'Just World News' with Helena Cobban

Politics in Iraq

The delegation from Baghdad did not get to meet Moqtada Sadr Tuesday. (I wonder if that had anything to do with the possibility that the delegates flew into Najaf on a US Blackhawk chopper, as Jazeera reported?) But the news is that the delegation will try again Wednesday or Thursday ... Even more importantly, we should all be looking at the many signs there are that a lively political process is currently underway inside Iraq today . That, despite all the moves the US forces are constantly making to try to escalate the military/insecurity situation.

It's still hard to say how this political process will turn out. Contrary to what some pro-Allawist people have continued to try to say, Moqtada is nowhere near being "run out of town on a rail" (in the infelicitous phrasing of US journo Chris Allbritton.) Indeed, Moqtada has been doing really well, politically, over the past ten days. Not least, he has forced the whole 1,300-member Iraqi "National Conference" to focus almost totally on his issue, rather than on the planned agenda of signing smoothly off on the election-prep plans previously cooked up by Allawi and his cronies.

To try to get a reading on the political situation inside the country, I've been doing a little search in "all the usual sources"--mostly in English, but also Al-Hayat in Arabic. I found some very interesting items, which I'll just quickly list here.

**Al-Jazeera.net has what looks like some good, solid reporting from inside the NatConf hall. Firstly, they note that the conference has had to be prolonged for at least one further day, since some 450 delegates (out of a total of fewer than 1,300),

accused the main political parties of hijacking the vote, saying most members were chosen long ago in secret.

Many had threatened to quit the conference unless the voting mechanism was changed.

Conference chair Fuad Maasum, a Kurdish former exile, had tried to insit on an up-or-down vote on a single pre-cooked list... Well, it's true that that may have been the way that many of the "delegates" themselves were chosen to go to the conference at all--see what Faiza wrote about that last week. But still, a good number of them objected to Maasum's plan.

And remember, only 80 (or 81) of the 100 seats on the body being elected there--which will be an electoral commission and a sort of interim parliament rolled into one--are to be filled by election at all. The other 20 (or19) are to be filled by the former members of the old, Bremer-appointed IGC...

19 or 20, I hear you ask: why the confusion? Well, the confusion has to do with whether our old friend Ahmad Chalabi gets included in that number or not... The question of his participation in (or banning from) the NatConf itself has also been the subject of some heavy internal politics there. See below.

(Talking of Ahmad Chalabi, the IWPR's Iraqi Press Monitor reported yesterday that Al-Bayan, which is issued by Vice-President Ibrahim al-Jafari's Islamic Daawa Party, reported yesterday that the "Minister of Justice", Malik Dohan al-Hasan, resigned

because the cabinet did not respond to his memorandum calling for the dismissal of the head of the Judicial Council, Judge Zuhair al-Maliki... The minister said the way in which Ahmed al-Chalabi and his nephew Salim al-Chalabi had been treated does not protect any Iraqi from legal interrogation for reasons arranged by some parties to defame political and patriotic figures.

There's some interesting politics for you!)

**Today's Iraqi Press Monitor has this intriguing little excerpt from London-based Az-Zaman :

Muqtada al-Sadr has agreed on the initiative of the National Congress to solve the crisis of Najaf peacefully. The members of the congress aided the proposal of Sayyid Hussein al-Sadr by solid margin. Sayyid Hussein said no one had the right to control the Imam Ali shrine, and that the government was the only body that should be in charge of it. Sayyid Hussein added that the government did not ask Muqtada to leave Najaf but had only asked him not to keep control of the shrine. [HC emphasis] He emphasised the importance of ending armed scenes in Najaf and that Mahdi elements entrenched in the shrine were free to leave the shrine and go anywhere without being chased by the government.

It may not be totally up-to-date as of now (Tuesday evening), but there are still a couple of very pertinent little details there.

** Actually, the whole of the August 17 edition of Iraqi Press Monitor is very interesting...

There's a report from Al-Adala about what happened when Chalabi tried to enter the NatConf hall:

The police, who stopped Chalabi from attending the congress, told al-Adala that they did so according to an order from the Minister of Interior. But Fuad Masoom said he had no idea about the order and that Chalabi had the right to attend the congress.

This snippet, from Ad-Dustour:

Some tribal leaders have withdrawn from the second session of the National Congress for not being fully represented to occupy the seats of the parliament and for the critical situations under which the congress was held.

This, from Al-Mashriq:

Clerics and preachers in Samarra have asked young believers to join the so-called Hadi Army in reference to Imam Ali al-Hadi, who is buried in Samarra. Sources affirmed the army would consist of armed elements that would be attached to the Mahdi army in Najaf. The insistence of the government to solve the crisis militarily has urged many Iraqis to join the resistance, and it has unified the different bodies of resistance. Member of the political office of the Islamic Party Ammar Wajeeh said the party rejected the government's attempt to solve the issue with Muqtada al-Sadr militarily.

Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think we'd be talking about a (pro-Sadrist) Sunni militia and political activity there...

There's this from Al-Mutamar (Chalabi's old moutpiece; maybe still is his?):

News sources said American forces have besieged the mosque of Umm al-Qura, which serves as headquarters for the Muslim Clerics Board in Baghdad, and have prevented anyone from entering or leaving the mosque. Board member Sheikh Ahmed al-Samarrai said the Americans have besieged the mosque and the adjacent area under the allegations they were attacked from that area. Therefore, he said, they insisted on inspecting the whole area including the mosque.

Now that definitely would, if confirmed, be a story about a Sunni institution...

And so it goes on. Basically, Iraqis of all stripes trying to figure out how to build themselves a political system, and US soldiers using guns and bombs to realize extremely uncertain (and anyway only very transient) military "objectives".

I see the situation as something of a race between these two processes. Can the political process win out over the militarists? They still have a chance. But boy, those militarists in the Marine Corps are bullheaded. What the heck do they think they would even do with the whole of downtown Najaf even if they "won" it? Do they even have any idea what's at stake there?