Needlenose

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.

Given that it used to be the near-daily posting fare at this site, I suppose I should feel some guilt over not paying more attention to the latest twists and turns of internal Iraqi politics — specifically, the ongoing machinations regarding a possible status-of-forces agreement (SOFA) between Iraq and the United States.

But how worked up should I get when so little actually changes?  For instance, when I last checked in on the surprising (to most observers) intransigence of the Iraqi government in the negotiations nearly two months ago, I wrote:

Isn’t that a classic haggling technique in any society?  Let the other side know you’re oh-so-close to a deal, encourage them to make a few concessions to close the gap… and just as they do and reach for the pen, pull back and say, “Wait, there’s one more thing you need to agree to.”

You’d almost think they’re having fun toying with the Bushites at this point.

Judging from news stories yesterday and today, that’s still where we are.

From the Associated Press today:

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki dug in his heels Monday on the future of the U.S. military in Iraq, insisting that all foreign soldiers leave the country by a specific date in 2011 and rejecting legal immunity for American troops.

. . . Last week, U.S. and Iraqi officials said the two sides agreed tentatively to a schedule that includes a broad pullout of combat troops by the end of 2011 with the possibility that a residual U.S. force might stay behind to continue training and advising Iraqi security services.

But al-Maliki’s remarks indicated his government was not satisfied with that arrangement and wants all foreign troops gone by the end of 2011.

. . . President Bush has long resisted a timetable for removing troops from Iraq, even under strong pressure from an American public distressed by U.S. deaths and discouraged by the length of the war that began in 2003.

Last month, however, Bush reversed course and agreed to set a “general time horizon” for bringing troops home, based on Iraq’s ability to provide for its own security. But the Iraqis insisted they want a specific schedule.

“We find this to be too vague,” a close al-Maliki aide told The Associated Press on Monday. “We don’t want the phrase ‘time horizons.’ We are not comfortable with that phrase,” said the aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the negotiations.

Another top al-Maliki aide, also speaking on condition of anonymity for the same reason, said the Iraqi government had “stopped talking about the withdrawal of combat troops. We just talk about withdrawals,” including trainers and logistics troops.

The AP story carries a tone of partial disbelief that Maliki and his anonymous aides could actually mean what they say, suggesting on one hand that “al-Maliki is playing to a domestic audience” and “seeking to bolster his nationalist credentials ahead of provincial elections,” but also acknowledging (appropriately, in my opinion) that “The prime minister’s strong statements in support of an end to immunity and for a firm withdrawal timetable would make it difficult for him to accept an agreement that falls short of his public demands.”

I think the better analysis of what’s going on came from the AP’s Robert Reid in a story I analyzed here a month ago:

With the talks bogged down, the Iraqis sensed desperation by the Americans to wrap up a deal quickly before the presidential campaign was in full swing.

“Let’s squeeze them,” al-Maliki told his advisers, who related the conversation to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

Maliki’s statements today, and the associated leaks from his advisers, seem like the “squeeze” is continuing — and I’m not surprised.  When I noticed the recent stream of news stories (nearly all driven by Iraqi government sources) claiming a troop agreement was near, I wondered when this other shoe would fall.

Isn’t that a classic haggling technique in any society?  Let the other side know you’re oh-so-close to a deal, encourage them to make a few concessions to close the gap… and just as they do and reach for the pen, pull back and say, “Wait, there’s one more thing you need to agree to.”

You’d almost think they’re having fun toying with the Bushites at this point.

I’ve been skeptical of the arguments (put forth, ironically, by both Iraq-forever Bushites and some stoutly anti-occupation progressive bloggers) that the increasingly frequent remarks by Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki and his political allies in favor of a U.S. troop withdrawal timeline are merely posturing in advance of Iraq’s provincial elections — in part because those elections keep getting delayed, which would seek to make posturing beside the point.

But via the excellent, unsung blog Musings on Iraq, I can see that some other activities of Maliki’s can’t be interpreted any other way. Here’s an Associated Press story I missed a couple of weeks ago:

It is a politician’s dream: Handing out cold, hard cash to people on the street as they plead for help. Iraq’s prime minister has been doing just that in recent weeks, doling out Iraqi dinars as an aide trails behind, keeping a tally.

