Abu Aardvark

is the Islamic Army going back to the mattresses?

It hasn't gotten any attention that I've noticed amidst the furor over the provincial election law and Kirkuk, but a few days ago the Emir of the Islamic Army of Iraq announced a new offensive against American bases and troops.   This campaign was authorized, according to the very brief statement, because Iraq's fate must not be determined by occupiers or their agents.   This follows on the heels of the announcement a few weeks ago by Jaysh al-Mujahideen that it was leaving those two coalitions, of which it was a founding member along with the Islamic Army, due to their failure to produce any political results.

Why does this matter?  Because the Islamic Army is the core of the coalition of 'nationalist-jihadist' insurgency factions which have expressed interest in joining the political process (the Reform and Jihad Front, the Political Council of the Iraqi Resistance) and is one of the key factions believed to have joined up with the Awakenings Councils / Sons of Iraq in force.  Its public break with the Islamic State of Iraq (AQI) in April 2007 was probably the most important turning point in the transformation of the Sunni insurgency.   

This could very well just be a propaganda move, an attempt to rebuild some credibility and draw attention to their military capability.  It may amount to nothing more than an upswing in videos of exploding hummers.   But that could backfire upon them, since if attacks do not in fact begin to pick up, it could prove seriously damaging to the Islamic Army's remaining credibility and devalue them as interlocutors.  I've already seen some mocking posts on other forums asking, essentially, "where's the beef?"

Or, it could be the beginning of something else.  The announcement follows months of grumbling from various Awakenings leaders about being targeted by al-Qaeda in Iraq, about disappearing American cash, about their not being integrated into the Iraqi Security Forces. It follows the as the fall from grace of Abu Abed, the prominent Awakening leader widely believed to be from the Islamic Army who has fled to Jordan.   If the Awakenings are going to switch sides again, the Islamic Army would presumably be the center of gravity. 

The timing seems odd, given that the US and Iraq seem to converging on just the kind of timeline for withdrawal of American forces which the IAI has always demanded as a condition for its joining the political process.  Still, we may be about to find out whether the insurgency factions which turned against al-Qaeda and joined the Sons of Iraq can and will go back to the battle.  Are they just a "bunch of hoodlums" (in the immortal words of Gen Jack Keane), an exhausted force which can safely be ignored, or are they the core of a still-formidable fighting force which voluntarily laid down its arms but could easily pick them back up (as, say, Steve Biddle would suggest)?   I really hope that we aren't about to find out.

USIP Iraqi Interior Minister

I spent the morning attending a public event at the US Institute for Peace (again!) with the Iraqi Minister of Interior Jawad Bolani.   You know how sometimes you go to events with public officials and hope that they will say something new or controversial, or perhaps slip up and say something unintentionally revealing? 

Well, this wasn't one of those. 

Bolani painted a generally rosy portrait of progress in reforming the MOI, speaking in highly general terms about improvements in the training, administration, and performance of the Iraqi police.  He said all the right things about the rule of law, the need for professionalism, and so forth... exactly what you'd expect.  He talked about how he began, upon taking office in June 2006, with a range of reforms aimed at  improving services, building institutional capacity, and overcoming the corruption, sectarianism, weak leadership, poorly trained police, and so forth. That catalogue of challenges at least implicitly admits the staggering scale of problems in MOI detailed in American reports such as that by General Jim Jones last September which concluded that the Iraqi Police should be disbanded and rebuilt from scratch.  Bolani seems to recognize the problems and to be trying to repair them, and as a USIP panel concluded in April has made at least some progress.   The closest he got to controversy was when he hinted at the gap between his orders and the implementation of those orders - the perennial problem in these affairs - but didn't elaborate and wasn't pushed.

