08/10/07 – Molly Hennessy-Fiske – The Scott Horton Show

Alright, my friends, welcome back to Anti-War Radio.
I'm Scott Horton.
This is Chaos Radio 95.9 FM in Austin, Texas.
And our next guest today is Molly Hennessey Fisk.
She's a reporter for the Los Angeles Times and she's in Iraq right now.
Welcome to the show, Molly.
Are you there?
How are you?
Oh, good.
There she is.
I'm doing great.
Where in Iraq are you?
I am in Baghdad at this moment.
You're in Baghdad right now.
Okay.
That's right.
I'm looking out at the city, at the city lights.
They'd have a performance.
There are city lights in Iraq?
Is that right?
In Baghdad?
Oh, yeah.
There's a lot of the city is functioning.
There's businesses and there's, you know, people living in their homes.
You can see, you know, we're under a curse right now until tomorrow morning.
There aren't a lot of cars around.
Normally there'd be, you know, taxis driving around and people driving home.
Okay.
Well, thanks to the Democrats, the National Security Agency will have a backup recording of this interview in case my computer craps out.
I'm really happy for that.
Is it right that troop levels now in Iraq are at an all time high, 160 something thousand?
That's right.
It's a function of the surge that's been underway since February.
And you definitely feel it here.
I was just out a forward operating base here in Baghdad earlier today.
And there's a lot more troops out on the streets and they're also stationed in these areas called joint stations out in the neighborhoods and then even smaller combat stations.
So you have seen a real shift in tactics then with the more troops on the scene?
I think it's still open to debate whether they're actually getting out and patrolling more, but they're certainly out stationed in the neighborhoods, a lot sort of closer to the people.
And I've been out on some patrols in West Baghdad neighborhoods like Amaria and Qadamiya just yesterday.
They have a major religious, Shiite Muslim religious celebration going on in the West Baghdad neighborhood of Qadamiya where there's a big shrine and some troops were out talking to people, talking to the police officers there and there were hundreds of people in the streets and they were able to just walk among the people and like I said, talk to people.
So that's a definite sort of change in the atmosphere.
Well, it seems like from what I've been reading in the papers and even particularly your articles for the Los Angeles Times, it seems like the security situation is getting better in some ways, but it seems like all the progress is away from what is claimed to be the ultimate goal, which is to bring the different factions together under the Maliki government.
Your article, I guess from almost a week ago now, aided by US militants, widen reach.
Basically the story there is that America has befriended the former dead ender Sunni insurgency and is using them against Al Qaeda, but at the same time, what they're doing basically is arming and financing and strengthening the Sunni insurgency that still has no intention of submitting to the power of the central government in Baghdad.
Well, I guess a lot of it, like I mentioned in that article, a lot of it comes down to a counter-insurgency theory and that a lot of the commanders here have gone to West Point, are very well educated and schooled in this counter-insurgency theory and are trying to do something new and say, why don't we instead of continuing to be our heads against the wall and fight these people, co-opt some of them and get them into the police department because in neighborhoods like Amaria, the neighborhood I wrote about that's in West Baghdad, that is mostly Sunni, Sunni Muslims, you don't have a police force because the police are seen as mostly Shiite outsiders.
So if you co-opt these people, the theory is, you know, these Sunni militants, then they can become the police.
They'll be accepted by the local people and they can keep the area safe from other militants who are from outside of the area, maybe even outside of Iraq.
So that's the theory that they're trying to sort of test out on the streets.
And like you said, the question is whether that's going to lead to army militants who then turn on U.S. forces.
We haven't seen that.
You haven't seen people with ammunition that they got from U.S. forces shooting soldiers.
We haven't seen that.
And there's also questions about the militia influence within the Iraqi police and military.
That's Shiite Muslim militias.
Are they joining the police or are they still just acting as their own private militias?
Well, it depends on which area you're talking about.
There are some areas in West Baghdad where they are sort of supervising police checkpoints, kind of being a backup to the police.
And then out and out of grades, the U.S. commanders have started sort of an auxiliary police school.
It's a $40 training course that they're sort of signing up for.
And in all of these areas where these militants partner with U.S. forces, partnering means that they have to submit fingerprints, their names, identifying information.
So at the least, U.S. forces know who they are.
So it's more information than they had before.
And in some cases, what they call biometric information, so retina scans and even more specific identifying information.
So U.S. forces do gain through the relationship, even just on a basic level.
Well, now, you quoted in your article last week, this guy from, I believe you said the group was named the Revolutionaries of Amaria.
And he said...
That's right, SAFE.
I'm sorry?
SAFE, the leader of the Revolutions, yeah.
And now he said, we are going to fight the Shiite militias.
We have no intention of joining this government.
He said, we have revenge issues, we Iraqis.
Right.
I think what he had said was there's portions of this group who are going to become police, but he wants them to move on to other neighborhoods, to be policing other neighborhoods as well.
