Revolution in Baqubah
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By Juan Cole*
Informed Comment
Sunday, April 11, 2004
5 US soldiers Killed in Baghdad and al-Anbar
According to Reuters and other wire services:
BaqubahA violent revolt broke out in the eastern city of Baqubah, in which guerrillas mounted assaults on government buildings and police stations. Fighting spread throughout the city, only slowing down Saturday afternoon. Baqubah looked like a ghost town. US-trained Iraqi security forces did not report for duty at checkpoints and police stations. Several American troops of the 1st ID's 3rd Brigade were wounded, and 40 Iraqis were killed in the fighting. On Friday, there had been coordinated rocket attacks on a police station, the governor's office, and a US military civil affairs building. On Friday, 11 civilians had been killed and 35 injured.
West Baghdad: Guerrillas attacked a fuel convoy Saturday, killing two US soldiers and an Iraqi driver.
A 10 year-old-boy fired a rocket-propelled grenade at a US tank west of Baghdad, hitting it and setting it on fire.
In the Sunni Baghdad quarter of Azamiyah, guerrillas fought US troops and bombs were heard going off, with columns of smoke rising.
' Several blasts rang out across central Baghdad and a column of smoke rose from near the heavily fortified "Green Zone" where the US-led administration in Iraq is based, witnesses said. A US army spokeswoman said at least one of the blasts had been a controlled explosion, but had no further details. '
al-Anbar Province On Friday, guerrillas had killed 3 Marines in separate incidents near Abu Ghuraib and elsewhere.
Mosul Heavily-armed Iraqis in a truck fired at US troops in Mosul. They fired back, killing 12 Iraqis and finding the truck full of arms. (-al-Hayat). US troops also fired on a crowd of demonstrators in from of the governor's office in Mosul, killing 3.
Hillah: Guerrillas assassinated a translator working in al-Hillah for the Americans.
Kut Ash-Sharq al-Awsat reports that according to local physicians, the American fight to re-take al-Kut from Sadrist insurgents has killed 16 and wounded 26.
posted by Juan Cole at 4/11/2004 09:31:20 AM
Muqtada's Fate
Reuters is reporting that several members of the Interim Governing Council met Saturday with Muqtada al-Sadr in Najaf, seeking a compromise that might end the violence in the south. Naseer Chaderji, a liberal Sunni nationalist, said, "Moqtada has regard in Iraq, mainly through his father. But he cannot be allowed to achieve his political goals through violence. The council members told him this and at the same time acknowledged that improving the south's standards of living was a legitimate demand. "
al-Hayat says that Adil Abdul Mahdi, the representative of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, had proposed that Muqtada dissolve the Army of the Mahdi, and allow its men to be melded into the new Iraqi national army, in return for which the arrest warrant against him would be suspended by the Coalition Provisional Authority.
Al-Hayat reports that US Viceroy in Iraq, Paul Bremer, rejects such negotiations, saying that Muqtada faces three possibilities: He can surrender, he can be arrested by US troops, or he can be killed resisting that arrest. I'd just suggest to Jerry that he be careful what he wishes for. Muqtada's family has been standing up to that kind of bullying talk for decades, when it issued from the Baath, and they are not the surrendering kind. If the US arrests Muqtada, it can only do so by desecrating among the most sacred shrines in Islam. If you want to see waves of attacks on American interests from Beirut to Tehran and from Kabul to Manama, just go ahead. And once the US has Muqtada, that will simply provoke daily demonstrations in all the southern cities demanding his release. If the US kills Muqtada, his followers will likely go underground and wage a long-term guerrilla war against the US, of the sort Mr. Bremer has failed to put down in the Sunni Arab areas after a year of trying. My advice to him (not that he is good at taking advice) is, if Chaderji can get him a deal, to take it. Bremer will be back in Washington on July 1, but the Iraqis and the US troops and all the rest of us will have to live with the results of his failed policies and his arrogant obstinacy for the next decade.
