al-Maliki's New Coalition

Under intense pressure to get the Bush-backed Iraqi oil law passed, al-Maliki has formed a new alliance with "moderate Shiites and Kurds", basically leaving the Sunnis out in the cold.

At the news conference announcing the accord, al-Maliki was flanked by President Jalal Talabani, the leader of the northern autonomous Kurdish region, elder statesman Massoud Barzani and Shiite Vice President Adel Abdul-Mahdi.

The four men signed a three-page agreement they said ensures them a majority in the 275-member parliament that would allow action on legislation demanded by the U.S.
[...]
Their parties the Shiite Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council and Dawa and the Kurdish Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and Democratic Party of Kurdistan hold a total of 181 seats.

Al-Maliki called on the Sunni Accordance Front, which is the largest Sunni bloc with 44 seats and includes al-Hashemi's party, to return to the government and heal a rift that opened when the bloc's five Cabinet ministers quit the government.

The four-party agreement was unveiled four weeks before the top U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, and U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker are to deliver a progress report on Iraq to Congress.

Thus the timing. How convenient - but not for the Sunnis, some of whom called for referendum on the law last month.

Reacting to the news, the head of Iraq's Islamic Party had this to say:

...leader of the party, Sunni Vice-President Tariq Hashemi, told the BBC that the current political situation was "not conducive to creating new political blocs".

"There are many differences over how to manage the security situation and deal with those in power committing flagrant human rights violations. They can't be deemed moderates," he said.

"The government's performance vis-a-vis human rights must be improved."

On the Washington front, it is expected that Petraeus' September surge report will show "a mixed picture" concerning the political developments. This move by al Maliki will definitely be touted as a major accomplishment by the Bush administration despite the blow to the Sunnis.

Meanwhile, Petraeus will apparently report troop redployments (not reductions) in furtherance of his his whack-a-mole counterinsurgency strategy and, as the Washington Post reported on Thursday, the Bush administration seems to be attempting to shield Petraeus from testifying publicly about his report in September, voicing preferences to send Condi and Gates to do the heavy lifting spin-doctoring instead.

Petraeus and Crocker have said repeatedly that they plan to testify after delivering private assessments to Bush. U.S. military and diplomatic officials in Baghdad appeared puzzled yesterday when told that the White House had indicated that the two may not be appearing in public.

They should know by now that Commander Guy™ will do whatever he needs to to cover up his failures.

All of this is, of course, occurring against the back drop of the horrendous suicide bombings of Iraqi Yazidis in northern Iraq on Wednesday. That death toll is slowly creeping up with the number of dead now being reported as totaling anywhere from 300 - 500 which, as Time magazine notes in its article The Surge's Short Shelf Life, would make it "the deadliest terrorist operation in the country since the fall of Saddam Hussein."

Hardly a sign of progress but I imagine both parties, the Republicans and Democrats will simply push the "let's just wait a bit more before we do anything" mantra in September, citing whatever "successes" they can eek out of Petraeus' report while Iraqis and coalition soldiers continue to die and al-Maliki further marginalizes the Sunni population while the entire country still exists in a nightmarish shambles.
 

al-Maliki: US Troops Can Leave 'any time they want'

Oh, the audacity! (cough, cough) What does he think he is? The ruler of a sovereign country or something?

Al-Maliki said his government needs "time and effort" to enact the political reforms that Washington seeks — "particularly since the political process is facing security, economic and services pressures, as well as regional and international interference."

But he said if necessary, Iraqi police and soldiers could fill the void left by the departure of coalition forces.

"We say in full confidence that we are able, God willing, to take the responsibility completely in running the security file if the international forces withdraw at any time they want," he said.

One of al-Maliki's close advisers, Shiite lawmaker Hassan al-Suneid, bristled over the American pressure, telling The Associated Press that "the situation looks as if it is an experiment in an American laboratory (judging) whether we succeed or fail."

He sharply criticized the U.S. military, saying it was committing human rights violations and embarrassing the Iraqi government through such tactics as building a wall around Baghdad's Sunni neighborhood of Azamiyah and launching repeated raids on suspected Shiite militiamen in the capital's slum of Sadr City.

He also criticized U.S. overtures to Sunni groups in Anbar and Diyala provinces, encouraging former insurgents to join the fight against al-Qaida in Iraq. "These are gangs of killers," he said.*

In addition, he said that al-Maliki has problems with the top U.S. commander, Gen. David Petraeus, who he said works along a "purely American vision."

