Category Archives: Shi’a

Constitutional Con?

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BAGHDAD–Hello all. We haven’t spo­ken in a while. I wish I could give you a good rea­son for that, but I can’t. After Marla’s death, I just didn’t feel like blog­ging for a while. It’s not like there’s been a dearth of mate­r­ial, how­ever. A new gov­ern­ment, a hell of a lot of vio­lence, alle­ga­tions of prior cor­rup­tion, mas­sive mil­i­tary oper­a­tions… And that’s just in the last month or so. Iraq’s a busy place.

But this week, the new Iraqi gov­ern­ment estab­lished the Con­sti­tu­tional Com­mit­tee that will draft Iraq’s per­ma­nent con­sti­tu­tion. It’s made up of 55 mem­bers of par­lia­ment that didn’t get tapped for Ibrahim al-Jaafari’s cabinet–which took way too long to get off the ground. Three months? I mean, c’mon. The gov­ern­ment expires, in the­ory, at the end of this year any­way. These guys’ main job is sup­posed to be mak­ing sure all the checks get signed and the writ­ing of a con­sti­tu­tion. And yet, they’re act­ing like a per­ma­nent gov­ern­ment, argu­ing over cab­i­net posts and putting more thought into their own polit­i­cal futures than the country’s. This pisses Iraqis off.

And speak­ing of polit­i­cal futures, Iyad Allawi is con­sid­er­ing tak­ing the chair­man­ship of the com­mit­tee, although one of his aides told me that he’s really prepar­ing for the next elec­tion. I told the aide that I thought being chair­man of the com­mit­tee might be a nice plat­form from which to run. True, admit­ted the aide, but if the process falls apart, Allawi will be blamed for that if he’s the chair­man. I coun­tered that if the process falls apart, Allawi’s going to have a lot more to worry about than his polit­i­cal viability–and so will Iraq.

Another name being bandied about is Houman al-Hammoudi, a polit­i­cal advi­sor to Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, head of Supreme Coun­cil for Islamic Rev­o­lu­tion in Iraq (SCIRI). These two guys are handy sym­bols for where Iraq may be head­ing. If Allawi takes the chair­man­ship, the new con­sti­tu­tion will likely have more Amer­i­can input and be more sec­u­lar. If al-Hamoudi gets it, look for a stronger role for Islam and more influ­ence from Tehran. (SCIRI still has sig­nif­i­cant ties to the Iran­ian regime.)

The chair­man will be announced today, inshal­lah, so we’ll get to see where we’re going. [UPDATE 5÷16÷05 5:32:23 PM: The chair­man­ship wasn’t announced on Sun­day because com­mit­tee mem­bers can’t decide between al-Hammoudi and a Kur­dish mem­ber.] But, in my opin­ion, it’s already off to a bad start. There are only two Sun­nis on the com­mit­tee. One sug­ges­tion to increase their rep­re­sen­ta­tion is to shunt them off to a sub­com­mit­tee ghetto, where they’ll fil­ter up their rec­om­men­da­tions to the main com­mit­tee. Dr. Saleh Mut­lak, a mem­ber of the National Dia­logue Coun­cil, the hot, new polit­i­cal group for dis­en­fran­chised Sun­nis, thinks things might be OK if Allawi is the chair­man but if it’s al-Hammoudi, the mar­gin­al­iz­ing of the reli­gious minor­ity will be com­plete. This is a recipe for yet more dis­as­ter, con­sid­er­ing the Sun­nis are already sus­pi­cious that de-Ba’athification is really code for an anti-Sunni purge.

The new gov­ern­ment and the Amer­i­cans might be wise to lis­ten to Mut­lak and his com­pa­tri­ots on the Coun­cil. They have good ties to the Iraqi insurgency–the Ba’athists and nation­al­ists, not the jihadis–and they’re look­ing for a deal. As TIME Mag­a­zine reported in Feb­ru­ary, mem­bers of the Ba’athist/nationalist insur­gency are open to nego­ti­at­ing an end to their strug­gle with the U.S. “We are ready,” said a top insur­gent nego­tia­tor, “to work with you.” The Coun­cil is their Sinn Fein.

