.

Another notable feature of the released law is the non-mention of Kurdistan, where leaders reportedly have decided not to carry out elections. They appear to be doing this unilaterally – it is not something that is explicitly part of the law, whose language itself is general and refers to “all the governorates” with no other exception than Kirkuk.

There has been a degree of confusion in the press about the women’s quota: this quota was adopted already on 22 July, but back then it was purely aspirational – no mechanism for arriving at the quota was defined other than an instruction to parties to nominate a certain proportion of women. Now, the counting of the open lists results is arranged so that every fourth* winner from these lists will be a woman, but there is no guaranteed quota (theoretically, in some small electoral districts male independent candidates might win all the seats) and the specific goal of 25% does not appear in the final version of the law referred to above.

Finally, there has been some debate about the omission of a total of 13 seats that had been reserved for “micro-minorities” (including Yazidis, Shabak, Sabaeans, Christians) in the original 22 July version of the law (though no modalities for their election had been specified). A third of these seats were in Kurdistan and another two in Kirkuk. Some minority representatives have protested against what may possibly have been horse-trading between Kurdish and Iraqi nationalists; others may hope that the renewed focused on national unity in the parts of Iraq south in Kurdistan in itself may offer new possibilities for minorities without any need to resort to a quota system.

*Or more probably every third? The original has "At the end of every three winners there should be a woman irrespective of men winning [more votes]".

21 September: ISCI vs the interior ministry in Nasiriyya?

The police commander of Nasiriyya, Sabah al-Fatlawi, is in the news today due to his complaints of “special groups” that are entering from Iran through Maysan and then go on to commit mischief in the Iraqi south. Fatlawi has an interesting background: his appointment by the ministry of interior was furiously resisted by ISCI back in June, with protests about his alleged “political” ties. Fatlawi was backed by Daawa members in the governing council.

This episode is interesting for a number of reasons. Firstly, it might be of relevance to the question of tension between Maliki and ISCI, possibly with Jawad al-Bulani (minister of interior) on Maliki’s side. Secondly, Daawa in Nasiriyya primarily means the notoriously elusive Tanzim al-Iraq branch: they now seem to support the security forces of the government. Finally, ISCI was supported in its opposition to Fatlawi by Fadila, which is their arch-enemy in neighbouring Basra and in Iraqi politics more generally.

20 September 2008: Two Very Different Takes on Centralism

Diverging opinions on the virtues of centralism as a principle of government have created tensions between the Daawa party and ISCI for some time, yet without escalating to the point where their alliance appears to have been under serious threat as such.

It is nevertheless interesting that over the past two days, the two opposing poles have expressed their conflicting views on the issue with almost perfect synchronisation. In an interview in al-Hayat, Nuri al-Maliki largely reiterated his position on federalism along the lines he described it an earlier interview back in November 2007: federalism is a constitutional option, but not something that should threaten the potency of the centralised state. Conversely, ISCI’s Jalal al-Din al-Saghir expressed the exact opposite attitude in Friday prayers yesterday, describing “centralism” as a distinguishing feature of the old Baathist regime.

There can be little doubt that to Daawa, centralism remains a positive concept while to ISCI, it has negative connotations. This is interesting, because at least since the release of the main draft of the oil law in early 2007 it has been plausible to ask whether ISCI pursues a centralist plan B as an alternative to its severely criticised scheme for a large federal Shiite region south of Baghdad. As of today, it seems as if ISCI still has some internal debating to do before the party can be at ease with the idea of centralism in the same way as the Iraqi premier and some of the circles around him. Oil minister Husayn al-Shahristani, for example, seems to belong to the latter camp in this question: In an interview in today’s Al-Sharq al-Awsat he criticises the Kurds for obstinacy with regard to the oil law and contends that the only option left to “the Baghdad government” would be to revert to Saddam-time legislation. The symbolic significance of this kind of adoption of Baathist centralism by the new Shiite-dominated regime would be quite considerable.

Importantly, though, others see it in a different ways: in the context of the stalled debate over the provincial elections law and military operations by the central government in Diyala, Kurdish politician Qadir Aziz today speaks about a conspiracy against the Kurdish cause and he mentions both ISCI and Daawa as part of the conspiracy.