"There are disagreements that the strategy that Petraeus is following might succeed in confronting al-Qaida in the early period but it will leave Iraq an armed nation, an armed society and militias," al-Suneid said.

(* I wrote about that situation earlier this week in ' Outsourcing Executions of al Qaeda in Iraq'.)

Now, while this open defiance is most likely just posing by al-Maliki, who felt he needed to respond to the 'unsatisfactory' benchmarks cited in the latest report, at least the criticism by al-Suneid appears to be brutally honest.

One last thing regarding this issue:

In August, the parliament is taking a one-month vacation — a shorter break than the usual two months, but still enough to anger some in Congress who say lawmakers should push through reforms while American soldiers are dying.

First of all, members of the US congress have absolutely no qualms about taking their vacations while American soldiers are dying. Secondly, Americans are not the only troops serving in that country. What about the "coalition of the [dwindling] willing"? Or don't their troops matter as well? And beyond that, every time I've seen some American talking head or politician comment about the Iraqi parliament's summer break, no one ever mentions that Iraqi soldiers are dying as well - not to mention the hundreds of thousands of dead civilians as well. So, I find that entire line of criticism to be hugely egocentric, but it just follows along the same attitude as the "those ungrateful Iraqis" line that is brought up by Republicans and Democrats alike. If they had a clue, maybe they'd remember that the Iraq invasion was illegal and that nobody, besides that lying crook Ahmed Chalabi, asked for the Americans' help in the first place.

As for al-Maliki trying to assure those who favour troop withdrawals ASAP, he knows that as long as Bush is around that isn't going to happen. If he truly believes Iraq is ready to go it alone (which it never actually will since US troops are poised to be there for years as "support" for the government), he should put his money where his mouth is and just kick them out. He'd even win back al Sadr's support if he made such a move and that would definitely bring progress on the political and insurgency front. But al -Maliki will not be allowed to do that as long as his government has not passed the oil law in order to appease Bush and his war-profiteering buddies. Forget about the September "progress report". The turning point in this war will begin the day that oil law is passed since that's all this war has been about since day one.
 

Will al-Maliki be brought down by a no confidence vote?

So, you've got Moqtada al-Sadr vowing to block the draft Iraq oil law, with al-Maliki trying to fight back by claiming Baathists have infiltrated al-Sadr's movement with "talks in recent weeks about forming a Shiite-Kurdish coalition that would sideline al-Sadr's movement" but now CBS is reporting that al-Maliki may be facing an upcoming no-confidence vote led by Sunni politicians.

CBS News has learned that on July 15, they plan to ask for a no-confidence vote in the Iraqi parliament as the first step to bringing down the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

Even those closest to the Iraqi prime minister, from his own party, admit the political situation is desperate.

"I feel there is no strategy, so the people become hopeless," said Faliy al Fayadh, an MP from the Dawa Party. "You can live without petrol, without electricity, but you can't live without hope."

Iraq's prime minister is facing his most serious challenge yet. The no-confidence vote will be requested by the largest block of Sunni politicians, who are part of a broad political alliance called the Iraq Project. What they want is a new government run by ministers who are appointed for their expertise, not their party loyalty.

The Iraq Project is known to the highest levels of the U.S. government. CBS News has learned it was discussed in detail on Vice President Dick Cheney's most recent visit to Baghdad, when he met with the Iraqi Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi.
[...]
Leaders of the Iraq Project claim they have the necessary votes to force al-Maliki to resign, but that has yet to be tested in parliament. For now, the U.S. is still standing by the Iraqi leader – publicly at least.

It's no surprise that the Bush administration would try to throw al-Maliki off the bus since he cannot guarantee passage of the oil law - the raison d'etre for this war. The question remains then: who will Bushco Cheney install as a replacement for al-Maliki? And how will Iraq's Shiites react if a Sunni leader is chosen? And how will that help with getting the oil law passed since Azzaman reports, "Sunni Scholars have issued a decree branding anyone accepting the law a traitor and Sunni members of parliament, who have already boycotted its sessions, have vowed to resist the law." Via Reuters we learn that a Sunni lawmaker resigned his post on the energy panel on Saturday in opposition to the draft oil law.

Since Bushco has been planning al-Maliki's ouster for months, as LA Times reporter Paul Richter reported in May, this farce about bringing democracy to Iraq can obviously be put to rest now.

