Live from Baghdad

Syria Hands-Over Saddam Hussein's Half-Brother to Iraq
Capture an Apparent Goodwill Gesture

By TODD PITMAN, AP

CAIRO, Egypt (Feb. 27) - Iraqi officials said Sunday that Syria captured and handed over Saddam Hussein's half brother, a most-wanted leader in the Sunni-based insurgency, ending months of Syrian denials that it was harboring fugitives from the ousted Saddam regime. Iraq authorities said Damascus acted in a gesture of goodwill.

Sabawi Ibrahim al-Hassan, who shared a mother with Saddam, was nabbed along with 29 other fugitive members of the former dictator's Baath Party in Hasakah in northeastern Syria, 30 miles from the Iraqi border, the officials said on condition of anonymity. The U.S. military in Iraq had no immediate comment.

Al-Hassan's capture was the latest in a series of arrests of important insurgent figures that the government hopes will deal a crushing blow to the violent opposition forces. A week ago authorities grabbed a key associated and the driver of Jordanian-born terror leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, leader of al-Qaida in Iraq and believed to be the inspiration of the ongoing bombings, beheadings and attacks on Iraqi and American forces. Iraqi officials said they expect to take al-Zarqawi soon.

Iraqis welcomed news of al-Hassan's capture.

"I hope all the terrorists will be arrested soon and we can live in peace," said Safiya Nasser Sood, a 54-year-old Baghdad housewife. "Those criminals deserve death for the crimes they committed against the Iraqi people."

"I consider this day as a victory for Iraqis," said Adnan al-Mousawi, a resident in Mahmoudiya, south of Baghdad. "By God's will Saddam will stand in court with his officials and this will be the end of the unjust dictatorship."

Al-Hassan was believed to be operating from the northern Syrian city of Aleppo to help organize and finance the insurgency that has killed untold thousands of Iraqis and more than 1,000 U.S. troops since the overthrow of Saddam in April 2003.

The Iraqi officials did not specify when al-Hassan was captured, only saying he was detained after the Feb. 14 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in Beirut, Lebanon, in a blast that killed 16 others. Syria fell under suspicion in the killing because of its military and political domination of the country, where it maintains 15,000 troops. Hariri had quit the premiership over Syria's continued presence in Lebanon.

The United States, France and the United Nations have applied extreme pressure on Damascus to withdraw from Lebanon, and the Syrians recently said they were pulling their forces back to the border, but not leaving the country.

David Satterfield, a U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state, was to meet Syrian Foreign Minister Mahmoud Hammoud on Monday to reiterate U.S. demands for the withdrawal and a thorough inquiry into the Hariri assassination.

Syria must have felt additional pressure after Israel on Saturday accused Damascus of harboring Palestinian militants responsible for a Friday night suicide bombing in Tel Aviv in which four Israelis were killed, shattering a hard-won truce.

Despite al-Hassan's arrest, the death toll mounted in Iraq on Sunday with two U.S. soldiers killed in a roadside ambush southwest of the capital - the second and third American deaths over the weekend that pushed the overall U.S. toll to nearly 1,500 since the war began in March 2003.

Bomb attacks and ambushes killed nine people near the northern city of Mosul, while five headless bodies - including that of an Iraqi woman - were discovered in and just south of Baghdad. Gunmen, meanwhile, killed two policemen in an ambush as the officers were driving to work in western Baghdad.

In the capture of the Iraqi fugitive, Capt. Ahmed Ismael, an Iraqi intelligence officer, said al-Hassan was handed to the Iraqis Sunday. Another Iraqi official said Syrian security forces expelled al-Hassan after he and his supporters had been turned back in an earlier attempt to cross the Syrian border into Lebanon and Jordan. Officials in interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's office confirmed al-Hassan's capture but gave no other details.

Al-Hassan was No. 36 on the list of 55 most-wanted Iraqis complied by U.S. authorities after American troops toppled Saddam in April 2003. Eleven from the deck remain at large. The half brother also was named as one of the 29 most-wanted supporters of the Iraqi insurgency. The United States had offered $1 million for his capture.

Allawi's office said the arrest "shows the determination of the Iraqi government to chase and detain all criminals who carried out massacres and whose hands are stained with the blood of the Iraqi people, then bring them to justice to face the right punishment."

Iraq's postelection Shiite Muslim power broker, United Iraqi Alliance leader Abdel Aziz al-Hakim, told AP al-Hassan's arrest signaled troubled times for the insurgency.

"Those criminals are on the run and we will chase the rest of them. We will work on arresting all the criminals, either those inside Iraq, or those in other neighboring countries, so that they can stand fair trial and be punished for the crimes they have committed against the Iraqi people," he said.

Under Saddam, al-Hassan led the dreaded General Security Directorate, which was responsible for internal security, especially cracking down on political factions that opposed the Iraqi leader. Al-Hassan was accused of the widespread torture of political opponents. He later became a presidential adviser, the last post he held in the former regime.

The government statement on his capture said al-Hassan had "killed and tortured Iraqi people" and "participated effectively in planning, supervising, and carrying out many terrorist acts in Iraq."

Al-Hassan was also thought to have been responsible for setting up shadowy companies in neighboring Jordan to overcome U.N. sanctions imposed after Iraq invaded neighboring Kuwait, prompting the first Gulf War in 1991. Internationally, al-Hassan's name was linked to attempts to sell looted Kuwaiti treasure.

His son, Yasser al-Sabawi, was mentioned by Iraqi security officials last year in the beheading of Nicholas Berg, the 26-year-old American from West Chester, Pa. Suspicion later fell on al-Zarqawi. It was unclear if the two men had any connection.

"This is a great achievement for the Iraqi security forces," National Security Adviser Mouwafak al-Rubaie told Dubai's al-Arabiya TV. "It is also a lesson for others to give themselves up to the Iraqi authorities."

Saddam's two other half brothers, Barzan and Watban, were captured in April 2003 and are expected to stand trial along with Saddam at the Iraqi Special Tribunal. Both appeared before the special court in Baghdad along with Saddam and other captured regime during preliminary hearings to hear the charges against them.

(Associated Press reporters Salah Nasrawi in Cairo and Sameer N. Yacoub in Baghdad contributed to this report.)

02-27-05 17:52 EST

* * *

IRAQ NEWS, SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 2005

Syria is widely believed to be responsible for the murder of former Lebanese Prime Minister, Rafik al-Harriri, and fourteen others on Feb. 14. The Israeli government now accuses Damascus of responsibility for Friday's bombing of a Tel Aviv night club that killed four Israelis.

Today's Ha'aretz carries a column suggesting Syria is in grave trouble and asks "is Syrian President Bashar Assad suicidal?" http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/pages/ShArtVty.jhtml?sw=Amos+Harel&itemNo=545203

Not at all--just a risk-taker. Syria just handed over Saddam's half-brother, Sabawi, along with 29 others involved in the Iraqi insurgency, as reported in the NYT below. Presumably, this is meant to dull any possible strong US reaction to Syria's latest outrages in Beirut and Tel Aviv.

How many more cards does Damascus have to play in this fashion? The failure to clearly identify the insurgency in Iraq as primarily a Baathist insurgency and act upon that has emboldened the Syrians. This is not only a US error, but that of other countries, including Israel. Take, for example, the following website, published by retired Israeli intelligence officials and click on Iraq:
http://www.intelligence.org.il/eng/default.htm There is almost nothing there, as if what was happening in Iraq was not important. Moreover, the one piece there about the Iraqi insurgency concerns a shadowy Islamic group--not the Baath and not Syria (echoes of this can be found on many pro-Israeli websites.)

One cannot understand the boldness of the Syrians now without also understanding that they seem to believe they can keep the US engaged in an endless card game, with only the slightest chance of its reaching a conclusive resolution.

Saddam Hussein's Half-Brother Captured

By EDWARD WONG
The New York Times
February 27, 2005

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Feb. 27 - The Iraqi government said today that it had imprisoned a half-brother of Saddam Hussein, a suspected major financier of the insurgency and for several years the head of the country's domestic intelligence and security service, once the most feared agency in Iraq.

The half-brother, Sabawi Ibrahim al-Hassan al-Tikriti, is No. 36 on the list of 55 most-wanted Iraqis that the American government compiled after the fall of Baghdad in April 2003. He is believed by Iraqi officials and American commanders to have funneled large amounts of money from Syria, where he sought refuge after invasion, to guerrilla cells here in Iraq. He was apparently captured in Syria with the help of the Syrian government over the weekend.

A senior American commander confirmed that Mr. Tikriti was a "big catch," and American officials have said that a crackdown on financiers in Syria could deal a devastating blow to the insurgency.

On the deck of playing cards portraying the 55 most wanted men, Mr. Tikriti appears as the six of diamonds, and a black-and-white portrait on the card shows him as a young, smiling man with a thin moustache. Two other half brothers of Mr. Hussein on the list, Barzan al-Tikriti and Watban al-Tikriti, were seized right after the Hussein government crumbled.

The American government had put out a $1 million bounty for the capture of Sabawi al-Tikriti. In recent months, Iraqi and American forces have been arresting the most wanted members of the former government at a rapid clip, the senior American military officer said. But the insurgency has continued to rage, with three American soldiers dying in two separate attacks in central Iraq on Saturday, the American military said today.

The Iraqi government did not give further details of Mr. Tikriti's arrest and did not mention whether American or other foreign forces had helped out, but The Associated Press, citing anonymous Iraqi officials, reported that Mr. Tikriti had been arrested in Syria with 29 other suspected insurgents and had been handed over to the Iraqis as a sign of good will. The Iraqi prime minister's office put out a terse statement saying Mr. Tikriti was involved in actions that "killed and tortured many Iraqi people." It also said that "it is worth mentioning that Sabawi has contributed in an active way in planning, supervising and carrying out a large number of terrorist attacks inside Iraq."

The Bush administration has been putting intense pressure on the Syrian government to help root out backers of the Iraqi insurgency living in Syria. American military officials say they believe the major source of financing for the insurgency has been coming from individuals in Syria, and in particular from relatives of Mr. Hussein. Commanders here have expressed extreme frustration at their inability to combat directly the sources of the funding. Officials say they are hopeful that the arrest of Mr. Tikriti could lead to the captures of other financiers and help dry up money going to insurgent strongholds like Ramadi and Mosul.

In the early 1990's, Mr. Tikriti served briefly as the head of the Iraqi mukhabarat, the intelligence agency that spied on - and assassinated - foreigners and Iraqis living outside the country. He was then appointed to command the general security services, the domestic intelligence agency, for several years. Many Iraqis feared general security more than any other agency, for it was responsible for the monitoring and murders of a great number of people inside this country, including Mr. Hussein's political rivals.

A senior American military officer said that over the last half-year, American and Iraqi forces have captured 15 men considered to be "high-value" individuals.

Yet, the guerrilla war has ground on, with nearly 1,500 American soldiers and thousands of Iraqis killed. Two American soldiers were killed in southeast Baghdad on Saturday in an ambush, the American military said today. The ambush involved a combination of a roadside bomb explosion and small-arms fire.

The military also said that a marine died on Saturday in combat in Babil province, south of the capital. The northern part of the province is called by many the "triangle of death" because it is a seething caldron of former Baath Party officials, jihadists and criminal gangs. The Marines have tried concerted offensives to stamp out the insurgency in river towns there along the Euphrates, but have had little success.

The Marines are also continuing with an offensive on river towns in Anbar province, in parched western Iraq. Called Operation River Blitz, the offensive has unfolded in fertile oasis settlements along the Tigris and in parts of the city of Ramadi, the capital of Anbar and an insurgent stronghold. The Marines may turn their efforts more to Ramadi as they finish with the operations in the river towns.

Other violence erupted across Iraq today, the Associated Press reported. A bomb exploded inside the police headquarters of the northern town of Hammam Alil, killing five people, according to a coroner at the main hospital in Mosul. In western Baghdad, gunmen killed two policemen heading to work, police officials said. Other police in Baghdad found the body of an Iraqi woman dressed in traditional black robes with a sign that said "spy" pinned to her chest.

In Latifiya, a town in the "triangle of death," Iraqi troops found four beheaded corpses on a farm, The A.P. reported. The four were apparently members of the Badr Organization, the armed wing of a powerful Shiite political party, the Supreme Council For the Islamic Revolution. The victims were reportedly kidnapped Saturday while driving to the holy Shiite city of Najaf.

The leading Shiite candidate for prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, the leader of the Dawa Islamic Party, appeared to win the backing over the weekend of the Shiite Council, another prominent Shiite party. The council had threatened to put forward a rival candidate for president or prime minister after its head, Ahmad Chalabi, dropped out of the running for prime minister last week.

But a senior aide to Mr. Chalabi, Ali Faisal al-Lami, said the council had decided not to pursue the two top offices in the new government for fear of widening splits among members of the United Iraqi Alliance, a fragile Shiite coalition that won a slim majority of seats in the constitutional assembly.

"We want to keep the alliance united," Mr. Lami said. The move by the council will make it harder for Prime Minister Ayad Allawi to peel off members of the Shiite alliance in order to form his own coalition government. Last week, Dr. Allawi openly announced his intention to remain in the post of prime minister and said he would build a secular coalition toe challenge the Shiites. But the odds are against Dr. Allawi, as he would have to win over the Kurds and a large number of smaller parties, as well as defectors from the Shiite alliance.

John F. Burns contributed reporting from Baghdad for this article.

Revenge killings of members of Saddam's former regime rise

By Hannah Allam
Knight Ridder Newspapers
Posted on Fri, Feb. 25, 2005

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Shiite Muslim assassins are killing former members of Saddam Hussein's mostly Sunni Muslim regime at will and with impunity in a parallel conflict that some observers fear could snowball into civil war.

The war between Shiite vigilantes and former Baath Party members is seldom investigated and largely overshadowed by the mostly Sunni insurgency. The U.S. military is preoccupied with hunting down suicide bombers and foreign terrorists, and Iraq's new Shiite leaders have little interest in prosecuting those who kill their former oppressors or their enemies in the insurgency.

The killings have intensified since January's Shiite electoral victory, and U.S. and Iraqi officials worry that they could imperil progress toward a unified, democratic Iraq.

"It's the beginning, and we could go down the slippery slope very quickly," said Sabah Kadhim, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry. "We've been so concerned with removing terrorists and Islamists that this other situation has reared its ugly head. Both sides are sharpening their knives."

Since the Jan. 30 elections, Shiite militants have stepped up their campaign to exact street justice from men who were part of the regime that oppressed and massacred members of their sect for decades. While Shiite politicians turn a blind eye, assassins are working their way through a hit list of Saddam's former security and intelligence personnel, according to Iraqi authorities, Sunni politicians and interviews with the families of those who've been targeted.

Former Baathists have responded in kind, this month killing several Shiites allied with major political factions. Cases under investigation include the killings of two Shiite militiamen outside a popular restaurant in Baghdad a week ago and the deaths of three Shiite militiamen who were in police custody.

In a tactic borrowed from Sunni insurgents, Shiite militants have begun distributing printed death threats. One leaflet that lists several former Baathists targeted for assassination says: "We have given you the chance to repent for your crimes against the people of this country, but we have noticed during surveillance that you are instead trying to restore the glory of the atheist, corrupt Baath Party."

Among those killed in recent weeks:

- Taha Hussein Amiri, a prominent judge who handed down death sentences during Saddam's regime. Two gunmen on motorcycles shot and killed him Feb. 12 as he was being driven to work in the southern Shiite port city of Basra.

- Haider Kadhim, a former intelligence worker. He was shot in the back of the head Feb. 17 after six gunmen disguised as Iraqi security forces talked their way into his home in the Baghdad district of Saidiyah. The attack occurred at 7 a.m. - Kadhim was still in his pajamas, and his mother, wife and daughter were home.

- At least two other former Baathists were killed in Saidiyah in the past month, including Abdulrazak Karim al Douri, who was a major in Saddam's intelligence service and most recently worked at the Interior Ministry. He and a co-worker were killed when gunmen surrounded their car and pumped more than 50 bullets into their bodies, according to death certificates and an autopsy report.

Especially besieged are Shiite Baathists who live in predominantly Shiite or mixed Sunni-Shiite neighborhoods, where targets are more accessible than in homogenous Sunni strongholds. Militiamen have demanded that former Baathists fly white flags to atone for their party membership and let their neighbors know they've renounced their pasts. Those who refuse often end up dead.

"They're doing it in Shiite neighborhoods because it's easier," said Mishan Jubouri, a prominent former Baathist who was one of the few Sunni Arabs elected to the new Parliament. "I know a lot of Shiite Baath Party members who have had to escape to Ramadi or Mosul or Tikrit," mostly Sunni territories.

There's been little or no investigation into any of the assassinations, the slain men's relatives said. Not that they need an investigation to place blame: The families staunchly believe that Shiite militias are behind the killings.

The assassination squads are widely believed to be from the Badr Brigade, the armed wing of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the country's most influential Shiite political party and the biggest winner in the elections.

"I believe they were Badr forces. They're assassinating all the well-known men," said Walid Rasheed, whose brother, a former Baathist named Falah Rasheed, was gunned down Monday outside his shop in Baghdad. "They just want to provoke strife among Iraqis."

Officially, the Iran-backed Badr militia is now the Badr Organization, a political party whose leaders say it's disarmed. In reality, Badr fighters were so emboldened by their sect's victory at the polls that they're again roaming southern Shiite territories with weapons displayed, according to witnesses and Iraqi authorities.

An intelligence memo distributed Feb. 15 to the U.S. military and private security contractors in Iraq said the renewed militia presence in southern Shiite cities "may be a defensive measure by one of the successful political parties following the release of the election results, and may explain the reason for the link to the Badr corps."

Hadi al Ameri, the leader of the Badr Organization, was among the powerful Shiites elected to Parliament last month and is said to be a top contender for defense or interior minister. In an interview Friday at his heavily guarded home, al Ameri denied that Badr fighters are behind the assassinations and said his men abided by the calls for restraint from Grand Ayatollah Ali al Sistani, Iraq's highest-ranking Shiite cleric.

"The head of Iraqi intelligence accused us of these assassinations and I told him, `If you have proof against us, give me the intelligence.' I offered to form a committee and hand over any guilty men," al Ameri said. "We don't want revenge from anyone. We've been oppressed and we shouldn't oppress others."

The guerrilla-turned-politician conceded that some Shiites were attacking former Baathists of their own accord. If al Sistani hadn't asked militiamen to use the courts - not guns - for revenge, he said, the situation would be much worse.

"The Baathists should pray day and night for Sistani," al Ameri said with a chuckle.

Knight Ridder tried to contact several former Baathists whose names appeared on a hit list; only one agreed to speak about the threat. The man, a Shiite in his 50s who was a security official under Saddam, received a note at his home last month that read: "You are a Baathist and we are watching you." He'd refused to fly a white flag in his neighborhood, he said, so he wasn't surprised to find his name among those marked for death.

Abu Muqdad - he asked that his full name be withheld for protection - said that since the elections, the targeting of former Baathists was "like a plague spreading through a town with no doctor." He accused political parties of quietly funneling names and addresses to their militias or hiring criminal gangs to carry out the killings.

"Go to the morgue and you'll find all our old (Baathist) luminaries," Abu Muqdad said. "Why were they killed, and who killed them? For revenge, by the Iranian-trained militias inside Iraq. They can do whatever they like now. Let's hope God grants us all restraint."

IRAQ
The Finger

The National Review editorial
February 28, 2005 (may require subscription)

The Iraqi people on January 30 stuck a finger in the eye of the country’s vicious insurgents and its former jackbooted rulers. The finger was stained in the purple ink that signified participation in Iraq’s first true election in 50 years.

How many American GIs and decent Iraqis — including government officials and election workers targeted for murder — have lost their lives to make this election day possible? The Iraqis took a step toward redeeming all those terrible losses. Which is just one reason the spectacle of Iraqis lining up to vote, and sometimes cheering and dancing with joy, was so moving.

President Bush’s determination to see the election through amid calls for its delay, and his faith that Iraqis would make a strong civic statement in favor of a better country, were both shown to be courageous and far-sighted. America’s willful defeatists — led by Sen. Ted Kennedy, who chose to declare our cause all but lost just days before this historic vote — look particularly puny in light of the millions who turned out to vote because they believe in the new Iraq.

Yes, there were problems. Sunni turnout appears to have been disappointing. But this does not necessarily signal broad Sunni disenchantment with the political process. Many Sunnis, living in the most chaotic and insurgency-ridden areas, were simply frightened away from the polls. There will be many chances to bring responsible Sunni leaders into the process. The mechanisms for the selection of a three-person presidential council, the appointment of a prime minister, and the writing and approval by referenda of a permanent constitution are all designed to emphasize consensus and coalition politics.

The unified Shiite slate formed by Ayatollah Sistani won big, prompting critics to warn that Iraq was going to go the way of Iran. Such fears are overblown. The Iraqi Shiite clerical establishment, as represented by Sistani, is suspicious of the Iranian theocratic model and appears determined to forge something different. The slate’s leaders have said that the new transitional government will be secular (there are fewer than a dozen clerics on the slate’s long list of candidates) — even if the constitution will inevitably incorporate more religious elements than Western liberals would want. They have also been extremely solicitous of the country’s Sunni leadership, making every effort to extend an olive branch. It is important to note that the slate itself is no monolithic force. It encompasses 22 different political parties, and its unity will be strained by the inevitable pressures of forming a new government.

There will still be violence in Iraq and grim news, as we have already seen. But the election could be an important step toward sapping the energy of the insurgency. Insurgencies ultimately succeed or fail on their political appeal. On Election Day, Iraqis had a choice between Sistani’s admonition to vote and Zarqawi’s warning that democracy is evil. Sistani won. Most Iraqis have come down on the side of decency and modernity in the battle over the future of Islam on which so much depends. There are signs that Iraqis fed up with Zarqawi’s mayhem are beginning to give up important information about his network. Thus, two of the most important ingredients to beating the insurgency — a political process that marginalizes it and good intelligence gathering that imperils it — are increasingly evident.

The Bush administration and the American public should maintain realistic expectations of what will result from the election in the near term: a government vastly better than Saddam’s and better than any other Arab regime, but one that still falls short of Western norms. Iraqi society is tribal, deeply religious, and ethnically divided, and its government will reflect these characteristics. American troops can be proud of what they have already achieved. But they have more work ahead. They must keep grinding down the insurgency until Iraqi security services can do it on their own.

Realism and patience, in short, will be just as necessary going forward as they have been over the last difficult and often heartbreaking year. But January 30, 2005, is a day to be remembered, a day of celebration. This year, springtime came early to Iraq.

'Our Guys Stayed and Fought'

By David Ignatius
The Washington Post
Friday, February 25, 2005; Page A21

BAGHDAD -- Let's call it the "Adnan and Jim Strategy." These two soldiers exemplify the new U.S. plan to stabilize Iraq by training Iraqi security forces and embedding U.S. combat advisers with them. If their success can be multiplied many times over, then the Iraqi government should, over time, be able to contain the insurgency. But that's a big "if."

Adnan is Gen. Adnan Thabit, the leader of the Special Police Commandos. He's a big man, dressed in a black leather jacket, sporting a diamond pinkie ring and a mustache even Saddam Hussein would envy. Barking out orders at his headquarters in a bombed-out Republican Guard barracks in western Baghdad, he looks almost like a Mafia don.

Gen. Adnan, as he's known, commands a force of about 10,000 men. He formed the commandos last summer, when security here was spinning out of control, at the urging of his nephew, the current Iraqi minister of the interior. He has a tough-guy résumé: a former member of Hussein's military intelligence service who was imprisoned in 1996 after he joined a U.S.-backed coup plot. One look at him and you know he is not a man you'd want to antagonize.

His police commandos are drawn from all over the country, and they include a mix of the country's religious and ethnic groups. A majority are probably Shiite Muslims, but Gen. Adnan, a Sunni, looks pained when I ask for an ethnic breakdown. "I don't care who's Shia, who's Sunni. I want only a good soldier who will fight for his country. I don't want anyone to ask that question, Sunni or Shia. We are all officers."

When the U.S. military first learned about the Special Police Commandos last September, Adnan told the Americans to go away. He didn't want their help and, like most Iraqis, was uncomfortable with the idea of U.S. military occupation. But he gradually agreed to work with the U.S. military, and then came to respect it deeply. That's where Jim comes in.

Jim is Col. James Coffman Jr., an Army Special Forces officer. He works for the man who heads the U.S. military training effort in Iraq, Lt. Gen. David Petraeus. Last September Petraeus asked Coffman to go check out the Police Commandos. Despite the initial rebuff, Coffman kept returning each afternoon to pay his respects to Gen. Adnan. The two soldiers gradually became friendly, and Coffman began providing supplies and some training help.

Coffman sensed that the commandos had what Petraeus is trying to foster in his training mission here: discipline, leadership and the will to fight. "I was totally impressed by how they conducted operations," Coffman recalls. "They had command and control, pretty good fire discipline, and they didn't harass civilians." He admired Adnan's professionalism and the fact that he threatened to fire his officers if they engaged in any religious or political activity on the job.

So the Americans decided to test the commandos in early October by sending them as part of a mixed U.S.-Iraqi force to regain control of Samarra, north of Baghdad. On the day the commandos were set to go, their headquarters was hit by a car bomb, with dozens of casualties. Adnan's troops moved out anyway, a few hours later. They fought well in Samarra and, using their own local intelligence, captured 38 suspected insurgent leaders.

The commandos next moved into Mosul in mid-November, after local police there had been shattered by the insurgents. Coffman accompanied them into battle. On Nov. 14, he and the Iraqi commandos were caught in a well-prepared ambush. They fought for more than four hours; four of the commandos were killed and 38 wounded, but they held their ground. Coffman was shot in one hand, but with the other, he kept firing his M-4 rifle and then, when he ran out of ammunition, an Iraqi AK-47.

Coffman was still wearing a heavy bandage on his hand when we visited Adnan's headquarters. His thumb and two joints were shattered in the Mosul fight. U.S. military doctors tried to evacuate him to Germany, but he refused. The Iraqi general looks over at his American adviser and says he's a brave soldier. "In the Mosul battle, he stood shoulder to shoulder with my men." It's obvious he could not pay a higher compliment.

That's what success will look like in the training and advisory effort that is now the centerpiece of the U.S. military strategy in Iraq: Soldiers who have confidence in each other and are successful in battle. Coffman is a tough officer, but there's a lot of emotion in his voice when he says: "Our guys stayed and fought."

davidignatius@washpost.com

Staying with the Iraqis
Brave people at a crossroads.

John O’Sullivan
National Review editor at large
February 08, 2005, 1:09 p.m.

Small incidents tell large truths. A little over a week ago in London thousands of Iraqi expatriates queued up politely in the best British style outside their embassy to vote. Nearby 200 demonstrators chanted slogans urging them to reject democracy. Mainly ignored, occasionally barracked by the would-be voters, making no impact, they eventually rolled up their banners and trudged forlornly away.

In Iraq those demonstrators would have been armed and dangerous. Iraqi terrorists killed 36 innocent people on polling day across the country.

But British bobbies were on hand in London — or "Londonistan" as the expats call it — to ensure that nothing got out of hand. And what transpired was just another London Sunday demo by Middle Eastern protesters. Ho-hum.

What large truth does this incident tell us? Well, among others, it shows that the number of self-conscious principled enemies of democracy is extremely small.

In an orderly society, Nazis, Communists, divine-right monarchists, Islamofascists, and all the other cranks and panacea-mongers can just about mount a small demo but they don't have the numbers to sway or halt an election.

In principle at least, even if not always in practice, every modern person who has not swallowed the hemlock of extremist ideology accepts that political equality and popular consent are the bedrock principles of modern government across cultures and religions.

Iraq is not, of course, an orderly society. It is a society in a near-civil war as it moves from the dictatorial rule of Baathist socialism to modern democracy. Its terrorists are a combination of Baathist bitter-enders and Islamofascists. But its people are ordinary modern citizens. And they see democracy as a form of protection against the rule of these dangerous madmen.

That is the underlying reason why Iraq's first fully democratic national election was such a remarkable success with a better-than-expected 60-percent turnout amid an atmosphere of civic celebration.

As late as the morning of the vote, even friendly observers saw the election as poised between two alternatives: Either the terrorists would succeed in deterring voters by murdering them or there would be a decent turnout of about 50 percent.

In the event both things happened: The terrorists killed 35 would-be voters but 60 percent of Iraqis voted anyway. And when the final figures are announced we will know how many Sunnis turned out — maybe as many as 40 percent.

Extraordinary act
Remember, too, that every vote cast in Baghdad and the Sunni Triangle was an extraordinary act of civic courage.

Compare a national turnout of 60 percent and a Sunni turnout of 40 percent with the 45 percent turnout in last year's European-parliament elections in which some national averages fell below 20 percent.

And, finally, imagine how few Europeans would have voted if the price of the franchise was a real risk of being murdered. That said, the hard part of building democracy now begins.

For though there are only a handful of conscious anti-democrats in today's world, there are many people who reject democracy in practice or at crucial moments because they think its operation will threaten their personal safety, their property, their ethnic group, their religion, or some other thing they value above democracy.

And sometimes their fears are reasonable. Iraq has several groups that might reasonably feel unqualified majoritarian rule would threaten some of these things.

Kurds are an ethnic minority. Sunni Muslims are a religious minority. And the Shiite Muslims who are the religious majority, having been the victims of discrimination for many years, might be thought to harbor visions of revenge in democratic disguise.

It is to deal with such reasonable fears that liberal constitutions typically protect certain rights — free speech, a free press, free assembly — against abuse by the majority in power.

And we judge a country to be fully democratic only when it has respected these rights through years and crises. Democracy needs both a liberal constitution and a liberal constitutional tradition.

Will the Iraq election lead to a stable democratic government with constitutional protection for minority rights in two or three years? Or will it break down amid religious and communal acrimony and lead to a civil war between Sunni, Kurd, and Shiite?

Consider: Iraq has a well-educated people, considerable oil wealth, a strong middle class, and even a tradition of elections and limited democracy under the British and the monarchy.

In other words, it has most of the usual preconditions for a successful democracy. It also has prudent religious leaders and a sophisticated political establishment who want a decent constitutional compromise.

And, finally, the election atmosphere of joyful democratic commitment suggests that Iraqis may be increasingly united by a national patriotism that could help overcome communal rivalries.

So there are good reasons to hope that Iraq will surmount the obstacles of ethnic and religious division. That leaves the more sinister threat of the principled anti-democrats in the terrorist "insurgency."

No government, however legitimate, can survive if it fails to provide its citizens with public safety. Moreover, every voter effectively cast two votes on Sunday, one for the party of his choice, the other against the terrorists.

So the new Iraqi government has a clear mandate to crush terrorism with, if necessary, considerable ruthlessness.

Strong symbol
A strong symbol of its determination would be the early trial and execution of Saddam Hussain and his leading accomplices. That would end any hope by Baathist bitter-enders of a restoration of the regime.

It would also meet the deep need of the Iraqi people for the just punishment of their oppressors. And if the Europeans complain about capital punishment, they could be reminded that in 1945 several European states restored the death penalty because they saw it was the only fitting punishment for such evil as Nazism.

Iraqis could make the same argument with perfect truth.

For the foreseeable future, however, the United States will still be needed to support Iraqi democracy both against an increasingly desperate insurgency and through the early adolescent tantrums of a new liberal system of government.

Now is exactly the wrong time to declare victory and get out — precisely because victory is in sight and withdrawing would put it at risk.

Bush must therefore get ready to fight domestic political battles against those Democrats like Senator Edward Kennedy and others who are urging a quick U.S. withdrawal.

Some would clearly prefer Iraqi democracy to fail rather than hand a political victory to President Bush. That looks like very un-smart politics in the United States. It would be endless death and destruction in Baghdad.

— John O'Sullivan, former adviser to Lady Thatcher, is the editor of The National Interest and is a member of Benador Associates.

Subj: [Iraq] Re: Ayad Rahim, back in Baghdad
Date: 2/15/2005 1:02:23 AM Eastern Standard Time

Dear Ayad,

I have been reading your long blog with great interest and attention (and after a couple of hours, still have lots to go). There are so many fertile areas for discussion in this - I hope all the members will read it and comment on them.

One of the most remarkable essays is the one by Kanan Makiya from the Wall Street Journal, which I'm taking the liberty of posting below in full. The central point he makes is that "the threat to Iraqi life and well-being does not come from the Arab nationalism of the Baath, which subordinated Iraq to the mythology of a single supposedly yet-to-be-united Arab nation. It comes from the legacy of that totalizing ideology: the profoundly irrational and self-destructive politics of shrinking oneself down to the mere fact of one's own victimhood."

This is a great danger whenever a long-established structure based on cruelty and oppression is suddenly overturned. The victims have no time to adjust to their new position, and tend to go overboard in wielding their new power, flush with a sense of vindication and self-righteousness which prods them to scorn compromise and pragmatism. It is especially dangerous when fired by religious conviction, and in particular by Shi'ism, which revels in victimhood, martyrdom and hatred of the oppressor.

The Shia have absolutely got to learn, very quickly, the necessity of being gracious and generous in victory, of reassuring their former tormentors that there will be no vindictiveness or discrimination against them, and of deliberately carving out a well-defined chunk of state power for the exclusive use of their opponents. Similarly, the Kurds have very little time to extend the same assurances and guarantees to the Turkmen (and, to a lesser degree, the Christian minorities in Kurdistan). It is very easy for outside interests to exploit ethnic fears and turn them to mischief. Once ethnic violence begins, its effects are often irreversible.

I hope you will be careful of your personal safety despite your euphoric mood, and heed the words of Al-Muthakkibu'l 'Abdi:

"Fa ma adri, idha yammamtu ardan
Uridu'l khayra, ayyuhuma yalini:
A'al-khayrulladhi ana abtaghihi,
Ami'sh-sharru'ladhi huwa yabtaghini."

For I know not, when bound for the land of my quest, if my portion shall be
The good which I hope for and seek, or the evil which seeketh for me.

Best wishes,
Owl

SOME SUNNI PARTIES REGRET BOYCOTT

Sunnis in al-Anbar governorate face prospect of not being fairly represented
at local and national level.

By Dawood Salman in al-Anbar
IWPR'S IRAQI CRISIS REPORT, No. 113
February 18, 2005

Iraqi politicians who won seats in the al-Anbar governorate council are facing claims that their victory was illegitimate because of low voter turnout in the mainly-Sunni province.

Only two per cent of the governorate's population cast their vote on January 30 after leading Sunni Arab groups such as the Muslim Scholars' Association called for a boycott of the election. They argued that a fair poll could not be organised because of poor security in the mainly Sunni areas and the presence of foreign occupation troops in Iraq.

The final results in the election for the al-Anbar governorate, a troubled province west of Baghdad, were certified on February 17. They showed the Iraqi Islamic Party received 2,692 votes while the Iraqi Independent Assembly came second with 755 votes. The total number of votes cast in the governorate was 3,775.

Much has been made of the Sunni boycott's impact at the national level, with leading Shia and Kurdish parties debating the best way to include the disenfranchised Sunni minority in the new government.

But Sunnis in al-Anbar governorate are now facing the very real possibility that they will not be fairly represented at the local level either.

That has caused a backlash against groups that encouraged the boycott as well as anger towards the Iraqi interim government, which Sunnis say failed to provide a secure environment for the vote.

Ahmed al-Izi, a member of the Iraqi Islamic Party, called the elections "legally incomplete". While his party did well in the ballot, it had been one of the main supporters of the Sunni boycott.

"If we hadn't withdrawn from the election, the percentage [of voters] would have been greater, but we will work for the sake of the citizens and our representatives in the council will continue what the previous council has done," he said.

But Khidhir Awad, a former member of al-Anbar's governorate council whose party boycotted the elections, told IWPR that he was deeply disappointed by the results. "We should have entered the elections and had candidates," he said.

Al-Anbar council member Sheikh Said al-Dulaimy said the interim government and Iraq's electoral commission should have done more to ensure a fair and safe vote for all Iraqis. He suggested that the commission could have replaced the polling sites that were bombed before the poll.

And Farid Ayar, a spokesman for Iraq's Independent Electoral Commission, said that the security situation in Al-Anbar kept the commission from supervising polling sites and, in some cases, from even knowing where the stations were located.

The commission did allow voters from al-Anbar to register and cast ballots on the same day. There also were special polling sites set up for local voters who had been displaced by fighting in cities such as Fallujah.

Al-Anbar residents are now demanding that their leaders find solutions to the problems caused by the boycott. They are pressuring their leaders to attend National Assembly meetings and take part in writing Iraq's new constitution. In addition, some are demanding that new elections be held immediately at the governorate level.

Members of the leading Iraqi Islamic party have said that they will work hard to address the concerns of voters in al-Anbar.

Khidhr Abdul-Jabbar Abbas told IWPR that one of his party's most important priorities is to restore peace and order in the governorate. A plan to deploy 3,000 police in the middle of the governorate is already underway, he said. In addition, the party is committed to building consensus with other parties and tribal sheikhs in order to formulate a plan for the new governorate council.

Others parties are simply hoping that the next round of elections in December will turn out better.

"We hoped to win both the National Assembly and the governorate council but we were not in the assembly and we won only three seats of the governorate council, but we look forward to the coming elections," said Ahmed al-Abduli, of the Iraqi Independent Assembly.

Dawood Salman is an IWPR trainee journalist in Iraq.

Now It's Up to Iraqis

By David Ignatius
The Washington Post
Wednesday, February 2, 2005; Page A23

Think of Sunday's elections in Iraq as the starting point. It was the democratic revolution the Iraqi people never had as they watched U.S. troops sweep into Baghdad and then occupy their country. It was the moment in which individual Iraqi citizens, by risking their lives to cast their votes, finally began to make their own history.

The election was an experiment, and until Sunday nobody could be sure how it would turn out. Would Iraqis defy suicide bombers and mortar attacks to get to the polls? Did the people of Iraq want a new, democratic nation enough to die for it? In braving 109 separate attacks on polling places Sunday, a majority of Iraqis gave their answer.

The stories of election day courage should become part of the narrative of the new Iraq. Karl Vick of The Post described a man who voted at a girls high school in Baghdad where a suicide bomber had attacked just a few hours before. "I would have been happy to have died voting at the time of this explosion," the man said. The Post's Anthony Shadid quoted the director of a polling place in a Sunni neighborhood in Baghdad who described the election as a wedding for Iraq: "For a half-century, no one has seen anything like it. And we did it ourselves."

If Sunday was a new beginning, what can Americans and Iraqis do to avoid the mistakes of the past two years and build a country that's worthy of the bravery of its people? The important decisions lie with Iraqis, and that's the crucial point. This is now their country to shape or misshape.

Bush administration officials are understandably spinning and crowing about the success, but they should resist any new sense of mission accomplished. "The bloodbath didn't happen, but the country remains deeply divided," notes Raad Alkadiri, an Iraqi consultant for PFC Energy who served as an adviser to the British occupation authorities in Baghdad. He says initial returns suggest that about 60 percent of eligible Iraqis voted; for all the commitment of those who went to the polls, more than four in 10 Iraqis apparently did not.

So the new government's first challenge will be to reach out to the nonvoters. Alkadiri quotes Winston Churchill's famous formula: "Magnanimous in victory." The largest vote probably went to the United Iraqi Alliance, which was blessed by Shiite Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani. If its Shiite leaders can reassure Iraqi Sunnis and other minorities that they will be equal citizens in the new Iraq, they can form a stable government that, over time, will defeat the insurgency. But if the Shiite politicians engage in sectarian politics and efforts to settle old scores, they will fail.

A key figure will be the wily former exile leader Ahmed Chalabi, who took cover under the Sistani umbrella last year. Administration officials are said to be worried by reports that the De-Baathification Committee, which Chalabi heads, has drawn up a list of 200 election candidates who should be denied a role in the new government, including several prominent allies of interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi. Perpetuation of those old feuds is the last thing a new Iraq needs.

The other big challenge for the new Iraqi government will be dealing with the United States. The polarity is now reversed: Now it's up to the Iraqis to shape the relationship. The right answer for both sides is a gradual process of U.S. military disengagement -- in which the number of U.S. troops declines as Iraq's security forces increase in numbers and confidence. It's a delicate balance: Most Iraqis want the U.S. occupation to end, but they also fear the chaos that will erupt if American troops leave too quickly.

Mowaffak Rubaie, the current Iraqi national security adviser and a possible member of the new government because of his close relations with Sistani, told me last weekend that Iraq won't ask U.S. troops to leave until next year at the earliest. Pressure will grow for the Iraqis to negotiate a timetable for U.S. withdrawal. But it can be blunted if the Bush administration follows through on its tentative plan to shift its military role to training the Iraqi army, conducting joint Special Forces operations against the insurgents and turning over daily security chores to Iraqi forces wherever possible.

The Iraq story has had too many painful twists for anyone to offer rosy scenarios. Sunday's vote wasn't a culmination, but a beginning. The new Iraqi government may make as many mistakes as its American liberators have, but at least they will be Iraqi mistakes.

davidignatius@washpost.com

Insurgents Wage Precise Attacks on Baghdad Fuel

By JAMES GLANZ
The New York Times
February 21, 2005

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Feb. 20 - Insurgent attacks to disrupt Baghdad's supplies of crude oil, gasoline, heating oil, water and electricity have reached a degree of coordination and sophistication not seen before, Iraqi and American officials say.

The new pattern, they say, shows that the insurgents have a deep understanding of the complex network of pipelines, power cables and reservoirs feeding Baghdad, the Iraqi capital.

The shadowy insurgency is a fractured movement made up of distinct groups of Sunnis, Shiites and foreign fighters, some of them aligned and some not. But the shift in the attack patterns strongly suggests that some branch of the insurgency is carrying out a systematic plan to cripple Baghdad's ability to provide basic services for its six million citizens and to prevent the fledgling government from operating.

A new analysis by some of those officials shows that the choice of targets and the timing of sabotage attacks has evolved over the past several months, shifting from economic targets to become what amounts to a siege of the capital.

In a stark illustration of the change, of more than 30 sabotage attacks on the oil infrastructure this year, no reported incident has involved the southern crude oil pipelines that are Iraq's main source of revenue. Instead, the attacks have aimed at gas and oil lines feeding power plants and refineries and providing fuel for transportation around Baghdad and in the north.

In an indication of how carefully chosen the targets are and how knowledgeable the insurgency is about the workings of the infrastructure, the sabotage often disrupts the lives of Iraqis, leaving them dependent on chugging, street-corner generators to stave off the darkness and power televisions or radios, robbing them of fuel for stoves and heaters, and even halting the flow of their drinking water.

The overall pattern of the sabotage and its technical savvy suggests the guidance of the very officials who tended to the nation's infrastructure during Saddam Hussein's long reign, current Iraqi officials say.

The only reasonable conclusion, said Aiham Alsammarae, the Iraqi electricity minister, is that the sabotage operation is being led by former members of the ministries themselves, possibly aided by sympathetic holdovers.

"They know what they are doing," Dr. Alsammarae said. "I keep telling our government, 'Their intelligence is much better than the government's.' "

Sabah Kadhim, a senior official at the Iraqi Interior Ministry, said he believed the sabotage was part of a larger, two-faceted plan that included the terror operations that have killed so many Iraqis over the last two years.

The new pattern of sabotage, he said, lays the groundwork for chaos - a deeply resentful populace, the appearance of government ineffectuality, a halt to major business and industrial activities. The second side - the suicide bombings, assassinations and kidnappings - he said, is aimed in large measure at sowing discord among ethnic and religious groups.

"And I think they, honestly, stand a better chance with the first than the second," Mr. Kadhim said.

Whatever the source of the plan, it shows clear signs of being centrally controlled, Iraqi and American officials say.

"There is an organization, sort of a command-room operation," Thamir Ghadhban, the Iraqi oil minister, said Thursday in an interview. In his area of responsibility, Mr. Ghadhban said, "the scheme of the saboteurs is to isolate Baghdad from the sources of crude oil and oil products."

"And they have succeeded to a great extent," he said.

Mr. Ghadhban supported his assertions with a map showing that in November, December and January, in widely scattered attacks, insurgents simultaneously struck all three crude oil pipelines feeding the Doura fuel refinery in Baghdad. The refinery is the nation's largest producer of gasoline, kerosene and other refined products.

During that period, more than 20 attacks occurred on a set of huge pipelines carrying things like oil, kerosene, gasoline and other fuels to Baghdad from oil fields and refineries in the north.

In contrast, in the same region, the map shows an economically crucial crude oil pipeline - one that carries oil for export - was not attacked even once.

The map was prepared by his ministry by cataloging the exact coordinates, dates and nature of the attacks and combining that information with a detailed schematic of the web of pipelines, fuel depots, roads and refineries in and around Baghdad.

Those attacks caused widespread disruptions, including severe gasoline shortages. And Mr. Ghadhban said that when he tried to make up for the shortages by trucking the fuel in with tankers, saboteurs went after the fuel convoys and the bridges that they crossed to reach Baghdad.

After allowing a reporter to view on a computer screen the map and an array of other graphs and figures describing the pattern of sabotage, Mr. Ghadhban declined to provide a copy, but his ministry's analysis has circulated among other officials in Iraq, and one of them agreed to give a copy of the map to The New York Times.

Oil and transportation are far from the only infrastructure that the insurgents have struck to isolate Baghdad and deprive its residents.

