Thousands of Sadrists Demonstrate in Kirkuk

AFP reports that nearly 2000 members of the Army of the Mahdi, the militia headed by young Shiite radical Muqtada al-Sadr, demonstrated in Kirkuk on Saturday. The demonstration coincided with a general strike by the city's approximately 300,000 Turkmen residents. Even the police stayed home.

Ibrahim Khayyat at al-Hayat provides further details. Muqtada's representative in Kirkuk, Abdul Fattah al-Musawi, said, "The goal of putting 18 companies, or 1750 men (and 180 women), on parade, was to reinforce the unity of Muslim Iraqis with non-Muslim Iraqis. "Kirkuk," he said, "is for all its inhabitants, not just for a particular group."

The parade lasted for about two hours. The Shiites of Kirkuk and of the surrounding area joined in, raising the Iraqi flag (the Kurds have their own provincial flag), and pictures of Muqtada and of his father, Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr (who was assassinated by Saddam in 1999).

Jalal Jawhar of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan said that there was no objection to the demonstration, since it was part of democracy, but that it had to remain peaceful. He also considered that "the goal of parading troops was to demonstrate the power of Muqtada's supporters and to underline their presence."

One of the issues that has derailed the passage of a fundamental law or interim constitution by the Interim Govering Council is Kurdish demands. The Kurdish parties insist on a very loose federalism, Swiss style, and they also want Kirkuk added to a consolidated Kurdish province. Kirkuk has never been a majority Kurdish city, since the Turkmen predominated there, and since the 1990s Saddam expelled thousands of Kurds and brought in Arab residents. The city is said to be one third, Turkmen, one third Arab and one third Kurdish. Ethnic violence broke out in January in the wake of a public Kurdish call for the city to be added to the Kurdish province. There are many petroleum wellheads around Kirkuk, and the Kurds want control of them. They want, as in Canada, for the provincial government to control petroleum in its province.

The Kurdish demands on Kirkuk are absolutely unacceptable to the Sunni Arabs and Turkmen. A loose federalism has long been rejected by the Shiite al-Da`wa Party. As far back as 1996, al-Da`wa broke with Ahmad Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress in large part because he had acquiesced to the Kurdish demands for loose federalism. Likewise, the Sadrists want a strong central government.

One question I have is about the ethnicity of Muqtada's supporters in Kirkuk. I've been told that perhaps a majority of the Turkmen are Shiites, and that they have in recent decades given up their unorthodox folk religion for orthodox Twelver Shiism, and that many followed Sadiq al-Sadr. Among the hundreds of thousands of Arabs relocated north by Saddam were, in addition, lots of Shiites. It would be interesting to know if the Army of the Mahdi militia in Kirkuk is mixed ethnically, with both Turkmen and Arabs.

Al-Musawi's statement about reinforcing ties with non-Muslims is also bizarre, and one wonders if the Sadrists are trying to put together a Shiite-Chaldean alliance against the Kurds in the north. If you combined the 600,000 Iraqi Christians, many of whom are in Ninevah province, with the 600,000 Turkmen or so, and added to them all the Arabs relocated to the north by Saddam, it would be a non-trivial alliance against the 4 million or so Iraqi Kurds.

Sistani's Representative in Karbala Rejects Referendum on Provincial Council>

ash-Sharq al-Awsat/ AFP: Shaikh Abdul Mahdi al-Karbala'i, the representative in Karbala of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, rejected the suggestion by another cleric that the provincial council appointed by CPA official John Berry be submitted to a referendum. He said that an appointed council is by its nature illegitimate, and called on its members to resign.

Shaikh Husain al-Sadr, who is influential in the Kazimiyah suburb of Baghdad, had agreed with Perry that having a referendum was the best path forward. Shaikh Husain's representative tried to convince Berry to reduce the number of women on the council from 11 to 5.

Vigilanteism in Basra

Scheherezade Faramarzi of AP reports on the Shiite militias of Basra and the way they are imposing both law and order, and a puritan style of life on the population (though sometimes they do some kidnapping or coercion of their own).

The militias pose a long-term problem for Iraqi security, since they violate the state's monopoly on the use of force. And they are depriving persons of rights they have under the law (e.g. to own and operate a video store that purveys a little flesh). They are coercing women into wearing scarves or veils, and it is difficult to see how women's rights can make any progress in Basra under these circumstances.

The question is whether Basra is in an exceptional situation, or whether it is a harbinger of the future of Iraq.

What a Document Looks like

Jonathan Schanzer, writing in the Weekly Standard, notes that I had asked Bill Safire for even a single "document" that shows that Saddam Hussein's government cooperated with al-Qaeda before September 11. He suggests that we might substitute for such a document his interview with Abdul Rahman al-Shamari, who he says served in Saddam's secret police, the Mukhabarat, from 1997 to 2002, and who is now "in a Kurdish jail."