Meanwhile, an AP reporter on the ground is convinced that there is a groundswell of support for Muqtada in Kufa, East Baghdad, and elsewhere, as evidenced by the throngs at Friday prayers at Sadrist mosques on Friday.
The Army of the Mahdi announced a three-day ceasefire to honor the religious commemoration of Arba'in (since the battles with the Coalition are no longer going their way, this move is also a face-saving device). The US have also agreed to freeze their military operations in the cities of the south, to allow further negotiations. Another negotiator, Jawad al-Maliki of the Shiite al-Da`wa Party, said he had given a letter to Muqtada from the CPA. The CPA spokesman denied knowledge of any such mediation attempt. Al-Maliki insisted that the document demanded that Muqtada dissolve the Army of the Mahdi, respect national institutions and laws, and that it withdraw from public buildings and allow order to be restored.
ash-Sharq al-Awsat reports that one Shiite notable who has visited Iran, has been putting out feelers to Iran about the possibility of Muqtada going into exile there.
posted by Juan Cole at 4/11/2004 09:30:44 AM
What Went Wrong in Washington and the Green Zone
Robin Wright of the Washington Post goes Bernard Lewis one better with an insightful piece on What Went Wrong with the American enterprise in Iraq. The Post is on a roll today, with an excellent overview of how things spun out of control in recent weeks by Rajiv Chandrasekharan and Anthony Shadid . (I had to scroll down to see it at the MSNBC site in IE for some reason). The article argues for arrogance and ignorance as motives in coming after Muqtada and his people right before Arba'in. But I still wonder about a darker side. The CPA told them that they cracked down on Muqtada because his militias threatened to make democracy impossible. I wonder if what they really meant to say was that his militias threatened to make it impossible for the Pentagon to install Ahmad Chalabi as prime minister.
I bring this up because Iyad Allawi has now resigned from Security Commission of the Interim Governing Council (not from the Council itself, so far). His man at the Ministry of the Interior, Nuri Badran, was forced out of office by Bremer a few days ago. Allawi's resignation from the Security Commission is a protest against his man being fired and against US policies in Iraq. He complained in the newspaper of his Iraqi National Accord, "The commission does not have prerogatives to find effective solutions to the deterioration of the security situation" in the country." Wire services said, ' The paper said Allawi had submitted a letter to the current Governing Council president, Massud Barzani, in which he expressed "reservations on the measures adopted by the top civil administrator Paul Bremer and his armed troops." '
Now, Allawi was the one who organized the ex-Baath officers for the CIA and the State Department, and who tried to foment military coups against Saddam, but failed. The Company and State turned to Allawi especially from about 1996 onward, when they dropped Ahmad Chalabi, who could not account for the millions of dollars they had given him. The Pentagon picked up Chalabi, however, and backed him especially hard once Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Feith got into office early in 2001. Unlike Allawi, Chalabi wanted deep debaathification, the destruction of the Baath army, and a disqualification of the ex-officers. The two have been rivals for a decade.
Allawi's place on the Security Commission was taken by Muwaffaq al-Rubaie, a Shiite and former member of the Basra branch of the radical al-Da`wa party, who is now close to Grand Ayatollah Sistani. Ahmad Chalabi has increasingly associated himself with Rubaie and other pro-Sistani Shiites on the IGC.
So, my question is, was Badran gotten rid of and Allawi sidelined because the Pentagon is now at the endgame, intending to shoehorn Chalabi into power in Iraq? Are the rivals to Chalabi, from Muqtada to Allawi, being targetted one after another by Rumsfeld's representatives in Baghdad? We by now know how completely hollow the talk of Rumsfeld and crew about "democratization" is. How many people have been elected to office on a one-person, one-vote basis in Afghanistan, Iraq, or any place else as a result of Rumsfeld's policies? Everyone is appointed or jiggered into office by a manipulated Loya Jirga. Chalabi seems set to be jiggered into office. And, his militia appears not to be considered a threat to democracy, since the Pentagon even flew it into Iraq.
posted by Juan Cole at 4/11/2004 09:29:54 AM
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*Juan Cole is Professor of History at the University of Michigan |
