Maliki Curbing Shia Militia's? · 28 January 2007, 18:36 CET by Charles Vermeulen
This week’s The Economist (page 35-36) sees a "glimmer of hope" in Iraq as, according to the magazine, some American officials and some of the aides of Nuri al-Maliki "have been telling journalists" that the Iraqi prime minister "has had a change of heart" and "has authorised a full-fledged crackdown on the militia’s". As a result the U.S. army was able to arrest several members of Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army and the number of operations by Iraqi and American troops against "Mahdi Army targets" could be sped up. Furthermore, the Sadrist commanders are said to be on the run and their fighters are forced to lay down, even in Sadr City itself.
The Economist adduces several causes for this apparent major change. First of all, Maliki allegedly "has lost his patience" and no longer wants to "to engange the Sadrists through dialogue". Secondly, the video of the hanging of Saddam Hussein, which showed Sadrists mocking at the former dictator, is perceived by Iraqi Shia’s as a sign that their current power in Iraq might be lasting. According to the magazine this boosted Maliki’s popularity among the Iraqi Shia. On the other hand, to continue, outside Iraq Maliki’s reputation has suffered severely by his failure to rein the Shia militia’s. As a result of this failure the U.S. has threatened to end its support for the Iraqi governement. Likewise, it may become very hard for Maliki to persuade several Sunni Gulf states to cancel billions of dollars of debt as the slaughter of Iraqi Sunni’s continues. What’s worse, they might start to actively support Sunni militia’s.
But also the Sadrists themselves seem to support the curbing of the militia’s. Although Al-Sadr "never seemed happy with sectarian cleansing carried out in his name" and although the Sadrists have struggled to bring under control their commanders and fighters, it’s remarkable, nonetheless, that al-Sadre has failed to respond to the latest arrests of his commanders, which might be a sign that he has "acquiesced" in the U.S. efforts to purge his army of its "rogue commanders". Likewise al-Sadr has responded "quite mildly" this week on the increasing number of arrests, while several Sadrist members of parliament even proclaimed the end of their boycot of parliament. The Economist states that this might be the result of the fear of the Sadrists that, if Iraq becomes a pariah state in the Arab world, they might be perceived as the prime cause for this which in turn would turn them into a pariah among the Shia Islamists.
The current developments, however, constitute only "glimmer of hope", the magazine warns, for the Mahdi Army "may be quieting down, the Sunni insurgents are not". So any new Sunni attack might be the end of Maliki’s new policy towards the Shia militia’s or even spark of a new wave of Shia retaliation.
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Execution Chamber Infiltrated to Stir Violence · 4 January 2007, 06:57 CET by Charles Vermeulen
‘The execution (of Saddam Hussein) was carried out by militias and outsiders. They put aside the team from the interior ministry that was supposed to carry it out’, an Iraqi official claimed yesterday. According to Mowaffaq al-Rubaie, Iraq’s national security adviser, the infiltration even had a marked purpose: ‘Whoever leaked this video meant to harm national reconciliation and drive a wedge between Shiites and Sunnis’. Click here to read an article on the matter in The Scottsman.
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Don't Allow Bha'atists to Gain From Execution · 3 January 2007, 10:17 CET by Charles Vermeulen
The execution of Saddam Hussein last Saturday ignited a heated debate which primarily evolves around the questions whether death penalty is just barbarious or somehow legitimite, whether Saddam’s trial has been fair / legitimite or not, whether the circumstances in which the execution took place (the mocking at Saddam preceding the execution and the recording on mobile phone) and the date of the execution (the Sunni date for Eid ul-Adha, the Festival of Sacrifice) were inappropriate. Important as those issues are, they shouldn’t overshadow the almost endless list of repulsive crimes committed by the Butcher of Bagdad and his henchmen. To be more specific: off course it would have been opportune if the Shia dominated government of Iraq considered the feelings of the Iraqi Sunnis and even of Saddam’s hardcore Ba’athist supporters. On the other hand, Saddam’s supporters shouldn’t be allowed to gain politically, or at least not much, from the flaws in the trial and from the execution, for they bear no proportion to Saddam’s crimes at all. On the contrary, to cry blue murder, as his supporters do, is completely out of place.