No, Jonathan. That isn't a document. That is a single-sourced account from a prisoner (assuming he exists and assuming he actually was mukhabarat) who wants to get out of jail and has every reason to tell people what they want to hear. Or for all I know the Kurds have paid or coerced him to say these things, since they want US help against their Islamists.

A document has the following characteristics. It originates close to the time of the event it describes. Typically it is written on paper with ink. It has all the hallmarks of authenticity. So, for instance, a memo from an Iraqi intelligence officer dated January 5, 2000, discussing cooperation with al-Qaeda, written down in black ink and by an officer we actually know was really serving at that time, on paper of the sort used by the Baath government, with all the bureaucratic form of a Baath document--that would be a document. Since the US now has thousands of documents from the Iraqi secret police, if such a document existed we would not be speculating about it--it would have been splashed on the front pages of all the newspapers of the world. It likely does not exist.

Single-source allegations by shadowy Iraqi ex-officers were among the fallacies that pulled us into the war to begin with. And, no, the way to confirm al-Shamari's story is not to find yet another stooge who has been coerced or paid to say the same things. It is to provide the sort of evidence that would stand up in court. I'm a historian. I go by evidence. If I'm wrong, and the evidence surfaces to prove it, I will gladly change my views. Al-Shamari, about whom we know nothing, is useless for that purpose.

In good journalism, by the way, you don't go to print with a single uncorroborated source.

Mr. Schanzer does himself no favors with regard to credibility by associating himself with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, which was a major source of disinformation about Iraq before the war, and which should by all rights have lost all credibility by now.

6 US Soldiers wounded in 24 hours

Wire services quoted by al-Jazeerah report that guerrillas wounded three US soldiers with rocket-propelled grenade fire Thursday night near Tikrit.

On Friday morning, guerrillas in Tikrit lightly wounded another two US troops in a bom blast. A third soldier was seriously wounded in an attack on his convoy in Khallis, northeast of Baghdad.

Islamists on IGC Defeated on Islamic Law Provision

Raghida Dergham reports in al-Hayat that the representatives on the Interim Governing Council of the Islamist tendency suffered a political defeat on Friday when the IGC abrogated Directive 137, which it had issued in late December, and which put personal status law in the jurisdiction of religious courts. If implemented, the order would have abrogated the uniform civil personal status law of 1959.

An informed source reported to Dergham that IGC member Raja' al-Khuza'i, a maternity physician who missed the first vote, was the one who insisted that the directive be reconsidered in light of the angry public response to it. (Many women's groups had mounted protests). After a heated discussion, the measure went to a vote of the 24-member council, and the directive was voted down 15 to 9. In the late December meeting, held when Raja'i and another woman member, Songol Chapouk, were absent, the directive had passed 11 to 10.

She says that observers maintain that the vote will establish a new dynamic on the council that will be important as the IGC discusses the place of Islam in Iraqi legislation. The special meeting of the IGC called on Friday was to discuss the Fundamental Law or interim constitution it is now drafting, which was supposed to be completed by the end of February (this goal seems unlikely to be met).

The Islamists on the council are said to have left angry, and it was up to Bremer to attempt to conciliate them.

At the same time, according to ash-Sharq al-Awsat, a conference was held of secular parties in Iraq afraid that the country might move toward theocracy when the Americans withdraw. The two main Kurdish parties attended, along with Adnan Pachachi's party, Hamid Majid Musa's Iraqi Communist Party, and Nasir Chadirchi's National Democratic Party.

In Kufa, Dergham reports, the young Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr renewed his threat to lead a rebellion if the US civil administrator Paul Bremer continued to reject the position that Islam be specified is the sole source of legislation in the new constitution. He said he would persevere in this path, "even if I am killed or imprisoned." He said in his sermon, "America only came to harm Islam, but the occupiers will not be able to wipe out Islam . . . I call on the believers to be fully prepared, when the orders come from the religious leadership, to challenge the occupation."

Muqtada added, "I call upon the governing council to announce a rebellion against the decision, and I demand of Bremer personally to retreat from his statement against Islam." He said he would continue on this path even if he were killed or imprisoned.

In the meantime, a spokesman for the United Nations in New York considered it a positive sign that Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani has indicated a willingness to see elections held late in 2004. He said that if the Iraqis want to hold elections then, they would have to launch themselves into action immediately, and affirmed that the UN was ready to help. He added, "We are still waiting for a sign from the Iraqis demonstrating that they accept Brahimi's recommendations."

