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description=10 posts published by Reidar Visser during September 2008;

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the, on, iraq, and, in, elections, for, more, this, no, law, biden, gulf, analysis, archive, september, 2008, archives, categories, meta, my, latest, book, amazon, com, twitter, updates, subscribe, recent, posts, tension, between, iraqi, security, forces, badr, brigades, time, hilla, senator, obama, one, you, were, wrong, mccain, was, right, after, compromise, kirkuk, finally, an, governorates, isci, vs, interior, ministry, nasiriyya, two, very, different, takes, centralism, friends, but, kurds, problem, democratic, policy, hakim, insincerity, local, sahwa, of, south, gets, specific, again,

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at the reports are genuine and that this was not a staged event of some kind the episode is interesting because it seems to add to a more general trend earlier this year in maysan posters of hakim were torn down during operations carried out by the security forces some months ago isci protested strongly against the interior ministry s appointment of a new police chief in nasiriyya some reports claim that the notorious scorpions of the iraqi security forces took part in the recent hilla operation even in cooperation with us forces earlier the late police chief in babel qays al mamuri had fought badr with determination moreover the incident throws into question the true degree of demilitarisation as regards the badr forces and other pro isci elements it is worth recalling that as late as 2007 the leader of hizbollah in iraq an integral part of isci made a public request to maliki to have his 30 000 militiamen integrated into the iraqi security forces and complained that no action had been taken in other news wifaq and al hiwar al watani have decided to contest the local elections on a joint ticket with hiwar s leadership specifically rejecting an alliance with sunni dominated tawafuq on the grounds that they found it too sectarian that s a step in the right direction but where are fadila jaafari s islah the uia independents and the tribal leaders posted in iraqi nationalism uia dynamics comments off on more tension between the iraqi security forces and the badr brigades this time in hilla no senator obama on this one you were wrong and mccain was right posted by reidar visser on saturday 27 september 2008 18 50 senator barack obama to senator john mccain during yesterday s presidential debate you said that there was no history of violence between shiite and sunni and you were wrong since this is forceful claim about iraqi history which was presented during a contest for the position as the world s most powerful leader it is worth examining in some further detail let s take a closer look at that history of violence between shiite and sunni in iraq shiites and sunnis have coexisted in iraq since they crystallised as two distinctive religious communities in baghdad in the tenth century ad when the struggle for power between various factions of the islamic caliphate that had been going on since the seventh century became transformed into a theological one with the shiite doctrine of the imamate in the subsequent centuries there was certainly tension between these two communities at times not least because the rivalling ruling elements of the caliphates chose to cultivate links with particular communities to further their own power struggles but outbreaks of violence on a large scale were extremely rare in fact not more than three cases stand out before the late twentieth century and these were all related to invasion by foreign forces rather than to internal sectarian struggles between the iraqis the first major case of extensive shiite sunni violence was in 1508 a massacre by invading persian safavids of sunnis and christians in baghdad the safavids returned a little more than one hundred years later in 1623 and once more went ahead with a massacre of sunnis in baghdad later in the nineteenth century extremist sunni wahhabis from the arabian peninsula would regularly overrun the settled areas of iraq on one occasion in 1801 this took on a clearly sectarian nature as bedouin warriors massacred shiites in the holy city of karbala the list can be completed down to 2003 and the us invasion with a series of ugly episodes that took place in the late twentieth century between 1969 and 1971 the sunni dominated baathist regime performed mass expulsions of shiites including a high number of fayli kurds in 1980 there was another wave of mass deportations of shiites in the wake of the iranian revolution finally in 1991 there were massacres of shiites after the failed intifada that followed the gulf war conversely some of the other historical episodes that are occasionally described as instances of sectarian violence simply do not fit this label for example the conflict between the government and the mostly shiite tribes on the euphrates in the 1935 was interwoven with questions relating to agrarian issues and conscription and sunni politicians had ties to both the government and the opposition camps on the one hand there can be no doubt that this is a grim record it involves thousands of innocent people who were massacred simply because they belonged to the wrong sect on the other hand however it is important to keep things in perspective these six cases of widespread sectarian violence took place in a time span of more than 1 000 years moreover they were mostly instigated by foreign invaders the iraqis themselves repeatedly closed ranks against these aggressions uniting shiites and sunnis against the foreign forces for example in 1623 when the safavid army was about to massacre the sunni population of baghdad shiites of karbala intervened to save sunnis from shiite aggression similarly in 1801 when sunni wahhabis sacked karbala the sunni pasha of baghdad punished the sunni governor of karbala for having failed to prevent the attack on the shiites also in none of these cases did the victims propose separative solutions never in iraqi history has there been any call for a small sunni state and with the exception of feeble and short lived attempt by some low ranking clerics and notables of baghdad in 1927 the shiites have also consistently shied away from a call for a small shiite breakaway state none of the major upheavals of twentieth century iraqi history 1920 and 1958 featured sectarian conflict as the main mode of political action the accumulation of cases of sectarian violence during the decades of baathist rule calls for special comment true the measures taken against the shiites in the early 1980s and in 1991 were extremely repressive and in a one off episode in the immediate wake of the 1991 uprising they turned into fully fledged explicit sectarianism through a series of chauvinist sunni editorials in the thawra newspaper in which the arabness of the shiites was questioned however subsequent developments in iraqi politics show that the sunni character of the baathist regime was not its real core and that it was first and foremost an authoritarian regime built on relations between patrons and clients in the mid 1990s the dominant political trend in iraq was intra sunni struggles as tribe after tribe challenged saddam hussein who ended up executing people from his hometown tikrit and his own family when the defector husayn kamil hasan al majid returned from jordan in 1996 he was put to death just like many shiite rebels had been after the 1991 uprising perhaps most importantly in the context of the us elections this record needs to be compared with that of the country barack obama represents himself did not the civil war cause some 600 000 deaths between 1861 and 1865 how many thousands of african americans have been killed in kkk violence what about the native