bha'ath,
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'Replaced by More Tyrants Instead of One' · 2 January 2007, 16:54 CET by Charles Vermeulen
Reactions from the Iraqi blogosphere on the execution of Saddam Hussein on IraqSlogger via Zeyad’s must-read blog Healing Iraq.
healing iraq,
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iraqi blogosphere,
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The Image of the Sadrists · 2 January 2007, 10:15 CET by Charles Vermeulen
As far as I know Moqtada al-Sadr’s supporters, especially his militia, the al-Mahdi Army, are notorious for their abductions and brutal violence in the streets of Baghdad. But apparently I misjudged them as, according to Sami al-Askari, an advisor of Iraqi prime-minister Nouri al-Maliki, the behaviour of some of them during the execution of Saddam Hussein ’(...) damaged the image of the Sadrists. That should not have happened. Before we went into the room we had an agreement that no one should bring a mobile phone.’ The mobile phone video showed some of the attendents chanting ‘Moqtada, Moqtada, Moqtada!’ at the former dictator.
baghdad,
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Saddam Hussein at the Gallows (2) · 1 January 2007, 09:52 CET by Charles Vermeulen
On Reuters.co.uk a new video is published showing Saddam laughing while being mocked at on the gallow. According to Reuters the video images show “Saddam exchanging taunts with witnesses at his execution. In Arabic, someone shouts ‘Go to Hell’ and the name of Moqtada al-Sadr, the radical anti-American cleric whose father was killed by Saddam’s agents. Saddam laughs and replies ‘Is this courage? Is this what you think it takes to be a man?’” The video had been ‘posted on Arab websites’, Reuters reports.
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Saddam Hussein at the Gallows, His Last Minutes · 31 December 2006, 13:19 CET by Charles Vermeulen
The New York Times on Saddam Hussein’s last minutes.
iraq,
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Protest in Tikrit · 6 November 2006, 07:35 CET by Charles Vermeulen
CNN reports that 2,000 people protested last Sunday’s verdict and sentence against former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in Tikrit, Hussein’s birthplace and hometown. They had to defy a government’s curfew to do so. But still, according to Wikipedia Tikrit had an estimated population of about 28,900. If these numbers are (still) correct, it would mean that barely 7% of Tikrit’s population went out on the streets in support of their leader.
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Iraqi Culture and Democratizing Iraq · 5 November 2006, 11:24 CET by Charles Vermeulen
As sectarian violence is daily routine in Iraq the country seems to fall apart rapidly and the project to democratize Iraq seems to end in complete failure. No doubt lots of explanations can be adduced to elucidate this utter failure. This posting, however, is limited to the field of culture, which makes the central question here: does Iraqi culture handicaps the attempt to establish democracy in Iraq? A big question, but the ideas of Geert Hofstede, ‘expert on the interactions between national cultures and organizational cultures’ and the data on the Arab World (including Iraq) he gathered and analysed throw some interesting light on the matter.
The core in the thinking of Geert Hofstede about national culture differences is constituted by five concepts, that is, his famous five ‘cultural dimensions’: ‘power distance’, ‘individualism’ (versus ‘collectivism’), ‘masculinity’ (versus ‘feminity’), ‘uncertainty avoidance’ and ‘long-term versus short-term orientation’. In his analysis of the above mentioned data two of these five dimensions catch the eye: the dimension of ‘power distance’ and the dimension of ‘uncertainty avoidance’.
