Sorry, I'm late.
I had to stop by the wax museum again and give the finger to FDR We know Al-Qaeda, Zawahiri is supporting the opposition in Syria.
Are we supporting Al-Qaeda in Syria?
It's a proud day for America.
And by God, we've kicked Vietnam syndrome once and for all.
Thank you very very much.
I say it, I say it again, you've been had.
You've been took.
You've been hoodwinked.
These witnesses are trying to simply deny things that just about everybody else accepts as fact.
He came, he saw, he died.
We ain't killing their army, but we killing them.
We be on CNN like, say our name, say it, say it three times.
The meeting of the largest armies in the history of the world.
Then there's going to be an invasion.
All right, you guys, introducing Elijah Magnier.
He is the international war correspondent for Al-Rai.
And that is E-J-M-A-L-R-A-I on Twitter.
And you can find his own website at ejmagnier.com.
Welcome back to the show.
How are you doing, Elijah?
Hello, Scott.
Thank you for having me again.
Very happy to have you here.
Listen, important news, huge news out of Iraq and the results of the elections there.
Muqtada al-Sadr's group has come in first place so far, at least as far as I know.
But then it's a lot more complicated than that.
I mean, I guess virtually all of the first few places went to these different Shiite parties.
And now it's a question of who's going to be able to form the different alliances in order to pick a prime minister.
But so I guess, first of all, who is Muqtada al-Sadr backing?
He actually didn't run himself.
Right.
He's still just the kingmaker.
But so who does Sadr and his group support for prime minister?
Well, actually, Muqtada al-Sadr is not the kingmaker because the kingmaker is the one who managed to put all together the largest coalition of different groups and different forces.
For example, Muqtada with his 54 seats at the parliament, he had the largest number, but he's still a very long way to get 170, 180 seats.
Therefore, he needs to gather with him other coalition.
And yesterday he made a deal with Sayyid Ammar Hakim, who has 19 seats.
And he's talking to the prime minister, Haidar Abadi, and he is trying to attract other Sunni and Kurds group.
It doesn't mean he's going to manage because there is one very big problem here in Iraq is who is going to accept to be under the mercy of Muqtada al-Sadr.
That is the problem.
Well, and so explain that.
You're saying what?
He was troublesome as part of the United Iraqi Alliance before?
Well, Muqtada al-Sadr at the first beginning, he started to be a big, he was anti-U.S. personality in Iraq.
And he was the leader of Jaysh al-Mahdi who fought against the Americans, against the Iraqi government and against the Iraqi troops at the time when Ayad Allawi was a prime minister.
And then he formed with, he gave his lieutenants to form different groups like Assad, Ahl al-Haq, and other groups to fight, to continue fighting the Americans.
And when he wanted to recollect these groups and the assets these had, and they were supported by Iran, then they refused and they decided to go solo and split off Jaysh al-Mahdi and his group.
This is where the hate toward the Iranians started to build.
And Muqtada al-Sadr has a very controversial policy since the first beginning when he took over from his late father that was killed by Saddam Hussein.
And his policy was always ambiguous.
So, for example, he found refuge in Iran, but he's not pro-Iranian.
He hates Iran because Iran managed to divide his group into different other groups.
We're not talking about only Assad, Ahl al-Haq.
We're talking about Qatar, Imam Ali.
We're talking about Hezbollah Iraq.
We're talking about Harak al-Nujaba and other groups.
And they were all pro, were ex-Sadrists and ex-Jaysh al-Mahdi.
And also he is anti Nouriel Maliki, not because he's a nationalist and he likes his country, but because Nouriel Maliki is supporting the Hashd al-Shaabi, the Popular Mobilization Forces, who have many groups within them who are pro-Iranians.
Therefore, this is where he is anti-Iran and anti Nouriel Maliki.
But it doesn't mean he's also pro-Saudi.
But at the same time, two years ago, he went to the green zone where all the ministers are established and the embassy, including the U.S. embassy.
And he sent his people and they break into different ministries.
And he said it's only to pull the ear of the prime minister, Haider Abadi.
So can you imagine today the prime minister wanting to form a coalition with a person like this and other groups will want to join him, which I very much doubt he's going to make it.
But it's still too early to judge.
Well, now, so do the Iranians still hold their previous sway with Hakeem and the Supreme Islamic Council?
Well, Hakeem has 19 seats, and with 19 seats, he's going to sell himself on a very expensive platform because he knows that 19 seats can make a difference.
And Amiri is their candidate, right?
Sorry?
Amiri is Hakeem's candidate, right?
