Iraqi Perceptions of the War

[OfTheTroops]

De baathification is one of the worst ideas ever. 30 years of skill and experience stripped from any position of authority on a "survivor" pledge to the Baath. I thought they had a grand "reconciliation" back in 2007. Things are not going to go well.

[Surferbeetle]

Throwing out the technocrat's who ran things via De-Ba'athification, privatizing SOE's (unemployment rates went through the roof), and disbanding the Army (trained and unemployed soldiers with unlimited access to weapons) had very significant consequences to stability in the region.

It's interesting to think about the why's behind some of those decisions:

• Perhaps sending a noteworthy and long lasting message to the region was part of the decision making process. There are historical examples to consider such as The Morgenthau Plan.

• Perhaps Democracy Peace Theory was part of the decision making process.

• Perhaps the history of the military and the Ba'ath Party in Iraq was part of the decision making process.

Chronology of Iraqi Coup's

1941

The 1941 Iraqi coup d'état, also known as the Rashid Ali Al-Gaylani coup or the Golden Square coup was a military coup in Iraq on April 1, 1941[1] that overthrew the regime of Regent 'Abd al-Ilah and installed Rashid Ali as Prime Minister. It was led by four Iraqi nationalist army generals, known as "the Golden Square." The Golden Square intended to use the war to press for full Iraqi independence following the limited independence granted in 1932. To that end, they worked with German intelligence and accepted military assistance from Germany. The change in government led to a British invasion of Iraq and subsequent occupation until 1947.

1958

Inspired by Nasser, officers from the Nineteenth Brigade known as "The Four Colonials", under the leadership of Brigadier Abd al-Karīm Qāsim (known as "az-Za`īm", 'the leader') and Colonel Abdul Salam Arif overthrew the Hashimite monarchy on 14 July 1958. The new government proclaimed Iraq to be a republic and rejected the idea of a union with Jordan. Iraq's activity in the Baghdad Pact ceased.

February 1963

The February 1963 Iraqi coup d'état was a February 8, 1963 armed military coup which overthrew the regime of the Prime Minister in Iraq, Brigadier General Abdul-Karim Qassem. Revolutionary leaders and supporters of the coup referred to it as a movement, rather than a coup. Some time after the Homeland Officers' Organization, or "Al-Ahrar" ("The Free") succeeded in toppling the monarchy and transforming the Iraqi regime into a republic in 1958, signs of differences between political parties and forces and the Homeland Officers' Organization began when Pan-Arab nationalist forces led by Abdul Salam Arif and the Baath Party called for immediate unification with the United Arab Republic.

Another view of the February 1963 coup

Qasim’s removal took place on February 8 1963, the 14th day of Ramadan and therefore called the 14 Ramadan Coup. The coup had been in its planning stages since 1962, and several attempts had been planned, only to be abandoned for fear of discovery. The coup had been initially planned for January 18, but was moved to January 25, then February 8, after Qasim gained knowledge of the proposed attempt and arrested some of the plotters.
The coup began in the early morning of February 8 1963, when the Communist air force chief, Jalal al-Awqati was assassinated and tank units occupied the Abu Ghrayb radio station. A bitter two day struggle unfolded with heavy fighting between the Ba’athist conspirators and pro-Qasim forces. Qasim took refuge in the Ministry of Defence, where fighting became particularly heavy. Communist sympathisers took to the streets to resist the coup adding to the high casualties. On February 9, Qasim eventually offered his surrender in return for safe passage out of the country. His request was refused, and on the afternoon of the 9th, Qasim was executed on the orders of the newly formed National Council of the Revolutionary Command (NCRC)[73]. His successor was his fellow July 14 conspirator, Arif.

1968

In 1968, Abdul Rahman Arif was overthrown by the Arab Socialist Baath Party.