Abdul Hamid Confronted over his Allegation that the Shiites are a Minority

The Kuwaiti newspaper al-Qabas reports that it had a further confrontation with Muhsin Abdul Hamid, leader of the Iraqi Islamic Party and February's president of the Interim Governing council. Al-Qabas and other news sources reported recently that Abdul Hamid maintained that Shiites constituted less than 40% of Iraq's population, i.e. that they are a minority. When Abdul Hamid visited Riyadh recently, he denied having made the statement. Actually, he denied having said that Sunni Iraqis would impose their will on Shiites because Sunnis are the majority.. On his return he stopped off in Kuwait and met with the press. Al-Qabas presented him with an audiotape cassette containing his statement that Shiites are a minority and challenged his allegation that he had been misquoted. (Al-Qabas had not in any case reported that he said Sunnis would impose their will on Shiites; that was some news service.) On the cassette, Abdul Hamid clearly says, "The Sunnis are the majority in Iraq."

When confronted by Nasir al-`Utaybi, Abdul Hamid said, "The press sometimes corners us, but we are a single people, and give each other mutual aid, and we work together on the governing council and off it."

He added that Iraq is erasing the past and building a new relationship of fraternity and good relations with its neighbors first of all.

He denied that the Iraqi Islamic Party has any relationship to the Muslim Brotherhood. "We are not responsible for their past positions, whether negative or positive." He repeated his repudiation of the invasion of Kuwait in 1990.

In fact, the Iraqi Islamic Party did begin as an Iraqi branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, whatever its current relationship to the mother group in Cairo.

Social scientists estimate that Shiites are between 60 and 65 percent of the Iraqi population, but many Sunni Iraqis have trouble coming to terms with this social fact. Abdul Hamid is outgoing as president of the IGC as of March 1.

Explosions in Baquba, Baghdad

AP reports that ' In Baqouba . . . an explosion occurred Thursday in the city center and witnesses said three police cars were on fire. '. It continues,

' The U.S. command said [a] fuel truck, assigned to the 1st Armored Division, was hit by a roadside bomb in the western Baghdad suburb of Abu Ghraib. "A convoy of U.S. Army trucks was attacked," Mahir Obeid, said. "One of them was blown up by a roadside bomb while another was hit with a (rocket propelled grenade). Both of them caught fire." '

Army of the Helpers of the Sunnah a Major Insurgent Group

Al-Hayat newspaper in London says it has gotten hold of many memos and videotapes concerning Jaysh Ansar al-Sunnah and pointing to its relationship with the Kurdish radical Islamist group, Ansar al-Islam. The memos say that the Army of the Helpers of the Sunnah (AHS) has carried out 285 attacks against Coalition forces, has killed 1155 persons and wounded 160 [sic], and has destroyed dozens of helicopters, tanks and troop transports.

The memos show that there is a central leadership of the AHS, which follows a leader or "amir" named Abu `Abdullah al-Hasan Bin Mahmud. It refers in numerous places to Ansar al-Islam, the largely Kurdish terrorist group which has some Afghanistan veterans in its ranks. It contains a statement from the organization's leader, and an explanation of its structure (it comprises a number of jihadi groups operating from the north to the south of the country). Its goal is to create an army under a single leader, which can undertake a practical program not imported from abroad, "depending on the teachings of the pure [Islamic] Law." It issues a call to "brothers in Islam and jihad to join this army." (I wonder if the stricture against 'imports from abroad' is aimed at keeping independent of al-Qaeda, which would be perceived by Iraqi guerrillas as non-Iraqi in leadership).

Abu Abdullah led the group from last June, when it appears to have been formed, until January 2. (I am not clear here what al-Hayat is trying to say--was the last memo dated Jan. 2, or is there evidence of him stepping down?)

The memos claim that the organization was behind the 29 November attack on Spanish intelligence agents in the village of Latifiyah, which killed 7 and wounded 1 [the memo says 'wounded 8']. On 5 Jan. they claim to have killed 8 Canadian and British intelligence agents in two Chevrolets, in Yusufiyah in the southwest of Baghdad [no such incident was reported in wire services around this date according to Lexis Nexis].

Cassettes found with the memos list 6 suicide bombers and detail their missions in recent months.

The materials deny a relationship between AHS and the group known as Volcano.

We may as Well Just Record all our Telephone Calls and send them to Maryland

Philip Knightley and Kim Sengupta describe how the US National Security Agency and the British Government Communications Headquarters eavesdrop on the whole world. The NSA is forbidden from listening in on Americans without a warrant, but the US government circumvents this problem by formally allowing the GCHQ to spy on Americans. The NSA listens in on British calls, and then the two just swap the information.