But talks may have bro­ken down. Mut­lak declined to con­firm any nego­ti­a­tions, but handed me a state­ment yes­ter­day that reads, in part:

What we can­not for­get is the respon­si­bil­ity for the con­tin­u­a­tion of casu­al­ties that is borne by a blind insis­tence on a mil­i­tary solu­tion to the insur­gency. That mil­i­tary solu­tion, over the course of now two long years, has proven to be clearly unreachable.

The U.S. and its Coali­tion part­ners, which cre­ated the con­di­tions that pre­vail in Iraq today by its ill-advised dis­so­lu­tion of the Army and its sweep­ing de-Ba’athification edicts, should drop its “hands-off“attitude toward nego­ti­a­tions and polit­i­cal solu­tions and join with all of us, those in the Iraqi gov­ern­ment and those who are out­side, in the com­mon work of find­ing a polit­i­cal solu­tion that will end the insur­gency, and bring about the new demo­c­ra­tic Iraq that we all desire.

This tells me the talks may have bro­ken down and that they’re look­ing to start them up again. Prob­a­bly because the Sun­nis are wor­ried about Shi’ite revenge squads. One could argue whether they have it com­ing or not, but that is, in effect, argu­ing for civil war. So I guess the choices are let the Shi’ites and the Kurds mas­sacre the Sun­nis or talk with the for­mer Ba’athists and bring them into the gov­ern­ment. Your pick.

And this ties in with my cur­rent obses­sion: how Iraq will rec­on­cile itself with its recent bloody past and the role of the Ba’ath Party. While many Sunni lead­ers stayed and took part in the regime, the cur­rent Shi’ite and Kur­dish lead­er­ship spent much of the Sad­dam years in exile–and they have long mem­o­ries of the oppres­sion of their peo­ple by a mil­i­tary largely com­manded by Sunni offi­cers. So it’s no sur­prise that many for­mer mem­bers of Saddam’s mil­i­tary think this is not only a polit­i­cal purge, but also a sec­tar­ian one. “They do not mean Ba’athists,” said Abu Laith (a pseu­do­nym), a cap­tain from Fal­lu­jah in Iraq’s new 8th Mech­a­nized Divi­sion. “They mean Sunnis.“

Abu Laith is a for­mer cap­tain in Iraq’s 6th Armored Divi­sion, which was based in Basra. He chose not to fight the Amer­i­cans in March 2003, when they rolled north out of Kuwait. But now he’s ready to take up arms against the new gov­ern­ment and the Amer­i­cans if talks break down and hard­lin­ers in the Jaa­fari gov­ern­ment push for a purge of the secu­rity forces. “We are pro­fes­sional men and we know how to fight,” he said.

Los­ing expe­ri­enced offi­cers like Abu Laith to the insur­gency is not some­thing the Amer­i­cans want to see, which is why they seem to be more open to talks than the Iraqi gov­ern­ment. The Jaa­fari cab­i­net and the Kurds are not in a for­giv­ing mood for a lot of rea­sons. But the choices are going to come to down to talk­ing or fight­ing. Dri­ving the for­mer Ba’athists away from talks and their jobs is invit­ing catastrophe.

“If the gov­ern­ment has 1,000 ene­mies now, they will have 10,000 ene­mies,” said Abu Laith. “We are fight­ing for our lives.”

Whew, off deadline

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Wow, off dead­line finally, and the good new — as things now stand — is that the last three days will be chron­i­cled in this com­ing week’s TIME Mag­a­zine. And you guys got to read the bulk of it here first! I’ll post a link when it’s avail­able in the next cou­ple of days.
[UPDATE AUG-30: And here’s the “story”:http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101040906 – 689431-1,00.html.]
As I men­tioned, Thurs­day was a day of enter­ing the Shrine with the pil­grims and going to the Sis­tani press con­fer­ence Thurs­day night. When the cops came to fetch us, many of us — includ­ing this “brave” cor­re­spon­dent — turned out the lights in our rooms and locked the doors. I con­sid­ered hid­ing under the bed, but there was no need this time. They didn’t shoot at us and they were (mostly) polite. I hope some­one got in trou­ble for shoot­ing at us.
I wish I had been able to learn more about Thursday’s protest shoot­ings and the attack on Kufa’s mosque, but I couldn’t be every­where at once. I think I should have gone to the protests instead of the Shrine that day. ‘Twould have been bet­ter news judg­ment.
The cops came again on Fri­day morn­ing at 6:15 (thanks, guys!) to take us to the Shrine. Tens of thou­sands of pil­grims were stream­ing through police check­points to get to the Shrine. The Mahdi mili­ti­a­men turned in a few of their weapons. I didn’t go, how­ever. I had to get back to Bagh­dad to file and we had to leave early to avoid kid­nap­pers in Lat­i­fiya.
I’m glad the fight­ing in Najaf has stopped. I’m not sure what will hap­pen now, but per­haps there’s some hope. Moq­tada has put down his weapons before in nego­ti­ated cease-fires, only to order his men to fight again. Many of his men are keep­ing their weapons, and it looks like the Mahdi Army will con­tinue as a twi­light mili­tia. If Moq­tada decides the polit­i­cal realm is not for him, any­thing could hap­pen. In Iraq, it’s best not to hope too hard.
And as we saw yes­ter­day, there is already new fight­ing in Sadr City. Some­one didn’t get the memo.