Questions failed to elicit much more.  He offered few specifics on the extent and nature of purges of sectarian actors.  Nor was he pushed to delve in any detail into the legacy of former Minister of Interior Bayan Jabr, whose success in turning MOI into a "dysfunctional" bastion of sectarian Shia militias was punished with an appointment as the Minister of Finance in Maliki's government.   He declined to offer a date by which the Iraqi police might be ready to take over security responsibilities.   Asked about the integration of the Sons of Iraq/Sahwat into Iraqi Security Forces, he spoke generally about hiring security forces in all regions and the need to provide jobs and opportunities.  Asked about the impact of deBaathification laws, he pointed to the new Justice and Accountability Law which will have to provide guidance.  Asked about complaints that the detention of Sadrists in Basra, Sadr City and Amara were intended to weaken the Sadrists ahead of the provincial elections, he insisted that all arrests were for security reasons and that the detainees would receive proper judicial attention.   Asked about his views of and/or MOI preparations for a US withdrawal over 21 months, he spoke vaguely about the need to build on current progress.  Asked about the negotiations over a long-term security agreement, he described the Iraqi negotiating team and expressed hopes for a constructive partnership with the US. 

It was useful to hear the Iraqi Minister of Interior, who presumably has a reason to be in town right now, but I'm afraid I was unable to pick up anything really intriguing to pass on here.  Perhaps others in attendance (including Paul Wolfowitz, I noticed!) picked up something interesting or novel in his presentation.  If so, please chime in.

Cracks in the Foundation

I spent the day today at a fascinating day-long conference organized by the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point about the various internal and external challenges to al-Qaeda within the Islamic world.  By Chatham House Rule I can't talk about the specifics of who was there or what was said, but I can say that it was one of the more interesting events of its kind I've been to lately.    Speakers looked in depth at the experience of radical Islamist movements in Yemen and Algeria, the internal arguments within jihadist circles (including some made famous recently by Larry Wright and Peter Bergen, but others as well), the various ramifications of al-Qaeda's relationship with various affiliate movements from Iraq to the Maghreb, the role of various trends in Saudi salafism, and more. Wish I could offer more detail but really can't. 

There's no rule against my describing my own talk, though.  I spoke about the relationship between al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood:  not about the arguments over whether and how to engage with the MB, and not about the deep history of the relationship (back to the splits in the Egyptian MB over Qutb) but specifically over how AQ and the MB view each other today.   While I'm not going to reproduce the whole talk here (I will be turning it into an article very soon if I can just find the time), and I'm not going to repeat familiar parts such as the core doctrinal differences between the two movements, the basic argument was that this long-simmering relationship turned "hot" in late 2005 - early 2006. It has increasingly emerged as a central ideological battlefield within Islamist politics, triggered by Zarqawi's bombing of the hotels in Amman (which made things very difficult for the Jordanian MB), the Hamas electoral victory in January 2006 (perhaps the single most divisive moment), the Hezbollah-Israel conflict (where much of the MB sided with Hezbollah but jihadist purists refused to accept the Shia party as legitimate), and - of course - Iraq.  Keeping in mind the importance of local variation (MB organizations really differ from country to country) and splits within individual MB organizations (the struggles between different trends within MB youth), it's difficult to miss the rising salience of the core doctrinal and organizational divides. 

It isn't always appreciated the extent to which Iraq proved a particular challenge to the MB.  Most MB members opposed the war, and supported the 'muqawima'.  But the rise of Zarqawi's methods and ideology repelled many of them, leading to sharp public controversies between Zarqawi and Yusuf al-Qaradawi (among others).   It is quite interesting that there has been virtually no evidence of any MB ‘foreign fighters’ in Iraq, while in one al-Ekhlaas posting in October 2007, Abdullah Mansour complained:  ‘why has the Ikhwan not issued one official statement calling its followers to jihad in Iraq?”  The decision of the MB's Islamic Party to contest elections in 2005 and join the government placed it at sharp odds with prevailing sentiment in most of the Islamic world, not just al-Qaeda, and disturbed many within the Muslim Brotherhood itself - tying Jordanian and Egyptian MB leaders who I've interviewed over the last couple of years into knots. It highlighted, according to the Palestinian-Jordanian journalist Yasir al-Za'atra, the absence of any real global MB organization able to control its national organizations. 