Or Hakeem is running separate himself, too.
Well, Hakeem is separate and he is not against joining Amiri or joining Muqtada, depending who's going to win.
So he's going to wait, I think, until he sees if it is possible to join Muqtada or not.
But the main problem is Muqtada is trying to attract Massoud Barzani, the leader of Kurdistan in Erbil, not in Sulaymaniyah.
And the problem is that Massoud Barzani doesn't have a problem with Muqtada Sadr.
But he has a problem with the prime minister, Hadir Amiri, sorry, Haider Abadi, because Haider Abadi took off Kirkuk and restricted the flights from Sulaymaniyah, from Erbil, controlled the Kurdish area.
And he has a grudge against the prime minister.
And Muqtada wants Haider Abadi to become a prime minister for a second term.
So we don't see these two men fitting well.
On the other hand, the Iraqis are known to settle their problems when their own interest comes first.
Therefore, it is not a major obstacle.
But I heard from Massoud Barzani entourage, they really prefer Maliki rather than Haider Abadi.
Because of the grudge over Kirkuk, which I guess, you know, makes sense.
So now, I guess, Hakeem, I'm interested in Amiri and Hakeem running.
They have separate parties now.
But I thought Amiri was the leader of the Bata Brigade that was really the army of the Supreme Islamic Council, which was the Hakeem family and their organization, right?
Yeah, that is correct.
That was correct several years ago when Majlis al-A'lab and Badr were split and they became two different entities.
So Badr was the armed force of the Majlis al-A'la.
Majlis al-A'la held different groups together and formed the Supreme Council.
That is the translation of the word Majlis al-A'la.
And Badr was the armed force, so the military arm of the Supreme Council.
And then they split and they became two different groups.
And when the father of Sayyid Ammar Hakeem died, Sayyid Abdulaziz Hakeem, so Sayyid Ammar went alone and he came out of the Supreme Council and formed a new group called al-Hikmah, the wisdom.
So he is not within al-Amiri, but it doesn't mean that he can join.
He can't join.
No, he can join al-Amiri at a certain point when he will see al-Amiri is forming the largest coalition.
And the talk among all these groups are happening today in Beirut, Tehran and here in Baghdad.
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So what about Eyad Allawi?
Because I know his group had come in first place with the plurality back in 2010.
But they ended up being pushed aside in favor of America and Iran's favorite Maliki then.
Well, Eyad Allawi at that time, I mean, several years ago when Maliki got his second term, managed to gather 91 seats at Parliament when Maliki gathered 90.
But that is not enough because to form the largest coalition, you need a much larger number than 91 to go ahead and choose the prime minister of your biggest coalition.
So Eyad Allawi today has 22 seats at the Parliament and he doesn't have a harmonious 22 seats because there are groups within his party that are like Salim al-Jabouri and like Salih al-Mutlaq who can split off Eyad Allawi as they have done four years ago and can go and join the largest coalition in exchange of a seat at the ministership or a vice prime minister or vice president.
So in exchange of something, some kind of political gain.
Well, I know that part of the, I guess the motivation behind his campaign then or behind a lot of support for his campaign was that even though he was a Shiite, he was a former Baathist as well so that possibly he could have bridged the difference and helped on some compromise with the defeated Sunni leaders.
And of course the rest is history.
After that did not happen, which I don't know that it would have really worked, but after that did not happen and then of course with America and allied support for the insurgency in Syria, that ended up blowing back very badly into Iraq for a few years there.
Well, yes, Eyad Allawi presents himself as, he is a Shia but a secular Shia and he was the favorite candidate of Paul Bremer at that time.
And as soon as a person becomes a prime minister in Iraq, then he manages to gather many seats.
There we saw Eyad Allawi was nobody when he became a prime minister on the following election.
He managed to gather 91 seats, but then on the one afterward he went to 40.
And then today he is at 20.
We look at al-Maliki, he has the biggest vote in Baghdad, 90,000 votes for himself.
Nevertheless, because he is no longer prime minister, then he didn't manage to gather what Haider al-Badi did very badly as a prime minister to gather only 51 seats because every prime minister managed to get so many seats, but not enough again to form a coalition.
So for Haider al-Badi, that was the biggest surprise for him because he thought defeating ISIS and hitting the Kurds will give him a free ticket to a second term, which is not the case.
All right now, so what about Fallujah, Ramadi, Mosul, and these cities that have been so-called at least liberated from the Islamic State?
I don't know what you call it in the last few years here.
Were they allowed or able to participate in the election?
Oh, yeah, of course.