In mid-January, a bomb hit a water main from a treatment plant that supplies 65 percent to 70 percent of the city's drinking water. It struck in just the spot that would lead to a collapse of water pressure in nearly the entire system. Most Baghdad residents were left with little or no running water for more than a week.

Attacks on carefully chosen targets were also a major reason that the output of Iraq's national electricity grid recently slumped below the amount it produced before the American-led invasion in April 2003, despite billions of dollars of projects aimed at repairing power plants and transmission lines, and adding huge new electricity generators.

And although the overall output has recently reached prewar levels, that qualified success has been punctuated by repeated blackouts caused by breakdowns, sabotage and other problems.

With all of their knowledge, and a seemingly unquenchable hatred for the people now running the government, the insurgents have transformed their initially generic brand of sabotage into a more subtle science, said Gal Luft, executive director of the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security in Washington, which closely tracks Iraq's oil infrastructure.

The attacks now aim to "prolong the destruction," Dr. Luft said. Insurgents achieve that aim by going after critical junctures in the pipeline system and focusing on equipment that is difficult to repair or remanufacture - even taking into account what stocks of spare parts may be low in Iraqi warehouses, he said.

The insurgents also skillfully play on what Dr. Luft calls the "chicken-and-egg relation" between fuel and electrical power: without oil there is no electricity, and without electricity, oil cannot be pumped or refined. So an attack on one area of infrastructure can disrupt another.

With all those moves at their disposal, the insurgents have turned away from a single-minded focus on blowing up pipelines that export oil, he said.

"I feel that this is a very different approach," Dr. Luft said. "The main thing today is isolating the Baghdad area and making sure there is not enough oil going into the refineries."

That pattern has not gone unnoticed by American military and government officials.

"I do think there is a Baghdad regional plan," said Lt. Col. Joseph P. Schweitzer of the United States Army Corps of Engineers, who before moving to a new assignment this week spent seven months as director of the Reconstruction Operations Center, an umbrella organization for military and civilian infrastructure work in Iraq.

"It's a chess game," Colonel Schweitzer said. "This is a very smart, adaptive enemy."

He said he doubted that the plan was unified throughout the country, but that the observed patterns provided clues on how to fight the insurgency. "It is something that we're studying intensively, and we have been studying," he said. "We've come to some conclusions, and we're taking actions.

But a spokesman for the American-led forces in Iraq, Col. Robert A. Potter of the United States Air Force, said in a statement sent by e-mail, "It would be speculative to affirm or rebut whether or not these attacks are random or specifically aimed to cause a specific effect."

Whatever script the insurgents may be following, their attacks have been prolific, said Mr. Ghadhban, the oil minister. His ministry registered 264 acts of sabotage against the petroleum infrastructure in 2004 and more than 30 so far this year, he said.

No one tactic could turn back what amounts to a siege on the great circulatory systems of a nation, Mr. Ghadhban said. But he has already solicited contracts for a vast protection system that would include fences on both sides of pipelines stretching for thousands of miles in the desert, with infrared surveillance cameras, sensors, airborne surveillance and a nimble security force.

Whether Mr. Ghadhban will have a chance to carry out his plan as the oil minister is another question. Although he won a seat in the new national assembly, the gasoline shortages, fairly or unfairly, have hurt his public standing in this political season.

"If I'm chosen, I will continue, definitely," Mr. Ghadhban said. "And I think we would do better."

AT WAR II
Next Acts
President Bush needs to rumble on

PAUL JOHNSON
The National Review
Feb. 28, 2005, issue

It was the singular merit of George W. Bush’s first term that, after an uncertain start, he used the stimulus of 9/11 to follow the logic of America’s unique position as the world’s sole superpower. This imposes corresponding opportunities and duties. By taking up the leadership of the War on Terror, and by insisting that America would act unilaterally if necessary, Bush showed he was eager to take full advantage of America’s vastly increased relative power. The results are now coming in. In both Afghanistan and Iraq, fair and free elections have been held for the first time. What a half a century of exhortation had failed to do, the judicious use of military force achieved in two years — to bring democracy to the Muslim Middle East.

In the process, America obliged the leaders of international terrorism to concentrate all their efforts on preventing democracy from emerging in Iraq. By inflicting defeat on them there — where they were strongest — U.S. armed forces have dealt a blow to terrorist morale from which it may never recover. The families of American and Allied soldiers killed in Iraq should take comfort from this. The operation has succeeded. Terrorism is now on the retreat, and countless innocent lives may be saved in consequence.

Date: Sat, 19 Feb 2005 18:08:12 -0500

Hi, Allan,

.... I agree with you, that Ja'fari is more popular, but I think Ahmad would be far better....

Oh -- as to Ahmad, being less popular, I think, whoever does a good job, is gonna become very popular, very fast, but, you're right, people didn't vote for 169, for Ahmad, but for one of the "Shi'i" candidates.

That has been the thinking -- about Allawi -- that that would be his consolation prize, the job in Washington. I don't think it matters, being an MP -- he just drops that, picks a replacement. His party might be dead, anyway -- it's just him.

All right -- see you.

* * *

Date: 2/20/2005 11:03:31 AM Eastern Standard Time

Hello Ayad,

I hope Baghdad is treating you well. I went to a Kurdish restaurant yesterday and it was excellent - and cheap! 44 pounds for 6 meze, two entrees, two vodka, two whisky, and a beer (for 3 of us)! I wish we had real Kurdish restaurants in [America]....

Yes, Allawi's party spent a lot of money and he is something of a spent force. I believe that the only other big name on his list is Sha3lan, who has made a real fool of himself in his wild accusations against Dr. Chalabi, Dr. Shahristani, and 169.

Have to run. Here in London I am seeing maybe one group a day in the afternoon, then going to a club and staying out late and waking up late the next day. A very strange schedule!

Talk to you soon.

Cheers,
Allan

* * *

Date: 2/25/2005 9:21:39 PM Eastern Standard Time

Hey, Allan,

.... Sha'lan, by the way, was on Yawer's list, then Yawer kicked him off. I was disappointed in in Yawer, that he had Sha'lan on, in the first place.

I didn't know there were Kurdish restaurants -- but, I guess, only in London. Was it good? I just went back to your e-mail, and saw that you said it was excellent. So, where is it? I'm to be in London, from the 15th of April to the 20th -- or thereabouts -- Saddam trial...dependant...depending on what happens with those. I wanna stay for the duration of those.

I'm all right -- staying safe, and writing a bunch....

All right -- see you.

Oh -- when do you get back to America?

Happy trails.

Beirut's Berlin Wall

By David Ignatius
Washington Post
February 23, 2005

BEIRUT -- "Enough!" That's one of the simple slogans you see scrawled on the walls around Rafiq Hariri's grave site here. And it sums up the movement for political change that has suddenly coalesced in Lebanon and is slowly gathering force elsewhere in the Arab world.

"We want the truth." That's another of the Lebanese slogans, painted on a banner hanging from the Martyr's Monument near the mosque where Hariri is buried. It's a revolutionary idea for people who have had to live with lies spun by regimes that were brutally clinging to power. People want the truth about who killed Hariri last week, but on a deeper level they want the truth about why Arab regimes have failed to deliver on their promises of progress and prosperity.

A crowd was still gathered at Hariri's resting place well after midnight early yesterday. Thousands of candles -- many bearing Christian icons, others Muslim designs -- flickered in a semicircle around the grave and melted together into a multicolored patina of wax. Mourners have written angry messages in Arabic on a nearby wall denouncing Syria, whose troops occupy Lebanon and which many Lebanese blame for Hariri's murder. "The Ugly Syrian," says one. "Get Out of Here," says another. For people who have been frightened even to mention Syria's name, it must feel liberating just to write those words.

Over by the Martyr's Monument, Lebanese students have built a little tent city and are vowing to stay until Syria's 15,000 troops withdraw. They talk like characters in "Les Miserables," but their revolutionary bravado is the sort of force that can change history. "We have nothing to lose anymore. We want freedom or death," says Indra Hage, a young Lebanese Christian. "We're going to stay here, even if soldiers attack us," says Hadi Abi Almouna, a Druze Muslim. "Freedom needs sacrifices, and we are ready to give them."

Brave words, in a country where dissent has often meant death. "It is the beginning of a new Arab revolution," argues Samir Franjieh, one of the organizers of the opposition. "It's the first time a whole Arab society is seeking change -- Christians and Muslims, men and women, rich and poor."

The leader of this Lebanese intifada is Walid Jumblatt, the patriarch of the Druze Muslim community and, until recently, a man who accommodated Syria's occupation. But something snapped for Jumblatt last year, when the Syrians overruled the Lebanese constitution and forced the reelection of their front man in Lebanon, President Emile Lahoud. The old slogans about Arab nationalism turned to ashes in Jumblatt's mouth, and he and Hariri openly began to defy Damascus.

I dined Monday night with Jumblatt in his mountain fortress in Moukhtara, southeast of Beirut. He moved there for safety last weekend because of worries that he would be the next target of whoever killed Hariri. We sat under a portrait of Jumblatt's father, Kamal, who was assassinated in 1976 after he opposed the initial entry of Syrian troops into Lebanon. With me was Jamil Mroue, a Lebanese Shiite journalist whose own father was assassinated by Arab radicals in the 1960s. It was an evening when the ghosts of the past mingled with hopes for the future.

Jumblatt dresses like an ex-hippie, in jeans and loafers, but he maintains the exquisite manners of a Lebanese aristocrat. Over the years, I've often heard him denouncing the United States and Israel, but these days, in the aftermath of Hariri's death, he's sounding almost like a neoconservative. He says he's determined to defy the Syrians until their troops leave Lebanon and the Lahoud government is replaced.

"It's strange for me to say it, but this process of change has started because of the American invasion of Iraq," explains Jumblatt. "I was cynical about Iraq. But when I saw the Iraqi people voting three weeks ago, 8 million of them, it was the start of a new Arab world." Jumblatt says this spark of democratic revolt is spreading. "The Syrian people, the Egyptian people, all say that something is changing. The Berlin Wall has fallen. We can see it."

Where will this amazing Lebanese intifada go next? The answer may lie partly with the Shiite militia, Hezbollah, which is probably the most powerful political organization in the country. Hezbollah officials and leaders of the opposition have been trading signals this week about whether they can form a united front. What's clear is that the Lebanese are fed up with the status quo and that Hezbollah -- like all the other parties -- must adjust to change.

The circle of mourners around Hariri's grave was two and three deep when I visited yesterday afternoon. Many people were weeping, more than a week after his death. In every face you could see that same emotion: Enough!

davidignatius@washpost.com

* * *

The Good Intifada

The Wall Street Journal
February 24, 2005
REVIEW & OUTLOOK

Walid Jumblatt is not the sort to be described as a friend of the United States, much less of the Bush Administration. In November 2003, the Druze leader and Lebanese parliamentarian described Paul Wolfowitz as a "virus" and regretted that the Deputy Defense Secretary hadn't been killed in a terrorist rocket strike on his Baghdad hotel the month before. So it says something about the changing face of Middle East politics that Mr. Jumblatt seems to have converted to Mr. Wolfowitz's way of thinking.

"It's strange for me to say this," he recently told Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, "but this process of change has started because of the American invasion of Iraq. I was cynical about Iraq. But when I saw the Iraqi people voting three weeks ago, eight million of them, it was the start of a new Arab world. The Syrian people, the Egyptian people, all say that something is changing."

As, it seems, do the Lebanese. There were mass demonstrations in Beirut last week following the assassination of former prime minister Rafik Hariri. That was to be expected -- a fitting tribute to the man who rebuilt Beirut from the rubble. What's remarkable is that the demonstrations haven't stopped.

On Monday, tens of thousands of Muslim, Christian and Druze protesters took to the streets to demand that Syria withdraw its 14,000 occupying troops and end its de facto control, via its intelligence apparatus, of Lebanese politics. Hundreds of Lebanese expatriates protested outside of Syrian embassies in Paris, Stockholm, London and Kuwait City. The Lebanese Prime Minister has offered to resign; his rubber-stamp parliament will likely be swept in forthcoming elections provided these are conducted fairly.

A real opposition front is forming under the aegis of Mr. Jumblatt and exiled figures such as former Prime Minister Michel Aoun, who was ousted by the Syrians in 1990. If this isn't a Ukrainian-style Orange Revolution (yet), it may be the start of what some Lebanese are calling their own peaceful intifada -- the "shaking off" of foreign rule.

The task for the Bush Administration is to support this exercise in people power by raising the political, economic and diplomatic price Syria must pay for the occupation. So far, there hasn't been much of one. The first Bush Administration acquiesced in Syria's takeover of Lebanon in exchange for its support in Desert Storm. The State Department has long courted Damascus in the vain hope that it would make peace with Israel. The CIA counts on Syria for much of its intelligence on al Qaeda. Now some of our foreign policy solons, such as former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, are using the scarecrow of a U.S. military invasion of Syria to suggest that nothing serious should be done to move the Damascus regime.

In fact, President Bush could do much merely by championing Lebanese freedom in every speech he delivers on the Middle East. Other effective and low-cost measures include freezing all diplomatic contacts with Syria until it complies with U.N. Resolution 1559, which calls for full Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon, and calling attention to the plight of Syrian dissidents, 200 of whom have bravely signed a letter to protest the Syrian occupation.

Also, would it be asking too much of all our European partners -- now that we're friends again -- to designate the Syrian-sponsored Hezbollah as a terrorist organization (France still refuses to do so) and treat prominent members of the Syrian regime as personae non gratae by denying them entry visas and investigating their ties to money laundering and drug trafficking?

They could start with Assef Shawkat, President Bashar Assad's brother-in-law and head of Syria's military intelligence. Though Damascus denies any role, Mr. Shawkat was fingered by the Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Seyassah as one of the masterminds of the Hariri killing. Also on the list: Maher Assad, Bashar's brother, who is implicated in supporting Baathist terrorists in Iraq; Interior Minister Ghazi Kaanan, who we hear is close to the CIA but is also the de facto ruler of Lebanon; and former Interior Minister Ali Hammoud, who also supports the Iraq insurgency.

We cannot say whether these measures will suffice to dislodge Syria from Lebanon, but at least they're a start. What we can say is that if there was ever a moment to make an ally of the Lebanese people in their quest for freedom, this is it.

Dear Mr. Rahim,

I came across your blog recently and wanted to let you know about our company, HireIraqis.com.

HireIraqis.com is a bilingual job site and placement services focused exclusively on the Iraqi job market and dedicated to linking Iraqi nationals with the companies engaged in the reconstruction efforts.

I would greatly appreciate it if you could list our site in your links section. Please don't hesitate to contact me if you have any questions or if I can be of assistance in any way.

Regards,

Ahmed Almanaseer
President
HireIraqis.com
www.hireiraqis.com

ahmed@hireiraqis.com

Subj: An Iraqi Frist
Date: 2/25/2005 10:28:21 AM Eastern Standard Time
From: "David Levey"

Sen. Frist completes a surgical visit
Politician makes speech, observes heart operation

Mark Naymik
Plain Dealer Politics Writer
Friday, February 25, 2005

Bill Frist, the nation's top senator and an acclaimed heart surgeon, showed off both his political and medical skills Thursday in Cleveland.

He was in town to stump for medical reform and to observe the open-heart surgery of a 6-year-old Iraqi girl....

After his speech, Frist toured Rainbow Babies & Children's Hospital, where he donned operating scrubs so he could attend the open heart surgery of Shayn Aziz. The girl traveled with her mother from Iraq to have a hole in her heart repaired.

After talking to doctors for 10 minutes in the operating room, peering into the girl's chest cavity, Frist met with the girl's mother, Gazang Hamad. As part good-will gesture and part photo opportunity, he told the mother that Shayn was doing well.

Frist, who often travels around the world to perform surgery on people without access to medical care, promised to visit Hamad in Iraq.

The two then posed for pictures, with Hamad holding a photo of her daughter and her daughter's baby doll.

To reach this Plain Dealer reporter:
mnaymik@plaind.com, 216-999-4849

* * *

Date: 2/25/2005 5:40:53 PM Eastern Standard Time

Hey, David,

I hadn't thought of that -- that we've got an Iraqi Frist -- or, that the U.S. could have an American Ja'fari. I'll post that. Thanks.

1. United Iraqi Alliance -- #169 -- 175,303
2. The Iraqi List -- #285 -- 49,110
3. The Independent and Democratic Cadres and Elite -- #352 -- 10,242
4. The Democratic Patriotic Coalition -- #258 -- 1,719
5. The Islamic Action Organization in Iraq, Central Committee -- #111 -- 1,716
6. The People’s Union -- #324 -- 1,456
7. The engineer Ali Muslim Jaar-Allah Ali al-Baydhaani -- #167 -- 1,018
8. The Islamic Vanguard Party -- #234 -- 855
9. The Islamic Call Movement -- #192 -- 773
10. The Iraqi Gathering for Democracy -- #170 -- 674
11. Iraqis -- #255 -- 537
12. The Shaykh Sa’doon Ghulaam Ali Abdil-Kareem al-Laami -- #335 -- 502
13. The Islamic Kurdistani Group-Iraq -- #283 -- 441
14. The Iraq Democratic Gathering -- #115 -- 393
15. The Independent List -- #282 -- 346
16. The Iraqi Turkoman Front -- #175 -- 318
17. The Patriotic Front for Iraqi Unity -- #166 -- 308

NEWS RELEASE from the United States Department of Defense

Feb 23, 2005

DoD Identifies Marine Casualty

The Department of Defense announced today the death of a Marine who was supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Lance Cpl. Trevor D. Aston, 32, of Austin, Texas, died Feb. 22 as a result of non-hostile vehicle incident in Al Anbar Province, Iraq. He was assigned to Marine Forces Reserve’s 1st Battalion, 23rd Marine Regiment, 4th Marine Division, Austin, Texas.

The incident is under investigation.

Breaking News

Elsewhere, in an effort to "confuse the insurgents," President Bush said the U.S. will begin airdropping copies of his Social Security plan over Iraq.

NEWS RELEASE from the United States Department of Defense

Feb 23, 2005

DoD Identifies Army Casualties

The Department of Defense announced today the death of three soldiers who were supporting Iraqi Freedom.

They died Feb. 21 in Baghdad, Iraq, when an improvised explosive device detonated as they were exiting their military vehicle after it had rolled over. The soldiers were assigned to the Army National Guard's 1st Battalion, 151st Field Artillery, 34th Infantry Division, Montevideo, Minn.

The soldiers are:

1st Lt. Jason G. Timmerman, 24, of Tracy, Minn.

Staff Sgt. David F. Day, 25, of Saint Louis Park, Minn.

Sgt. Jesse M. Lhotka, 24, of Alexandria, Minn.

Car Bomb Blast in Tikrit Kills at Least 15 Officers

Allawi Forms Coalition in Bid to Hold Onto Top Post

By SAMEER N. YACOUB, AP
Updated: 07:54 AM EST

TIKRIT, Iraq (Feb. 24) - A man wearing a police uniform drove a car bomb inside the main police compound in Saddam Hussein's hometown north of Baghdad on Thursday, setting off a massive explosion that killed 15 police and wounded 22, officials and witnesses said.

At least four other police were killed in separate attacks across the country, including another suicide car bomb assault on a police convoy in Iskandariyah, 30 miles south of the capital.

In the capital, gunmen opened fire on a bakery in eastern Baghdad, killing two people and wounding a third, police said.

The violence came a day after interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi announced he was forming a coalition to try to hold onto his post in the next government and block the candidate of the dominant Shiite political alliance. Kurdish parties also weighed in with demands for top posts, setting up a possible showdown over the role of religion in a new Iraq.

The blast in Tikrit, 80 miles north of Baghdad, occurred at one of the station's busiest times, when dozens of policemen were arriving to relieve colleagues who'd been working all night, police Col. Saad Daham said.

"He waited until the shift change, then he exploded the car," Daham said, adding the aim was "to kill as many as possible."

Daham said the attacker was able to slip into the station undetected because he was wearing a police lieutenant's uniform. He blamed guards at the station's gates for allowing the bomber to enter without checking his papers or searching his vehicle.

Twenty cars were set ablaze after the massive blast, sending clouds of smoke into the sky. An Associated Press photographer on the scene saw at least 10 charred bodies laying on the ground.

Several ambulances ferried casualties to a hospital and U.S. troops set up checkpoints and searched vehicles across the city.

Daham put the toll from the blast at 15 dead and 22 wounded. Khalil Ibrahim, an official at the Tikrit hospital, said all the dead and injured were policemen.

Elsewhere, insurgents ambushed a police patrol in the northern city of Kirkuk with a roadside bomb, killing two policemen and injuring three.

And in Iskandariyah, a suicide bomber attacked a police convoy, killing two policemen and a child who was walking down the road at the time. Police said the attack targeted Col. Salman Ali, who escaped unharmed.

Insurgents have relentlessly attacked U.S. and Iraqi security forces with car bombs throughout the past year in a campaign of violence that's included kidnappings, beheadings and assassinations of top officials.

Ending the violence will be a top priority for the new government, once it takes office after parties who won seats in the national assembly decide who will get top posts.

Allawi's call for an inclusive coalition that would attract minority Sunni Arabs who form the core of the insurgency came as support for Ibrahim al-Jaafari, the leading Shiite candidate, began slipping in his United Iraq Alliance.

One day after al-Jaafari, 58, was nominated for the post of prime minister by the clergy-backed alliance, a Shiite political group that supports his one-time challenger, Ahmad Chalabi, threatened to withdraw its support.

The Shiite Political Council demanded that the alliance make amends after forcing Chalabi to end his pursuit of the prime minister's post by nominating one of the council's members for the largely ceremonial post of Iraqi president.

But the Kurdish coalition controlling 75 of the 275 seats in the National Assembly has long taken for granted that the alliance, which has 140 seats, will give the presidency to one of its leaders - Jalal Talabani. Allawi's ticket won 40 seats.

"Regarding the nomination for the presidential post, no names were presented officially and we are running nonofficial discussions with all parties, especially with the Kurdish officials here in Baghdad," al-Jaafari spokesman Abdul Razaq Al-Kadhimi said.

The Kurds also issued a separate list of demands that include reinforcing autonomy in their northern provinces.

A two-thirds majority of the assembly is required for approval of the presidency - the first step in a complicated process of filling the top positions. What this boils down to is that for al-Jaafari to become prime minister, he must win the approval of his own Shiite alliance, including Chalabi's supporters, and an additional 44 legislators.

The next prime minister will oversee the drafting of a new constitution, and some fear al-Jaafari could lead Iraq toward an Islamic theocracy, or even a strictly sectarian Shiite one. Allawi, Chalabi and the Kurds oppose efforts to codify or legislate religion.

02-24-05 0510EST

Look Who’s Voting

WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY JR.
National Review
on the right (may require subscription)

NEW YORK, JANUARY 28

Some years ago my guest on Firing Line was Gen. Vernon Walters. He was a phenomenon who had had phenomenal experiences, among them interpreting for four different presidents in four different languages, and serving briefly as director of the CIA. He remarked, in passing, that no democratic government had ever initiated national aggression.

I was stunned by this statement, and as the exchange proceeded, attempted to run my skeptical memory over it. Surely it could not be so? But so — it is. And that revelation by General Walters orients us properly in the matter of the election in Iraq on Sunday.

Mostly, talk about the achievements of democracy is inflated. For one thing, baptism in democracy is not permanently orienting. It isn’t as if a democratic election acted as a magnet, pointing a nation resolutely and incorruptibly toward liberty. We can earn the right to vote, and the majority can use that right to deprive everyone, themselves included, of liberty.

This is not the moment to engage the pretensions of democrats who act as if popular elections guaranteed liberal laws. But it repays grateful thought to dwell on Walters’s point. How is it that self-governing countries decline to engage in national aggression?

It must follow that the mere democratic act has something of a sacramental character. What a boon for the countries that surround Iraq: Syria, Turkey, Iran, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan. All that they would have to fear is the intoxication of their own peoples by the experience of Iraq. During the Cold War someone remarked that the difference between socialists in the Soviet Union and capitalists in the free world was this, that if a neighbor becomes wealthy, the capitalists who surround that neighbor will seek to imitate him. The communists would seek to undermine him. Mr. Bush has several times stressed his belief that a democratic Iraq would affect the political destinies of Iraq’s neighbors. This may be too hopeful, but this is the season to express our hopes.

There has been speculation on the matter of a critical figure. It was amusing that one analyst, reporting from Baghdad, said that, conceivably, the Iraqi vote could match the vote in the United States. In the presidential election of 2004, just over half (60.7 percent) of Americans voted. The case might be made that those who did were responding to the threats of our own terrorists. If it hadn’t been for words and deeds by Democrats, many Republicans would have stayed in bed.

That is the luxury of the state that takes self-government for granted. In Iraq, those who go to vote, especially in areas where the insurgents are active, are true democratic heroes. One observer said that it would be reasonable to anticipate 60 acts of terrorism on Sunday. Terrorists thrive on unpredictability. That is what gives them the great leverage they have. If we knew exactly where a terrorist would strike, the jeopardized could prepare for him, and vitiate or even abort his mission.

The other problem in Iraq reflects tribal divisions. If the Sunnis were to succeed in boycotting the election, that would be different from the failure to vote for fear of retaliation by the insurgents.

Whatever happens, it is a day of haunting significance. President Bush’s statement on Thursday that of course the United States military would withdraw if the new government requested it to do so is the perfect frame for a genuinely democratic exercise.

You can’t get, in Iraq, sophisticated demographics of a kind that will tell us how many failed to vote for fear of the insurgents, how many were motivated by tribal resentments. But one might hope that the European community would greet the events of Sunday with at least a measure of gratitude for what the United States has made possible.

Breaking news

Elsewhere, President Bush announced that Iraq's national motto will be, "Come for the weapons of mass destruction, stay for the democracy.”

Subj: Dennis Prager show...
Date: 2/23/2005 1:45:37 PM Eastern Standard Time
From: John Palmer
To: Ayad Rahim

I sent Eva an e-mail today and she replied:

Hi John,

Thank you so much for reminding me; can we have Ayad on tomorrow, Thursday, at 9 am pacific time?

  Date:  2/23/2005 1:01:49 PM Eastern Standard Time

Ayad:

Thanks for the email.

No, there was no attachment.

Stay safe.

Anita P.S.  Who's your candidate for PM?

* * *

  Date:  2/23/2005 5:42:48 PM Eastern Standard Time

Mine is Ahmad Chalabi -- but, as long as he gets his way, that's fine. I want a dictatorship of Ahmad.

See ya.

Shiite Alliance in Iraq Wants Islamist as the Prime Minister

By JOHN F. BURNS and DEXTER FILKINS
The New York Times
February 23, 2005

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Feb. 22 - Ibrahim al-Jaafari, a Shiite doctor with an Islamist bent, was chosen Tuesday by the victorious Shiite alliance as its candidate to become Iraq's new prime minister. The decision may well open a period of protracted and rancorous negotiations with a coalition of secular leaders intent on sharply curtailing Dr. Jaafari's powers or blocking him and his clerical-backed coalition.

Ayad Allawi, the current prime minister, and Barham Salih, a Kurdish politician and deputy prime minister, said in separate interviews on Tuesday that without guarantees renouncing sectarianism and embracing Western democratic ideals they were poised to block Dr. Jaafari's nomination and possibly peel off enough members from the Shiite's United Iraqi Alliance to form a government of their own.

Iraq's interim constitution effectively requires a two-thirds majority in the new assembly to choose a prime minister and government, and the Shiite alliance, led by two religious parties with close ties to Iran, won a bare majority in the Jan. 30 election.

Indeed, initial indications were that a potentially polarizing battle was possible, one that could expose the deep fissures in Iraqi society that have been held in check since the fall of Saddam Hussein. Those fissures not only cut across sectarian and ethnic lines but also track a wide disagreement about the nature of the Iraqi state: whether it should be religious or secular, centrally led or governed by a federal system, allied to Iran or anchored in ties to the West.

Dr. Jaafari, 58, won the nomination when his final challenger, Ahmad Chalabi, agreed to withdraw. Mr. Chalabi, a secular, American-educated exile and a one-time favorite of the Bush administration, had been pushing for a secret ballot within the Shiite alliance to determine a candidate for prime minister.

Mr. Chalabi agreed to drop out of the race, after intense pressure from the leaders of the two main wings of the Shiite alliance, Mr. Jaafari's Dawa Party and the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, or Sciri, led by Abdul Aziz al-Hakim. Mr. Chalabi promised to support Dr. Jaafari, and stood with him and several other Shiite leaders at a news conference to announce the decision.

"Unity is more important than winning," Mr. Chalabi said.

If Dr. Jaafari secures the approval of the newly elected national assembly, he would play a central role in the drafting of the country's permanent constitution, which is scheduled to be put before voters later this year. That process is likely to be one of the most contentious political battles in the coming months, with arguments over such questions as the role of Islam in government and the degree of autonomy afforded to minorities such as the Kurds.

Despite the appearance of inevitability, Dr. Jaafari faces a difficult task in persuading a large bloc of mostly secular parties to support him.

If the Kurds and Dr. Allawi do not scuttle Dr. Jaafari's candidacy, they are likely to set a number of stiff conditions for their support, regarding not only the shape of the government but also of the permanent constitution to be drafted this year.

Both the Kurds and Dr. Allawi's group, known as the Iraqi List, are skeptical of the Shiite alliance's pledge that it will not build an Islamic state. Dr. Allawi and senior Kurdish leaders have said they are troubled by what they regard as the undue influence wielded among the Shiite alliance by the government of Iran, which provided sanctuary to the leadership of both the Dawa Party and Sciri during the time of Saddam Hussein.

Dr. Allawi, in the interview on Tuesday, said he intended to press his own candidacy for prime minister, and to explore the possibilities of forming a secular bloc within the assembly that could muster more seats than the alliance.

Under Iraq's interim constitution, agreed to last year, Dr. Jaafari would need the agreement of two-thirds of the 275 members of the national assembly to become prime minister. Holding just a slim majority - 140 seats of 275 - Dr. Jaafari's alliance would almost certainly need the support of the Kurds or Dr. Allawi's group - or both.

At the core of a potential secular coalition, Dr. Allawi said, would be his own group, with 40 seats, and the Kurds, with 75 seats, and possibly some defectors from the United Iraqi Alliance. He noted that the alliance's 140 elected members included many who were not religious Shiites, a group that might be disaffected enough with the choice of Mr. Jaafari to break away.

"What it boils down to is that there are a lot of secular Shiites in the alliance," he said, citing two of the most prominent political figures among the alliance's elected candidates, Mowaffak al-Rubaie, who has been national security adviser in the interim government, and Mr. Chalabi.

In Dr. Jaafari, the Shiite alliance picked a soft-spoken leader whose personal modesty and ties to the Dawa Party, a victim of bloody purges carried out by Mr. Hussein, have made him, at least according to opinion polls, the most popular leader in Iraq. A native of the holy city of Karbala, where his father worked at the Imam Hussein shrine, Dr. Jaafari fled Iraq in 1980, after Mr. Hussein began a campaign of killing and torturing thousands of Dawa members.

Since returning to Iraq after Mr. Hussein was toppled, Dr. Jaafari has cut a cautious political path, tacitly supporting the American presence here but staking out a strongly adversarial position on many key issues.

As a member of the American-appointed Iraqi Governing Council, Dr. Jaafari pushed for a more expansive role for Islam in the country's interim constitution. And he was one of several Shiite leaders who initially refused to sign the document, based on his opposition to a provision that would allow a two-thirds majority in three of Iraq's 18 provinces to nullify the constitution when it goes before voters later this year. Dr. Jaafari, whose Shiites represent a 60 percent majority in the country, said the provision was undemocratic.

He eventually signed the interim constitution, but even now says he may lead a move to reverse the provisions he opposed last year. That prospect is viewed with alarm by many groups here, including Kurds, secular parties, and the Americans.

At a news conference after his nomination on Tuesday, Dr. Jaafari, who spent more than 20 years in exile in London and Iran, declared the defeat of the insurgency his first priority. In recent public statements he has made it clear that an Iraqi government cannot accomplish that without the continued support of American troops. He also promised to forge a coalition that included Iraqis of all sects and ethnicities, particularly the Sunni Arabs, who largely boycotted nationwide elections last month and who are generating most of the violence against the American-backed government here.

"If need be, we will be strong against the perpetrators of acts of violence, and at the same time we will be lenient with anybody who will work with us," Dr. Jaafari said at the news conference. Flanked by a smiling Mr. Chalabi, he sat before a poster of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the powerful Shiite religious leader under whose guidance the alliance came together.

"I don't believe that anybody, be they Sunnis or any other religious doctrine, will allow these people to destroy our country, and there should be a force that will stop them and put an end to the bloodshed," Dr. Jaafari said.

In the interview with Mr. Salih on Tuesday, he said that neither the Kurds nor Dr. Allawi wanted to personalize the contest over the prime minister's job, but that if the alliance wanted their backing there were "key policy issues to be addressed." Crucially, he said, the alliance leaders would have to make an "absolute commitment" to draft a permanent constitution that would embody the principles of democracy, human rights and a federal system of government, an issue of particular importance to the Kurds.

Mr. Salih made the remarks as he hurried into Dr. Allawi's office in the heavily protected Green Zone, only moments after alliance leaders had appeared on television to confirm Dr. Jaafari's nomination. Mr. Salih, who spent most of the 1990's representing Iraqi Kurds in Washington, said Shiite alliance leaders should understand that the two-thirds rule meant that they could make no progress in forming the new government without the support of groups outside the alliance, mainly the Kurds and Dr. Allawi's group.

"I think we have to send a message," he said. "The parameters are very clear." Asked if the Kurds could join Dr. Allawi in an effort to form a secular bloc within the new assembly that could put forward its own candidate for prime minister - most likely Dr. Allawi, Mr. Salih replied: "Anything is possible. In the past, it used to be Saddam Hussein who made all the decisions for us Iraqis. But now, this is an open game, and you will see shifting alliances."

Mr. Salih hinted that the maneuvering could include efforts to break up the Shiite alliance, luring secularists among the 140 alliance members who won assembly seats to join the Kurds and the Allawi group. "You will see that looking at this in terms of fixed formations is a mistake," he said.

Dr. Allawi predicted that settling the issue of who would lead the new government could take weeks, and hinted that the battle could be bitter. He said he had heard rumors that the alliance leaders had consulted with Iran's ruling ayatollahs, and had been told that Dr. Allawi, a secular Shiite with close ties to the United States that go back at least 15 years, would not be acceptable to Iran as prime minister in the new transitional government. "I have heard that they don't want me," he said. "Why, God knows."

Any suggestion that Iran has played a role in the alliance's choice of prime minister would be politically explosive in Iraq, particularly among the Sunni minority population that was Iraq's traditional ruling group for decades until the overthrow of Mr. Hussein. That, in turn, could re-energize the Sunni-led insurgency that has paralyzed much of the country in the 23 months since the American-led invasion, blighting hopes that key Sunni groups with links to the insurgents - including tribal leaders who have met secretly with Dr. Allawi in recent months - might agree to help curb the insurgency and join the political process.

Subj: hey
Date: 2/23/2005 2:34:21 PM Eastern Standard Time

hope you are doing well! what do you think of the Al-jafari, Chalabi, Allawi choices for prime minister? (I know parliament is backing Al-Jafari, but coalitions may arise to change things, so I'm still asking - plus Im just curious where you stand on each of them)

Miriam [from Cleveland]

* * *

Date: 2/23/2005 4:43:11 PM Eastern Standard Time

Hey, Miriam,

I'm pro-Chalabi -- very much. I think he'd do a great job, and quickly turn people in his favor. He's a real dynamo, an action person, with some great ideas up his sleeve. A tremendous thinker -- really a genius.

I'm anti-Allawi, mainly cause he's an Arab nationalist, and may still be a Ba'thi. In fact, he's defended, and even promoted Ba'thism -- as a sound philosophy. It's just that damn Saddam, that didn't implement it. Otherwise, he's said that it's a very democratic framework, structure, etc. Surprisingly -- for an Arab nationalist -- he's very open to good relations with Israel, and his being a former (?) Ba'thi, might make him more likely to pull off relations with Israel.

Ja'fari -- I'm non-plussed by. He's a good man -- all, really are. They're all mensches -- from good families, well-meaning, they don't need this -- they could easily rest, on fortunes, and ease. Ja'fari, though, is pretty mild -- a gentle man -- good speaker, but nothing special, as far as I'm concerned. He's not gonna shake things up, won't rock the boat. He's not that much of an Islamist -- won't impose it on anybody -- but he's not much of anything, either. That's probably a little drastic -- overstating it -- but....

So, how you doin'? What's doin', with you?

All right -- thanks for writing -- and I'll see you.

Local Man Gets Cocky With Ladder

GUNNISON, UT—Three days into painting his house, Donald Simonds has gotten arrogant with his 12-foot aluminum ladder. "When he started his project, he'd step up the rungs real gingerly, bracing himself with his hands all the way," neighbor Earl Pickett said. "Now, three days later, he's climbing up the wrong end, carrying three paint cans at once, standing on the top step of the thing. I even saw him steady himself by putting one foot on a windowsill." Pickett said he just hopes Simonds' smug way with his ladder doesn't get him hurt.

رابطة الشباب المسلم في بريطانيا


بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم

{ولا تحسبن الذين قتلوا في سبيل الله أمواتاً بل أحياء عند ربهم يرزقون}

مجلس فاتحة

تقيم رابطة الشباب المسلم في بريطانيا مجلس فاتحة على أرواح الشهداء الذين سقوا بدمائهم أرض العراق يوم العاشر من المحرم 1426 هـ على أيدي المنحرفين الحاقدين السائرين على خطى بني أمية وأشياعهم,

وعلى أرواح الشهداء الثلاثة من منظمة بدر الذين استشهدوا على أيدي عملاء نظام صدام البائد الذين أدخلوا أجهزة الأمن العراقي.


الزمان: الساعة 7-9 السبت الموافق 26/2/2005م

المكان: مؤسسة دار الإسلام

ندعو جميع الأخوة المشاركة في هذا العزاء

وإنّا لله وإنّا إليه راجعون

وسيعلم الذين ظلموا أيّ منقلب ينقلبون والعاقبة للمتقين.

رابطة الشباب المسلم

NEWS RELEASE from the United States Department of Defense

Feb 22, 2005

DoD Identifies Marine Casualty

The Department of Defense announced today the death of a Marine who was supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Cpl. Kevin M. Clarke, 21, of Tinley Park, Ill., died Feb. 19 as a result of hostile action in Al Anbar Province, Iraq. He was assigned to 1st Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, I Marine Expeditionary Force, Twentynine Palms, Calif.

NEWS RELEASE from the United States Department of Defense

Feb 22, 2005

DoD Identifies Marine Casualty

The Department of Defense announced today the death of a Marine who was supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Cpl. John T. Olson, 21, of Elk Grove Village, Ill., died Feb. 21 as a result of hostile action in Al Anbar Province, Iraq. He was assigned to Headquarters Battalion, 2nd Marine Division, II Marine Expeditionary Force, Camp Lejeune, N.C.

“These weren’t elections -- they were a referendum on identity.”

DID YOU KNOW THIS?

Did you know that 47 countries have re-established their embassies in Iraq?

Did you know that the Iraqi government employs 1.2 million Iraqi people?

Did you know that 3100 schools have been renovated, 364 schools are under rehabilitation, 263 schools are now under construction and 38 new schools have been built in Iraq?

Did you know that Iraq's higher educational structure consists of 20 Universities, 46 Institutes or colleges and 4 research centers?

Did you know that 25 Iraq students departed for the United States in January 2004 for the re-established Fulbright program?

Did you know that the Iraqi Navy is operational? They have 5- 100-foot patrol craft, 34 smaller vessels and a navel infantry regiment.

Did you know that Iraq's Air Force consists of three operation squadrons, 9 reconnaissance and 3 US C-130 transport aircraft which operate day and night, and will soon add 16 UH-1 helicopters and 4 bell jet rangers?

Did you know that Iraq has a counter-terrorist unit and a Commando Battalion?

Did you know that the Iraqi Police Service has over 55,000 fully trained and equipped police officers?

Did you know that there are 5 Police Academies in Iraq that produce over 3500 new officers each 8 weeks?

Did you know there are more than 1100 building projects going on in Iraq? They include 364 schools, 67 public clinics, 15 hospitals, 83 railroad stations, 22 oil facilities, 93 water facilities and 69 electrical facilities.

Did you know that 96% of Iraqi children under the age of 5 have received the first 2 series of polio vaccinations?

Did you know that 4.3 million Iraqi children were enrolled in primary school by mid October?

Did you know that there are 1,192,000 cell phone subscribers in Iraq and phone use has gone up 158%?

Did you know that Iraq has an independent media that consist of 75 radio stations, 180 newspapers and 10 television stations?

Did you know that the Baghdad Stock Exchange opened in June of 2004?

Did you know that 2 candidates in the Iraqi presidential election had a recent televised debate recently?

OF COURSE WE DIDN'T KNOW!

WHY DIDN'T WE KNOW? - OUR MEDIA WOULDN'T TELL US!

NEWS RELEASE from the United States Department of Defense

Feb 18, 2005

DoD Identifies Army Casualty

The Department of Defense announced today the death of a soldier who was supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Sgt. Christopher M. Pusateri, 21, of Corning, N.Y., died Feb.16 in Mosul, Iraq, of injuries sustained from enemy forces using small arms fire. Pusateri was assigned to 2nd Battalion, 325th Airborne Infantry Regiment, 82nd Airborne Division, Fort Bragg, N.C.

NEWS RELEASE from the United States Department of Defense

Feb 19, 2005

DoD Identifies Army Casualties

The Department of Defense announced today the death of two soldiers who were supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom.

They died Feb.16 in Forward Operating Base Iskandariyah, Iraq, when a roadway collapsed, causing their vehicle to roll over. The Soldiers were assigned to the Army National Guard's 1st Battalion, 155th Infantry Regiment (Mechanized), McComb, Miss.

The soldiers are Sgt. Timothy R. Osbey, 34, and Spc. Joseph A.Rahaim, 22, both of Magnolia, Miss.

The incident is under investigation.

Subj: a couple of e-mails...

Date: 2/21/2005 11:03:06 AM Eastern Standard Time

Ayad,

I'm including the text from a couple of e-mails I received yesterday and today.

you just...can't keep a good man down.

I'm not surprised you went back though I do worry about you. Remember the duct tape example? Did you bring any?

Hugs,

Anita P.S. I called the day of the elections and spoke to your sister. I just wanted to congratulate you and your family. Hope you got the message.

DEAR SIR

MY NAME IS JAMAL, AND I LIVE IN KUWAIT.

MAY BE IT IS SILLY TO ASK, BUT BELEIVE ME I HAVE TO, BCZ I TRIED ALL THE MEANS I HAVE AND I FAILED.
MR. AYAD: I HAVE A FAMILY FRIEND FROM BAGHDAD AREA, SHE IS A FEMALE DOCTOR, WE CHAT TOGETHER FOR A LONG TIME, SUDDENLLY SHE DISAPPEAR. I DO NOT KNOW WHAT IS WRONG, SHE ALWAYS TALKS ABOUT THE BAD CONDITIONS IN BAGHDAD AREA.
I KNOW A FEW INFORMATION ABOUT HER, WHAT I KNEW IS HER NAME IS: DOCTOR XY, SHE WORKS IN ONE OF THE HOSPITALS IN BAGHDAD AREA, SHE GRADUATED FROM MEDICAL SCHOOL 2 OR 3 YEARS AGO. AND SHE LIVE IN PALISTINE STREET. I TRIED TO CALL THESE HOSPITALS, BUT NO LUCK, AND I TRIED TO COME TO BAGHDAD, BUT EVERYBODY WARNING ME NOT TO GO THERE.
I DO NOT KNOW HOW TO SAY THIS TO YOU, I NEED YOUR HELP FINDING HER, I WISH TO TALK TO HER.

IF AND IF YOU CAN HELP ME BY VISITING THESE HOSPITALS TO FIND HER I WILL BE YOU SERVANT FOR EVER.

SINCERELY
JAMAL

jamal@xyz.com

The only friendly caution I have for you is be careful of doing too much personal stuff on the blog...of course, I'm telling an Iraqi to be cautious! That's kind of redundant isn't it?

By the way, if you want to respond back to people in person but don't want your personal e-mail address to become published, just go to yahoo, MSN, etc. and create a free account. That's a pretty easy process.

Been following the news lately and the coverage makes it sound like Baghdad is starting to go up in flames again! What's the situation where you're at?

Take care, and I'm waiting on a reply from Eva again about Dennis' program. They were talking about the 24th, but I have no confirmation on that. Oh, also, I talked to a friend of mine at Fox 8 and he said the reason they haven't asked you to do any more work is because they've stopped having guests on any of the local shows. Apparently their ratings were dropping, and I guess they needed to shake things up to try and stop the slide. Dave Umbriac is now the weekend show producer.

If anything changes, I'll let you know.

John

* * *

Subj: reply to two e-mails, etc.
Date: 2/21/2005 10:45:44 PM Eastern Standard Time

Hi, John,

Yeah -- I'm not going to go around, looking for this guy's relative. I will, however, post his e-mail, without names, and send him a reply. I don't know whether to send it, via you, or from my own mailbox. I don't wanna have to check other mailboxes, although, thanks, for suggesting that alternative.

I accidentally hit InternetExplorer, and thought about opening a hotmail account, but...Bill Gates. I then plugged in "yahoo!," in the search box, but then, thought...I don't wanna have to open another mailbox; plus, I don't know when I'd get to it, etc. Do, do you mind, if I just send my reply, through you? Thanks.

