Category Archives: Post-War

Press outrage

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This will likely come as no sur­prise to my Iraqi read­ers, but I came across this tid­bit in a Guardian arti­cle about the ves­tiges of Saddam’s grip on Iraq:

Almost all of the bureau­crats at [Saddam’s] infor­ma­tion min­istry have done very nicely for them­selves since the war. The gov­ern­ment min­ders who spent their days report­ing to the intel­li­gence ser­vices on for­eign reporters or doing their best to obstruct their work have gone on to well-paid jobs — for the same for­eign news organ­i­sa­tions they once hounded.
The second-in-command at the infor­ma­tion min­istry, who spent his days read­ing the reports the min­ders wrote about vis­it­ing for­eign jour­nal­ists, has been employed by Fox News.

I just shake my head at this one… As Josh over at Talk­ing­PointsMemo notes, if CNN had done this, this might raise more than a few eye­brows.
The rest of the arti­cle is an inter­est­ing read, too.

Update to Flag Flap

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A knowl­edge­able friend who was in Kirkuk a few weeks ago wrote in to tell me that the Kurds — and other polit­i­cal par­ties such as the Turko­man Front — had been fly­ing their flags since at least the begin­ning of August. Three days ago, when the Coali­tion Pro­vi­sional Author­ity instructed the flags be taken down, Kurds pelted U.S. sol­diers with stones. The CPA soon reversed itself, the rea­son for the pre­vi­ous entry.
As my friend wrote: “When I was there [in early August], the city was FILLED with Kur­dish flags. It is truly unbe­liev­able, and quite beau­ti­ful. Every sin­gle build­ing had a Kur­dis­tan flag fly­ing. Many walls had Kur­dish flags painted on them. Even the light­posts had Kur­dish flags painted on them.“
The fla­grant flag fly­ing was news to me. I had heard from friends in the area that the Iraqi flag (minus Saddam’s post-1991 Ara­bic addi­tions) had been fly­ing since the early sum­mer or so. In fact, when I was there in April on the day of Kirkuk’s lib­er­a­tion, there were many old-style Iraqi flags being waved about — in addi­tion to the polit­i­cal par­ties’ flags. When did the Kurds and oth­ers begin putting up their own flags? I don’t know.
Any­way, the deci­sion to let the Kurds wave their ban­ner high in Kirkuk seems to be a revert­ing to the sta­tus quo, although one that I still think is decid­edly shaky. Regard­less of the valid­ity of the Kurds’ claims on Kirkuk (and I think they’re pretty damn valid), flaunt­ing the Kur­dish nature of the city in the face of Turkey and its Turko­man brethren is ask­ing for trou­ble.
Any­way, this flag lag reveals a source of major frus­tra­tion for me. My sources com­mu­ni­cate too slowly to allow for time­li­ness. Try­ing to parse Kur­dish and Ara­bic English-language media over the net is a bit of a fool’s game. In short, there’s no good way to cover Iraq from New York, and I have no way to get to Iraq any time soon.