The NSA is ten times larger with regard to personnel than the CIA, with a budget larger than the other intelligence agencies as well ($8 bn. out of about $30 bn. total). Frankly, after September 11 I think most Americans would be happier if it listens in on calls in Pakistan and Afghanistan and Hamburg a little more intently than in the past. It is not so clear that they would be happy to know it was listening in on Americans not under any suspicion of criminality.

The GCHQ was founded in 1946, but I heard somewhere that the deal on having the US spy on British citizens and the British on US, and then swapping the data, goes back to World War II.

The current row over GCHQ in New York monitoring UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan's phone calls was in some sense begun in spring of 2003 when GCHQ employee Katharine Gunn blew the whistle on the US and the British governments, revealing that the US had asked GCHQ to listen in on the phone calls of the UN ambassadors of 6 swing vote countries on the Security Council with regard to the building Iraq war. The British government seriously considered prosecuting Gunn, but backed off just a few days ago. Some have suggested that the British authorities began worrying that if the case went to court, Gunn's attorney would demand to see the memos of Lord Goldsmith, the British attorney general, on the legality of the Iraq war. We know from one leaked memo that he felt that without a UN Security Council resolution, a prolonged Anglo-American occupation of Iraq would likely involve the two in policy making that contravened international law (as it has). Others say that it just seemed highly unlikely a British jury would convict Gunn, given how unpopular the war and occupation have been in the UK.

This week, ex-British cabinet member Clare Short, who broke with Tony Blair over the Iraq war, revealed that while on the cabinet she had seen transcripts of Kofi Annan's telephone calls.

Now it turns out that whenever UN weapons inspector Hans Blix was in Iraq, his cell phone was monitored. That Blix was under surveillance and that transcripts of his phone calls were shared among the US, the UK, Australia and Canada, puts a new spin on the Blix allegation last summer that he had been the object of a smear campaign by officials in the US Department of Defense. If Feith, Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld had his personal phone calls, they were in a position to cook up plausible smears against him. Blix maintains that the authority of the United Nations has been perhaps irretrievably damaged by the very countries who should have been supporting it.

The Blix wiretaps raise an interesting question. Did the US and UK know even more about the lack of evidence for weapons of mass destruction than we thought, from what Blix was saying privately in spring of 2003 before the war?

While the GCHQ listening in on phone calls in the US is apparently just a regular occurrence, tapping Kofi Annan's line would be illegal because the UN headquarters is not considered US soil. Whatever deal Roosevelt and Churchill made about each spying on the other's citizens doesn't apply at the UN.

The framers of the US constitution wanted individuals to have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their own homes, and wanted the police to leave them alone unless there was good evidence they had committed a crime. The rise of the National Security State during WW II and in the Cold War has effectively gutted the constitution in this regard for all practical purposes. The Patriot Act more or less repeals the Bill of Rights, which has bedevilled successive US regimes, especially that of Richard Nixon, who now finally has his revenge.

I suppose the real question is whether, when Bin Laden boasted, "I will take away their freedom," it was an empty boast or an accurate prediction.

Cole Interviews with Chicago Public Radio's Worldview

Those of you with RealAudio can listen to two interviews I did with Chicago Public Radio's Worldview program, hosted by Jerome McDonnell. The interviews are listed under February 26. One treats the Americana in Arabic Translation Library. The other is on the issue of transitional government in Iraq. Thanks to Jerome for excellent questions, and to him and Dave McGuire for seeking the interviews.

Sistani Reaffirms demand for Elections by end of Year

The NYT reports that Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani has again said the UN needs to set a date certain for direct elections in Iraq, which Kofi Annan said could plausibly be held in December or January if preparations begin being made now. He clearly wants those preparations to start, and he wants an international guarantee of a date certain. He also reaffirmed what he has said before, which is that the caretaker transitional government that will hold sovereignty from June 30 until the elections should be very limited in its powers and decisions, since it will lack the legitimacy that comes from being popularly elected. What is new here is only that Sistani seems to be saying that his earlier deadline of October 1 for elections could slip to December or January, but no later.

Two US Soldiers die in Helicopter Crash; Police General Killed

AP reports that two US soldiers were killed in a helicopter crash on Wednesday near Haditha in the Sunni heartland. Guerrillas shot down a police general in the northern city of Mosul, in line with their general attempt to discourage Iraqis from joining or serving in the new American-backed police force.

In Amara, guerillas fired a mortar shell at the local television station, but it landed in a garden outside the station and did no damage to speak of. There have been a number of such attacks on the station in recent weeks (az-Zaman).

