Needlenose

As you can probably tell from the paucity of posts, it’s been a busy holiday season for this humble correspondent. I did, however, catch this passage in an Associated Press story yesterday about the postponed trial of Muntadhar al-Zeidi, the Iraqi reporter who threw his shoes at Dubya during a press conference in Baghdad:

. . . in the most telling sign of the changes that are sweeping over Iraq, Tuesday’s second anniversary of Saddam Hussein’s hanging went by almost unnoticed — a near-forgotten footnote in a war that has claimed the lives of more than 4,200 Americans and tens of thousands of Iraqis.

The anniversary was not even marked in Saddam’s hometown of Tikrit, where the insurgency quickly took hold after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.

Returning to the article’s main topic, the AP scribe (Patrick Quinn) then writes:

The trial of al-Zeidi was to begin Wednesday on charges of assaulting a foreign leader, which his defense team said carried a maximum sentence of 15 years. . . .

Last week, [Iraqi prime minister Nouri] al-Maliki sought to undermine the journalist’s popularity by saying he had confessed that the mastermind of the attack was a militant known for slitting his victims’ throats.

Al-Maliki said that in a letter of apology to him, al-Zeidi wrote that a known militant had induced him to throw the shoes. The alleged instigator has never been identified and neither al-Maliki nor any of his officials have provided a further explanation. The letter was not made public.

The journalist’s family denied the claim and alleged that al-Zeidi was tortured into writing the letter.

Guess it’s clear why there’s no reason to commemorate the death of Saddam.  His body may be out of power, but his spirit is thriving nicely.

Mohammed Hussein of the New York Times’ Baghdad bureau writes about the aftermath of this month’s famous shoe-throwing incident:

When traveling outside Iraq, I would sometimes hide my nationality by refraining from speaking in an Iraqi dialect. When Arabs would find out where I was from, I would be lectured about how Iraqis are too willing to accept the presence of American troops in our country. But after an Iraqi television reporter threw his shoes at President Bush during a news conference, other Arabs seem to have raised their opinions of us.

. . . “The Iraqi people are courageous people,” a taxi driver in Amman, Jordan, told me a few days ago. It was strange to hear this praise after hearing years of verbal abuse from Arabs in Jordan and Syria. When my uncle was shopping in the market in Amman recently he heard a voice yell: “Are you Iraqi?” In the past this would be followed by a speech about the war and the Americans. Instead the man yelled to my uncle: “You made us proud.”

As an Iraqi journalist, I’ve had a hard time understanding why Arab people are treating us with dignity now after this type of behavior. Throwing a shoe, especially at a guest, is a deep insult in our culture.

But many other Arabs don’t feel this way. In Amman, people would stop me and ask to hear more about the shoe throwing. “We heard the good news from Iraq,” a neighbor said. My Iraqi friends living in Syria and Lebanon say they have also all been praised.

. . . As an Iraqi, I am happy that our neighbors treat us with respect now. I just wish it was for something other than this. I wonder how our dignity could be so tenuous as to be linked to a pair of shoes.

I have nothing to add; just thought it was worth passing along.

Dubya looks into an Iraqi reporter’s eyes and sees his sole.

(Via the Associated Press.)

Update:  Oops, I think watertiger won even before I posted this.

Via Think Progress, here’s one man speaking on behalf of two countries today at Dubya’s press conference during a “surprise” visit to Iraq:

According to news reports, the man shouted, “This is a farewell kiss, you dog!” as he threw his shoes at the Shrub-in-Chief.

Over at American Footprints, new contributor Motown67 summarizes a report by the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point on Iran’s actions related to the U.S. occupation of Iraq.  For an institution connected to the U.S. military, the CTC is surprisingly clear-eyed in seeing the comprehensive, multiple-choice strategy Iran has followed in Iraq.  As Motown67 puts it in his condensed take:

[Iran has backed] a variety of groups from the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC), to the Dawa Party to Moqtada al-Sadr to Special Groups even though they are opposed to each other. Iran supported the Americans at first as well, because the creation of a new political system was the vehicle for Iran’s allies to gain power in the new government. At the same time, Iran began reaching out to Sadr and Shiite militants.