Well -- here's my reply, to this guy. Then, there's more stuff, for you.

Dr. Jamal,

I'm sorry about your relative. I wish I could do something to help. The thing is, I don't go around, especially to places I don't know. Plus, I only go around, with my relatives or good friends. You know, Iraqis coming from abroad, are good "morsels," and I think I stick out. So, I don't want to go somewhere, I'm not sure about. I will ask my relatives, though -- see if, maybe, we can make a phone call, ask people. If there's anything, I'll let you know. In the meantime, I'm going to post your e-mail, without names -- I hope that's all right.

What I would suggest, is to contact the Red Cross/Red Crescent. I'm sure you've thought of that. Then there's also the U.N. High Commissoner for Refugees, although I don't know if she qualifies, as a refugee. Still, they can probably point you in the right direction. Then, there are also hospitals, being operated by the Emirates, Saudi, all over the country. I'd look into some of those -- plus, Iraqi groups, based in Kuwait. One of them, al-jeeran, I've come across, on the net. It's more academic, disseminating news, but...you never know -- they might know something, know somebody, a way to help.

Well -- good luck. Thanks for writing, and let me know what happens -- and, if I think of something, come across something -- maybe one of my relatives can look, instead of me -- as I'm a stranger here, too, and, thus, more at risk -- I'll let you know.

All the best,

Ayad

Back to John:

In your advice, you said, "be careful of doing too much personal stuff on the blog." What did you mean? Are you talking about, me, writing too much stuff about myself, my family? Could you be specific?

What else?

That was interesting, huh? That guy?

The situation's fine. The city's not going up in flames. Things are getting better, all the time, and they're really looking up, with a self-selected government, about to take hold, and people taking responsibility for their world. That's what people are busy with, what they're talking about.

Okay -- let me see, what else...you've got.

I guess that's it. I'll keep waiting -- for Prager, or anybody else.

All right -- take care. See you.

Warning to Damascus

NB: And one might also ask just what is the quality of Syrian "intelligence" regarding al Qaida, which as the WSJ explains, is one of the reasons for the kid-gloves approach to Damascus.

* * *

Warning to Damascus
Wall Street Journal
REVIEW & OUTLOOK
February 7, 2005

Among the notable parts of President Bush's State of the Union speech last week was its blunt warning to Syria, next door enemy of free Iraq. "Syria still allows its territory, and parts of Lebanon, to be used by terrorists who seek to destroy every chance of peace in the region," Mr. Bush said. "We expect the Syrian government to end all support for terror and open the door to freedom."

Let's hope the President finally means it, because this is only the latest U.S. warning to Damascus since the fall of Saddam Hussein in April 2003. Colin Powell visited Bashar Assad soon thereafter -- despite Pentagon objections that the Syrian dictator would consider it a sign of U.S. weakness. And sure enough, Syria has been adding to our troubles in Iraq ever since.

In November, U.S. troops in Fallujah found GPS systems "with waypoints originating in western Syria," according to the Washington Post. Captured Iraqi and foreign fedayeen report being trained in small arms and explosives at camps in Syria. The Treasury Department has also implicated Syrian individuals and financial institutions in financing Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's terrorist network and in terrorist-related money-laundering schemes.

More worrisome, General George Casey, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, has said he has information that Iraq's Baathists have established the New Regional Command, "operating out of Syria with impunity and providing direction and financing for the insurgency in Iraq." The leader of this command, Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, formerly Saddam's No. 2, reportedly moves freely between Syria and Iraq to direct the insurgency. The U.S. also knows that in recent months the Baathist Regional Command has invited Sunni tribal leaders to meetings in Damascus hotels in order to recruit them to the insurgency.

Yet so far the U.S. hasn't mounted a single Predator strike on any of these or other insurgent targets inside Syria. In part, this is because the State Department wants to engage Syria in a peace process with Israel, and in part because the CIA seems to be heavily reliant on information obtained through Syrian intelligence about al Qaeda. As a result, both State and CIA tend to treat Syria's behavior either as a function of its relations with Israel, or as a matter of "not doing enough." But the real problem is that Syria uses its minimal cooperation to disguise its larger efforts to undermine U.S. interests and allies throughout the region.

It is true, for example, that Syria has provided the U.S. with actionable intelligence that helped prevent a terrorist attack on a U.S. military facility. Yet as former CIA Director James Woolsey noted in these pages last year, "too-heavy reliance on intelligence provided by liaison [i.e., foreign] services can sap our will to challenge a foreign government that is trying to buy our quiescence with dollops of intelligence." As for the positive role Syria might play in Arab-Israeli peace negotiations, those interests are far less important than the imperative of preventing Syria from abetting the insurgency in Iraq.

With a new government soon to be formed in Baghdad, now is the time to make clear to the young Assad that he will pay a price if he continues aiding the enemies of free Iraq.

Interview

Ajami: Iraqi Elections 'Gave the Lie' to View That Democracy Is Alien to Middle East

Fouad Ajami, director of Middle East studies at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, says the outpouring of Iraqis from all walks of life to vote in Sunday's elections "gave the lie to the idea that democracy is alien or need be alien to this region." Ajami says that even though some Arab media outlets gave prominent play to the elections, some tried to diminish the vote's impact by muting their coverage.

As for the U.S. role, Ajami says the elections, combined with enhanced training for Iraq's security forces, may provide "the twin pillars of our strategy for a graceful exit from that country."

Ajami, who is a member of the board of directors of the Council on Foreign Relations, was interviewed on January 31, 2005, by Bernard Gwertzman, consulting editor for cfr.org.

What are your first thoughts in the wake of Sunday's elections in Iraq?

It reminded me of just a few weeks ago when people were celebrating the Orange Revolution in the Ukraine. The spectacle of ordinary Iraqis; old women, old men, Iraqis returning from far away to vote, people holding up their forefingers dipped in purple ink, gave the lie to the idea that democracy is alien or need be alien to this region. I got up this morning and decided, because I knew I was going to be talking to you, that I would pick up the Arabic press and see how the election was covered to get a sense of how the region responded to this dramatic and big event.

How did they respond?

It was interesting. I would have to say the most shameful of all the responses came from the Egyptians, from the leading paper of the regime of [President] Hosni Mubarak. Mubarak was one of the three people in the region that President Bush called to discuss the Iraqi election; the other two being King Abdullah II of Jordan and crown prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia.

In the lead paper of Egypt, Al Ahram, the elections were treated as some marginal event. The front page went, of course, to Mubarak who was attending a conference of the Organization for African Unity in Abuja, Nigeria. It was as if Mubarak wanted to shield his country from the effect of this Iraqi revolution.

On the other side, the elections received remarkable coverage from a paper which is undergoing a tremendous revolution, I think, in the way it thinks about the world and covers the world. It's a very influential paper, Asharq Al Awsat, a Saudi-owned paper that's published in London. It was exuberant over the election. The front page was celebratory. The huge banner headline said, "Iraqis Vote for Iraq." And the two pictures on the front page were of a man holding his forefinger with the purple ink and a woman looking and studying her ballot, perhaps a woman who may even be unable to read, who may actually vote with her thumbprint.

These two responses tell you the story that, among some Arabs, there is a kind of celebration of the freedom of Iraq. And then there is this other approach to the elections of Iraq, a fear of what this election would mean for other Arabs, with a determination to show, of course, that it was just another violent day in Iraq. Mubarak and his press, in my opinion, disgraced themselves. In the midst of history being made in Iraq, you have a situation where Mubarak himself is preparing to run for another six-year term to bring it to 30 years in office. So, he is in the middle of preparing for his own uncontested election.

For our part, we Americans overcame the fear of the Shiite bogeyman that has paralyzed American policy ever since the Iranian revolution of 1979. Ever since we made the acquaintance of radical Shiism, we've been afraid of the Shiites, and we've held our politics hostage to that fear. But we had to slay that dragon and set that bogeyman aside. And we had to trust democracy in Iraq; we had to trust the Shiites.

The United States was lucky to have Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani in Najaf preaching the necessity of voting.

Yes. We were lucky. As a secularist, I'm not very happy with the idea that a Grand Ayatollah could decree, issue a fatwa, that voting is a religious obligation, because my worry about this is we could end up with another Grand Ayatollah who would decree that voting is impermissible. That's the risk we take. We took this risk in Iraq and we were lucky. We were lucky that the man at the helm of the clerical institution of the Shia of Najaf was a man of tremendous restraint, a man who represented the quietist tradition of Shiism. Now meanwhile across the street, so to speak, the Association of Muslim Scholars, which is the Sunni association, decreed that voting was impermissible. So, in fact, religion was brought into this election on the side of reason and moderation by Sistani, and then on the side of the insurgency, one way or another, by the Association of Muslim Scholars. A secularist cannot be happy with this, but we take it as it is.

A lot of people have been predicting that now that the election is over, there will be a big effort to bring the Sunnis into the constitution-writing process.

Everyone I've spoken to in Iraq, Kurdish leaders and Shiite leaders alike, will tell you no one has any intention to put together a new political process in Iraq that eliminates the Sunni Arabs. The Sunni Arabs will have a place at the table. By the way, no one really knows for sure what the Sunni Arabs are as a percentage of the population. I've seen figures as low as 13 percent. I've seen figures as high as 20 percent. So, cut it any which way you want, the Sunni Arabs are at best 20 percent, at worst 13 percent of the population of Iraq.

I didn't realize it could be that low.

Absolutely. That's the problem for them. You know, in fact, look across the border so to speak, and see the Alawites who rule Syria. They are less than 11 percent. The Sunni Arabs will have a place at the table. They may even be overrepresented in the political process to come, if only because the Kurds and the Shiites want them to participate in the making of this new country because no repair can go on without them. So, they will grant them a place. But the Sunni Arabs have to understand that their age of hegemony is over and that's the hardest thing for them to accept.

Going back to the media, I was struck by the fact that the Arab television networks, Al Arabiya and Al Jazeera, both covered the election quite heavily and in a positive way.

Absolutely in a positive way. The impact of Al Arabiya has been revolutionary, in particular. The impact of Al Arabiya has to do with the presence at its helm of a man of unbelievably exquisite politics who is liberal to the core. That's a Saudi journalist by the name of Abdul Rahman al-Rashed. He was editor-in-chief of the same paper I was talking to you about, Asharq Al Awsat, and he lived in London for many years.

Now he lives in Dubai and he works out of "media city," which is a kind of oasis that the Crown Prince and the prince of Dubai have established in Dubai. And Al Arabiya has become a rival to Al Jazeera, and has given Al Jazeera a good run for its money. And Al Arabiya's coverage has been remarkably liberal, remarkably supportive of Iraq's elections, just as the newspaper, Asharq Al Awasat, has been supportive of this process. There is a determination, particularly at the helm of Al Arabiya, to be done with the journalism of incitement, to be done with the journalism of radicalism, and I think Rashed has pretty much put the message out.

Is Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia enthusiastic about these free elections?

No. Let's say that Iraq has become the battleground between Arab autocracy and Arab liberalism and participatory politics. The autocrats have been hoping, if you will, that this American venture in Iraq would fail. Clearly, there are gradations of difference. Let's just try to parse them. In the case of Egypt, the Egyptians, meaning Mubarak and the political class around him, desperately want Iraq to fail. For one, they are far away from the scene. They do not share a border with Iraq. They believe they can insulate themselves from Iraq. In the case of Jordan and Saudi Arabia, I think it's more subtle there. They may not love the spectacle of democracy, they may not love the spectacle of women, not only voting, but competing for national office--here I'm talking about Saudi Arabia. They may not want democracy to come out with flying colors in Iraq, but they also don't want the mayhem of Iraq to spill over into their borders. So, I think, they would look at these elections as part of their desire to see some kind of stability come to Iraq.

In the case of Jordan, the king of Jordan, young King Abdullah II, got himself into hot water by warning, in a famous interview which he's had to take back, about what he called the spread of the "Shiite crescent" running from Iran, Iraq, and Syria into Lebanon.

But in the end, the Arab neighbors of Iraq just simply could not stop the process of democracy in Iraq. They couldn't stop the Iraqis from voting. And here was Anglo-American power, principally American power, insisting on these elections, supporting these elections and protecting these elections.

Let's talk about the United States, where President Bush is having a lucky streak.

You know, he's made three bets and he's won three times. He made a bet in Afghanistan there would be elections. He made a bet in Palestine that he would not have to deal with [former Palestinian Authority President Yasir] Arafat. The death of Arafat and the success of [President of the Palestinian Authority] Abu Mazen [Mahmoud Abbas] in the elections earlier in January were a vindication of the Bush policy. Now come the elections in Iraq.

Here is the president, a few days earlier, being ridiculed by the "realists" and by other people presumably "in the know" when he said he had planted the flag of liberty firmly, and people ridiculed him for saying he had planted a flag of liberty in Iraq, of all places. Well, now the elections vindicate him. But, I add, there is much danger for this policy still. The victory is not total and final, but grant this administration these three good outcomes--Afghanistan, Palestine, and Iraq.

I guess we have to wait and see now what happens in Iraq. It's going to be a very interesting year.

I think the Iraq elections bought time for our president, not only on the ground in Iraq, but I generally believe they bought him time in the United States. It was almost like we as Americans had grown estranged from the people of Iraq. We came to doubt them. We got used to seeing them in a foul mood. We didn't see enough gratitude on the ground in Iraq. For a fleeting moment, today, January 31, in the immediate aftermath of the election, it seems as though we've closed a circle. We've gone back to that dramatic day, April 9, 2003, when that statue of Saddam Hussein was toppled in Firdos Square [in Baghdad]. We now seem to be bonded with the Iraqis because they were doing the most American of things, voting. There were election banners, there were these simple men and women, peasants, the marsh Arabs, Kurdish mountaineers, all voting.

You could almost forgive our president if he were to say: "I told you so. I said that I planted the flag of freedom and I planted the flag of liberty." So, I think the news from Iraq is a vindication of this policy. It doesn't tell us that the gospel of liberty is going to sweep the Arab world, but I think it does buy time for the policy. It does re-hook the American people to Iraq. It tells them something good can come out of Iraq. The elections came at about the time we passed 1,400 U.S. fatalities in Iraq. We have paid a terrible price, a heavy price in Iraq, but the elections vindicate and redeem the policy-- there is no doubt about it.

Now, back to Iraq. On the ground, I think we will find that the people who fear the Shiite bogeymen are going to be surprised. They are going to find the Shiites have deep wells of anti-clericalism among them; there are many Shiites who don't want the "Turbans" in power. Shiite politicians will be looking for deals with Sunni and Kurdish politicians to build alliances. And they will find a constitutional process into which the Sunni Arabs will be invited in every conceivable way.

It may be that [interim Prime Minister Ayad] Allawi will be brought back in as prime minister for yet another round. Why? Well, because he is a Shiite and a secularist. His old Baathist roots make him acceptable to the Sunnis. It may turn out that we will once again find Sheik Ghazi al-Yawar, the interim president from Mosul, quite acceptable and quite the proper choice for president, because of his manners, his decorum, and his decency. And although he is a Sunni Arab, he is very close to the Shiites. He is married to a Kurdish woman. And, he is the most consensual figure in Iraq.

Now, it also may turn out for American policy that we may have to swallow our pride and deal with none other than Ahmad Chalabi, because Chalabi is back at the center of the political game. And he was the moving force behind the putting together of the so-called Sistani list, the United Iraq Alliance list. And there were earlier reports that the Americans have already signaled that if Chalabi wanted to be minister of interior, it's perfectly fine with them. So, I think we will discover the multiplicity of Iraq. We will discover the Sunnis will be back in the political process. We will discover the Shiites are much more divided than we thought. We will discover there will be anti-clericalism among the Shiites. We will discover that the Shiites don't want theocracy because it isn't anything that they've aspired to in the past. We will see the return of politics to Iraq.

And think of the uniqueness of this spectacle. The communists are back, they fielded a list in the elections. Imagine the irony for George W. Bush, that he waged a war in Iraq to give the Communist Party of Iraq a place at the table. And the constitutional monarchists are back. Sharif Ali, a descent of the Hashemites who survived the regicide of 1958 as an infant of two years of age, is somewhere in the country. We will discover the multiplicity and richness of Iraqi political life. We can hope that these elections, plus the training mission of [Lieutenant] General [David] Petraeus, will become the twin pillars of our strategy for a graceful exit from that country.

Date: 2/21/2005 1:40:32 PM Eastern Standard Time

.... I really don't know how the Iraqi people continue to cope with the random bombings, kidnappings, etc. I greatly admire their courage and perserverance.
You take care of yourself and be safe.
Elaine

WHAT ROLE FOR ISLAMIC LAW?

The Shia-led alliance that won the election insists that it has no plans to impose a theocratic constitution.

Hamid Al-Hamrani in Baghdad
IWPR'S IRAQI CRISIS REPORT, No. 113
February 18, 2005

The rise of Shia political forces in Iraq is raising questions about whether their leaders will seek to introduce Islamic law into the country's new constitution.

The United Iraqi Alliance won a resounding victory in the January election, securing an estimated 140 seats in the 275-seat transitional National Assembly. That body's main responsibility will be to draft a new constitution for the country.

The Shia-led alliance, which is backed by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, said it does not intend to create an Iranian-style theocracy in Iraq. Ibrahim Jaafari, one of the alliance's top candidates for prime minister, said he believes that Islamic law or Sharia should be one of the main sources for legislation, along with other sources of law that do not harm "Muslim sensibilities".

But such statements have done little to reassure Iraqis who believe the country's next constitution should separate mosque and state.

"All religious parties talk about freedom, democracy, pluralism and women's rights," said Yanar Mohammed, head of the Organisation for Women's Freedom in Iraq. "But as soon as they assume power, they begin arresting those who disagree with them,"

Mohammed said she is especially concerned that religious parties will seek to introduce laws that discriminate against women, such as mandatory veiling.

A precedent for this was set last year when the Iraqi Governing Council attempted to introduce Sharia into family law, which contains largely secular legislation on the status of women. The measure was shelved after protests from women's groups and pressure from the United States occupation government that appointed the council.

Mohammed took particular issue with Islamic laws that allot women only half the share in inheritance due to men, or allow husbands to have four wives. "Why are men entitled to marry four women? Doesn't this mean that a woman is equal to a quarter of a man?" she said.

A spokesman from one of the main parties in the United Iraqi Alliance said fears that Sharia is to be imposed are unfounded.

Ridha Jawad Taqi of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq said his party has already supported provisions in the Transitional Administration Law, the interim constitution, that guarantee freedom of religion and prohibit discrimination. To support his position, Taqi quoted a verse from the Koran saying, "Religion is not to be forced."

Taqi said the assembly's diverse makeup, including a mandatory 30 per cent quota for women, will help guarantee the rights of minorities. In addition, the final content of the constitution is ultimately up to the Iraqi people, since by law they must vote on the draft constitution in October. If that ratification fails, the assembly must write a new draft.

"The laws that go into the constitution will be voted on by the whole of Iraqi society, with all its different ethnicities, genders and religions," said Taqi. "If these laws don't get a consensus from the Iraqi community, they will be annulled."

The United Iraqi Alliance fell short of the two-thirds majority needed in the transitional National Assembly to make key decisions unilaterally. The Kurdish Alliance List got the next largest share of votes, earning the largely secular Kurds an estimated 75 seats. These numbers have made it less likely that religious Shias will be able to introduce Sharia.

Prominent Islamic scholar Ayad Jamal al-Din said most Iraqis want separation of religion and state. He said that after years of living under authoritarian regimes, Iraqis should not have to face a future of strict religious rule.

"Our tragedy was the state, not religion," he said. "I don't think the secular man in Iraq wants to cancel out people's religion, but if the religious man gets into politics and into the Republican Palace, he will forget what's legitimate and what's illicit."

Jamal al-Din, who ran an unsuccessful bid for the assembly, said the separation was also necessary to keep religion pure and free of outside influence.

Some believe that there are no conflicts between democracy and Sharia, only that people have distorted them both to suit their own agendas.

"When Sharia is implemented in a sound way, you will see that it is more just than democracy itself," said Saleem Naji Hasan al-Zubaidi, a member of the constitutional legal committee. He explained that Islamic law gives rights to all individuals irrespective of religion, sect or ethnicity.

He added that there are enough qualified legal experts in Iraq to draft the constitution without foreign help.

"The Iraqis know their people better than others and they know what their interests are and how to implement democracy without violating Sharia," he said.

Kareem Tahseen, a 33 year old engineer, believes it will be possible to achieve the right balance so that minority rights are protected, the people's right to vote is maintained, and Sharia is named as one source of legislation.

"What we demand is a free, democratic, and pluralist Iraq that respects the dignity of human beings," he said.

Hamid al-Hamrani is an IWPR trainee journalist in Iraq.

Date: 2/19/2005 1:29:41 PM Eastern Standard Time
From: Allan

Dear Ayad,

.... With regards to Kanan, I believe they delayed the appointing of a new ambassador because of elections. I heard a rumor that Allawi may take it and was waiting to see how he did, but I am not sure how he could if he is an Iraqi MP. He has been making strange statements. I believe that Kanan is interested in the post and hope he gets it.

You are correct that Dr. Chalabi is a very great strategist and I have supported the INC for many years. However, I believe that most voters voted for 169 want Ja3fari as opposed to Chalabi, and the appointment of Ja3fari will be more well received by voters and give them more faith and pride in Iraqi democracy. Both would be very fine PMs and I look forward to an government that will be more powerful and receive more popular support than the current government.

Of course, Chalabi certainly has a (Plan B) and knows he is a long-shot and is probably building up support to get a lock on a powerful position heading a ministry.

It will be a good government, which Iraqis deserve!....

Cheers,
Allan

NEWS RELEASE from the United States Department of Defense

Feb 21, 2005

DoD Identifies Army Casualty

The Department of Defense announced today the death of a soldier who was supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Spc. Seth R. Trahan, 20, died Feb. 19, in Baghdad, Iraq, from injuries sustained while on patrol when an improvised explosive device detonated. Trahan was assigned to the Army National Guard's 3d Battalion, 156th Infantry Regiment, Crowley, La.

Breaking News

ONE YEAR LATER, FIRST JANET JACKSON JOKES ARRIVE IN IRAQ

Rumsfeld Apologizes for Delay

February 6, 2005

The first shipment of Janet Jackson jokes arrived in Iraq today, a full year after wisecracks about the singer's right breast dominated the American media.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld apologized to the Iraqi people for the one-year delay, citing "difficulties in translation."

The sarcastic remarks were airlifted into Iraq over the weekend and delivered to the U.S.-led coalition's three primary joke-distribution centers in Baghdad, the southern city of Basra and oil-rich Kirkuk.

But in the so-called Sunni Triangle, where angry demonstrators protested the lack of Janet Jackson jokes last week, the shipment of year-old boob gags culled from late-night comedy monologues could be a case of too little, too late.

Hisham Dalal, 39, an office worker whose family has been without Janet Jackson jokes since last February, denounced the quality of breast-related witticisms the U.S. was offering Iraqi citizens.

"I guess you had to be there," a bitter Mr. Dalal said.

Like many Iraqis, Mr. Dalal suspects that higher-quality Janet Jackson jokes were sent to U.S. allies such as Britain who supported the American war effort.

The U.S.-led coalition suffered another setback later in the day when Iraq's most prominent Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani, demanded that all Janet Jackson jokes be gone from the country by April 1.

Elsewhere, Marine Corps General James Mattis attempted to clarify his controversial remarks of last week, telling reporters today, "What I meant to say was, it's fun to shoot people, but not nearly as much fun as putting hoods over their heads and making them stand on a box."

NEWS RELEASE from the United States Department of Defense

Feb 17, 2005

DoD Identifies Army Casualty

The Department of Defense announced today the death of a soldier who was supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Sgt. Adam J. Plumondore, 22, of Gresham, Ore., died February 16 in Mosul, Iraq, when a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle. Plumondore was assigned to the Army's 1st Battalion, 24th Infantry Regiment, 1st Brigade, 25th Infantry Division, Fort Lewis, Wash.

JAAFARI BUILDS BRIDGES

Leading candidate for the premiership extends his hand to Sunnis and radical Shia.

By Zaineb Naji in Baghdad
IWPR'S IRAQI CRISIS REPORT, No. 113
February 18, 2005

Interim vice-president Ibrahim al-Jaafari, leading candidate for the post of Iraqi prime minister, this week declared his desire to build political bridges by insisting that Sunnis, who largely boycotted the elections, should be included in government along with the Shia firebrand Muqtada al-Sadr.

Jaafari spoke to reporters after a February 17 press conference by the Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq, IECI, which certified the results of the January 30 elections for the 275-member National Assembly.

The IECI said the United Iraqi Alliance, the Shia-led bloc of which Jaafari is part, will have 140 seats; The Kurdish Alliance List, made up of the two major Kurdish parties, 75; and the Iraqi List, led by interim premier Ayad Allawi, 40.

The remaining 20 seats will be divvied up between nine parties, including al-Iraqiyun ("The Iraqis", the party led by interim president Ghazi al-Yawar which is to receive five seats.

The assembly's main task will be to draft a permanent constitution that will be put before the public in an October referendum.

No parties received the two-thirds majority necessary to rule without a coalition partner and Jaafari's comments reflected that reality. His Shia-led bloc will have to form a coalition, perhaps with the Kurdish Alliance, in order to have the required majority necessary to approve measures.

Jaafari, who heads the Islamic Dawa Party, expressed his willingness to cooperate with the other political groups and said Sunnis, who largely stayed home on election day, needed to be included in government.

"We respect all those who boycotted the elections and we will prove to them that we will deal with them," said Jaafari, 58, a doctor who fled from Iraq in 1980 and lived in London until Saddam Hussein was overthrown. "The constitution won't be complete if the Sunnis don't participate."

He also said he welcomed the prospect of non-Shia holding the posts of president and parliamentary speaker. The Kurdish Alliance has put forward Jalal Talabani, head of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, for the former job and it has been suggested the Sunnis will be offered the latter.

The National Assembly will choose a president and two deputy presidents, which will then in turn choose a prime minister.

Jaafari reiterated that he wanted Muqtada al-Sadr, the young cleric whose supporters have fought the American military in the past, to be a part of the new Iraq.

The National Independent Elites and Cadres Party, which includes supporters of Sadr, will have three seats in the parliament.

"Iraq's political field is open for all Iraqis, including the Sadr movement," said Jaafari. "The Sadr movement has a long history and it has made sacrifices and taken firm stands. That's why I addressed this issue and say in a direct way that Muqtada al-Sadr can participate in the political process in establishing Iraq's new political house."

This desire to have Sadr in the government may be a reflection of Jaafari's religious beliefs, as he is seen by some as being more conservative than other candidates for the prime minister post, including interim finance minister Adel Abdul Mahdi and Ahmed Chalabi, a secular Shia and former American ally.

Mahdi, who belongs to the other major Shia party in the United Iraqi Alliance, the Supreme Council of Islamic Revolution in Iraq, withdrew his name from the running so as to prevent cracks in the bloc, and Chalabi is seen as a long-shot candidate.

Jaafari has said that Islam should be used as one of the sources of legislation, but that concept is likely to face opposition from the Kurds, who want a secular state.

Still, Adnan Mufti, a member of the political bureau of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, said Jaafari was an acceptable candidate for the post of prime minister.

"The United Iraqi Alliance have said they don't want to establish an Islamic state," said Mufti. "And their list includes figures who believe in federalism."

Zaineb Naji is an IWPR trainee journalist in Baghdad.

NEWS RELEASE from the United States Department of Defense

Feb 18, 2005

DoD Identifies Army Casualty

The Department of Defense announced today the death of a soldier who was supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Pfc. Michael A. Arciola, 20, of Elmsford, N.Y., died Feb. 15 in Al Ramadi, Iraq, from injuries sustained from enemy small arms fire. Arciola was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 503d Infantry Regiment, 2nd Infantry Division, Camp Casey, Korea.

NEWS RELEASE from the United States Department of Defense

Feb 18, 2005

DoD Identifies Army Casualty

           The Department of Defense announced today the death of a soldier who was supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom.

           Spc. Justin B. Carter, 21, of Mansfield, Mo., died Feb. 16 in Forward Operating Base McKenzie, Iraq, from non-combat related injuries. Carter was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 15th Infantry Regiment, 3d Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division (Mechanized), Fort Benning, Ga.

           The incident is under investigation.

Q&A: Ahmad Chalabi on Official Iraq Role

By MAGGIE MICHAEL, Associated Press
Fri Feb 18, 1:40 PM ET

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Ahmad Chalabi is confident that he is on the brink of being anointed by the clergy-backed United Iraqi Alliance as the country's first democratically elected prime minister.

Chalabi, leader of the Iraqi National Congress, has had his ups and downs since the United States began building up forces in Kuwait and threatening to invade Iraq.

Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld touted him as a great Iraqi patriot for leading the opposition to Saddam Hussein while in exile. In 2004, he was President Bush's guest at Bush's State of the Union address.

But later, Chalabi fell out with the Bush administration when he was accused of supplying Iran with classified information.

After no weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq, U.S. intelligence agencies said they had depended too much on Chalabi.

He spoke to The Associated Press on Friday about his current political position and candidacy to become Iraq's next prime minister.

AP: Do you think that the majority of the (United Iraqi) Alliance will vote for you?

Chalabi: Yes.

AP: What percentage?

Chalabi: I will not speculate on that.

AP: You think that Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani has the final say on the Alliance's choice?

Chalabi: No. No. No. Sistani position is (that) the elections to take place. He encouraged people to have elections and it is now up to the various parliament groups to make choices of people who will emerge in the government. He isn't involved in the details.

AP: Is there a split inside the alliance and are you in favor of the secret ballot?

Chalabi: There is no split and there is a democratic competition. Whoever becomes prime minister, he will work with the others. This is democracy.

AP: What kind of a government does Iraq need in the coming eight months?

Chalabi: Iraq needs a government that will be effective, help the assembly to draft the constitution, and get on the program to get Iraq back on its feet, which includes sovereignty, security, providing services, fighting corruption, and moving forward with the life of the people.

AP: What makes you the best candidate for the prime minister's post?

Chalabi: First of all, I will focus on getting sovereignty, which is the way to establish security. I believe sovereignty involves the Iraqi government control over the security services, the armed services and the intelligence services of the government, from recruitment to training to equipment to deployment.

I also believe that another aspect of sovereignty is taking control over public spending. The third issue of sovereignty is to have control over the administration, which means that the advisers appointed by occupation authority during the CPA (Coalition Provisional Authority) will leave and the government will hire Iraqis and pay their salaries. Fourth aspect of sovereignty is control over Iraq foreign policy.

In addition to the republican palaces, we should open the Green Zone to Iraqis.

I have a program for fighting corruption which doesn't only mean going after those who are corrupt, but also to put (in place) procedures, and serious procedures, to stop the transactions - and this happens through control and methodology in terms of public spending.

I also believe that we should have a status of forces agreement to regulate the presence of multinational forces according to the U.N. Security Council resolution, and to move forward with the trial of Saddam and the people charged in his circle quickly.

This is a unifying process for Iraqis, and this means revitalize the court, and specialized courts

AP: You were known as an advocate of the de-Baathification, what are you plans concerning this issue?

Chalabi: Yes, de-Baathification moves forward. De-Baathification is a unifying process in Iraq. It is a humane process, and it is a process which saved the lives of many thousands of Baathists in Iraq. People were angry and they wanted revenge.

We were very careful to say that all Baathists should not be punished by collective punishment, We made a separation between the bulk of the Baathists.

AP: What about setting a timetable for the withdrawal of the American forces from Iraq?

Chalabi: The timetable for the withdrawal of troops is just a slogan, an arbitrary slogan. If one is serious about what to do about the presence of multinational forces, the way to move forward is to go beyond the slogan, it is to have a status of forces agreement.

AP: American troops stormed your office in May for leaking intelligence to Iran. How do you comment on those charges?

Chalabi: All of them are false. They are irrelevant. All are false and not true. I have friendly relations with Iran, but that doesn't mean we pass intelligence to them. I never do that.

AP: Why did the American troops storm your office?

Chalabi: There were results of fights in the United States between various parts in the administration, and our friendly side lost and the other side won. So they used this ridiculous charge. They never said they attacked the house for intelligence, and they never said they attacked the house themselves. The official line (for storming my office was that) there was an Iraqi warrant from a court which they have nothing to do with it. But again, when the charges (on Iran) appeared in the press, my lawyers in the U.S. wrote to the director of the FBI and the attorney general at the time, Mr. (John) Ashcroft, and offered our full cooperation in any investigation that involves espionage against the United States, which was mentioned in the press, and we had no answer.

AP: How about the warrant?

Chalabi: It was a warrant not against me but against people in the INC (Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress party). And we are now finding out (that) the files are missing and no one knows anything about it. This is part of a campaign to make obstacles and to stick charges against me and INC.

AP: How about Jordan?

Chalabi: I have raised a case against Jordan in the United States federal court. There is a Web site. Go visit www.petrabank.com and you will see that the case has a great deal of merit and Jordan has not responded to this case yet. But this is the federal court of the United States, and they have to respond.

AP: What are (interim Prime Minister Ayad) Allawi government failures?

Chalabi: I believe that the major mistake is that the government didn't take seriously that Iraq is a sovereign state. There is no dialogue of equals with people of multinational forces here.

The government has been silent over the oil-for-food scandal. Some people in the government were involved in the oil-for-food program - several of them in some way or another, and they don't speak at all about the waste that happened under CPA.

Nobody in the government took it up. In the Governing Council we warned them repeatedly that they are not doing the correct thing, accounting were poor, the procedures were nonexistent. People has to feel that there is sovereignty in Iraq and they are the masters of their fate in a government that represents them to protect their rights.

Also, other mistakes is the use of excessive force without exhausting political process.

AP: How would you deal with the militant groups in Iraq?

Chalabi: There are several types of militant groups. There are Baathist and Saddam followers, who continue (to be) the backbone and financial, administrative and infrastructure of the fighting. These have to be dealt with intelligence (information) and they have to be apprehended and put on trial.

Foreign Jihadists (holy warriors), who are few, should be caught also and put on trial, and people who are engaged in insurgency because they are disaffected, or violated, and there are many examples of that. Those we have to talk to them and bring them in and we have already started this process.

NEWS RELEASE from the United States Department of Defense

Feb 18, 2005

DoD Identifies Army Casualty

The Department of Defense announced today the death of a soldier who was supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Sgt. Frank B. Hernandez, 21, of Phoenix, Ariz., died Feb. 17 in Tal Afar, Iraq, when an improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle. Hernandez was assigned to 2nd Squadron, 14th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Brigade, 25th Infantry Division, Stryker Brigade Combat Team, Fort Lewis, Wash.

NEWS RELEASE from the United States Department of Defense

Feb 18, 2005

DoD Identifies Army Casualty

The Department of Defense announced today the death of a soldier who was supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Spc. Katrina L. Bell-Johnson, 32, of Orangeburg, S.C., died Feb. 16 in Ba'qubah, Iraq, when she was involved in a vehicle accident. Bell-Johnson was assigned to the Army's 418th Transportation Company, 180th Transportation Battalion, Fort Hood, Texas.

The incident is under investigation.

'Chalabi set to become Iraq's PM'

By ORLY HALPERN
Jerusalem Post
Feb. 18, 2005 3:11 | Updated Feb. 18, 2005 12:27

Ahmed Chalabi is likely to emerge as Iraq's leader, as originally envisioned by the US, Dan Senor, the former spokesman for the US occupation government in Iraq, told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday.

"He has a good chance of getting the job," said Senor.

The Iraqi premiership race is now between two seasoned 58-year-old Shi'ite politicians from within the United Iraqi Alliance (UIA), a Shi'ite list that won the most votes in the elections.

One is Chalabi, the secular leader of the Iraqi National Congress. The other is Ibrahim Jaafari, the religious leader of the Dawa Party.

According to Senor, Jaafari would probably have been assured of the post if Chalabi had not pushed – and succeeded – to get an internal vote of all the list members. Originally, the top leaders of the parties within the list were going to decide between themselves.

"Chalabi believes that if there's an up or down vote of the 141 members he has a better chance of winning," said Senor.

Chalabi is the former US darling who arrived in Iraq with the allied forces and the hope he would take Saddam Hussein's place. He left Iraq as a teenager and later created an opposition party called the Iraqi National Congress, which was on the CIA payroll.

Chalabi has very close contacts in Israel and with leaders of the Jewish community in the US. His party once called for the normalization of ties with Israel, where he has visited a number of times.

He fell out of favor with the US when he was thought to have been spying for Iran. His party was also accused of misleading the US by supplying it with false information about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Recently, the US announced there were no WMDs there and the search was called off.

But in a remarkable turnaround, Chalabi allied himself with the religious Shi'ites and became part of that list.

Now he hopes to get the premiership. "He said he has a plan, he's ready for the vote," said Senor.

The final results of the Iraqi elections gave the UIA a slight majority, the Iraqi Election Commission announced Thursday. After the smaller lists, which did not get the minimum number of required votes, were removed from the results, the UIA had 140 of the 175 votes. This means that almost every list member will get a seat in the National Assembly.

Within the next few days, the members of the UIA list must decide who they want to be the next prime minister. The two religious parties on the list, the Supreme Council of the Revolution in Iraq and the Dawa party members, will probably all vote for Jaafari, a religious politician.

But Chalabi, said Senor, is confident.

"There are a lot of independents on the list and Chalabi believes he can win them – and he will try to win them over," said Senor.

Still, Adnan Ali, Jaafari's senior adviser, told the Post he's confident Jaafari will get the job. "There's no doubt about it."

Subj: Hi from T
Date: 2/19/2005 3:17:54 PM Eastern Standard Time
From: "Teresa Thornhill"

Hi Ayad
Just wanted to say hello and that I am thinking of you. I have not yet logged onto your blog, as the icon for it has disappeared from my screen. If you can e.mail me the address, that would be good....
Am looking forward to seeing you in April and hope all will go well for you between now and then.
I should say, I was thrilled about the large turn-out for the elections, I found it very moving. I thought people were incredibly courageous to turn out and vote despite the apalling risks.
last night I saw Maysoon al Damluji on Channel Four news. They showed a video diary of her and two other women candidates. I felt so sad for Maysoon that her party did so badly. She looked really upset. Have you seen her? If you do, please give her my warm regards.
Meanwhile, take care, and send me your blog address if poss.
lots of love
Txxxx

NEWS RELEASE from the United States Department of Defense

Feb 18, 2005

DoD Identifies Army Casualty

The Department of Defense announced today the death of a soldier who was supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Staff Sgt. Jason R. Hendrix, 28, of Claremore, Okla., died Feb.16 in Ar Ramadi, Iraq, when an explosion occurred while he was conducting combat operations. Hendrix was assigned to 1st Battalion, 9th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Infantry Division, Camp Hovey, Korea.

Zuhayr Shentaaf writes that, at this time, with local and regional daggers stabbing Iraq, the country is in dire need of a politician of the top rank, capable of dealing with the world, especially the Arab world, and able to take bold decisions. While praising Ja'fari for his diplomatic skills, Shentaaf says that this is a time for tough and forthright talk, in particular, with Arab countries, something Chalabi has consistently done, with candor. Shentaaf also points to Chalabi's willingness and ability to expose secrets of Arab support for Saddam. Chalabi has proven his political skills, Shentaaf argues, in persuading the United States to topple Saddam, in not disguising his relationship with the United States, in overcoming American duplicitousness while still maintaining relations, and in exposing mismanagement and corruption by the U.N. and the U.S. Shentaaf also cites Chalabi's financial and economic experience, which Ja'fari lacks.

* * *

Usama Mehdi backs Ja’fari because of his pragmatism and flexibility. Ja’fari, Mehdi writes, was sentenced to death, by the Ba’thi regime, for his membership in the Da’wa party, and was the first president of the Governing Council, in August 2003, the first Iraqi leader after the fall of Saddam, truly ushering in a new age, and astonishing Iraqis into the realization that the deposed would not return and the victim of the past was now at the head of the state ruled by the hangman for 35 years.

Ja'fari, 58, was born in Kerbela, graduated from medical school in Mosul in 1977, worked in Kerbela hospital, and became, after three years, assistant to the health director of the province. Ja'fari joined the Da’wa Party in 1966, the party having been formed in 1957 -- Da'wa is the oldest Shi’a party in Iraq. Ja’fari became the main spokesperson for the party, whose ideology is to reform Islamic thought and modernizing religious institutions.

Saddam banned the party in 1980, executed its main ideologist and issued a unique order to execute all members of the party. This forced Ja’fari to flee -- to Iran, then, in 1989, to England.

Ja’fari rejected the U.S. plan to topple Saddam from abroad. To that end, Da’wa and other forces opposed to Saddam convened conferences and issued statements opposing outside intervention, something others, under the aegis of the Iraqi National Congress, called for. Da’wa refused to attend the last conference abroad, in London, in late 2002, because it urged American involvement. Da’wa always favored a toppling of the regime, from internal forces.

Because of Ja’fari’s pragmatism and flexibility, he returned to Iraq, to join the new authority. He affirmed that his party still opposed foreign occupation, but that he was urged to join the new government, and would do so, in an effort to shorten the period of occupation. Ja’fari said last week that departure of foreign forces now, would create a bigger problem than their remaining in Iraq.

What distinguished Ja’fari’s role in Da’wa, was that he swung his wing of the party away from its pro-Iran leanings, and its previous allegiance to the doctrine of “rule of the jurisprudence [clerics].” Ja’fari has been criticized by Iraqi politicians for not speaking out against Iran’s recent involvement in Iraq.

Ja’fari enjoys gentle manners and a particular popularity, since taking up the position of vice president. He was one of the first to return from exile. In an opinion poll released last year, Ja’fari trailed only Sistani and Muqtada a-Sadir as the most influential Shi’a in the country. It’s known of Ja’fari, that he’s greatly influenced by Sistani and Muhammad Baqir a-Sadir, who was executed by Saddam in 1980, and that he’s a poet and has, memorized, many poems by Mutannabi and Jawahiri.

Ja’fari is from the well-known Ushaiqer family of Kerbela, but chose the name Ja’fari, when he left Iraq, to protect his relatives in Iraq. The family hails from Ushaiqer, in Saudi Arabia, and Ja’fari’s grandfather led the 1876 “Ushaiqer revolt” of Kerbela against Ottoman rule.

Ja’fari's name is the second on the United Iraqi Alliance list of candidates. Before the elections, Ja’fari tried to allay Sunnis’ fears, saying “If our list got a large number of the votes, that doesn’t mean we want a Shi’a regime in Iraq. If we win in the elections, we will administer power on the basis that we are Iraqis, and not on the basis of sectarianism.”

The Da’wa party affirms that the Saddam regime killed thousands of its members between 1982 and 1984. During the writing of the interim constitution (the transitional administrative law), Da’wa strove to make Islam the one source of law for the country. Ja’fari is known for good relations with all the neighboring countries. He’s married, and has two sons and three daughters, all living in Britain.

U.S. OKs PLAN TO INCREASE PRESSURE ON SYRIA

WASHINGTON [MENL] -- President George Bush has approved a plan for an aggressive U.S. military policy along the Iraqi border with Syria.

Officials said the White House has endorsed a plan that would grant U.S. troops the right of pursuit of Iraqi insurgents into Syria. They said the plan also included greater efforts along the Iraqi-Syrian border to block the flow of insurgents and weapons into Iraq.

"We will continue to make it clear to both Syria and Iran that meddling in the internal affairs of Iraq is not in their interests," Bush said.

The plan does not call for an invasion or attack on Syria, officials said. Instead, the plan stipulated the deployment of additional air and ground assets meant to detect and strike infiltrators from Syria. They said the policy would allow U.S. troops to shoot suspected infiltrators, even while they were on Syrian territory.

Subj: Thank you
Date: 2/18/2005 9:51:51 AM Eastern Standard Time
From: Samir Sumaidaie

Dear Friends

I wish to say "Thank You" to all who have supported our Patriotic Democratic Alliance List 258 (التحالف الوطني الديمقراطي)

With very little resources we were able to gain a voice in the Transitional National Assembly and several seats in provisional assembly. This is while others with much better funding and access to media, failed to do so.

Our voice will be for a democratic Iraq and an Iraqi identity to be raised above all other identities in the context of citizenship and government, whilst fully respecting and even celebrating the rich variety of Iraqi society.

The success of these elections is not in in terms of who won and who lost. The Iraqi people won and the terrorists lost. All the shortcomings of the elections (and there were many serious ones) will have to be addressed, but they will be addressed within the framework of new Iraq, without violence.

I pay tribute to the leaders and members of our Alliance, in particular Dr Abid Faisal Al-Sahlani (Abu Abir) and his daughter Abir for all the effort and faith and commitment they placed in the election campaign.

From here we (and our beloved country) can only go forward and upward, to defeat terrorists, corruptions and the forces of darkness, and start building a civilized country again, step by step, brick by brick and institution by institution.

Samir Sumaida'ie

Al-Jaafari Discusses Goals for Iraq

Wednesday, February 16, 2005

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Associated Press — Many view Shiite political leader Ibrahim al-Jaafari as a cleric in a business suit. He is now in the spotlight as his chances grow to win the nomination to be Iraq's first prime minister.

