Starving Out the Baní Crawford

For some inscrutable Middle Western reason, Prof. Cole has suddenly decided to look in the Persiphone press for anti-GOP zingers about the former Iraq, and, as I speculated the other day, it looks as if they do exist to be found:

Fars News reproduces in Persian on May 24, 2008, another anti-American fatwa by Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani of Najaf. It says that its correspondent in Najaf reports that an Iraqi Shiite submitted the following to Sistani: 'I sell foodstuffs. Sometimes the Occupying Powers or their associates come to my establishment. May I sell them foodstuffs?' Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani replied: ' Selling foodstuffs to the Occupying Powers is not permitted.'

"And the daleel for that is, Your Eminence?"

Last I knew, the US military in Iraq does not buy its food from Iraqis but rather imports it, for fear that Iraqi nationalists might poison it. (( Ahem! )) So the fatwa has no immediate effect. But if Sistani is laying the grounds for a Gandhi-style non-cooperation movement, he certainly could put a crimp in the American military's style in Iraq. I can't imagine US troops could function in the Shiite south or much of Baghdad without Shiite cooperation. Sistani still has a great deal of moral authority, and would be backed by less cautious clerics such as Muqtada al-Sadr and Ayatollah Jawad al-Khalisi. (( Who? )) This fatwa is significant in light of the reports that Sistani has been orally permitting attacks on US troops by Shiite militiamen loyal to the Shiite religious authorities in Najaf. Then an Iranian news service reported yesterday that Sistani is also coming out against the proposed mutual security agreement between the United States and Iraq that is intended to serve as a Status of Forces Agreement after the United Nations Security Council authorization for US troops to be in Iraq expires in December. The report says: "The Grand Ayatollah has reiterated that he would not allow Iraq to sign such a deal with 'the US occupiers' as long as he was alive, a source close to Ayatollah Sistani said. The source added the Grand Ayatollah had voiced his strong objection to the deal during a meeting with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in the holy city of Najaf on Thursday." Sistani may have been forced to take a stand on this issue because his clerical peers and rivals are coming out vocally on it. The man some consider the 'fifth Grand Ayatollah of Iraq,' Sayyid Kadhim al-Ha'iri (who resides in Qom, Iran because he cannot abide the Occupation regime in Iraq) has denounced the proposed security agreement in no uncertain terms. Fars News had reported in Persian on May 22 that al-Ha'iri (Haeri) rejected the security agreement. "Every [schoolboy] knows that America intends to legitimize its illegitimate presence in our country," so as, he said, "to loot its wealth and spreak poverty and deprivation." Haeri argues that the US is hoping to use the new bilateral security agreement to escape from Chapter 7 of the UN Charter, which subjects its actions in Iraq to the authority of the UN security council.

"Subjects its actions" is good. ‘Spreak’ looks like a Humtydumptyian portmanteau for ‘wreak and spread’, though God knows best. Plus notice the blatant swipe from Rúholláh Cardinal Khomeiní in the next paragraph:

Haeri said that the US wants to ensure that "even American dogs in Iraq are reassured and protected from any threat of being tried by the state or the people, while all political institutions and courts, including the president of the republic, the prime minister, the representatives in parliament and the populace of Iraq must be answerable to the Americans." He called on Iraqis to work toward their liberty and said that America had never honored any of its treaties. He warned Iraqis against so humiliating themselves, quoting a saying from the Prophet Muhammad, "Beware abasement!" He called on Iraqis to unite against the conspiracies of the enemy. On Friday, arch-conservative Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami of Iran weighed in on the debate, saying in a sermon: "American forces will keep the ministries of defense, interior and intelligence under their supervision for 10 years . . . Iraqi tribunals will not be able to judge American military personnel and employees of firms who work for the US military ... It is open-ended slavery. It is the worst humiliation… Any hand that signs such an agreement will be considered by Iran as a traitor to Islam, to Shiism and to the Iraqi people...."

(Apart from that, Mrs. Lincoln . . . ?)

So Sistani no doubt feels he has to make himself heard on all this or become irrelevant.

JC is worth attacking seriously about that bit of amateur wheeling-dealing. For the rest, he fills in some non-gaps for the convenience of Rip Van Winkle:

The agreement will specify how many bases the US may have in Iraq, where, and for how long. It will probably also grant US troops extraterritoriality, that is, a guarantee that they will not be tried in an Iraqi court for any crime committed on Iraqi soil. The extraterritoriality of foreign troops was a common legal feature of colonial arrangements in the region. It was one of the things the nationalist movements campaigned about, and typically they abrogated it as soon as they came to power. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini made the legal immunity of US troops in Iran in the 1960s and 1970s a plank in his platform of revolution against the Shah. Both the US and the Iraqi government appear to recognize that US bases in Arab Iraq are likely to be contentious, and apparently the thinking is now increasingly to site most of them in Kurdistan, where the population is more welcoming. That scenario, however, seems to me to have severe drawbacks. Iraqi Kurdistan is harboring guerrillas of the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK), who have frequently hit Turkey and provoked strong Turkish reprisals. You want to put US troops in the middle of that? The bases would have to be provisioned via Incirlik Air Force Base in Turkey, so the Turks could always blackmail the US military into supporting them against their Kurdish hosts! Kurdistan is landlocked and surrounded by potentially hostile powers-- Iran, Syria, and and the arab provinces of Iraq. Is that the sort of place it is wise to site thousands of US troops?