The split between the nationalist jihadist 'muqawima' factions and the Islamic State of Iraq (AQI) in April 2007 drove this to a fever pitch, with the jihadist forums (led by statements by Abu Omar al-Baghdadi and Abu Hamza al-Muhajir) coming to define nearly all of their Islamic rivals as "Ikhwani"... wiith this label extending even to salafi stalwarts such as Abdullah Janabi, the 'hero' of Falluja,  Hareth al-Dhari of the Assocation of Muslim Scholar of Iraq, the Islamic Army of Iraq, al-Jazeera (or, as they call it al-Khanzeera), and even at one point Hamed al-Ali.  Shamal al-Baghdadi summed this up a few months ago on an al-Ekhlaas posting, confessing that he didn't "know where to start with the conspiracies, treasons, hateful alliances", dubbing them the "ikhwan of apostasy, living under thumb of the tyrants and ruwafidh.. they are no better than Awakenings,  Abu Rishas by another name."   

At any rate, my talk drew on both my ongoing research into the Muslim Brotherhood and on a rather vast quantity of postings on jihadist forums over the last five years to track the eruption of the "Ikhwan issue" in the jihadist consciousness and the MB response.   Among the many, many examples that I drew upon were the works of Akram Hijazi, a Jordanian who has emerged as one of key ideologues of the centrality of MB/AQ conflict (perhaps because he’s Jordanian, where salafi jihadists much stronger than in most of Arab world); a massive five part expose by Abd al-Majid Abd al-Karim Hazeen on al-Ekhlaas in August 2007 of “the conspiracies of the Ikhwan against Islam and its people"; a number of direct appeals to Brotherhood members to join the jihad; the surprisingly large amount of time Ayman al-Zawahiri devoted to the MB, Hamas and Qaradawi in his Q+A session;  and dozens of others.  As ‘abu qandahar’ wrote on the al-Ekhlaas forum in October 2007, the "Islamic world is divided between two projects, jihad and Ikhwan."   How and why that came to be so - and whether it's really even true - is a fascinating story... which will have to wait for that article!

USIP Future of US Forces in Iraq

I sat (okay, stood outside the overflow room) through a two hour panel at the US Institute for Peace this morning, chaired by Daniel Serwer and featuring Kimberly Kagan, Charles Knight, Colin Kahl, and Rend al-Rahim, devoted to the future of U.S. forces in Iraq.  It was an unusually rich panel discussion, and all four panelists made useful and thoughtful contributions.   

To very briefly summarize, Kimberly Kagan laid out the familiar argument for the surge's success and the great progress being made, with more nuance and caveats than in some of her op-eds (but still drawing this from Colin Kahl:  "I guess I see the glass half-empty, and Kim sees the glass as... overflowing").    Charles Knight gave a highly cogent presentation of the Commonwealth Institute's "Quickly, Carefully, Generously" report, arguing passionately that there will be no real political reconciliation until American military forces leave.  Colin Kahl presented the Center for a New American Security's "Shaping the Iraqi Inheritance" report calling for "conditional engagement", arguing for the need to move away from 'Iraq centrism' (strategic interests actually exist beyond Iraq's borders, if you can believe it) and 'Iraq maximalism' (holding our policies hostage to outcomes manifestly beyond our capabilities to produce).    Finally, Rend al-Rahim laid out a devastating depiction of Iraq's current situation, and - perhaps surprisingly - offered a wholehearted endorsement of Kahl's description of Iraq and policy recommendations. 

All the presentations were rich and detailed, and I would quibble with bits of each of them and agree with others.  But I wanted to highlight here three interesting points of contention which came out of the presentations and discussion.

First, on the topic of the hour, Kagan was at pains to assert that US troop withdrawals would happen soon and the only question was when and under what conditions (in line with the ongoing blurring of McCain's position). But she later argued that troops could not be withdrawn until after provincial and national elections, since they would be needed to provide security for those vital political moments.   I do not know how to square these two claims.   Since it now looks unlikely that provincial elections will be held this year, and national elections are not scheduled until late 2009, waiting for those would mean that withdrawals could not even begin until 2010 - the year in which both Obama and Maliki reportedly want to see the withdrawal process completed. At least she didn't make the laughable argument I heard from one prominent advocate of 'strategic patience' that high levels of US troops during the elections would somehow lead Iraqis to eschew sectarian voting (it didn't help in 2005, and the election law, the integrity of the electoral process, and the behavior of political parties might matter a bit more).   