Images and sounds of War

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Back in Bagh­dad and, unfor­tu­nately on dead­line now, but here are some “photos”:http://homepage.mac.com/callbritton/PhotoAlbum30.html and a movie I shot while in Najaf.
Think the Bat­tle for Najaf is over, and Sis­tani is the big win­ner here. But I’m too fraz­zled and on dead­line to make heads of this right now. More later, _inshallah._

Bear with me…

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Bear with me, today will be light. I’m fine, and back from the Shrine for a third time in three days and I’m just too tired to write too much right now. My apolo­gies.
But at least I was in the Shrine when the pil­grims made it in. Hun­dreds, thou­sands of them flooded the war zone and turned what was a burned out neigh­bor­hood into some­thing almost fes­tive — assum­ing you find RPGs cool (like I do.)
Any­way, I think this cease-fire is actu­ally work­ing. It’s giv­ing the Mahdi mili­ti­a­men time to leave the area and vacate the Shrine. We’ll see, obvi­ously. There’s no way to ever be sure or any­thing in this place.
Going to rest a lit­tle now. Will try to blog more about today later.

Bad day in Najaf

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NAJAF — I don’t know what the news is from the rest of Iraq or even what’s going on with the gov­er­nor of Najaf. I do know what’s hap­pen­ing with the police depart­ment, how­ever. They’re raid­ing the Sea of Najaf hotel and round­ing the 100 or so jour­nal­ists at gun­point and sub­ject­ing them to mass arrest.

But I’m get­ting ahead of myself.

We started out to the shrine again today, using a dif­fer­ent route. The front is con­stantly shift­ing and the fight­ing is very fierce between the Mahdi, the Amer­i­cans and the New Iraqi Army. Sev­eral times my group — which included reporters and pho­tog­ra­phers from the New York Times, the Observer and CNN — had to turn back because of tanks and Bradleys fir­ing on Mahdi posi­tions. It seemed a lit­tle pre­sump­tu­ous to ask them to stop fir­ing so a gag­gle of jour­nal­ists could cross the street.

We ended up going through the Sea of Najaf, the for­est and vil­lage on the skirts of the old city. In typ­i­cal Iraqi humor, it’s not a sea at all, but a hot, burn­ing fur­nace of a destroyed vil­lage. It was a 2-hour walk through rub­ble and sniper posi­tions, con­stantly being on the look­out. It was here that my trou­ble started.

We didn’t encounter any fir­ing, but I fell vic­tim — again — to heat exhaus­tion. It set in and I was able to hold it together until we got to the front gates of the Imam Ali Shrine, but from there, I just had to sit and rest.

Then the bombs started. Mas­sive muni­tions were land­ing no more than 50 or 100m from us, and a pho­tog­ra­pher said a mis­sile struck the bar­ri­cade that pro­tected the peo­ple run­ning in and out of the shrine, set­ting the bar­rier on fire. I didn’t see it, but there was so many things explod­ing. We stayed with a group of Mahdi who gave me ice and water to cool me off while my trans­la­tor did a few inter­views for me. I felt like the biggest loser on the planet that I was so wiped just as we had got­ten where we wanted to go.

We couldn’t get into the Shrine; the path was under too much fire. The entrance to the Shrine sits at the meet­ing point of two streets which end at the Shrines gate. We rested in a pro­tected area on one street, and the other street con­tained Grand Aya­tol­lah Ali Sistani’s offices. As I sat, we heard incom­ing scream­ing in, but I was too exhausted to do much but cover my ears and lean closer to a wall. We kept hav­ing to fall back as the Amer­i­cans bombed closer and closer to our position.