So today, Mosul, the life is normal.
Everything is not in the old city, in the city center that is completely destroyed, but in other parts outside the city center where ISIS fought to the last man.
Life has returned normally.
There are fruit and vegetables in the street, gas, gasoline, reconstruction.
The electricity is returning slowly but surely.
Yes, they have voted, but generally speaking, what hasn't been said officially and it was misleading in the election is when the Iraqi government came out and said 44% of those allowed to vote have voted, which is not true because those who are allowed to vote are 24 million.
But the Iraqi government made the statistic on the last four years, which were 11 million eligible to vote, and they said 44% of the 11 million.
So basically we have 20% to 22% only who voted.
This is why Muqtada has an elevated number of seats and where other areas of Iraq didn't vote.
And why didn't they vote?
Was it just the aftermath of the war?
It's a mixture of that.
It's the aftermath of the war.
It is the call of the Grand Ayatollah Sistani saying, we don't want the same people to return to power again.
And people were not interested because there is a very high level of corruption.
The infrastructure in the country is very low.
I'm not talking about main cities, but in rural area is really very slim.
And nothing has been done since 2003 to date.
I mean, very little has been done.
And I guess Sistani mostly tries not to comment on these kinds of things, but is there a pretty clear implication of who he does favor?
Yes, there is.
He favors nobody.
Yeah, he said clearly.
I mean, I talked to him a few months ago in person.
Really?
Yes.
I have a good connection with the Grand Ayatollah Sistani and I visit his house often.
And the House of the Mujahideen said clearly, we have no candidate and we're not going to support any candidate because none deserve to be supported.
Nobody among all these offered anything to the country.
Therefore, we don't ask the population to support any candidate.
And that was quite frustrating for the people in the street here in Iraq because they were longing for the Grand Ayatollah to say something and to indicate to whom they can give their vote.
And because he didn't say that, people are saying, well, we're not going to vote because you're not helping us here.
And he doesn't want to help them because he doesn't want to take the responsibility upon him and say, OK, I've suggested for you to vote for this person.
And he managed to go through and then he gave nothing to the population.
So he doesn't want this responsibility because he believes none of the Iraqi politicians today deserve to be supported.
And this is why he said, use your brain and you decide who you want to support.
Well, Jesus seems like that's a lot of potential power that he refuses to exercise there, huh?
Well, because it's a big person, a big responsibility upon him.
If he indicates a person and the person turned out to be non-adequate, people will crucify him.
Yeah.
Well, but then wouldn't it make sense, though, for him to say, you know, X, Y and Z, they and their parties are really beyond the pale.
You know, I mean, is there really none of these parties are slightly preferable?
I mean, say, for example, on a major issue like what's going to be the future of the predominantly Sunni areas of Iraq that were formerly under the control of the Islamic State, you know, especially like Ramadi and Mosul, where they were, you know, bombed so badly and all of this stuff, there has to be reconstruction.
There has to be, you know, some kind of reconciliation, right?
When Iraq was split in half for more than three years.
And so you can't just have, you know, Asaib al-Haq up there in charge of the government, right?
So wouldn't Sistani say, well, I mean, wouldn't he prefer Sadr, who seems to always want to be more of an Iraqi nationalist than, say, a cat's paw of Iran?
Well, today there are Asaib al-Haq managed to get 17 seats, by the way, since you've mentioned them.
And they have 17 seats in the parliament.
And Muqtada has 54 seats.
That means we have militia in the parliament today.
That is true.
But Asaib al-Haq are no longer part of the Hashd al-Shaabi, and they're not in Ramadi.
The Popular Mobilization Forces are today integrated in the security forces.
And it is up to the prime minister to declare the war on ISIS terminated and ask all the militia to put down their weapons.
And because it didn't do that, today we see Saraya al-Salam of Muqtada.
They are still armed.
They control from the south of Iraq.
We're talking since from Basra to Samara North, the town of the ISIS leader Baghdadi.
And they are present with their weapons a bit everywhere in Iraq.
Asaib al-Haq, they're no longer in Ramadi or Fallujah or in the entire Anbar area.
They are today in Najaf, and they are in the south of Iraq.
And they have not been asked to be disarmed.
But all those who joined the Hashd al-Shaabi, they are already part of the Iraqi security services.
This is something completely different today.
And they are not entitled to run an election, and they have no seat.
Hashd al-Shaabi doesn't have any seat in the parliament.
And then, so what about the Sunni leaders?
I mean, I know there were Sunnis in the parliament really all along.
