The Washington Post is a little behind

In today’s Washington Post you’ll find (courtesy of the AP) a very brief breakdown of the upcoming elections that you could have found here a week and a half ago.  That’s what happens when you pull your staff out of the country. But still, how are we giving this country such short shrift in news coverage? Didn’t we spend billions of dollars and thousands of lives to get Iraq to this exact point? We still have more US troops here than any other country in the world!

Washington Post – “A look at Iraq’s March parliamentary vote”

The moral of the morning: keep it here for timely Iraq-related news and analysis.

Mas’oud Barzani goes to Washington (Recommended Weekend Reading)

One of the great things about not being in school anymore is reading for pleasure.  Now that I don’t have a paper due tomorrow, I can tick off books that have long languished on my reading list and consume articles in newspapers and magazines (online, mind you, I’m not buying these things) when I want.  While I apologize to those still toiling away at their syllabi, to those getting their leisurely read on: keep livin’ the dream.

So in light of my newfound literary freedom, I’ve decided to offer a weekend installment of recommended reading.  So sit back, relax, and let yourself go. It’s Sunday afternoon (and it’s not like you’re watching the pro bowl).

Barzani getting the pat down after setting off the metal detector. Eyyyyyy.

This weekend, courtesy of a reader of this blog, I offer you the transcript of Masoud Barzani’s visit to the Brookings Institution last Wednesday.  Kak Masoud Barzani is President of the Kurdistan Regional Government, head of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, and general godfather figure of Iraqi Kurdistan.  According to Brookings’ Middle East Policy Director Ken Pollack’s sycophantic description:

Masoud Barzani is one of those figures whose importance is hard to describe to people who don’t know anything about Iraq or about the Kurdistan region. I was thinking about it this morning. It occurred to me that in some ways the place that Masoud Barzani occupies in Iraqi politics and Middle Eastern politics is a little bit like the place that Paris occupies in France — all roads lead to him.

Jesus.  You were thinking about that this morning? Right. I’m sure it was just before the shower and the shave…

But just think for a minute if that actually were true, and how sad an indictment that would for Iraqi politics.  In a country tied with Sudan as one the top five most corrupt in the world, Masoud and his tribal fiefdom are the embodiment of Iraq’s most profound political flaws.  Last year he used his political hegemony to force a dramatic overhaul in the Kurdish Constitution, which potentially extended his presidency eight years and substantially expanded his presidential powers at the expense of an increasingly impotent parliament. Oh, and we would be remiss in failing to mention his deliberate policy of antagonizing Baghdad over highly sensitive issues in an attempt to consolidate bargaining power.  All roads lead to Masoud Barzani indeed.

Anyway, we’re full-on into election season and there was a lot of talk about it, so let’s see what was said.

Speaking in Kurdish and translated by Falah Mustafa Bakir, a KRG minister and the Head of the Office of Foreign Relations of the KRG, Barzani called for transparency and worried about terrorist attacks tainting Iraq’s second national election.  At the end of his conversation with Mr. Pollack, Barzani stepped back and reflected on the currently perilous nature of Iraqi democracy:

In fact, issues related to Iraq as a whole — a commitment to the Constitution, participation in the power-sharing arrangements, the governance system in Iraq, the culture of self-imposition and culture of unilateral decisional ruling in the country.

After the first 16 pages of the transcript they open up the floor to Q&A, which I would also recommend.   Particularly noteworthy is Barzani’s evasion on the question of the banning of 500-odd Iraqi politicians posed by Robert Dreyfuss of The Nation magazine. “We in the Kurdistan region of Iraq have overcome this issue and we have sold it,” said Barzani, “We have got rid of it because we don’t have the culture of retaliation and revenge in Kurdistan.”

I highly recommend this transcript not for any noteworthy insights, but simply as a great way to get to know one of Iraq’s elite power brokers.  Iraq elections are a-comin’, and they are quickly becoming the only kind of March Madness I’ll get to enjoy since my poor east coast Huskies can’t stop losing. I mean, Providence, really? Come on!

Iraqi Elections Roundup – The Banning of “Ba’athists”

Top of the Tuesday to you.  We’ve got an Iraq elections update for you courtesy of the Council on Foreign Relations.  The first article is a piece by ”International Affairs Fellow in Residence” Brett H. McGurk (who?) who blames Iran for the recent banning of 500 mostly Sunni candidates from running for parliament in stark, DOD memo-like terms:

Let’s first be clear about what is happening. The decision to ban candidates stems not from Baghdad, but from Tehran, in a move that has become familiar. In the middle of the night and to the surprise of most Iraqis, a decision comes out of nowhere that tilts power toward an Iranian-backed candidate or agenda.