In his ‘Allemaal andersdenkenden: omgaan met cultuurverschillen’ (Dutch Paperback edition, 2004, page 39), which was originally published as ‘Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind’ (London, 1991) Hofstede defines ‘power distance’ as ’(...) the extent to which the less powerful members of organizations and institutions (like the family) accept and expect that power is distributed unequally’. In the paragraph ‘Machtsafstand en de staat’ (‘Power Distance and the State’, pages 55-56) he compares states with a high level of power distance with states with a low level of power distance. Let’s take a closer look on the first category, states with a high level of power distance, for according to Hofstede’s data it’s this category to which Iraq belongs.
In states with high levels of power distance the question whether power is legitimate or not is irrelevant and power precedes justice. An unspoken consensus exists that there needs to be an ‘order of unequality’ in the world and that everyone has a specific place in it. In such states the powerful enjoy priviliges and they’re expected to use their power to acquire more wealth. Furthermore, they try to look as powerful as possible. The main sources of their power are their friends and family, charisma and / or the ability to use violence, which explains the frequent occurrence of military dictatorships in countries with a high level of power distance. The political spectrum in such countries is usually marked by a strong left- and right-wing and a weak center. As to be expected, to conclude, high income inequality is typical for states with a high level of power distance.
The other dimension which stands out in Hofstede’s analysis is ‘uncertainty avoidance’. Hofstede defines the concept as ‘the extent to which members of a society feel uncomfortable by uncertainty and ambiguity; this feeling is associated with, among other things, a nervous stress and and the need for predictability: for formal and informal rules’ (page 144). According the above mentioned data the Arab World (including Iraq) is marked by a high degree of ‘uncertainty avoidance’. Hofstede characterizes such societies as follows (pages 161-166):
They tend to have more formal and more accurately worded rules, their citizens belief that they exercise little influence on their authorities, dislike (extreme forms of) protest, feel dependent on the expertise of their government and think that this is as it should be. Their officials foster negative feelings towards politics and politicians. They tend to be conservative and value law and order. Their political spectra often include extremist minorities. In societies marked by a high degree of ‘uncertainty avoidance’ a tendency exists to ban political groups. They include relatively more terrorists. Furthermore, their members tend to be suspicious, xenophobic, ethnocentric and chauvinistic. Combined with a high degree of collectivism a high degree of uncertainty avoidance coincide with more implicit rules originating in tradition (‘high context’-communication). This combination also coincide with a tendency to assimilate or suppress minority groups, which often leads to violent conflicts with those groups, who share the same tendency, as is the case in the Arab World.
Several characteristics strike the eye: a tendency to value inequality, the ability to use violence as a source of power, a political spectrum marked by a weak center, the feeling of dependency on the expertise of the government, the presence of extremist groups, a tendency to ban political groups and suppress minority groups, xenophobia and ethnocentrism. If this is the context in which the democratizing project takes place, one can hardly be surprised about the ‘utter failure’ of the project and to ‘stay the course’ can hardly be considered a serious option. Yesterday Belgian public TV station Canvas aired ‘Chemical Ali’, a documentary by Kawa Akrawi on the atrocities committed to the Iraqi Kurds and Shiites by Ali Hassan Al Majeed, better known as ‘Chemical Ali’. The documentary once more calls to mind, on the other hand, that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq has never been an option at all.
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Terrorism and the US invasion of Iraq · 16 January 2006, 21:34 CET by Charles Vermeulen
In an interview with Paul Bremer in the last week’s Monday edition of the Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad the former ‘the Administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority’ was asked whether the war in Iraq fostered terrorism. According to Bremer this question illustrates the lack of understanding in Europe of ‘the new terrorism’, which confronts the US with muslim terrorists who want to kill Americans by the thousands. This implies that the US cannot wait for the next terrorist attack; they have to act before they’re attacked. Failing to see this is caused by Europe’s standstill. Europe isn’t aware of this new threat and therefore it has a problem. By disqualifying Europe and its efforts to counter terrorism again a representative of the Bush government tries to distract the public’s attention from the fact that it has never been proven that Al-Qaeda’s 9/11 attacks were somehow supported by the regime of Saddam Hussein.
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