11 September 2008: Hakim’s Insincerity on the Local Elections

In a strange series of comments given to the Iraqi news agency Aswat al-Iraq, Ammar al-Hakim highlights the importance of holding early provincial elections and seems to forget that his own party, ISCI, has been at the forefront of attempts to derail those elections. First, back in February, ISCI along with the Kurds fiercely resisted the insertion of a timeline for elections into the provincial powers law. Subsequently, after having been defeated by a parliamentary majority on the issue, ISCI tried to use the presidential veto to avoid elections. More recently, ISCI has continued to complicate the parliamentary deliberations on the elections law itself through continuing to demand the right to use religious symbols for campaigning purposes. In a remarkable statement in the most recent interview, Hakim refers to the “timeline for elections laid down by the Iraqi constitution” – surely he must know that there is no timeline for local elections in the constitution.

Perhaps sensing a degree of pressure from the higher Shiite clergy, Hakim now tries to present ISCI as an advocate of early elections – unsurprisingly, he now blames the very parties that demanded elections in the first place for trying to obstruct them! This refers to the demand by a majority of Iraqi parliamentarians that pending elections in Kirkuk, and as part of the elections law, there should be some kind of shake-up in the local administration there in the direction of greater power-sharing between the various communities. This demand reflects a widespread desire among Iraqi parliamentarians to challenge the hegemony of ISCI, the Kurds and Maliki in dominating Iraq’s politics – a hegemony which came under threat when the provincial powers law with the timeline for elections was adopted back in February, but which has since been restored through heavy-handed action (often with US support) against political enemies of all shades, in many cases on the pretext of vaguely defined “security” concerns that have yet to result in formal charges against those targeted in the operations.

In the interview, Hakim is less bullish than ever before on the idea of forming a big Shiite region. This time, he merely refers to the constitutional provisions on the subject, which leave the issue to popular grassroots initiatives.

8 September 2008: Biden Gets Specific on Iraq – Again

Immediately following his nomination as Democratic VP candidate, there were certain signs that Joe Biden was playing down his plans for an “active federalisation” of Iraq. However, now he is picking up where he left off. The following quotes are from “Meet the Press” on 7 September, along with some annotations in brackets:

“Everything that’s working in Iraq has been the bottom up approach, not a strong central government imposing. And the truth of the matter is the only way you’re going to make this–sustain it, the question is, how do we leave and leave a stable Iraq behind? Without a political settlement, Tom, we’re going to be back there in another year or two or three or five.”

[Here Biden reiterates a common misunderstanding of the Iraqi constitution. The Iraqi constitution outlines a hybrid asymmetrical federal system under which the various parts of the country can choose between remaining under the central government OR becoming a federal region – through specific procedures. Biden violates both these features: first he rejects the idea of asymmetrical federalism by excluding the possibility of some provinces remaining under the central government, then he goes on to push for a “settlement” instead of accepting the gradual evolutionary process foreshadowed in the Iraqi constitution.]

“MR. BROKAW: But the Iraqi government didn’t like the idea [i.e. Biden’s “plan”]. Maliki…

SEN. BIDEN: Well, the Iraqi government–Maliki didn’t, but the rest of the government liked it.

MR. BROKAW: But he is the head of the government. It’s their country.

SEN. BIDEN: Yeah–by the way, it is their country, but he’s the head of the government, but he’s the head of the government whose popularity is very much in question, and the election itself.”

[Biden apparently hasn’t noted that except from the Kurds and their partners in the Maliki government (ISCI), pretty much everyone else in Iraq is against his plans. These days, even ISCI seems to have second thoughts with regard to the wisdom of soft partition.]

“MR. BROKAW: Five years from now, do you think Iraq will have relative stability and democratic principles in a central government?

SEN. BIDEN: If there is an Obama-Biden administration, yeah. If there is a John McCain administration and Sarah Palin, I think it’s probably not going to happen, because John does not view this in terms of the region. I never heard him speak about how he’s going to integrate Iraq into the region where you have these competing interests that exist.”

[This is the truly frightening part. Integrate Iraq into the region?? After it has first been soft partitioned a la Biden? Sounds bad if you consider yourself an Iraqi.]

7 September 2008: The Sahwa of the South

The ”Council of the Tribes of the Sons of the Arab South” (various versions of the name occur but the leadership figures seem constant) has called for the ministers of electricity and trade to be sacked. This council is an interesting example of tribal cooperation in the far south (Basra, Dhi Qar, Maysan) where the anti-Iranian theme is extremely pronounced and where there are calls for better relations with Arab Gulf states. In other words, combining local regionalism, Iraqi nationalism and pan-Arabism, this represents the quintessential sahwa of the south – except that Washington’s preference for working with Nuri al-Maliki, ISCI and others with a more pro-Iranian attitude prevents it from replicating the Anbar experience south of Baghdad.