Members of the United Iraqi Alliance agreed Wednesday to hold a secret ballot, most likely on Friday, to choose between Ibrahim al-Jaafari and Ahmad Chalabi. Al-Jaafari spoke to The Associated Press this week:

AP: What are the issues at the top of your agenda?

Al-Jaafari: Security is at the top, then improving the standards of social services and all pressing elements on the Iraqi people.

We need to elevate people's standard of living so it is compatible with the country's resources, which God almighty rewarded Iraq with.

Of course people should understand that such great ambitions — and fears which we will work on eliminating — will take time. But the people must feel an improvement in the security situation and the standards of social services.

AP: Would you call for the withdrawal of the multinational troops from Iraq?

Al-Jaafari: We have to look into the reasons why the multinational troops remain in Iraq, and not only Iraq, but in many regions around the world; the troops are present in a certain country when the breaches in the security situation are greater than the capacity of the security apparatus in that country to handle it.

It is true that if the multinational forces are in Iraq, it is a weakness and not a point of strength as it means that security is not up to the level needed in the country. However, treating such a weakness shouldn't lead us to committing a bigger mistake by calling for the troops' withdrawal at this time. There are security challenges, there are breaches, assassinations and explosions.

Despite the fact that the multinational troops are in Iraq, blood is spilled, the land is under attack, how would it be if these troops left?

When we are able to improve Iraq's security, it will be normal then to ask for the withdrawal of the multinational troops from Iraq.

AP: Do you believe that Islam should be the main source or the only source for legislation? What is your position on civil liberties?

Al-Jaafari: The constitution should reflect, like a clear mirror, the Iraqi fabric.

Iraqis agree on common ideas, such as respecting peoples' various beliefs, civil liberties, endorsing elections as the way to select authorities, preserving the state sovereignty, respecting human rights, respecting women and integrating them into political life.

The great majority of Iraqis are Muslim, it is normal that we should care about their sensibilities by making Islam the official religion of the state and making it one of the main sources for legislation along with other sources, without harming the Muslims' sensibilities.

AP: You are a leader of a political party called Dawa, which calls for the Islamization of the society and the state, isn't this a contradiction?

Al-Jaafari: We believe that theory is not the goal, but the goal is the human being, and as long as the human being is aware of the developments that are taking place, he will be flexible in developing the theory.

Witnessing the current experience in Iraq and how the society is open and diverse, it is normal that we reconsider our ideas in light of the new developments.

We deal with the other on the basis that the majority doesn't exclude the other but respects the other.

AP: What is your position of the banning of Baath Party members from the government?

Al-Jaafari: Evaluation of those who belonged to the Baath Party depends on the individual and his behavior and the powers he had when he was part of Baath Party. The mere belonging to the Baath Party, without committing any crime or holding a senior political post, is a different issue, especially since there are many Iraqis who were forced to join the Baath Party.

AP: How would you encourage Sunni participation in the coming elections? How would you comment on the Sunni Association of Muslim Scholars labeling the incoming government as "illegitimate?"

Al-Jaafari: Legitimacy can't be granted to anybody, it is a reality. There are people who voted in the elections despite the tough conditions.

I respect the other's points of views but this is legitimacy and the government (which will be formed) doesn't come under the umbrella of the occupation or a government under a United Nations mandate.

For those who didn't participate in the elections this time, the coming government will open the door for them to help build the new Iraqi state.

AP: What is your position of federalism?

Al-Jaafari: When we talk about federalism in principle, it doesn't mean that we call for separation.

The successive past regimes which ruled Iraq created fears and worries because of not only undermining calls for federalism, but also suppressing the sons of the provinces. Therefore (those who call for federalism) are not only attracted to the idea but also they fear the central government.

In other words, most of the calls for federalism are just reactions to the past oppression.

Now, if the central government was able to create justice and to preserve the rights of the sons of the provinces, not to discriminate against different races, many of those fears will evaporate.

AP: You once said that Iraq will not turn into a playground for some to fight Washington.

Al-Jaafari: No country in the world will be permitted to turn Iraq into a front line for confrontation with America or any others.

AP: Why have you always been suspected of having links to Iran?

Al-Jaafari: This is just a widespread, mistaken belief.

The Dawa Party was established in 1957 before any Islamic revolution.

It was normal after the mass executions (of Dawa Party leaders) for the party to leave Iraq. So some went to Syria and others to Iran or other Arab countries while some remained inside Iraq. Since then, coordination between the group members in different countries was launched. That is all! However, the group in Syria was accused of being loyal to Syria, the group in Iran was accused of having links to Iran.

An Iraqi remains an Iraqi all his life, wherever he goes.

1. United Iraqi Alliance -- #169 -- 4,075,295 -- 140
2. The Kurdistani Coalition List -- #130 -- 2,175,551 -- 75
3. The Iraqi List -- #285 -- 1,168,943 -- 40
4. Iraqis -- #255 -- 150,680 -- 5
5. The Iraqi Turkoman Front -- #175 -- 93,480 -- 3
6. The Independent and Democratic Cadres and Elite -- #352 -- 69,938 -- 3
7. The People’s Union -- #324 -- 69,920 -- 2
8. The Islamic Kurdistani Group-Iraq -- #283 -- 60,592 -- 2
9. The Islamic Action Organization in Iraq, Central Committee -- #111 -- 43,205 -- 2
10. The Democratic Patriotic Coalition -- #258 -- 36,795 -- 1
11. The Rafidayn Patriotic List -- #204 -- 36,255 -- 1
12. The Reconciliation and Liberation Bloc -- #311 -- 30,796 -- 1
13. The Iraqi National-Unity Gathering -- #146 -- 23,686
14. The Independent Democratic Gathering -- #158 -- 23,302
15. The Iraqi Islamic Party -- #351 -- 21,342
16. The Islamic-Call Movement -- #192 -- 19,373
17. The Patriotic Iraqi Gathering -- #289 -- 18,862
18. The Iraqi Republican Gathering -- #299 -- 15,425
19. The Constitutional Monarchy, Ali bin al-Husayn -- #349 --13,740
20. The Iraqi Gathering for Democracy -- #170 -- 12,728
21. The engineer Ali Muslim Jaar-Allah Ali al-Baydhaani -- #167 -- 11,614
22. The Hashemite Iraqi Monarchy Gathering -- #133 -- 9,781
23. The Democratic Patriotic Alliance -- #250 -- 9,747
24. The Democratic Iraqi Trend -- #103 -- 8,331
25. The Iraq Democratic Gathering -- #115 -- 8,316
26. The Islamic Vanguard Party -- #234 -- 7,182
27. The Patriotic Front for Iraqi Unity -- #166 -- 7,126
28. The Assyrian Patriotic Gathering -- #139 -- 7,119
29. The Democratic Cooperative-Work Front -- #165 -- 6,772
30. The Islamic Accord Movement -- #272 -- 6,706
31. The Free Officers and Civilians Movement -- #220 -- 6,372
32. The Democratic Islamic Trend -- #124 -- 6,130
33. The Islamic Union for the Fayli Kurds of Iraq -- #313 -- 5,986
34. The Independent List -- #282 -- 5,981
35. The Popular Democratic Gathering -- #127 -- 5,852
36. Abdil-Sattar Jabur GaaTi’ al-’Abooddi -- #102 -- 5,652
37. The Democratic Islamic Party -- #249 -- 5,581
38. Maalik Abdil-iHsayn Ghaffoori -- #120 -- 5,519
39. The Democratic Iraqi People’s Party -- #230 -- 5,206
40. The Kurdistani Democratic-Solution Party -- #260 -- 5,183
41. Ameen Hayder Hamed -- #159 -- 5,127

Race for Top Iraq Post Narrows to 2 Shiites

By DEXTER FILKINS
The New York Times
February 16, 2005

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Feb. 15 - The race for the top job in Iraq's new government narrowed Tuesday to two leaders in the Shiite alliance, with Ibrahim Jafari of the Dawa Party squaring off against Ahmad Chalabi, who was mounting a last-minute stand against his rival.

Dr. Jafari, a physician who spent more than 20 years in exile and is now a deputy president in the interim government, improved his chances on Tuesday when he persuaded another rival, Adil Abdul Mahdi, to withdraw from the race.

Dr. Jafari's party, Dawa, and Mr. Mahdi's, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, known as Sciri, are the two largest groups in the Shiite alliance, which captured a slim majority of the votes in the election on Jan. 30.

Hamam Hamoudi, a senior leader in Sciri, said his group had agreed to withdraw Mr. Mahdi's bid to be prime minister "out of our desire to maintain the unity of the alliance."

While aides to Dr. Jafari were predicting victory, people close to Mr. Chalabi said he had gathered enough votes to secure the post for himself. Mr. Chalabi's aides said they planned to call for a vote of the alliance's 140 likely assembly members at a meeting on Wednesday.

At least on paper, Mr. Chalabi appeared to have a chance. Although Dawa and Sciri are the largest parties in the Shiite coalition, known as the United Iraqi Alliance, together they have only about a quarter of the 140 seats captured in the election. The rest of the winning candidates are members of other parties or politically independent.

The rivalry between Dr. Jafari and Mr. Chalabi appeared to pose significant risks for the Shiite alliance. If Mr. Chalabi fails to persuade the alliance to back him, he could take some of his followers with him and join a coalition of Kurds and secular Shiites, led by the current prime minister, Ayad Allawi, to form a government.

Mr. Chalabi would have to persuade only a small number of Shiite candidates to leave the alliance in order to deprive it of the seats necessary to form a government. According to unofficial vote tallies, the Shiite alliance's 140 assembly seats are just 2 over a majority.

Mr. Chalabi declined to comment in detail, but said he would convene a meeting of disaffected alliance members shortly.

"It is down to myself and Jafari," he said.

For all the maneuvering, though, Dr. Jafari seemed to have the edge.

While Mr. Chalabi has ranked among the least popular of Iraqi leaders in public opinion polls, Dr. Jafari has ranked the highest. In addition, Dr. Jafari leads an organization known for its deep roots in Iraq, and for the repression it suffered under Saddam Hussein, while Mr. Chalabi is known for leading an organization, the Iraqi National Congress, that was composed mostly of exiles.

Mr. Chalabi also carries substantial political baggage. Though many Iraqis credit him with persuading the Americans to topple Mr. Hussein, he is widely known here for his conviction on bank fraud charges associated with the collapse of the Petra Bank in Jordan.

Dr. Jafari, who was a member of the now-defunct Iraqi Governing Council, took a low profile during many of the significant events of the last 22 months, including the anti-insurgent offensives in Najaf and Falluja. He is thought to have Islamist leanings, but in a recent interview he said he favored the formula now in the country's interim constitution, which designates Islam as one of many and not the only source of legislation.

A general practitioner, Dr. Jafari left Iraq in 1980 as Mr. Hussein, in the wake of the Iranian revolution, began to arrest and kill members of the Dawa Party. After spending much of the 1980's in Iran, he moved to London, where he remained until the collapse of the Hussein government in April 2003.

The deal between Dawa and Sciri was reached Tuesday, when Sciri's leader, Abdul Aziz Hakim, agreed to withdraw Mr. Mahdi from contention for the prime minister's job. According to a knowledgeable Iraqi source, Mr. Hakim got much in return: Dawa's leaders agreed that Sciri candidates would be appointed vice president as well as the heads of two ministries.

Aides to Dr. Jafari were confident that Sciri's agreement would clear the way for him to become prime minister.

"It's done," said Adnan Ali, a senior leader of the party. "We're going to have a formal announcement in a couple of days."

But several obstacles still stood between Dr. Jafari and the prime minister's office. While Sciri leaders said they had agreed to withdraw Mr. Mahdi's name from contention, they said they had not yet agreed to back Dr. Jafari. They said they would do that when he agreed to a set of unspecified conditions that were to be spelled out Wednesday.

Furthermore, the agreement between the Shiite leaders was made without the agreement of the Kurdish leadership, which will likely play a major role in the formation of the future government. Under the interim constitution, any group that forms a government is likely to need the agreement of two-thirds of the national assembly's 275 members. Because the Kurds won as much as 25 percent of the assembly seats, their assent will almost certainly be needed to form a new government.

Barham Salih, a senior Kurdish leader who is now a deputy prime minister, said the Kurds would insist on a number of conditions before they agreed to support any government. Among those were the requirement of a secular state, as well as a federal system that granted the Kurdish people significant powers of self-rule in their homeland in northern Iraq. It is not clear whether Dr. Jafari would agree to those conditions.

"We are not going to personalize the issue," Mr. Salih said. "We have a set of clear policy criteria that will determine how we vote."

David Frum's Diary
FEB. 16, 2005: THE FINALISTS
National Review Online

Three weeks ago, TIME magazine profiled the leading candidates for the job of prime minister of Iraq. TIME's list did not mention Ahmed Chalabi. TIME apparently concluded that Chalabi was a finished force who had sold himself to the ayatollahs in exchange for a place on the United Iraqi Alliance list the clerics supposedly controlled.

Instead, Chalabi has emerged as one of the two finalists. TIME didn't see it coming. Neither frankly did much of the US foreign policy apparatus. The foreign-policy establishment had told itself so loudly and so often that Chalabi was a nothing, an unpopular exile, an invention of a handful of loose cannon Pentagon neocons, that they lost the ability to see political facts as they were.

Now, faced with reality, a weird kind of panic is setting in. The last remaining alternative to Chalabi is Ibrahim al-Jaffari, head of the Islamicist Dawa party. Despite the party's close ties to Iran and Jaffari's far-from-pro-American views, the hard-core Chalabi opponents in the US government seem bent on promoting even him in order to thwart Chalabi.

Is there not something strange and obsessional about this? Iraq's prime minister is for Iraqis to choose. But America does have some weight in the process - and it seems astonishing that any portion of that weight would be exerted in favor of a candidate like al-Jaffari, solely in order to vent some ancient bureaucratic spite against Chalabi.

There's a theory in Iraq - it sometimes get picked up on English-language Internet sites as well - that the whole CIA-Chalabi quarrel is a clever American ploy to make the US guy look like an Iraqi nationalist. If only the US government were that cunning and that capable! The truth is that we have here a case of personal agendas and institutional vendettas driving national policy. It's an abuse of power, it's wrong from both an American and an Iraqi point of view - and it's long past time for it to stop.

11:57 PM


FEB. 16, 2005: CHALABI AGAIN

So it looks as if Ahmed Chalabi will emerge from this post-election struggle in Iraq as one of the country's leading men, if not its prime minister. Chalabi may well be the most controversial international figure of our time, admired and reviled in almost equal measure. And in truth he's not an easy man to understand. He is subtle, sometimes guileful, working in the service not of the United States (though he has sought and accepted US aid), not of Israel (though he's often accused of that), not of himself (there are less dangerous ways of making a living than fighting Saddam Hussein) - but, to borrow a phrase of Charles DeGaulle's, of a "certain idea" he has had of Iraq. His idea has been that Iraq could emerge as a stable, non-aggressive, pluralistic, free-market nation in the heart of the Arab world - and thus begin the redemption of the Arabs from the backwardness into which they have fallen.

I sometimes think that it is Chalabi's subtlety that has made him so unpopular with some American spies, diplomats, and generals. They tend to prefer Arab leaders who are either blunt and open in their ambitions and intentions (like Hosni Mubarak) or who can at least fake bluntness and openness (like Iyad Alawi). Chalabi is obviously up to something - and that worries people.

I'll be writing more about Chalabi in the future, as will we all. In the meantime, here is an excellent piece in the London Times by my friend Dean Godson about Chalabi's re-emergence. Here are links to a couple of past NRO pieces that may remain relevant. Chalabi and his movement are discussed at some length in An End to Evil. And below follows a reprint of a 2003 NRODT article on Chalabi that offers more background on how he came to be so disliked by the US and UK foreign policy elites.

**

Our Man for Iraq
NATIONAL REVIEW
Feb. 20, 2003.

There's an old joke about the Air Force major assigned to brief a superior officer about the latest Cold War contingency plan. He finishes triumphantly: "And that is how we intend to destroy the enemy!"

The superior shakes his head wearily. "Young man, the Soviets are our adversary. The Navy is the enemy."

If you've done much newspaper reading in recent weeks, you have probably noticed all those stories -- some datelined Washington, some datelined northern Iraq -- about the latest flare-up between the U.S. government and the main Iraqi opposition group, the Iraqi National Congress. It's enough to make you wonder whether some people in the U.S. government don't see Saddam as merely the adversary -- and the INC as the real enemy.

The INC is an assembly of many different groups united by their determination to overthrow Saddam and build a more liberal Iraq. It is made up of Kurds as well as Arabs, socialists and free-marketeers, Christians and Muslims, Sunnis and Shi'ites, secular intellectuals and tribal traditionalists. The INC is led by Ahmed Chalabi, a descendant of one of Iraq's most prominent families; an American-educated businessman who is as democratic, market-oriented, and pro-Western as any leader the Arab world has produced in half a century. Even Chalabi's many Iraqi critics acknowledge his moderation and tolerance. "I know this about Ahmed," one of them once said to me: "If I disagree with him, he won't murder me. By Iraqi standards, that's very impressive."

Over the years, Chalabi's democratic vision for Iraq has won the support of Americans across the political spectrum. He's admired by Iraq hawks like Richard Perle, Joe Lieberman, and John McCain -- and also by Iraq doves like Joe Biden. He has been joined by Iraq's most famous writer, the democratic exile Kanan Makiya. In 1998, Congress appropriated nearly $100 million in aid for the INC.

Most of that money, however, has never been paid. For if Congress supports the INC, large elements of the U.S. foreign-policy bureaucracy hate it with a hatred hotter than any emotion they evince toward Saddam Hussein.

In the 1990s, the INC's CIA handlers forbade the group to conduct operations on Iraqi soil. Since 9/11, the State Department has shunned the INC in favor of its own creation, the Iraqi National Accord, a collection of former generals and other associates of Saddam.

A poisonous stream of not-for-attribution quotes about the INC has flowed from State and CIA into any newspaper willing to print them. Chalabi, it's said, is corrupt, ineffective, and an Iranian spy. "He could fight you for the last petit four on the tray over tea at the Savoy," one bitter former official told The New Yorker last April, "but that's about it."

Who's right? What's going on?

As always in Washington, there is a back-story -- and then a story back of the back-story.

The back-story is this: In the 1990s, the Clinton administration organized a series of covert operations against Saddam's government. They all failed dismally, and many of the Iraqis who took part in them died gruesome deaths. The organizers of these operations felt shame, guilt -- and a desperate desire to fix the blame for repeated disaster on somebody else.

The INC was an especially attractive target for the blame-shifters because Chalabi had repeatedly warned that the covert operations would fail -- and in Washington, there are few sins quite so unforgivable as being right when everyone else is wrong. Actually, there is one worse sin: advocating bold action when everyone around you has shamefacedly decided that they would prefer to do nothing.

Chalabi kept arguing that the way to defeat Saddam was not with a plot, but with INC ground forces backed by U.S. airpower: the same tactic that would triumph in Afghanistan in 2001. The Clinton NSC team loathed this idea, and they fiercely resented Chalabi for pushing it.

The grudge endured into the Bush administration because, for reasons that remain very hard to understand, the Bush team kept much of the old Clinton national-security apparatus on the job for many months -- in some cases more than a year -- after Inauguration Day. And nowhere did change come more slowly than in those parts of the NSC that deal with the Middle East. Long after Clinton had left Washington to give speeches about how he came this close to making up his mind to wage war against Saddam Hussein, the people he hired were still at their desks waging war against Ahmed Chalabi.

That's the back-story. Now the back-back-story. Since the population of Iraq is nearly two-thirds Shi'ite Muslim, a more representative political system will probably bring to power a government drawn from the Shi'ite majority. Chalabi himself comes from a prominent Shi'ite family. And this prospect is very frightening to the Sunni Arabs of the Persian Gulf -- and their many and influential friends and protectors in the West.

Even without the religious element, the idea of representative government being established anywhere in the Arab world dismays and appalls other Arab governments. That's understandable enough: The Arab world is a fractious and fragile place, super-saturated in extremism -- it's easy to conjure up nightmare scenarios about what could happen if the people of the Arab world were ever allowed to express themselves freely.

On the other hand, it's hard to imagine America intervening in Iraq without at least attempting to leave behind some better system of government. Americans cannot make Iraq a liberal democracy. But only Americans can give Iraq a chance at liberal democracy. It is vital that Americans choose wisely -- and it is necessary that America choose soon. If we wait to choose until the shooting stops, we may find that power in Iraq has already fallen into the hands of the very last people we should trust: those members of Saddam's entourage who switched sides at the opportune moment.

07:57 AM

1. The Kurdistani Coalition List -- #130 -- 622,889
2. The Islamic Kurdistani Group-Iraq -- #283 -- 9,800
3. The Iraqi List -- #285 -- 3,605
4. The Iraqi Turkoman Front -- #175 -- 1,880
5. The Hashemite Iraqi Monarchy Gathering -- #133 -- 1,564
6. The Populist Democratic Gathering -- #127 -- 1,419
7. The People’s Union -- #324 -- 1,184
8. The Kurdistani Democratic Solution Party -- #260 -- 1,024
9. Malik Abdil-iHsayn Ghaffouri -- #120 -- 996
10. The Rafidayn Patriotic List -- #204 -- 958
11. United Iraqi Alliance -- #169 -- 933
12. The Democratic Iraqi Trend -- #103 -- 893
13. The Iraqi Republican Gathering -- #299 -- 823
14. The Islamic Call Movement -- #192 -- 821
15. The Patriotic Front for Iraq’s Unite -- #166 -- 625
16. Iraqis -- #255 -- 499
17. The Kurdistani Conservatives Party -- #364 -- 456
18. The New Iraq Renewal Party -- #273 -- 446

The Results Are In

BY Nibras Kazimi
New York Sun
February 17, 2005

The good news: we are not getting an Islamic theocracy in Iraq. The bad news, well, there is none. The results of the Iraqi elections were announced Sunday, and I did what every self-respecting obsessive election-watcher does: get out the calculator. Many hours later, and with the full list of the 275 members of the newly elected National Assembly or parliament before me, I have the following breakdown to report:

Gender politics: The Transitional Administrative Law, which was drawn up by the former Iraqi Governing Council to regulate a period of interim sovereignty that lasted from July of last year, when the coalition occupation was declared over, to last January's election, stipulated that no less than 25% of theseats in the new parliament should be reserved for women. The slates that competed in these elections had to be formulated in such a way to give women that minimum quota, and as a result there will be 85 of them (or a whopping 31%) in this new legislative body. I don't think this has happened anywhere in the world, and I dare the experts or the Women's Lib movement to prove otherwise. More women than men voted in these globally landmark elections and there are more women represented in Iraq's new parliament than any elected body on Mother Earth. Oprah, Hillary, would you care to say something?

The new democracy in Iraq shall have founding fathers, and founding mothers. This, coupled with the emancipation of women from the non-pedicured clutches of the Taliban, should compel the bra-burning crowd to send gushy Valentine's cards to President Bush. Somehow, I think that Maureen Dowd, the self-appointed maiden of punditry, is not going to understand the magnitude of what just happened. But I'm sure women in Saudi Arabia do.

Communal politics: The Arab Sunnis got 24 seats (9%), the Kurds got 74 seats (27%), the Christians got eight seats (3%), the Turkomen got five seats (2%) and the Yezidis, an obscure religion sometimes labeled as ancient "Devil-Worshippers," got two seats (1%).

Everyone who wanted the elections to be delayed, and the list included the New York Times editorial page and plenty of Arab dictators, was worried sick about Sunni Arab alienation from the elections that, according to their reasoning, would leave them with no option other than waging civil war. These folks should be feeling as small and foolish as the Sunni Arab leadership, because their reasoning was upside down. The current insurgency is an undeclared civil war waged by the Arab Sunnis of Iraq who hope to reclaim the absolute power they enjoyed under Saddam Hussein, and the only reason there was no massive outbreak of communal strife is due to the fact that the Sunnis could not find a partner for their macabre and tangled tango. Saddam's victims, predominately the Shias and the Kurds, waited for the ballot boxes as their response to Sunni provocation. Now, the real leaders of the Arab Sunnis who were fanning the flames of the insurgency (not the ones roused from retirement by Foggy Bottom like Pachachi, who couldn't even manage to get a seat) are sheepishly asking to be allowed to play with all the others on the playground of parliamentary politics.

For the first time in the Middle East, the use of politically motivated violence as a means of getting recognized and earning a seat at the table, as employed by Yasser Arafat and other Arab dictators, has failed miserably and conclusively. Elections were the wake-up call for Iraq's Sunnis, not the beginning of the end.

The Kurds, who for the past 80 years of Iraq's existence fought valiantly to exit the "Iraqi arrangement" and opt for independence, are coming around to the idea that maybe, for the time being, a federal Iraq is an option they can live with. Thousands of Kurdish nationalists uttered "Long Live Kurdistan" as their last words before a horrible death at the hands of an Iraqi state that forcibly tried to keep the country unified. Last Sunday, millions of Kurds went to the polls to vote as Iraqis as part of a compromise with the ghosts of national destiny. For much of Iraq's history, there was a de facto civil war that ended up murdering hundreds of thousands of Kurds. These election results had the effect of binding a segment of the population, as numerous as the Arab Sunnis, to the idea of a unified Iraq, and ending the longest running civil war in the Middle East. How come no one at the New York Times editorial board is celebrating this outcome?

Ideological politics: The United Alliance List, peddled as the "Islamic Revolution Lite" list, walked away with an astounding 140 seats, the largest single block. The fad these days is for journalists and anti-Bush pundits to raise their brows in feigned horror and yell, "We have created an Islamic Frankenstein!"

Rest at ease: As usual it is a case of mistaken identity. Although the first name on the UAI list is a mullah, the majority of those who got elected from this particular slate are secular leaning academics and technocrats. At least one likes to drink alcohol more than is good for him. By my count, there are fewer than 30 party affiliates, and the bulk are unknown independents. Those reporters in Baghdad should be forgiven for all that alarmist drivel, for they had not met any of those new leaders of Iraq at political rallies or press conferences and thus don't know where they stand on issues. The new faces of Iraq's democracy were busy giving literary lectures, treating patients, or tending gardens. They are the building blocks of Iraq's nascent civil society, and Ayatollah Ali Sistani, who lovingly put together the UAI list, wanted their views heard amidst the raucous clamoring of political agendas as the constitution is being written, which is the primary role of this elected parliament.

And here's a political prediction to boot: The current law on the books called the Civil Affairs Law of 1959, which covers personal matters such as marriage, inheritance, and divorce, will not be repealed. This law, the most liberal in all of the Islamic world, is the litmus test of the Islamist agenda. The fundamentalists on the UAI list would like to substitute Islamic jurisprudence, or Sharia, as the final arbiter of personal matters. They tried to do just that during their tenure on the Governing Council and failed due to American intervention; they will fail again in the new parliament because they don't have the votes.

Dirty politics: Yes, there was massive vote fraud, some of which was probably managed by the Baghdad station of the Central Intelligence Agency, but that also counts as good news. Massive vote rigging was held in check by massive voter turnout. Yet again, the spooks did not see this one coming: Iraqis voted in very large numbers, and the fraudsters were caught off-guard when they realized that their made-to-order ballots were not enough to tip the balance in favor of their well-financed candidates. Two lists that had covertly pocketed tens of millions of American taxpayer money among themselves over the years did not even manage to get a single seat. Prime Minister Allawi, who poured tens of millions of dollars into an all-out ad campaign that marketed his "can-do" prowess, did fairly well, but still not enough to keep him politically relevant.

So there you have it: a real election with real results. None of that "the Great Leader won a landslide with 99.9% of the votes" business. Politics, in all its many high and low gradations, has been reintroduced into Iraq, and these elected representatives of the people are about to chart a new course for their nation. Iraqis are now fully in charge of their country's destiny, for better or worse. And should they stumble or fail, the Iraqi people will vote them out, and my calculator will be dusted off yet again.

Mr. Kazimi is an Iraqi writer living in Washington, D.C. He can be contacted at nibraska@yahoo.com

Subj: Re: Ayad Rahim, back in Baghdad
Date: 2/14/2005 12:11:02 PM Eastern Standard Time
From: Gregg

Hey Ayad.

Good luck in the motherland. Grow eyes on the back of your head. All's well in Boston--winter lingers but is wearing down. The equipment bus just left Fenway for Ft. Meyers on Saturday. Life will return.

Gregg

* * *
Date: 2/14/2005 7:34:41 PM Eastern Standard Time

Life will return?! -- you never had it so good. Ain't nothin' returnin', like two-thousand and four!...buddy!

Hey -- how are you and Shel doin'?

Things are really hoppin', here -- everybody's delighted -- things looking really good.

. . . .

All right -- lots of love -- to all.

IRAQI ELECTION: WINNERS REJOICE, BUT TALK TO LOSERS

Although the Shia-dominated bloc got nearly half the vote, it still needs allies to prevent deadlock in parliament.

By Zaineb Naji in Baghdad and Talar Nadir in Sulaimaniyah

IWPR'S IRAQI CRISIS REPORT, No. 112
February 14, 2005

The Shia-dominated United Iraqi Alliance is looking around for coalition partners after it won nearly half the vote in Iraq's national elections. Both Shia and Kurdish groups - the other main winner - say they are looking for ways to include the Sunnis in the political process.

The Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq announced on February 13 that the Alliance, which was organised at the behest of the country's senior Shia cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, received more than four million votes - 48 per cent of the 8.4 million ballots cast.

As expected, this figure - high though it is - does not give the bloc the two-thirds majority it would need to govern without a coalition partner.

Mofaq Rubai, one of the United Iraqi Alliance's candidates, described the results as a "feast" which gave "a reason for Iraqis to celebrate from Kurdistan to Basra".

"The power now lies in the hands of the people, and the 275 members of parliament will decide Iraq's destiny," he said.

The results are still provisional, as parties and candidates have three days to file complaints or appeal against the results before the outcome can be regarded as official.

The Kurdish Alliance List, made up of the two major Kurdish parties, came in second with 26 per cent of the vote, or more than 2.17 million ballots. This virtually assures the Kurds of a top government post.

In Sulaimaniyah, one of the regional capitals of Iraqi Kurdistan, residents celebrated the results by firing into the air.

"The results are very good and it strengthens the Kurdish position so that it corresponds with the situation in Iraq," said Nawsheerwan Mustafa, a political bureau member of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, PUK, one of the main Kurdish parties in the Alliance.

The results mean that the Shias and Kurds, two groups that were oppressed under Saddam Hussein, will now hold the balance of power.

In third place was the Iraqi List, led by interim prime minister Ayad Allawi, which received more than 1.16 million ballots, 13.8 per cent of the vote,. Allawi has presented himself as the secular Shia alternative to the United Iraqi Alliance.

Raja al-Khazay, a candidate on the Iraqi List, said the results were disappointing. "There are a lot of good politicians who won't get seats in parliament," she said.

Each bloc list or party will be awarded seats in the 275-member transitional National Assembly in approximate proportion to its share of the national vote. That means the United Iraqi Alliance will get at least 132 seats, the Kurds 71 or more, and the Iraqi List at least 38 seats.

A two-thirds majority, or 183 seats, is needed to approve crucial issues before the National Assembly, including the approval of a prime minister and of a draft constitution, which will be the parliaments main duty.

Under the interim constitution, the National Assembly has to appoint a president and two vice-presidents. In turn, the president and his deputies will choose a party or coalition to nominate a prime minister and form a government. The assembly also has to approve the cabinet.

Although the final results have only just been announced, parties and coalitions have been angling for positions in the new government since the January 30 election. In the last two weeks, the main Shia, Kurdish and Sunni parties have been meeting to hammer out deals.

The United Iraqi Alliance says it wants the post of prime minister, and has suggested current finance minister Adel Abdul Mahdi and vice-president Ibrahim Jaafari as candidates for the job. The two men belong to the two main Shia political forces - Mahdi is from the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, while Jaafari belongs to the Islamic Dawa Party.

"There is no competition between the parties but there are negotiations," said Rubai. "The issue is not individuals, but politics and strategies. So the strategy for the new Iraq is a federal and united Iraq that covers everybody."

Meanwhile, the Kurdish Alliance List has been pushing for PUK leader Jalal Talabani to be president. The PUK controls the eastern part of Iraqi Kurdistan while the Kurdistan Democratic Party, the KDP, reigns over the western portion.

Al-Khazay said the Iraqi List would try to maximise its position by forming coalitions with the Kurds, with al-Iraqiyun ("the Iraqis"), a Sunni party headed by interim President Ghazi al-Yawar, and with the People's Union, a bloc whose principal constituent is the Iraqi Communist Party.

Al-Iraqiyun is set to receive about five seats, while the People's Union should get two.

Of the estimated 14 million eligible voters, around 60 per cent turned out for the elections.

But, as expected, many Sunni Arabs stayed at home either to boycott the vote or out of fear.

Turnout for the Sunni Arab community, which accounts for about a fifth of Iraq's population, was much lower than the average. In the western province of Anbar, the mainly Sunni province where the volatile cities of Fallujah and Ramadi are located, only two per cent of voters came to the polls. Turnout in the northern province of Ninewa, which includes the troubled city of Mosul, was about 17 per cent for the National Assembly ballot (separate provincial elections were held across Iraq the same day).

Mishan al-Jabouri, head of the Liberation and Reconciliation Front, a secular Sunni party, said he was not satisfied with the election results. His party received more than 30,000 votes, which should translate into one parliamentary seat.

"These votes do not represent the people's will," said al-Jabouri. "These are fake elections, which produced this abnormal result."

Both the Kurds and the Shias say they want the Sunni Arabs to be represented in the new political set-up. It has been suggested that the one of the top positions - that of speaker of parliament - could go to the Sunnis.

Rubai, of the United Iraqi Alliance, said the Sunnis could not be left out or marginalised, because as such a significant part of the population, they have a major role to play in establishing the state.

Zaineb Naji and Talar Nadir are IWPR trainee reporters in Iraq.

• The United Iraqi Alliance, list #169, with 140 seats
• The Kurdish Coalition, list #130, 75 seats
• Ayad Allawi’s Iraqi List, #285, 40
• Ghazi il-Yawer’s Iraqis, #255, 5
• The Turkoman Front, #175, 3

• The Independent and Democratic Cadres and Elite, #352
• The People’s Union, #324
• The Islamic Kurdistani Gathering-Iraq, #283
• The Islamic Action Organization in Iraq, Central Committee, #111

• The Democratic Patriotic Coalition, #258
• The Rafidayn Patriotic List, #204
• The Reconciliation and Liberation Bloc, #311

NEWS RELEASE from the United States Department of Defense

Feb 15, 2005

DoD Identifies Marine Casualty

           The Department of Defense announced today the death of a Marine who was supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom.

           Lance Cpl. Richard A. Perez Jr., 19, of Las Vegas, Nev., died Feb. 10 as a result of non-hostile vehicle incident in Al Anbar Province, Iraq. He was assigned to Marine Forces Reserve’s 6th Motor Transport Battalion, 4th Force Service Support Group, Las Vegas, Nev.

           The incident is under investigation.

1. United Iraqi Alliance -- #169 -- 211,481
2. The Iraqi List -- #285 -- 64,285
3. The Islamic Action Organization in Iraq, Central Committee -- #111 -- 3,302
4. The People’s Union -- #324 -- 2,172
5. Iraqis -- #255 -- 2,128
6. The Democratic Patriotic Coalition -- #258 -- 1,890
7. The Independent Furatayn Bloc (Two Euphrates, two rives) -- #296 -- 1,072
8. The Independent Democratic Cadres and Elite -- #352 -- 1,000
9. Mhammad Kadhum Fayrooz al-Hindawi -- #265 -- 960
10. The Islamic Call Movement -- #192 -- 909
11. The engineer Ali Muslim Jaar-Allah Ali al-Baydhaani -- #167 -- 759
12. The Democratic Iraqi Trend -- #103 -- 710
13. The Islamic Kurdistani Group-Iraq -- #283 -- 535
14. The Iraqi Republican Gathering -- #299 -- 520
15. The Islamic Accord Movement -- #272 -- 446

1. The Kurdistani Coalition List -- #130 -- 375,165
2. The Rafidayn Patriotic List -- #204 -- 4,165
3. United Iraqi Alliance -- #169 -- 2,017
4. The Iraqi List -- #285 -- 1,979
5. Maalik Abdil-Hsayn Ghaffouri -- #120 -- 1,045
6. The Hashemite Iraqi Monarchy Gathering -- #133 -- 773
7. The Islamic Kurdistani Group-Iraq -- #283 -- 735
8. The Kurdistani Democratic Solution Party -- #260 -- 695
9. The Popular Democratic Gathering -- #127 -- 630
10. The Democratic Iraqi Trend -- #103 -- 523
11. The Iraqi Republican Gathering -- #299 -- 463
12. The Yezidi Movement for Reform and Progress -- #228 -- 423
13. The Islamic Call Movement -- #192 -- 376
14. The Iraqi People’s Democratic Party -- #230 -- 293
15. The New Iraq’s Reawakening Movement -- #273 -- 268
16. The Patriotic Front for Iraqi Unity -- #166 -- 244

NEWS RELEASE from the United States Department of Defense

Feb 15, 2005

DoD Identifies Army Casualties

The Department of Defense announced today the deaths of three soldiers who were supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom.

The soldiers died Feb. 13 in Balad, Iraq, when the vehicle they were riding in overturned. All were assigned to the Army's 5th Squadron, 7th Cavalry, 3d Infantry Division, Fort Stewart, Ga.

The incident is under investigation.

The soldiers are:

Sgt. Chad W. Lake, 26, of Ocala, Fla.

Sgt. Rene Knox, Jr., 22, of New Orleans, La.

Spc. Dakotah L. Gooding, 21, of Des Moines, Iowa

First Post-War Survey of Iraqi Women Shows Women Want Legal Rights; Dispels Notions That Women Believe Tradition, Culture Should Limit Their Participation in Government

Press release
Friday, January 7, 2005

Despite Violence, More than 90% of Iraqi Women Optimistic About The Future, But New Government Could Open or Close Windows of Opportunity, Women for Women International Warns

Washington, DC – The first survey of Iraqi women since the outbreak of the war was released today by Women for Women International, one of the few non-governmental organizations remaining in Baghdad. The groundbreaking survey paints a vivid and even surprising portrait of Iraqi women in transition and dispels the prevailing notion that women believe tradition, customs or religion should limit their participation in the formation of a new Iraqi government.

The results of the survey of 1,000 Iraqi women in Baghdad, Mosul, and Basra, major political and commercial centers in Iraq, was unveiled in a report entitled “Windows of Opportunity: The Pursuit of Gender Equality in Post-War Iraq.” Among the key results:

• 94% of women surveyed want to secure legal rights for women.
• 84% of women want the right to vote on the final constitution.
• Nearly 80% of women believe that their participation in local and national councils should not be limited.

“History has shown that when women play a role in the formation of new governments, those nations are more stable and more successful in the long run,” said Women for Women International’s founder and CEO Zainab Salbi. “Many Iraqi leaders have claimed that women do not want to be involved in the reconstruction process. This survey clearly shows that women overwhelmingly believe they should have a seat at the table.”

The most unexpected result of the survey is that despite increasing violence, particularly violence against women, 90.6% of Iraqi women reported that they are hopeful about their future. In recent months, many women who have been involved with the reconstruction efforts or women’s rights work have been kidnapped and murdered. Among those murdered included Zeena Al Qushtaini, an Iraqi businesswoman known for wearing western clothing, who was kidnapped and executed. Her body was found clad in a traditional headscarf, which she refused to wear when she was alive. In December, Wijdan al-Khuzai, a candidate in the Iraqi election, was also murdered near her house in Baghdad.

“Women make up more than half the population of Iraq. This makes them enormously influential, both for the election this month and for Iraq’s future,” said Manal Omar, who has been Women for Women International’s Country Director in Iraq, since the organization established offices there in July 2003. “The new Iraqi government must act quickly to ensure their rights today and secure their hope for the future. If women continue to be excluded from the new government and lose hope for the future, then the window of opportunity for women in Iraq – and hope for the country itself – closes.”

To date, women have not played an active role in the new Iraqi governing bodies. Only three women have been appointed to the 25-member Interim Iraqi Governing Council, and the three women on the Council did not have the right to serve on the Presidential Council. No women were appointed to be governors of 18 provinces in Iraq nor were any women appointed to a committee overseeing the drafting of the new Iraqi constitution.

Women for Women International warned, however, that the survey showed that more than twice as many women believed that religious institutions had done something to improve their lives in the past year (13%) than those who believed the government had done so (6%).

“Women’s voting power but lack of muscle as elected officials in the current governing bodies leave them vulnerable in Iraq today,” said Salbi. “Too often women turn in desperation to extremist religious groups for help despite the long-term sacrifice of personal freedoms. These groups have historically been able to gain support when they can offer basic services normally provided by a government.”

Salbi pointed to The Islamic Brotherhood in Egypt, Hamas in the West Bank and the occupied territories, and the Taliban in Afghanistan as examples of this trend.

The survey, conducted by Iraq Center for Research and Strategic Studies (CSSR), randomly sampled women in three geographic areas in order to represent the views of Iraqi women across different educational, economic, ethnic, and religious backgrounds. The sample size was 1,000 women and covered seven cities in three governorates, Baghdad, Mosul, and Basra.

The standardized questionnaire was administered by women researchers in face-to-face interviews with the female heads of household. The survey contained 35 questions that covered the respondents’ demographic information as well as their perceptions on access to medical care, education, and economic and political participation in the past year.

Women for Women International was founded in 1993 to help women overcome the horrors of war and civil strife in ways that can help them rebuild their lives, families, and communities. Its Iraq program has provided services to nearly 800 women from Baghdad, Hillah and Karbala, and works with organizations and Iraqi governing bodies to address the needs of Iraqi women at the leadership and grassroots levels.

Sameera Ja’far
Asmaa’ al-ShabbouT
Iltifaat al-Fatlawi
Hanaan Sa’eed
Aamireh al-Beldaawi
Battool Qasim
Najiheh Abdil-Ameer
Salameh al-Khafaji, member of the Interim Governing Council
Aamaal Kashif al-Ghitaa, head of charitable organizations
Zahraa' Abbas
Muna Zelzeleh
Thawreh Jwaad
Asmaa al-Musawi
Intisar al-Saraaji
Nada l-Sudaani
Shatha al-Musawi
AwaaTif al-Mustafa
In’aam al-Jawaadi
Hiba al-Husayni
Aamaal al-Jabiri
Mayadeh Jaasim
Baasimeh Hasen
Reghed Haadi
Zayneb NaaSir
Hanaa’ Turki
Ameera Kadhum
Baasimeh Lu’ay
Kawkeb Mahmoud
Balqees Kawlee
Battool Ameen al-Khafaji
Rashdeh Khaz’al
Emaan Khaleel
Aqeeleh Abdil-Hasen
Suhaam Kadhum Salmaan
Khadija Jaabir
Adeeba Musa
Wijdaan Khaleel

Nisreen Birwari, minister of municipalities
Nirjis Muhammad
Widad Hama
Alaa’ Noori
Zahra HaaSi
Saamyeh Aziz
Baakizeh Mustafa
Saamyeh Ahmed
Intisar Bakr
Azhaar Ramadhan
Jakleen Qos
Nazaleen Hsayn
Faa’izeh Hsayn
Nirmeen Sadeeq
Qismeh Haadi
Shaylaan Khasrwa
Nawal Hsayn

Sawsan Ali al-Shareefi, minister of agriculture
Hameedeh Ahmed
Rajaa’ al-Khuzaa’i, member of Interim Governing Council
Wijdaan Mikha’il
Nawal Jwaad
IntiSaar Yusif
Hayfaa’ Khashen
Emel Anwar
Rabee’a Muhammad
Nidhal Hsayn
Lamee’a Abid
Ibtisaam Menkhi

Asmaa’ Abdullah

FayHaa’ Zayn al-Abideen

Subj: welcome back home
Date: 2/15/2005 6:14:37 AM Eastern Standard Time
From: Moulan

Hi Ayad,

glad to hear from you again....

welcome back home...

wish I could done it like you..my congratulations for the first democratic elections

I voted in Munich in Germany.

Please be careful...wish you all the best

Best regards,

Moulan

Subj: Re: Ayad Rahim, back in Baghdad
Date: 2/14/2005 11:43:07 PM Eastern Standard Time
From: Allan

Dear Ayad,

Mabrook! It is good to hear from you and know that you had the great privilege of witnessing one of the most amazing days in modern Iraqi history. A friend of mine just returned from Iraq and he said that Baghdad was incredible on Election Day. I was in Dohuk a few days before the elections and the energy on the streets was unbelievable. I will be in London this weekend and look forward to catching up with some old friends from what used to be called "the opposition". I am also looking forward to getting my new Iraqi flag (with the kufi script) from my friend.

Of course, stay safe in Baghdad and keep me informed if possible. I do not know if I will be back in Iraq until the summer. Also, I will be involved in some upcoming efforts involving the Iraqi national soccer team, and I would like to keep you informed on these matters....

Truly,
Allan

Watersheds
We live in a time of democratic revolution.

Michael Ledeen
National Review Online Contributing Editor
February 14, 2005, 9:45 a.m.

Has there ever been a more dramatic moment than this one? The Middle East is boiling, as the failed tyrants scramble to come to terms with the political tsunami unleashed on Afghanistan and Iraq. The power of democratic revolution can be seen in every country in the region. Even the Saudi royal family has had to stage a farcical "election." But this first halting step has fooled no one. Only males could vote, no political parties were permitted, and only the Wahhabi establishment was permitted to organize. The results will not satisfy any serious person. As Iraq constitutes a new, representative government, and wave after wave of elections sweep through the region, even the Saudis will have to submit to the freely expressed desires of their people.