The handouts by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and a handful of other top officials are authorized — as long as each goes no higher than about $8,000, and the same people don’t get them twice. Aides say they are meant merely to ease the pain a bit, and are motivated by a belief that better conditions will lead to more security.

The cash handouts are just one small — if eye-catching — part of a major investment push this summer by Iraq’s government. The aim is to rebuild basic services and jumpstart Iraq’s damaged economy by quickly distributing as much of the country’s glut of oil revenue as possible.

. . . “Money is not a problem,” al-Maliki told a recent gathering of tribal chiefs in the southern city of Basra, after government forces had defeated Shiite extremists there. “But we must put it in honest hands to spend.”

. . . Most of the grants the prime minister gives out are only $200 to $400 to help those needing medical care, widows or people without jobs. On one recent visit to the riverside Abu Nawas park in Baghdad, he gave a group of boys each the equivalent of $40 in dinars to buy soccer balls. The biggest grants require documentation like letters from a hospital, his aides say.

Nice to see that the powers-that-be in Iraq are finding ways to put that huge budget surplus to good (political) use, I suppose.

On Sunday, the New York Times surveyed the eerie calm in Sadr City:

The militia that was once the biggest defender of poor Shiites in Iraq, the Mahdi Army, has been profoundly weakened in a number of neighborhoods across Baghdad, in an important, if tentative, milestone for stability in Iraq.

It is a remarkable change from years past, when the militia, led by the anti-American cleric Moktada al-Sadr, controlled a broad swath of Baghdad, including local governments and police forces. But its use of extortion and violence began alienating much of the Shiite population to the point that many quietly supported American military sweeps against the group.

. . . The change is showing up in the lives of ordinary people. The price of cooking gas is less than a fifth of what it was when the militia controlled local gas stations, and kerosene for heating has also become much less expensive. In interviews, 17 Iraqis, including municipal officials, gas station workers and residents, described a pattern in which the militia’s control over the local economy and public services had ebbed. Merchants say they no longer have to pay protection money to militiamen. . . .

. . . A member of the Shuala district council said: “They used to come and order us to give them 100 gas canisters. Now it’s, ‘Can you please give me a gas canister?’ ”

Such extortion is the plausible flip side of the Mahdi Army’s much-hyped delivery of services in the neighborhoods they controlled, and it gives a clue to why the Sadrists were unable (or perhaps more accurately, unwilling) to provide those services when they were in charge of several government ministries.

There’s a certain amount of hype in the NYT article about the diminished influence of the Mahdi Army, but still the tone of relief — and in some cases, revenge — rings true:

In Topchi, a Shiite neighborhood in western Baghdad, a handwritten list of militia members’ names was taped up in the market this month, with the warning for their families to leave town. Several of their houses were attacked.

Some militia members’ families went to the local council to ask for help. They found none. Mahdi militiamen killed four local council members over several weeks last fall.

. . . Now neighborhoods are breathing more freely. A hairdresser in Ameen, a militia-controlled neighborhood in southeast Baghdad, said her clients no longer had to cover their faces when they left her house wearing makeup. Minibuses ferrying commuters in Sadr City are no longer required to play religious songs, said Abu Amjad, the civil servant, and now play songs about love, some even sung by women.

At the same time, the expected triumphalism of the right-wing idiotsphere is (as usual) premature:

Majid, a Sadr City resident who works in a government ministry, said several Iraqi Army officers in his area had to move their families to other neighborhoods after Mr. Maliki’s military operation because the militia threatened them. Bombs are still wounding and killing American soldiers in the district. And early this month, one Iraqi officer’s teenage son was kidnapped and killed, his body hung in a public place as a warning, said Majid, who gave only his first name because he feared reprisals.

“People are still afraid of the Mahdi Army,” he said. “You still get punished if you talk bad about them.”

. . . The militia is painting its response on Sadr City walls: “We will be back, after this break.”

This sense of lying in wait is reinforced by the McClatchy News story about the Iraqi army’s Potemkin victory over the Sadrists in Amara:

It wasn’t yet dawn, and the Iraqi army unit was already behind schedule. It was about to launch a major operation against another cluster of towns overrun by Shiite Muslim militiamen. . . . The 40-vehicle convoy was about to leave the base when the commander, Brig. Gen. Nabil Yassin Azadi, ordered everyone to stop. “Where is the map? How could you forget the map?” he screamed at his subordinates.