3 September 2008: Muqtada’s Northern Strategy

In a message attributed to him and published in Kufa on 29 August (but as of yet unconfirmed at many key Sadrist websites) Muqtada al-Sadr supposedly stressed the importance of ejecting the Kurdish peshmerga from Khanaqin so that they can be replaced by Iraqi government forces.

If correct, this would serve as another reminder of Muqtada’s intentions to play the Iraqi nationalist card in the north, which he has done previously as well, with major Sadrist demonstrations against federalism in Kirkuk back in 2004. At the same time, Sadr’s insistence on consistency touches on cracks in the alliance between ISCI and Kurds that forms the backbone of the Maliki government: “You were the first to insist on imposing the law in the governorates of the centre and the south of Iraq, so why reject this idea in Khanaqin” Sadr asks. Perhaps tongue in cheek, but still an interesting contrast to 2003 when Sadr at one point contemplated the formation of a “shadow cabinet” to challenge what he described as illegitimate government structures sponsored by the United States.

29 August 2008: The Arrest of Ali Faysal al-Lami

There are problems concerning the portrayal in some media sources of Ali al-Lami – the de-Baathification director captured recently by US forces on suspicion of pro-Iranian activities – as a straightforward “Sadrist”. Lami, whose name suggests a link with the Bani Lam tribe of Maysan in the far south, has a long history of association with Ahmad Chalabi and Abd al-Karim al-Muhammadawi who back in 2005 participated in a party called the “Shiite council” – one of the first Iraqi parties to use Shiite sectarian identity in such an explicit way in its name. Jawad al-Bulani, the current ministry of interior, at one point also belonged to this circle.

There are many other individuals in the United Iraqi Alliance who since 2005 have floated between several camps – they include figures like Sami al-Askari and Jabir Habib Jabir. It seems inconceivable that Lami should have been able to hold on to his current position for so long time unless the Maliki regime saw certain advantages in having him there.

28 August 2008: In Denver, No “Plan for Iraq” Yet

In a positive development, Senator Joe Biden yesterday refrained from any mention of his previous “plans for Iraq” which include a soft partition scheme and a more recent (and more general) plan for “active federalization”. Instead he referred more generally to Barack Obama’s position on the war in Iraq.

What remains for the Democratic Party is to define an exit strategy that does not convert the Iraq situation into a net gain for Iran. As long as the final phase of the US occupation of Iraq involves consolidation of the Maliki regime and the basic system of government adopted in 2005 (rather than a weakening of these two factors) such gains for Iran will be the inevitable outcome. What is missing in Democratic discussion of exit strategies is the realisation that US policies in Iraq from 2003 to 2008 (and specifically Washington’s particular choice of partners among the Shiites) have unintentionally strengthened Iran’s position in Iraq quite considerably, so that leaving Iraq tomorrow would not in any sense mean a return to the status quo ante of 10 April 2003. This point may perhaps seem a little long-winded for an election campaign where there will be a preference for black and white caricatures, but for those who truly care about the political stability of the Gulf region in the long term it should be seen as the fundamental issue.

21 August 2008: The USG Formally Embraces the Minority View in the Kirkuk Question

Yesterday, US Ambassador Ryan Crocker explicitly extended his support to a UN proposal of delaying the provincial council vote in Kirkuk apparently without making any substantial changes to the province’s current political line-up, while allowing the vote to go ahead in the rest of Iraq’s governorates. It is noteworthy that this is the model that was earlier rejected by a majority of Iraqi parliamentarians (who favoured a new power-sharing arrangement in Kirkuk in the interim), and was not brought to a vote despite attempts by the government to push it through in early August after the presidential council had vetoed the decision of the Iraqi parliament to create a power-sharing regime in Kirkuk.

The upside of the UN approach to Kirkuk is that it is part of a grand strategy of diluting territorial issues in northern Iraq by tackling them piecemeal, starting with the easiest ones. This is a good approach because there are certain “disputed” areas that are not really disputed and which many Iraqis, regardless of ethnic origin, would be quite happy to assign to the Kurdish federal region. This approach would also contain the application of the concept of “disputed territories” to the north – an important factor with regard to political stability given that ISCI in particular has shown a proclivity for thinking in similar terms in the south, for example in possible border adjustments between Karbala and Anbar. Theoretically this could form the basis for a grand compromise on territorial changes in the north that could bring closure to the Iraqi federalism debate and a renewed focus on development issues more broadly.