The tidal wave has even reached into the planet's darkest corners, most recently shaking the foundations of the North Korean hermit kingdom. A new leader is announced at the same time the monsters in Pyongyang whisper "We've got nukes" and demand legitimacy from George W. Bush. Given the opacity of the country, and the irrationality of its leaders, nobody seems to know whether the Dear Leader is still alive, or, if he is, why the transition has been proclaimed. But the North Koreans, as tyrants everywhere on the planet, are acting like a regime no longer confident in its own legitimacy. Notice that the world's longest-running dictator, old man Castro, is conjuring up the illusion of American assassination teams planning the murder of his buddy in Venezuela, even as Fidel promises death to anyone who has the nerve to propose popular validation of his own failed tyranny. Such is the drama of our time.

Free elections do not solve all problems. The fascist tyrants of the last century were enormously popular, and won huge electoral victories; Stalin was truly loved by millions of oppressed Soviets; and fanatics might win an election today in some unhappy lands. But this is a revolutionary moment, we are unexpectedly blessed with a revolutionary president, and very few peoples will freely support a new dictatorship, even one that claims Divine Right.

But the wheel turns, as ever. Such moments are transient, and if they are not seized, they will pass, leaving the bitter aftertaste of failure in dry mouths and throttled throats. The world looks to us for more action, not just brave words, and we must understand both the quality of this moment and the revolutionary strategy we need to adopt to ensure that the revolution succeeds. Above all, we must applaud those who got it right, starting with the president, and discard the advice of those who got it wrong, including some of our "professional experts."

The two great elections of recent months were held in Iraq and Ukraine. In both cases, the conventional wisdom was wrong. The conventional wisdom embraced the elitist notion that neither the Ukrainians nor the Iraqis were "ready" for democracy, because they lacked one or another component of the so-called requirements for a free society. Their alleged limitations ranged from historical tradition and internal conflicts to a lack of education and culture and insufficient internal "stability." How I hate the word stability! Is it not the antithesis of everything we stand for? We are the embodiment of revolutionary change, at home and abroad. Most of the time, those who deplore a lack of stability are in reality apologizing for dictators, and selling out great masses of people who wish to be free. And even as those un-American apologists invoke stability, we, as the incarnation of democratic capitalism, are unleashing creative destruction in all directions, sending once-great corporations to history's garbage heap, voting once-glorious leaders into early retirement, and inspiring people everywhere to seek their own happiness by asserting their right to be free.

The Ukrainians are now in control, but the Iraqis still have to contend with the discredited meddlers and schemers who never believed in their democracy, and still seek to place failed puppets in positions of power in Baghdad. Anyone who reads the dozens of blogs from Iraq — which express a wide range of political opinion — must surely see that the Allawi interregnum has failed. The results of the election speak clearly: The Allawi list was outvoted five to one by its major opponents, even though Allawi commanded a treasure chest vastly greater than that of the others. Ambassador Negroponte, Secretary of State Rice, and DCI Goss should tell their "experts" to admit error, and cease their efforts to install a president and prime minister who reflect the consensus of Foggy Bottom rather than the will of the Iraqi people. If they persist in attempting to dictate the makeup of the new Iraqi government, and continue to meddle in the drafting of the new Iraqi constitution, they will turn the majority of Iraqis against us. Despite countless errors of judgment and commission, we have, for the moment at least, won a glorious victory. We should be smart enough, and modest enough, to accept it.

This glorious victory is due in large part to the truly heroic performance of our armed forces, most recently in that great turning point, the battle of Fallujah. Our victory in Fallujah has had enormous consequences, first of all because the information we gathered there has made it possible to capture or kill considerable numbers of terrorists and their leaders. It also sent a chill through the spinal column of the terror network, because it exposed the lie at the heart of their global recruitment campaign. As captured terrorists have told the region on Iraqi television and radio, they signed up for jihad because they had been told that the anti-American crusade in Iraq was a great success, and they wanted to participate in the slaughter of the Jews, crusaders, and infidels. But when they got to Iraq — and discovered that the terrorist leaders immediately confiscated their travel documents so that they could not escape their terrible destiny — they saw that the opposite was true. The slaughter — of which Fallujah was the inescapable proof — was that of the jihadists at the hands of the joint coalition and Iraqi forces.

Thirdly, the brilliant maneuvers of the Army and Marine forces in Fallujah produced strategic surprise. The terrorists expected an attack from the south, and when we suddenly smashed into the heart of the city from the north, they panicked and ran, leaving behind a treasure trove of information, subsequently augmented by newly cooperative would-be martyrs. Above all, the intelligence from Fallujah — and I have this from military people recently returned from the city — documented in enormous detail the massive involvement of the governments of Syria and Iran in the terror war in Iraq. And the high proportion of Saudi "recruits" among the jihadists leaves little doubt that the folks in Riyadh are, at a minimum, not doing much to stop the flow of fanatical Wahhabis from the south.

Thus, the great force of the democratic revolution is now in collision with the firmly rooted tyrannical objects in Tehran, Damascus, and Riyadh. In one of history's fine little ironies, the "Arab street," long considered our mortal enemy, now threatens Muslim tyrants, and yearns for support from us. That is our immediate task.

It would be an error of enormous proportions if, on the verge of a revolutionary transformation of the Middle East, we backed away from this historic mission. It would be doubly tragic if we did it because of one of two possible failures of vision: insisting on focusing on Iraq alone, and viewing military power as the prime element in our revolutionary strategy. Revolution often comes from the barrel of a gun, but not always. Having demonstrated our military might, we must now employ our political artillery against the surviving terror masters. The great political battlefield in the Middle East is, as it has been all along, Iran, the mother of modern terrorism, the creator of Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad, and the prime mover of Hamas. When the murderous mullahs fall in Tehran, the terror network will splinter into its component parts, and the jihadist doctrine will be exposed as the embodiment of failed lies and misguided messianism.

The instrument of their destruction is democratic revolution, not war, and the first salvo in the political battle of Iran is national referendum. Let the Iranian people express their desires in the simplest way possible: "Do you want an Islamic republic?" Send Lech Walesa and Vaclav Havel to supervise the vote. Let the contending parties compete openly and freely, let newspapers publish, let radios and televisions broadcast, fully supported by the free nations. If the mullahs accept this gauntlet, I have every confidence that Iran will be on the path to freedom within months. If, fearing a massive rejection from their own people, the tyrants of Tehran reject a free referendum and reassert their repression, then the free nations will know it is time to deploy the full panoply of pressure to enable the Iranians to gain their freedom.

The time is now. Faster, please.

— Michael Ledeen, an NRO contributing editor, is most recently the author of The War Against the Terror Masters. He is resident scholar in the Freedom Chair at the American Enterprise Institute.

Hi Ayad...Glad to hear that you are safe and sound in Iraq. Many of my former colleagues (who are still working) have been there, and all have returned safely back to the U.S., though one had a very close call.... Take good care of yourself, and be safe!...Barry

1. United Iraqi Alliance -- #169 -- 88,211
2. The Kurdistani Coalition List -- #130 -- 35,607
3. The Iraqi List -- #285 -- 35,115
4. The Iraqi Islamic Party -- #351 -- 14,756
5. Iraqis -- #255 -- 9,307
6. The People’s Union -- #324 -- 2,357
7. The Democratic Patriotic Coalition -- #258 -- 1,000
8. The Islamic Call Movement -- #192 -- 996
9. The Reconciliation and Liberation Bloc -- #311 -- 979
10. The Iraqi National Unity Gathering -- #146 -- 929
11. The Iraqi Turkoman Front -- #175 -- 928
12. The Independent Democratic Gathering -- #158 -- 818
13. The Turkoman Brotherhood Party-Iraq -- #338 -- 753
14. The Free Officers and Civilians Movement -- #220 -- 726
15. The Islamic Action Organization in Iraq, Central Committee -- #111 -- 589
16. The Democratic Patriotic Alliance -- #250 -- 564
17. The Independent List -- #282 -- 559

AFTER THE SUNNI BOYCOTT

Sunni groups may have achieved their aim of opting out of elections, but now they must decide whether it makes sense to boycott a constitutional process that will shape their future.

By Dawood Salman in Ramadi
IWPR'S IRAQI CRISIS REPORT, No. 112
February 14, 2005

After the Sunni Arabs in Iraq's western Anbar governorate stayed away from last month's election, many are now considering how best to secure their interests in a changed political landscape. For some, participation in an administration that they see as the product of flawed elections is out of the question, while others want a role in governance nevertheless.

Iraq's major Sunni political groups boycotted the January 30 election, after the influential Muslim Scholars' Association said a fair poll was impossible because of the continuing violence in Sunni-majority areas.

Election results indicate that voter turnout in these areas proved much lower than in the rest of the country, both as a result of the boycott, and because many people were scared by the security situation or by the possible repercussions of voting.

In Anbar, the mainly Sunni province where the volatile cities of Fallujah and Ramadi are located, turnout is estimated at just two per cent.

The transitional National Assembly, which will be the first Iraqi legislature not to be dominated by Sunnis, will find it hard to function - and harder still to win universal legitimacy - if one-fifth of the population perceives itself to be disenfranchised.

The assembly's principal task is to draft a constitution by August this year, in time for a referendum in October and fresh parliamentary election in December. The final document will define how Iraq is governed and how much autonomy its regions will enjoy - issues in which Sunnis as well as Shias and Kurds have a vital interest.

The Shia and Kurdish coalitions which did well in the ballot have insisted that they want to bring Sunni Arabs on board by giving them a role in decision-making if not in elected institutions. There has been some talk of the post of speaker of parliament being awarded to a Sunni.

The question now is whether the political forces that represent the Sunnis are prepared to take up the offer.

The largest Sunni party, the Iraqi Islamic Party, has branded the elections illegitimate and refused to participate in the transitional administration that emerged from them.

At the same time, the party has recently been in negotiations with the veteran Sunni politician Adnan Pachachi, who wants Sunni groups to take part in shaping the new constitution.

Others in the Sunni areas - while maintaining their reservations about the electoral process itself - want to move on and are reviewing their options.

Iraqi Islamic Party member Said al-Ani voiced cautious optimism, suggesting that the National Assembly might be acceptable as long as it puts national rather than sectarian interest first.

"I think if the elected parliament finishes with sectarianism and succeeds in translating into reality the interests of those parties which took part in the boycott, it will be a good thing for the unity of Iraq," he said.

For some of those interviewed by IWPR in Anbar province, it is important for the new Iraqi administration to look strong - and that means overcoming ethnic and religious divisions quickly. They argue that a divided government will send the wrong message to powerful neighbours like Iran and Turkey.

Raed al-Dlemy was among those not opposed to the vote - he was an election official in Ramadi, a hundred kilometres west of Baghdad, only resigning after he received several threats. Now he thinks that despite the low turnout figures, the Sunnis still have a chance to make their voices heard.

"The loss of Sunni votes at this stage can be compensated for when the constitution is being written, as the Sunnis will then be able to participate so as to protect their rights," he said.

Muhammed al-Ubaidi, a lawyer from the town of Hit, 50 km up the Euphrates river from Ramadi, thinks it was a bad tactical move to stay away from the polling booths, saying, "It would have been better for the Sunnis to participate in the election, so as to balance the powers of the Kurds and Shias, who have now become dominant."

But many others are unrepentant about the boycott, and are determined not to work with an administration which they see as having been installed under the shadow of a foreign military presence.

"The boycott of the national and governorate council elections by most Sunnis was the only way, and the best way, to reject these ballots," said Walid al-Omari, a government employee from Anah, a town in Anbar province less than 100 km from the Syrian border. "The end product is a government that is not legitimate."

Boycott supporters insist that all of Iraq's governorates must enjoy security and stability before a fair election can be held.

"In this critical period, an election is pointless, and our demand to postpone it was a good one," said Ayad Fayadh, a government employee in Ramadi. "We don't regret our boycott."

Dawood Salman is an IWPR trainee journalist in Iraq.

1. United Iraqi Alliance -- #169 -- 518,091
2. The Iraqi List -- #285 -- 151,070
3. The Islamic Call Movement -- #192 -- 9,570
4. The Islamic Action Organization in Iraq, Central Committee -- #111 -- 5,777
5. Iraqis -- #255 -- 5,503
6. The Democratic Patriotic Coalition -- #258 -- 5,312
7. The People’s Union -- #324 -- 4,226
8. The Iraqi Gathering for Democracy -- #170 -- 2,277
9. The Independent and Democratic Cadres and Elite -- #352 -- 2,188
10. The engineer Ali Muslim Jaar-Allah Ali al-Baydhaani -- #167 -- 1,734
11. The Iraqi National Unity Gathering -- #146 -- 1,714
12. The Democratic Islamic Trend -- #124 -- 1,256
13. Ameen Hayder Hamed -- #159 -- 1,168
14. The Democratic Patriotic Alliance -- #250 -- 1,109
15. The Democratic Cooperative Work Front -- #165 -- 912
16. The Islamic Vanguard Party -- #234 -- 898
17. The Independent Democratic Gathering -- #158 -- 888
18. The Islamic Kurdistani Group-Iraq -- #283 -- 839
19. The Constitutional Monarchy, Ali bin al-Husayn -- #349 -- 782

Democracy Wins

Wall Street Journal
REVIEW & OUTLOOK
February 15, 2005 (requires subscription)

So the results of Iraq's January 30 parliamentary election are in, and the
best summary we can offer is this: Most everyone got some of what they
wanted, and no one got everything they wanted. That's life, and that's
democracy.

Start with the coalition of Shiite parties, known as the United Iraqi
Alliance, which took 48.2% of the 8.5 million votes cast. Because of the way the voting system works, the UIA will have a slim majority in the new parliament -- 140 out of 275 seats.

But this falls short of what the Shiites had hoped for, which means they
cannot dictate terms to anyone and will have to make compromises to form a working coalition government. It also means that religious parties will be in no position to demand an Islamic constitution for Iraq, and that the political influence of Iran will be a long way from the dominance feared in much Western reporting.

Then there are the Sunnis. Their candidate slates are barely represented in the new parliament -- in part because many Sunni parties boycotted the election, and in part because the comparatively low Sunni turnout did little to help those that took part. As a result, prominent Sunni figures like State Department-favorite Adnan Pachachi did not even win a seat in the parliament.

Yet Sunnis can take comfort that while the Shiites probably reached their
electoral maximum in this election, the Sunnis can only increase their
representation in the future -- an excellent incentive for them to
participate in the next ballot in a year. It's also a good sign that many Sunnis are now saying the boycott was a mistake.

The Kurds also did well. Their 25% of the vote and 75 seats means they will have a strong claim on naming the next President, likely to be Patriotic Union of Kurdistan leader Jalal Talabani, and they will also help select the next Prime Minister. But the Kurds will have to be careful not to overplay their hand, for example, by demanding that oil-rich Kirkuk become part of the Kurdish autonomous region. The Kurds will prosper in a federated Iraq, but they will be in trouble in one that splinters.

What goes for parties also goes for politicians. Prime Minister Iyad Allawi
of the Iraqi List took 13% and 40 seats, which means he will probably not keep his job. But as the only politician with unrivaled dominance of his slate, he's in a good position to become the principal opposition leader in the new parliament. Ibrahim al-Jaffari, leader of the religious Dawa party, can also make a claim to become Prime Minister, although his ties to Iran make him suspect to the Kurds.

The other strong contenders for the premiership are Adel Abdel Mahdi of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq and the UIA's Ahmed Chalabi, both former exiles. Mr. Mahdi is already sending conciliatory signals, saying on CNN that "We don't want either a Shiite government or an Islamic government. Now we are working for a democratic government."

For his part, Mr. Chalabi has maneuvered remarkably well given how he had been dismissed by much of the Western press as a corrupt Pentagon stooge with zero local support. The fact that the CIA, the State Department, the National Security Council, and L. Paul Bremer's Coalition Provisional Authority went out of their way to thwart and discredit him should now serve as a cautionary tale to U.S. policy makers about how not to make friends and influence people.

A striking feature of these elections is how well the moderates did. It is commonly said that democracy in the Muslim world can only lead to the victory of radicals. Yet democracy itself tends to be a moderating force, demanding compromise, persuasion and salesmanship rather than force. So it's notable that Shiite firebrand Moqtada al-Sadr, who led an uprising last year, took only three seats in the new parliament -- far fewer than the 20 that some had predicted.

We hope the Bush Administration looks at all this with confidence rather than concern, and that it especially resists the (CIA) temptation to play kingmaker or otherwise try to influence the result. The next Iraqi government will surely make some calls with which the U.S. is going to disagree, especially if it resumes the de-Baathification of the Iraqi Army that is favored by both the Kurds and Shiites. But the whole point of this exercise was to make Iraq a democracy, not a client-state. As it is, it's difficult to imagine a democratic Iraq being any more hostile to basic U.S. interests than, say, France.

The next large task for the new Iraqi parliament is to resolve its leadership issues so that it can enact a permanent constitution later this year. The task for the U.S. is to assist that effort without prejudice, train the Iraqi military and fight the terrorist insurgency. These are essential and difficult jobs, but it's good to know the U.S. is no longer in the driver's seat. The Iraqi people have more than demonstrated they are capable of steering a course for themselves.

1. United Iraqi Alliance -- #169 -- 1,130,277
2. The Iraqi List -- #285 -- 462,677
3. The Kurdistani Coalition List -- #130 -- 45,525
4. The Independent and Democratic Cadres and Elite -- #352 -- 28,545
5. Iraqis -- #255 -- 25,352
6. The People’s Union -- #324 -- 21,952
7. The Democratic Patriotic Coalition -- #258 -- 14,350
8. The Independent Democratic Gathering -- #158 -- 13,592
9. The Islamic Action Organization in Iraq, Central Committee -- #111 -- 8,532
10. The Constitutional Monarchy, Ali bin al-Husayn -- #349 -- 7,519
11. The Rafidayn Patriotic List -- #204 -- 7,430
12. The Iraqi National Unity Gathering -- #146 -- 5,069
13. The Iraq Turkoman Front, #175 -- 4,039
14. The Islamic Kurdistani Group-Iraq -- #283 -- 3,210
15. The Iraqi Gathering for Democracy -- #170 -- 3,186
16. The Iraqi Islamic Party -- #351 -- 3,081
17. The engineer Ali Muslim Jaar-Allah Ali al-Baydhaani -- #167 -- 3,041
18. The Democratic Patriotic Alliance -- #250 -- 2,979
19. The Hashemite Iraqi Monarchy Gathering -- #133 -- 2,854
20. The Islamic Call Movement -- #192 -- 2,468
21. Abdil-Sattar Jabur GaaTi’ al-Iboodi -- #102 -- 2,394
22. The Iraqi Republican Gathering -- #299 -- 2,338
23. The Reconciliation and Liberation Bloc -- #311 -- 1,933
24. The General Union for Iraq’s Youth -- #112 -- 1,930
25. The Patriotic Brotherhood Movement -- #331 -- 1,902
26. The Free Officers and Civilians Movement -- #220 -- 1,894
27. The Liberal Iraqi Democratic Party -- #181 -- 1,850
28. The Islamic Accord Movement -- #272 -- 1,824
29. The Islamic Vanguard Party -- #234 -- 1,790
30. The Democratic Cooperative Work Front -- #165 -- 1,560
31. The Independent List -- #282 -- 1,542
32. The Iraqi Nation Democratic Party -- #322 -- 1,529
33. The Nation Party -- #360 -- 1,529
34. The Iraqi People’s Democratic Party -- #230 -- 1,514
35. The Democratic Islamic Trend -- #124 -- 1,512

Date: 2/14/2005 6:05:19 PM Eastern Standard Time

Its down to Ayad or Adel, Chalabi is just to scare them all. Ayad, has a chance as a "mid-stream" candidate and the one Shiite most likely to talk with the Sunnis. Yet, I think the elections were rigged to get "169" down few points. It seems all seats are up for grabs, its SALE time.
I was in Riyadh today and you should see the argument I got into with my host who is member of "parliament" as to why not have a Kurd as president and why shouldn't the Sunnis accept Ayad or another Shiite as PM. I was shocked and he is considered to be a "moderate" element!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I am too exhausted will get into more details later.

Regards and see you soon
Layth

1. United Iraqi Alliance -- #169 -- 397,715
2. The Iraqi List -- #285 -- 60,075
3. The People’s Union -- #324 -- 6,301
4. The Islamic Action Organization in Iraq, Central Committee -- #111 -- 4,394
5. Iraqis -- #255 -- 2,138
6. The Democratic Patriotic Coalition -- #258 -- 1,779
7. The Independent and Democratic Cadres and Elite -- #352 -- 1,675
8. The Iraqi National Unity Grouping -- #146 -- 1,454
9. The Iraq Democratic Gathering -- #115 -- 1,377
10. The Democratic Patriotic Alliance -- #250 -- 1,354
11. The engineer Ali Muslim Jaar-Allah Ali al-Baydhaani -- #167 -- 1,155
12. The Reconciliation and Liberation Bloc -- #311 -- 1,064
13. The Free Officers and Civilians Movement -- #220 -- 1,040
14. The Iraqi Grouping for Democracy -- #170 -- 1,025
15. The Kurdistani Coalition List -- #130 -- 1,015

AT WAR
A Crack in the Wall
Iraq’s election deals a blow to absolutism; there will be others

DAVID PRYCE-JONES
National Review (subscription required, to see web-version of entire article
February 28, 2005

The delight and the dignity of Iraqis with stained fingers proving they had just participated in choosing their leaders has been a memorable spectacle of hope. Like the peoples of the old Soviet empire, the Arabs are beginning to democratize. Decent governance in Baghdad is the immediate issue, but in due course democracy — and democracy alone — may place the Arab and Muslim world and the West on an equal footing. Huge historic forces are in play.

Power in the Arab and Muslim world has always been in the hands of those who could seize and hold it, founding dynasties if they could. Absolute rule by the strongest was a mechanism endlessly perpetuating violence and therefore stagnation. Iraq is a particularly tragic example. Saddam Hussein and his two sons were only the latest in the long and bloody line of rulers bent on exploiting that unfortunate country and its riches. What determined everything, of course, was that they controlled the security and secret-police apparatus, and this was almost entirely recruited from Sunni Arabs like themselves, a minority but one traditionally powerful enough to ensure the succession of one-man rulers. Shia Arabs and Kurds and other minorities always outnumbered the dominant Sunnis by a factor of four or five to one, but they had no access to power, unless as collaborators and quislings. Saddam’s regime piled their corpses by the hundreds of thousands into mass graves.

The complexity of the election reflects the immensity of the task of replacing absolutism by due process: There were over 7,000 candidates on more than 100 lists. Having the numbers, the Shia are certain to be the winners in the election, therefore preponderant in the forthcoming assembly and in the constitutional debate to follow. Last year, to be sure, Moqtada al-Sadr, a junior Shia cleric, tried to take a leaf out of the Sunni book by recruiting a militia and forcing his way into power at gunpoint. Bringing him to heel peacefully, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani proved that the Shia establishment is both responsible and capable. Sunni terrorists including the Zarqawi group have committed unspeakable atrocities in order to provoke the Shia into reprisals, and perhaps civil war. Sistani and other ayatollahs have restrained what would otherwise have been willing hotheads from falling into that trap.

In Iraq now, the whole spectrum of prominent personalities — politicians, ayatollahs, and clerics, tribal sheikhs, ethnic leaders, and representatives of minorities — are visiting each other in processions of Mercedes-Benzes along dusty and often shattered roads, and then sitting in backrooms to drink coffee and cut deals among themselves. The questions to be resolved are how much power the Shia are going to want for themselves, and how much they will concede; and beyond that how the state taking shape is to reconcile Islamic and secular values.

Here is an Arab version of the process that collapsed absolutism in the Soviet Union. Mikhail Gorbachev’s introduction of elections was also complicated, and seemingly controlled, but it was enough to break the militarized monopoly of power. In his refusal to sanction the use of violence for his own ends, Ayatollah Sistani is in the mold of Gorbachev, and he wants to incorporate the Sunnis much as Gorbachev also hoped to make allies of his critics and other dissidents. His approved electoral list included 30 Sunnis, because they and many others like them well understand that a boycott of this process will effectively shut them out of power. Iraq’s backroom debates are the local equivalent of the “round tables” in former Soviet republics and satellites where political and ideological opponents negotiated the concessions necessary for power-sharing.

Al-Qaeda’s Dr. Ayman Zawahiri and Zarqawi and the Sunni Association of Muslim Scholars object to these developments, and it is easy to see why: For them, and for Saddam’s Baathists too, this version of a round table spells the imminent replacement of Arab and Muslim absolutism with a social model taken from the West. Such people resent the accommodations already made to the West over the last 200 years, and fear that any more will finally undermine their identity.

Napoleon Bonaparte’s invasion of Egypt in 1798 first exposed the imbalance between the creative energies of the West and the stagnation bred by absolutism in the Middle East. Occupying Egypt in 1882 — and Palestine and Iraq subsequently — the British enforced reforms whose thrust was the institutionalization of these countries in order to close the gap between Us and Them. This was done so clumsily that Arabs instead formed a sense of their continuing subordination, and responded with nationalism. Nationalist leaders from Nasser to Saddam Hussein turned out to be nothing more than absolute rulers in another guise, extending the vicious circle of violence and stagnation. The present American-led intervention is therefore the third — and by far the most urgent — challenge from the West to the Arabs to define for themselves their place in the modern world.

Iraq’s version of a round table is already having positive repercussions. In Beirut, Rami G. Khouri, one of the most prominent and articulate Arab commentators, writes that “the sight of Iraqis enthusiastically choosing their leaders from among a wide range of options is causing many Arabs to reassess the political implications of developments inside Iraq.” This May, elections are due in Lebanon. Except for the usual collaborators and quislings, the Lebanese actively want an end to the Syrian occupation of their country, and may use the elections as a means of showing that they too can choose leaders able to hand their state to them.

No absolute ruler in the region is more threatened by the Iraqi example than Bashar al-Assad, president of Syria, a country mired in violence and stagnation. He is a fine example of a contemporary dynast, with no legitimacy except being the son of Hafez, the previous strongman and president. Recently he has been suppressing his Kurds and arresting anyone pleading for democracy. However, Syrians have had the extraordinary experience of observing Iraqi expatriates among them enjoying a free vote when they themselves have no such opportunity.

In Libya and Egypt, sons of Col. Moammar Qaddafi and Hosni Mubarak appear ambitious to succeed their fathers as dynastic president. In both countries, on the other hand, it looks unlikely that democratic reform can continue to be thwarted by the simple expedient of imprisoning anyone with ideas. In his late seventies, Mubarak has ruled by emergency decree for over 20 years, and later this year in an unopposed election will “seek” a fifth six-year term. After serving a prison sentence for promoting democracy, the admirable Saad Ibrahim aims to stand against him. Ayman Nur is another democrat and one of the few parliamentarians who do not belong to Mubarak’s monopolistic party. Stripped of immunity by Mubarak’s party, he was arrested minutes later, and is being held without trial. A crowd about 1,000 strong demonstrated, chanting, “Mubarak is a disgrace and a traitor!” They too follow events in Iraq.

Bahrain is to hold legislative elections this year. As for Saudi Arabia, it takes pride in maintaining its Muslim identity and absolute rule, but even there the retrograde royal family has agreed to hold municipal elections, limited, to be sure, because women will have no vote and a proportion of candidates are to be appointed rather than elected. Still, nothing like it has ever taken place. Nor has anything ever taken place in Morocco like the commission now trying to establish the extent of injustice and torture in that country’s concentration camps under the previous ruler.

In his State of the Union address, President Bush paid tribute to elections in Iraq, the Palestinian Authority, and Afghanistan, pursed his lips over Egypt and Saudi Arabia, and went on to say that “hopeful reform is already taking hold in an arc from Morocco to Jordan to Bahrain.” The Iranians, he added meaningfully, should stand up for their own liberty. Perhaps nothing immediate will come of this pressure to reform. Perhaps absolutism is too strong for the people to rid themselves of it, and cunning rulers will do just enough to keep the United States off their backs. At the last moment, the Shia may decide that it is payback time and they aren’t about to share power with the Sunnis. But even so, this Iraqi election has put down a permanent marker.

At this defining moment, Sen. John Kerry sees fit to deny reality with a warning not to “over-hype” the election. Sen. Edward Kennedy speaks of Iraq as a “catastrophic failure.” Everywhere politicians, academics, commentators, reporters in the hundreds, cannot go beyond the parrot-cry of “exit strategy,” too caught up in partisan politics to consider the historic context of the Iraqi election. The phenomenon reveals ignorance, and condescension too, as if Arabs are to be condemned forever to violence and stagnation, and the rights and privileges of democracy are quite beyond their benighted reach.

Mr. Pryce-Jones is an NR senior editor. Among his books is The Closed Circle: An Interpretation of the Arabs.

1. The Iraqi List -- #285 -- 5,263
2. United Iraqi Alliance -- #169 -- 4,786
3. Iraqis -- #255 -- 1,377
4. The Iraqi National Unity Grouping -- #146 -- 631
5. The Independent Democratic Grouping -- #158 -- 393
6. The Iraqi Islamic Party -- #351 -- 235
7. The Constitutional Monarchy, Ali bin al-Husayn -- #349 -- 127
8. The Democratic Patriotic Coalition -- #258 -- 77
9. The Kurdistani Coalition List -- #130 -- 58
10. Muhammad Abid Awwad al-Dulaymi -- #121 -- 42
11. The Islamic Democratic Party -- #249 -- 40
12. The Iraqi Hashemite Monarchic Grouping -- #133 -- 39
13. The United Islamic Party of Iraq -- #144 -- 38
14. The Democratic Qasimi Gathering -- #252 -- 36
15. The People's Union -- #324 -- 34
16. Ibrahim Khalil Sa'eed al-Aysawi -- #140 -- 32

The Results Are In
But we don’t know who won.
James S. Robbins
National Review Online contributing editor
February 14, 2005, 7:52 a.m.

The results of the January 30 elections announced Sunday by the Independent Electoral Commission are another giant step towards building a free and democratic Iraq. Voter turnout, at almost 59 percent, was higher than an U.S. election since 1968. That in itself can be counted as a victory, though hardly surprising except to the chronically pessimistic. But the election results do not in themselves settle the question of who will take power in the transitional government.
  
Handicapping is underway on who will take the top leadership positions. This is taking the form of a debate within the victorious United Iraqi Alliance (UIA) between supporters of Finance Minister Adil Abd-al-Mahdi, who is backed by the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), and Vice President Ibrahim al-Jafari, head of the Islamic Dawah party. These are the two most influential groups in the so-called Shia list that gained 47.6 part of the national vote and will likely receive around 132 of the 275 seats in the Transitional National Assembly. Two other potential UIA nominees are nuclear scientist Husayn al-Shahristani (wouldn't that be ironic?) who is favored by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, and Iraqi National Congress (INC) head Ahmad Chalabi (whose election would be even more ironic).

The fact that the United Iraqi Alliance did not win an outright majority is good news. They will have to make a coalition with one or more of the smaller parties in order to form a government. A two-thirds majority (184) is required to elect a prime minister and president, so that means attracting over fifty votes, assuming the 16 parties that make up the Shia list stick together. The Kurdish Alliance took 25.4 percent of the vote and will likely gain around 70 seats, not enough to defeat a candidate they disapprove of but a large enough block to form a serious opposition (or a potent majority coalition partner). The Iraqi List led by current interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi will probably receive 38 seats with its 13.6 percent showing. Approximately 40 seats will be divided among the dozen or so smaller parties.

Determining who will sit in the parliament is not clear-cut. First, the number of seats each party or coalition has won must be determined. This will be most difficult among the lesser parties, those that gained enough votes to win at least one seat and may be entitled to a major fraction of another. However, seats cannot be divided, so a formula will be used to decide the marginal cases, though the larger, more powerful coalitions will want to sweep up as many of these disputed seats as possible. Once the number of seats each group is entitled to is determined, the intra-party debates over who will actually get them will intensify.

In mature parliamentary democracies, a rank-order list of names is published before the election so the voters know for whom they are voting. However, most Iraqi parties kept their lists secret, citing security concerns. In fact, they probably did not have detailed lists, or may have had several drafts of lists that were being continually revised. It would have been too difficult to settle the questions of precedence before the election, and could have led to fights that would have broken up the coalitions. The groups receiving the largest numbers of votes are not technically parties but assemblages of parties, some of which are larger and more influential than others. Each party coalition will now have to decide how many seats go to each of their constituent members. Some of the smaller parties are likely to receive only token seats, the majority going to the dominant partners. It will be difficult for those who are shut out this way to make much of a case since there is no certain method of determining how much each party's supporters contributed to the coalition's total. This will lead to intense bargaining among the various groups for the limited numbers of seats. It will be interesting to see if the coalitions maintain their cohesion when the assembly convenes. There are no rules that will force the parties to cooperate while governing, and variations on the blocs may emerge as issues are debated, particularly the new constitution.

Drafting the permanent constitution is the principal, though not only, mission for the transitional national assembly. Article 61 of the Law of Administration for the State of Iraq for the Transitional Period lays out the process. The draft must be completed by August 15, 2005. A referendum will then be held no later than October 15. The referendum is one of the key checks on the process of formulating the new basic law. It must be approved by a majority vote, and must not be rejected by two-thirds of the voters in three or more provinces. This gives Kurds and Sunnis a practical check on the will of the majority; they can defeat a constitution they disapprove of by marshalling local opposition and forcing a rewrite. This should deter more radical members of the UIA from suggesting a sharia-based constitution, which probably would not receive support from the majority of the Iraqi population anyway. Polls show around 10 percent supporting a fundamentalist approach to government. Should the draft constitution be rejected in the referendum, the national assembly will dissolve and a new one elected in December. If it is approved, the December elections will be for whatever government is established under the constitution. Either way, we will go through this process again by year's end.

— James S. Robbins is senior fellow in national-security affairs at the American Foreign Policy Council and an NRO contributor.

1. United Iraqi Alliance -- #169 -- 4,075,295
2. The Kurdistani Coalition List -- #130 -- 2,175,551
3. The Iraqi List -- #285 -- 1,168,943
4. Iraqis -- #255 -- 150,680
5. The Iraq Turkoman Front -- #175-- 93,480
6. The Independent and Democratic Cadres and Elite -- #352 -- 69,938
7. The People’s Union -- #324 -- 69,920
8. The Islamic Kurdistani Gathering-Iraq -- #283 -- 60,592
9. The Islamic Action Organization in Iraq, Central Committee -- #111 -- 43,205
10. The Democratic Patriotic Coalition -- #258 -- 36,795
11. The Rafidayn Patriotic List -- #204 -- 36,255
12. The Reconciliation and Liberation Bloc -- #311 -- 30,796
13. The Iraqi National Unity Gathering -- #146 -- 23,686
14. The Independent Democratic Gathering -- #158 -- 23,302
15. The Iraqi Islamic Party -- #351 -- 21,342
16. The Islamic Call Movement -- #192 -- 19,373
17. The Patriotic Iraqi Gathering -- #289 -- 18,862
18. The Iraqi Republican Gathering -- #299 -- 15,425
19. The Constitutional Monarchy, Ali bin al-Husayn -- #349 -- 13,740
20. The Iraqi Gathering for Democracy -- #170 -- 12,728
21. The engineer Ali Muslim Jaar-Allah Ali al-Baydhaani -- #167 -- 11,614

Tailor-Made for the CIA
By Jim Hoagland
The Washington Post
February 13, 2005

Members of this capital's most selective reading group have been hashing over the story of "Kamal" the tailor without reaching consensus on their protagonist's character and motives. The sooner they do, the better the chances U.S. forces will have of subduing Iraq's violent insurgency.

Kamal -- a pseudonym -- is not a creation of John le Carre or John Grisham, though the three-page treatment of the tailor's life and times circulating here is said to have the crackle of a spy novel in places. No wonder: It was written by spies for other spies and for the most senior policymakers in the Bush administration.

People with stratospheric security clearances have been meeting at the White House to chew over the CIA's depiction of its subject insurgent as a resentful "at-large Iraqi fighter who is motivated to fight because the United States is occupying his country," in the words of an otherwise unidentified "senior intelligence official" who spoke to Walter Pincus of The Post.

Personalizing the Iraqi insurgency through one individual is the agency's imaginative response to a continuing deadlock in the Bush administration over the nature of the Iraq insurgency, which now involves tens of thousands of rebels and has cost nearly 1,000 American lives from hostile fire.

Two broad schools of analysis have competed within the administration since remote-control and suicide bombings erupted about four months after major combat operations ended in April 2003. Hearing the theories argued out again in one of his last White House meetings before he left office, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage groaned: "We can't even agree on who we are fighting."

Armitage's insight touches a vital point. It is impossible to design a strategy to defeat an enemy whom you cannot or will not define with clarity. You will be unable to determine the nature of the Iraqi allies you need to fight the insurgents -- as the Bush administration has repeatedly been unable to do. What if this is an essentially nationalist uprising that feeds almost entirely on the presence and abuses of a foreign military force -- the kind of insurgency that the CIA's depiction of Kamal and his opaque "family grievance" against the occupiers is intended to suggest?

A quick U.S. withdrawal could make such an insurgency go away. This analysis also has the advantage of greatly lessening the agency's responsibility for having failed to predict the uprising to begin with.

The CIA paper was initially disclosed and endorsed by Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in Senate testimony on Feb. 3. The identity of the report's representative insurgent was not disclosed by Myers or by the Feb. 6 Post account.

Others who have read it seem less impressed. They feel the narrative is highly speculative and obscures Kamal's ties to at least one insurgent group that is primarily run by Baathist henchmen of the deposed dictator, Saddam Hussein.

This is more than conflicting lit-crit in top-secret circles. The United States needs a different strategy if it is to overcome a well-organized, well-financed sabotage campaign by Baathists being aided by a small number of foreign Sunni Salafist extremists such as Abu Musab Zarqawi.

That definition of the enemy is closer to a recent analysis of the same subject written by the Pentagon's Central Command headquarters than is the CIA's tale of Kamal. So, I gather, are the five policy changes (four of them political, only one military) that retired Gen. Gary Luck recommended to the National Security Council in a still-secret report after his recent inspection trip to Iraq.

The soldiers may see the reality of postwar Iraq more clearly than the spies, who are deeply dependent on the conflicted, Sunni-run intelligence agencies and regimes of Jordan, Saudi Arabia and other nations in the region. In some ways, the analysis built around Kamal the tailor fits like a glove over the CIA's prewar scenarios for co-opting and rewarding Iraq's Sunni Baathist leaders -- despite all that has happened in the interim.

There obviously is no single answer to -- nor single symbol for -- the insurgency, which contains a volatile mix of forces, motives, personalities and readings of history. President Bush will have to call audibles or change registers as he turns real power and sovereignty over to a durable elected Iraqi government.

But he is not well served by surprisingly abstract arguments in policy councils over the dominant nature of an enemy who slaughters Americans, Iraqis and others as a matter of strategy. The president needs to respond with a clear definition and a plan of his own.

jimhoagland@washpost.com

NB: Jim Hoagland writes, "It is impossible to design a strategy to defeat an enemy whom you cannot or will not define with clarity. You will be unable to determine the nature of the Iraqi allies you need to fight the insurgents."

Entifadh Qanbar, spokesman for the United Iraqi Alliance, addressed this point Friday in a talk at the Hudson Institute, when he explained: 1) the Iraqi insurgency is primarily a Baathist insurgency; and 2) the intelligence and security services of the Allawi government, which were set up by the CIA, are, in fact, riddled with individuals whose loyalties are to the insurgents.

BOYCOTT WORKED, SUNNI CLERICS SAY

Religious body says election had no legitimacy, but many Sunnis seem ready to join subsequent political process.

IWPR crisis report, 02-Feb-05
By IWPR reporters in Baghdad and Kut

The leading Sunni religious body in Iraq, the Association of Muslim Scholars, has said the January 30 lacked legitimacy because large number of Sunnis followed the clerics' calls for a boycott.

Although official turnout figures and a region-by-region breakdown have yet to be released, initial reports show that Shia and Kurds came out to vote in large numbers, while fewer Sunnis showed up. An estimated eight million Iraqis participated in the election, implying a turnout of around 60 per cent.

Ahead of the election, the Association of Muslim Scholars called on followers to boycott the polls, saying a vote could not be legitimate as long as there was a foreign troop presence in Iraq.

Many in the Sunni community clearly heeded the call, while others living in the more dangerous parts of Iraq have told IWPR they were unable to vote because they were too scared to go out.

Sunnis make up perhaps 20 per cent of Iraq's population, but members of the community held positions of power for decades, before and during the rule of Saddam Hussein, himself a Sunni.

In a statement released on February 2, the Muslim scholars said that because so many people refused to take part, a new administration that emerged from it would not have a mandate to draft a constitution. The task of writing the document falls to the 275-member National Assembly.

"We make it clear to the United Nations and the international community that they must not get involved in granting legitimacy to this election, because such a move will open the gates of evil," said the clerics' statement.

After the election, senior Iraq political figures repeated promises to draw Sunni groups into the decision-making process. Veteran politician Adnan Pachachi, himself a Sunni, said he wanted parties that boycotted the election to be involved in writing the constitution.

It is a view that seems to be shared by many of the Sunnis who chose not to vote.

Sheikh Kamil al-Khalifa, a cleric at the al-Busalam mosque in the southeastern city of Kut, said he had disagreed with holding elections, but he insisted Sunnis will still take part in shaping the future.

"We have had a role in the past, and that role still exists," he said. "When the new constitution is being drafted, we will have a right to debate it and object to provisions that do not meet the demands of the Iraqi people. We are part of Iraq, so we have the right to reject it [the constitution]."

Sunni cleric Azghir Abbas, also from Kut, did not vote himself, but says he realised that Iraqis really wanted to participate in the elections when he saw the turnout figures and the long queues at the polls.

Abbas said the Sunnis will continue to advocate their agenda, which includes establishing a deadline for the withdrawal of United States-led Coalition troops.

"We need to have a timetable and we will accept nothing less," he said. "We boycotted the election because we did not get a response to this demand, and we will be able to reject the constitution when it is announced. It is our right."

Iraqi interim president Ghazi al-Yawar said at a February press conference that US troops were still needed, but there would be a timetable for their withdrawal, although he refused to name a deadline.

"There will be a marked decrease in the number of multinational forces by the end of this year," said al-Yawar. "A complete withdrawal depends on the strength of Iraqi security and military forces and the eradication of terrorists within Iraq."

Najm Abdullah, 33, was one of the Kut residents who opted out of the election. But he did observe the big turnout of voters, and he wishes them well.

"Everyone's got their own opinion, and we are free to hold ours," he said. "As for us, we are working to have our demands met, and we are not opposing those who voted. Everyone has their own way of getting their demands heard."

This story has not been bylined because of concerns for the security of IWPR reporters.

* * *

SUNNIS ALLEGE COERCION

As turnout levels in Sunni areas remain unclear, some claim they were pressured to vote, others that they were told not to.

IWPR crisis report, 02-Feb-05
By IWPR reporters in Ramadi and Baghdad

Some people in the largely Sunni west of Iraq are complaining that United States troops tried to coerce them into taking part in the January 30 elections.

People in the town of Ramadi, about 100 kilometres west of Baghdad in the Anbar governorate, said they felt that raids conducted by US troops prior to the election were part of an effort to force people to go to the polls.

"They arrested us on January 29 and released us in January 30," said Fahmi Abid al-Dlemi, a Ramadi resident. "Afterwards, they asked us whether we were going to vote, and we told them we were."

Haitham al-Harithi, a university student in Ramadi, told a similar story, "After seizing us, they said they'd release us if we agreed to go and cast our ballots."

US and Iraqi officials worry that a low turnout among the Sunnis - who account for about one in five of the population - could cast doubt on the election's legitimacy.

Several Sunni parties boycotted the poll on the grounds either that instability in the "Sunni triangle" would prevent a fair election, or that no vote could count as legitimate as long as Coalition troops were stationed in the country.

Such is the level of suspicion about the election that while some are alleging that Sunni voters were pressured to vote against their will, others are claiming there was a concerted effort to stop them going to the polls. Those who favour the latter theory cite reports that Sunni voters in Samawa were intimidated by election workers, as well as the logistical errors that led to a shortage of ballots in ethnically mixed cities such as Mosul and Kirkuk.

Preliminary results show that expectedly high numbers of voters turned out in some Sunni cities such as Baaqubah, northeast of Baghdad. In other places such as Baghdad's al-Azamiya neighbourhood, most polling stations did not open at all.

Final turnout figures are not expected to be released for several more days.

Few voters turned out in Fallujah, the town west of Baghdad which US troops stormed in November in a bid to crush insurgents. Hundreds of thousands of residents were displaced by the fighting and now reside in makeshift camps just outside the town.

Eisa Abdullah, a camp resident who was among those who did decide to vote, said, "We have been suffering a bad situation since we lost our homes and belongings, but we took part in order to vote for the constitution and to support the democratic process."

Abu Junaid al-Kubaissi, a displaced Fallujah resident living in Baghdad, could have cast his ballot in the capital, as Iraq's electoral commission had made provision for such cases. But he says he didn't bother, and he doesn't care who wins, either.