Second, on bargaining and conditionality. I thought that Kahl had the better of Kagan on the questions of conditionality as a means of influencing Iraqi behavior.   While Kagan strongly objected to the characterization of her position as "unconditional engagement", Kahl convincingly argued (based in part on his conversations with American diplomats and military officers) that the Bush administration's refusal to contemplate withdrawals undermined all attempts at tactical-level conditionality.    His presentation (and the underlying report) render laughable Charles Krauthammer's column today arguing that Maliki thinks that McCain would be a tougher negotiator than Obama (because offering unconditional support forever is such an effective bargaining tactic).  Kagan's rebuttal, that she has seen no evidence that conditionality has worked in influencing Iraqi behavior, only strengthened Kahl's point (why would she have seen evidence of it working when, by Kahl's argument, it hasn't been tried?).  At the same time, I thought that Knight (politely) drew blood with his comment that conditioning US withdrawal will fail because  the "conditions which 'make leaving possible', whether building the Iraqi Security Forces or political reconciliation, will always recede into the time horizon like a mirage."  That's one reason why the timetable idea should remain an important part of the kind of strategy Kahl advocates, since it offers a buffer against attempts on either side to backslide on commitments.   

Finally, Kim Kagan shocked me with a comment made forcefully, twice, once towards the end of her prepared remarks and again at the opening of her closing remarks:  the future of Iraq depends primarily on American decisions, not Iraqi decisions.   I found this extraordinarily revealing:  for her it really is all about us.   This infantalizes Iraqis - and, as Kahl would surely note, demands nothing of them, since it is American decisions and will which matter and not theirs.  Such a world-view, characteristic of so much neoconservative foreign policy thinking, explains a great deal.  How could one possibly contemplate drawing down American forces, after all, if American actions are the only actions that matter, American power the only power which matters, American decisions the only decisions which matter? Why would it matter what Maliki says, or what Iraqi politicians or public opinion polls say, if what really matters is only ultimately us?   

This isn't just unintentionally demeaning to Iraqis - it is also clearly wrong. Of course Iraqi decisions about political reconciliation, constitutional reforms, institution building, sectarianism, violence and more will shape the future of Iraq, influenced by but clearly independent of American policies and preferences.  Certainly none of the other panelists agreed.  Kahl pointed to the inevitably declining American influence, linking this to his oft-stated argument about the negative consequences of the Bush administration's refusal to offer any strategic conditionality.   Knight stated succinctly that the solutions to Iraq's problems will be found by Iraqis, not by us. Rahim, the only Iraqi on the panel, tactfullly ignored it.   

There was much more in the discussion, and if the video becomes available it's worth checking out. 

keep an eye on those kurds

Keep an eye on the special meeting of the Kurdish Parliament called for today over Kurdish outrage over the Kirkuk provisions in the just-passed provincial elections law, which Kurdish leadership is calling a "coup against the Constitution."  The Kurdish bloc is calling for a re-vote, which might make sense but would be of dubious legality.  Some (overly excitable?) Arab and Iraqi reports suggest that in addition to Talabani vetoing the provincial election law (over which the Kurds walked out of Parliament) the Kurds could pull out of Maliki's government and potentially even bring it down. Wouldn't it be wild if the estimably pro-US Kurds, the biggest fans of a long-term American military presence, bring down Maliki at the height of his perceived power immediately after he expressed support for the removal of US troops by 2010... over a seemingly entirely unrelated issue?  Masoud Barzani, President of the Kurdish region, is coming down to Baghdad to discuss both issues - the provincial elections and the negotiations with the US - while Maliki is still out of the country.  I doubt it will come to the worst - more likely there will be brinksmanship and some kind of resolution - but at this point it's hard to see how the elections will happen this year, and the political scene has clearly just taken a sharp turn for the worse.  Rapidly developing story to watch carefully...

provincial election passes in its own special way

The controversial provincial election law has finally passed the Iraqi Parliament, accompanied by a mass walkout by the Kurdish representatives, a raft of procedural complaints about secret voting, and warnings that it is impossible to carry out an honest, credible election on the scheduled date.   A happy ending!