I got news for ya, Mr. McGurk JD: your big bombshell ain’t news to anyone. Especially not in the Middle East, where Asharq Al-Awsat editor Tariq al-Hamid was saying the same thing in his piece “The Iranian Democracy of Iraq” last week..  Still, I can’t hate too much on McGurk: he’s a Husky (East Coast Husky, of course).  Gotta love his recommendation for the US to stay behind the scenes to work things out in these sizzling sentences: “No Iraqi can retain domestic credibility while appearing to bend to the demands of Washington. Smart power in this instance is quiet power.”  Gotta love those slick DC catchphrases!

***

CFR’s other piece on Iraqi elections is an interview with Iraq expert Reidar Vissar of the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs.  Dr. Vissar disagrees with Mr. McGurk’s diplomatic approach:

What I’m suggesting is that they [the US administration] should say more loudly that they see deep systemic problems in Iraq; they should say that they are watching these elections carefully; they should perhaps try and work for some sort of added international scrutiny with respect to these elections. In short, they should plant some sort of hope among the many Iraqis that have been intimidated by the decisions of this de-Ba’athification board and feel that there are problems with the whole political system in the country. But instead, Washington seems to have taken an extremely diplomatic approach, and that’s just not going to send any signal at all. It seems as if Washington is supporting the current Iraqi system uncritically, which can easily produce voter apathy.

Arbitrary and unexpected is about par for the course in Middle Eastern democracies working out the kinks.  Though Reidar is still a legit go-to on all things Iraq, I gotta side with the Husky on this one: Iranian supporters in Iraq stand to gain most if US directly meddles in this disagreement.  If that were to happen, not only would these banned politicians be pushed outside the Iraqi domestic arena, but they would be placed on the same sideline as the United States.  Next to Israel, that’s probably the worst political bed buddy you can have.  This will all work itself out by March.  After all, there’s plenty of time.

Oh, and in other news they finally got around to killing that asshole Chemical Ali.  ‘Bout damn time that guy got his.

An Iraqi Elections Primer (Recommended Weekend Reading)

One of the great things about not being in school anymore is reading for pleasure.  Now that I don’t have a paper due tomorrow, I can tick off books that have long languished on my reading list and consume articles in newspapers and magazines (online, mind you, I’m not buying these things) when I want.  While I apologize to those still toiling away at their syllabi, to those getting their leisurely read on: keep livin’ the dream.

So in light of my newfound literary freedom, I’ve decided to offer a weekend installment of recommended reading.  So sit back, relax, and let yourself go. It’s Sunday afternoon (and the Colts and Saints are going to win so put football on the backburner).

This week we’re going to stay on home turf and talk about the Iraq.  We’re rounding the final turn and hitting the homestretch here before country-wide elections on March 7th, so check back for local opinions and choice campaign trail quotations over the next 30-odd days.

Map of Iraq by Voting Districts

But before we get into the nitty gritty, this weekend definitely check out a great election primer from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.  They have brief explanations for the Iraqi electoral system, voter registration, and a great description of some of the thornier issues in the electoral law.  Though not terribly deep, it is a great overview that we can use as a foundation for future analysis. Here’s an except:

Two particularly thorny issues delayed the approval of the election law for the 2010 parliamentary elections: disagreement about the voter rolls in the northern city of Kirkuk, and whether to hold elections on an open or closed list system.

The Kirkuk Conundrum – This was the main obstacle to the adoption of the election law and indeed to the holding of elections countrywide. The electoral dispute centered on who has the right to vote in Kirkuk. The underlying issue is whether Kirkuk should be part of the Kurdistan region.

Open vs. Closed Lists – The open list issue was the less important of the two and probably received more attention than it deserved under the circumstances. The new law calls for an open list system.

Breakdown of Iraqi Parliament Seats by Voting District

They also have a useful description of the different political blocs which you can check out here.

Zuhair al-Jezairy

Wednesday morning  I will be going to Erbil to attend a conference on the publication of Zuhair al-Jezairy’s oral history project.  A journalist by training, Al-Jezairy was born in Najaf but left Iraq for the UK in 1979 as his life was in danger under Saddam’s regime.  Al-Jezairy returned to Iraq in 2003 to revive its dormant Fourth Estate, first as editor-in-chief of al-Ma’da (The Term) and then founder of the very useful independent newspaper Aswat al-Iraq (Voice of Iraq).  Stay tuned for more on al-Jezairy and his awesome oral history project, which documents the memories of the elderly who lived in a non-sectarian Iraq (despite nonsense from Middle Eastern ‘experts’  who claim Sunnis and Shias have hated each other forever).