. . . Tehran believed that elections would allow its allies to gain power. The SIIC and Dawa had already positioned themselves before the invasion as exile groups willing to work with the U.S. At the same time, Iran began a dual track policy of infiltrating thousands of Badr Brigade fighters into Iraq, supported by the Qods Force. They also had Hezbollah send some operatives to work within the country. They eliminated opponents of Iran and set up operations against the U.S.

Most crucially, the CTC notes that rather than being closely allied with Sadr (as Bushite rhetoric has falsely insisted), the Iranians used financial/military support of breakaway militants to undermine his standing in Iraq:

The fracturing of the Sadr Trend suited Iran. They disliked Sadr’s political moves because he continued to be a nationalist and anti-Iranian, and was a wild card. He could stop or start military actions when Iran didn’t want him to, which would harm Tehran’s larger political policy. The Special Groups on the other hand, were committed to fighting the occupation using violence, so Iran began moving towards them. They could be regulated by the amount of lethal aid Iran provided them.

Funding violence by former Sadrists served a double purpose — simultaneously pressuring the U.S. occupation and chipping away at Sadr’s authority, allowing SIIC and Dawa (Tehran’s longer-term allies) to reap the benefits without leaving any fingerprints.  All in a good scam’s work, you might say.

I was surprised at first by this post-SOFA approval development in Iraq, summarized over the weekend by the Washington Post:

Iraq’s preeminent Shiite spiritual leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, has expressed concern about the country’s security agreement with the United States, saying it gives the Americans the upper hand and does not do enough to protect Iraqi sovereignty, an official at his office said Saturday.

Sistani, whose words carry great weight in Iraq, did not reject the pact outright and indicated that he would leave it to voters to decide its fate in a national referendum to be held by July 30. His comments will almost certainly bring pressure on the Shiite-led government and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to fulfill their promise to hold the vote.

It was always my impression that Sistani’s oft-cited reservations about the agreement were the key spine-stiffening element behind prime minister Maliki’s tough negotiating stance with the U.S., but I had thought there was also an element of calculation and coordination involved — specifically, pleading the need to placate Sistani and the rest of the marjaiya was part of Maliki’s bargaining strategy.

Beneath it all, I felt sure the old guy was pragmatic enough to accept the final deal as the best they could hope for under Bush (and especially tolerable since Bush and his neocon backers wouldn’t be around to renege on its terms).  With this new statement, was the grand ayatollah really experiencing what some circles on the left are calling “buyer’s remorse” about the agreement?

Then I came to my senses.  Sistani had been briefed about the negotiations every step of the way — if he genuinely objected to the agreement’s terms, he could have killed it singlehandedly by denouncing it before the legislature voted.  Instead, he chose to let it pass.  Nor did he explicitly demand a referendum, which allowed the Maliki government to offer it as a fig-leaf concession to opposition parties.  Nor was he demanding that the Iraqi public be allowed to weigh in before the rather leisurely midyear schedule approved by the legislature.

Which leads me to think that Sistani’s real goal is to defuse any public opposition by seeming to share their concerns but postponing any action until the middle of the year.  Not coincidentally, the timing of the referendum places it after the deadline for U.S. troops pulling out of Iraqi cities, which will help the Maliki regime in making its case for approval.

Other hints dropped in various news accounts suggest a range of side benefits as well.  By voicing concerns over the implementation of the agreement, Sistani keeps the carrot-and-stick of his approval in place for the incoming Obama administration, positioning Maliki to push for more concessions around the edges of the accord to ensure that the referendum passes.

At the same time, he and the marjaiya get to distance themselves from the government, whose ineptitude and corruption have tarnished their image after they used their influence to bring it to power.  And Sistani is able to extend a rhetorical olive branch to the Sadrists, keeping the option of their return to the mainstream political fold open, even as the practical effect is to suck the oxygen out of their opposition to the SOFA and marginalize them further.

That grand ayatollah is a pretty smart guy.

Update: Via the sidebar of Abu Aardvark, Iraqi vice president Adel Abed al-Mahdi (a top pol in the Shiite hierarchy allied with Maliki) is quoted in an Arabic-language article as saying the “referendum gives us leverage in the negotiations” with the U.S., just as I described above. So I guess they’re not even hiding it.

Like, perhaps, some holiday get-togethers, the Iraqi parliament’s long-awaited vote on the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) with the U.S. turned out to be somewhat anticlimactic.  From Reuters:

Iraq’s parliament on Thursday approved a landmark security pact with the United States that paves the way for U.S. forces to withdraw by the end of 2011, taking the country a big step closer to full sovereignty.