The law passed with 127 votes out of the 140 members in the room (out of 275 total).  That's 46% of Parliament voting in favor, but it's legal, just barely - a quorum requires 50% +1, or 139 members.  The procedures used by Speaker Mahmoud Mashhadani ruffled more than a few feathers.  The Deputy parliamentary speaker Khalid al-Attiyah, for one, "said the secret ballot was unconstitutional."  Tareq al-Harb, identified by Aswat al-Iraq as a legal expert, seemed to agree and dubbed the vote boycotted by an entire Iraqi community as well as the failure to vote on the move to a secret vote against the constitution.

The Kurdish walkout over the arrangements for Kirkuk likely spells trouble.  At a minimum, it seems likely that President Jalal Talabani will not vote to ratify the law, which means it will not come into effect.   Even worse would be if the decision drives Kurds to now demand the implementation of Article 140 (the constitutionally mandated but deeply contentious referendum on the status of Kirkuk and disputed areas), an issue which the UN has been painstakingly negotiating for many months to avoid disaster.  And then, of course, there's the prospect of a mass Kurdish boycott of the provincial elections leading to a round of disenfranchisement reminiscent of the Sunni community in 2005. 

Bottom line: the rush to pass the law by an arbitrary deadline likely means that it will not be ratified by Talabani and thus the elections will not be held even by the end of the year, or - if they are - that they will generate more problems than they would solve.  Oh well...

provincial elections postponed to end of year (depending on who you ask)

As rumors and reports of various deals over Kirkuk and other controversial issues continue to swirl, it appears that the Iraqi election commission has decided to postpone the provincial elections from October 1 to the end of the year (December 22).   I say 'appears', because different reports offer different degrees of certainty.  The Associated Press says that

"Iraq's election authorities say there is not enough time to hold important provincial balloting on schedule by October. A statement Sunday from the Election Commission proposes moving the voting from October 1st to late December."

"Proposes" does not mean that the proposal will be accepted (see below). Reuters has it as "Iraq's Electoral Commission said on Sunday time was running out to hold provincial elections this year because of parliament's delay in passing legislation needed for the poll."   But it quotes Faraj al-Haidari, head of the IHEC, saying that "We need at least three months after the law is passed to prepare so polling can be up to international standards.... Even if the law is passed in the coming days, we will only be able to vote at the end of the year. Any more delay and we won't be able to have elections this year."

The longer account in Aswat al-Iraq quotes Hamdiya al-Husseini, a member of the commission, saying that the high electoral commission 'decided to postpone' the elections and that this applies whether or not the Parliament manages to pass the election law next week.  Without offering more details, al-Husseini suggested that the UN agreed with the decision as necessary to guarantee the integrity and procedural mechanisms of the elections.   But apparently, changing the date of the election would also require a new law since the October 1 date is written in to existing legislation.

This isn't entirely new, of course.  While Iraqi politicians have continued to argue over whether the elections would be held on the October 1 date, people working on the elections have been saying for months that they would have to be delayed because of the long failure to pass a law.  Crucially, it's not clear whether the IHEC decision - or recommendation, as the case may be - will be binding on the government.   

As I wrote earlier this week about the debates over the election law, better that these elections be done right than that they be done on an arbitrary schedule.  There's little substantive difference between October 1 and the end of December, other than the former might generate a 'purple finger' moment to influence the American election campaign (which really shouldn't be a consideration either way - though the risk of violence around the provincial elections should also be taken into account by those who do).   At the same time, a lot of actors - especially, but not only, the various 'Awakenings' groupings - have been impatiently waiting for these elections to get the share of power to which they feel entitled... so hopefully they won't be postponed too long.   Hopefully they will just set a new, realistic but hard date, pass an electoral law acceptable to all trends, and then make provisions for serious international monitoring.  I know, I know, here I go with my optimism again... sorry 'bout that. 

GP: The Third Iraq Handoff

As we all struggle to peer ahead to figure out the future of America's role in Iraq, I'm delighted to present this guest post from my friends and colleagues, Derek Chollett and Jim Goldgeier, drawn from the arguments and research presented in their excellent new book America Between the Wars: From 11/9 to 9/11.   As always, guest posters represent only themselves and I might agree or disagree and am not telling for now.   