Assassination in Najaf

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Unfor­tu­nately on dead­line today and unable to give a full account­ing or analy­sis on a news-heavy day. Daily Kos has an item on the attack.
Ini­tial response based on NPR: This is very, very bad (obvi­ously). Twenty 75 More than 90 peo­ple dead and at least 140 wounded. The most holy shrine to Shi’a Islam is dam­aged [UPDATE but not too badly, appar­ently.] Aya­tol­lah Moham­mad Baqir al-Hakim, a key Shi’a cleric and head of the SCIRI, is dead. Shi’ites in Najaf seem to be blam­ing rem­nants of Saddam’s secu­rity forces for the attack. (Which seems plau­si­ble.)
Hakim’s death could shat­ter the Iraqi Gov­ern­ing Coun­cil, on which Hakim’s brother, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, sits. It could set off a power strug­gle among the Shi’ites with the mod­er­ates — now pos­si­bly led by Abdul Aziz al-Hakim (who isn’t even that mod­er­ate, frankly) — and the hard-liners, led by fire­brand 22-year-old Moq­tada Sadr.
If it turns out that Sun­nis were behind this, expect riots and clashes in Bagh­dad.
Iran will be watch­ing this very closely as well. Hakim was their guy in Iraq and it’s unclear now what will hap­pen.
Tin-foil hat the­ory of my own: Al Qa’ida oper­a­tives, who are Sunni, did this in a bid to spark a civil war, which would embroil U.S. troops and tie them down when they might be needed in South Korea, Indone­sia, Afghanistan, etc. The attack also aims to show the Arab world that Amer­i­can troops aren’t up to pro­vid­ing secu­rity and can be put on the defen­sive. This will embolden _jihadis_ and give other nations yet another rea­son to with­hold addi­tional troops. All this means Amer­ica will likely remain pretty much on its own in Iraq and her abil­ity to respond to threats around the world will be neg­a­tively impacted. Instead of fly­pa­per for ter­ror­ists, Iraq is a tarbaby for Amer­ica.
This could be the equiv­a­lent of the assas­si­na­tion of the Archuduke Franz Fer­di­nand that sparked World War I — although on national scale, rather than a global one. The prob­a­bil­ity of civil war — with Amer­i­can troops caught in the mid­dle — just spiked.

Security Report

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Well, this is pretty bleak. Iraq Today, Baghdad’s inde­pen­dent, English-language news­pa­per, pub­lishes a Secu­rity Bul­letin that doesn’t paint an encour­ag­ing pic­ture:

CMCC [Civil-Military Coor­di­na­tion Cen­ter] cites Adhamiyah, Rusafa, Thowra, al-Muthanna, Shaab, Hur­riyah, Shuahla and the area around Sad­dam Inter­na­tional air­port as uncer­tain or hos­tile areas.
Car­jack­ing is rife in the cap­i­tal. Do not walk around the streets with bags or mobile/satellite phones.
The cur­few in Bagh­dad begins at 11pm and ends at 4am.
Iraq’s high­ways are con­sid­ered dan­ger­ous. High­way 10 between Bagh­dad and the Jor­dan­ian bor­der is espe­cially haz­ardous, par­tic­u­larly around the Ramadi area. Armed ban­dits oper­ate this route, using fast cars to stop large con­voys of vehi­cles. High­way 8, between Bagh­dad and Hillah is also con­sid­ered a no go route by human­i­tar­ian organ­i­sa­tions. High­way 1, between Bagh­dad and Qasim is also very dan­ger­ous.
Police are present on the streets of the cap­i­tal but they are Out-gunned and outnumbered.

Jeeze. Good to know. Espe­cially about High­way 10. I took that high­way when I left Bagh­dad in late April, but didn’t have any prob­lems. We ran it dur­ing the day, and there were a num­ber of places where earthen embank­ments had been set up forc­ing the taxi to fol­low a tight “S” path ver­rrrrrry slowly — in other words, it would have been great for an ambush. Luck­ily, noth­ing hap­pened. When J., my friend who left a week or so before me, took that route, how­ever, he men­tioned that his dri­ver stopped to chat with a man on the side of the road wear­ing a black face mask and car­ry­ing an AK-47. Nice.