It's just they didn't seem to have much power, influence, or ability to help to reconcile the different factions.
Well, the Sunni, yes, they have a vote because they represent 30%, 35% of the population.
And they are represented by the speaker, Osama Najafi, by Salim al-Jabouri, by Saleh al-Mutlaq, by other groups.
And they have their seats allocated in the government and in the parliament.
But according to the size and the percentage they represent in the country.
Right.
Well, but of course, I mean, that meant in practice that, say, like in 2013, the Shiite-dominated government was really withdrawing from the predominantly Sunni areas because it was like a foreign country.
And they were, you know, I remember Patrick Coburn reporting on the show, the Iraqi army being AWOL from Mosul a year before the fall of Mosul because, you know, they were like out on Fort Apache out in enemy territory and without, you know, solid enough supply lines to rely on.
And so they were retreating back behind Shiite lines and ultimately leaving Iraqi Sunni stand wide open for ISIS to come in.
So it seems like somebody has to figure out a way to do something about that, where these major regions can can be part of one country again.
Even if, you know, as you're saying, the Sunni are a small minority of the population, or not that small, but a minority of the population.
They still live in, you know, almost half the country or what, a third of the country in the West there.
Right.
Yes.
And the Sunni are between six and seven million in Iraq.
But we it's good to keep in mind that the majority of those who were killed to liberate Ramadi and to liberate Mosul are Shia.
Those who fought against ISIS, you have between 10 to 12,000 Shia killed while fighting ISIS in Sunni areas, like in Salahuddin, like in Anbar and like in the plain of Nineveh.
Therefore, today, the Sunni Shia rhetoric is existential.
It exists mainly on social media and among analysts.
And it's to a lower level in Iraq.
It hasn't gone.
It hasn't vanished yet.
In 2003, when I landed in Iraq and I had the background of the sectarian war between Sunni and Shia, the first question I said, is there a war between Shia and Sunni here?
And people look at me very strangely and said, Shia and Sunni, there's no difference in Shia and Sunni here.
Well, with ISIS, that's changed radically because the objective of what used to be al-Qaeda in Iraq and then later became ISIS, Zawahir al-Zarqawi, was to trigger the sectarian war.
And he managed today because the Sunni within the popular mobilization forces, within the security forces, within the Iraqi army, fought side by side by the Shia.
And the largest number of casualties and killed were among the Shia who defended mainly the Sunni area.
Because if you look at Baghdad toward the south, from Baghdad to Mosul, they are mainly Shia dominated.
You have the biggest area where there are concentration of Shia, a bit in Tal Afar and Tashkormatu, but all the rest, they are a mixture, but mainly Sunni.
And this is where the majority of Shia died to liberate the Sunni area.
So the sectarian aspect in Iraq is going away slowly but surely.
And those who are triggering the sectarian Iraqi aspect today have been defeated, which is ISIS.
And the remaining rhetoric is still in the news and on the media and much less in Iraq.
And the Sunnis know very well in Iraq they are six to seven million and the country is some dominated by the 65% Shia and they accept that.
And so you're saying that ultimately within the predominantly Sunni areas that those people are thankful enough for their liberation from the Islamic state that they're not as, I guess, resentful about their new inferior position in the society as compared to how it was before?
And then does that really translate then into an acceptance of Baghdad's power in their towns?
OK, so to be realistic, in the country of war, at war, like in Iraq, you have different type of people.
You have the population who are careless, who govern and who dominate.
If it is ISIS or it is the central government, they are survival and they want to survive.
They give a damn who is the leader.
And then you have a part of the population who support whoever comes and guide them or dominate them.
In this case, before the liberation was ISIS.
And these are the adapt and then they collaborate and they help exactly like they've done with at the time of Saddam Hussein, where the majority of the population were part of the Ba'ath party, but they were not adopting the ideology of the Ba'ath party.
So it's exactly the same happened when ISIS walked in and in the area under the control of ISIS.
And then you have the society that supported ISIS and still support ISIS.
And this will never change.
And then you have the society that have suffered from ISIS because ISIS fought in every single Sunni city and every single Sunni city that was dominated by ISIS was destroyed.
So who is the fault here of ISIS or the central government who liberated this area from a terrorist group?
This question needs to be addressed to the population who lived under ISIS, under ISIS ruling and under ISIS ideology and under ISIS penalties to chop your head, to chop your hands and feet, to be thrown from the top of the building, to allow no space for any other religion or any other thinking.
But their thinking, remember that ISIS fought against the same Al-Qaeda and they both Wahhabi, they both Salafi and they both Takfiri.