The Third Iraq Hand-Off
Derek Chollet and James Goldgeier

Derek Chollet is a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security.  James Goldgeier is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a professor at George Washington University.  They are the authors of America Between the Wars: From 11/9 to 9/11.

Thanks very much to Marc Lynch for giving us an opportunity to share our views on Abu Aardvark.  We’d like to put a larger frame on the discussion about Iraq than is normally done in this political season, taking a step back to think forward about what it means for the future of America in the world. 

All the chatter about whether the surge is working or not, or whether McCain will make Iraq the new South Korea, or how many troops Obama could really pull out within 16 months or how he might “refine” his proposals is important, but misses a broader point.  As we argue in our new book, America Between the Wars, when we look at Iraq, we can’t simply think about what has occurred since March 2003.  Iraq has been front and center in American foreign policy for nearly two decades, ever since Saddam Hussein’s forces invaded Kuwait in August 1990.  In January 2009, we will be facing the third presidential hand-off of the Iraq problem.  Whether Obama or McCain wins in November, this third Iraq hand-off has to be the last.

George H.W. Bush was able to forge an international coalition to drive Saddam Hussein’s troops out of Kuwait in the spring of 1991, but he left the Iraqi leader in power.  After all, as his Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney put it later in 1991 when asked why the United States had not gone to Baghdad to oust Saddam, “I think that was a quagmire we did not want to get involved in.”  With no-fly-zones in the north and south, and a sanctions regime in place, Bush 41 handed an unresolved Iraq problem off to Bill Clinton.  Bush even bombed Iraq several times just days before Clinton’s inauguration.  On January 13, 1993, more than 100 American, British and French fighters bombed Iraqi air-defense targets; five days later, forty-five TLAMs launched at sea destroyed a factory that had been a key part of Iraq’s nuclear program.  These attacks were followed by further jet-fighter air strikes the next day.  All were justified by Saddam’s continuing defiance of the numerous strictures the U.N. Security Council had placed on his behavior.  And the military moves were fully supported by the incoming Democratic president.

Then came the Clinton years.  Madeleine Albright told us that it was hard to focus on issues other than Iraq when she was ambassador to the United Nations because of the regular reviews of Iraq’s compliance with Security Council resolutions and the work required to hold the international community together.  Clinton’s first use of force was in Iraq in the summer of 1993, when the U.S. bombed the Iraq intelligence headquarters in Baghdad in retaliation for the attempted assassination of George H.W. Bush on the former president’s visit to Kuwait in April.  The following year, the U.S. sent 50,000 troops to the Gulf in response to an Iraqi buildup near the Kuwaiti border and kept 5,000 in Kuwait afterward just to play it safe. 

In December 1998 came Operation Desert Fox, the culmination of the Clinton administration’s confrontation with Iraq.  As the president said to the American people as he justified his decision to bomb Iraq, “Heavy as they are, the costs of action must be weighed against the price of inaction.  If Saddam defies the world and we fail to respond, we will face a far greater threat in the future.  Saddam will strike again at his neighbors. He will make war on his own people.  And mark my words, he will develop weapons of mass destruction.  He will deploy them, and he will use them.”

But despite official policy in favor of regime change, the Clinton administration, in the words of former Deputy National Security Adviser James Steinberg, “did not contemplate using force to change the regime.”  Clinton did tell George W. Bush in the transition that it was “one of his two or three greatest regrets” that he was unable to find the right answer for the challenge Iraq posed.  And thus Clinton handed off the Iraq problem to Bush.

And here we are again.  George W. Bush will leave it to the next American president to figure out how to produce a stable Iraq, and what level of military, economic, and political engagement is necessary to fulfill American interests.  Of course, because of Bush 43’s many mistakes, as have been dissected so ably on this blog and elsewhere, Iraq in 2009 will pose challenges of a far greater magnitude than those faced in 1993 or 2001.

Putting Iraq in this broader context is important for understanding how we got here.  But it also makes it even more compelling to argue that America has to extricate itself from the country, and why the third Iraq hand-off has to be the last. 