"This government makes promises without doing anything, just as they promised to rebuild Fallujah," he said.

This story has not been bylined because of concerns for the security of IWPR reporters.

Iraq Election Results: Seat Allocations in National Assembly

Iraqi Prospect Organisation
Sunday, February 13, 2005

Based on the Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq's Rules and Regulations No. 17 'Seat Allocation', today's results would see the National Assembly seats distributed as follows:

List Name -- List Number -- Number of Votes -- Seats Won

The Islamic Labor Movement in Iraq -- 111 -- 43,205 -- 2

The Kurdistan Alliance -- 130 -- 2,175,551 -- 75

The United Iraqi Alliance -- 169 -- 4,075,295 -- 140

The Turkomen Iraqi Front -- 175 -- 93,480 -- 3

National Rafidain List (Assyrian Christians) -- 204 -- 36,255 -- 1

Iraqis -- 255 -- 150,680 -- 5

The National Democratic Alliance -- 258 -- 36,795 -- 1

The Islamic Kurdish Society -- 283 -- 60,592 -- 2

The Iraqi List -- 285 -- 1,168,943 -- 40

The Reconciliation and Liberation Entity -- 311 -- 30,796 -- 1

The Communist Party -- 324 -- 69,920 -- 2

National Independent Elites and Cadres Party -- 352 -- 69,938 -- 3

TOTAL -- 8,011,450 -- 275

Basic Explanation

Seat allocations for Iraq's 275-member National Assembly are calculated as follows:

• The total number of valid votes cast (8,456,266) is divided by 275 to give an initial quota of 30,750.
• Any list which has less votes than the initial quota is excluded. All those that have as many votes of more than the initial quota are filtered out.
• A new total votes is calculated based on the total number of votes cast to the filtered out lists (8,011,450).
• A seat quota is then calculated by dividing the new total by 275, which is 29,132.55.
• The number of votes a filtered party received is divided by the seat quota to give the total number of seats. Remainders are dealt with by giving an extra seat to each list in order of highest remainder until all 275 seats are allocated.

The Iraqi Prospect Organisation is a network of young Iraq men and women working to promote democracy in Iraq.

Hello,

Ayad Rahim.

I’m back in Baghdad. It was a last-minute decision – I just couldn’t stand, not being here, for the elections. I left Cleveland, on the 26th, made to into Baghdad on the 28th, just before the airport closed, and got to vote two days later, to boot. I’ve picked up the blog, Live From Baghdad, from last time -- you can follow along, at AyadRahimTripToIraq.blogspot.com. I should be here, until at least mid-April. I’ll try to get into the courts, for the upcoming trials of Saddam and his gang.

I’m keeping safe, thank you, although the situation is pretty good and things are looking up, more and more. If you want to get in touch, you can write to me, directly, or, alternatively, I suggest, to another e-mail address, via my publicist, John Palmer: ayad@veritymedia.com.

All the best,

Hi Ayad!

Must be mental telepathy. I've been thinking about you a lot since the elections and wondering how things are with you. Been meaning to get in touch and here you are. It must be kinda exciting being in and experiencing Iraq since last you were there. Things certainly sound more hopeful. Will be glad to read the blog again and am going to let Janet and Alan know so they too can follow you. It's great to have an on-the-spot report from someone you can trust. Take care and keep safe.

Rita

Subj: Re: Ayad Rahim, back in Baghdad
Date: 2/13/2005 3:50:08 AM Eastern Standard Time

Dear Ayad:-
It was pleasure to meet you in Boston and will be great if I can meet you in Iraq soon while now I’m in Amman will leave to Korea next day, Please do not put the [phone number] of your house in after your name you can put only mobile phone beacuse the phone of the house lead to the neighbourhood and if there is corruption in the communication committee will give the house adress so do not do that again.

all the bast

your friend

Shiite Candidates Win Nearly Half of Iraqi Votes
Turnout Was About 60 Percent of Eligible Voters

By JASON KEYSER, AP

BAGHDAD, Iraq (Feb. 13) - Iraq's majority Shiite Muslims won nearly half the votes in the nation's landmark Jan. 30 election, giving the long-oppressed group significant power but not enough to form a government on its own, according to results released Sunday.

The Shiites likely will have to form a coalition in the 275-member National Assembly with the other top vote-getters - the Kurds and Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's list - to push through their agenda and select a president and prime minister. The president and two vice presidents must be elected by a two-thirds majority.

"This is a new birth for Iraq," Iraqi election commission spokesman Farid Ayar said while announcing results. Iraqi voters "became a legend in their confrontation with terrorists."

Minority Sunni groups, which largely boycotted voting booths and form the core of the insurgency, rejected the election - raising the prospect of continued violence as Iraqis try to rebuild their country.

In an interview with Al-Jazeera television, Mohammed Bashar of the anti-American Association of Muslim Scholars said the fact that there were no international or U.N. monitors in Iraq made him question the figures.

"Those who boycotted the elections are more than those who took part in it," he said. "Boycotting the election does not mean that the boycotter will renounce his rights."

The Shiite-dominated United Iraqi Alliance ticket received 4,075,295 votes, or about 48 percent of the total cast, Iraqi election officials said. The Kurdistan Alliance, a coalition of two main Kurdish factions, was second with 2,175,551 votes, or 26 percent, and the Iraqi List headed by the U.S.-backed Allawi finished third with 1,168,943 votes, or about 14 percent.

Those three top finishers represent about 88 percent of the total, making them the main power brokers as the assembly chooses national leaders and writes a constitution.

"That's really part of that democracy that we're all so happy that they're working toward," said Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn.

Of Iraq's 14 million eligible voters, 8,550,571 cast ballots for 111 candidate lists, the commission said. About 94,305 were declared invalid.

The Iraqi Electoral Commission said the turnout was 58 percent, about what was predicted.

In the ethnically mixed, oil-rich city of Kirkuk, Kurds took to the streets to celebrate the results. Cars sped through the streets blaring their horns and waving flags of Kurdistan.

Since Saddam Hussein's ouster, Kurdish leaders have focused on influencing political decisions in Baghdad with the aim of reinforcing autonomy in their northern provinces.

"I'm a Kurd. I'm the mother of a martyr. I feel like he has come back to life. We have a chance now," said Shamsa Saleh, 57, carrying a Kurdish flag in her hand.

People crowded the street and police patrolled to keep the peace.

The figures also indicate that many Sunni Arabs stayed at home on election day, either out of fear of insurgent attacks or opposition to a vote with thousands of U.S. and foreign soldiers on Iraqi soil.

In Anbar province, a stronghold of the Sunni Muslim insurgency, only 13,893 votes were cast in the National Assembly race - a turnout of 2 percent.

In Ninevah province, which includes the third-largest city, Mosul, only 17 percent of the voters participated in the National Assembly race and 14 percent voted in the provincial council contests.

"They're going to have to see more Sunnis brought into the constitution writing if there's going to be any legitimacy at the end of the day, and I think we'll see that," Delaware Sen. Joseph Biden, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told "Fox News Sunday."

Sahib al-Amiri, an aide to radical Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, said his group expected the United Iraqi Alliance to receive a higher percentage of the vote. Turnout would have been higher if there was a U.S. withdrawal plan, he added.

A ticket headed by the country's president Ghazi al-Yawer, a Sunni Arab, won only about 150,000 votes - less than 2 percent. A list headed by Sunni elder statesman Adnan Pachachi took only 12,000 votes - or 0.1 percent.

Pachachi told Al-Arabiya television it was clear that 'a big number of Iraqis" did not participate in the election, and "there are some who are not correctly and adequately represented in the National Assembly" - meaning his fellow Sunni Arabs.

"However, the elections are correct and a first step and we should concentrate our attention to drafting the constitution which should be written by all Iraqi factions in preparation for wider elections."

Parties have three days to lodge complaints before the results are considered official and assembly seats are allocated, the election commission said.

"Until now there is no estimation regarding how many seats the political parties will get. When the counts are final the number of seats will be divided according to the number of votes," commission member Adel al-Lami said.

The balloting was the first free election in Iraq in more than 50 years and the first since Saddam was ousted from power after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.

Voters chose the National Assembly and ruling councils in the country's 18 provinces. Iraqis living in Kurdish-ruled areas of northern Iraq also elected a new regional parliament.

About 1.2 million Iraqis living abroad were eligible to vote in 14 nations. More than 265,000 of those Iraqis cast ballots in the United States, Australia, Britain, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Iran, Jordan, the Netherlands, Sweden, Syria, Turkey and United Arab Emirates.

In the United States, where more than 24,000 Iraqis cast ballots, the alliance was strongest with more than 31 percent, while Allawi's list came in sixth with about 4 percent - finishing not only behind the Kurds but also behind two tiny Assyrian Christian parties and a communist-led party.

AP-NY-02-13-05 1106EST

Subj: Re: it sounds like its going well - yay yay yay!! stay safe!
Date: 2/13/2005 8:29:23 AM Eastern Standard Time

NEWS RELEASE from the United States Department of Defense

Feb 13, 2005

DoD Identifies Army Casualty

The Department of Defense announced today the death of a soldier who was supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Staff Sgt. William T. Robbins, 31, of North Little Rock, Ark., died Feb. 10 in Taji, Iraq, of non-combat related injuries. Robbins was assigned to the Army National Guard's 39th Infantry Brigade, Little Rock, Ark.

NEWS RELEASE from the United States Department of Defense

Feb 13, 2005

DoD Identifies Army Casualty

The Department of Defense announced today the death of a soldier who was supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Staff Sgt. Kristopher L. Shepherd, 26, of Lynchburg, Va., died Feb. 11 in Baghdad, Iraq, when an improvised explosive device detonated during clearing operations. Shepherd was assigned to the 767th Ordnance Company, 63rd Ordnance Battalion, 52nd Ordnance Group, Fort McNair, Washington, D.C.

AFTER THE WAR

To Withdraw Now Would Be Folly
The price of liberty in Iraq? Ten years' vigilance.

BY NIALL FERGUSON
The Wall Street Journal
Wednesday, February 9, 2005 12:01 a.m. EST

No sooner had the polling stations closed in last weekend's near-miraculous Iraqi elections than the siren voices could be heard back in Washington. Assorted Democrats--the usual suspects, some naive, others cynical--could be heard urging that the United States now set a definite date to withdraw from Iraq. They held an election, didn't they? Doesn't that mean the job's done? Can't the troops come home?

Happily, President Bush used his State of the Union address to dispel such notions. "While our military strategy is adapting to circumstances," declared the president, "our commitment remains firm and unchanging." As he rightly said, an "artificial timetable for leaving Iraq . . . would embolden the terrorists and make them believe they can wait us out." Only when Iraq is "democratic, representative of all its people, at peace with its neighbors and able to defend itself" will the troops come home.

Amen to that. At least someone in the nation's capital--and happily it's the man in charge--seems to be learning some lessons from history. The key lesson is this: Premature promises to leave on this or that date dishearten those who are supportive of American policy and embolden those who see an American withdrawal as the precondition for their own violent seizure of power.

Mr. Bush is the world's first idealist-realist. Part of him understands very well that the success of American policy in the Middle East depends on tenacity and the credibility that comes with it. But another part of him is excited to the point of unrealism by his own grand visions of a democratic revolution throughout the Middle East.

American presidents have a professional obligation to indulge in highfalutin rhetoric, and President Bush's speechwriters have served him well this winter. "The road of providence is uneven and unpredictable, yet we know where it leads: It leads to freedom." That's not a bad punch line. The echoes of FDR and JFK in the inaugural address last month were also skillfully crafted. Yet there is another president--whom I have yet to hear the president quote directly--who nevertheless hovers like a shadow over the Bush second term. That president is Woodrow Wilson.

"Our aim is to build and preserve a community of free and independent nations, with governments that answer to their citizens, and reflect their own cultures. And because democracies respect their own people and their neighbors, the advance of freedom will lead to peace." Mr. Bush's words. But Wilson's concept.

* * *

As the First World War drew to a close, Wilson--who had intervened in it with the greatest reluctance--was possessed with a messianic idea of how the U.S. could win "the war to end all wars" and "make the world safe for democracy." To be sure, his vision of an international order based on collective security and international law is not one to which President Bush would subscribe. But what the two men undeniably have in common is the idea that a world based on national self-determination and democracy will be an inherently peaceful world.

It could very well be that President Bush is right about the Middle East. Maybe democracy and freedom really are "on a roll" there. But it also seemed, for a time, that Wilson was right about Europe, the region he set out to transform politically.

In 1918 Wilson declared: "Democracy seems about universally to prevail. . . . The spread of democratic institutions . . . promise[s] to reduce politics to a single form . . . by reducing all forms of government to Democracy." Sure enough, of 29 European countries, nearly all acquired some form of representative government before, during or after the First World War. Unfortunately, it didn't last. Six had become dictatorships by 1925, a further four by 1930, six by 1935 and eight by 1940.

The European experience reveals something important that the Bush administration must not lose sight of. Just holding an election is not sufficient to build an enduring democracy. As Americans should know from their own history, elections are only a first step. Just as important is the process whereby a government is formed, and the process whereby a constitution is drafted that ensures this new government is not permanently in office. For a new polity, these steps are just as important as establishing an effective military force--the other objective that has come to dominate American thinking about Iraq.

All this was hard enough to do when the relatively homogeneous populations of 13 British colonies decided to establish their own government. It is especially hard in countries where there are deep ethnic divisions, as there are in Iraq today--and as there were in so many Central and East European countries after the First World War.

Democracy is not a universal panacea. To the German minorities of Czechoslovakia and Poland after 1918 it seemed to pose a threat: the tyranny of the Slav majority. Jews in Poland and Romania faced the same problem. Wilson's ideal of self-determination seemed to imagine that Europe was composed of relatively homogeneous societies like that of France or England. But the transformation of the Ottoman Empire into a Turkish nation-state had dire implications for the Armenians and the Greeks.

Most moderate Middle Eastern commentators see ethnic conflict as the biggest danger now facing Iraq. It was indeed ominous that in Kurdistan--now a more or less autonomous state in a weak Iraqi confederation--a referendum on independence was hastily bolted onto last weekend's election. It was even more worrying that so many Sunni voters heeded the extremists' command not to vote.

There are those in the United States who blithely speak of a federal or confederal solution of the problem, as if Iraq were a Middle Eastern version of Canada or Switzerland. But Iraq is more like Yugoslavia. No, worse: It is more like Lebanon. For ethnic groups in the Middle East, power remains a zero-sum game. And democracy just means that the minority groups always lose. So why should they buy into it? If one group feels permanently excluded from power, it will be tempted to secede. It is no coincidence that with the spread of democracy the number of countries in the world has shot up.

* * *

Another threat to Iraq's fragile new democracy is that of meddlesome neighbors. Iran has already been much too involved in the mobilization of Shiite voters in Iraq and we should treat with skepticism the assurances of those who favor an "Islamic Republic of Iraq" that they do not in fact want a Tehran-style theocracy. President Bush hopes for a democratic domino effect in the Middle East. But something rather different is conceivable.

Woodrow Wilson was a man who lived to have his illusions shattered, though not long enough to see the complete collapse of his new world order into a Second World War. President Bush needs to learn from his example. And the first lesson he needs to learn is that just getting people to vote is no more than a beginning. Get the follow-through wrong and you can easily end up with "one man, one vote--once."

Lesson No. 2 concerns the duration of American military interventions. Wilson finally took America into World War I in 1917. Yet by 1919 the troops were on their way home from Europe, leaving the Europeans--in effect the French--to police the peace treaty. Premature U.S. withdrawal from Iraq in the wake of last week's elections would run the risk of leaving no one to police the peace.

That is why the president is more right than he knows to reject calls for an arbitrary departure date. The price of liberty in Iraq will be, if not eternal vigilance on the part of the United States, then certainly 10 years' vigilance.

Mr. Ferguson is professor of history at Harvard and author of "Colossus: The Price of American Empire" (Penguin Books, 2004).

48 percent, for the United Iraqi Alliance
26 percent, for the Unified Kurdish list
13 percent, for the Iraqi List (Ayad Allawi)
13 percent, for the remaining lists and individuals

AHMAD CHALABI IS ON THE BRINK OF A COMEBACK

By ELI LAKE
The New York Sun
February 9, 2005 Wednesday
FRONT PAGE; Pg. 1
WASHINGTON

The former Iraqi exile leader who hehttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.giflped found the Iraqi National Congress, Ahmad Chalabi, is seeking his country's highest office and says he has accepted an informal nomination to be prime minister.

In a phone interview yesterday with The New York Sun, Mr. Chalabi said he had said yes to the request from prominent members of the United Iraqi Alliance list, the slate of candidates that will likely control a majority of seats in the transitional national assembly to be announced in the coming days.

Among Mr. Chalabi's supporters is the leader of a resistance against Saddam Hussein in southern Iraq in 1991, Abdul Karim Al Muhammadawi, known as “the prince of the marshes." Mr. Chalabi has also garnered support from a former member of the Iraqi Governing Council, Salama al-Khufaji, who is one of the highest-ranking women on the UIA list. Mr. Chalabi also draws support from the Shiite Political Council, the organization he helped build this summer after he was excluded from the interim government headed by Prime Minister Allawi.

If Mr. Chalabi manages to secure enough support to be prime minister of Iraq, it will mark an extraordinary comeback for the man most analysts wrote off last May, when American and Iraqi soldiers raided his home and confiscated computers on charges that he had employed thugs to bully bureaucrats in the finance ministry. Throughout last summer, Mr. Chalabi was targeted by an untrained judge appointed by the Americans; all charges were eventually dropped. The CIA had written off the former banker as having no political base in Iraq, while leading Democratic politicians blamed him for fabricating intelligence on Saddam Hussein's links to Al Qaeda and arsenal of weapons of mass destruction.

Yesterday, Mr. Chalabi said he harbored no ill will towards his old nemeses in Washington and went out of his way to thank the American people, the American military, and President Bush for liberating Iraq. He even found kind words for Jordan, which has an outstanding warrant from a military court for his arrest in connection with his role in the collapse of the Petra Bank. Mr. Chalabi is suing the Jordanian government in federal district court in Washington for racketeering in connection with the bank collapse.

"I am always a friend of the Jordanian people," he told the Sun. "I lived there a long time. I will not comment on this issue other than to say the sting of animosity from some quarters in Jordan against me has been taken out."

In the race for prime minister, Mr. Chalabi's chief rivals are other Shiite politicians, such as the current finance minister, Adel Abdel-Mehdi, who this week rejected a timetable for the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq. Another aspirant to head the Iraqi government is the current leader of the Dawa party, Ibrahim Jafari. Mr. Jafari was a vice president in the Allawi government, but has been a vocal critic of Mr. Allawi in the run-up to the election.

"Chalabi will be influential. He is a force to be reckoned with. He has shown substantial political skills. But in this situation, I think the Shiites will want to choose one of their own, that is their inclination," an Iraq specialist for the Congressional Research Service ho is a former CIA analyst, Kenneth Katzman, said yesterday. "I don't think they can necessarily trust him. He has been with the Americans, now he is not with the Americans. He is not Islamist and he is secular."

A former adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority, Michael Rubin, said yesterday that it was too soon to predict who would be the next leader of Iraq. "We are in the primaries. What matters now is that they know who the candidates are, so let the horse-trading begin."

Iraq's election commission is currently counting the ballots Iraqis cast on January 30. According to Iraqi sources, the UIA is likely to receive anywhere from 51% of the seats in the new assembly to more than 60%. The next-highest voting bloc will be the Kurdish slate with Mr. Allawi's party running a distant third.

In the interview yesterday, Mr. Chalabi said one of his main goals would be to open up the heavily guarded "green zone" in the middle of Baghdad to regular Iraqi citizens. Since the fall of Saddam, the palaces and grand hotels that marked the epicenter of the Baathist tyranny have been turned into living quarters and offices, first for coalition officials and later the interim government.

"Symbols of sovereignty must be returned to the Iraqi people through their government. The republican palace is one of the most important symbols, it must be returned to the Iraqi people," Mr. Chalabi said. He added that President al-Yawar has said that President Bush was unaware that the republican palace of Saddam has been virtually off-limits to Iraqis and agreed that the situation should be changed. "We are acutely aware of the security concerns of the United States, and there are sites on the periphery of Baghdad which we will provide to them willingly," Mr. Chalabi said.

Mr. Chalabi also said that he expected the new government to focus on rooting out Baathist elements in the security services that are sympathetic to terrorists. "On the issue of security services, the security plan implemented since the transfer of sovereignty has failed. The number of attacks has more than doubled on a daily average," he said. "That means we believe a major problem has been the introduction of former regime elements at a high level in the intelligence service and the National Guard. It is important to review the background of these people meticulously."

He said he expected the new security services would target geographic areas where the insurgency was strongest, but that he would also fight to make sure the country's courts actually tried terrorists, complaining that there have been no trials for terrorists and many times they have been released after their arrest. "The role of the executive branch in Iraq has been too strong," he said. "We must make the judicial branch stronger and fortify it in order for it to stand up to the executive."

Mr. Chalabi said he agrees with human-rights advocates who wanted to make sure Iraq did not turn into a tyranny of the majority. On Monday, the Wall Street Journal ran an essay by Iraqi author and human rights activist Kanan Makiya warning the ascendant Shiite political class to eschew the confessional politics of ethnicity and religion and help build an inclusive political Iraq. Mr. Chalabi said he agreed with Mr. Makiya without reservation. "We do not want ethnic- or sectarian-based politics in Iraq. But saying it does not make it happen," Mr. Chalabi said. "We believe we are able to do that because we will have another election and write a constitution that will make sectarianism impossible in the new Iraq."

To that end, Mr. Chalabi said that in the coming months, he did not expect the UIA slate or Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani (the world's leading authority on Shiite religious doctrine) to support a constitution that made Islam the sole source of Iraqi law. Stressing that he was not speaking in any way for Mr. Sistani, Mr. Chalabi said, "Ayatollah Sistani is a man who, if anything, is very keen to be consistent. The platform of the UIA, which he basically blessed, contains a reference to the role of Islam in Iraq which is not far from the transitional administrative law, which only said it was one source."

Mr. Chalabi said that he wanted to rethink the presence of some 20,000 security contractors in Iraq and try to give these jobs to Iraqis who will do a better job at security. "Their presence is not welcome at this time and their utility is very limited. They also present a heavy burden on the Iraqi economy, padded in security costs. This is not the way to do it," he said. "We are not going to do anything drastic without coordination and careful planning, but we need to examine ways of doing this differently." The issue is likely to come up in any negotiation of a Status of Forces Agreement. The Coalition Provisional Authority granted security contractors immunity from Iraqi law.

In the interview, Mr. Chalabi's voice was noticeably excited. On three different occasions, he waxed effusively about the historic significance of the elections in which he just ran. He even said, "These elections will have an influence on the democratic movement in Iran." For Mr. Chalabi, who has been accused anonymously of passing American signal intelligence to the Iranians by the CIA and maintained State Department-funded offices in Iran for years before Iraq's liberation, the statement was significant. Mr. Chalabi has denied passing intelligence to the Iranians and has challenged Congress to hold an open hearing at which he could face his accusers on the issue.

Mr. Chalabi said the impact of the elections would reach the entire Islamic world. "Iraqi people voted out a government which had the support of the United States and 150,000 troops in Iraq, with funding 50 times more than the other lists combined, especially on TV time. They did that in the face of major threats by terrorists. The Iraqi people demonstrated this can happen."

Date: 2/13/2005 3:17:43 AM Eastern Standard Time
From: Layth

Update: Allawi is PM and Jalal is President. Apparently major conflicts with "169" whomever, torpedoed Jaafari knew what he was doing. It was not fair.

Read this NY Times article, very interesting.

Date: 2/13/2005 11:17:43 AM Eastern Standard Time

You think Ayad has a chance?

It doesn't look like it.

I ask you -- once the members are seated in the parliament, are they up for grabs -- each, goes in his own direction?

* * *
Iraqi Exile Sees His Prospects on Rise Again
By DEXTER FILKINS
The New York Times
February 13, 2005

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Feb. 12 - Nine months ago, American soldiers pulled up to Ahmad Chalabi's compound here to help raid and ransack the place, marking a dramatic break between the Bush administration and the Iraqi exile who, more than anyone else outside the American government, helped make the case for the invasion of Iraq.

Earlier this week, as dusk settled on the capital, a line of Humvees and American trucks returned, this time bearing one of the American Embassy's most important diplomats, Robert Ford. The purpose of Mr. Ford's visit was to assess what the next Iraqi government, perhaps with Mr. Chalabi in a senior post, was planning for the future.

After two hours of discussion, Mr. Ford and his retinue of armed guards and armored cars departed. Mr. Chalabi could barely contain his delight.

"At least there is dialogue," he said with a small smile.

An American official here described the meeting with Mr. Chalabi as "routine," the latest of several, and similar to many that the Americans are holding with influential Iraqi leaders as the results of the Jan. 30 elections come into focus.

Still, the conversation highlighted a substantial change in chemistry between Mr. Chalabi and the American government, which raided his compound last May on suspicion that he had passed top-secret information to the Iranian government. Mr. Chalabi denied the charge.

But more than anything, the visit by the American diplomat demonstrated the change in Mr. Chalabi's political fortunes in his native land. Vilified in the United States as the man who fed exaggerated reports of Saddam's weaponry to intelligence agencies, and often listed as one of the most unpopular people in Iraq, Mr. Chalabi is now all but assured a seat in the National Assembly. Over the past several days he has begun maneuvering to become the country's prime minister.

Though he is by most accounts a long shot for the top job, Mr. Chalabi, by quietly assembling an unlikely coalition of Shiite leaders and Islamist outsiders, seems likely to have secured for himself a senior position in the new Iraqi government. As the vote counting nears completion, Mr. Chalabi is in command of one of the largest blocs within the Shiite alliance, which appears certain to head the next government.

Mr. Chalabi's chances to become prime minister rest on the fragmented nature of the Shiite alliance that is likely to form the government. The group, called the United Iraq Alliance, will likely capture as many as 150 seats in the 275-member assembly. But the alliance has yet to agree on a nominee for prime minister. While Mr. Chalabi by himself has nowhere near enough the allies he needs to secure that nomination, neither so far do either of his main rivals, Ibrahim Al-Jafaari of the Dawa party and Adel Abdul Mahdi of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution.

With each man short of the necessary votes, they are busy scurrying for supporters within the alliance. While Mr. Mahdi and Mr. Jafaari - both from large mainstream Shiite parties - are considered the favorites, the two appear to be deadlocked over the struggle to lead the government. That has given an opening to Mr. Chalabi, and one that he appears to be trying to exploit. According to a rough tally of likely election results, Mr. Chalabi's coalition, called the Shiite Council, will end up with about 13 seats, compared with about 15 for Mr. Jafaari and 18 for Mr. Mahdi.

To become the Shiite alliance's candidate for prime minister, one of the candidates would have to secure a majority within the alliance, or about 75 seats. Leaders from both Dawa and the Supreme Council have been busy cutting deals with potential allies.

The deadlock has given Mr. Chalabi a confident glow.

"It's down to three people now, Jafaari, Adel and me," Mr. Chalabi said.

That Mr. Chalabi is even in a position to be maneuvering for power marks yet another turn in his up-and-down political trajectory. Once the Pentagon's chief Iraqi ally, Mr. Chalabi's footing in the Bush administration steadily eroded as it became clear that much of the intelligence he had turned over to the American government, which was used to justify an invasion, turned out to have been exaggerated or false.

Here in Iraq, his troubles grew was well. Mr. Chalabi's conviction in Jordan on charges that he embezzled $30 million from a Jordanian bank is well known. Last year, as he sparred with the Bush administration, an Iraqi court charged him with possessing counterfeit currency. Those charges were later dismissed.

Then came the accusations that Mr. Chalabi had tipped off the Iranian government that American eavesdroppers at the National Security Agency had broken Iranian codes and were reading Iran's secret messages.

The F.B.I. began an inquiry to discover which American might have revealed the Iranian code secrets to Mr. Chalabi. Investigators interviewed some officials with access to top-secret codes and gave some of them polygraph examinations. But investigators have had difficulty determining who leaked the information, and they are pessimistic about the possibility of bringing criminal charges, officials said on condition of anonymity.

Many Iraqi political leaders, even some who are friendly with Mr. Chalabi, say his quest for the top job will prove futile; they find it implausible that Shiite leaders would choose as prime minister a man who is so unpopular domestically and of such polarizing effect in the United States, the Iraqi government's main ally.

"I can't imagine they would make Chalabi the prime minister," said Adnan Pachachi, a secular Sunni leader. "He's too unpopular."

The political resurrection of Mr. Chalabi was made possible by both fate and by his own determination. In Washington, his most bitter rivals, the former C.I.A. director George Tenet and the former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, have departed. As the Islamic-minded politicians in Iraq have moved closer to power, Mr. Chalabi, who is Western educated, secular and fluent in English, has seen his usefulness in Washington ascend again.

In Iraq, Mr. Chalabi assembled an unlikely coalition of disaffected Shiites, some of whom, at first glance, appear to have very little in common with the man himself. Mr. Chalabi's fortunes will likely rise or fall on the reliability of his newfound allies.

One Iraqi who may hold the key to Mr. Chalabi's future is Moktada al-Sadr, the young cleric who led a series of armed uprisings against the American military last year. According to aides for both men, Mr. Sadr has promised to back Mr. Chalabi in his bid to become prime minister. Despite his outlaw status - he is under indictment for murder and has been in hiding for months - Mr. Sadr fielded several candidates in the election. Together, his allies appear likely to emerge as the largest single block inside the Shiite alliance, with as many as 21 seats.

Mr. Sadr's backing would give Mr. Chalabi a substantial boost toward his goal. Without it, Mr. Chalabi's chances seem slim.

Mr. Sadr, known for his virulently anti-American views and Islamist leanings, seems an unlikely ally of Mr. Chalabi, a pro-Western moderate who supports the continued presence of American forces in Iraq. But in an interview last week in Najaf, Mr. Sadr's chief aide said that Mr. Sadr had decided to back Mr. Chalabi. The aide, Ali Smesim, said the other candidates were pursuing their narrow agendas.

"The others are baking bread just for themselves," Mr. Smesim said of Mr. Chalabi's rivals, employing an Arabic proverb.

But aides to Mr. Chalabi's main rivals, Mr. Mahdi and Mr. Jafaari, say Mr. Sadr's support for Mr. Chalabi is not assured. Indeed, they say Mr. Sadr has pledged to support whomever emerges as the top candidate.

"Moktada sent us a message yesterday," said Humam Hamoudi, a leader with the Supreme Council, which is backing Mr. Mahdi.

The prevailing view among Mr. Chalabi's rivals is that while he knows he stands little chance of becoming prime minister, making a run at the job could enhance his prospects in the new government. Adnan Ali, a top aide to Mr. Jafaari, said he recently confronted Mr. Chalabi.

"I said to him, 'Do you really think you are going to be prime minister?' " Mr. Ali said. "He is just trying to increase his power."

For his part, Mr. Chalabi does not appear to be conceding. At his home earlier this week, he busied himself with a large group of Iraqi politicians, who sat drinking tiny glasses of tea. Some of them were independent candidates, unaligned with any party, whose votes were up for grabs.

"The independents are all gravitating toward me," he said.

Edward Wong contributed reporting from Najaf for this article, and Scott Shane and David Johnston from Washington.

WONDER LAND
Give Iraq's Voters The Nobel Prize For Peace
Yasser Arafat never did so much for peace in the Middle East.

BY DANIEL HENNINGER
The Wall Street Journal
Friday, February 11, 2005 12:01 a.m.

The Nobel Peace Prize Committee will announce its 2005 winner in October. I think that this year the voters of Iraq should receive the Nobel Peace Prize.

They have already won the world's peace prize by demonstrating in a single day a commitment not seen in our lifetime to peace, self-determination and human rights--the goals for which the Nobel Peace Prize began in 1901. Formal recognition by the Nobel Committee of what the Iraqi people did on Jan. 30 would do more to ensure the furtherance of these goals, in concrete ways, than any other imaginable recipient this year. Who did more?

The history of the Peace Prize shows as well that Iraq's voters placed themselves squarely at the center of one of the Nobel Committee's enduring, seemingly quixotic, goals--peace in the Middle East.

On at least three occasions, the Prize has been awarded to individuals attempting Middle East peace. Ralph Bunche received the Prize in 1950 for work as mediator in Palestine a few years before. Then Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin won in 1976 and in 1994 it went to Shimon Peres, Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat. Cynics would argue that Arafat deserves another Peace Prize for dying. The way to trump the region's well-earned reputation for lost causes would be to reward the eight million Iraqi idealists who rejected the cynics who offered death and subjugation over the difficulties of negotiating a democracy.

It might be said that the Nobel Committee prefers to pick individuals so as to personify the courage and persistence necessary to put peace before chaos and repression--Wangari Maathi of Kenya last year, Burma's Aung San Suu Kyi in 1991 or Andrei Sakharov in 1975. Here is a story of courage and persistence for peace as reported by the correspondents for Radio Dijla in Baghdad:

"Abdul Karim Abboud, 54 years old, lives close to the Abu Hanifa mosque in the district of Azamiya, an area of Baghdad inhabited by a Sunni majority. Early in the morning, the man left his home accompanied by his wife to cast their votes. On their way to the polling center and not far from their home, gunmen started to shoot randomly to scare people and prevent them from voting. The wife received a bullet in her shoulder. Abdul Karim carried his wife back to their home and left her with their daughter. He left his home again, heading for the polling center. After casting his vote, Abdul Karim went back to his wife. He said: 'This is for Iraq and its freedom.'"

Make no mistake; the designers of Iraq's car bombs had gotten their candidacy onto the ballot that day as certainly as any of the thousands of candidates' names. Just as they have been on the "ballot" in all the places the Nobel Committee has singled out for hope--Northern Ireland, East Timor, Tibet. Informed world opinion held before the election that peace would fail and terror would win, again. That day, peace won.

On at least seven occasions, the Prize has been awarded to agencies or officials of the United Nations. This reflects an attempt to animate the ideals and goals of the U.N., no matter its manifest failures, missteps and hypocrisies. Here is the world sought in the Preamble to the U.N.'s Charter signed in 1945:

" . . . to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war . . . to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women . . . ." These words, almost exactly, poured from the mouths of Iraq's men and women as they walked from voting stations, ink-stained fingers in the air.

Especially women. Has any one event done more to gain ground for the rights of women, in places where history and culture have rendered their rights minimal, than the spectacle of black-robed voters standing for hours to exercise the franchise?

The Nobel Prize for Peace has gone to the brave--to Nelson Mandela in 1993, Lech Walesa in 1983, Martin Luther King Jr. in 1964. Their courage consisted of laying public claim to fundamental freedoms and human rights, knowing that the making of this claim could get them killed, and one did die. Hardly any of Iraq's eight million voters could have known for sure that he or she would survive that Sunday's insistence on the same claim, and some have not. In Baghdad this week gunmen fired on the car of Mithal al-Alousi, the general-secretary of the Iraqi Nation Democratic Party, who has made peace overtures to Israel. He lived but two of his sons died.

There are sufficient practical reasons to elevate Iraq's voters in the eyes of the world. While eight million Iraqis stood against bombs to vote, millions sat in front of televisions in other nations, wishing for this opportunity. If it can happen in what was Saddam Hussein's Iraq, it may happen too in Yemen, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Jordan or Iran. Imagine the effect on the Arab street if its inhabitants saw that Arabs can win a Nobel Peace Prize, and the world's admiration, by casting votes as free men and free women.

Not least, terrorism--its arguments and its methods--was rebuked. This is the peace "process" rightly understood.

The Nobel Committee has never given the Prize to a nation. No matter. This is the new model for a new century: a whole nation choosing peace. Legitimize Iraq; others will want to follow. The Committee has another rule: Its deadline for nominees was Feb. 1. That makes this nomination a smidgen late. The Iraqi vote, however, was Jan. 30. The people of Iraq nominated themselves for the Nobel Peace Prize. There may be someone or something more deserving, but not in the world we live in.

Mr. Henninger is deputy editor of The Wall Street Journal's editorial page. His column appears Fridays in the Journal and on OpinionJournal.com.

United Iraqi Alliance, 4,075,295
Unified Kurdish list, 2,175,551
Iraqi List (Ayad Allawi), 1,168,943
Iraqis (Ghazi il-Yawer), 150,380

Shia coalition split over choice of Iraq premier

By Steve Negus in Baghdad
Published: February 6 2005 21:27 | Last updated: February 6 2005 21:27

Divisions emerged at the weekend in a Shia coalition that appears to have swept the vote in the January 30 elections, with the two main parties each putting forward a candidate for Iraq prime minister.

Members of the Islamic Dawa party announced over the weekend that their leader, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, would be a candidate for prime minister, quelling earlier reports that he preferred to remain in his current position as one of the country's two vice-presidents.

“He is the official candidate of the political office of the Dawa party for the post of prime minister,” said Jawad al-Maliki, a member of the party's politburo.

Members of the other main party in the coalition, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, have proposed finance minister Adel Abd al-Mahdi for the top post. Sciri members emphasise that Mr Mahdi, an economic liberal who recently visited Washington, is acceptable to the US while close to the Iraqi Shia clerical establishment.

However, the Dawa party's Mr Maliki emphasised that his group's candidate had a “background that is acceptable” to the public, and that Mr Jaafari would be perceived as “away from any external influence”.

Sciri was formerly based in Iran and, although it has renounced its former goal of instituting Iranian-style clerical rule, it continues to be distrusted by many Iraqis. Many western diplomats had expected the alliance to fracture, partly because of the coalition's ideological diversity, bringing in secularists and non-Shia as well as Islamists.

In addition to Mr Jaafari, the secular-leaning Shia politician Ahmed Chalabi and former nuclear scientist Hussein al-Shahristani have been nominated by members of the alliance as prime ministerial candidates.

However, Mr Maliki said Dawa and Sciri would agree on a joint candidate within days.

Possible candidates from outside the alliance include Jalal Talabani, the leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. Some Iraqi politicians suggest Mr Talabani might be satisfied with the largely symbolic presidency, or the parliamentary speaker's job. Iyad Allawi, the interim prime minister, was also reportedly hoping to retain his position, possibly as a compromise candidate, but some Iraqi politicians believe the abundance of candidates for the job, plus an unexpectedly strong showing by the alliance, make it unlikely he can keep his job. As of yesterday, the alliance had received over two-thirds of the votes counted. The tally so far is based on voting in the predominantly Shia south and parts of Baghdad and this is expected to drop considerably as ballots from the Sunni Arab and Kurdish areas are counted.

Meanwhile, a group of independent Iraqi election monitors declared the January 30 election to be “in accordance with basic international standards”, although it acknowledged modest problems.

The Election Information Network, which claims to have deployed more than 8,000 monitors in 80 per cent of the country's 5,000 voting stations, said it had found instances of voters being encouraged or pressed to select a certain list in 15 per cent of polling places.

An official in Iraq's most influential Sunni religious organisation said yesterday it would issue a fatwa, or religious ruling, calling for an end to the insurgency if Iraq's new government set a date for the withdrawal of US troops.

“If the Iraqi government sets out a position in agreement with all political trends, and it is approved by the United Nations that the US forces withdraw, then I am sure that the Islamic and nationalist resistance will end,” said Sheikh Amer al-Haity, who runs the west Baghdad office of the Association of Muslim Scholars.

“If it does not end, the association will take a stand to a stop to the resistance and issue religious rulings that it not continue, so that there be no more killing of the sons of Iraq,” he said.

Date: 2/11/2005 3:24:30 AM Eastern Standard Time

Hi Ayad,
How are you coping? rumor has it that Jalal is Pres. Ayad, VP and Adel is PM, the other choice is Chalabi, I don't think a real option, just a pressure to get everyone to decide. They should have a decision within the next 48 hours and Jaafari has been vetoed by the Kurds. Do not ask me why, I find him more legitimate than all others, but hey politics is a science on its own.

Regards
Layth

PARTIES EYE UP POTENTIAL PARTNERS

As post-election speculation takes hold, the big players - Shia and Kurds - consider their options, with cooperation seen as a better bet than confrontation.

By IWPR reporters in Iraq
IWPR crisis reports, 02-Feb-05

Although official election results have yet to be announced, Iraq's political parties are already manoeuvring to secure positions in a new administration. With no one group likely to win an outright majority in the interim parliament, the talk is of coalition-building rather than competition.

One of the stronger possibilities is a coalition between Shia and Kurdish groups, both of which are certain to have benefited from high turnouts in the north and south of Iraq, and will be in a position to take the reins of the transitional National Assembly

For the National Assembly ballot (as opposed to the regional elections also held on January 30), the dominant parties in the north, the Kurdistan Democratic Party, KDP, and Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, PUK, formed a joint list, while the main Shia parties coalesced into the United Iraqi Alliance. Both blocs also included smaller elements representing other religions and ethnicities.

"The Kurds and Shias are natural partners for each other," said Fouad Hussein, of the Iraqi Communication and Media Commission. "But it depends on the Shias: if they get 160 seats [out of a total of 275], then they will feel strong and won't need the Kurds.

"But if the Kurds can make a king, they can also destroy a king."

IWPR has learned from a senior Kurdish politician, who preferred not to be named, that early results place the Shia-led bloc in front and the Kurds second.

According to this source, the United Iraqi Alliance received 45 per cent of the vote and the Kurdish Alliance List 30 per cent. The Iraqi List led by interim prime minister Ayad Allawi came third with 15 per cent, and in fourth place was the People's Union, a bloc established by the Iraqi Communist Party, winning 10 per cent.

These early figures suggest that as expected, no single party or bloc received the two-thirds majority it would need to rule without a coalition partner.

Each bloc list or party will be awarded seats in the 275-member National Assembly in approximate proportion to its share of the national vote. That would mean - on present showing - that the United Iraqi Alliance would get about 124 seats, the Kurds 83 seats, the Iraqi List 41 and the People's Union 28.

A partnership between the Alliance and the Kurds would give them a two-thirds majority.

But Prime Minister Allawi, who has hinted that he could step forward as a secular Shia alternative to the Alliance, could seek to form a coalition with the Kurds or the People's Union in order to block the big Shia grouping.

Raja al-Khazay, a candidate on Allawi's Iraqi List, hinted at this possibility, saying, "The Kurdish list is some extent similar to the Iraqi List" - a reference to their common secular stance. But she refused to say whether the Allawi group was in fact pursuing this option.

The United Iraqi Alliance might itself go for another partner. Radha Jawad, a political bureau member of the Supreme Council of Islamic Revolution, SCIRI - one of the dominant Shia parties in the Alliance - has said negotiations are currently under way with the Kurds. But he indicated that talks were also taking place with other groups, including Sunni parties which boycotted the election.

Jawad said the Alliance plans to talk to the Iraqi List, too, given Allawi's Shia identity, said Jawad. "We have a good relationship with Allawi and his party, the Iraqi National Accord, as we have worked with them for the last two years. So I don't think Shia unity is in danger," he said.

Under the interim constitution, the National Assembly will appoint a president and two vice-presidents. In turn, the president and his deputies will choose a party or coalition to nominate a prime minister and form a government.

The United Iraqi Alliance is reportedly seeking the post of prime minister, which would mean the job would stay with a Shia. Kurds say they want the presidency, which could leave the other top position, that of National Assembly speaker, for a Sunni.

Sadi Pira, head of the PUK's office in Mosul, says the Kurds deserve to hold the presidency and at least one ministry, which might be defence, foreign affairs, oil, finance or internal affairs.

The PUK controls the eastern part of Iraqi Kurdistan while the KDP runs the west.

"We have achieved a high level of development in the Kurdish provinces, so we've shown that we are able to rule," said Pira.

While each group naturally seeks the maximum political advantage for itself, the Kurdish and Shia political groups are going out of their way to emphasise that the Sunni Arabs, too, will have a place at the table, even if they do not get the dominant role they once had.

"We are still insisting on forming a partnership government that includes all segments of the Iraqi people," Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, a leading Shia politician who heads SCIRI, said on Al-Arabiya television on February 1.

For the Kurds, Shafiq Qazaz, minister of humanitarian aid and cooperation in the KDP-run administration, said, "Sunnis are a very important part of the mosaic of Iraq, and they have to be accommodated.

"But they won't be rulers, and the game must be played both ways. The Sunnis can't be blamed for all the insecurity, but some Sunni elements are linked to it. And if they are to be part of Iraq, they have to abandon it."

The future political landscape is rapidly taking shape. Iraqi interim president Ghazi al-Yawar said at a February 1 press conference that the government will not be formed until the end of February or the first week in March.

But the absence of a new government will not prevent the National Assembly from convening its first sessions, he said.

The principal task assigned to the National Assembly is to draw up a constitution for Iraq, which needs to be ready in time for an October referendum.

The drafting process will almost certainly put severe strain on whatever coalition partnerships are in place by then. Groups which have cooperated to win a majority in the assembly are likely to fall out badly over such contentious issues as whether Islamic law should be written into the constitution, or what status should be accorded to the Kurdistan region.

But for now, the parties are still basking in the glow of elections that went better than most expected, and are maintaining the spirit of collaboration.

"The parties need each other, so they are cooperating," said Fouad Hussein. "After this part is over, they might use a different kind of language."

This story has not been bylined because of concerns for the security of IWPR reporters.