WASHINGTON — As Iraq's government compiles a record of failure, the Bush administration is under growing pressure to intervene to rearrange Baghdad's dysfunctional political order, or even install a new leadership.

Publicly, administration officials say they remain committed to Prime Minister Nouri Maliki, even though after a year in office, his elected government has failed to complete any important steps toward political reconciliation — the legislative "benchmarks" sought by U.S. officials.

But privately, some U.S. officials acknowledge that the congressional clamor to find another approach will increase sharply in coming months if no progress is made toward tamping down sectarian violence, bringing more minority Sunnis into the government and fairly dividing up the nation's oil resources.

Intervention "is the eternal temptation for the Americans," said one U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity when discussing internal deliberations. "As we get closer and closer to the fall, and the benchmarks are not met … there will be a growing appeal to the idea that if we can replace the top guy, we can get back on track."

Although U.S. officials vow not to meddle in the government they helped to create, they have brought their influence to bear again and again, including in Maliki's selection as prime minister in early 2006. In January of this year, top U.S. officials considered, and narrowly rejected, a proposal to try to reorganize the fractious political order around a new moderate coalition.
[...]
Americans could spur change through a multitude of diplomatic channels and could use their influence with other Iraqi groups and leaders to shake up the political order in Baghdad. For instance, Washington could encourage a parliamentary no-confidence vote on Maliki, then quietly work a new coalition to choose a leader to its liking, analysts said.
[...]
The Bush administration could quietly apply its influence in choosing a new prime minister if Maliki's government fell as the result of a no-confidence vote. Under parliamentary rules, only 50 lawmakers are needed to call such a vote. The government falls if it does not win support from half of the 275 members of the body.

All of those purple fingers were just a mirage.

And, in the meantime, "senior administration officials" (WH leakers throwing out trial balloons to gauge the public's reaction) have told the WaPo that Bushco is lowering expectations for what can actually be accomplished in Iraq this year - contradicting its loudmouth blabbering about imposed benchmarks expected of Iraq's government as well as the US military and its whack-a-mole surge - in an attempt to stop more Republican rats from abandoning ship. "Shaving yardsticks", it's called. I call it "refusing to admit defeat".

The blame game goes on and on:

According to several senior officials who agreed to discuss the situation in Iraq only on the condition of anonymity, the political goals that seemed achievable earlier this year remain hostage to the security situation. If the extreme violence were to decline, Iraq's political paralysis might eventually subside. "If they are arguing, accusing, gridlocking," one official said, "none of that would mean the country is falling apart if it was against the backdrop of a stabilizing security situation."

From a military perspective, however, the political stalemate is hampering security. "The security progress we're making is real," said a senior military intelligence official in Baghdad. "But it's only in part of the country, and there's not enough political progress to get us over the line in September."

Here's the new meme now:

In their September report, sources said, Petraeus and Crocker intend to emphasize how security and politics are intertwined, and how progress in either will be incremental. In that context, the administration will offer new measures of progress to justify continuing the war effort.

"There are things going on that we never could have foreseen," said one official, who argued that the original benchmarks set by Bush six months ago -- and endorsed by the Maliki government -- are not only unachievable in the short term but also irrelevant to changing the conditions in Iraq.

Bang your head against the wall. I'll wait.

Top administration officials are aware that the strategy's stated goal -- using U.S. forces to create breathing space for Iraqi political reconciliation -- will not be met by September, said one person fresh from a White House meeting. But though some, including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, have indicated flexibility toward other options, including early troop redeployments, Bush has made no decisions on a possible new course.

And that's news because...? Someone honestly expects Mr Stay The Course to do something "new"? How naive.

This administration only has a few choice cards up its sleeve and after having power for 6 years, it's used all of them - every single one of them jokers. So, what do you do after you've so mismanaged your illegal war of choice, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people? One thing: make sure your oil buddies abscond with as much profiteering as they can from a country you've turned into a living nightmare while going off to write your memoir about how misunderstood you were.
 

Yes, things can get worse in Iraq...

And they are...

Via the AP:

BAGHDAD - Cars, minibuses and roadside bombs exploded in Shiite Muslim enclaves across the city Sunday, killing at least 45 people in sectarian violence that defied the Baghdad security crackdown, while a radical anti-U.S. cleric raised a new threat to Iraq's government.

Two officials close to Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr said his followers would quit their six Cabinet posts Monday — a move that could leave Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's already weak administration without enough support to stay in power.