The United States has been obsessed and entangled with Iraq for eighteen years.  Iraq is an important country in an important region.  But the America faces numerous challenges in the world.  The rise of Asia is probably the greatest geo-strategic problem we will face in the next twenty to thirty years.  Climate change threatens to alter our planet.  And we are trying to come to grips with the ongoing impact of globalization.  Then of course there is terrorism, WMD proliferation, Iran, North Korea, the war in Afghanistan, Russia, and energy security.  The George W. Bush administration was consumed by Iraq.  When Obama talks about the resources devoted to Iraq that could be spent on fixing things here at home, he is only getting to part of the problem.  Iraq has made it impossible to carry out a foreign policy to meet all of these challenges effectively – in fact, it has made it only harder.  And thus whether it is Obama or McCain, the next American president cannot afford to have his foreign policy also consumed by Iraq. 

that same news that everyone else is writing about

I've been too busy to write much the last week - a couple of big projects with suddenly looming deadlines, and a proliferating number of smaller ones (and of course watching Dr. Horrible and taking the kids to the pool!) are taking up all my time these days. But it's hard not to at least marvel at the rather remarkable changes in the official position of the Iraqi government culminating in Maliki's reported remarks favoring Obama's withdrawal plan and Bush's agreement on a 'time horizon.'   

The best response thus far comes from an unidentified senior adviser to the McCain campaign, via Marc Ambinder:  "voters care about [the] military, not about Iraqi leaders."  That's a bit of 'straight talk' which I'm sure will play well with the Iraqis. 

It's surprising, no doubt. I know that I'm not the only one who has generally assumed that Maliki and most of the ruling elite preferred McCain's vision of endless, unconditional American military support.  Prevailing explanations as to why the change seem to divide into three main groups:  one thinks that he doesn't really mean it and dismisses its significance; the second sees this as an outcome of Maliki's growing strength (real or perceived), after the last few months' military operations / spectacles and the wave of oil revenues;  the third sees it as an outcome of Maliki's real political weakness, forcing him to bend before a rising public storm over the terms of the proposed agreement.

I don't think the first one - that he didn't mean it - holds up, especially after the latest developments. While Maliki may well backtrack after the next round of conversations, and a 'time horizon' leaves a lot of wiggle room, his new stance is well in line with a whole lot of on the record quotes from government officials and senior members of the ruling coalition in the Iraqi and Arab press (scan my tags over the last few weeks for examples, no time to fill in the links now).  It also roughly accords with what most Iraqi political parties and trends have been saying, including Sistani.   In other words, I don't think that transcription errors or whatnot are the story here - the position, for whatever reason, seems like a real one, or at least as real as public rhetoric ever is.  (UPDATE:  here is government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh's version of the 'translation error' argument, helpfully provided by CENTCOM). 

A combination of the latter two may actually be the best explanation:  Maliki feels strong now, but understands that the current high won't last. It's interesting in that regard that Maliki's new position towards the US is unfolding precisely at the same time as a whole raft of major laws are coming before the end of a month-long Parliamentary extraordinary session - provincial elections law (with a push to hold them by October despite all the obstacles), constitutional revisions, the vote on the return of the IAF cabinet members, and more.  That sense of urgency could be read as the behavior of a leadership which feels emboldened temporarily, but knows that its window may soon close and thus wants to lock in favorable agreements now.  Of course, its willingness to go for a short-term memorandum of agreement now and negotiate a long-term one with the next administration cuts the other way... unless the terms on offer now are so bad that they feel able to walk away and take a chance.

At any rate, none of this public bargaining and posturing tells us what kind of relationship with the United States this Iraqi government, or any plausible successor government, really wants.  What would a "favorable deal that they want to lock in" look like to them (as opposed to wider Iraqi political attitudes)?  As pleased as I've been by the Iraqi leadership's new mantra, I remain skeptical.    There's a lot of wiggle room in what's been said thus far, much of it could be for public consumption or for bargaining leverage, and it's not clear that their basic self-interest has changed.   But it's certainly been something to see.. curious to hear how others are interpreting it, beyond the immediate implications for US domestic politics which have thus far dominated the discussions I've read.

