| Ahmed Abu Risha, who took over leadership of the Anbar Salvation Council from his murdered father, brother, obviously, gave a long interview to al-Arabiya this week. It's interesting to get a sense of how his political thinking is developing. He began by talking about his recent visit to Washington. He placed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and Joe Biden in the same category - really. He said that first Zarqawi and Abu Hamza al-Muhajir declared an Islamic State in Anbar, and then Joe Biden declared a plan for partitioning Iraq, and that he had gone to Washington to argue that neither was the reality of Iraq. He said that he told Bush that he carried a message from all the tribes of Iraq, Sunni or Shia, that they opposed partition of the country - and that Bush told him three times that such a partition would not happen. Somebody tell Abd al-Aziz and Ammar Hakim. Intriguingly, there is no indication in the interview that Abu Risha was made aware of the impending Bush-Maliki agreement, announced a couple of days after the interview aired, during these meetings with the President. |
It somewhat lowers the credit of 1950's vintage Pol. Sci. that Abu Aardvark overlooks the possibility that the schizomaniacal fiends of SCIRI may rely upon corrupt smoke-filled townsmen to the exclusion of noble open-air Bedouin. AA retains enough proportion to see the funny side of der Erwecker des al-’Anbárs, but he remains decidedly Sunninternocentric:
| The most interesting parts of the interview revolved around the question of Sunni political representation. The interviewer asked Abu Risha who gave him, or the Anbar Salvation Council, the right to claim to represent anyone. Abu Risha replied that their success against al-Qaeda was the basis of their legitimacy, a fascinating mirror of the claims of the insurgency factions that their legitimacy derived from their military success against the American occupation. (He repeatedly praised the institutions of the Iraqi state, especially the the Army - but said little about the Iraqi government.) Power indeed flows from the barrel of the gun, in Abu Risha's answers, rather than the ballot box. |
If Abú Rishá has trouble distinguishing Sen. Biden from M. al-Zarqáwí, how about Abu Aardvark's syncope of "power" and "legitimacy"? Even in the 1950's, social scientizers knew better than that, I believe, the question having been raised recently in conjunction with Germany, among other neorégimes of those times. And then there comes Staat versus Regierung, an antithesis which seems much better to befit the Berlin end of the Baghdád railroad, although at this point AA muddles that Prussian antithesis up with the one between Macht versus Recht, a.k.a. "the ballot box." That is quite another story. AA might reflect, to begin with, that it is perfectly possible for a neorégime to lack both ingredients, as for instance that of poor M. al-Málikí, which possesses little "legitimacy" and less power. Even der Erwecker cannot envy poor M. al-Málikí his gun barrels too seriously, I trust, not at this point in the aggression. When the Sunní Ascendancy enjoys its own again, things will be different, of course: that proposition is a political tautology.
Der Erwecker may be a bit less of a clown than the Herr Prof. Dr. makes him out. Perhaps. Some sentence containing "[our] success against al-Qá‘ida [is] the basis of [our] legitimacy" would be plausible enough in the context of Little Brother debriefin’ the hero on the tribes of semiconquered Mesopotamia: the hero would be referring exclusively to the sort of legitimacy-basin’ to be expected of Crawfordite vigilantes, i.e., "Our legitimacy from your point of view, Mr. President." ’Abú Ríshá's private notions of why his relatives and friends and clients and dupes support him, or should support him, almost certainly contain many factors of scant interest to a militant extremist Republican.[1]
Even by the Aardvarkidean account of him, the hero must attach some smidgen of importance to ballot boxes, at least to deny any support thence to his miserable opponents and rivals:
| Abu Risha dismissed the electoral legitimacy of both the local councils and the Tawafuq Bloc due to the low levels of Sunni participation in the elections. He pushed the idea of an Iraqi Awakening (Sahwa Iraq) as a "political entity" as the legitimate representative of all Iraqi tribes and all the various Awakenings. He claimed that there could be no conflict between the Awakening and the armed factions, but never got specific despite some pointed questions from the interviewer. Whenever the armed factions came up, he would change the subject to tribes - an obvious finesse of a politically major question. |
I'd have thought it worth explaining from a high and dry Pol. Sci. point of view, Mr. Bones, exactly what "pushed the idea of" signifies here. It does not sound as if der Erwecker desires any encounter between tribes and ballot boxes, in which respect he shows himself a thoroughly orthodox and up-to-date Levantine pol, of exactly the same mindset as Gen. Mubárak and Col. Qadhdháfí and les altesses royales du Ryadh and so on down the list of usual suspects all the way down to the tiniest Gulfie minnow.
’Abú Ríshá might conceivably recommend himself to the Party of Grant on precisely those grounds, for it is the Party of Harding as well, after all, that has, or used to have, a cravin’ for "normalcy." Normalcy is not exactly the same political fluid as legitimacy, perhaps, but it has been closely associated with it ever since M. de Talleyrand-Périgord made the match. "Hey, guys, put ME in power, wouldja? I promise you I'll make your Peaceful Freedumbia normal again!" Some classy invasionites from the tanks of thought would find that an unattractive propositions, bein’ stubbornly devoted to mirages of Domino Democracy™, yet a majority of GOP geniuses. and even of Party base and vile, would probably be prepared to settle for normalcy at this point. [2]
One speculates in a void, to be sure, for the Herr Prof. Dr. says not a word about what "pushed the idea of ... a ‘political entity’ as the legitimate representative of ..." means on the positive side. Perhaps the correct guess is to take that wordlessness at face value and imagine the Awakener proposing no arrangement with GOP extremism more definite than "Why not everybody simply pretends that I am legitimate?" Political grown-ups in the West will find that a paltry sort of legitimacy, no doubt, but then ’Abú Ríshá is no Westistání, and the Kiddie Krusaders are, ex hypothesi, political kiddies.
A little of the rust and tarnish comes off Georgetown Pol. Sci. after that, however, when Abu Aardvark offers a tolerably just appreciation of the stumblebums' nifty Bribe-A-Tribe™ gizmo:
| Finally, as always with the Awakenings, his position ultimately came down to money: he complained that under "the former government," Anbar received 870 [b]illion dinars a year from the central government, but in the 2007 budget (he claimed) it got only 289 [b]illion dinars, which weren't being spent appropriately. Hint, hint. |
If the begging bowl is to be obtruded by der Erwecker himself, then the suggestion I made in note [1] becomes more urgent than ever. The Crawfordites are not likely to go on payin’ out the hero's pension -- plus relatives' and friends' and clients' and dupes' ditto -- indefinitely merely because of his ornamental value or his past services. The militant Republicans can be rather astoundin’ly stingy when it comes to their little foreign friends, as opposed to their good ideobuddies over at Blackwater or Halliburton.
(AA goes on at length, but here ’Abú Ríshá and I will exit the bus.)
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