Al-Jezairy is also the author of the book The Devil You Don’t Know: Going back to Iraq; an excerpt of which can be found here.

The Ugly Reality of a Separate Peace (Recommended Weekend Reading)

One of the great things about not being in school anymore is reading for pleasure.  Now that I don’t have a paper due tomorrow, I can tick off books that have long languished on my reading list and consume articles in newspapers and magazines (online, mind you, I’m not buying these things) when I want.  While I apologize to those still toiling away at their syllabi, to those getting their leisurely read on: keep livin’ the dream.

So in light of my new-found literary freedom, I’ve decided to offer a weekend installment of recommended reading.  So sit back, relax, and let yourself go. Take a break from what will surely be an underwhelming football game this afternoon and read a top Middle East-related read.

This weekend I am recommending a great piece written by Nir Rosen in last month’s Boston Review.  Rosen, an Iranian American and a fluent Arabic speaker who came to Iraq on his own in 2003, writes about the uneasiness of the peace that has settled in Iraq’s most troubled areas.  During the war, the areas in Baghdad that Rosen revisits were among the worst affected by the sectarian violence that raged uncontrollably through the country’s mixed communities like wildfire.  Rather than the surge that many hailed as the harbinger of peace in the war-torn land, Rosen argues persuasively through personal experiences with Americans and Iraqis that it was pure exhaustion and the effectiveness of the sectarian cleansing that actually ended the violence:

In fact, the subsiding of violence in Iraq in 2007 was evidence of that success: fewer people dying because there were fewer to kill; the cleansing had nearly been completed, with Sunnis and Shias separated in walled enclaves run by warlords who had consolidated control. The security gains American officials boasted about immediately after the Surge were largely the result of the expulsion of millions of Iraqis from their homes and the construction of walls to divide or imprison them.

He ends the piece by describing the new political order in Iraq:

Despite the relative calm, it was clear during my trips to Iraq in 2008 and 2009 that the post-civil war order was one of enshrined sectarianism. At the Ministry of Interior, I saw televisions in the lobby and waiting room tuned to Shia religious channels. Shia religious music blared from the radios of police vehicles. Shia religious banners hung on the Ministry of Interior and other ministries while Shia religious flags waved in the wind above the nearby Ministry of Oil and other government buildings. On the walls of the Baghdad Council there was a large mural of Shia pilgrims marching to Karbala. A confident expression of Shia identity, much as I saw at the airport in Basra, was now the most common manifestation of sectarianism. The state now belonged to the Shias.

Click here to read this excellent piece.

Yemen: This Month’s Edition of ‘Throw Money at the Problem!’

At the beginning of last week our friends at Poets and Policymakers, an excellent blog written by some SAIS colleagues and the newest edition on the blogroll, posted a piece on the recently popularized troubles in Yemen.  I would go into them here, but it seems Yemen experts are coming out of the woodwork these days, so I don’t imagine you’ll have much problem finding their take on the (many) problems in that mismanaged country.  Reading the article at P&P is a good start if you’re interested.

A man chewing Qat. The magic drug that destroys work productivity, takes up more than half of the agricultural output of the country which, in addition to gobbling up valuable water resources, prohibits the growth of food that actually feeds people. Rather than a drug, it may be more accurately described as a cash crop. Except that it has no export value. I chew it right up!

But all this to say that in their comments section I put in my two cents on the issue, namely that Yemen’s mismanagement is “like an overleveraged bank that continues to take on debt selfishly ignorant of its impending doom, and then, when it inevitably collapses, we all get screwed.”  As such, I jokingly demanded that experts discuss drawing up a stimulus package for our new best friends in Sana’a.

But now it’s actually happening!

Following a tidal wave of exhortations (see here and here) from Yemen ‘experts’ (as much as they can exist), General David Petraeus appeared on Christiane Amanpour’s CNN show to announce that we will double our aid to Yemen, while refraining from sending any troops.

As one strategist argued: Say the [Yemeni] government is paying someone $50, they [Al Qa’ida] will pay $100. At the same time al-Qa’ida Islamic “scholars” will “collect” some of the tribe’s young people, jobless and naturally religious, to begin “training”, while also providing them with occasional financial help. Mr al-Misri says he cannot tell how many adherents it has but adds: “they are growing because the environment in Abyan helps the groups to grow because of the economic and employment problems.

Where will we get this money you ask? Well here’s a start.