Hello,
I'm a French independant illustrator, reporter and photograph.
In your blog, you wrote a few words about an italien journalist, Giuliana Sgrena, but did you heard about the kidnapping of french woman journalist Florence Aubenas and her guide on January, 5th.? Do you know we have, in France, websites supporting them (+ others journalists disappeared or kidnapped in Irak)?
Is it possible to diffuse and post my message on your weblog, to your friends by mail...?
May be this message will reach Florence.
I believe you say something as "Inch'Allah"... I made this dream.
Thierry Birrer *

If you want to know more about what happens in France, don't hesitate to contact me !

Unwillingness to understand …

Florence,

Now it's been 38 days since you disappeared and I feel the omnipresence of your absence.
Absence of a journalist involved in the defense of democracy values; absence of a very appreciated woman.
Now it's 38 days there is a lack in the journalist profession, as if it was missing some letters in the word "liberty". Or as if an arrow -the arrow of intolerance- sanked into "liberty".

Your absence, this lack, this emptiness are growing every day. And I stumble over the sentence "unwillingness to understand…".

That's absolutely certain that the pen of the journalists and the image of the photographs are essential defences facing the war, facing exactions, facing corruption. Your articles, as those of your colleagues, are so much pillars for democracy. One of these pillars will lack, and democracy will shake! So your presence in Iraq disturbs. As Ingrid Bettancourt in Colombia also does. As Enso Baldoni did. But I still do not understand how one can kidnap or murder…

Then, which French people could ignore that you disappeared ? Which one and more, which journalist ? Which student in a school of journalism ? Nevertheless, this morning, I read only 650 messages on Liberation's forum and hardly 1200 on that of "Reporters without frontiers"… Hardly 1800 support and sympathy messages. I read them all. Only a few come from colleagues. Even so, certainly your kidnappers have direct access to these. Since the beginning of the invasion of Iraq, we noticed that terrorist and islamist fighters are masters in the art of communication with internet. But, we… here? Where are the supports of thousands of journalists, press correspondants, photographs, local reporters, students in journalism? The more the days flow, the less I understand these absences…

So, Florence, all that, is too much. Much too much.
Get back soon! It will give meaning to the word "liberty", still drastically reduced this morning. Then, I hope we will work together to resolve these unwillingness to understand. For no more Abdel Hussein Khazaal, Guy-Andre Kieffer, Fred Nerac, Giuliana Sgrena and many others at the cover of world newspapers or sticked to the front of town halls!

Thierry

* Coming from Syria on the way to Kuwait, I've passed through the south of your country in 1987. I kept in memory beautiful landscapes, all ochre and beige, with welcoming people... And now, for 2 years, I only heard abouth disasters, deaths, kidnapping, invasion, exactions, bombs, injuried and so more. I could not understand why the world becoming mad... Why this? I was against war, I demonstrated against it in Feb. 2003. And now, one of my friend, Florence, disappeared in Baghdad. As I am, she is. Against war. For peace and democracy. The less you will do will be great !

NEWS RELEASE from the United States Department of Defense

Feb 11, 2005

DoD Identifies Army Casualty

The Department of Defense announced today the death of a soldier who was supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Spc. Jeffrey S. Henthorn, 25, of Choctaw, Okla., died Feb. 8 in Balad, Iraq, from non-combat related injuries. Henthorn was assigned to the 24th Transportation Company, Fort Riley, Kan.

Subj: RE: Ayad Rahim, back in Baghdad
Date: 2/11/2005 9:11:34 AM Eastern Standard Time

Dear Ayad,

I am happy for receiving your email and I am almost able to say it is safer now than before the elections, but who knows it may become worse after declaring the results of voting, anyway we hope the situation will improve and I think it will continue improving, this is my point of view. Yesterday there was a kidnapping incident near the Iraq Foundation office a taxi of type Sunni kidnapped a standing lady while she was waiting for somebody to pick up and still we do not know the other circumstances, may be she is…

Anyway, welcome to you in Baghdad my friend.

Best regards,

Ali

Politician condemns Sunni clergy after sons killed
AFP: 2/9/2005

BAGHDAD, Feb 9 (AFP) - An Iraqi politician bitterly attacked the country's biggest Sunni Muslim religious organisation on Thursday, the day after his two sons were gunned down.

Speaking as he waited for the bodies of his sons to arrive at his family home, Mithal al-Alusi, a Sunni who has caused controversy by calling for normalised ties with Israel, accused the Sunni clergy of "siding" with terrorists.

"I have a message to the Committee of Muslim Scholars: They should know that they have no right to talk on behalf of Sunnis," said Alusi.

"Let them talk in the name of their own party. The Committee of Muslim Scholars is a political party. I warn them, and I mean it, to stop siding with terrorism. They will be punished by the criminal law."

The Committee of Muslim Scholars, the main religious organisation for Iraqi Sunnis, called for a boycott of the country's landmark January 30 election. Since the vote it has demanded a timetable for the withdrawal of US troops in Iraq as a condition for joining talks on a new government and constitution.

Alusi, the outspoken leader of the Democratic Party of the Iraqi Nation, narrowly missed the attempt on his life which claimed the lives of his sons, Ayman and Jamal, aged 22 and 30. A bodyguard was also killed.

Alusi decided at the last minute not to take the car in which his sons were travelling. It came under attack 200 metres (yards) from the family home.

Alusi, a former spokesman for the Shiite party of Ahmed Chalabi, also appealed for unity against the insurgents who have claimed thousands of lives in Iraq over the past year.

"We must firmly face terrorism. We must open up to whoever wants to rebuild Iraq, and to harshly impose the law on criminals.

"No dialogue with the terrorists. We have to build a state of law and constitutions."

"It is time for the Iraqi government to act. We all have to do something. It is the responsibility of everybody. My two sons were killed and many of our sons are being killed every day. The phantoms of death have no place in today's Iraq," said Alusi.

Our white elephant in Iraq

The foreign policy establishment picked a loser; Allawi is a Baathist who lacks appeal or the right vision

by Dean Godson
The Times (London)
February 10, 2005

IT WAS gracious of Iyad Allawi, the Iraqi interim Prime Minister, to thank the British people for their support in the pages of The Times last week. Quite rightly, he acknowledged the hefty price in blood and treasure paid by this country to bring democracy to Mesopotamia.

Understandably, Mr Allawi did not say that both he and his own al-Iraqia list have been the greatest beneficiaries of British and American support in recent years. For this former Baathist has long been a favourite of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and of its American counterpart at Foggy Bottom.

Thanks in part to his patrons in London and Washington, he was able to run much the most expensive campaign of the Iraqi election, including a five-part television series on al-Arabiya that made much of his erstwhile Baathist credentials. Its message was that you need a strongman like me to handle things in the current crisis. The Baath was essentially a good organisation, he contended. All that was wrong was Saddam, who perverted its high ideals for his own monstrous ends.

But the Allawi roadshow has been for naught — partly because most Iraqis have no electricity with which to turn on their televisions. He appears to have polled no more than in the mid-teens — his best showing was among Baathist exiles in Syria — and it is hard to envisage how he can continue as Prime Minister. Whitehall’s great white hope seems to be a great white elephant.

By contrast, the United Iraqi List, the largely Shia bloc, appears to have cruised home to victory. Less commented upon, though, is the re-emergence as a key powerbroker of Mr Allawi’s great rival, Ahmad Chalabi of the Iraqi National Congress. He has now secured the support of some important compatriots to become prime minister, or else vice-president.

Mr Chalabi is known largely in the West as the favourite of the Washington neoconservatives congregated heavily in the Pentagon and the office of Vice-President Dick Cheney. He seemed to have fallen spectacularly from grace last May, when his offices were raided by American security forces after allegations that he had informed the Iranians that the US had broken some of their secret codes.

This reflected a longrunning grudge held against him by the British and American foreign policy establishments, who are inveterate foes of the neoconservatives’ Wilsonian vision for the region. Indeed, senior MI6 officers have reviled him as a “salonista” with no support on the ground after his long years of exile in this country.

In fact, Mr Chalabi has proved to be a highly adept manoeuvrer in Baghdad since its liberation. He was the key figure in brokering the United Iraqi List. He was able to fend off the demands of pro-Iranian elements for a manifesto that committed the bloc to Khomeini-style clerical rule, obtaining the support of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani for a less purist approach.

So how did King Charles Street get it so wrong about this cultivated scion of one of Iraq’s pre-eminent Shia families? Partly, Mr Chalabi was the victim of a classic Washington power play. But it was also an authentic dispute about contending visions of the future of the Middle East. More than anyone else, he personifies the acute, pluralistic challenge to the authoritarian, predominantly Sunni Arab, regional order.

If the despised Shia Arab majority of Iraq is empowered through the democratic process, what does that mean for the stability of long-time Sunni clients of the West? Above all, what does it imply for the House of Saud — upon which Britain’s remaining defence industries are so heavily dependent — and who rule over a large Shia population in the oil-rich eastern provinces?

Much of the transatlantic mandarinate duly recognised that President Bush’s democratic passions could open up a can of worms. But Mr Bush, backed by Tony Blair, decided to overthrow Saddam, so they reconciled themselves to the outcome. Instead, they sought to make the President’s vision as unthreatening as possible. Once the fighting was over, they laboured to slow the pace of “de-Baathification”.

The mandarins also endeavoured to give Sunni Arab states and the UN — which many Iraqis regard as accomplices to Saddam’s tyranny — a substantial say in the running of the place. Thus, when John Sawers, the political director of the Foreign Office, informed Mr Chalabi that it was very important for President Mubarak of Egypt to play a significant part in shaping the emerging Iraqi polity, the INC leader retorted, “if you really expect me to support that, you don't understand what I'm trying to achieve.”

What Mr Chalabi seeks is a radical break with Iraq’s Baathist past and its unthinking adherence to the wider Arab nationalist belief that the West is principally responsible for the region’s ills. This also entails breaking with the ex-Baathists — the “lustration” of the system. But these are the very men upon whom the CIA and MI6 would depend to defeat the insurgency, partly on the principle that you set a thief to catch a thief. Mr Allawi was the political embodiment of this approach.

Mr Chalabi contends that one of the reasons why relatively few of his countrymen are assisting the coalition is because the “new” intelligence services are thoroughly penetrated by Baathists who have not been properly “turned”. “The security plan envisaged for Iraq after the granting of sovereignty has failed", Mr Chalabi said in an interview with The Times. “Attacks on coalition forces have doubled since then.” To rectify this, Mr Chalabi proposes turning over control of the security ministries to a representative commission of the National Assembly.

Expect soon a sharp tussle of wills based upon the old question of “who rules?” Mr Chalabi will be at the heart of this feud — and of its resolution. His renaissance gives the lie to the notion that expatriates lack credibility with their countrymen. But then as Harold Macmillan used to say, when the British Establishment is united on a point, it is almost always wrong.

The Eden Again Project’s most recent newsletter (February 2005) is now available on our website www.edenagain.org. The newsletter announces the formation of Nature Iraq, an NGO registered in Iraq with a sister affiliation to the Iraq Foundation. Nature Iraq will take on the responsibility for fulfilling the mission of the Eden Again Project and other environmental projects of the Iraq Foundation. The newsletter includes a description of the recent Marsh Arab Forum in al-Islah, Iraq, and the work plan of the Eden Again Project for development of a Sustainable Restoration Plan for the Mesopotamian Marshlands.

'The Ratchet Clacks, the Wheel Cannot Turn Back'

By Frederick Turner
Published, Tech Central Station
01/31/2005

On the Iraqi Election

They celebrate the birthday of Iraq,
Newborn upon their own most ancient land;
The ratchet clacks, the wheel cannot turn back.

New scholars of a future almanac,
They take their sheepskins in an inky hand
And celebrate the birthday of Iraq.

This act crowns kings and queens who were a pack
Of speechless beasts under a beast's command:
The ratchet clacks, the wheel cannot turn back.

No pale-faced Press, nor killers masked in black
Could break the circle of their wedding-band:
They celebrate the birthday of Iraq.

Warriors of peace, they held back the attack,
The medal's golden disk won from the sand.
The ratchet clacks, the wheel cannot turn back.

If chaos came, the whole globe went to wrack,
The glory of their choices still would stand:
They celebrate the birthday of Iraq,
The ratchet clacks, the wheel cannot turn back.

Turner is Founders Professor of Arts and Humanities, University of Texas at Dallas

NEWS RELEASE from the United States Department of Defense

Feb 09, 2005

DoD Identifies Army Casualty

The Department of Defense announced today the death of a soldier who was supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Staff Sgt. Zachary R. Wobler, 24, of Ottowa, Ohio, died Feb. 6 in Mosul, Iraq, when his dismounted patrol encountered enemy forces using small arms fire. Wobler was assigned to the Army’s 2nd Battalion, 325th Airborne Infantry Regiment, 82nd Airborne Division, Fort Bragg, N.C.

Breaking News

February 9, 2005

BUSH PROMISES TO BRING TROOPS HOME THROUGH IRAN

Most Direct Route, President Says

Under pressure to detail an exit strategy for Iraq, President George W. Bush said at a White House briefing today that he would not designate an exact timetable for a withdrawal of U.S. troops but added, "The fastest way to bring the troops home would be through Iran."

After reporters audibly gasped, the president explained that bringing the troops home through Iran would be "the most direct route" and produced driving directions from Mapquest to back up his claim.

But less than an hour after his remarks, Iranian president Mohammed Khatami blasted Mr. Bush's exit strategy, arguing that bringing U.S. troops home through Iran was far from the most direct route, and was, in fact, going totally in the wrong direction.

Using a map of the world and a magic marker, President Khatami showed that by traveling east rather than west, U.S. troops would have to circumnavigate the globe in order to reach their final destination.

In response, Mr. Bush acknowledged that it would be a long journey, but added, "If necessary, we'll stop in North Korea."

On a related subject, Mr. Bush said that the vote-counting in Iraq's historic presidential elections was not yet complete but that it looked like the winner would be actor Jamie Foxx, for his performance in "Ray."

"He's won everything else so far," Mr. Bush said.

NEWS RELEASE from the United States Department of Defense

Feb 07, 2005

DoD Identifies Marine Casualty

The Department of Defense announced today the death of a Marine who was supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Lance Cpl. Travis M. Wichlacz, 22, of West Bend, Wis., died Feb. 5 as a result of hostile action in Babil Province, Iraq. He was assigned to Marine Forces Reserve's 2nd Battalion, 24th Marine Regiment, 4th Marine Division, Milwaukee, Wis.

February 3, 2005 | 4:57 p.m. ET

Iraqis, the U.S. Congress, and ink-stained fingers (David Shuster)

Safia Taleb al-Suhail is the Iraqi voter who provided that magical moment Wednesday night during the President's State of the Union address. This afternoon, I had the privilege of interviewing her in one of our studios here in Washington, D.C. She is articulate, passionate, and courageous. And we will show most the interview this evening on 'Hardball.'

A few highlights:

Safia said she met the Norwoods for the first time last night at the speech. Safia walked in and was sitting next to Laura Bush, when she heard the couple behind her talking to the mayor of Washington, D.C. (Janet and Bill Norwood were explaining to the mayor why they had been invited... and how their son, a Marine, got killed in the battle for Fallujah.) Safia overheard the conversation... and on her own, she turned around and introduced herself. She said she told the Norwoods "Thank you" and "Words can't express how grateful my country is to you." Safia said she felt an instant bond with Janet Norwood and was soon looking at one of the last pictures taken of Norwood's son Byron.

There was an exchange of questions... and e-mails. (The women pledged to stay in touch.) Then, the President walked in and the speech began. Safia said she was honored when the President singled her out... and even more honored when he mentioned the Norwoods. Safia said the long hug with Janet Norwood was spontaneous and emotional. Both were crying.

There was a moment during this hug when it appeared Mrs. Norwood had given Safia the ID tags that belonged to Norwood's son. In fact, Safia said that during the embrace, the tags got caught on the jewelry Safia was wearing and on Mrs. Norwood's purse. "We were bound together," said Safia, "it was an accident but somehow appropriate."

Safia Taleb al-Suhail acknowledges that she is now an inviting target for the insurgents who have been murdering prominent and not-so-prominent Iraqis who cooperate with the United States. And she will talk about all of that tonight on Hardball at 7 p.m. ET

Ink stained fingers:

By the way, that gets me to one observation I had about covering the State of the Union, just 36 hours after being in Baghdad. To me, it was surreal to see the members of Congress arrive in their nice cars and motorcades... and then walk into the house chamber wearing their fancy suits and ties. It was even more surreal to see that some lawmakers, in this incredibly secure and safe coccoon, had stained their own index fingers.

The courage of ordinary Iraqis last Sunday was unmistakable. They were literally risking their lives by standing in line to vote and by getting their fingers stamped with ink. The members of Congress who stained their own fingers and wagged them proudly for the cameras were an affront to that courage. And in my eyes, those lawmakers diminished the true significance of what happened last weekend in Iraq. The fact is, few members of Congress have a son or daughter serving in the U.S. military. And few lawmakers have actually ever served themselves. Furthermore, in Washington, D.C., even "political courage," (never mind the real stuff) is exceptionally rare. Am I being too cynical? Probably. (And I'm sure I'll get a ton of nasty e-mails from some of you.) But, if members of Congress want to show "solidarity" with the Iraqi people... they are welcome to head to Baghdad, put on a flak jacket, and help/advise the new assembly on writing the constitution. Or, our lawmakers could serve as "election monitors" in Iraq when the constitution is put to a vote as early as this fall. That would be courageous and show real solidarity. An ink-stained american finger, waved for the TV cameras on the floor of the House chamber... is a political stunt.

Questions/comments: DShuster@msnbc.com

Breaking News

February 7, 2005

IRAQIS PAINT FINGERS PURPLE TO PICK UP WOMEN

Phony Voters Pack Baghdad's Bars

In Iraq, where a purple finger became a purple badge of courage after last week's historic elections, thousands of non-voting Iraqi men have started painting their fingers purple in order to pick up women, Iraqi women complain.

"Women won't look at you twice if you don't have a purple finger," says Beshar Yousif, 27, a bicycle messenger who sat out the election but waited for hours to get his finger painted in one of the many finger-painting shops that have opened in Baghdad in the aftermath of the vote.

Purple fingers have become such a status symbol in Iraq in recent days, observers say, that the price of a barrel of purple paint has soared to over ninety dollars a barrel, outpacing the price of a barrel of oil.

But all of the purple-finger fakery is not sitting well with Iraqi women like Jumana Akrawy, 32, who said that she "felt like an idiot" after being picked up at a bar last week by a purple-fingered man who turned out to be a non-voting fraud.

"His purple finger had me at 'hello,'" she recalls ruefully.

But the thrill was gone, Ms. Akrawy says, once she asked her suitor who he voted for on Sunday: "He was like, 'Abu. uh, Ahmed. Number 167?"

Ms. Akrawy, who voted in the election, now sees democracy as something of a mixed blessing: "As far as I can see, it's just given men another way to lie to you."

Hudson Institute’s Center for Middle East Policy cordially invites you to a foreign policy discussion and luncheon on

IRAQ AFTER THE ELECTIONS:
PROSPECTS FOR DEMOCRACY IN THE MIDDLE EAST

with

Richard Perle
Resident Fellow, American Enterprise Institute

Carl Gershman
President, National Endowment for Democracy

Entifadh K. Qanbar
Special Envoy United Iraqi Alliance List 169
Spokesperson of the Iraqi National Congress

Friday, February 11th, 2005
12:30 pm – 2:00 pm

Hudson Institute
1015 18th Street, NW
Suite 300
Washington, DC 20036

The recent elections in Iraq were a momentous step towards realizing President Bush’s vision for democracy in the Middle East. The obvious question is what is next for Iraq? What kind of government and constitution are likely to emerge in the country?  What difficulties lie ahead? Furthermore, does the emergence of democracy in Iraq have greater implications for the region? Will democracy spread to other parts of the Middle East?   

TO RSVP, please contact the Hudson Institute at (202) 223-7770 or email: rsvp@hudsondc.org

The Shiite Obligation
Iraqi's majority group must rise above the politics of victimhood.

BY KANAN MAKIYA
The Wall Street Journal
Monday, February 7, 2005 12:01 a.m. EST

The size of the turnout, irrespective of the outcome, establishes that the Iraqi elections will go down in the history books as a defining event in the future of the Middle East. For those millions of ordinary Iraqis who risked making the ultimate sacrifice by braving the bombs and the gruesome killings, this moment is what the 2003 war was all about.

In spite of the many failings of the occupation regime that ended in June 2004, a fledgling, closely watched democratic process is now a demonstrable reality in an Arab and Muslim country. Whatever else one may say about how flawed the electoral system designed by the U.N. was in Iraq, and how difficult intimidation made it for some Iraqis to vote in at least three of the 18 governorates, these were genuine elections with thousands of candidates and a myriad of manifestoes, replete with the kind of backward politics and ad hominem attacks that only the deep-felt hopes and fears of a nation actually wrestling with its own demons can give rise to.

* * *

The Arab world has seen elections before. However, virtually all of them were artificial affairs, their outcomes never in doubt. They were in the end celebrations of one version or another of autocracy, never a repudiation of them. That kind of state-management is not what has just taken place in Iraq. Millions of people actually made choices, and placed claims on those who will lead them in the future. To act upon one's own world like this, and on such a scale, is what politics in the purest sense is all about. It is why we all, once upon a time, became activists. And it is infectious. The taste of freedom is a hard memory to rub out.

No wonder the political and intellectual elites of the Arab world are so worried, and no wonder they were so hostile to everything that happened in Iraq since the overthrow of the Saddam regime. They had longed for failure. They trotted out the tired old formulas of anti-Americanism to impart legitimacy to the so-called Iraqi "resistance to American occupation." But the people of Iraq have put an end to all that. En masse, ordinary people took to the streets in the second great Iraqi revolt against the politics of barbarism exemplified by Abu Musab al Zarqawi's immortal words: "We have declared a bitter war against the principle of democracy and all those who seek to enact it."

The Iraqi elections are the second great Iraqi revolt against barbarism because the first took place during the uprising of 1991, when millions of Iraqis subjected to weeks of aerial bombardment took to the streets and begged the very allies who had been bombing them to help liberate them from Saddam's rule. Nothing like that had happened before, just like nothing like these elections has ever happened in Arab politics.

The nature of great historical turning points, and the source of the wonder and beauty that they bring into the world, is that we can't predict their outcome. The elections are ultimately about what it means to be an Iraqi in the post-Saddam era. They will produce a leadership in the shape of a National Assembly that will in turn create a government. But that is not nearly as important as the fact that the elections will give rise to the first draft of a document, the constitution, that will define the quality of being an Iraqi for decades to come. What will such a definition amount to? We all have opinions. But no one knows.

Having been subjected to the gravest of depredations, and having been scarred by a brutal dictatorship unmatched in its capacity for cruelty, the Iraqi people are today an unknown quantity. To be sure, the men and women who took their lives in their hands as they went out to vote are heroes. They are heroes in a way that it is difficult for people who have not been subjected to such abuse and intimidation to understand. But they are also victims. And, in spite of what so much of modern Arab culture has been trying to persuade us of in recent years, there is no virtue in victimhood; it is a debilitating condition, not a quality.

Iraqis have yet to come to terms with the meaning of their victimhood. They have yet to reconcile this debilitating condition with the political attributes of citizenship in a new Iraq. Above all, they have yet to create the leadership that is capable of making them reason through the very many pitfalls that coming to terms with one's own victimhood entails.

Therefore I am both a happy man today, and a worried one.

I am happy because the people of Iraq are once again taking responsibility for their own fate. But I am worried because it is not yet clear if any of the 7,636 candidates who had their names up for election are fully aware of the dangers that lie in store for their people. This time of course the threat to Iraqi life and well-being does not come from the Arab nationalism of the Baath, which subordinated Iraq to the mythology of a single supposedly yet-to-be-united Arab nation. It comes from the legacy of that totalizing ideology: the profoundly irrational and self-destructive politics of shrinking oneself down to the mere fact of one's own victimhood.

The terrible lesson of Palestinian politics is that a leadership that elevates victimhood into the be-all and end-all of politics brings untold suffering and misery upon its own people. Given political power, this kind of a leadership will in turn victimize. This is an iron law of social and political psychology confirmed by any number of recent historical experiences. The insurgents in Iraq fully understand this dynamic; in fact they are counting on it. That is why their goal is not to win over Iraqi hearts and minds; it is rather to inculcate a state of pervasive physical insecurity, conducive to the eruption of the most irrational forms of behavior. Theirs is a politics of fear and intimidation borrowed from that of the former regime which produced them, and it is a politics designed to create a backlash among those very Iraqis who so rightfully today wear the blue-black stain on their right index finger as a badge of honor.

Foremost among those victims are the Shiites of Iraq, of whom I am one. Shiite parties and 111 coalitions are poised on the verge of a great electoral victory. But who is this mass of people, politically speaking? What do they stand for? What kind of a state do they want?

Since 1968, the Baath have been trashing the only idea that can hold the great social diversity of Iraq together: the idea of Iraq. Their answer to the question "Who am I?" was: You are either one of us, or you are dead.

True to their word, they killed anyone who dared to say he was a Kurd or a Shiite or a leftist, or a democrat and a liberal. Contrary to what many Iraqi Shiites tend to think nowadays, the Baath never wanted to build a Sunni confessional state in Iraq. Anti-Shiite sectarianism was introduced on a large scale after the uprising of 1991. The state that the Baath built in Iraq up until the 1991 Gulf War was worse than sectarian. It thrived on the distrust, suspicion and fear that it went about inculcating in everyone. In this sense it was consistently egalitarian. Atomizing society by breeding hate and a thirst for revenge was the regime's highest ambition and principal tool of social control. Every Iraqi--Kurd or Arab, Muslim or Christian, Shiite or Sunni--became both complicit in the Baathist enterprise and its victim at the same time.

When the Shiites become the majority in a duly elected Iraqi National Assembly, they will inherit the great burden of a fractured and deeply atomized country filled with minorities, all of whom have known suffering of one sort or another. How will they shoulder that responsibility?

A fateful moment of truth came in March last year, during the debate over the interim basic constitution. A conflict erupted not over the authority of the interim government or its shape, but rather over the very distant and abstract notion of how the permanent constitution should be ratified. At issue was the all-important question of minority rights and federalism. Specifically, the most contentious item of the draft was Article 61(c), which held that no future permanent constitution could be ratified if two-thirds of voters in any three governorates rejected it.

Article 61(c) embodied a principle previously widely accepted by the democratic Iraqi opposition in exile; namely, that an Iraqi democracy had to be principally about minority rights, and only afterwards about majority rule. In other words, the rule of law took precedence over public opinion and populist sentiment. After intensive discussion, the Iraqi Governing Council succeeded in reaching a consensus, and the crisis was overcome. Nevertheless, the incident showed that the idea of Iraq as a pluralist and accommodating whole was at odds with the Shiite sense of political entitlement arising from their own previous suffering.

The most fundamental truth of post-Saddam politics in Iraq is that only the Shiites are in a position to stop the legacy of dictatorship from snatching victory out of the jaws of its own demise in the shape of escalating confessional and ethnic violence in the years to come. I said that in 1993, but the point is a thousand times more relevant today.

By virtue of their numbers, the Shiites in the first place carry the greatest responsibility for that future, greater than that of any other ethnic or sectarian group in Iraq. They also have far more to lose than anyone else, and this too is a lesson the insurgents have understood well. To be sure, there are hopeful signs, among them Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani's call for Shiite restraint in the face of terrorist violence. Yet the Grand Ayatollah is not a politician, and he has yet to find his moral equivalent among the politicians. The fact that Iraqis are still competing with each other over who has suffered the most, and who did or did not collaborate with Saddam, is a sign that whether or not Saddam is in jail, what he represented still lives on inside Iraqi hearts. Herein lies the greatest danger of all for Iraq's future.

* * *

The debate over Article 61(c) prefigures the most fundamental political struggle that will take place in the National Assembly of the new Iraq--the struggle over what it means to be an Iraqi. As the majority in the coming National Assembly, the Shiite leadership will be at the forefront of this struggle. The selfish sectarian impulse, however understandable and natural, needs to be turned on its head into a new political idea that embraces the whole country, one that is neither Arab nor Islamic, but Iraqi.

This idea cannot be built in reaction to perceived enemies, real or imagined; nor can it be built on exclusions of any kind. It has to be founded on the principle of tolerance and forbearance. No other formula will work in Iraq. We Iraqis tried dictatorship; in fact we took it further than almost anyone else in the world. Still it did not work. The country all but fell apart. But for a new inclusive idea of Iraq to take hold, the Shiites in particular have to make a very real sacrifice; they have to think beyond what is in their own self-interest, narrowly conceived. In so doing they might just become the agents for a genuine democratic transformation of the whole Middle East.

Mr. Makiya, author of "The Republic of Fear" (University of California Press, 1998), among other books, is the founder of the Iraq Memory Foundation.

Chalabi Is Back
An apology is in order.

By Barbara Lerner
National Review Online
February 08, 2005, 8:35 a.m.

The Iraqi election was a moving display of courage and a great victory, for America, for Iraq, and for our much-maligned president. But when the full results of this historic election are released later this week, it's a safe bet that we will find ourselves having to deal, once again, with another much-maligned man: Ahmed Chalabi. And since our CIA and State Department did the maligning, Chalabi's expected election victory presents what diplo-speakers call "a challenge."

Chalabi is a longtime Iraqi leader, a secular Shiite coalition builder, before the war and after. His prewar coalition, the INC, brought Shiite, Sunni, and Kurdish anti-Saddam resistance parties together. Later, he played a role in mediating an armed conflict between the two main Kurdish parties, leading to a peace agreement that still holds. His postwar coalition, Grand Ayatollah Sistani's United Iraqi Alliance, is struggling to bring rival Shia religious parties together in a way that Sunnis, secular Iraqis, and Kurds can live with. The UIA is the odds-on favorite to emerge with the most seats when the votes are counted, and Chalabi is number 10 on their list. He will be a key figure in the new, 275-member Iraqi national assembly (who has spoken out against an Islamic republic). So it's a bit awkward that in the months leading up to the election, we tried to drive this man out of the country.

Our spooks and diplomats convicted him — in the old media but in no court — of a variety of crimes; invaded his home and office with American troops and the police of our Iraqi appointees; searched his premises, roughed up his staff, and threatened to arrest him and several of his relatives and friends if he didn't leave Iraq. We were tougher on him than on murderous little Muqtada al-Sadr, but Chalabi didn't run. He stayed, fought the charges legally, campaigned peacefully, and won. Despite this history, it is not yet clear whether his victory will turn out to be a good or a bad thing, for us and for the Iraq we hope to see. What is clear is that we have new leadership now, at CIA and State, and it's in our interest to rethink our relations with Chalabi. To do that, we must look anew at the three main charges leveled against him, and at the evidence for them.

Charge one is that Chalabi is an out-of-touch exile phony, an upscale con-man with no accurate information about today's Iraq, no base of support inside the country, and no significant allies there. His only real allies, our experts at CIA and State kept telling us, are naive neocon civilians at the Pentagon: Chalabi suckered them by feeding them lies they wanted to hear about the possibility of a democratic Iraq, free from old hatreds and conspiracy theories about America and Israel. The first two parts of this charge are clearly false. General Richard Myers is no neocon, and even as the leakers at CIA and State were telling any journalist who would listen that Chalabi's information was no good, Gen. Myers was quietly reporting that the intelligence our commanders in the field got from Chalabi was very good. The claim that Chalabi has no base of support in Iraq and no significant allies there will, likely, be put paid by the election results, and by his continuing relationships with Sistani, with the Kurds, and other Iraqi players. The claim that Chalabi was insincere when he spoke of his hopes for a democratic, pro-American Iraq, unshackled from the old Arab League hate-propaganda and failure-excuses, is different. On this point, the available evidence is not yet sufficient. Even if he meant it when he said it, it's not clear if he still does, or if our moves against him have left him bitter and vengeful. Here, Ronald Reagan's advice is best: Trust, but verify.

Charge two is that whatever his political views, Chalabi can't be trusted because he's a thief and a crook, guilty of counterfeiting in Iraq, and bank fraud in Jordan. Again, the first part of this charge is simply false; the second is unproven. The counterfeiting charge stems from the fact that when our agents searched his premises, they found a small stack of fake banknotes with the word "counterfeit" stamped on them in red. This is hardly surprising: Chalabi was head of the finance committee in the Iraqi governing council and, if he intended to pass fake notes, it's unlikely he'd have stamped them as such. The bank-fraud charge is based on the fact that Chalabi was convicted of that crime in absentia in Jordan in 1992. To evaluate it, it's essential to consider some basic facts about Jordan that are persistently ignored in the media. Jordan has a relatively friendly ruling dynasty — the Hashemites — but it is not a friendly country. In opinion polls, Jordan's population routinely scores near the top in hostility to America. The opposite is true of Saddam Hussein. He was, and to some extent remains, popular on the Jordanian street, and in many elite circles too. Add the fact that, despite large infusions of American aid, Jordan's weak economy is heavily dependent on trade with Iraq, and it's obvious that few Jordanian bankers supported the sanctions on trade with Iraq. Consider, too, the fact that Jordan's courts have none of the independence we associate with American courts, and it's easy to see how a lone, anti-Saddam banker in Jordan might be convicted on less than compelling evidence. Crown Prince Hassan, for one, was not impressed. The prince has a long record as the most pro-American, least anti-Israel member of the Hashemite dynasty, and Chalabi escaped arrest in Jordan because Hassan drove him out of the country in his own car. More recently, in Iraq, it was Chalabi who made the first big move to expose U.N. Oil-for-Food corruption by hiring the American accounting firm, KPMG International-al, to audit records he uncovered. Why Paul Bremer, our former viceroy, rushed to cancel that contract is not yet clear, but on its face, it raises more questions about Bremer than Chalabi. In sum, it is unreasonable to insist that Chalabi's corruption is an established fact. There may be some legitimate questions here but, without credible evidence, this charge, too, must be regarded as unproven.

Charge three is that Chalabi is a traitor who deliberately fed us false information before the war, lying to us about Saddam Hussein's WMDs and about the way the Iraqi people would respond to an American invasion. Chalabi's enemies at State and CIA claim he did this to sucker us into invading Iraq, and then betrayed us by telling Iranian spies we had broken their secret communication code. Here, the first point to note is that Chalabi cannot be "a traitor," because he is not an American. He's not an obedient American agent either. Our CIA tried to force him into that mold before the war, but failed. They planned an uprising in the Kurdish north, and they didn't take it kindly when Chalabi said: 'Abort it; your security has been breached and if you go ahead, Saddam will crush it.' His advice was rejected, but events proved him right, and that made him persona non grata to CIA experts with egg on their faces. As a result, it is ludicrous to assert that when George Tenet assured President Bush that Saddam's possession of WMDs was "a slam dunk," he did so because he trusted Chalabi. The CIA was contemptuous of him, and of his claim that a majority of Iraqis hated Saddam and would welcome his overthrow but, once again, the facts proved Chalabi correct. Finally, in evaluating claims that Chalabi told an Iranian spy we had broken their code, consider the fact that we supposedly learned this because the Iranian reported it to Tehran, using — you guessed it — that very same code. To believe that they would do this, instead of using the compromised channel to pass us disinformation, you have to believe Iranian intelligence agents are dumber than rocks, and the likelihood of that is near zero.

All in all, it is in America's interest to explore the possibility of a new relationship with a newly empowered Ahmed Chalabi, because clinging to the old slanders is more likely to damage us than him. An apology for having maligned him unfairly in the past would be a good way to start.

— Barbara Lerner is a frequent NRO contributor.

BALLOT BOX MIX-UP

IWPR crisis reports, 02-Feb-05

People in and around the northern city of Mosul say they've been unjustly deprived of their votes because of logistical errors.

By IWPR reporters in Mosul

Election officials in the northern city of Mosul are furious about a mix-up in which Baghdad failed to send them enough ballot papers and boxes in time for the vote.

The Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq, IECI, sent extra ballot boxes to Mosul on January 31, a day after the elections, as a shortage had prevented thousands of residents from voting.

There was no suggestion the IECI asked them to hold a second poll using the extra ballot boxes. But an election official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the local branch of the commission refused even to accept the boxes, saying they now distrusted both the electoral process and the IECI itself.

The official said electoral staff and local representatives of political parties are meeting to formulate a complaint to the IECI about the problems.

Parts of Baghdad and Basrah received insufficient ballot papers, and in some cases none at all.

IECI director Adel al-Lami said on February 1 that the issue of late or missing ballots would be discussed by the commission, but declined to say what action would be taken.

IECI headquarters in Baghdad is currently in the second phase of counting about eight million ballots, and final results are expected to be announced in about a week.

Ballot boxes and papers arrived late or not at all in several towns around Mosul, including Sinjar, Hamdaniyah, Shaikhan, Bartallah, Bashiqah and Qush.

Angry demonstrators, mainly Kurds and Christians, protested in some areas. In Sheikhan, in the northeast corner of Ninewa province, protestors paraded banners saying "Don't Deprive us of Our Right to Vote" and "The Election is for All", as they chanted in front of the mayors office on January 31.

Some also carried Kurdish flags. Kurdish parties say 200,000 Kurds were deprived of their vote in the Mosul area.

Shaikhan mayor Basil Jooqi said nearly 20,000 people in the town had been prevented from voting, and criticised the IECI for failing to ensure that election materials arrived in time.

Tahsin Beg, the chief of Iraq's Yezidi religious minority, was at the demonstrations. "We want our voices to reach the Kurdish leadership, the IECI, the United Nations, the United States and the United Kingdom," he said. "Why did they prevent us voting? We Yezidis and Christians are angry with this situation, and the matter must be resolved one way or another."

In the town of Sinjar, in the west of Ninewa province, a senior official from the Kurdistan Democratic Party, Fadhil Meerani, said the IECI had supplied 12,000 ballot papers for an electorate of 72,000. He said the IECI did promise to fly in more of the forms, but these never arrived.

This story has not been bylined because of concerns for the security of IWPR reporters.

Like most dads, I enjoy talking sports with my son. Here in St. Louis, I begin most mornings by saying, “Eli, the Cardinals won last night.” His response: “No, they didn’t.” I have no idea why he doubts me -- over and over -- but it’s probably because he just turned 3. Anyone older than that has no rational explanation for believing the Cardinals would lose a series to anyone, Yankees included.

-- Kyle Veltrop, August 23, 2004, issue

Iraqi Sets Up Polling Station in Egypt

By SALAH NASRAWI
Associated Press, January 17, 2005

CAIRO, Egypt - Once exiled and stripped of his Iraqi citizenship, Talib Murad now sees hope in his country's new democracy. He is so eager to take part in the Jan. 30 election for an Iraqi national assembly that he has set up his own polling station after learning that Egypt, where he lives, is not one of the 14 countries designated for voting by expatriate Iraqis.

"I have waited so long for this moment to come, but when it came it was all frustration and despair," he said of his failed efforts to persuade organizers to include Egypt on the list of countries for overseas voting.

Murad is among 6,000 or so Iraqis living in Egypt who have found themselves without a local polling station to vote in their homeland's first election in 50 years. Iraqi activists estimate 1.5 million Iraqis live in countries with no access to polling stations, so will have to travel to another nation if they want to cast a ballot.

The International Organization for Migration, a Geneva-based nonprofit group supervising the out-of-country voting, says Iraqi election officials will not recognize results from outside the designated 14 countries.

However, officials in Iraq said they would make an effort to count such votes. Hussein Hindawi, head of the Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq, said it was doing its best to allow voting for all Iraqis abroad.

"We will count each and every vote," he said. But he offered no details on how the commission would receive or count votes from outside the designated polling sites.

Still hopeful that they can have a say, Murad and other Iraqis are campaigning through direct contacts and the Internet to draw voters from Egypt's Iraqi community to his makeshift polling station in an old office of the now-defunct Iraqi News Agency.

"The election to me means that my family's tragedy should not be repeated. That can only be prevented if we have a democratically elected government," Murad said.

Murad is a member of the small Faili minority that was forced from Iraq after Saddam Hussein ordered the mass expulsion of Iraqi Shiite Kurds, denouncing them as alien Persians. Murad was stripped of his citizenship and spent more than 30 years in exile. After Saddam's ouster by the U.S.-led invasion, he restored his citizenship.

Inside Iraq, voters will go to the polls Jan. 30 to elect a 275-member assembly that will choose a president and two deputy presidents and also draft a constitution.

The International Organization for Migration expects about 1 million people to vote in the 14 countries — Australia, Britain, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Iran, Jordan, the Netherlands, Sweden, Syria, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and the United States. The countries were chosen because they have large populations of expatriate Iraqis.

Registration began in those countries Monday, so Murad started registration at his Voluntary Iraqi Electoral Committee office in Cairo.

"Voting is our legitimate right to help in rebuilding our devastated country," said fellow campaigner Zaim al-Khairallah.

An Israeli rediscovers his Iraqi roots
By Shahar Smooha
Ha'aretz
January 30, 2005

AMMAN - There was nothing surprising about the stunned looks I got last Friday as I stood at the entrance to the girls school in Swafiyeh, handed the guards and the representative of the Iraqi elections committee an Israeli passport and declared my wish to register to vote in the elections to the Iraqi parliament, which would begin in Jordan exactly a week later.

The elections official asked to see some document attesting to my connection to Iraq and the belittling look on his face was replaced by one of sincere astonishment when I gave him my grandparents' 1951 laissez-passez. After pointing out my father's name on the yellowing certificate and presenting a signed and notarized translation of a document proving I am his son, the mustachioed Iraqi ordered me to wait. He disappeared into the big building with my passport and the Smooha family's most precious document, leaving me with the guards at the entrance.

A scant five minutes later it was my turn to be surprised. The mustachioed one, smiling broadly, appeared at the edge of the school's inner courtyard, instructed the guards in Arabic to let me in, and then turned to me in English: "Welcome. Please follow me." When I strode with him into one of the classrooms manned by Iraqi elections officials, another surprise awaited me. The four women and young man seated behind small desks had been apprised of the Israeli's approach and they were waiting for me, all smiling.

With a warmheartedness I had never encountered anywhere I had gone to tend to my bureaucratic matters, they told me to sit down, perused my grandparents' transit papers, stamped "Exiting without possibility of return," and were surprised that the only thing I know how to say in Iraqi Arabic is "How are you?" Three minutes later I was back on my feet, an Iraqi voter card in my shirt pocket alongside my Israeli passport. "See you next week, think hard about who to vote for," one of the women said as I left the room.

On Friday, after a week of digesting my new Iraqi identity - thanks to the Iraqi elections committee's decision to allow every Iraqi-born adult or their children over age 18 to vote, regardless of sex, religion or nationality - I returned to the Amman girls school. This time I only needed to bring my voter card and some form of ID, and once again the process was fast, efficient and cordial. One of the women I dealt with a week earlier examined the documents, told me quietly that she had wondered whether I would indeed come vote and then directed me with a smile to another table.

There a mustachioed and grave-looking man was seated who made me dip my finger in a sponge swimming in a puddle of indelible ink. In my naivete, I presumed this was the first stage of voting by fingerprint, but the Iraqis corrected my mistake with a smile usually reserved for the feeble-minded: coloring the finger with the black muck that will come off "in another month, maybe more," was merely intended to prevent repeat voting.

Once the Swafiyeh ink-blotter was pleased with the blackening of my finger, he presented me with a voting form the size of a poster and sent me behind a low divider. I had decided two days earlier who I would vote for, but then, alone behind the divider, I was genuinely distressed for the first time: The enormous form contained 111 names of the lists competing in the elections, all written in Arabic whereas I, unfortunately, can read only Hebrew and English.

I signaled to a member of the polling station committee and asked him for translation help. He asked that I whisper in his ear the name of the party for which I want to cast my ballot and after I did so, he wrote its name in Arabic on my card. Afterward, aware that attempting to locate the party's name on the long list would try the patience of the voters waiting in line, he pointed to the title on the voting form. I compared his handwritten note to the inscription on the poster, checked the box next to the party's name and dropped the folded poster into the transparent ballot box.

When I left the room, fairly excited, some of the Iraqi officials greeted me and the ink-blotter smiled for the first time. In the taxi ride back to the border crossing near Beit She'an, after a meal of mixed-grill and hummus at an Iraqi restaurant in Amman, everything seemed like a particularly hallucinatory dream. Only my black finger reminds me what a celebration of democracy I took part in a few hours ago.

How I touched base with my roots and helped bring democracy to the Middle East

Israelis of Iraqi origin were able to vote in this week's Iraq elections. The trip to the polling station and back turned out to be a journey of self-identity.

By Shahar Smooha
Ha'aretz
Last update - 08:03 06/02/2005

For years I have been familiar with the yellowish-brown photo of my father and my aunts and uncles, sitting in two rows and looking directly into the camera. It hangs on a wall in my parents' home in Haifa, and right next to it is another photo in which they appear, older, with graying hair or shiny bald heads. The identical number of people appear in each photograph, but not all the family members are in both of them. Missing from the first one - which was taken in 1951, just before Grandpa Nazam and Grandma Rina abruptly gave up the good life they had in Iraq and moved overnight to a tent in the Kiryat Ono ma'abara (new-immigrant transit camp) outside Tel Aviv - is Uncle Reuven, who was born in Israel not long after the family's traumatic move. Missing from the second, which was taken 14 years ago in my parents' yard, is Uncle Yitzhak, whom I never knew. He was born on May 15, 1948 - the day the State of Israel came into being - and my grandmother was so thrilled that she named him Fawzi - "victory." In Israel, where he arrived at the age of three, he was called Yitzhak, and 16 years later, in the first hours of the Six-Day War, he was killed in the Rafah Salient.