What is less clear is why this process should require a perpetuation of the status quo in the provincial government of Kirkuk. If instead steps towards a modicum of power sharing were implemented, there are greater chances that any grand “final status” deal would enjoy credibility in the eyes of the majority of Iraqis. The proposal of the majority of the Iraqi parliament needs not be the perfect approach, but there is a clearly expressed desire not to carry on with existing arrangements, which are seen as strongly supportive of the Kurdish position. This stance represents a challenge to the forces that see the 2005 constitution and the political set-up it created as a viable way forward, and for the USG to persevere in ignoring the majority of the Iraqi parliament on this issue seems like an almost self-destructive strategy. If anything, the forces that find it difficult to consider Kirkuk as anything other than “Iraqi” – and which therefore are reluctant to acquiesce in what is seen as undemocratic special arrangements for the area – are probably even stronger outside parliament than inside it.

20 August 2008: More on Diyala

Today there is an attempt by Iraqi authorities to gloss over the Diyala episode by blaming it on technical misunderstandings between various arms of the Iraqi security apparatus: the local police versus a special force from Baghdad. This cannot disguise the fact that a week ago, and reportedly by consensus, the provincial council which includes 20 members from the Shiite Islamist camp (many of them ISCI*) voted to oust the police chief, Ghanim al-Qurayshi, whom Baghdad had earlier appointed probably with the support of Nuri al-Maliki and Jawad al-Bulani. Demonstrations against the dismissal, allegedly to a large degree made up of members of the police loyal to Qurayshi, had met with the disapproval of the governor who has ties to ISCI. There clearly is some kind of intra-Shiite dimension to this affair, but it remains unclear whether it is a case of a local branch of ISCI cooperating with non-Shiites in a bid to oust an outsider appointed by Maliki, or another example of tension between ISCI and forces more loyal to Maliki.

* The list of coalitions from the Iraqi electoral commission dated 20 December 2004 provides the following overview of the constituent elements of the two formal political alliances in Diyala: List 302, the Kurdish-Turkmen-Arab Alliance, made up of PUK and KDP (the two biggest Kurdish parties), and list 339, the Alliance of the Islamic and Nationalist Forces in Diyala, consisting of three elements: Daawa, SCIRI and Badr. In the January 2005 elections, list 302 won 7 seats, list 339 won 20 seats, and list 351, the Sunni-dominated IIP, got 14 seats.

19 August 2008: The Powers That Are Divided among Themselves

Recent events in Diyala provide yet another indication that all is not well inside Iraq’s ruling establishment, especially with regard to its dominant component of Shiite Islamists. Presumably with the support of premier Nuri al-Maliki, Iraqi government forces yesterday raided the premises of Diyala governor Raad Rashid al-Mulla Jawad (linked to ISCI in many reports). Earlier, on 12 August, the chief of police in Diyala was sacked by the provincial assembly, ostensibly because he had promoted “ex-Baathists” to high positions in the local police force. The interior ministry was reportedly unhappy with the action taken by the provincial assembly.

On the surface, Diyala seems like a manifest example of the alliance between Kurds and ISCI that forms the increasingly feeble parliamentary backbone of Nuri al-Maliki’s government: these two forces dominate the local assembly and key positions in the local administration. However, these fiefs now appear to be coming under attack from forces loyal to Maliki himself. Before he was accused of promoting “Baathists” in Diyala, the sacked police commander, Ghanim al-Qurayshi, had reportedly been under consideration for transfer to Basra to assume even more important security tasks, suggesting that he has friends close to Maliki.

This is not the first time there has been friction inside the Shiite establishment. On 29 May, the provincial council in Dhi Qar rejected the interior ministry’s appointment of Sabah al-Fatlawi, against the votes of the Daawa (Tanzim al-Iraq) branch. Earlier, in February, Daawa along with Fadila had sidelined the provincial security council where ISCI was strong, prompting protests from ISCI about the police forces “becoming politicised”. And all too often it is forgotten that the top Basra security officials that came under attack by ISCI and the Sayyid al-Shuhada movement shortly before the military operation in Basra in March were in fact Maliki appointees. In light of examples like these, it is extremely difficult to maintain the common notion that ISCI has perfect control of the Iraqi security forces in most part of the country, although in the case of Diyala it remains unclear whether this is the result of an internal split inside ISCI (national versus local leaderships) or tensions between ISCI and Daawa.

Meanwhile, the corporate media is already feverishly reporting the Diyala developments as a purely sectarian affair, conveniently ignoring the fact that the Sunni Islamist IIP holds only 14 seats out of 41 on the provincial council that voted to oust the Shiite police commander (and whose governor is also a prominent Shiite leader who used to be criticised for ties to Badr).

[Most of this note is also available in an Arabic translation provided by the Iraqi news agency Aswat al-Iraq.]

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