Cole’s Free Kurd baloney comes from an English-language Gulfie source , a much less promising place to look for secret clues about the sinister Safavids. M. de Barazanji below obviously thinks the Safavids very sinister indeed, and especially when they disguise themselves as neo-Iraqi subjects. Yet his ill-informed notion that militant extremist Republicans are ever goin’ta do anythin’ for anybody but themselves suggests that disappointment for the Magnificent Mountaineers is just around the next bend in the tunnel. JC really should have been able to figure out that what M. de B. wants for Free Kúrdestán tells one nothing about what AEI and GOP and DOD are likely to do about their own problems.

US and Iraq set to seal security accord 05/24/2008 07:24 PM | By Basil Adas, Correspondent Baghdad: The Iraqi and US governments are to sign a long-term military cooperation agreement within a framework of strategic friendship and cooperation that will be complete in about two months. These negotiations seem to be very difficult for Iraqis because Americans have rejected the restrictions and conditions which the Iraqi government intends to impose on American forces operating on its territory, according to the Iraqi Parliament Security and Defence Commission's Vice Chairman, Abdul Karim Al Samarai. Samarai told Gulf News: "There are disagreements with the Americans about the number of military bases that the Americans want to build and their locations, in addition to the power and authority that forces can enjoy inside Iraq." Al Samarai said the Iraqi and American sides both agree about the importance of these military bases, but during negotiations another problem has emerged. Americans seem to be putting off the Iraqi government's demand for a US pledge to take all practical steps to lift the international trusteeship on Iraq. That would mean releasing Iraq from the seventh item of the United Nations Charter which recognises this tutelage. According to sources in the Foreign Ministry, the Iraqi side consists of a joint committee of the Foreign Affairs Ministry, the presidency and the premiership, and the American side consists of representatives of US forces in Iraq, the US Department of Defence and representatives from significant security services in the United States with the CIA at the forefront. The commander of the Kurdish Peshmerga forces, Jaafar Al Barazanji, confirmed that there is a serious American approach to establish military bases in Iraq's northern region of Kurdistan. He told Gulf News: "The existence of the military bases is so essential for Iraq's security and therefore there must be American bases in Kurdistan, middle and south of Iraq. The Iraqi armed forces do not seem to be able to protect borders and address terrorism ... therefore the American bases should exist for the next 15 or 20 years." Al Barazanji affirmed that there are internal risks to Iraq's democratic future and there is a large flow of Islamic fundamentalist organisations in the Middle East which requires an American commitment in any long-term agreement to defend Iraq's security and its ongoing political process.

Can’t you just hear the native pol explaining the beautiful mutual convenience of it all to the Crawfordites, much as A. Chalabí and K. Makkiyya and others of that ilk did not so long ago? Before them, the Diems and the Nhus and the Kaisheks and .... "Come put me and my buddies in power, Sam, and then -- WOW!" Life can really be unfair: how come this scam seems to work for every nationality of selfseekers on earth save Free Kurds?

Some political sources close to the Iraqi government confirmed that Kurds have accepted establishing most of the US military bases on Kurdistan's territory, if the controversy continues over allocating them in Shiite southern or Sunni western provinces. These bases may justify the continuation of the armed Iraqi resistance in these territories. Hashim Hassan, a professor of media and information at Baghdad University, warned about the consequences of the US military bases' long-term presence in Iraq. He said to Gulf News: "The presence of these bases will fragment the Iraqi internal front because these military bases will be in the interest of one party. Besides, it can be a factor of concern for some regional countries close to Iraq, as Syria and Iran could use these bases to strike them. As for the Gulf states and Egypt's concern, there would be the possibility of using bases for political and moral pressure to accept implementing American democracy in the region."

Prof. Dr. Hassan overlooks the obvious point that once the former Iraq has been entirely restored to Levantine normalcy, there will exist only One Party that matters. One Party at most, that is, since often the local cardboard King or tinhorn Colonel-President can manage fine with zero parties. Naturally the palefaces of AEI and GOP and DOD will be allied with His Majesty or His Excellency against pretty well every other indig in sight, but that arrangement is preëminently workable and has been ever since Cassander of Macedon invented it two dozen centuries ago next Wednesday. If the good professor is seriously worried about "political and moral pressure to accept implementing American democracy," I know a gentleman who can sell him insurance against being struck by a meteorite. Sancta simplicitas!