AP reports ' And in Baghdad, attackers fired a rocket-propelled grenade at a major Shiite Muslim shrine overnight, officials at the shrine said. The RPG punched a hole in an outer wall of the Kazimiyah shrine in a northern neighborhood of the capital, but caused no injuries. ' The shrine of Imam Musa al-Kazim in Kazimiyah is among the holiest sites for Shiites, and visiting it is part of the Muharram commemorations now beginning in Iraq. This attack would fit with the strategy announced by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, leader of the al-Tawhid terrorist group, of attempting to foment civil war. The emotional impact of this assault on a major shrine at this season cannot be overestimated.

Mahmoud Uthman: IGC too Weak to be given Sovereignty

In an interview with ash-Sharq al-Awsat, Kurdish Interim Governing Council (IGC) member Mahmoud Uthman (Osman) said that a national congress should be held to elect a transitional parliament, He said that sovereignty should not be handed to the existing IGC because it is weak and lacks unity. He blamed the Coalition Provisional Authority, which has the real decision-making powers, for the weakness of the IGC, saying it had been reduced to an advisory council. He complained that the UN Security Council had erred grievously in allowing one country to rule another directly in the 21st century, quite apart from the good deed the US did in removing Saddam.

Uthman imagines a national congress meeting late this spring, composed of tribal leaders, party heads, clerics, and other notables, who might be able to elect a government that then had some legitimacy. His proposal sounded to me rather like the Loya Jirga in Afghanistan that produced the Karzai government. It did to his interview, Shirzad Shaikhani, as well, and Shaikhani asked Uthman if he meant a sort of Loya Jirga. Uthman replied "To some extent.".

High Baghdad Official Forced to Resign over Veiling Issue

Az-Zaman reports that Jawad Kadhim al-Anani, appointed to a high position in the Baghdad provincial government just twenty-four hours before, was forced to resign because he had immediately issued a decree requiring enforced veiling of women municipal employees during business hours. He thereby deeply offended hundreds of female government employees. Some employees say there have not been formal actions taken against them for not veiling, but that they receive various forms of pressure to do so. ("Veiling" here probably means wearing a headscarf and modest clothing with long sleeves and hemlines).

Sunni Clerics Fail to Secure Release of 150 Imprisoned Women

(AFP/az-Zaman): Sunni clerics meeting with US officers failed to secure the release of 150 Iraqi women imprisoned by the American forces. A US spokesman said he had no immediate knowledge of the condition of the jailed women.

Cleric Muhammad Bashshar al-Faydi said, "The Americans must understand that if they continue this way, the violence is going to increase . . . many of these women belong to tribes, and the tribal chieftains want revenge."

The Anglican Church envoy in Iraq, the Rev. Canon Andrew White, also took up the case of the imprisoned women.

The Passion of Christ in the World Religions

The phenomenon of Mel Gibson's The Passion, about the death of Jesus of Nazareth, has provoked a lively debate about the dangers of anti-Semitism. Historians are well aware that medieval passion plays (which shared the sado-masochistic themes of Gibson's movie) often resulted in attacks on Jews. The concern of American Jewish leaders is therefore entirely valid.

Some of the problem goes back to the Gospel writers, who wrote many years after the fact and depict the Jewish leaders in a frankly implausible way because they had lost contact with Jewish customs. They have the Sanhedrin or Jewish religious council meeting about Jesus on the Sabbath, which just would not have happened. They have it meeting at night, which also would not have happened. Their account accords with nothing of the procedures and laws we know to have been followed at that time. The likelihood is that the Romans arrested and killed Jesus as a potential Zealot or religious radical whom they perceived as threatening, but that the later Christian community strove to have better relations with Rome just as Roman-Jewish relations got very bad. So the Gospel authors soft-pedaled Rome's role and invented nocturnal Sabbath Sanhedrins that have gotten Jews beaten up ever since.

In a post-September 11 world, this controversy has taken on wider significance. Film critic Michael Medved argued that American Jewish leaders were wrong to attack the film as anti-Semitic because they risked alienating Christian allies (of rightwing Zionism, apparently), who were needed to fight the "Islamo-fascists" (his word, on the Deborah Norville show) attacking Jews in Israel.

Although Medved appears in this argument to be taking the more "assimilated" position, basically saying that the rightwing Christians should be allowed to broadcast their historically absurd and offensive images of first-century Jews in peace regardless of the consequences, in fact his is the more reactionary position on several levels.

First, he is saying that a minority that faces many attacks every year in the US and Europe should not speak out about cultural phenomena that might increase those attacks. The United States is a relatively tolerant society in world-historical terms, but the ADL alleges that 17 percent of Americans hold anti-Semitic beliefs, and there are every year too many incidents of vandalism of Jewish property and harassment of Jews. I suspect I differ with the ADL on what exactly anti-Semitism is (it isn't criticism of Israeli policies in the Occupied Territories), but I accept their number as a ballpark figure. And if that is the number, it is way too high. Bigotry is when you stereotype an entire group, and then blame individuals for imagined "group" traits. Individuals are unique, and you can't tar a whole people with a single brush. And, it is by speaking out about the problem that any minority makes progress in the United States. Who would imagine telling African-Americans they should be quiet about films that depict them as villains harming something whites hold dear? No liberals that I know of.