Father once told me that the yellowish-brown photograph on the wall was taken from the Iraqi laissez-passer/expulsion certificate of Grandpa and Grandma, but I never saw the original photo or the document to which it was affixed. Until last Wednesday. That morning the editors of Haaretz suggested that I go to Amman to try and verify the reports about the right of Israelis of Iraqi origin (or, like me, the offspring of Iraqis) to register for the elections to the Iraqi parliament on January 30. Journalistically it sounded like an interesting challenge, but it was only later on during that day of pouring rain - after getting the certificate supplying the official proof of my right to vote, from my Uncle Menashe - that I started to ask myself what it is that actually makes me an Iraqi.

Menashe had kept the document in his private archive since Grandpa's death 10 years ago, and he was plainly moved to be looking at it again. The memories flooded him and I got to hear about the train stations my grandfather had managed in Iraq, about the sacks of dates Menashe and Uncle Fuad would polish off, about the terrible punishment he once received in his aunt's house for losing his shoes in the Tigris River, and about the critically injured person, Grandpa's colleague, whom Menashe found in his bed one day when he came home from school. Arabs had thrown the man from a speeding train only because he was Jewish, and Grandpa, who lived his life between the stations, took him home - the man was on the brink of death - and put him in the bed of his first-born son until a doctor could arrive to treat him.

Menashe hasn't forgotten the injured man to this day and he hasn't forgotten how Grandpa was stabbed repeatedly in his stomach during the pogrom of 1941 and how he escaped, injured, from the hospital when he understood that the injured Jews died immediately after taking the "medicines" handed out by the staff there. I listen to these stories avidly, knowing that the memories of my father's older brother are true.

Uncle Menashe was 13 when he left Iraq. He speaks the language well and is familiar with the culture. He reads and writes Arabic, he can quote Arabic poetry without making mistakes, he follows with interest the events in the land of the great rivers, and he says confidently that he could still find his way around Baghdad today.

I, however, have none of this. What exactly does my Iraqi identity - which will perhaps be officially mine in less than 48 hours - consist of? In the end, I had to admit to myself, it consists of little more than a surname that made my life difficult as a child and made it slightly easier in the army, and of an intimate familiarity with especially fine food. As it happens, I possess a Mizrahi (referring to Jews of Middle Eastern descent) identity, or at least the consciousness of a Mizrahi identity. My father, Sami, a professor of sociology at the University of Haifa, has constantly dealt with the subject, and from an early age I knew that the "oriental communities" had been discriminated against in 1,001 ways as compared with the Ashkenazi lords of the land. But the focus was on all the Mizrahim, not on the Iraqis.

This opportunity, I told myself, apart from the reportorial work it entailed, might be able to teach me something about the Iraqiness that I possess - or not - so on Friday morning two weeks ago I set out for Amman.


I arrived in the Jordanian capital after a trip of about an hour and a half from the border crossing near Beit She'an, and made my way to the girls' school in the upscale Swafiyeh neighborhood. The school was empty due to Id al-Adha (the Feast of the Sacrifice). For the four days of the holiday, members of the Iraqi elections committee met there and dealt with the thin stream of Iraqi citizens who wanted to register to vote.

Those who were able to prove their right to vote received a numbered chit stating their name and a brochure in the colors of the national flag, explaining the regulations in two languages, Arabic and Kurdish. They were asked to return to vote between the 28th and 30th of the month with the chit and an identifying document. (The elections in Iraq were held last Sunday, but Iraqis abroad voted earlier over a period of a few days.)

The commotion was palpable at the entrance to the street on which the school was located. Several armed Jordanian policemen patrolled the gate of the school, and further down the street a few cars were parked, in each of which two men in civilian clothing sat, carefully observing the passersby. The taxi driver didn't want to park directly in front of the gate and let me off somewhat past it. He promised to wait for me and wished me good luck. "The Iraqi nation needs people like you," he said with a wink before I closed the door.

It was cold in Amman. The two guards from a private security firm, who were posted at the entrance to the school next to a large metal detector, seemed happy for every chance to stretch a little, even if only for a few seconds, to use the manual detectors they held. They, and the official from the Iraqi elections committee who stood with them at the entrance to check the documents of the would-be voters, were practically idle: The line I had imagined stretching down the street simply wasn't there.

I arrived just as the guards finished checking an elderly Iraqi man who waited until another guard, who was inside a small makeshift tent next to the gate, completed the security check of his wife. The check showed that the couple did not constitute a security risk and they were therefore allowed to enter the school. Now the three men at the gate turned to me.

I presented an Israeli passport and three pairs of eyes stared at me as though I had just landed from Mars. "What is your business here, sir?" the elections committee official asked me in English, a touch of pity seeping into his voice. "I have come to register for the elections," I declared with confidence, wondering what would happen next. The official gently shunted one of the guards to the side and asked the Israeli weirdo to show an Iraqi ID certificate.

I opened my bag, took out the laissez-passer that had belonged to my grandmother and grandfather from its plastic wrapping, and handed it to the official, pointing to my father's name - he was nine at the time, the fourth of the eight children of the Smooha family. To reinforce the first impression, I also took from my bag a document issued by Israel's Interior Ministry, proving that I am my father's son. It was translated by a notary public who also embellished it with a red seal, which is visually and otherwise impressive.

Prepared for battle

The man perused the yellowing document intensively, comparing the names to those that appear in my passport, and then asked me to wait. I remained outside in the cold with the two security guards and without my passport and the family document, which I had promised uncle Menashe I would guard with my life. I had been warned in Israel that the Iraqis would try to make things difficult for me and I was ready for the first stage of the struggle: attrition by freezing. In my bag were 12 pages of questions and answers that I had downloaded and printed the night before from the official Internet site of the Iraqi Central Elections Committee. In case anyone should claim that I did not meet the criteria for voting, I would be able to whip out the relevant clauses and prove that I did.

However, no more than five minutes later, as I was busy running through my mind scenarios of a heroic bureaucratic struggle against all odds, the mustachioed official appeared at the edge of the wide schoolyard, shouted to the guards that I was all right and, smiling, beckoned me to go with him.

As I entered one of the classrooms of the empty school, in which the members of the Iraqi polling station committee were now sitting, I was met by five pairs of eyes staring at me, belonging to four women and a young Iraqi man who spoke excellent English with a British accent. The quintet had obviously seen the documents a few minutes before and had approved them, and they seemed to have been waiting impatiently to see the strange Israeli, perhaps the first one they had ever seen in the flesh.

To break the ice, I decided to bring in the big guns, and said: "Eshlonak?" Hearing the question (which means "What's happening?"), posed in Iraqi Arabic, everyone burst out laughing in relief and started to bombard me with questions in Arabic. Embarrassed, I explained that "eshlonak" is the only word I know in their mother tongue, and the Iraqis shifted to English, somewhat disappointed.

As there was no pressure of potential voters at the site, all the members of the committee crowded around me and pored over my Israeli passport, but were especially fascinated by the 1951 Iraqi laissez-passer. They gazed at the photograph of my grandparents and complimented me on their Iraqi appearance, noting that I look rather less Iraqi. I knew that. When they came to page six of the document, they stopped and conversed among themselves in Arabic.

Above the group portrait of the brothers and sisters something is stamped in Arabic and adorned with the curlicue signature of an Iraqi official. "Do you know what is written here?" one of the women asked me. I know, because Uncle Menashe told me, but I nevertheless ask her to translate.

"It is written here that they are allowed to leave Iraq, but can never come back," she said.

"And what is your opinion of that?" I ask.

"That was then. Today Iraq is something else," she replied with a smile.

I sat down opposite the only woman in the room wearing a head covering - the other women would have blended elegantly into any Ramat Gan street - sign a numbered chit on which my name appeared in large Latin letters, and received my voter card. It was embedded in a small notebook that had a drawing of the Iraqi flag and, underneath, bore the inscription in English: "The future of Iraq has a voice - your vote!"

I put the voter card in my shirt pocket, next to my Israeli passport, bid farewell to the cordial Iraqis, who replied, "See you next week," and returned to the cold of Amman. I was inside for less than 10 minutes and now I was an official Iraqi with papers to prove it. Until two days ago I would never have thought that was possible.

Who to vote for?

I knew I didn't want to vote for the interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi, who seemed to me too much of a puppet, too American, too smooth and too corrupt. And even though I could appreciate the stubbornness of all kinds of militant Shi'ites who don't like living under American occupation, people who do not balk at murdering civilians to achieve their goals are not exactly my cup of tea. Similarly, the parties that wanted to restore the good old days and make Iraq a monarchy seemed somewhat detached from reality. In short, I needed advice.

When I asked my father, a well-known backer of the underdog, he didn't hesitate for a second. "Give your vote to the Kurds, they need it most," he declared, serious as usual, and after reflecting on the matter for a few more seconds, warned: "But they have several streams and several lists in the elections. Watch out who you vote for."

In a conversation with Prof. Amatzia Baram, an expert on Iraq from the department of Middle East history at the University of Haifa, I learned something about the lists that would decide the future of my new compatriots. Baram told me about Mithal al-Alousi, an Iraqi intellectual who visited Israel a few months ago and openly declared his support for the establishment of full diplomatic relations between the two countries, after which he received a number of death threats and was expelled from his party. Now, he said, Al-Alousi heads a party of his own, the Iraqi Democratic Nation Party, which promotes secular liberal values, but I decided that in my private journey to connect with my roots, the issue of relations with Israel would wait a while. The true Iraqis have slightly more urgent subjects on their agenda. I asked for more recommendations.

Baram continued: "There are two other very deserving parties. They don't have a very good chance of getting into the parliament, but they could suit an Israeli Jew like you. The first one is called the Iraqi Council of Nongovernmental Humane Organizations, a short, catchy name, and the second is the Iraqi Representation of the Independent Civil Society Organizations, another party with a snappy name. They are good people."

Maybe because these organizations reminded me too much of the "People's Front of Judea" and the "Judean People's Front," the ludicrous suicide factions that fought each other in "Monty Python's Life of Brian," I asked Baram for more options. "Another excellent option is to vote for the party whose leader is the interim president of Iraq," he said.

Baram described Ghazi Ajil al-Yawer, who heads a powerful tribal coalition that includes Sunni, Shiite, Kurdish and Christian groups, as "a liberal and a democrat whose face is to the world. A religious person who does not mix religion with politics, is not anti-Semitic and will work for a modern Iraq." Al-Yawer, Baram added, was in exile in one of the Gulf emirates for part of the period of Saddam Hussein's rule and is considered one of the few politicians in Iraq not tainted by corruption. After seeing a photograph of Al-Yawer (a kaffiyeh on his head and his face adorned with a neatly trimmed mustache) I had no doubt: He's my man.

The elections

Equipped with the documents confirming my attachment to the Iraqi nation and with the name of a suitable candidate, I returned to Amman last Friday. The first thing I noticed was the large number of posters publicizing the elections, which were plastered all over the Jordanian capital. In marked contrast, leaflets promoting the various candidates were nowhere to be seen. Another difference that caught my eye immediately when I returned to the Swafiyeh neighborhood was the level of security.

The Jordanian authorities were taking no chances and wanted to give the voters the maximum feeling of security, especially after the threats of the Jordanian-born terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi "to color the elections in blood." Large Jordanian police and security service forces were stationed around the voting centers and closed off the access routes to them, and private security firm guards carried out thorough body searches of everyone who was allowed into the voting stations. At the same time, local police officers reported that they knew of no specific warnings about possible terrorist attacks against Iraqi voters in Jordan.

In contrast to the previous week, there was considerable hustle and bustle around the girls' school. The voters, who arrived in family groups, dressed in holiday finery, seemed very excited. True, only 20,166 potential voters registered in Jordan, out of an estimated population of 150,000 Iraqi exiles, but those who did register appeared very enthusiastic about realizing their right to vote in the first multiple-party elections in their country for 50 years.

At the entrance to the school I again presented my Israeli passport and my voter card. An usher directed me to polling booth No. 6 on the second floor. One of the women who dealt with me the previous week examined the documents, telling me quietly that she had been wondering whether I would actually return to vote, and with a smile sent me to the next table. There, mustachioed and grim-looking, a man dips my finger in a sponge awash in a puddle of indelible ink, to prevent voting again.

Once he was satisfied with his efforts, the finger-printer handed me a voting form the size of a poster and instructed me to stand behind a low divider. The enormous form contained the names of the 111 lists that were competing in the elections, all written in Arabic and Kurdish, whereas I, despite my official Iraqiness, was shamefully unable to identify even the letters that make up the words. A member of the polling station committee came to my aid, as he undoubtedly did when he encountered illiteracy. As I left the room, quite thrilled, having placed the voting form in the ballot box, some of the Iraqi officials greeted me and the finger-printer also smiled for the first time.

Voters' discourse

Outside the classroom I was approached by a man and two women whom I had not noticed before. The man, Yusuf Ranima, a heavyset refrigerator and air-conditioning technician with a mustache from Baghdad, told me that he stood next to me in the classroom a minute and a half before and figured out that I was Israeli. He then told me about his grandfather, who was finance minister in the king's government in the 1940s, and wrote a book about the history of Iraq's Jews.

"These elections are the minimum I can do today for my country," he said with emotion. "I don't know whether I would have voted in Iraq, but we are here on holiday and here it is safer. Once we did not have freedom, but we had security, and today we can be attacked at any moment. We are Catholics and once there was no difference between us and the Muslims, but today it is more dangerous for us in Iraq than for others."

In a torrent of speech, Ranima told about the many friends and relatives his family lost in the past year, and said that the biggest danger lurks for affluent people in their homes, not outside. "People die all the time in explosions in the street," his wife burst in, "but the real terror is at night in the house. They enter people's houses, murder them, and cut off their heads for money. The violence is everywhere. It's terrible."

Were they thinking of leaving Iraq? "I have a brother in Norway and another brother in New Zealand, and a large part of my family is overseas, but Iraq is home," Ranima replied, choosing his words carefully.

"Of course, we want to leave, the sooner the better. It is very dangerous there," his wife interjected, giving him a withering look. Ranima does not argue the point.

Ghassan Rahmani, an Iraqi businessman who frequently travels the Baghdad-Amman route, related that his father was murdered by the Saddam Hussein regime and described the elections as "a test of the strength of will of the Iraqi people in the face of the terrorists who are operating in the country." At the same time, he harbored no illusions: "I am hopeful that the elections will become the first step in the process of building a stable, democratic, independent country, but it will take a long time until that actually happens.

"I do not think the elections were held too soon," he added, as he peruses closely the endless list of the names of the candidates for the 275-seat parliament. "The Iraqis are a wise people and are ready for change. After 40 years of chaos I think the time has come to begin the process. It will not happen in one day, but as a sick person who takes antibiotics improves his condition little by little, so the condition of our nation will improve. We have to start with something."

In conversations with more and more genuine Iraqis I hear, in one version or another, the same horrific stories of violence, plunder and insecurity that have been their lot for decades, and that things have become worse since the American invasion of their country almost two years ago. Under the law we are all Iraqis, but in another few hours, when I get passport stamped and return to Tel Aviv, they will remain Iraqis and I will shed my costume and go back to being an Israeli. That's what I am, and nothing will help me.

Israelis of Iraqi origin can vote in Iraqi elections
By Yoav Stern, Haaretz Correspondent
January 13, 2005

Registration will begin in four days, and anyone who is or once was an Iraqi citizen, even if he was deprived of the citizenship, is eligible to vote, Sarah Tosh, spokesperson for Iraq's out-of-country-voting (OCV) central headquarters, said Wednesday.

"There are no restrictions on Iraqis on the basis of religion, race or sex," said Tosh. "This definitely includes those who are Israeli citizens today."

Anyone who has an original Iraqi birth certificate may take part in the vote. Other required certificates are an Iraqi passport, an identity card, or a form from the Iraqi population registrar testifying that the holder is or was an Iraqi citizen.

A wedding registration from Iraq, a university graduation certificate or land registry ownership certificates will also be accepted. Those whose father is Iraqi may also vote, even if they were born in another country, as long as they have a certificate proving it. However, children to mothers of Iraqi descent may not vote, because the Iraqi law from 1957 grants citizenship only to children with Iraqi fathers.

Registration will take place from January 17-23, and polling from January 28-30. Eligible voters will have to produce their registration receipt and ID to cast their ballot. More details may be found on www.ccicoa.org.

"I call on everyone who lives in the free states to come and vote, to provide a counter balance to the voters from other countries," said Mithal al-Alousi, the Iraqi politician who visited Israel last year and is today the secretary general of the Democratic Party of the Iraqi nation. He was referring to hundreds of thousands of votes that will come from ballots posted in Iran.

Some 130,000 Jews emigrated from Iraq to Israel after it's establishment, decimating one of the oldest Jewish communities in the Arab world. The Jews left considerable property behind, as the Iraqi government forbade them to take it out of the country or sell it.

Shlomo Hillel, former Knesset speaker and winner of the Israel Prize for his activity on behalf of Iraq's Jews, said Wednesday that if former Iraqis living in Israel may vote in the elections "it would be a very significant step signaling Iraq's willingness to change direction."

However, Hillel said he finds it difficult to believe that anyone who announces that he is an Israeli citizen would be allowed to vote.

Former defense minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, who immigrated to Israel from Iraq at 12, does not believe Israelis will vote "because anyone who sees Israel as his country will not vote in the Iraqi elections."

Subj: Re: [Iraq] FW: Israelis of Iraqi origin can vote
Date: 1/12/2005 11:51:31 PM Eastern Standard Time
From: Anwar

Nice stuff. This is the Iraqi spirit of inclusion. But alas, it comes too late. Most of Iraqi Jews are too old or have deceased, and the second generation may not have interest in this. Anyway, I think it is correct policy to give back Iraqi Jews their rights. Now it is up to them to use them or not. Of course, those fanatics in Israel will do everything to prevent Iraqi Jews from thinking about their country. For us, the bottom line is: they are Iraqis independent of their current nationality.

Anwar

A PILGRIM'S TALE

Grandmother saw long walk to polling station as a religious duty.

By IWPR reporters in al-Khair, Missan province (ICR No. 109, 02-Feb-05)

Seventy-five year old Lamia Jasim is getting some much-needed rest after walking 25 kilometres just to take part in Iraq's historic elections.

"I had to rest from time to time when I felt my legs and my walking stick would not carry me," Jasim told IWPR. "Then I would start off again.".

Jasim lives in al-Khair, a small community south of Amarah in southeastern Iraq. But she was registered to vote in al-Majar, 25 km away, because she once lived there with her son.

The heavily stooped woman said she did not have any intention of voting until one of her sons turned on the radio on the eve of the poll.

"I heard the announcer saying that the marja [Shia religious authority] Ayatollah Ali Sistani had issued a fatwa [edict] saying people must go to the polls," she said.

That night, Jasim couldn't sleep a wink, because she was wracked with guilt that ignoring the elections might constitute a sin. The next morning, after prayers, she made her decision.

"My sons tried to prevent me," she recalled. They told her, "We are your sons, we are a piece of you; we will vote in al-Khair and that will be enough."

But it wasn't enough for their mother.

"I left home early without telling my sons," continued Jasim. "I walked along the long road to the Adil subdistrict, then onward to Majar district."

She had to walk the entire distance. There were no drivers on the road because of the blanket ban imposed on vehicles on election day, a move intended to keep insurgents from attacking polling stations with car bombs.

The elderly woman arrived in al-Majar at noon and made her way directly to the polling station.

Looking back on her trip, she compared it to visiting the shrine of Imam Hussein in Karbala, one of the holiest sites in Shia Islam. She said it was her "sacred duty" to vote, saying it was like grasping the cage that encloses the tomb of the seventh-century Islamic leader.

Now feels that a heavy burden has been lifted from her shoulders.

Jasim is no stranger to hardship: two of her sons died fighting in the wars pursued by former president Saddam Hussein.

The 75-year-old says this election could be her last, but she hopes it will mark the beginning of security and stability, and that her grandchildren will have a brighter future.

This story has not been bylined because of concerns for the security of IWPR reporters.

Australia: Melbourne and Sydney
Canada: Calgary, Ottawa and Toronto
Denmark: Copenhagen
France: Paris
Germany: Berlin, Cologne, Mannheim and Munich
Iran: Ahvaz, Kermanshah, Mashhad, Orumiyeh, Qom and Tehran
Jordan: Amman
The Netherlands: Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Zwolle
Sweden: Gothenburg and Stockholm
Syria: Damascus
Turkey: Ankara, Istanbul
United Arab Emirates: Dubai, Abu Dhabi.
United Kingdom: Glasgow, London and Manchester
The United States: Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, Nashville and Washington (DC)

A long journey toward democracy

3 Houston-area Iraqis travel to Tennessee to vote
By LORI RODRIGUEZ
Houston Chronicle (requires subscription, unfortunately -- I was hoping for easier access, so you can see the picture of the happy campers)
Jan. 29, 2005, 1:10AM

NASHVILLE, TENN. - Cardiologist Mahdi Al Bassam of Sugar Land flew the red-eye to Nashville Friday morning, voted in the Iraqi national election and then returned home for his hospital rounds and on-call shift this weekend.

Al Bassam and two other Iraqis from Houston were among thousands of expatriates who braved long trips and frigid weather to cast their votes in five different locations across the United States. Thousands more Iraqis abroad made their way to election sites in 13 other nations in an arduous display of the democratic process.

As voters carefully cast paper ballots in tents on the Tennessee State Fairgrounds, their smiles were broad and their spirits high.

"It's a small price to pay for the freedom to vote," said Al Bassam, 59, who fled Iraq in 1967 and became a leader in the opposition to deposed dictator Saddam Hussein.

"We're doing it for the faith that we can start a democracy in Iraq that will spill across borders and someday finally bring peace to the Middle East."

"We have dreamt of this for a long, long time through very dark days."

Out-of-country voting will continue through Sunday, when Iraq will conduct its first democratic election. While expatriates are only allowed to vote on the 275-member Transitional National Assembly, voters in Iraq also will elect regional and state leaders.

That limit was no deterrent for Mowafai "Mike" Rubaiy, 62, a civil engineer who splits his time between Houston and Beaumont.

"It's the first time we've ever experienced democracy," said Rubaiy, who left his native land in 1973.

"America has been very good to me and allowed me to accomplish something here. But now the time has come to help Iraq, and I know every vote matters."

Turnout Friday was steady but lower than expected, said officials with the Iraq Out-of Country Voting Program, which was organized to enable expatriates to participate in the historic election. More voters are expected today and Sunday.

Behind tall fences and tight security on the Tennessee fairgrounds, scores of local and state police outnumbered voters. Dozens of TV cameras and reporters from across the country recorded moments for posterity. Similar situations were reported at polls in Los Angeles, Detroit, Chicago and Washington, D.C.

A CNN crew accompanied Al Bassam, Rubaiy and Amin Alyassin, 74, who has lived in the Houston area for the last 11 years. The three were filmed boarding a Southwest Airlines plane, getting to Nashville, leaving Nashville and, of course, voting in the tents.

So were other Iraqis, including some of the 20,000 Arabs and Kurds living in Nashville.

"They should have made the process easier so more people could have voted. Some had to travel great distances twice in one week, once to register and then again to vote," said Hussan Momory, who has lived in Nashville for five years.

"Even then, many did it because they want to see freedom and they want a new government. They felt strongly enough to make the journey."

Momory voted Friday alongside his friend, Thura Hamid, who was grateful that voting in the U.S., despite the difficulties, was safer than in Iraq. Assembly candidates have been killed and insurgents have threatened voters.

Of 240,000 Iraqi expatriates and their children qualified to vote in the U.S., only 25,946 registered. Worldwide, 280,303 people registered to cast ballots in the countries participating.

For the three Houston-area Iraqis who rose at 5 a.m. Friday and, after a nonstop day, rolled back into Hobby Airport 12 hours later, it was a momentous and memorable day.

"Whether the American people agree or disagree with the invasion of Iraq, they should be proud that they brought this election about. They should stand tall," said Al Bassam.

"They have brought something to an ancient culture which will always appreciate what they did. We will always be grateful."

NEWS RELEASE from the United States Department of Defense

Feb 04, 2005

DoD Identifies Army Casualty

The Department of Defense announced today the death of a soldier who was supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Sgt. 1st Class Sean M. Cooley, 35, from Ocean Springs, Miss., died February 3 in Northern Babil Province, Iraq, when his vehicle was struck by an improvised explosive device. Cooley was assigned to the 150th Engineer Battalion, 155th Armor Brigade, Lucedale, Miss.

Spirited campaigning, high voter turnout in Kurdistan

30/01/2005   KurdishMedia.com

Dohuk-Kurdistan (KurdishMedia.com) 30 January 2004: Voter turnout in Iraq has reportedly surpassed expectations, and, as expected, the turnout in the Kurdish autonomous region has been very high. In areas that are usually a world apart from the terror that haunts much of the country, cold weather was perhaps considered to be more of a threat than large scale terrorist attacks.

The high turnout in the Kurdish autonomous region followed intense campaigning and overwhelming enthusiasm from various groups. In the prosperous city of Dohuk, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and its supporters seemingly put a great deal of effort into campaigning, despite the fact that this city is already very supportive of the party.

Kurdish soldiers (peshmerga) built a snowman in front of one of their bases in Dohuk and decorated it with Kurdistan and KDP flags, placing a campaign pamphlet on its chest and a yellow turban and Kurdistan flag on its head.

Taxi drivers decorated their cars with flags and posters of KDP leader Mesud Barzani and almost every store was decorated with election posters.

Liquor stores, predominantly owned by Christians, beared the posters of the National Rafidain List, the Christian alliance led by Assyrian Democratic Movement Secretary General Yonadam Kanna.

Some cars were decorated with so much campaign paraphernalia that it is difficult to see how they managed to drive safely. These cars drove slowly down the road, playing patriotic Kurdish music and using a loudspeaker to tell people that it is their duty to vote.

Meanwhile, near the headquarters of the Kurdistan Islamic Union, men stood outside chatting excitedly, parking cars bearing the black flag of the party outside their building.

On 30 January, KDP President Mesud Barzani and millions of others cast their votes following a great deal of spirited campaigning. Now they look to a future of democracy, prosperity, and peace.

Elsewhere, despite some complaints that the ballot in Sunday's Iraqi election was confusing and likely to cause voting errors, "This election represents the will of the people," said Iraqi president-elect Pat Buchanan.

NEWS RELEASE from the United States Department of Defense

Feb 04, 2005

DoD Identifies Army Casualty

           The Department of Defense announced today the death of a soldier who
supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom.

           Spc. Robert T. Hendrickson, 24, from Broken Bow, Okla., died Feb. 1 in
Baghdad, Iraq, from wounds sustained when his military vehicle overturned.
Hendrickson was assigned to the 2d Battalion, 5th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Cavalry
Division, Fort Hood, Texas.

  Date:  2/4/2005 3:37:29 PM Eastern Standard Time

Hi Ayad,

I am glad you arrived safe and sound. How did you get in? Please stay safe.  

Things here were good, a nice warm day, people walking to vote, looking calm, but walking in a hurry. I walked around in the PM and walked by 2 election centers. There were lots of cops and soldiers and Coalition Forces (although they stayed at the major intersections backing up the army). People were being searched at major intersections. Stuff like that. We had some local shootings the night before and day after, but nothing on election day. Bombings rate seem to fluctuate, some days we hear a few, others it's calm.  

Well, keep safe and keep me updated. Any plans to swing south?

Mike

NEWS RELEASE from the United States Department of Defense

Jan 31, 2005
DoD Identifies Marine Casualty

           The Department of Defense announced today the death of a Marine who was supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom.

           Cpl. Timothy A. Knight, 22, of Brooklyn, Ohio, died Jan. 26 when the CH-53E helicopter he was in crashed near Ar Rutbah, Iraq. Knight was assigned to 1st Battalion 3rd Marine Regiment, 3rd Marine Division, III Marine Expeditionary Force, Marine Corps Base Hawaii.

           The cause of the crash is under investigation.

The top vote-getter was the United Iraqi Alliance
36.15 percent of the vote (95,318)

Second was the Kurdistan Coalition List
29.60 percent (78,062)

Ayad Allawi’s Iraqi List came in third
9.15 (24,136)

The Patriotic Rafidayn List
7.03 (18,538)

People’s Union
4.41 (11,640)

The Iraq Turkoman Front
2.4 (6329)

The Patriotic Assyrian Grouping
1.59 (4198)

The Islamic Union of Iraqi Faili Kurds
1.44 (3797)

Adnan Pachachi’s Independent Democratic Grouping
0.93 (2452)

Ghazi il-Yawer’s Iraqis
0.88 (2315)

The Islamic Accord Movement
0.66 (1745)

The Democratic Chaldean Union Party
0.55 percent (1442)

The Constitutional Monarchy, Sharif Ali bin Hussein
0.50 (1317)

Iran, 56,597
Sweden, 29,286
United Kingdom, 28,673
Germany, 25,195
United States, 24,332
Jordan, 21,388
Syria, 15,060
Netherlands, 14,159
Denmark, 12,319
United Arab Emirates, 11,418
Australia, 11,210
Canada, 10,492
Turkey, 4,039
France, 981

New York Times
February 6, 2005
POST-ELECTION CHATTER
Suddenly, It's 'America Who?'
By DEXTER FILKINS

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Through 22 months of occupation and war here, the word "America" was usually the first word to pass through the lips of an Iraqi with a gripe.

Why can't the Americans produce enough electricity? Why can't the Americans guarantee security? Why can't the Americans find my stolen car?

Last week, as the euphoria of nationwide elections washed over this country, a remarkable thing happened: Iraqis, by and large, stopped talking about the Americans.

With the ballots still being counted here, the Iraqi candidates retired to the back rooms to cut political deals, leaving the Americans, for the first time, standing outside. In Baghdad's tea shops and on its street corners, the talk turned to which of those candidates might form the new government, to their schemes and stratagems, and to Iraqi problems and Iraqi solutions. And for the United States, the assessments turned unfamiliarly measured.

"We have no electricity here, no water and there's no gasoline in the pumps," said Salim Mohammed Ali, a tire repairman who voted in last Sunday's election. "Who do I blame? The Iraqi government, of course. They can't do anything."

Asked about the American military presence here, Mr. Ali chose his words carefully.

"I think the Americans should stay here until our security forces are able to do the jobs themselves," Mr. Ali said, echoing virtually every senior American officer in Iraq. "We Iraqis have our own government now, and we can invite the Americans to stay."

The Iraqi focus on its own democracy, and the new view of the United States, surfaced in dozens of interviews with Iraqis since last Sunday's election. It is unclear, of course, how widespread the trend is; whole communities, like the Sunni Arabs, remain almost implacably opposed to the presence of American forces. But by many accounts, the elections last week altered Iraqis' relationship with the United States more than any single event since the invasion.

Since April 9, 2003, when Saddam Hussein's rule crumbled, Iraqis have viewed themselves more or less as American subjects. American officials ran their government, American soldiers fought their war, American money paid to rebuild Iraq. Indeed, the American project to implant democracy in Iraq often seemed to be in danger of falling victim to the country's manifest political passivity, born of a quarter-century of torture centers, mass graves, free food and pennies-a-gallon gasoline. The more the Americans tried to nudge the Iraqis towards self-government, the more the Iraqis expected the Americans to do.

As the insurgents wreaked more and more havoc, and sabotaged more and more of the country's power supply, the Iraqis, not surprisingly, blamed the people in charge. Day by day, many Iraqis' gratitude for the toppling of Saddam Hussein seemed to harden into bitterness and contempt.

After June 28, when American suzerainty here formally ended, not many Iraqis bought the notion that the interim government of Ayad Allawi was anything other than a caretaker regime, hand-picked by the Americans and the United Nations. All that seemed to change last Sunday, when millions of Iraqis streamed to the polls. Few if any Iraqis had ever voted in anything approaching a free election, yet most seemed to know exactly what the exercise was about: selecting their own representatives to lead their own country.

"Our dilemma is solved," said Rashid Majid, 80, who wore his best jacket to the polls. "We will follow our new leaders, because we have chosen them."

Some Iraqis saw in the election their own liberation, one that many did not feel on April 9, 2003. Mr. Hussein's regime was not toppled by Iraqis but by the American military, a fact that has lingered in Iraqi minds.

Yet after casting ballots in a free election, conducted by more than 100,000 Iraqi poll workers, many Iraqis said they finally felt free - not only from the terrors of the old regime, but also from acute feelings of humiliation about the American occupation.

"The election was a victory of our own making," said Mowaffak al-Rubaie, the national security adviser. "The Iraqi people voted with their own blood."

The newfound self-respect that Mr. Rubaie believes the election conferred on ordinary Iraqis seems to have had an immediate impact on their view of the United States. Suddenly empowered with the vote, Iraqis no longer seem to view America as all-powerful, or themselves as unable to affect events. A result has been a suddenly more accepting view of the United States.

The realism among Iraqis was evident on election day itself. Amid the euphoria of voting, America, which had almost always been the first topic of conversation, was suddenly evanescent, unmentioned in a score of interviews unless a reporter raised it first. And when Iraqis did talk of America, it was with a reasonableness and patience that had seemed missing, a willingness to balance good with bad, to give credit where it is due.

This transition seemed all the more striking for the fact that Apache helicopters roared over the polling centers every few minutes with American troops manning checkpoints only a few blocks away.

Hachim Shahir, an 83-year-old bricklayer standing in line for hours to vote, was asked how it had been possible for somebody like him to arrive at such a late stage in life without ever having voted, and now finally to have cast a ballot. He thought for a long while, then answered: "America - it was America that did it."

And how did he feel about that?

"America will be good if it completes what it came here to do, to bring us democracy, and then it goes home," Mr. Shahir said. "The main thing now is that they keep their promises, and leave. Personally, I believe they will do it."

The new mood appears to have continued since election day. The calls by candidates for a timetable for American military withdrawal have died away. Even a group of Sunni politicians decided last week that they would take part in the drafting of Iraq's new constitution without insisting on a timetable.

Getting Iraqis to take charge of their own affairs, whether by fighting insurgents or taking over government ministries, has been the goal of American leaders here since the fall of Saddam Hussein. After 22 months of trying to persuade the Iraqis to stand on their own, while doing everything for them, the Americans may be finding that Iraqis, now fully sovereign, don't want them to go home so soon after all.

John F. Burns contributed reporting for this article.

Free to Dance in Iraq

By Charles Krauthammer
The Washington Post
Friday, February 4, 2005; Page A17

"At polling centers hit by explosions, survivors refused to go home, steadfastly waiting to cast their votes as policemen swept away bits of flesh."

-- The New York Times, Feb. 2, on the Iraqi elections.

Iraqis turned out to vote in great numbers, with great enthusiasm and determination. Surprise. The media have not been as surprised, noted a friend of mine, since the Nicaraguans turned out in their 1990 election to kick out the Sandinistas.

These two elections were 15 years apart, but the herd mentality of the liberal establishment never changes. They were shocked when those revolutionary darlings in Managua, magnet for long-haired Western "sandalistas" on revolutionary holiday, lost a free election -- to the candidate supported by the contras.

The liberal cliche of the time was that Third World people care more about food than about freedom. This kind of contempt for the political and spiritual dignity of people who live in different circumstances never goes away. It simply gets applied serially to different sets of patronized foreigners. Today we are assured with confidence that Arabs, consumed by tribe or religion or whatever, don't really care about freedom either.

On Jan. 30 millions of Iraqis said otherwise. They really do care about the right to speak freely and to vote secretly, the ordinary elements of democratic citizenship.

Why weren't Iraqis dancing in the streets on the day Saddam Hussein fell, critics have asked sneeringly. Some Iraqis, the young and more reckless, did dance. Others, I suspect, were too scared, waiting to see how things turned out. Would the United States leave them hanging as in 1991? Would it leave behind a "moderate" Baathist thug in its place?

Nearly 22 months later, Iraqis seemed convinced that there would indeed be a new day. And that is when the dancing started -- voters dancing and singing and celebrating, thrusting into the air their ink-stained fingers, symbol of their initiation into democracy. It was an undeniable, if delayed, feeling of liberation. Said one prominent Shiite spokesman: "We are celebrating the end of tyranny."

As if to make a point even more definitively, it was not the suicide bombers but the voters they killed at the polls who were buried as martyrs. The remains of one suicide bomber were spat upon. Another suicide bomber, reported Iraq's interior minister, was a child with Down syndrome. There are no words for the depths of such depravity, sending an innocent to murder innocents, dressing this poor child in explosives and then leading him to his slaughter.

These are the people whom Michael Moore, avatar of the Democratic left, calls the "Minutemen." These are the people who Ted Kennedy, spokesman for the Democratic left, says are in a battle with the United States for "the hearts and minds of the people."

This is both stupid and pernicious. The United States is trying to win hearts and minds; the insurgents are trying to destroy hearts and minds, along with the bodies that house them. They have no program. They have no ideology. They call themselves the "Party of Return." Their only platform is to return themselves to power to continue the rape, pillage, torture and murder of the past 30 years. That appeals to the minority of the minority that profited from these enterprises, and to nobody else.

Their foreign allies, the Zarqawi jihadists, do have a platform, which is to destroy and outlaw democracy as a form of apostasy. The Zarqawi persuasion was put to a test on election day. It lost.

Leading Democrats are discomfited by this demonstration of Iraqi support for the Bush Doctrine. John Kerry urges that we not "overhype this election." At the very moment when the first seed of democracy is planted, the Democratic leaders want the United States to turn its attention immediately to withdrawal. Kennedy demands a timetable. Democratic House leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate leader Harry Reid demand a definitive exit strategy.

This might be terrifying to Iraqis who just risked their lives to get democracy underway, and who still remember the Baathist slaughter of tens of thousands 14 years ago when the United States urged them to rise up against their oppressors and then abandoned them. But it will not be terrifying to Iraqis, because they know that this is a different time and a different Bush. He won't listen to the Saudis. He won't listen to the Democrats. If the world knows anything about George W. Bush, it is that he does what he says. Iraq's president called this talk about withdrawal "complete nonsense." Which is why the Iraqis could dance.

letters@charleskrauthammer.com

The validation of the vote

By Fouad Ajami
U.S. News & World Report
January 24, 2005

Far away from the raging insurgency in the Sunni Triangle, an Iraqi man, Saad Algarabi, who had driven nine hours from Jacksonville, Fla., to Nashville to register to vote in his country's election, gave voice to a faith in democracy that only a people denied it could fully appreciate: "I would drive 10 hours, 20 hours--I would drive to California--to have my vote counted for once.

This vote is worth more to me than my drive." On January 30, Iraqis will vote in their country, and so will exiles in 14 other nations--untold thousands scattered the world over by the untrammeled tyranny of Saddam Hussein. The ballot box will not cure Iraq of its troubles, but Iraqis, and those who wish them well, may be forgiven the hope that this election is a breakthrough in the terrible history of this tormented land.

It is easy to debunk these elections, to see them as an American imposition--they vote, and we begin our preparations for withdrawal. It is easy to scoff at an election where most of the candidates are afraid to campaign in public or to even let their names be known to the voters. (The votes will be cast for electoral slates.) But there can be no denying the enthusiasm that a vast majority of Iraqis have shown for the process of voting. These are not jaded people who will be casting their votes. They shall come to the polling stations past the perpetrators of terror; they will set aside the edicts of some religious preachers who have ruled against taking part in these elections. They shall be doing something unfamiliar to most Arabs in their troubled neighborhood: taking part in truly competitive elections.

After the terrorism. We know in advance that the verdict of this election shall not be to the liking of the Sunni Arabs. A political and military class drawn from their midst had ruled, and veritably owned, the country. The elections will ratify that the old system of sectarian rule by a powerful minority is gone for good. It is more than likely that the Sunnis will be underrepresented in the National Assembly that the voters will choose. This will be due to the lawlessness and the terrorism in the predominantly Sunni provinces. But this needn't be catastrophic. No one of consequence has in mind a scheme to banish the Sunni Arabs from political life. No less a figure than Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani has given every indication that a legitimate Sunni representation is vital to the workings of a new polity. Other leaders in the Shiite and Kurdish communities have spoken in a similar vein. For its part, the American "regency" in Iraq has shown a willingness to bend over backward to accommodate the fears and demands of the understandably anxious Sunni community. It shall not be easy for the Sunni Arabs, that passage from political dominion and primacy into a new world of competitive politics. But after the wrath and the terror are spent, after the Sunni mainstream in Mosul and Fallujah and Baghdad comes to a recognition that there can be no conceivable return to the ways of the past, there may come a choice in favor of sobriety and reason.

Iraq has had a way of blighting our hearts; its "turning points" have had a way of disappearing on us, simply merging with a steady trail of terror. This could be another such moment. Over the course of the past two years, Iraq has taught us the futility of celebrations. These elections are no panacea. But they loom large, all the more so now that we know that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction were a phantom. America is not in the business of providing liberty to strangers who should secure it on their own. But we are there, in a country that has proved more truculent and difficult than we ever thought. We accept, then, the gift of this election, secured at such a terrible price, on behalf of Iraqis and foreign liberators alike.

It is, in those unsentimental Arab lands, received wisdom that Iraq is the most brittle, the most merciless of Arab countries. Which is why it is so supremely ironic that there are election posters today in Baghdad's streets--and no Maximum Leader suffocating the life of the place, looking for public squares to erect monuments in his honor. Skeptics warn that an Iraqi government that emerges out of these elections could officially ask for an American withdrawal. This is unlikely, for deep down most Iraqis know the weakness of their country and its need for foreign help. A more likely outcome might be the demand for a timetable of American withdrawal. We could live with this, for this is their country, and no one had in mind a permanent American imperium in Mesopotamia.

People Power, Regime Change

David Kaspar reports that the German media is giving a less positive report on the Iraqi elections than the Arab media. Arthur Chrenkoff gives a very useful (and rather long) report on the good news from Iraq under the title, "Happy Birthday." He has many good links you might follow. John Podhoretz slams those who are not admitting that the elections in Iraq are significant. Roger L. Simon thinks it’s about time for the mainstream media to stop calling terrorists "insurgents." Good idea. Amir Taheri rightly argues in the London Times that the elections proved the doom-mongers wrong and is a major defeat for the terrorists. Also see this largely positive stories from the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post.

I know it is fashionable, and sometimes politically necessary, to say that this election in Iraq is not the end of mischief and terror. I know that. But it is a milestone, nevertheless, and that is what has to be admitted. The reports on television—the interviews with Iraqi citizens, their heartfelt joy being expressed in words and song—about this great event moved me deeply and should move anyone who is prejudiced in favor of liberty. These people got up and walked to their polling places despite all. Is this not an act of courage? Is this not an act of hope? Is this not a revolutionary act? Is this not a great example of people power? The regime has changed, and the rest are details. And everyone knows this, except maybe the likes of John Kerry, Teddy Kennedy, and Juan Cole. These people cannot overcome their sad defeatism, and/or their hatred of Bush. Too bad for them. Let them wallow in their bitterness and pessimism, and let the rest of us rejoice at the event, taking it for what it was and what it represented: A people shaking off the tyrannical past and giving themselves authority on behalf of freedom. In another time and under other leadership this would be called people power and even the liberals would be rejoicing, as they did in 1986 in the Philippines. I was there for that. But, as they say, the times have changed and the corruption of the so-called progressive forces in American politics is near complete. They don’t know what they stand for, who they are, and they don’t know the difference between good guys and bad guys. Oddly, the moral relativism—their inability to see the difference between regimes—that they expound will have greater consequences in this country than abroad. The progressives continue to de-authorize themselves, to make themselves ever less significant in America politics. Indeed, if this weren’t so serious, we would be laughing. But the rest of us can take great pleasure in seeing the Filipinos, the Bulgarians, the Romanians, the Hungarians, the Ukranians, the Iraqis, and the others to come, begin to take pride in being free. I congratulate these people and wish them well.

The leaders of France, Germany, and Russia are saying nice things about the elections in Iraq, and are looking forward to being more helpful. Chirac said that the "the participation rate and the good technical organization of the elections were satisfactory." Javier Solana, the foreign affairs chief of the EU said the Iraqi people "are going to find the support of the European Union—no doubt about that—in order to see this process move on in the right direction." In the meantime, Jean-Pierre Kingsley, chief of the U.N.-backed International Mission for Iraqi Elections, said that "the Iraqi elections generally meet international standards." Abu Musab al-Zarqawi makes clear that he is still an enemy of democracy.

BBC reporters' impressions of the voting

Basra
"People have been literally streaming towards polling stations. I have never witnessed this huge turnout for long time."

Mosul
"In places with a Kurdish majority such as the Noor and Masarif districts, there is a huge turnout."

Fallujah
"The turnout to all these stations is very low."

Baghdad
"We have seen voting here in the capital, and in the streets close to the BBC office the atmosphere was almost euphoric."

Arbil
"We're not looking at vast crowds of people but this particular polling station has been allocated 3,000 registered voters and I would say we've probably seen the bulk of them passing through already."

Al Amarah
"From Basra to Al Amarah, to the northern most sections of the British zone, thousands of people are lined up on the streets. Even in the smaller provincial towns 400 kilometres from Basra, towns like Ali al-Ghabi and Komait, where there are only a handful of polling stations, the queues are several hundred deep."

Najaf
"A lot of women turned out and their numbers dwarf those of the men. I have seen very old people unable to walk, I have seen blind people being led to the polling stations."