And in a rare gesture of dissent from America's partners in Baghdad, dozens of Iraqi policemen demonstrated in front of their station, accusing U.S. troops of treating them like "animals" and "slaves."

The so-called "surge" isn't working, obviously. How long has a "political solution" been touted as being necessary in Iraq?

Just keep sending those troops in though...

The U.S. military command announced the combat deaths of three more Americans. Two British service members died when their helicopters crashed in midair north of Baghdad, and hours later a U.S. helicopter was hit by ground fire near Mosul but landed safely with no injuries.

Six powerful bombs, gunfire and artillery blasts enveloped Baghdad in a near-constant din that seemed a setback for the 9-week-old U.S.-Iraqi military campaign to pacify the capital.

Juan Cole has much more.
 

Two Very Disturbing War Stories

One from Afghanistan. The other from Iraq.

Afghanistan:

Thousands of angry demonstrators took to the streets in Afghanistan yesterday after US forces were involved in a panicked shooting which left 16 civilians dead and 23 injured.

Local people as well as a number of Afghan officials accused the American marines of opening fire indiscriminately following a suicide bomb attack on their convoy in Nangarhar province.

With protests continuing to grow, and the police coming under attack from stone- throwing crowds, the US military maintained that the casualties were the victims of a "complex ambush" in which gunmen had carried out a synchronised attack following the blast in which a marine was injured.

But Mohammad Khan Katawazi, the district chief of Shinwar district, where the deaths took place, insisted that they "treated every car and person along the highway as a potential attacker" as they attempted to speed away from the scene of the explosion.

Abdul Ghafour and Noor Agha Zwak, speaking on behalf of the Nangarhar police and government, and Zemeri Bashary, the Interior Ministry spokesman in Kabul, also claimed the deaths and injuries were due to American fire.

Iraq:

BAGHDAD, Monday, March 5 — Iraqi special forces and British troops stormed the offices of an Iraqi government intelligence agency in the southern city of Basra on Sunday, and British officials said they discovered about 30 prisoners, some showing signs of torture.
[...]
Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, a conservative Shiite, condemned the raid in Basra. He publicly said nothing about the evidence of torture.

“The prime minister has ordered an immediate investigation into the incident of breaking into the security compound in Basra and stressed the need to punish those who have carried out this illegal and irresponsible act,” said the full text of a statement issued late Sunday by his office.

It remained unclear why he sought to pursue the raiding force aggressively rather than the accusations of prisoner abuse. Efforts to reach officials in his office were unsuccessful.

The civilian deaths in Afghanistan will obviously be the subject of an investigation resulting in the usual conflicting reports.

The raid in Basra and al-Maliki's response to it however ought to be raising some serious red flags for those who have gushed about how cooperative and compliant he's been. This situation, coupled with his terse dismissal of an alleged rape perpetrated by Iraqi security officials in February, shows a man who is far too devoted to sectarian interests to be an effective leader of a country in grave turmoil at a time when bridges need to be built between the warring religious factions.

The discovery of prisoners in the Basra offices, which the British described as the headquarters of Iraq’s government intelligence agency, echoed other recent cases in which American or British forces stumbled onto a government-run detention center that held people showing signs of torture.

As recently as December, a combined force of British and Iraqi troops assaulted a police station in Basra and rescued 127 prisoners from fetid conditions. Some of the prisoners had been tortured.

The most significant recent case involved a secret Baghdad prison run by the Shiite-controlled Interior Ministry, known as Site 4 and discovered by American and Iraqi troops last year, where more than 1,400 prisoners were discovered and where some had been subjected to systematic abuse.

al-Maliki has promised a cabinet shuffle within the next couple of weeks in an attempt, he says, to root out corruption. That certainly remains to be seen, especially if he continues to come to the defence of forces that are torturing and raping people. I have a feeling he won't be around much longer - nor should he be - unless the US decides to continue to prop him up so they can get their oil deals sealed.

Related: Media Censorship by the US Military in Afghanistan following the suicide bombing.
 

Yes, it IS all about Iraq's oil

Alas, there you have it. The Guardian reports that the Iraqi government is under pressure from the US and UK to hand over oil contracts to multinational companies.

It's no longer just a rumour or conspiracy theory: the invasion of Iraq was all about the oil.