Second, Medved is eager to perpetuate a dangerous political marriage of convenience between the rightwing settler movement in Israel and the American evangelicals. The rightwing Christians in the US don't support the settlers against the Palestinians because they love Judaism. They want to set things up for the conversion of all Jews to Christianity and the return of Christ, i.e., for the end of the Jewish people. (Interestingly, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is aware of this "Christian Zionism" and cites it as one motive for the US occupation of Iraq; it is not making Israel or the US any friends). The Likud may get votes and de facto campaign money from the rightwing Christians in the short term, but it is encouraging Christian anti-Semitism by disguising it as support for Israel. In fact, Israel's best interests lie in a return to the 1967 borders and making peace with Arab and Muslim neighbors, not by a ruthless expansionism and continued colonial occupation that harms Israel's image and debilitates Israeli democracy. (Yitzhak Rabin's policies of Oslo and after, before an ultra-Orthodox Jewish assassin cut him down, would have pulled the rug out from under Zarqawi's argument).

Third, it is hard to see the difference between the bigotry of anti-Semitism as an evil and the bigotry that Medved displays toward Islam. It is more offensive than I can say for him to use the word "Islamo-fascist." Islam is a sacred term to 1.3 billion people in the world. It enshrines their highest ideals. To combine it with the word "fascist" in one phrase is a desecration and a form of hate speech. Are there Muslims who are fascists? Sure. But there is no Islamic fascism, since "Islam" has to do with the highest ideals of the religion. In the same way, there have been lots of Christian fascists, but to speak of Christo-Fascism is just offensive. It goes without saying that a phrase like Judeo-fascist is an unutterable abortion. (And this despite the fact that Vladimir Jabotinsky, the ideological ancestor of Likud and the Neocons, spoke explicitly of the desirability of Jewish fascism in the interwar period). Medved is even inaccurate, since the terrorist attack on civilians in Jerusalem to which he referred was the work of the Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, a secular rather than an ostensibly Muslim group.

Interestingly, the Koran, the holy book of Islam, denies that the Jews were responsible for Jesus's death (4:154-159). It appears that some Jews of the ancient Arabian city of Medinah were disappointed when they learned that the Prophet Muhammad had accepted Jesus as a prophet of God, and had put this decision down by observing that he wasn't much of a prophet if the Jews had managed to kill him. The Koran replies to this boast (surely by some jerk in the Medinan Jewish quarter) by saying, "They did not kill him, and they did not crucify him, it only appeared to them so." What exactly the Koran meant by this phrase has been debated ever since. As an academic, I do not read it as a denial of the crucifixion. The Koran talks of Jesus dying, and is not at all Gnostic in emphasis, at one point insisting that Jesus and Mary ate food (presumably against Gnostics who maintained that their bodies were purely spiritual). A lot of Muslims have adopted the rather absurd belief that Jesus was not crucified, but rather a body double took his place. (This is like something out of the fiction of Argentinean fabulist Jorge Luis Borges). Those Muslims who accepted Jesus' death on the cross (and nothing else in the Koran denies it) interpret the verse as saying it was God's will that Jesus be sacrificed, and so it was not the Jews' doing. (Great Muslims like at-Tabari and Ibn Khaldun accepted the crucifixion). Any way you look at it, though, the Koran explicitly relieves Jews of any responsibility for Jesus' crucifixion and death. In this it displays a more admirable sentiment than some passages of the Gospels, and certainly than the bizarre far-rightwing Catholic cult in which Mel Gibson was raised, which appears to involve Holocaust denial, and which deeply influenced his sanguinary film.

3 Iraqi Contractors Killed, 2 Wounded in Mosul

AFP says that guerrillas sprayed machine gun fire from a car at Iraqi contractors in Mosul working for the Americans, killing 3 and wounded 2 on Tuesday.

Bremer fails to Resolve Deadlock in IGC over Fundamental Law

ash-Sharq al-Awsat reports that Paul Bremer met Tuesday with the nine most powerful members of the Interim Governing Council in an attempt to settle outstanding issues that have delayed passage of the Fundamental Law or interim constitution. A member of the IGC who declined to be named told SA that some powerful members had used new tactics to forestall resolution of some key issues, leaving them as time bombs that would explode in the future. These include the shape of Iraqi federalism, the question of whether there will be a three-man rotating presidency, and the prerogatives of the future governing council. He said that in many instances a provision had been voted on, but that those opposed to it managed to bring it back up and unsettle it later. He expressed skepticism that the most pressing issues would be resolved, saying that the Americans had exerted enormous pressure to have a finished document within a week. He seemed to imply that any such document would dodge all the hard questions, ensuring that they became explosive when the transitional government was forced to take them up later.