UPDATE - there's surprisingly little discussion of Maliki's statement in the Arab or Iraqi press this morning - I found more links to Dabbagh's 'explanation' than to the original statement, and virtually no commentary.  Maybe it's just lag time, maybe something else.  Interesting, though.

vote on provincial elections postponed

It appears that the long-anticipated Iraqi Parliament vote on a law governing the provincial elections scheduled for the beginning of October has been postponed until Thursday and probably longer.   Parliamentary Speaker Mahmoud al-Mashhadani postponed discussions after the Kurds walked out in protest over the treatment of Kirkuk;  leaders from the Shia UIA were reportedly huddling with their Kurdish partners in the governing coalition, trying to reach an agreement on how to proceed. 

This isn't a great shock:  the government had submitted a multiple-choice draft for the Parliament to debate, leaving the most contentious issues unresolved.  It didn't seem likely that the divided and contentious Parliament would quickly arrive at a consensus which eluded Maliki's relatively tight ruling Shia-Kurd coalition.  It isn't clear yet whether this will mean the postponement of the provincial elections, as the UN facilitators have warned.  But hopefully it will:  the consequences of these elections will be enormous, and it would be foolhardy to rush into them with half-baked, politically controversial rules simply to meet an artificial deadline. 

The issues raised by the provincial election law cut to the heart of competing visions of Iraq's political future.    Kurds are fuming over the plans for voting in Kirkuk, which they feel might prejudice the future of the contested area (the three official Kurdish provinces will almost certainly not take part at all in the provincial elections).   The question of open vs closed lists may seem technocratic, but will have major implications for voting:   many people think that (for better or worse) closed lists strengthen the role of parties at the expense of individual candidates and could heighten the salience of sectarian appeals; but at the same time, open lists make it virtually impossible to guarantee constitutionally mandated quotas for women and minorities.  The government's directive against the use of religious symbols or the faces of non-candidates in election materials is widely believed to have targeted the Sadrists, but it also affects ISCI, one of Maliki's key ruling partners, and any use of Sistani. 

Tensions surrounding the electoral laws are increased by the political stakes.  There's a widespread belief that the government's recent military campaigns have been 'shaping operations' designed to improve the prospects of pro-government lists in the Shia areas at the expense of the Sadrists.  And in the Sunni areas, the prospect of provincial elections has been dramatically heightening the tension between the Awakenings and the governing Islamic Party, with the former fearing that the latter will use its position to its advantage against the emerging political challenger. 

Meanwhile, MP Khayrallah al-Basri of the Iraqiya list raised a vital issue which has barely been raised to this point, but which should be:  the electoral participation of some 5 million Iraqis displaced from their original homes.  Sectarian displacement has radically transformed the socio-political map of Iraq (think about those maps showing the changing sectarian composition of Baghdad since February 2006).   There are currently 2.8 million internally displaced, according to the latest estimate by the International Organization for Migration, including almost 1.6 million since February 2006.  There are massive gaps in voter registration among IDPs, especially the post-February 2006 IDPs, with little time (or intention?) to overcome them.

The current plan is to require all of these IDPs to vote absentee in their place of origin, not in their current place of residence.  While this admirably refuses to ratify sectarian cleansing, it also introduces all kinds of potential distortions by severing voting from the localities and services in question (why vote on pragmatic grounds if you will not be relying on or benefiting from the local government being elected?).  In comparable situations elsewhere, displaced voters have been given the choice as to where to vote, but this was reportedly vetoed by the Iraqi government.   Meanwhile, refugees outside the country evidently will not be able to vote at all.   Together, this could mean the effective disenfranchisement of some one-sixth of the electorate - not a decision to be taken lightly, without substantive public and policy debate. 

After early skepticism, I've long since been persuaded of the importance of these elections, mostly by the stock placed on them by Iraqis.  But that only increases the importance of taking the time to get the rules right and to not be stampeded by an artificial deadline.  As MP Safia al-Shuail told Reuters, "It needs more time for discussion and it also needs a political consensus."   I'd say that's right, if the provincial elections are going to live up to the great hopes which have been placed on them by so many different political actors inside and outside of Iraq. 

UPDATE:  Eric Martin thinks I'm being too optimistic....