americans the numbers here are clearly higher than the number of deaths caused by sectarian violence in iraq and yet few are prepared to question the viability of the united states as a political project so where did senator obama really want to go with those comments there is a problem in democratic discourse on iraq that consists of always trying to put the actions of the bush administration is the worst possible light even in situations when this forces the democrats to twist the reality it seems reasonable to criticise the iraq war on several grounds there were no weapons of mass destruction no al qaida link and no 911 relationship and the unilateral action without a un mandate created yet another dangerous precedent in international affairs but democrats go further than this they frequently claim that the sectarian problems seen in iraq since 2003 and especially in the wake of the samarra bombing in 2006 were a natural expression of iraqi politics and that the high degree of iranian influence seen in today s iraq is somehow a natural phenomenon in a country with a large shiite population the argument is that the bush administration should have known that any tampering with the authoritarian structures of baathist iraq would automatically have prompted a civil war with a strong iranian role among the shiites it is also a way of ultimately blaming the iraqis themselves for all the problems they are currently going through this is to ignore the historical record of coexistence between shiites and sunnis in iraq and the fervent anti iranian attitudes among large sections of iraq s shiites of course on the latter point john mccain is off the mark just like obama by suggesting that the consequences of defeat would have been increased iranian influence he overlooks the fact that some of america s best friends in the maliki government have extremely close ties to iran and that iran s interests so far have been well served by the republican victory project and washington s peculiar choice of alliance partners among iraq s shiites but on the whole republicans to a greater degree than democrats at least seem to recognise the historical roots of iraqi national unity from the iraqi point of view it simply seems more dangerous to have a us president who based on some extremely superficial reading pretends to know something about the divide between sunnis and shiites than to have one who reportedly is completely ignorant about the subject the bottom line is that there is nothing in iraq s history that should prevent the country from reverting to its natural role as one of the world s great nations those who try to suggest otherwise either ignore the empirical record or do not care for the well being of the iraqi people it is said that obama has several top notch progressive and knowledgeable advisers who know about all these things and who are unlikely to look to soft partitionist joe biden when it comes to actual policy making but unless these voices can have a real impact on what their candidate says in front of millions of americans in prime time televised debates their usefulness seems unclear if yesterday s unfounded attack on iraq s record of coexistence is the most inspirational thing obama can come up with on iraq then it is hard for a non american observer to see any fundamental difference between his candidacy and that of all the others before him obama s remarks were yet another example of how american politicians can be careless in dealing with other sovereign nations and their histories and they also go in exactly the wrong direction at a time when politics in iraq is once more becoming more cross sectarian posted in sectarian master narrative us policy in iraq leverage issues comments off on no senator obama on this one you were wrong and mccain was right more on the elections law posted by reidar visser on thursday 25 september 2008 0 00 the iraqi parliament has now published what is supposed to be the final version of the elections law one remaining caveat concerns the discrepancy between some of the articles in the published version and those quoted in yesterday s official press release from the parliament especially concerning articles 32 and 35 the second point about a permission to use symbolism related to non candidates except religious authorities maraji al din has been omitted in the complete version of the law and article 35 sounds altogether different from the original the press release referred to a permission to use public buildings and mosques for information purposes related to the electoral process but not for political campaigning as such whereas the newly released text bans the use of government offices for campaigning purposes but expressly allows it in mosques and places of worship while the change to article 32 may be a case of an oversight by the website staff the differences between the two versions of article 35 are substantial it could be simply the case of a wrong draft having been used but it might also reflect some last minute changes to the law that have not yet received the attention they deserve another notable feature of the released law is the non mention of kurdistan where leaders reportedly have decided not to carry out elections they appear to be doing this unilaterally it is not something that is explicitly part of the law whose language itself is general and refers to all the governorates with no other exception than kirkuk there has been a degree of confusion in the press about the women s quota this quota was adopted already on 22 july but back then it was purely aspirational no mechanism for arriving at the quota was defined other than an instruction to parties to nominate a certain proportion of women now the counting of the open lists results is arranged so that every fourth winner from these lists will be a woman but there is no guaranteed quota theoretically in some small electoral districts male independent candidates might win all the seats and the specific goal of 25 does not appear in the final version of the law referred to above finally there has been some debate about the omission of a total of 13 seats that had been reserved for micro minorities including yazidis shabak sabaeans christians in the original 22 july version of the law though no modalities for their election had been specified a third of these seats were in kurdistan and another two in kirkuk some minority representatives have protested against what may possibly have been horse trading between kurdish and iraqi nationalists others may hope that the renewed focused on national unity in the parts of iraq south in kurdistan in itself may offer new possibilities for minorities without any need to resort to a quota system or more probably every third the original has at the end of every three winners there should be a woman irrespective of men winning more votes posted in iraqi constitutional issues comments off on more on the elections law after compromise on kirkuk finally an elections law for iraq s governorates posted by reidar visser on wednesday 24 september 2008 16 41 iraq s parliament today approved the remaining article 24 of the provincial elections law that was partially approved on 22 july except for the provisions relating to elections in kirkuk the new article which has been crafted in cooperation with the united nations special representative in iraq staffan de mistura delays the elections in the disputed kirkuk province but also establishes a committee which will deal with power sharing issues in local government there the committee will consist of 7 parliamentary representatives from kirkuk 2 kurds 2 turkmens 2 arabs and 1 christian and will have until 31 march 2009 to prepare its report the iraqi parliament will then proceed to create a special elections law for kirkuk or if it fails to do so the prime minister the president and the ...