Back to De-Ba'athification:

Joel Wing at Musings on Iraq, Timeline of Iraq’s De-Baathification Campaign

[Surferbeetle]

International Crisis Group, Iraq’s Uncertain Future: Elections and Beyond, Middle East Report N°94 25 February 2010

As a rule, Iraq’s post-Saddam elections have tended to magnify pre-existing negative trends. The parliamentary polls to be held on 7 March are no exception. The focus on electoral politics is good, no doubt, but the run-up has highlighted deep-seated problems that threaten the fragile recovery: recurring election-related violence; ethnic tensions over Kirkuk; the re-emergence of sectarianism; and blatant political manipulation of state institutions. The most egregious development was the decision to disqualify over 500 candidates, a dangerous, arbitrary step lacking due process, yet endorsed by the Shiite ruling parties. Under normal circumstances, that alone might have sufficed to discredit the elections. But these are not normal circumstances, and for the sake of Iraq’s stability, the elections must go on. At a minimum, however, the international community should ramp up its electoral monitoring and define clear red lines that need to be respected if the results are to be considered legitimate. And it should press the next government to seriously tackle the issue – long-neglected yet never more critical – of national reconciliation.

That leaves what happens after the elections, assuming they pass this threshold. The question then will be whether the incoming government is able and willing to address the country’s numerous political deficiencies, from sectarianism to politicised institutions and much in between. Serious work toward national reconciliation is long overdue. This time, forming a coalition government and holding it up as an example of national unity will not suffice. There will have to be meaningful progress on opening up political space, increasing cross-sectarian participation and improving transparency and accountability.

Rachel Schneller at CFR, Avoiding Elections at Any Cost in Iraq, December 3, 2009

The new election law expands the seats of the governing council from 275 to 323, but Iraqi Kurds and Sunnis dispute the allocation of the forty-eight new seats, saying Shias are overrepresented.

The United States would do well to back away from the policy of elections at any cost. Elections in Iraq do not signify stability. In Iraq, the sequence of events is more important than the chronology of them. That is, the order of constitutional reform, oil law reform, and election law reform is more important than ensuring they occur according to schedule. In this light, the current delays on Iraq's election law are a good sign, because it appears Iraq's Sunnis, Shias, and Kurds are seriously trying to work out a power-sharing arrangement acceptable to all.
Iraq's constitution requires a new government to be in place before existing mandates expire in March 2010, but Iraq's current government is certainly capable of finding a way to legalize a further delay on elections if needed. It is more important to ensure that elections, when they do happen, have the buy-in of all Iraqis, rather than being bound to a timetable that appears, from within the country, to be arbitrary and imposed from the outside. An election that does not have the confidence of all three groups could result in a boycott by one of them, as the Sunnis did in 2005, or in protracted disputes after the election regarding acceptable power-sharing arrangements, which also occurred after the 2005 elections.

Steven Lee Myers at NYT, Vote Seen as Pivotal Test for Both Iraq and Maliki, Published: February 28, 2010

A few months ago, building on genuine if not universal popularity, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki appeared poised to win a second term as Iraq’s prime minister. Now, as Iraqis prepare to vote in parliamentary elections on March 7, his path to another four years in office has become increasingly uncertain, his campaign erratic and, to some, deeply troubling.

Mr. Maliki, who turns 60 in June, could yet prevail. According to politicians and polls conducted by parties and American officials, though not released publicly, Mr. Maliki’s coalition will very likely win the largest plurality of the new Parliament’s 325 seats. But it is unlikely to be anywhere near a majority.

[Surferbeetle]

Liz Sly, at the LA Times, Maliki's hold on power uncertain, 2 March 2010

The unified Shiite bloc that swept the vote in the last election has split into two camps: Maliki's State of Law coalition, which has attempted to portray itself as nonsectarian, and the more religiously inclined Iraqi National Alliance.

The Iraqiya bloc headed by secular Shiite Iyad Allawi, who was the U.S.'s choice to lead the first postoccupation Iraqi government, is the favorite to pick up the Sunni Arab and secularist vote, but it will face competition from the Sunni religious Iraqi Accordance and the Iraq Unity Alliance, a new coalition headed by Shiite Interior Minister Jawad Bolani and Sunni Awakening leader Ahmed abu Risha. Even the main Kurdish Alliance that emerged as the kingmaker in the last parliament is confronting a challenge from the breakaway Kurdish Goran, or Change Party.

Perhaps the only issue on which these disparate groups agree is their desire to replace Maliki as prime minister, said Mowaffak Rubaie, Maliki's former national security advisor who is running as a candidate with the rival Shiite alliance.