Iraqi trades unions have called for the country's oil reserves - the second-largest in the world - to be kept in public hands. But a leaked draft of the oil law, seen by The Observer, would see the government sign away the right to exploit its untapped fields in so-called exploration contracts, which could then be extended for more than 30 years.
[...]
Foreign Office minister Kim Howells has admitted that the government has discussed the wording of the Iraqi law with Britain's oil giants.

In a written answer to a parliamentary question, from Labour's Alan Simpson, Howells said: 'These exchanges have included discussion of Iraq's evolving hydrocarbons legislation where British international oil companies have valuable perspectives to offer based on their experience in other countries.' The talks had covered 'the range of contract types which Iraq is considering'.

It's colonialization and exploitation all over again.

The law, which is being discussed by the Iraqi cabinet before being put to the parliament, says the untapped oil would remain state-owned but that contracts would be drawn up giving private sector firms the exclusive right to extract it.

'There is this fine line, that the wording is seeking to draw, that allows companies to claim that the oil is still Iraqi oil, whereas the extraction rights belong to the oil companies,' says Kamil Mahdi, an Iraqi economist at Exeter University. He criticised the US and Britain, saying: 'The whole idea of the law is due to external pressure. The law is no protection against corruption, or against weakness of government. It's not a recipe for stability.'

And neither was the war to begin with.

This oil grab has been planned for a very long time.

...the need to dominate oil from Iraq is also deeply intertwined with the defense of the dollar. Its current strength is supported by OPEC's requirement (secured by a secret agreement between the US and Saudi Arabia) that all OPEC oil sales be denominated in dollars. This requirement is currently threatened by the desire of some OPEC countries to allow OPEC oil sales to be paid in euros.

The Internally Stated US Goal of Securing the Flow of Oil from the Middle East

As early as April 1997, a report from the James A. Baker Institute of Public Policy at Rice University addressed the problem of "energy security" for the United States, and noted that the US was increasingly threatened by oil shortages in the face of the inability of oil supplies to keep up with world demand. In particular the report addressed "The Threat of Iraq and Iran" to the free flow of oil out of the Middle East. It concluded that Saddam Hussein was still a threat to Middle Eastern security and still had the military capability to exercise force beyond Iraq's borders.

The Bush Administration returned to this theme as soon as it took office in 2001, by following the lead of a second report from the same Institute. <2> This Task Force Report was co-sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, another group historically concerned about US access to overseas oil resources. The Report represented a consensus of thinking among energy experts of both political parties, and was signed by Democrats as well as Republicans. <3>

The report, Strategic Energy Policy Challenges for the 21st Century, [.pdf file] concluded: "The United States remains a prisoner of its energy dilemma. Iraq remains a de-stabilizing influence to ... the flow of oil to international markets from the Middle East. Saddam Hussein has also demonstrated a willingness to threaten to use the oil weapon and to use his own export program to manipulate oil markets. Therefore the US should conduct an immediate policy review toward Iraq including military, energy, economic and political/ diplomatic assessments."

Yes, that's the same James Baker (R) of the Iraq Study Group, the recommendations of which were largely rejected by the Bush administration and which some viewed as simply providing damage control for Bush's disastrous policies - an offer he seems to have refused as he sticks with the more familiar course of militarism and threats.

War is good for business, especially those connected to Bush's inner circle. The longer the war rages on, the more money contractors like Halliburton soak up. However, there is also a need to provide increased security to Iraq's oil fields so the multinational oil companies can swoop in and grab their slice of the pie as well. Who is Bush's so-called surge supposed to benefit then? The Iraqi people or the energy companies?

When Cheney held his secretive energy task force meeting in early 2001, he had good reason to refuse to disclose the participants as it was later revealed in 2005 that Cheney was courting big oil. The wheels had been set in motion years before that to take control of the Middle East oil reserves. They already had the Saudis on side. Iraq and Iran were proving to be non-compliant and 9/11 gave the administration the excuse it needed to pump up the war sentiments towards Iraq.

The neocons and those who wanted this war may be disillusioned that it's taken this long to finally see their oil dreams come true but all they have to do now is to convince al-Maliki that it's in his government's best interests to play ball. He can easily be replaced if he doesn't cooperate and the Bush administration has a vested interest in making this deal happen before al-Maliki cozies up even more with Iran's government to form a Shi'ite bloc in the Middle East - which would defy more US intervention. The stakes are very high.

So here we are, five years later. Hundreds of thousands dead. A raging civil war. Two million displaced people. A humanitarian crisis. And for what? Just as many of us have said all along, "It's the oil, stupid".