And that's sort of a point of tension between these groups and the U.S. forces that I talked to, is the U.S. forces would like to see them confined to particular neighborhoods, whereas the leaders see them growing and spreading their reach.
So in the coming weeks, that's going to have to get decided.
There's a push and pull going on, and it may turn out that U.S. forces get divided.
There's too much push, and they're not going to continue with this plan, or they may be more flexible.
And now, we saw in the news yesterday a big push into Sadr City.
From Austin, Texas, the way it looks is as though the American military, the policy out of Washington, D.C., is to accuse Muqtada al-Sadr's group of being the Iran factions and fighting them, when in fact we're fighting them on behalf of the Iran factions of the Dawah party and the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution.
Is that right?
Well, I think it's complicated.
It's complicated by what's been going on in the national government.
I mean, you brought the thought to boycotting the government at this point.
And when you're talking about sort of the Iranian factions, it's difficult to tell what exactly is Iran's involvement in the politics at this point.
You've got three-way talks going on between the U.S., Iran, and Iraq.
We just saw the second round of talks here and a security committee's meeting.
So, I think we have seen more, certainly more raids going on in the area with ones off limits.
But it's still not clear how much power these different factions wield and how active Muqtada al-Sadr still is.
Let me ask you this.
When you're at the press briefings, does everybody laugh at Michael R. Gordon?
You know, to tell the truth, I don't know what he looks like.
I have not yet to meet him.
I know I've been places where he's been before, and people say, you know, oh, you just talked to the same person we talked to.
Or, oh, I know him.
Yeah, I've never met him.
Because it seems to me, and I don't mean to overstate this, it seems to me that his reporting is part of a criminal conspiracy to frame Iran for America's troubles in Iraq and that everything in his articles are lies and he knows they're lies.
For example, he keeps saying over and over again on the front page of the New York Times that Iran is and must be responsible for all the new and improved EFP landmines, even though it was reported in Reuters and in the Christian Science Monitor back in April at least once that during Operation Black Eagle, they found an EFP factory there in Diwania just 100 miles south of Baghdad.
Well, I did see the article that you're talking about that just ran, and, you know, again, it's difficult to tell what the origins of these things are.
I mean, you've got, you know, just a couple weeks ago, we had stories about Iran sending, you know, heads of little fighters into a office to train fighters, you know, by proxy.
Right, that was Michael Gordon again.
It seems like the landscape is changing and, again, I have to come back to the talks, the three-way talks that are going on.
That seems to be the only real sort of concrete negotiation where you can actually clear what the Iranian side is directly.
And in terms of the volume of the EFPs in here, I mean, like I said earlier, I was down in Potomac this morning in West Side where they've had increased problems with EFPs and they've been sort of scouting out whether they think EFPs are going to be in, and I don't know, maybe that's part of where this is coming from.
When you're actually out on the road, it makes you extremely paranoid, you know, just the possibility of them being out there and the lethality of them versus even just roadside bombs or IEDs.
So, you know, I haven't kept track of the specifics of the incidents, but I certainly know anecdotally that there are more of them out there and that, you know, in all the U.S. press conferences they've been talking about, in particular, in general.
They've been talking about Iran's involvement in sending over more lethal EFPs, and that is certainly a major part of the three-way talks is a lot of leaders saying they want to see more evidence from Iran that they are not sending these things in or sending fighters in to train people and not make them.
Well, pardon me if this reminds me of the...
That's not just outsiders saying that.
That's Iraqis saying that.
Uh-huh.
Well, I mean, that sounds like the run-up to the war against Iraq in the first place is they have to prove a negative.
They have to prove what they're not doing.
And yet all the accusations are based on assertions from the American government, no real evidence given yet, just assertions that Iran must be supplying the EFPs when it is a fact that a factory that makes EFPs, at least one, has been busted open by American soldiers in Iraq.
So the idea that they must be foreign-made just does not hold any credibility.
Well, you know, I'm not a voice expert, so I couldn't tell you the nature of the voice, but I mean, if what you're implying is that U.S. troops are planning these things, I can tell you from my experience they are not.
I've never seen anyone planning them.
What I said is a fear, a deep-seated fear among many troops that they're going to end up on the receiving end of one of these things and a lot more quashfulness on the roadways and concern about them.
Well, look, I wasn't saying that American soldiers are planning the land mines and blowing themselves up.
What I'm saying is they're being manufactured in Iraq and planted by Iraqis.
And there's still no evidence that they're coming from Iran, and yet there is evidence that they are being made in Iraq.
And yet the newspapers keep saying and TV keeps saying, well, these bombs are said to come from Iran.
Well, I say they don't.
I say I read it in the Christian Science Monitor that they found a factory that made them in the Diwania province, which means that there's at least a very good likelihood that a great many of these bombs are being made and used domestically.
And, in fact, we know they're being used mostly by breakoffs of the Mahdi army, not the Iran factions.