The deal, which parliament linked to a series of promised political reforms and a public referendum next year, brings in sight an end to the U.S. military presence that began with the 2003 invasion.

. . . Lawmakers in Iraq’s 275 seat parliament passed the deal with 149 MPs out of 198 present voting.

. . . “The withdrawal, theoretically, is completed at the end of December 2011, but we are expectant and hopeful that we could achieve that earlier,” government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said.

In an article before the vote, Reuters noted what a victory this is for the Iraqi government:

. . . the deal gives Iraq formal authority over the U.S. presence for the first time, replacing a U.N. security council mandate. U.S. troops must quit Iraqi towns and villages by the middle of next year, then leave Iraq within three years.

That will greatly strengthen the hand of Maliki and his Shi’ite-led government, which will continue to enjoy the benefits of U.S. military backing whilst scoring nationalist points for being the ones who ushered it out.

Conversely, today’s vote seems to marginalize the Sadrists, who have staked their claim to popularity on opposing the occupation, but were left helplessly (if entertainingly at times) on the sidelines as Maliki negotiated its end.  And the Sunnis in the legislature weren’t left with much, either, as Reidar Visser relates:

The developments in the Iraqi parliament today very much went in the direction Maliki wanted them to go, even if the opposition managed to create at least a degree of friction . . . today’s package of legislation is sadly reminiscent of many of the deals that have been cut with the Maliki government since 2006: it bestows ample privileges on the Iraqi government in return for promises of reform that are both vague and without a clearly defined timeline.

Even the one tangible concession — that of a public referendum on the agreement sometime in mid-2009 — is less than meets the eye.  Spencer Ackerman did the math yesterday and explained that given the six-month lag time and the one-year notice required for cancelling the agreement, a withdrawal forced by the referendum failing would basically match the timeline proposed by Barack Obama (and endorsed by the Iraqi government).   So Maliki & Co. get what they want either way… as usual.

(P.S.  Via ThinkProgress, a PDF of an English translation of the agreement is here.)

In the post just below, I waxed atypically (if faintly) optimistic about politics taking precedence over violence in the Iraqi debate over the U.S. SOFA/troop withdrawal agreement.  I was also impressed by the Maliki government letting a Sadrist anti-SOFA protest take place — yes, such protests had been occurring regularly for the past few months, but I figured that those actually strengthened the government’s hand in negotiations with the Americans (”We’d love to make more concessions, but alas, we have to placate those noisy Sadrists!”).  With the agreement signed, I guessed Maliki would find dissent less useful.

But, as occasionally happens despite my best efforts, I may once again not have been cynical enough in my assessment.  At least, that’s what occurred to me on reading this Washington Post story over the weekend:

Iraq’s defense minister warned Saturday that the government would declare a state of emergency if there was no agreement to keep U.S. forces in the country past the end of the year.

The threat by Abdul Qadir Muhammed Jassim appeared aimed at pressuring parliament to approve a security accord allowing U.S. troops to stay three more years.

Jassim has been a strong supporter of the agreement, which would replace a United Nations mandate that expires Dec. 31. But his language Saturday was unusually stark. . . .

“There are armed groups that believe they are stronger than the security forces,” Jassim said. He noted bluntly that some political parties maintain armed wings and suggested that foreign intelligence services were trying to intervene in Iraq’s affairs.

. . . On Friday, thousands of supporters of anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr marched in central Baghdad against the agreement.

. . . The Sadr group, with 30 seats in the 275-strong parliament, has led opposition to the pact. Sadr has threatened to end a cease-fire he has imposed on his militia if the agreement passes.

Sad to say, threatening (even if it’s just a bluff) to unleash more sectarian violence via the Sadrists if the Sunnis don’t fall in line would be more in keeping with Maliki’s track record than making genuine political concessions.

CNN reports on today’s protest in Iraq against the SOFA agreement proposed by Prime Minister Maliki :

Iraqis outraged by a proposed security pact between Iraq and the United States staged an angry but peaceful protest against the deal Friday.

Thousands of people — most of whom are backers of anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr — streamed into Baghdad’s Firdous Square waving Iraqi flags, hoisting posters with portraits of the cleric and carrying signs scorning the agreement.