"Anti-Maliki-ism will unite us," he said of the various parties, all likely to win seats. "There is a lot of strong opposition to Maliki personally."

"He's paranoid about plots and it's not a delusion, because everyone is trying to get rid of him," said a Western diplomat in Baghdad who spoke on condition of anonymity. "It contributes to an atmosphere where you don't trust others and therefore it's hard to build relationships of trust."

If not Maliki, then who? That's something no one seems prepared to predict. Potential candidates include Adel Abdul Mehdi, a longtime American favorite from the Shiite alliance; former Prime Minister Allawi; and even perhaps Ahmad Chalabi, the mercurial onetime Pentagon protege who hopes to emerge as a compromise candidate.

Given the fierce political rivalries, it is possible the factions will settle on a complete unknown -- in the same way Maliki was plucked from relative obscurity to head the last government after the chosen Shiite nominee from his party, former Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafari, was essentially vetoed by the Kurds and U.S.

Steven Lee Myers, at the NYT, Iraq’s Top Cleric Refuses to Influence Elections, 2 March 2010

In Najaf, the world’s most venerable seat of Shiite scholarship, clerics say Ayatollah Sistani, a pivotal figure ever since the American overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003, hopes to create for Iraq a model that is starkly different from the clerical rule that has governed Iran, which also has a Shiite majority.

The “quietist” Najaf school of Shiite thought, with Ayatollah Sistani in the lead, has long insisted that clerics play no direct role in government, and its proponents have opposed Iran’s model out of fear it could tar clerical authority and prestige.

If this approach outlasts him, which is not a given, since he is 79 and said to be ill, the impact on Iraq could be profound.

Some in Iraq view Ayatollah Sistani’s stance skeptically, arguing that he remains by definition a sectarian figure, concerned above all with ensuring Shiite political control. But by not insisting on a unified Shiite coalition, he has given Sunni parties the opportunity to compete.

“The supreme religious authority does not endorse any of the parties standing in the elections and maintains that voters should choose those lists that best serve Iraq’s current and future interests and that are most capable of bringing the people the stability and development they desire so much,” he said when the campaign began.

[Surferbeetle]

Marisa Cochrane Sullivan and James Danly at the Institute For The
Study of War,
Iraq on the eve of elections

This backgrounder provides an update on the political landscape in Iraq on the eve of parliamentary elections. The paper begins with a brief overview of the electoral process. The second part of the backgrounder documents the Shi’a, Sunni, and Kurdish political landscapes. This paper concludes with some considerations on the post-election period of government formation.

Roughly 18.9 million Iraqis are registered to vote in the upcoming election, at more than 10,000 polling centers across the country.8 Each polling center comprises one or more polling stations, of which there are more than 50,000 in total.9 More than 300,000 domestic election observers and observers from various political parties will monitor the election; in addition, eight diplomatic missions and international organizations have been asked to participate as international election monitors.10 Security for the polling sites will be provided by the Iraqi Security Forces, with some planning assistance and enablers provided by U.S. forces.11

In all, 6,172 candidates are vying for 325 seats in the Council of Representatives.12 310 seats are allocated into eighteen electoral constituencies, with each province considered one constituency.13 Eight of the remaining seats are reserved for minorities, including five for Christians, and seven of the remaining seats are compensatory seats that “are awarded to winning lists in proportion to the governorate seats they won in the country as a whole.”14 Candidates are registered to run in a specific province, and voters may only cast a ballot in their home province. Ballots from out-of-country voters are tallied in their home province. The 2009 electoral law stipulates an open list arrangement, allowing voters to select an individual candidate from a political party or a political party itself. Seats are awarded to the candidates with the highest number of votes.15 Once the results are certified and the winning candidates are seated in the Council of Representatives, the alliance-making continues in earnest as political parties vie for key concessions from one another in the distribution of ministerial appointments. This process of government formation will be discussed in greater detail at the end of this paper.