Karbala Provincial Council Row Shows Power of Shiite Clergy in Iraq

Mariam Fam has the best and clearest account I have seen of the recent trouble in Karbala over the provincial council. Apparently what happened is that the Coalition Provisional Authority decided to expand the council from 16 to 40. They asked local tribal leaders and other notables for a list of candidates, and then CPA administrator John Perry simply appointed the ones that he chose from the list.

Several Shiite clergymen, including Abdul Mahdi al-Karbala'i, the representative of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani in Karbala, and Muhammad Taqi al-Mudarrisi, leader of the Islamic Action Movement, condemned the council as undemocratically chosen because of the CPA appointments. Al-Karbala'i demanded that it resign, and four did.

Sistani is said to view the council as illegitimate because of the way it was selected.

Then on Sunday, the CPA announced that the new appointments would be subject to some sort of referendum. On Monday the governor of Karbala, Saad Safuk, forbade the holding of demonstrations unless the demonstrators had applied for and received a permit at least 24 hours prior to the rally. This decree strikes me as a violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights with regard to freedom of assembly.

One of the appointed council members who resigned is quoted by Fam,

' Saad Nasrawy said he decided to resign because he thought the selection process was arbitrary, but would have done so anyway after the clergy raised objections. "We, the Shiites, believe in our religious authority and consider their orders to be sacred," Nasrawy said. "We consider those who violate their orders to be nonbelievers...I am a Shiite. I have to obey." '

Muqtada: The UN has Agreed to the Occupation of Iraq

Excerpts from and comments by me on an IRNA (Iran) news agency interview with Muqtada al-Sadr, 23 Feb. 04 (courtesy BBC monitoring) follow. Muqtada al-Sadr, 30, is the son of revered Iraqi cleric Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr, who was assassinated by Saddam in 1999. Muqtada has taken a radical stance, demanding the immediate withdrawal of US troops from Iraq.

Sadr: "I will only negotiate with the Americans if their country says that it has come here to liberate us not to occupy us. That is because occupying a country is incompatible with the very principle of holding negotiations. We are not hostile to America, but we are the enemy of occupation." '

Asked about the UN finding that elections could not be held before June 30, he said that the UN did not have the right to interfere in Iraq's internal affairs and added, "The UN has agreed to the occupation of Iraq." He went on:

' The issue of the elections must be considered under the auspices of the Organization of the Islamic Conference and the Arab League and that is because those two organizations are closer to Iraq. At least, they have not declared their agreement to the occupation of Iraq . . . All the parties involved have agreed upon the necessity of holding elections in Iraq. However, they have a difference of opinion over its details . . .

"From the very beginning, I believed that the occupiers did not want Iraq to enjoy either the rule of the people or freedom. . . There is no reaction at present. If there is a reaction, it is going to be manifested through such peaceful means as staging demonstrations or sit-ins. ' He warned that violence would damage Islam and the Shi`ite branch of Islam. . . .

He said that elections could not be held while the country was occupied: ' Holding elections is one of the symbols of the rule of the people. It is not compatible with occupation, which is a symbol of dictatorship . . . '

Muqtada said he was opposed to the postponement of elections until 2005, and that he opposed the Interim Governing Council as collaborators with the occupation.

He said he opposed the division of Iraq along ethnic lines, and opposed a loose federal system that recognized such divisions: " The territorial integrity of Iraq must be preserved from north to south and from east to west." . . .

Of Iraq's future government: "I only want a government based on freedom and the rule of the people. Obviously, such a government will be an Islamic one. "

Iraqi Women see Window of Opportunity Closing

Scheherezade Faramarzi reports on women's aspirations for Iraq. It sounds as though not only did Mr. Bremer not appoint many women to the Interim Governing Council, but even some of the ones left on it are Islamists who favor or acquiesce in Islamic personal status law. It really is a scandal that the US appointed so few women. One, Aqilah al-Hashimi, was assassinated (she had asked for and been refused US protection). The ones left had no experience or institutional base.

Iraq as Election issue in Ohio

Leo Shane II reports that many local voters continue to be concerned with the Iraq war as an issue even when it no longer affects them personally. In this sense, the current troop shift, whereby tens of thousands of National Guardsmen are being sent to Iraq for a year, could be a factor in the election.