Protesters at one point set fire to U.S. flags and an effigy of President Bush, but the rally was well-organized and peaceful with no evidence of fighting or arrests. People dispersed amicably after the 2½-hour event.

Think about that.  In a country ruled by violence both before and after the U.S. invasion, a political faction held a massive demonstration in the capital against a key policy of the government… and then everyone went home peacefully.  Of course, that situation is by no means guaranteed to last, as the New York Times hints today in its coverage of the legislative debate over the agreement:

When cornered on the stairways and balconies of the Iraqi Parliament building in the Green Zone, many of those who are threatening to vote against ratification openly admit that they approve of its terms.

“To be clear, it is not the treaty that is the problem,” said Aala Maki, a senior member of the Iraqi Islamic Party, a Sunni party that has suggested it might not vote for approval. “What will be built on the treaty, that is the problem.”

Other than the followers of the radical Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, who reject any agreement in principle (and who continue to bang their hands on their desks in Parliament when it is being discussed), most lawmakers consider the pact at least satisfactory, if not ideal.

But the Sunnis, and others, are worried that the agreement will leave too much power to Mr. Maliki’s government, given that only two years ago elements of the government-run Iraqi police force were functionally little more than Shiite death squads.

The major Sunni parties, after several days of mixed messages, have largely come together and demanded a series of guarantees from the government and the Americans in return for their support. . . .

. . . Mahmoud Othman, an independent Kurdish lawmaker, said members of the Kurdish coalition were privately mulling whether to draw up their own list of demands.

“Everybody is afraid of Maliki,” Mr. Othman said. “Nobody is afraid of the agreement.”

Truth be told, this is the Sadrists’ real objection, too — since part of Maliki’s strongman ambitions is using the remaining U.S. presence to wear down their ability to oppose him (just as he’s done for the past year), even an orderly, gradual withdrawal is unsatisfactory to the Sadrists.  Thus they are forced to insist that a SOFA with a hard withdrawal deadline is in fact a puppet’s capitulation, that Obama is every bit the imperialist Bush/Cheney were, and so on.

For the moment, though, the debate is taking place in the political realm rather than on the streets, and that has to count as progress.  If Maliki has the sense and capacity to cut political deals with the Sunnis and Kurds to ensure broad support for the pact rather than steamroll it through by a narrow majority, that would be even more encouraging (though still transient).  We’ll know more on Monday, when the agreement is due to be voted on.

(Cross-posted at Firedoglake.)

Update: Did I say Monday? Make that Wednesday or Thursday:

The speaker of Parliament, Mahmoud Mashhadani, said Saturday that he would call for a ratification vote as soon as the different blocs came to some kind of agreement, which he urged them to do by Wednesday or Thursday.

A press officer for Mr. Mashhadani said the speaker’s emphasis on arriving at an accord before the vote was directly related to recent statements by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the country’s most powerful Shiite cleric, who has insisted that any agreement achieve national consensus.

Supporters of the pact, largely consisting of members of the United Iraqi Alliance, a Shiite bloc, and their Kurdish allies, appear to have enough votes for a majority, but they have grown frustrated in their attempts to persuade others to support the agreement. They said they believed that the ayatollah’s approval of the pact, which is considered critical, is contingent on more than token Sunni support.

. . . Late on Friday, Iraq’s president, Jalal Talabani, and Mr. Mashhadani invited members of Sunni parliamentary blocs to Mr. Talabani’s Baghdad home for discussions.

Some Sunni parliamentarians have asked that an appendix be added to the pact outlining their proposed guarantees. Since such an appendix is unlikely to be approved by the Americans, the Kurds countered with the idea of a treaty among Iraqi political blocs to ensure that the Sunnis’ demands are met after the pact is signed, said Abdul Khaliq Zangana, a Kurdish legislator who was at the meeting on Friday.

Will the Sunnis let themselves be fooled again persuaded to accept vague promises that Team Shiite has no intentions of keeping, or will they be able to pry some genuine concessions out of Maliki?  Stay tuned.

(Iraqis at a Baghdad cafe during a televised address by Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki on the proposed security agreement with the U.S., vIa the Associated Press and the New York Times.)

(NOTE:  I’ll have an actual post on this subject coming up one of these days…)