I get part of this, what is your definition of made, because I think in that instance the evidence that you're talking about was that there were parts that had come from Iran that were clearly expected that are manufactured in Iran.
This is according to the military, Akwad-e-In and then assembled in Iraq.
So, I mean, you know, similar arguments are made about al-Qaeda in Iraq.
You know, is al-Qaeda in Iraq really an al-Qaeda affiliate or is it an independent group?
And we try to be very careful about how we refer to al-Qaeda in Iraq and not assuming that all of the members are directly linked to al-Qaeda.
Just to say that members of the Mahdi army, you know, we're seeing, they're seeing the civil engineering of the Mahdi army and they've got what they call rogue elements of the Mahdi army out there who may or may not actually be affiliated with Masada's father.
You know, the leader who you were talking about earlier.
And so when you have the U.S. military saying, well, we're battling this sort of mafia element of Qesh al-Mahdi, the Mahdi army, you know, that's what's going on.
So, I don't know, I guess I feel like the argument about whether they're being made by Iranian-associated fighters here or they're actually being made in Iran is kind of somewhat besides the point.
Well, but the reason it's not...
The question that they seem to be trying to address and talk and then through, you know, negotiation among the national leaders is how do we get these, you know, they started appearing here, you know, at a certain point in time and we're seeing a greater concentration of them.
So obviously, you know, they're getting pointed out on the road more often by somebody.
And so how do we stop that from happening, you know?
Right.
Well, but, I mean, that's why it matters, though, is the responsibility is being put on Iran to stop it from happening.
And, you know, maybe I'm wrong about this.
Maybe there are, you know, factions of Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi army that are in fact backed by Iran.
But at least overall, we know that the factions that are the Iranian loyal factions are, is basically the Badr Brigade, the army of the official government.
And Muqtada al-Sadr is opposed to them because he's not the Iran faction.
He's a nationalist.
So to blame Iran for violence committed by Sadr's group is, you know, it seems to me just a bunch of propaganda against Iran.
Well, I haven't seen, personally, I haven't seen any evidence that this is an internal, you know, Iraqi squabble being worked out by planning, you know, EFTs.
And I also haven't seen a lot of reports of the Iranians saying, oh, this is all not us.
This is all Iraqi militia groups.
But I've seen them saying, you know, please, this is not the place of the U.S.
I'm telling you what to do.
The U.S. should not be involved.
The U.S. should not be intervening.
So, yeah, I guess I would look at what Iran's reaction has been and what they've been saying in these talks, which seems to be that the U.S. should be apologizing and I'm trying to think of the wording at the last round of talks, but I think sort of they were saying the U.S. should be humbling itself and that they weren't going to make any concessions in terms of the security situation.
So it's difficult, I guess I'm just saying it's difficult to tell when the Iranians are not saying we are or we aren't.
They're just saying we're going to do what we want to do to secure our border and to protect ourselves.
Let me ask you about this.
You wrote that Ayad Alawi and his group of four others, I guess, left the Maliki government's cabinet last week.
Can you tell us about that?
Right.
The Iraqi is right.
There are four ministers in the national government.
Well, they're boycotting.
And there were just six Sunnis the week before, right, that left?
Correct.
That's the Tawafik block, the Sunni block.
And so what does this portend?
I mean, what's the interpretation on the ground in Iraq?
I mean, it seems like the government there controls less and less territory and has less and less backing from within the country.
Yeah, although, you know, it is somewhat surreal because while some of that was still going on, just before the August recess, parliament was still meeting and still considering for the regular business.
And you don't see a revolt among people.
You don't see people saying this government is a joke, you know, we don't take this seriously.
You see people sort of arguing about the politics and saying, well, should they have done this or shouldn't they and are they going to come back or aren't they?
And, you know, Maliki's aides have told us that he intends to appoint people to replace the six Tawafik and national court ministers who withdrew.
And it's not clear what's going to happen to the slots of the other four ministers, although they're just boycotting.
So they're still actually going through their ministries and running their ministries.
They're just boycotting the national government meetings, sort of the cabinet meetings.
So I don't think, you know, while it does seem like Maliki's in a really good position, the government itself is not, you know, crumbling.
They're still meeting.
They have a leadership summit coming up where they may be able to hash out some of this legislation that Washington is looking for, benchmark legislation on the oil law, presidential elections, constitutional amendments.
So since a lot of the sort of power business of government gets done by these leaders of the political blocs and the prime minister and the president, the deputy, the vice presidents, we could see some sort of agreement emerge among them and a new sort of surge in leadership just in time for the September report to Congress.
That's not totally impossible, but it wouldn't be coming out of parliament.
Okay.
Well, Molly, I'm sorry.
We're over time, in fact, and I have to go ahead and cut it short.
I'm sorry we didn't get to have a more in-depth interview here, but I really appreciate your time today, everybody.
Molly Hennessy Fisk from the Los Angeles Times.
I just wanted to note my mother lives in San Antonio, so thank you.
Oh, well, I hope she got the ticket.