[Surferbeetle]

Mosul Vilayet

Wilayah

Governates of Iraq

Institute for the Study of War, March 17th, 2010, Fact Sheet: Iraq's Preliminary Elections Results

Ninevah: 31 seats available, 17 seats to Iraqiyyah, 6 seats to the Kurdistan Alliance

Baghdad: 68 seats available, 24-25 seats to State of Law, 21-22 seats to Iraqiyyah

Basrah: 24 seats available, 12-13 seats to State of Law, 7 seats to the INA

Dr Reidar Visser, 17 March 2010, The Internal Dynamics of the Iraqi National Alliance: The Sadrist Factor

Back in 2005, it was often an uphill struggle to argue that the influence of ISCI (then SCIRI) within the grand Shiite coalition known as the United Iraqi Alliance (UIA) was generally exaggerated. Only after the local elections in January 2009 was the gradual weakening of ISCI acknowledged more widely, even if that trend in reality had been in the making for many years.

Today, the partial results of the parliamentary elections indicate that the open-list system – whereby voters may override the backroom dealing and wheeling of the party cadres – has contributed to a further marginalisation of ISCI within the reconstituted Shiite alliance known as the Iraqi National Alliance (INA). Based on a prognosis of 67 INA seats, the results so far clearly indicate a Sadrist lead with 34 or more than half of the seats. Given the increasingly critical condition of ISCI with an obvious leadership vacuum after the death of Abd al-Aziz al-Hakim, it now makes sense to distinguish between the former militia (Badr) and the political wing (ISCI), especially since it seems Badr has a certain core electorate in some southern provinces. They get around 8 seats each, which is less than half of what the Sadrists get even if Badr and ISCI are counted together. The women’s quota will interfere with the final count: It does seem that the Sadrists have made a point of including a substantial number of female candidates on their lists, but in practice the women’s quota in this game will sometimes serve to strengthen the default ordering of the party elites against the wishes of the electorate. It is difficult to predict exactly what effect this will have, not least since some lists have fewer women on them than they should have had.

[Surferbeetle]

Rachel Schneller at Jamestown Foundation, February 26, 2010, No Place Like Home: Iraq’s Refugee Crisis Threatens the Future of Iraq

Demographic Warfare

The dynamic of Iraqi IDPs and refugees since 2006 has altered the demographic fabric of Iraq. The country in 2010 looks vastly different than it did before the Coalition invasion and the Samarra mosque bombing. Previously mixed Shi’a-Sunni neighborhoods are now almost entirely homogenous. Northern territories which used to house Kurds, Arabs, Turkomen, and other ethnicities are now less diverse, with Kurds claiming more area for the independent Kurdish region through tactics intended to chase away minorities.

One result may be greater regional stability, as ethnically homogenous populations more readily agree on social and political goals. Regional stability, however, will come at the cost of decreased national stability and greater fragility in relations between Iraq and its neighbors.

A homogenous Kurdish area will have less incentive to engage with Arabic-speaking areas of Iraq. A homogenous Shi’a region will have little incentive to listen to Sunni concerns, let alone make concessions to them. Ten years ago, many areas of Iraq were home to mixed populations of Kurds, Shi’a and Sunni who made the necessary political compromises to co-exist peacefully. The population displacement that has occurred in Iraq, however, has exacerbated sectarian and ethnic tensions and greatly decreased incentives for negotiation and compromise.

As demographically homogenous regions become stronger and more unified in their aspirations, the central government will become less capable of unifying the nation. Already, provincial governments have become more capable at exacting monetary tribute from the weak national government. In 2009, Baghdad bowed to Basra and the Kurdish Regional Government, according them one dollar per barrel of oil produced or refined. For each religious visitor, Najaf will receive a fee from the national government. National unity achieved through buying off provincial governments is tenuous, dependent on unstable oil prices in Iraq and a government struggling with corruption and inefficiency.

A national Iraqi census envisioned for late 2010 will reveal the extent to which the country has become divided (Aswat al-Iraq, August 31, 2009). This census is likely to be controversial, fraught with implementation challenges and marking a new phase of instability in Iraq. Determining the status of disputed territories such as Kirkuk will be linked to completing a census, which will reveal the demographic make-up of these highly sensitive areas. National elections slated for March 7 will also expose the extent to which Iraq has changed demographically since the 2005 elections, likely triggering further sectarian violence.

Aswat al-Iraq website, and description

Al Sabah

MEMRI (Middle East Research Institute) website, and description