There is a small alley­way con­nect­ing the two streets. Feel­ing a lit­tle less wiped, I crossed over to the other street to catch up with the oth­ers. As I rounded the cor­ner, I heard one of the other reporters say, “We can wheel him out of here in a trolley.”

“You’re not doing that,” I said as I approached them. “I’m walk­ing out of here.”

CRACK CRACK! Scram­ble, dust in the eyes, yells of “sniper!” and we all scram­bled for cover. My fixer and I dove into a open store front, pushed by three Mahdi guys who were nearby. My col­leagues ran round the cor­ner. We were pinned.

The Mahdi mil­i­tants were as friendly as they could be under the cir­cum­stance and urgently pressed me to the ground, pro­tect­ing me. One stuck his head out the door only to be answered with more sniper fire. He jerked back.

As I sat on the floor with the three armed me around me, I looked up at them. “So,” I said. “Shaku maku?” (Iraqi slang for “What’s hap­pen­ing?”) They started to crack up and then turned seri­ous again and told me how they were fight­ing to pro­tect the Shrine. At the moment, they were pro­tect­ing me and I thanked them.

After a few min­utes, we gin­gerly crept out and reunited wit the oth­ers. After the sniper fire, my adren­a­line was puls­ing and I wasn’t exhausted any­more. We decided it was time to head home.

How­ever, we had to go back through the Sea of Najaf again. And I gave out again from the heat. Luck­ily, we found a taxi and were able to get back to the hotel where I re-hydrated, rested and felt a bit better.

Until tonight. I was on the roof try­ing to get my BGan to con­nect when Najaf’s finest burst onto the roof with a Kalash­nikov and order me and the other jour­nal­ists down to the lobby. The cops had raided the hotel and forced all the jour­nal­ists out onto the street. We were ter­ri­fied. The cops yelled at us and pointed their weapons toward us. Sev­eral large trucks were wait­ing and knew we would be loaded onto them. Then they started shooting.

“Yella, yella” they ordered us. BANG BANG! They fired their weapons just over our heads forc­ing us to crouch. The for­eign jour­nal­ists and the Arab media were sep­a­rated into sep­a­rate trucks and we were all brought to the police sta­tion at gun­point. On the way, they con­tin­ued to scream at us and point their weapons in our faces. I tried to put my money in my bag, but a young police offi­cer thrust his Kalash­nikov at me and rifled through my bag.

Finally, we made it to the police sta­tion. My friend Phillip urged me to ride it out, be calm, smile a lit­tle. Then we were herded into the police chief’s office for the most bizarre press con­fer­ence of my life.

The Shrine would be stormed tonight, he said, and we would be allowed to get on a bus and go visit it tomor­row to see the dam­age the Mahdi Army had done to it. The Sis­tani pro­test­ers in Kufa were really Mahdi guys and they had to be killed. Oh, and thank you for coming.

A few of us put up a fight, demand­ing why they couldn’t just invite us down for a presser instead of kid­nap­ping us. Oh, no, the com­man­der said, that must have been a mis­take. I just asked them to bring you to me… There was no order to bran­dish weapons, push jour­nal­ists around and fire into the air. One cop, a lieu­tenant, just smiled at us when we pointed our fin­gers at him and said he was the one lead­ing the raid, yelling and point­ing his side arm at us.

These are Najaf’s finest. They’re like the old regime, only less dis­ci­plined. They’re ter­ri­fy­ing and they’re the most dan­ger­ous ele­ment in this con­flict. The Amer­i­cans and the Mahdi Army have pretty set posi­tions and you know they’re not tar­get­ing jour­nal­ists. But the police here have been engag­ing in a sys­tem­atic intim­i­da­tion of us for three weeks now. The gov­er­nor of Najaf has report­edly threat­ened to jail jour­nal­ists who don’t write down exactly what he says when he says it in interviews.

So we were returned to the hotel on bus. This was another warn­ing to stop cov­er­ing the Mahdi Army. To get out. My office man­ager in Bagh­dad is urg­ing me to leave, but I really want to stay. I’m unsure what to do, and the cops’ unpre­dictabil­ity is unnerving.

(Sorry this is not bet­ter writ­ten; I’m still pretty exhausted and it’s late here.)