Ethnic violence in Kirkuk

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Three Turkomen were shot dead in eth­nic vio­lence in Kirkuk on Sat­ur­day, end­ing months of rel­a­tive calm in the Kur­dish region of Iraq. It’s unclear exactly what’s hap­pen­ing, but that seems to have been the cap on two days of vio­lence in Kirkuk and Tuz Khar­mato to the south, with at least 10 peo­ple being killed, some of them at the hands of Amer­i­can troops. The Asso­ci­ated Press reports that in addi­tion to police shoot­ings, artillery or mor­tar fire “rocked” the city on Sat­ur­day.
While a sin­gle week­end does not an internecine con­flict make, the fall­out has reached Ankara, where a “mob” of about 100 Turks attacked the office of the Patri­otic Union of Kur­dis­tan there. Kur​dish​Me​dia​.com reports that about 23 Turk­ish police offi­cers and a num­ber of pro­test­ers were injured in the melee.
“Kirkuk is Turk­ish and it will remain Turk­ish,” shouted the pro­test­ers. “Damn Tal­a­bani, damn the pesh­merga.” (Jalal Tal­a­bani is the Secretary-General of the PUK.)
In Kirkuk, the Turk­men rep­re­sen­ta­tive to the interim Iraqi Gov­ern­ing Coun­cil called for the Kirkuk police to be dis­armed.
All this is hap­pen­ing as the Mid­dle East Newsline reports that Turkey will con­tribute 10,000 troops to patrol the Sunni Tri­an­gle extend­ing west and north of Bagh­dad. They will remain under Turk­ish com­mand and sep­a­rate from the two inter­na­tional divi­sions rumored to be en route to Iraq.
This is most alarm­ing. I wrote, dur­ing the war, that I felt the Turkomen were cry­ing wolf about the threat to their secu­rity in a bid to play Turkey and the United States off one another so as to reign in the Kurds when it came time to estab­lish a gov­ern­ment in Kirkuk.

[Salim Otrakchi, a Turko­man spokesman] said the Turkomen were espe­cially wor­ried about Kirkuk because the PUK had promised it would not go into the city with its forces and it did any­way.
At this point, it’s prob­a­bly a good idea just to tell you that I don’t believe what any­one is telling me at face value. The Kurds, deep in their hearts, really do want an inde­pen­dent Kur­dis­tan and this talk of fed­er­al­ism is the prac­ti­cal side of Kur­dish nation­al­ism. If they thought they could get away with it, they would bolt Iraq and never look back, I think. The Turkomen don’t really feel that threat­ened, but they see the Kurds with their new bud­dies, the Amer­i­cans, and worry they’ll be left out of any set­tle­ment and devel­op­ment plans in the north. So, they’re try­ing to play the Turks off the Amer­i­cans to keep the Kurds in check. And the Turks … Well, actu­ally, I believe them when they say they’re wor­ried about their secu­rity. They’re a truly para­noid bunch.

While this may be an iso­lated inci­dent, as I men­tioned, I could also be wrong in my orig­i­nal thoughts on the sub­ject. I watched with dis­may as in the days fol­low­ing the cap­ture of Bagh­dad and Kirkuk as the Kurds drove Arabs from land they felt had been taken from them under Sad­dam Hussein’s Ara­biza­tion pro­gram. Revenge was being taken and the U.S. wasn’t doing enough to stop it.
Well, now the U.S. has its hands full with the Sunni Tri­an­gle and the guer­rilla fight­ers there. Most of Iraqi Kur­dis­tan has had but a sprin­kling of Amer­i­can troops with most of the secu­rity being pro­vided by Kur­dish forces. Per­haps long-simmering ten­sions are start­ing to boil over after a bru­tally hot sum­mer.
I hope not. But — and I apol­o­gize for again refer­ring back to myself — as I wrote on Jan. 12, 2003:

Instead of a nice, clean occu­pa­tion that results in the first Arab democ­racy — and a net­work of Army bases from which to project power through­out the region — I pre­dict the United States will have years of guerilla insur­gency from nation­al­is­tic Iraqis (some of the fiercest nation­al­ism in the Arab world), the dirty job of sup­press­ing Kur­dish and Shi’ite inde­pen­dence move­ments and Sunni power grabs, the prob­lem of al Qai’da slip­ping across the bor­ders (with the help of Iran and sym­pa­thetic Saudis) into the coun­try to stike at Amer­i­can troops and med­dling in Iraq’s inter­nal affairs by Turkey, Iran, Saudi Ara­bia and Rus­sia. And don’t for­get the resent­ment in the region that will occur when the United States begins exploit­ing the Iraqi oil fields for its own pur­poses. No one will like that, least of all the Iraqis.

So far, it appears only the last pre­dic­tion hasn’t come to pass. Let’s hope this lat­est inci­dent isn’t the start of some­thing far worse.