And ISIS fought against Taliban, who have the exact, those who offered shelter to Osama Bin Laden.
Therefore, ISIS is not Sunni.
We can't say that ISIS are Sunni.
The Sunnis are not ISIS.
There is a group called ISIS that hides behind the Sunni.
And today you have Saleh al-Mutlaq, who is the vice prime minister.
He is not ISIS.
You have Salim al-Jabouri, who is a member of the parliament.
He is not ISIS and he is Sunni.
We can't drag the Sunni religion all under the tent of ISIS because it is not a reality.
But then you have those who lost their belonging, who lost their children, their brothers.
And these, they are resentful against the government.
Yes.
So you have all kinds of people.
But then time is the best healer.
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Yeah.
Well, I guess...
Yeah, I mean, that's my thing is I've been wondering since the end of Iraq War III, and, you know, what's going to be the future of, you know, I guess, Iraqi Sunnistan or whatever, these predominantly Sunni areas.
And I hope you don't think anything I said was implying that, you know, all the people of Western Iraq were happy to have Baghdadi in charge or anything like that.
That seemed much more like something that America, Turkey and Saudi Arabia inflicted on them than anything.
Although I think only, you know, not deliberately.
They deliberately inflicted it on the people of Syria.
I think the invasion of Iraq was when it went too far.
But certainly, I wouldn't just put that on the Sunni population of Iraq.
But anyway, so, yeah, I guess I just...
I'm really worried about their future.
You know, as we talked about before on the show, you said that, you know, the kind of previous Supreme Islamic Council policy, Iranian policy of let's have strong federalism, which means let's take Baghdad and let's just leave the Sunnis without any, you know, basically just cut them loose.
That, well, since that really backfired with the Islamic State coming in, that they've got to have a new solution.
They've got to figure out a way to reintegrate these areas, not under domination of Baghdad, but in some kind of Iraqi nationalist kind of way.
I thought maybe that would be a bit of silver lining of Muqtada al-Sadr coming to power, is that this has been his reputation, was that he would rather have an alliance with the Iraqi Sunnis, who to him are Iraqis, rather than have a closer relationship with Iran, as the Supreme Islamic Council has always sought.
And the problem, the Americans' problem with that was he wanted the Americans out, too.
And so they hated him and accused him of being the Iranian puppet, when he was really the least of the Iranian influence of the major Shiite leaders in Iraq War II.
So, I don't know, I was kind of thinking maybe the news of this election was hopeful, and that maybe, you know, Saar, you emphasized in your article about how he'd gone to Saudi Arabia and this kind of thing, that maybe he's really trying to emphasize a real reconciliation with the people and the powers in Fallujah, Ramadi, and Mosul, and so forth.
Well, indeed, what you've said is very correct.
Anyone who will dominate Iraq today, any prime minister, if this prime minister will come out of the Muqtada's coalition or al-Amiri-Maliki coalition, this new prime minister or the renewed prime minister has to address the Sunni in a different language.
So far in the last four years, Iraq was engaged in fighting ISIS to liberate the country.
The country was on the floor, was completely destroyed under the control of militia and terrorist groups, and then the country is starting to regain its health slowly.
Any new prime minister will have to address the Sunni in a way that they are absorbed by the government, they have their right looked after, and they no longer go toward any other group or al-Qaeda in a different dress that will come in and say, look what the central government Baghdad is doing, so come and join us.
So this problem will be addressed, and I hope so, by the new prime minister, because although all the Sunni area were destroyed, the Sunni area need to be reconstructed, and the Sunni population need to be addressed in a language where they feel they are part of Iraq and they are part of the entire population.
There is a space in Iraq for Sunni, for Shia, for Yazidi, for Kurds, for Assyrian, for any other religion, Christian, non-Christian, to be in this country and they can live together.
This is what ISIS prevented, this is what the central government Baghdad didn't learn to do properly until today, and this is what the central government Baghdad has to learn in the future.
Well, it sounds like you're a little bit hopeful there too, that maybe this will really be a new beginning there.
Listen, I'm so sorry that we're out of time, because I could ask you a whole other half hour worth of questions about Syria right now, but I've got to go, and I'm sure you do too, but thank you so much for coming back on the show, Elijah, I really appreciate it.
It's a pleasure.
Okay guys, that is Elijah Magnier, and I'm sorry I didn't say the name of the article at the beginning, it's at ejmagnier.com.
Iran unwelcome on the Iraqi street, and militias are numerous in the parliament.
US is the biggest loser.
That is at ejmagnier.com.