Still, does anyone think this money will go anywhere but into the government’s (aka the Saleh family) pocket? Especially if no one is there to enforce its distribution?  So the $50/$100 dilemma still holds, and we’re out $80 mil.  Great.

Awful Crimes of the Rich and Famous in the UAE

Today an Emirati court acquitted Sheikh Issa bin Zayed an-Nahyan, brother of the crown prince of the UAE, of all charges related to the torturing of an Afghani businessman last April.  What a disgusting sham. This man represents all the worst stereotypes of gulf oil ’sheikhs’ while bringing shame to a title that should invoke respect.  Here’s the story in brief:

last April, a video was released depicting this man, with the help of others including a man dressed in a police uniform, torturing Mohammad Shah Poor, an Afghani businessman.  At the time of its release, the UAE Interior Ministry even confirmed the identity of their opprobious sheikh, one of the sons of Zayed An-Nahyan, founder of the modern state of the UAE.

The video then made it to ABC News (as you can see from the above link), which aired part of the 45 minute long video that shows Shah Poor tied up and screaming as he is hit with a nail protruding from a piece of wood and has sand shoved in his mouth.  After the gruesome scene, in which ABC refrains from airing parts where the torture escalates to Issa repeatedly running the man over and stabbing his genitals with an electric cattle prod, Shah Poor requires months of hospital care.  This is all captured on tape mind you.

A month later, An-Nahyan is detained by the Abu Dhabi Public Prosecution Office.  State news agency promises “To ensure that all human rights obligations are met and enforced, that all national laws are applied equally and with transparency to all.”

Sheikh Issa bin Zayed an-Nahyan. Lovely.

Today, a year later, the man is cleared of all charges on the ruling that he had been drugged and so was “unaware of his actions.” It’s like a bad mafia movie only real. And did I mention the event actually took place in 2004?

The sickest part of the whole charade is the lawyer, Habib al-Mulla, who disgustingly triumphs the case as “a sign that the UAE is showing that everyone in this country can be put in front of law and judged.”  And the nerve he then shows to claim that justice has been served.  Just horrifying.

Iraq from Jane Arraf’s Post (Recommended Weekend Reading)

One of the great things about not being in school anymore is reading for pleasure.  Now that I don’t have a paper due tomorrow, I can tick off books that have long languished on my reading list and consume articles in newspapers and magazines (online, mind you, I’m not buying these things) when I want.  While I apologize to those still toiling away at their syllabi, to those getting their leisurely read on: keep livin’ the dream.

In light of my newfound literary freedom, I’ve decided to offer a weekend installment of recommended reading. So sit back with your non-work related cup of coffee and enjoy a litany of great Middle East-related reads.  Besides, it’s Saturday morning and what else do you have to do?

This week I want to recommend an interview conducted by the Council on Foreign Relations with CSM journalist Jane Arraf.  Though not academically trained, Ms. Arraf has over a decade of experience reporting from Iraq alone, and her insights into the country’s recent troubles are quite useful.  Below is an excerpt from her interview:

There have been three waves of attacks in the last several months?

The first targeted and devastated the foreign ministry and wounded half of the staff of the ministry. That attack also hit the finance ministry. That was in August. In October, another wave of suicide bombings hit the justice ministry and other government buildings. And just about a month and a half ago, there was another series of attacks that hit places that they went back to hit, for instance the court house after they attacked the justice ministry, and the temporary finance ministry after they had attacked the main finance headquarters. Clearly there is considerable strategy going into these attacks. These are aimed apparently to prove that if the government cannot keep itself safe, how can they keep Iraqis safe?

You can check out the rest of the interview by clicking here. Enjoy!

Iraq is so Yesterday

From a press conference this week at the American Embassy in Baghdad from Sen. Joseph Lieberman: An American in Yemen said what was “perhaps a bit overstated but it makes the point…’Iraq was yesterday’s war; Afghanistan is today’s war; and if we do not act pre-emptively now Yemen will be tomorrow’s war.’”

Then in the middle of last year, if you recall from an earlier post, Vice President Joe Biden said the following in an exchange with an Iraqi provincial council member: “If you fail, we will not defend democracy in Iraq. If you choose dictatorship, it’s your choice. As Americans, we don’t like to be humble, but we are forced to be. We have made mistakes in Iraq.”

So is that how our country runs its foreign policy? Pay out the nose for our ignorance, and then when we actually get the right people in place we pull the funding out from under them?  Ah well, we’ll make do with what little we have, but it’s a sad state of affairs when we overspend for incompetency and underfund talent.