(Guardsmen typically thought they would be serving weekends and some summer weeks, and if they pulled a tour overseas, it would be for 6 months. The Guards were not sent to Vietnam, but have been sent to Iraq. Many Guardsmen are plunged into poverty by such a tour, losing their small businesses or substantial parts of their salaries, and some even lose their homes because they can't keep up the mortgage payments. Then there is the issue of putting their lives on the line even though no Iraqi weapons of mass destruction have been found . . .)

Ordinarily a large majority of the military and the National Guards probably vote Republican. A lot of them are upset over having been given long, dangerous duty in Iraq, at a time when that country turns out not to have posed any threat to the US. If you figure that by October some 200,000 Americans will have served long terms in Iraq, and you extrapolate that out to five close family members each, that would be at least a million citizens directly affected. If even half of them turned against Bush over the issue, that would be 500,000. The country is so evenly divided politically that such numbers may matter.

Bush started Iraq War Planning in February 2002

The Guardian reports that Rowan Scarborough reveals in his new book, ' On February 16, 2002, Bush signed a secret national security council directive establishing the goals and objectives for going to war with Iraq, according to classified documents I obtained," Scarborough wrote '

This was already pretty obvious, just from the troop movements in spring of 2002. People used to ask me if I thought there really was going to be a war against Iraq. Duh. You don't build up all those troops in the Gulf for nothing.

Treasury Department attempts to stop Editing of Papers from Iran

Those of you who care about what is left of the First Amendment in this country should read this article at Democracy Now on the Treasury Department's threats to imprison and fine any of us editors who dare edit a paper for publication from a scholar in Iran (also Sudan, etc.). Someone remarked that the legal penalties for most rapists are probably lighter! It is ridiculous that editing a paper by an Iranian contributor in any way is an economic transaction or harms national security. Treasury does this "in consultation" with the Department of Justice. This step, like most of the Bush administration's Draconian moves (most pursued by Attorney General John Ashcroft), disgusts me. Let the eagles fly, indeed. (He can't sing, either.)

I actually edit a journal, The International Journal of Middle East Studies, that receives scholarly submissions from Iran. Unfortunately, so far none of them has gotten past the referees and so none are scheduled for publication. Some editors are planning civil disobedience. This matters. Next we won't be able to write about Iran. And then gradually we won't be able to criticize the decisions of John Ashcroft or John Snow. I had my newspaper articles censored occasionally when I was in Lebanon by the Baath under Hafez al-Asad. I've been censored by the best, and I am not afraid of the yahoos in Washington, D.C. Although Treasury is issuing the threats, my operating assumption is that prosecution would come from Justice. Whenever the Bush administration has been directly challenged on these sorts of illegal steps, it has rapidly backed down. Send protest email to the Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control is ofac_feedback@do.treas.gov. The address to complain to the Dept. of Justice about the issue is AskDOJ@usdoj.gov.

UN: No Early Elections in Iraq

Kofi Annan released his report on Monday suggesting that direct elections can't take place in Iraq until December of 2004 or early 2005. He made no suggestions about how to establish a government in Iraq to which the US could hand over sovereignty as planned on June 30. He is said to be opposed to the American practice of imposing solutions on the Iraqis, and will send Lakhdar Brahimi back to Iraq to ascertain from its leading political figures how they believe a transitional government could best be chosen.

This way of proceeding seems to me unlikely to be fruitful. Iraq is in its current difficulties in part because the Interim Governing Council has proven incapable of making tough decisions. It could not even elect a president, instead choosing to have a nine-man presidency that rotates once a month, ensuring lack of continuity. IGC member Muwaffaq al-Rubaie told al-Hayat yesterday that it seems to him unlikely that the IGC will succeed in approving a new Fundamental Law (interim constitution) by the deadline of February 28. Some outstanding issues include federalism (how much autonomy, exactly, will the Kurds have?), the place of Islam in Iraqi law, and the role of women in Iraqi society. Al-Rubaie said he thought these problems were so intractable that it was unlikely they would be resolved within a week. Paul Bremer, the American civil administrator of Iraq, has expressed his confidence that the deadline will be met.

Since you can hardly have a sovereign government without at least such a rump constitution, if the IGC proves unable to pass such a Fundamental Law by June 30, it would put in doubt the transition. Al-Rubaie says the Kurds are terrified of a renewed central government with an army, and their terror makes them unable to compromise (the Kurds want an undertaking that the national army won't set foot on their province).

If Kofi Annan is waiting for the IGC to take a decisive stance on how to constitute the transitional government, he will be waiting for a very long time. Brahimi will come back from another trip to Iraq with notes that show deep division and chronic indecisiveness. Whatever Annan decides, it will be an imposition on some major political force in the country, so he may as well just be decisive. He would be the only one acting that way in this whole sorry mess.