By the time they arrived at their destination, the city of Majir al Kabir, the sun led them in, and the militiamen whom they’d hoped to surprise had left, disappeared into the nearby marshes or perhaps across the border into Iran.

. . . As they dashed about the province over those four days, Azadi’s troops fired no shots and uncovered few weapons, despite digging up patios with picks and shovels in vain response to a tip.

Both the Sadrists and the Iraqi government forces appear well aware that the latter has never beaten the Mahdi Army in a straight-up fight, and the former seem to be gambling that this will remain true even if they leave the field for several months before scheduling a rematch. Nevertheless, even a temporary, fraying truce represents a tactical retreat for the Sadrists, and an implied admission that an open fight now would be more damaging to their interests.

The question at the moment is whether the government-allied forces can convert the temporary concessions of ground and authority by the Sadrists into something permanent — for example, by providing the same or better benefits (in terms of security and services) without the accompanying levels of graft and brutality. If they settle for being the new warlords with different uniforms, the locals may forget much of their current resentment toward the Mahdi Army.

To say the least, it’s been an interesting weekend for anyone following political developments involving the United States and Iraq. As if Barack Obama’s post-primaries trip to Kuwait, Afghanistan, and Iraq wasn’t enough, we had Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki issuing a surprisingly explicit endorsement of Obama’s proposed timetable for withdrawing American combat troops:

Maliki: . . . U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about 16 months. That, we think, would be the right timeframe for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes.

SPIEGEL: Is this an endorsement for the US presidential election in November? Does Obama, who has no military background, ultimately have a better understanding of Iraq than war hero John McCain?

Maliki: Those who operate on the premise of short time periods in Iraq today are being more realistic.

This was followed by pressure from the Bushites to issue an unconvincing denial, but Robert Reid of the Associated Press thinks he knows what’s really going on:

The Iraqi prime minister’s seeming endorsement of Barack Obama’s troop withdrawal plan is part of Baghdad’s strategy to play U.S. politics for the best deal possible over America’s military mission.

. . . Already, the Iraqi strategy has succeeded in persuading the White House to agree to a “general time horizon” for removing U.S. troops — long a goal of the Shiite-dominated Iraqi government.

. . . In the past, the Iraqis would have bowed to American pressure. This time, they saw an option in Obama, a longtime critic of the war. They could press for a short-term agreement with the administration and take their chances with a new president — Obama or McCain.

. . . “Let’s squeeze them,” al-Maliki told his advisers, who related the conversation to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

Wow. It’s hard to imagine the words “Let’s squeeze them” coming from a weak puppet like Maliki — or, at least, the Maliki that’s frequently been portrayed not just in the media but on progressive blogs. As Abu Aardvark wrote today, “I know that I’m not the only one who has generally assumed that Maliki and most of the ruling elite preferred McCain’s vision of endless, unconditional American military support.”

Readers here are a fortunate exception, as I accurately picked up signs several weeks ago that the Iraqi government would “prefer to deal with someone sane Barack Obama rather than another Republican president reading from the neocon playbook,” and suggested that we “consider what more Iraqis might do to make their preferences known between now and November.”

I think that the key mistake many observers (perhaps including Abu Aardvark et al.) make is that there are only two sides to the Iraqi situation: the U.S. occupation and those who ally with it, and the “resistance” (Sunni, Sadrist, or whatever) that takes up arms against it. They forget that the government Maliki represents wasn’t created by the Americans — it came about following popular elections demanded by Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, who also established the coalition to which Maliki belongs and lent his considerable prestige to ensure its victory. And Sistani probably didn’t go through all that trouble just to be known as the guy who rubber-stamped a permanent U.S. occupation.

Back in Febuary 2004, Anthony Shadid of the Washington Post wrote a profile of Sistani that has long influenced my writings on Iraq; it describes the grand ayatollah as primarily motivated by memories of 1920 — when Shiites rebelled directly against the British, and were rewarded with 80 years of Sunni/secular domination — and determined not to let his followers miss this opportunity.

It’s always seemed to me that his solution was to cooperate initially with the U.S. invasion, use the American military as a contractor of sorts to help cement a Shiite-led government’s power, then nudge us aside when the task was more or less complete. Maliki’s newfound spine, if anything, just means that they think that time is drawing closer.

(Cross-posted at Firedoglake.)

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